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August 2016

Anti-Israel Double Standards Enable Assad’s Brutality by Noah Beck

http://www.investigativeproject.org/5595/anti-israel-double-standards-enable-assad

Syria’s civil war claimed 470,000 lives since it started in March 2011, the Syrian Centre for Policy Research announced in February. That’s an average of about 262 deaths per day and 7,860 per month. The carnage has continued unabated, so, applying the same death rate nearly 200 days after the February estimate, the death toll is over 520,000.

Such numbers are staggering, even by Middle East standards. However, the violence has become so routine that it only occasionally captures global attention, usually when a particularly poignant moment of human suffering is documented. The most recent example is Omran Daqneesh, a 5-year old Syrian boy who was filmed shell-shocked, bloody, and covered in dust after the airstrike bombing of his Aleppo apartment block.

The tragic image of Omran caused outrage around the world, as did the image of Aylan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy whose body washed up last September on a beach in Turkey. Yet Omran’s plight demonstrates that, nearly a year after the last child victim of Syrian horrors captured global sympathy, nothing has changed.

If anything, the violence in this multi-party proxy war seems to be getting worse. Since Aylan Kurdi’s drowning, Russia began blitz-bombing Syria in support of the Assad regime. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimates that nine months of Russian airstrikes have killed 3,089 civilians – a toll that is greater, by some estimates, than the number of civilians killed by ISIS. By contrast, Syrian civilian deaths caused by U.S. airstrikes are probably in the hundreds (over roughly twice as much time, since U.S. airstrikes began in the summer of 2015).

Israel, One of the World’s Driest Countries, Is Now Overflowing With Water by Rowan Jacobsen

This post by Rowan Jacobsen was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.

We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished throughnational campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.

Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Bar-Zeev, who recently joined Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research after completing his postdoc work at Yale University, is an expert on biofouling, which has always been an Achilles’ heel of desalination and one of the reasons it has been considered a last resort. Desal works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. The water gets through, while the larger salt molecules are left behind. But microorganisms in seawater quickly colonize the membranes and block the pores, and controlling them requires periodic costly and chemical-intensive cleaning. But Bar-Zeev and colleagues developed a chemical-free system using porous lava stone to capture the microorganisms before they reach the membranes. It’s just one of many breakthroughs in membrane technology that have made desalination much more efficient. Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.

The institute’s original mission was to improve life in Israel’s bone-dry Negev Desert, but the lessons look increasingly applicable to the entire Fertile Crescent. “The Middle East is drying up,” says Osnat Gillor, a professor at the Zuckerberg Institute who studies the use of recycled wastewater on crops. “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel.”

President Obama has accomplished something previously unimaginable: He helped Donald Trump look more presidential than the president of the United States.By Marc A. Thiessen

On Friday, while residents of Baton Rouge were recovering from a historic flood that damaged some 40,000 homes, Obama was on Martha’s Vineyard watching fireworks, following 10 rounds of golf in 16 days. Donald Trump, by contrast, was on the ground in the flood zone, unloading relief materials, touring the devastation and focusing much-needed attention on a disaster that has been largely ignored by the media.

Why wasn’t Obama there? According to a White House statement, “The President is mindful of the impact that his travel has on first responders and wants to ensure that his presence does not interfere with ongoing recovery efforts.”

Funny, that’s precisely why President George W. Bush didn’t come to New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina. And Democrats — including Barack Obama — hammered Bush for it. Unlike Obama, Bush actually canceled his vacation and got on a plane to return to Washington. But he decided not to land in Louisiana so as not to draw resources away from the ongoing rescue efforts and flew Air Force One low over the flood zone so that he could see the devastation firsthand.

Democrats howled. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Bush was “oblivious, in denial, dangerous.” Obama later called Bush “a president who only saw the people [of Louisiana] from the window of an airplane, instead of down here on the ground trying to provide comfort.”

Trump to Louisiana: ‘We’re with you’

Mike Rowe exposes snobbery of anti-Trump journalists By Thomas Lifson

If Donald Trump should win the presidency, I hope he will be able to prevail upon Mike Rowe to be his secretary of education and lead a desperately needed reform and restructuring of American education. For Rowe understands the serious harm being inflicted upon Americans by the worship of college as the essential first step into the workforce, and the utter disdain and lack of support for vocation skill training.

But Rowe’s vision is far greater. He also spots political bias, and on his Facebook page. he has written a delicious response to journalists who harp on Donald Trump’s base being “poorly educated.” It is the read of the day. Here is a fair use excerpt, but read the whole thing:

Pardon Me, But Your Slip Is Showing…

Albert Samos writes…The media has recently been stating that Donald Trump’s key supporters didn’t graduate from college. They constantly refer to these people as “uneducated white men.” As an electrical contractor who happens to be a white guy with six employees but no college, I find this vaguely offensive and somewhat confusing. What do you think of the media characterizing people this way?

Hi Albert

If the media is referring to Trump supporters who happen to be male caucasians suffering from a lack of knowledge brought about by an absence of formal or practical instruction, than I guess “uneducated white men” is a fair description. However, if the Trump supporters in question are being dubbed “uneducated,” simply because they didn’t earn a four-year degree, I’d say the media’s slip is showing.

Let’s assume that Donald Trump is indeed popular among white men who didn’t graduate from college. The first question is, so what? Is this information newsworthy? Obviously, thousands of journalists think it is. To your point, the words “uneducated white men” now appear in hundreds of articles about Trump. But if this is truly important information, where were these reporters four years ago? In the last election, an even greater majority of African-American males who voted for President Obama had no college on their resume. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall any headlines or articles that delved into Obama’s popularity among “uneducated black men.”

If the media didn’t care about the lack of college among black men supporting Obama, why do they care so much about the lack of college among white men supporting Trump? Moreover, when exactly did a lack of college become synonymous with a lack of education?

There are many ways to become educated that don’t involve the purchase of a diploma. Why would the media ignore thousands of apprenticeship programs, on-the-job-training opportunities, and all the other alternative educational options that have led so many people into so many successful careers? The answer is obvious – many in the press are looking for ways to impact the election. If a biased reporter can get away with labeling Trump supporters who didn’t graduate from college as “uneducated,” he can simultaneously imply that any ballot cast for Trump is the hallmark of an “uneducated” voter.

If you’re only “vaguely offended” by this Albert, maybe it’s because you’ve seen it all before. Never mind the fact that you run a successful business. Never mind your years of training, your skill, your knowledge, your diligence, your commonsense, and every other quality that allowed you to succeed. In this political climate, none of that matters. These days, you’re just another white guy who never made it to college, voting for the “wrong candidate.”

The Anatomy of a Deception By Sarah N. Stern

“The worst example of international diplomacy in history, with none other than the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, at a time when the free Western world is being plagued by a scourge of Islamic terrorism.”

The media and much of the Republican establishment have caught on to only part of a story about a shady deal that the Obama administration made with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a deal that took a rather labyrinthine and bizarre form. What they are talking about is bad enough, which involves paying a ransom for hostages, opening up Americans to kidnappings and imprisonment whenever they travel abroad.

The part of the story that they are missing, however, is that what the administration did was highly illegal, according to statutes we still have on our books.

On August 3rd, a story broke that an unmarked cargo plane loaded with $400 million in foreign currency landed in Tehran as part of a United States payment to Iran. Coincidentally this happened the very same day that three American hostages were released.

The next day President Obama took to the airwaves, and emphatically stated, “We do not pay ransom for hostages. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future.” He went on to describe how he has met with various American families whose loved ones are being held hostage around the globe, and that we simply do not pay ransom because that would encourage more hostage taking in the future. “Those families know we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom,” Obama said. “And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we’re looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don’t pay ransom, defies logic,” President Obama added.

However, Washington is abuzz with the news from the Thursday, August 18th Wall Street Journal that an Iranian cargo plane from Iran Air went on a trip to Geneva where pellets were loaded onto it, with foreign currencies including Swiss francs and euros. One of the hostages, Pastor Saeed Abedini, had said that he was kept waiting at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran on January 16th, until the morning of January 17th, and “was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official that their departure was contingent upon the movements of a second airplane,” according to reports.

Another aspect of the story is that Iran Air is the official airplane used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to transfer weapons and manpower to Syria to fight for President Bashar Assad’s brutal dictatorship and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran Air had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for ferrying weapons and supplies until January 16th of this year, the very same date these foreign currencies were being ferried to Tehran.

Interestingly, January 16th was also “Implementation Day” of the agreement.

Peter Smith Distributive Justice

Those who wear compassion on their sleeves have no monopoly on concern for the poor. The only contention is about how best they can be helped. And whatever help is provided must be detached from any illusion that society can be rid of poverty.
A little enquiry shows that though a great many people are dissatisfied with the existing pattern of distribution, none of them has really any clear idea of what pattern he would regard as just. —Friedrich Hayek, “The Atavism of Social Justice”

Prosperity and poverty do not sit well together. The contrast is confronting. Take this comment for example:

Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities of income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the contrast between the luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding poverty suffered by others.

You are probably wrong about its provenance. It is neither from a papal encyclical nor an utterance of Justin Welby, Thomas Piketty, Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn. It is from Free to Choose (1980) by Milton and Rose Friedman.

Those who wear compassion on their sleeves have no monopoly on concern for the poor. The only contention is about how best they can be helped. And whatever help is provided must be detached from any illusion of ever ridding society of poverty. It will always be around, confirmed for those biblically minded by Deuteronomy 15:11 and Matthew 26:11. Moreover, there will always be wide disparities between the rich and the poor. Anything approaching equality of income or wealth is unachievable. Even those on the fringe of the distant Left who might extol its desirability will admit of that. As explicitly does the Catholic Church: “unequal distribution [‘in physical and mental abilities, wealth, etc.’] is part of God’s plan, so that man can share his blessings with those in need” (from the “Simplified” version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1936 and 1937).

There is no question. Inequality is an inherent characteristic of all complex human societies. This means that claims of there being excessive inequality is a judgment call. It is based, presumably, on the prevailing economic system, whatever it is, being flawed or broken in one way or another. This has to be the argument.

Unsurprisingly, as the system underlying all successful economies, capitalism is in the firing line. Inequality in, say, socialist Venezuela is not a headline issue. Inequality is just one of many problems in a typical socialist society and not the major one when the lights go out. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The question I intend addressing is how the values inherent in capitalism bear on “distributive justice” compared with Christian values and, as a subsidiary reference point, with those inherent in socialism. I am squarely in the First World. At root, the Third World’s problems have nothing to do with economics. They have everything to do with dysfunctional cultures and can only be solved though political and social reform by the societies concerned.

John O’Sullivan, in The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister (2006), points out that papal encyclicals “rightly warn against greed and materialism as dangerous sins”. The latest encyclical, issued on May 24, 2015, Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home) carries on the theme. Capitalism is again the culprit, as it must be. No other system, whether it was feudal or mercantilist before the rise of capitalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or the experiments with socialism-cum-communism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has produced enough material goods to sustain widespread materialism.

Greed and materialism, to which can be added “individualism” (interpreted as meaning a lack of solidarity with others), underscore the Catholic Church’s discomfort with capitalism. Other Christian denominations undoubtedly share this discomfort. And, certainly, it is difficult to see how greed, materialism and individualism, which undoubtedly at times characterise capitalism in practice, are reconcilable with Christian values.

TRUMP’S SHARIA TEST PROPOSAL — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/08/23/trumps-sharia-test-proposal-on-the-glazov-gang/

Nonie discusses Trump’s Sharia Test Proposal, explaining why the ideological vetting of Muslim newcomers is long overdue.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Nonie discuss Facebook Punishes Me For Violating Sharia, sharing how she was banned for committing a thought crime about Islam:

North Korea Shows Progress With Fresh Missile Test Pyongyang pursues program to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that are hard to detect before launch By Alastair Gale

SEOUL—North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile that traveled much further than previous similar tests, a fresh sign of progress in Pyongyang’s program to develop nuclear-tipped missiles that are difficult to detect before launch.

The missile was launched from near the port of Sinpo on North Korea’s eastern coast at around 5:30 a.m. Seoul time on Wednesday. It traveled about 300 miles (482 kilometers), according to the U.S. military, before falling into the sea.

North Korea began testing submarine-launched missiles in late 2014 but flight distances have been limited to a few miles at most. The previous most recent missile launched from a submarine in July of this year failed in the early stage of flight, according to South Korea’s defense ministry.

The latest launch showed “progress” compared with previous tests, according to a statement from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The apparent successful launch of a missile from a submarine comes after North Korea also held its first successful launch of a missile from a land-based mobile carrier in June.

Both missile types represent a new threat because they are harder to identify and destroy before launch. They also have the potential to give North Korea a “second-strike” capability to retaliate to an initial major attack on its military bases.

South Korea and the U.S. quickly condemned the latest test, one of a string of ballistic missile launches by North Korea this year in violation of a United Nations’ ban. CONTINUE AT SITE

( Relax everybody!!!)Joe Biden Will Attempt to Smooth Relations With Turkey By Carol E. Lee and Thomas Grove

““The vice president will express outrage at seeing people in the military and others who had taken an oath to protect the Turkish Republic and its citizens engaging in an illegal coup attempt against a democratic government,” a senior administration official said. “And he’ll reaffirm the strength and resilience of the U.S.-Turkey alliance.”

The U.S. vice president arrives in Ankara at a critical moment for the two allies.

Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Turkey Wednesday, the first senior White House official to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since last month’s failed coup, as the U.S. tries to smooth over strained relations.

Mr. Biden’s visit to the Turkish capital comes at a critical moment for the two allies. He arrived seeking to blunt accusations from some Turkish officials that the U.S. helped facilitate the attempted coup, senior administration officials said.

At the same time the White House is concerned about Mr. Erdogan’s response to the failed coup, which has involved widespread arrests and purging of government employees. Mr. Biden doesn’t plan to raise those concerns publicly, a senior administration official said.

As a sign of strength between the two allies, the U.S. joined Turkey in a fresh offensive against Islamic State-held territory in neighboring Syria. Turkey blames the terror group for a deadly bomb attack against a wedding party last weekend that killed 54 people, mostly women and children, in a Turkish city close to Syria.

Tensions between the U.S. and Turkey have flared over the past month as Turkish officials have called on the U.S. to extradite a cleric living in the U.S. whom they say helped orchestrate the failed coup.

Countering the Pontiff of Terror The U.N. has resolutions targeting the financing of terror. Why not go after those who incite violence? By Yasser Reda

Religious programming is popular throughout the Middle East. Television viewers call in or send questions via email or social media to ask scholars of Islamic law about all manner of things. Most questions relate to their personal lives, from the mundane—can Muslims listen to pop music?—to such issues as inheritance, alimony and contraception.

Every once in a while, however, a viewer raises an issue of political consequence. Such was the case with a 2015 episode of the Al Jazeera talk-show “Al-Sharia wa Al-Hayat” (Shariah and Life), which has recently become the subject of intense debate. The following question was asked: “Is it permissible—in the Syrian context—for an individual to blow himself up to target a group that owes allegiance to the Syrian regime, even if this causes casualties among civilians?”

This was the response:

“Generally, individuals should fight and die in combat. . . . However, if the need arises, individuals should only blow themselves up if a group (jamaa) decides that it is necessary for those individuals to blow themselves up. . . . These are matters that are not to be left to individuals. . . . Individuals should surrender themselves to the jamaa, and it is the jamaa that determines how to utilize individuals according to its needs.”

The speaker was Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the intellectual force behind the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic groups. He has written more than a hundred tomes on theological and jurisprudential issues that have attracted many adherents and numerous detractors. In addition to his scholarship, he has devoted a lifetime to religious political activism. Through his many writings, sermons, speeches and religious edicts, al-Qaradawi has become recognized as a progenitor of radicalism in the Middle East and beyond.

His answer regarding suicide bombings is typical of his extremism. By failing to reject the premise of the question, al-Qaradawi accepted suicide bombings as a legitimate weapon of warfare. This openly contradicts the prohibition in Islamic law on committing suicide.

Al-Qaradawi also fails to uphold the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, a cardinal principle of modern international humanitarian law and Islamic laws of war. The Holy Quran and various Prophetic sayings, otherwise known as the Hadith, establish an unquestionable prohibition on targeting noncombatants.

More alarmingly, al-Qaradawi entrusts the so-called jamaa—a term that can mean “the group” or “the community” and was left undefined—with the authority to order young women and men to become suicide bombers. He finds no religious compulsion or moral imperative to condemn the heinous practice of transforming human beings into indiscriminate instruments of death. He fails to denounce the evil of exploiting young women and men to advance the cause of terror. CONTINUE AT SITE