RUTHFULLY YOURS

A recent PJ Media blog [1] chastises mainstream (essentially Left) media for largely ignoring Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s 1/1/15 speech [2], an address much ballyhooed by conservatives (see for example, here [3], here [4], and here [5]). This criticism [1] of the Left-dominated media is warranted.

But conservative champions of Sisi’s address, and his subsequent unique, if brief [6] appearance at Coptic Christmas mass held in the St. Mark’s (Abbasiya) Cathedral last Tuesday (1/6/15), are also guilty of what Ogden Nash [7] referred to as “equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people,/ from Billy Sunday to Buddha, /And it consists of not having done something you shudda”—i.e., their own “sin of omission.” The shared conservative journalistic sin of omission is best illustrated by their collective failure to discuss the ongoing, Sharia-compliant campaign of el-Sisi’s youth and religious endowments ministries, begun after [8] his landslide election [9], and assumption of power, to extirpate the alleged “scourge” of atheism [10] afflicting Egypt. Moreover, this lacuna in conservative analysis, I argue, is rooted in their continued failure to acknowledge—let alone discuss—Sisi’s Weltanschauung as articulated [11] in his 2006 U.S. Army War College mini-thesis (which can be read in full here [12]).

In 2014, the year before the murder rampages at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the kosher supermarket in Paris, about seven thousand French Jews (out of a community of about half a million) emigrated to Israel.

With Muslim and other antisemitic harassment and violence constantly intensifying in France, that was twice the number of the previous year, and a record high.

Even before this month’s terror attacks, a higher number of French Jewish immigrants to Israel was expected for 2015. Now, after the attacks, a higher number yet is expected, possibly fifteen thousand. There is even talk of the Jews leaving France—mainly for Israel—altogether.

Meanwhile it’s reported that:

An unprecedented 15,000 soldiers and police officers have been mobilized in France to protect potential sites from terrorist attacks, of whom one third have been stationed at Jewish schools and synagogues for 24-hour-a-day supervision.

In a move described as an initiative to promote “religious pluralism,” Duke University announced Tuesday it would broadcast a weekly call to prayer for Muslims from the Duke Chapel bell tower each Friday at 1 p.m. Yesterday, however, the University reversed itself. “Duke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. “However, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.”

Thus Duke takes a rare break from its long tradition of fostering a politically correct, hypersensitive atmosphere on campus — one rife with hypocrisy. The same university that will not acquiesce to the MSA in this case is the one that hosted the annual conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) in 2004, during which attendees defeated proposals to moderate PSM’s “Guiding Principle #5,” that refuses to condemn terrorism. It was followed up by several speakers more than willing to bash Israel as an apartheid state, comparing their treatment of Palestinians to “Algiers under the French or Poland under the Nazis,” deriding American media for a “campaign of misinformation by Zionist-leaning news editors,” and accusing the Jewish State of “attempting to actually rid itself of the Palestinians while taking as much of their land as possible.”

President Obama is fond of saying that he is responsible for one of the greatest jobs recoveries in history. Never mind the fact that less Americans are in the active workforce, as a percentage, than at any time in three decades. Never mind that his recover has been the weakest jobs recover of the century. He says the recovery is “real, steady, and happening.” He says America is experiencing the longest period of uninterrupted growth in US history.

Ok, so let’s assume that we’re creating massive numbers of new jobs.

Is Obama responsible for those jobs?

In a word, no.

It turns out that Obama’s recovery hasn’t been his recovery at all: it’s been those evil oil and gas companies. As Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation points out, “From 2008 to 2013, the oil and gas industry created more jobs on net than all other industries combined.”

While Western newspapers were debating whether or not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, in Nigeria as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the Islamic State in Nigeria, also known as Boko Haram, in what is being called the deadliest attack by the Muslim group to date.

Survivors described the Islamic State setting up efficient killing teams and massacring everyone while shouting “Allahu Akbar”.

“For five kilometers (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one survivor said.

There’s a word for that. It’s genocide.

U.S. President Barack Obama, as is well known at this point, elected not to attend the ‎mass rally in Paris on Sunday, where the victims of several incidents of mass ‎murder by radical Islamic terrorists were honored, and the principle of free speech ‎‎(and a free press) was defended. The president also did not send Vice President ‎Joe Biden to the event, a symbolic role that would have suited Biden, while he waits ‎for Hillary Clinton to announce her candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination ‎for president in 2016, thereby ending his political career and ambitions. Secretary ‎of State John Kerry was in India, and chose to stay there. Attorney General Eric ‎Holder was already in Paris, but apparently had more important things to do there ‎than show his face in public. The excuse for his failure to show up at the rally had ‎to do with attending meetings in the city. It is pretty likely that those with whom he ‎was meeting were not sitting around a table conferring while the rally took place. ‎

Of course, this was not Ferguson, Missouri. There the White House sent three ‎people to Michael Brown’s funeral, and had a lot more to say about his death than ‎it did about the murder of 17 innocents which occurred in Paris. The U.S. ambassador to France, a political appointee, ‎who was awarded this elite post for her service as a big Obama campaign bundler, ‎was the sole official U.S. representative at the rally which several million people ‎attended, including over 40 foreign leaders. Some are calling this embarrassing ‎‎”no show” by the president and his top team, Obama’s Katrina moment, a reference to ‎President George W. Bush flying over New Orleans after the hurricane hit, while praising the ‎efforts of his Federal Emergency Management Agency director. ‎

Obscuring the threat of radical Islam won’t diminish it.

It is settled: The Paris terror attacks had almost nothing to do with Islam.

Consider that on the one hand, you have the chilling new tape of the Charlie Hebdo attackers declaring, “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammed,” and on the other, you have the tortured assurances of White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Which are you going to believe?

The Obama administration’s mind-bogglingly determined refusal to say that we are at war with “radical Islam,” together with the Left’s evasions about Islamic terrorism, means that there has been a haze of euphemism around what should be a galvanizing event in the West’s fight against terror.

The White House seems to think its denial of radical Islam will stop people from believing the obvious.

Could this argument be any dumber?

The Obama administration has forced America and much of the world into a debate no one wanted or needed. Namely, does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with Islam?

This debate is different than the much-coveted “national conversation on race” that politicians so often call for (usually as a way to duck having it), because that is a conversation at least some people want. The White House doesn’t want a conversation about Islam and terrorism.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says, “We have chosen not to use that label [of radical Islam] because it doesn’t seem to accurately describe what happened.”

What happened was the slaughter last week at the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The sound of the terrorists’ gunfire was punctuated by shouts of “Allahu akbar!” and “We have avenged the prophet Mohammed!”

Since no one questions the sincerity of these declarations, that alone should settle the issue of whether Islam had anything to do with the attack. And for normal people it would.

It was not elected to make Washington “work” but to keep Washington from working against Americans.

The Republican party’s conservative base has a major problem. In assessing the 2014 midterm elections, a tidal wave in which the base propelled the GOP to substantial majorities in both houses of Congress, conservatives are in full agreement with President Obama and completely at odds with Republican leadership.

The president boldly declared that, while he was not on the ballot, his policies were. He could not have been more right.

GOP leadership boldly declares that the election was a case of voters trusting Republicans with an opportunity to “prove we can govern” — to demonstrate that GOP lawmakers can work effectively with the president. They could not be more wrong.

In an attempt to make educational books more friendly to practicing
Jews and Muslims, Oxford University Press publishers are banning any
mention of pigs, bacon, or sausage in their youth books.

Schoolbooks will not be allowed to publish references to pork, for
fear of offending Muslims or Jews.

According to a speech made Monday on BBC Radio 4, a leading
educational publisher, Oxford University Press, is banning the
reference to pigs, sausages, or anything pork-related in their books.