RUTHFULLY YOURS

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

We’re well into the new century, moving swiftly through the second decade of the new millennium, at ease in an era of science, modern medicine and wondrous electronics that our grandparents could not have imagined. (Even our parents don’t understand most of it.)

So why does 2015 smell like Munich in 1938, reeking of denial, blindness, cant and cowardice in the year that would introduce monstrous tyranny and barbarism, an assault on the very idea of civilization? Comparisons may be odious but only the weak and foolish look and do not see.

A gunman invades the sanctity of a synagogue in Copenhagen, where Jews at worship imagined they were safe, and kills the man guarding the door. This followed by a day an attempted massacre at a seminar on free speech in another part of Copenhagen, where a gunman shouting the familiar Muslim cry of worship — “Allahhu Akbar,” or “God is great” — shot and killed one of the participants.

‘Devastated’ by Slain Jew, yet Denmark Huge Funder of Anti-Israel Activity NGO-Monitor: “Danish government is among the leaders in funding for anti-Israel NGO demonization in Europe, irresponsibly providing large sums via a number of mechanisms.”
By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

The prime minister of Denmark laid flowers on Sunday, Feb. 15, at the site where the day before a Jewish man was shot in the head and killed while volunteering as a security guard outside of a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Was the murder of Dan Uzan, the son of an Israeli father, an act in which the Danish government was indirectly complicit?

When Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt laid the wreath outside of the synagogue, she offered her condolences to the slain man’s family and to the whole Jewish community. She said she and her entire country were devastated by Uzan’s murder, and by all that happened in Copenhagen on Feb. 14.

“A man has lost his life in a service of that synagogue and we are devastated,” Thorning-Schmidt said, speaking to Jewish Danes.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

In the midst of recent horrific acts of terror, from burning the Jordanian pilot to storming the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a Danish café holding a free speech conference and the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen, many opinion leaders scratch their heads over President Obama and his administration’s refusal to couple the words “Islam” with “terrorism.” The result is the label “violent extremism,” awkwardly redundant in large part because what makes its referents “extreme” is precisely their use of violence. Many exasperatingly surmise the administration must be naïve, even delusional, and fails to understand the threat we face. Most then correctly warn that if we cannot accurately name the threat, we stand little chance of effectively dealing with it.

Two Narratives

This is not, however, a failure to understand the nature of Islam and its connection with modern day terror at all. Rather, it is the result of perhaps the most defining characteristic of Obama’s presidency: savvy rhetoric that, quite deliberately, disguises his actions and policies. From “you can keep your doctor” to “this will be the most transparent administration in history,” the President is facile juggling two vastly different narratives; one to trap and control public attention while the other grounds his policies. And as with the IRS targeting of conservatives, the Benghazi assassinations, Obamacare and so on, when the actions invariably so conflict with the rhetoric, we struggle to explain the dissonance in ways we can most accept. In the case of Obama’s dealings with Islam and, in particular our Islamic enemies, however, finding an acceptable explanation is exceptionally frustrating because we are generally unfamiliar with Islam. Consequently, we indulge in (and a compliant media even clings to) explanations that Obama is naïve, incompetent, or psychologically stressed because they are more comforting than recognizing the alternative.

On a sunny Saturday in September 2009, with Wisconsin in the throes of tea party fervor, conservative starlet Michelle Malkin fired up a crowd of thousands at a lakefront park in Milwaukee with rhetoric about White House czars and union thugs and the “culture of dependency that they have rammed down our throats.”

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican candidate for governor, casually attired in a red University of Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt, stepped to the podium to amplify the message. “We’re going to take back our government,” he shouted, jabbing the air with a finger. The attendees whooped and clapped. “We’ve done it here, we can do it in Wisconsin and, by God, we’re going to do it all across America.”

In a way, the event was Scott Walker’s graduation to the political major leagues. The audience had been delivered up by Americans for Prosperity, a tea party organizing group founded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire energy executives whose fortune helps shape Republican politics. With Americans for Prosperity, the brothers had harnessed the tea party’s energy in service of their own policy goals, including deregulation and lower taxes. And in Walker, they’d found the perfect instrument to help carry them out. The rally was one of the first times they’d joined forces.

A federal judge in South Texas on Monday temporarily blocked President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s decision comes after a hearing in Brownsville, Texas, in January and puts on hold Obama’s orders that could spare as many as five million people who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation.
Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states will “suffer irreparable harm in this case.”
“The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle,” he wrote, adding that he agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that legalizing the presence of millions of people is a “virtually irreversible” action.
The federal government is expected to appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department had any immediate comment early Tuesday.
The first of Obama’s orders – to expand a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children – was set to start taking effect Wednesday. The other major part of Obama’s order, which extends deportation protections to parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for some years, was not expected to begin until May 19.

Israel outpaces all other countries for London IPOs

Last year was a banner one for Israeli exits – and especially for IPOs, according to the IVC Research Center and Meitar Liquornik Geva Leshem Tal law firm. Altogether, some two dozen Israeli companies went public in 2014, accounting for $2.1 billion of the nearly $7 billion raised in 99 Israeli tech exits.

Most of those IPOs were on the NASDAQ, but London turned out to be a close second. Nine Israeli firms listed on the London Stock Exchange, two on the Main Market (for well established companies) and seven on the AIM, the international Alternative Investment Market for smaller start-ups. More Israeli firms went public in London than from any other country, other than the UK itself.

To celebrate, some 30 CEOs and CFOs of Israeli companies took part last week in an event with representatives of the London Stock Exchange, organized by UK Trade & Investment at the British Embassy in Israel. The British Embassy, as the representative of the London Stock Exchange in Israel, assists Israeli companies in raising funds in London.

Jewish, Arab vendors in New York turf war Sides trade accusations of land-grabbing, terrorism in spat over sidewalk space outside Rockefeller Center

It seems even the US isn’t free of territorial disputes between Jews and Arabs.

Under the headline “Intifooda,” The New York Post reported Sunday that the operators of a kosher food cart in Manhattan have been involved in a bitter turf war with the Egyptian owners of a rival establishment.

According to the report, the Holy Rollers kosher cart, operated by vendors Yisroel Mordowitz and Yosef Salzbank, settled near Rockefeller Center last Monday after wandering the streets of the city in search of a prime spot.

After the first day, Holy Rollers was rolling in money — some $2,000 — from selling its deli fare.

You Couldn’t Make This Stuff Up

But then most of us aren’t “climate scientists”, who have once again granted themselves permission to assemble a cavalcade of conjecture and omission and parade it as “evidence”, courtesy of the Australian Academy of Science. They do, however, care deeply about puppies and kittens

The Australian Academy of Science has hitched its wagon to the “climate change will kill kittens and puppies” school of science. This kittens-and-puppies theme was dreamed up by Harvard University’s Naomi Oreskes and endorsed by Academician and ABC Science Show host Robyn Williams — a device quite deliberately intended to make householders sit up, take notice and believe in the scariness of computer-model forecasts.

The Australian Academy of Science leadership on Monday (Feb. 16) rolled out its much-delayed booklet “Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers”, updating its 2010 version. Its website includes a three-minute video (below) of Academy luminaries such as astronomer Nobel winner Brian Schmidt saying scary stuff.

The Academy has patched onto this video another clip called “Why people don’t believe in climate science” featuring a youthful Dr Joe Hanson — the geeky guy (pictured at right) who appears toward the end of the clip, borrowed from Public Broadcasting Service channel, the US near-equivalent of our own ABC. In Hanson’s full video (below), he psychoanalyses why ‘deniers’ stubbornly refuse to go along with climate religion, and how psychologists’ arsenal of brainwashing tricks can ensure the public gets an effective message. His advice comes at the 1.35 mark of the video below

But that hasn’t kept him from turning Wisconsin around and winning election after election.

Approximately 100 percent of the people I know graduated college. Many of them also have master’s degrees, J.D.s, and MBAs. In my world, those without such credentials are almost exotic.

But my world is unusual. As a Manhattan-based political commentor and think-tank scholar, I work and play with other members of the chattering classes who occupy newsrooms, TV studios, research institutions, and university classrooms in the so-called Bos-Wash corridor. This coastal strip, between the Charles and Potomac rivers, houses the Eastern elite. In this habitat, my Georgetown A.B. and NYU MBA are rather unremarkable. The bankers, consultants, and publicists who are my neighbors also festoon their offices with framed diplomas.

To some in this small but influential cohort, the notion of a president of the United States without such distinctions seems unusual, if not unthinkable.

Now comes Scott Walker, arguably the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Wisconsin’s recently reelected governor attended Marquette University. However, during the spring of his senior year, he withdrew “in good standing,” according to school officials. Walker went to work full-time for the American Red Cross. He never finished his degree and, thus, is not a college graduate.

This is more than some members of the elite can bear.