RUTHFULLY YOURS

The military effort against the Islamic State hinges on a successful threefold approach involving intelligence, homeland security, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not have much past history in these areas to warrant confidence.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper just announced that the U.S. has underestimated the Islamic State. Clapper was probably correct, if unwise in apprising the world of U.S. incompetence. But he left out of his apologia any mention of why the U.S. has continuously downplayed the dangers of radical Islam. The answer is largely found among the Obama team, of which Clapper is a key part, and which has constructed its assessments to fit preconceived political directives.

The overriding belief of the Obama administration is that there is not really a radical Islamic movement that seeks to destroy the present nation-state order in the Middle East, form some sort of caliphate out of the mess, and then marshal the region’s population and resources to attack the West.

Clapper himself usually adheres to that belief. He once described the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as largely secular. His veracity and his judgment are equally suspect. Under oath before Congress, he once insisted that the NSA did not gather information on ordinary Americans — a flat-out lie (or, as he put it, the “least untruthful” answer he was in a position to give). He also once assured us that Moammar Qaddafi would survive in Libya.

The present director of the CIA, John Brennan, called the idea of a caliphate absurd. He has given us all sorts of strained, politically correct takes on jihad (“a holy struggle,” “a legitimate tenet of Islam”). He warned us when he took office in 2013 that the new Obama administration would focus on “extremists” rather than radical Islamists. That naïveté might explain why, days after the foiled attempt by the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Brennan seemed to have almost no detailed knowledge of the plot and suggested that there had been no breakdown in either intelligence or airport security. Then again, Brennan also once assured us that there had not been a single collateral death from drone attacks for an entire year, and insisted to U.S. senators that the CIA had never hacked into their computers.

Obama, Cameron et al say Islamic State are just a bunch of barbarians, not real Muslims. But as they behead and mutilate “infidels” they’re only doing what the Koran and the Prophet instructs

To understand why the Islamic State not only decapitates its “infidel” captives, but also mutilates and mocks their corpses—and all to sadistic laughter—one need only turn to the Koran and deeds of Islamic prophet Muhammad.

The Koran exhorts believers to “Fight them [those who oppose Islam], Allah will torment them with your hands, humiliate them, empower you over them, and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts” (Koran 9:14-15).

As usual, to understand the significance of any Koran verse, one must turn to the sira and hadith—the biography and anecdotes of Muhammad, respectively—for context.

Thus we come to the following account concerning the slaughter of ‘Amr bin Hisham, a pagan Arab chieftain originally known as “Abu Hakim” (Father of Wisdom) until Muhammad dubbed him “Abu Jahl” (Father of Stupidity) for his staunch opposition to Islam.

After ‘Amr was mortally wounded by a new convert to Islam during the Battle of Badr, Abdullah ibn Mas‘ud, a close companion of Muhammad, saw the “infidel” chieftain collapsed on the ground. So he went to him and started abusing him. Among other things, Abdullah grabbed and pulled ‘Amr’s beard and stood in triumph on the dying man’s chest.

According to Al-Bidaya wa Al-Nihaya (“The Beginning and the End”), Ibn Kathir’s authoritiative history of Islam, “After that, he [Abdullah] slit his [‘Amr’s] head off and bore it till he placed it between the hands of the Prophet. Thus did Allah heal the hearts of the believers with it.”

This, then, is the true significance of Koran 9:14-15: “Fight them, Allah will torment them with your hands [mortally wounding and eventually decapitating ‘Amr], humiliate them [pulling his beard], empower you over them [standing atop him], and heal the hearts of the believers, removing the rage from their hearts [at the sight of his decapitated head].”

Waning interest in global warming by world leaders

Global warming hysteria has cost jobs and prosperity. But since the world hasn’t warmed for almost two decades it’s hardly surprising that world leaders can’t even be bothered to turn up to the latest UN climate summit

The UN’s summit on global warming, where they hoped to sign world leaders up to more green measures to combat carbon dioxide, is not proving to be a popular affair. The USA, China, Canada, Australia, Japan and Russia want no part in more targets to cut carbon dioxide.

China’s President, Xi Jinping has more pressing matters to attend to, as does Mr Modi of India. More surprisingly, Angela Merkel the German Chancellor and leading representative of the world’s last bastion of anti carbon dioxide enthusiasm, the EU, is also unavailable to come.

Mrs Merkel would be well advised to stay at home and with her energy advisers to try and work out how to keep the German lights on and the factory wheels turning at acceptable cost.

Germany is very dependent on unreliable renewables, and also on Russian gas. As a result, ironically, Germany is turning more and more to depend on coal, one of the worst fuels if cutting carbon dioxide is your main aim. Germany’s anti carbon dioxide policy turns out to be both dearer and less successful than America’s.

By going for self sufficiency in oil and gas, and relying more on domestic gas for energy production, the USA has done a better job in curbing carbon dioxide than Germany. The USA refused to join in global target driven approaches. The EU did join in but simply failed to hit the more exacting targets.

A week after Chancellor Angela Merkel reaffirmed her government’s commitment to fight anti-Semitism at a landmark rally in Berlin, a lot needs to be done on the ground to stop the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

At home, German Law enforcement authorities have not only shown apathy and inaction, as in the case of the Muslim Imam in Berlin who called for the extermination of Jews, or against demonstrators in many German cities blaring anti-Semitic slogans. Police have sometimes seemed to go out of their way, allowing demonstrators to use police-megaphones and vehicles to spread the hate – as in Frankfurt and Hagen recently.

Internationally, the German tax payer remains a leading sponsor of NGOs and groups that target Israel and the Jewish people.

According to conservative estimates provided by the watchdog group NGO Monitor, between 2010 and 2014 the German government gave more than €4 million to organizations in Israel and the Palestinian territories that are actively running campaigns to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel.

Two German political foundations alone, the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, could be funneling more than €2 million worth of taxpayer’s revenue every year to such groups.

According to NGO Monitor, both of these political foundations have shown a lack of transparency in their allocation practices, making it difficult to estimate the actual amount of money going to these groups. The real figures could be even higher.

Not surprisingly, both these foundations also happen to have a long history of supporting anti-Israel campaigns in Germany.

Kerstin Müller, the Green Party politician who was active in the anti-Israel Boycott-Movement and campaigned for the labelling of Israeli goods coming into the European Union, now heads the Heinrich Boell Foundation office in Tel Aviv.

The Rosa Luxembourg Foundation is affiliated to the far-Left party “Die Linke”, successor of the East German Communist Party (SED). The Luxembourg Foundation regularly organizes events for anti-Israel activists and publishes literature promoting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) tactics directed against Israel.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/robert-spencer-on-trying-to-make-islam-un-islamic-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Renaissance Woman Ann Marie Murrell, the Editor-in Chief of PolitiChicks.com and the co-author of the new book, What Women Really Want.

Ann-Marie was joined by Robert Spencer, the director of JihadWatch.org and the author of the new book, Arab Winter Comes to America.

Robert came on the program to discuss Trying to Make Islam Un-Islamic, analyzing the danger of our leaders ‘ attempt to dissociate Islam from the violence committed in its name.

Don’t miss it:

Hardly a week goes by without some Democratic Party hack putting finger to iPad and swiping out a screed about the Republican Party’s problem with women or minorities.

This time it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz with “The GOP’s Woman Problem”. Schultz claims that the Republican Party was “rejected again by a bloc of voters that make up more than half of the electorate”. That claim is as real as Schultz’s hair color. The only bloc that rejected Romney was the same bloc that rejected Hillary; the bloc of minority voters who came out in force for Obama.

And unless Hillary Clinton also had a “woman problem” they didn’t do it over gender.

For example in the South Carolina Democratic primary, Obama beat Hillary among women by 54 to 30. That’s a much bigger split than the one between Obama and Romney among women. While Hillary Clinton beat Obama among white voters, Obama won 78 percent of the black vote.

There was no gender gap. There was a racial gap.

Throughout her campaign, Hillary Clinton consistently won the votes of white women in large numbers and lost the votes of women who said that their gender was not important. Obama won the female vote by his largest margins in southern states because he wasn’t really winning by gender, he was benefiting from a large turnout of black women.

Obama won the female vote in Georgia by 32%, but Hillary won 62% of the white female vote. Obama however had won 87% of the black female vote. In Ohio, Hillary and Obama had nearly the same split, but Hillary won the female vote in Ohio by 16% because the racial makeup of the voters was different.

In 2012, Romney won 53% of the white female vote and 3% of the black female vote in Ohio. He didn’t lose women. He lost the same “bloc of voters” that had rejected Hillary, not over gender, but over race.

The Republican Party doesn’t have a “woman problem”. Romney won the votes of white women in every age group; including young women. And Obama lost white women as he did all white voters.

The Constitution’s 227th birthday last week went almost unnoticed, except in Washington where Senator Harry Reid continued his assault on the First Amendment – which he would change so as to harness his political opponents, but which permits him to say whatever he wishes from one of the most powerful pulpits in the land.

Also last week, a poll of high school students and teachers regarding the Constitution’s First Amendment was released. It was conducted by the Florida-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Its findings were startling: Thirty-eight percent of the high school teachers believe the First Amendment provides too much freedom. Students appeared to better understand than their teachers the importance of the First Amendment in their everyday lives. Nevertheless, a still surprising 24% agreed that it is too liberal. This misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights is not limited to teachers and their students. Seventy-six percent of Americans, according to a Harris Poll released earlier this year, said they thought the First Amendment guaranteed freedom from religion, as well as the freedom to pray as one chooses.

I was astonished by the findings, but perhaps I should not have been. Political correctness has affected the way American history is taught, and the Left dominates the teaching staffs in our schools and universities.. It is axiomatic that the larger the role government plays in our lives, the fewer our rights The Left feeds on those who are dependent on government. The numbers favor them. The bottom 40% of all federal taxpayers pay a negative 9.1% of all federal taxes, while the top 40% pay 106.1%. An immersion in government has effectively divided us into two classes – those who pay the bills and those who do not.

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/09/22/video-feminism-vs-truth/

See this video which debunks the so called “war on women”…..
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The other day, I had the pleasure of joining an earnest group of serious thinkers in a freewheeling discussion with Henry Kissinger at a disclosed, but still secure, location at Yale. The occasion for the discussion was Kissinger’s new book, World Order [1], a brilliant historical conspectus of the major political dispensations that have imposed, or — in some lucky places — merely coaxed order out of the recalcitrant matter that is humanity.

There is a lot that might be said about World Order, about Henry Kissinger (who is well into his 92nd year), and about the huge topic that is the subject of his latest book: world order, a quality that seems in short supply in these increasingly fraught days.

For now, however, I’d like to focus on discrete subset of that capacious topic. At one point in the afternoon’s discussion, Kissinger was asked about ISIS, AKA, Islamic State, the newly declared caliphate whose favorite book seems to be Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading [2].

As my readers surely know, President Obama recently took to the airwaves [3] to scold ISIS. The problem, as Kissinger and others have pointed out, is that the president’s speech was long on detailing what he was not going to do and rather short on positive statements of policy. As one wag put it, the president’s performance amounted to a reverse Teddy Roosevelt: Talk harshly and carry a soft stick. That, more or less, was the president’s message. His tone was plenty bellicose, but his strategy (and remember, just a week before, he admitted that he didn’t yet have a strategy [4] for dealing with ISIS) was flaccid.

I doubt that the world can boast a more circumspect diplomat than Henry Kissinger. And yet the former secretary of State was blistering about Obama’s response to public beheadings carried out by Islamic State. No nation, Kissinger observed, can stand by while two of its citizens are brutally and publicly murdered, outrages compounded by the worldwide publicity assured by the circulation of internet videos of the incidents. Such actions must be met by swift and decisive force, obliterating the actors. But what has Obama actually done? To date, he has authorized a series of pin pricks, a few dozen, low-yield sorties. (Update: “U.S. Launches First Allied Airstrikes to Hit ISIS Targets in Syria [5].”)

The tale of two Soviet Jews—one an Israeli politician, the other a disgraced KGB informant—is a sly parable about Zionism.

A few months ago, the Canadian novelist David Bezmozgis wrote an essay about Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Like most observers, he was distressed by the violence in the region and the prospects of military escalation. Yet he also had a somewhat more selfish concern: For four years he had been working on a novel about an Israeli politician who flees to the Crimean city of Yalta after a personal scandal hits the front pages. “I’d wanted to write a novel that, among other things, engaged with current politics,” he wrote; instead, “world events conspired to undermine my designs for the book.”

Mr. Bezmozgis surely had a few dark nights of the soul. Yet “The Betrayers” seems only to benefit from its sudden disconnection from the headlines. Set in a parallel reality in which Israel has voted to withdraw from its West Bank settlements and Crimea is still an uncontested part of Ukraine, the novel takes on contentious questions about Zionism and the fate of post-Soviet Jewry, undistracted by the caprices of the news ticker or the polemics of the moment. It bears out Israeli writer Amos Oz’s claim that “the novelist has no political aim but is concerned with truth, not facts.”

At the heart of “The Betrayers” is the magnetic Baruch Kotler. He is a former refusenik—a Soviet Jew denied permission to emigrate to Israel—who was imprisoned in Russia for 13 years after a show trial found him guilty of treason. Finally released, he arrived in Israel a “dissident champion” and formed a staunchly right-wing Russian immigrant party, which he has led with outspoken pugnacity for more than two decades. He is “famously stubborn” in a “notoriously obstinate country,” and Mr. Bezmozgis brilliantly captures a man who is as flawed as he is principled.

This description will quickly call to mind the former Israeli politician Natan Sharansky, but Kotler has been extensively fictionalized. In particular, Mr. Bezmozgis implicates him in an affair with a headstrong young staffer named Leora (no such scandal has ever been attached to Mr. Sharansky). When Kotler speaks out against the Israeli Parliament’s plan for unilateral withdrawal, his opponents leak incriminating photos. “The scandale Kotler” becomes 24-hour-a-day news, and he sneaks out of the country with Leora, flying to Yalta.