ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

THE FOREST JIHAD IS HERE: ARIEL KOCH

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

This piece was first published on the Hebrew-language website Mida on November 25, 2016, rendered into English by Avi Woolf, and republished here with permission.http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2016/11/the-forest-jihad-is-here/

In contrast to talk about a “new form of terror,” the weapon of arson has served radical Islam for years around the world, with the aim of causing damage and “sowing fear into the hearts of infidels.”

A wave of fires is raging throughout Israel, causing great damage and leading to furious debates and rumor mills regarding their cause. Is this deliberate, negligence, or just a matter of the weather? The answer, so it seems, is a combination of the three. Some of the fires may indeed be the result of negligence, but such a large number of them in so many places suggests deliberate intent, helped by changes in the weather.

Indeed, police officials spoke this week of a “wave of arson,” and even arrested some suspects. At a press conference convened in burning Haifa by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gilad Erdan, the fires were described as “terror,” and Minister Erdan even defined the “arson terror” as a new phenomenon which Israel is now coping with. But in fact, this isn’t the first time terrorists have made use of the arson weapon, and the idea has been widespread on the internet for years. The main party spreading it is al-Qaeda.

While Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership hid in the Afghan-Pakistani hills, Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, the organization’s ideologue and strategist, published a two-volume book entitled A Call for Global Islamic Resistance. In his book, al-Suri calls on supporters of global jihad to hurt the West via urban combat and terror, individually and in groups. He provided inspiration for the terrorists who bombed Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005. Marc Sageman, a former psychiatrist working for American intelligence called this approach “leaderless jihad.” After the attack by terrorist Mohammad Merah on the Jewish Otzar Hatorah school in Toulouse, the head of Europol called it “the new jihad.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The War That Dare Not Speak Its Name For all his promises to get America out, Obama’s legacy is a renewed war in Iraq.By William McGurn

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

When David Petraeus appeared Monday at Trump Tower for a meeting with the president-elect, the headlines naturally fixated on whether the retired Army general and former CIA chief would serve as secretary of state for the incoming administration.

Certainly Mr. Trump’s choice here will be one of his most consequential cabinet picks. But the appearance of Mr. Petraeus carries an even more striking implication. Because his presence is a reminder of a painful truth that Mr. Trump, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all found easier to ignore throughout the 2016 election campaign.

The truth is this: America is still at war in Iraq.

All throughout the campaign, Mr. Trump rightly thumped both President Obama and Mrs. Clinton for their refusal to use the I-word—Islamist—when speaking of the terror threat against the American people. But when it came to the W-word—war—Mr. Trump was not much better.

In three presidential debates, neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton used the word war to describe the fighting in Iraq in which our troops are now engaged. When they did use the word, the context was almost always frozen in 2002.

There are political reasons for this. Mrs. Clinton, for example, is well aware that the Bernie Sanders wing of her party regards her as a latter-day Dr. Strangelove. So when she did talk about war and Iraq, it was mostly to declare that her Senate vote to authorize it was a mistake she deeply regrets.

Mr. Trump mostly fixated on the past as well. On almost every occasion the Iraq war came up, Mr. Trump used the opportunity to insist he’d opposed it from the start.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A NOTABLE QUOTE ABOUT TRUMP AND MUSLIMS

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-trump-and-muslims-1480378571

Abdulrahman al-Rashed, writing in a Nov. 10 op-ed titled “Don’t Fear Trump,” which appeared on the website of the Al Arabiya News Channel and in the London-based Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat:

When Barack Obama won the presidential elections eight years ago, it was met by a torrent of cheerful statements and writings. Back then, I wrote saying do not be over-optimistic. And now, it’s only been one day since Donald Trump won the elections and many rushed into making pessimistic judgments. To those I say, do not be over-pessimistic. . . .

Those who have been persuaded by what’s written and said during the electoral campaigns, and who concluded that Trump is against Muslims must take two important points into consideration: Trump’s personal history and the system of the American state, its constitution and judicial institutions. The president-elect has a long personal record of dealing with Muslim people and there isn’t any racial stance documented against him. He’s never been engaged in political or media campaigns against Muslims, whether American Muslims or Muslims outside the U.S., even following the phobia which spread after the September 11 terrorist attacks although Trump is a resident of the traumatized city of New York.

Meanwhile, the stance against Muslims who are affiliated with terrorism and extremism must not be viewed as a racial stance. As Muslims, this is our position too. Those who want to confuse enmity towards extremism with enmity against Islam are ideological groups that sponsor terrorist ideology and they aim to lobby to serve their political purposes.

Arab governments have plenty to do to communicate with the new administration in Washington after it’s formed. . . . At the same time, we must not blame Washington and fail to see that most of our problems and issues are the product of our decisions and acts and that most solutions to them are in our hands.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Donald Trump Chooses Tom Price as Health Secretary Price has led efforts to craft a GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act By Louise Radnofsky and Peter Nicholas See note please

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

Just for the record: Rep. Tom Price is a staunch supporter of Israel and ranked a minus 4 from the Arab American institute. As Tevye said ” it doesn’t make much difference but it’s nice to know.” rsk
WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump has chosen House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R., Ga.) as his nominee for secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, according to a transition team adviser, putting the six-term congressman in charge of the sprawling agency that will likely dismantle Democrats’ 2010 health-care overhaul.

Mr. Price, a 62-year-old former orthopedic surgeon, is one of several GOP physicians who sought to carve out a leading role in shaping the party’s health policy and, in particular, the party’s alternative vision to Democrats’ Affordable Care Act. Much of his criticism of the law has centered on the authority it gives to the federal government, and to the agency that he may now head.
“We think it’s important that Washington not be in charge of health care,” he said in an interview this summer. “The problem that I have with Obamacare is that its premise is that Washington knows best.”

He has championed his own legislation, the Empowering Patients First Act, since 2009, taking a position on a number of hot-button issues for conservative health policy thinkers. In its latest iteration, the proposal includes refundable, age-adjusted tax credits for people to buy insurance if they don’t have access to coverage through an employer or government program. People in a government program, such as Medicare, Medicaid or Tricare, would also be allowed to opt out of it and get tax credits toward the cost of private coverage instead.

Mr. Price had previously included tax deductions in his plans, a tool typically favored by harder-line conservative health policy thinkers, but said he had “moved towards credits because we felt it was cleaner.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France’s Politician Dhimmis by Yves Mamou

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

“Moreover, it is puzzling and disturbing that France adopts a double standard in relation to Israel, while ignoring 200 territorial conflicts currently taking place around the world, including those taking place right on its doorstep.” — Response of Israel’s Foreign Ministry to France’s new labeling regulations.

In the Ukraine, a few sanctions were imposed by France and EU, but there was never any labeling of food or cosmetic products.

Ironically, and sadly, the people most negatively affected by the French and EU regulations will be the 25,000 Palestinians employed by Israelis in the West Bank.

In just one year, 2016, France and its socialist president have made multiple hostile gestures towards Israel, which reveal more about raw anti-Semitism posing as anti-Israelism in France than about its unjustly solitary target.

The Muslim vote is now an important factor in French politicians’ decisions. In 2012, socialist President François Hollande was elected with 93% of the Muslim vote. That is how diplomacy is made conducted in France, and in Europe generally. It is a diplomacy solidly rooted in domestic policy. It is a domestic policy made by dhimmi politicians.

In France, retail chains and importers now have the legal obligation to label products originating in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

On November 24, the Official Gazette of the French Republic (JORF) published Regulation No 1169/2011, ordering “economic operators” to inform consumers about “the origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967.”

This French regulation is an application of the interpretive notice issued by the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ), on November 12, 2015. The notice states that the EU “does not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, namely the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and does not consider them to be part of Israel’s territory” and claims it is responding to “a demand for clarity from consumers, economic operators and national authorities”.

The European Commission allowed member states to arrange their own national implementation of this European regulation, with financial penalties.

The French adoption of this EU policy insists on labeling Israeli products with the greatest precision possible.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What About the Cultural Imbalance? by Nonie Darwish

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

If we do not demand equal cultural access, such a cultural imbalance will result in one side absorbing the values of the other, while keeping the Islamic nation “pure” and free of any outside influence. This one-sided cultural tyranny is forcing us, the American citizen, into tolerating intolerance while never expecting anything more aligned to Western values from the Muslim world.

As soon as Muslims form a small community inside a Western nation, they immediately deny access to any kind of Biblical preaching or education inside their community, but at the same time apparently feel entitled to demand access to preach the Koran in American prisons and spread Islamic culture and values in American schools.

If Muslims finance Islamic Studies departments on American campuses and teach Islam in our public schools, the same rights must be awarded to Americans. It is true there are a few American schools in the Middle East, such as the American University in Cairo, but these schools are forbidden from having departments of Biblical Studies.

If Muslim governments and citizens have full access to build mosques in America, America must insist on having the same access in their countries. That is not the fault of Muslim countries, so much as it is the fault of Western “multiculturalism,” which expects nothing and is adhered to only by Western nations.

If such one-sided access of Islam into the West continues, while other religions in Muslim communities and countries are considered by them illegal “hate crimes,” Western culture and the values of free will and religious freedom will atrophy and die. Islamists are counting on Western inertia to win.

Similar to the often-mentioned trade imbalance, there is a large imbalance Western nations and Muslim nations that is hardly ever mentioned: the cultural imbalance.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump’s climate plan might not be so bad after all by By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on November 29th, 2016

Bjorn Lomborg is president and founder of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School.

The election of Donald Trump and Republican majorities in both houses have terrified environmentalists and climate campaigners, who have declared that the next four years will be a “disaster.”

Fear is understandable. We have much to learn about the new administration’s plans. But perhaps surprisingly, what little we know offers some cause for hope.

It should not need to be restated in 2016 that climate change is real and mostly man-made. It is hard to know whether Trump will acknowledge this. He has called global warming a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese, but stated that this was a joke; he denied the existence of climate change during the campaign, but supported global warming action as recently as 2009.

What really matters is not rhetoric but policy. So far, we know that President Trump will drop the Paris climate change treaty. This is far from the world-ending event that some suggest and offers an opportunity for a smarter approach.
Even ardent supporters acknowledge that the Paris treaty by itself will do little to rein in global warming. The United Nations estimates that if every country were to make every single promised carbon cut between 2016 and 2030 to the fullest extent and there was no cheating, carbon dioxide emissions would still only be cut by one-hundredth of what is needed to keep temperature rises below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). The Paris treaty’s 2016-2030 pledges would reduce temperature rises around 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. If maintained throughout the rest of the century, temperature rises would be cut by 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit.

At the same time, these promises will be costly. Trying to cut carbon dioxide, even with an efficient tax, makes cheap energy more expensive — and this slows economic growth.

My calculations using the best peer-reviewed economic models show the cost of the Paris promises– through slower gross domestic product growth from higher energy costs — would reach $1 trillion to $2 trillion every year from 2030. U.S. vows alone — to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 — would reduce GDP by more than $150 billion annually.

So Trump’s promise to dump Paris will matter very little to temperature rises, and it will stop the pursuit of an expensive dead end.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mainstream Media Distorts Donald Trump’s Climate Stance By Tom Harris

Posted By on November 28th, 2016

In the children’s game “Telephone,” a message whispered from person to person becomes progressively distorted until the final version bears little resemblance to what was originally said. Media reporting of Donald Trump’s comments on climate change in his November 22 interview with the New York Times provided a real-world example of this.

In the interview, Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman asked the president-elect:

Are you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?

Trump responded:

I’m looking at it very closely. … I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully.

White House correspondent Michael Shear followed up:

Do you intend to, as you said, pull out of the Paris Climate [agreement]?

Trump answered:

I’m going to take a look at it.

Then, the Times incorrectly reported this after the interview:

Despite the recent appointment to his transition team of a fierce critic of the Paris accords, Mr. Trump said that “I have an open mind to it.

The Times video summary of the interview showed a slightly less distorted, though still wrong, representation of Trump’s comments. No matter. In the second step of this game, London’s Guardian stretched the truth a bit further, claiming:

Donald Trump has said he has an “open mind” over U.S. involvement in the Paris agreement to combat climate change, after previously pledging to withdraw from the effort.

The wire service Reuters similarly erred:

Trump said … he was keeping an open mind on whether to pull out of a landmark international accord to fight climate change.

Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), made much the same mistake. In the third step of the telephone game, prominent news magazine The Week deviated still further from reality, headlining their November 22 article:

Donald Trump changes his mind on climate change, Clinton, the press in meeting with The New York Times

The Week asserted that Trump’s new stance on the Paris Agreement is, “I have an open mind to it.” And so it continued across mainstream media, with The Independent (UK) newspaper reporting that Trump “indicated another important U-turn — this time in regard to climate.” The Australian then proclaimed: “Donald Trump backflips on prosecuting Hillary, climate change, Obama.”

HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ohio State Attack Was a Ram-and-Stab with ‘Possibility’ of Terrorism, Say Police By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on November 28th, 2016

ATTACK COMES AFTER ISIS “STABBING GUIDE”

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs said officials “have to consider that it is that possibility” that a mass stabbing on the Ohio State University campus this morning was a terrorist attack.

The campus was locked down for an active shooter situation, but authorities said at a press conference that the bullets were fired by a responding officer. “There’s no indication of a firearm being used by that suspect,” Jacobs said.

The attack occurred on 19th Avenue in front of Watts Hall. Shortly before 10 a.m., a vehicle jumped the curb and ran into a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk. That initial impact injured “several,” OSU president Michael Drake said.

Then the suspect, who has not been identified by police, got out and used a butcher knife to cut “multiple” people. Ten were transported to area hospitals, with one victim in critical condition.

Dispatch first received the call of the attack at 9:52 a.m., followed by a call at 9:53 a.m. that an OSU police officer fired at the suspect.

OSU public safety director Monica Moll said officers from multiple jurisdictions responded to the scene and law enforcement personnel in the area continue to investigate, but “we believe the threat was ended when the officer engaged the suspect.”

A few buildings remain shut down “as a precaution,” Moll said, as officers “continue to sweep those.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Kevin Donnelly Donald Trump’s Class Warfare

Posted By on November 28th, 2016

Poor American kids, like their Australian counterparts, continue to slide in assessments of educational achievement even as the sums poured into government schools soar. The president-elect’s endorsement of vouchers, choice and competition is the last, best hope to reverse that decline.
The current school-funding model is about to end and the federal, state and territory ministers of education are soon to meet and begin the process of deciding what will happen at the start of 2018. Crucial to the new funding model will be whether it continues the same old approach of governments controlling taxpayers’ money going to schools and thus forcing them to follow the ordained and endorsed policies in regard to curriculum, teacher employment and accountability.

That’s on this side of the pacific. In America president-elect Donald Trump offers an alternative called “school choice”. Trump has just appointed a school-choice advocate, Betsy DeVos, as Education Secretary and committed $20 billion towards “private school choice, magnet schools and charter laws”. That DeVos is already being denounced by all the usual suspects is an encouraging sign.

School choice involves local autonomy versus centralised, bureaucratic control, plus vouchers that see the money follow the child to whatever school his or her parents decide is best. In addition to being inherently good, the belief that parents should have greater control over where their children are educated signals to schools, both government and non-government, that if they are ineffective and fail to meet parental expectations enrolments will suffer. Instead of being run for the benefit of teacher unions, their executives and the thousands of bureaucrats employed at head office the focus is on giving schools the freedom to best reflect the needs of their communities.

Innovations such as charter schools and vouchers involve local control over curriculum and staffing and ensure that parents, especially those in disadvantaged communities, have the financial means to choose between privately managed schools and those controlled by the state. Florida, Washington and Milwaukee pioneered charter schools and the movement has gone international, with conservative and progressive governments in New Zealand, England and Sweden introducing a more market-driven model represented by school choice and increased local autonomy.

While not giving schools the same degree of autonomy and flexibility as charter schools in the US, the Australian government’s Independent Public Schools initiative is also based on the belief that local control leads to greater innovation and improved educational outcomes. As detailed in James Tooley’s book The Beautiful Tree, privately managed and funded schools are also increasingly popular in India where, because they achieve stronger results compared to government schools, poor parents are going without to pay the cost of enrolling their children.