RUTHFULLY YOURS

The 1940s and ’50s saw huge forced moves of population groups—people who put down roots and started over.

On Tuesday, as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the murder in a Jerusalem synagogue of five Israelis, the Spanish Parliament happened to be passing a nonbinding motion urging its government to “encourage the recognition of Palestine as a state.” Last month, Sweden became the first European Union member to officially recognize Palestine as a state, and parliamentarians in England and France have similar legislation in the works.

As anti-Israel sentiment grows in Europe—and in the U.S., where the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” movement has taken hold on many college campuses—calls for an immediate resolution to the Palestinian “refugee” problem abound. To hear some in the anti-Israel movement today, one might imagine that the Palestinian exodus was a unique occurrence in modern history, that no other people have ever been moved off what they considered to be their ancestral lands.

The truth is that such movements—including that of the Palestinians—happened so often in the mid-1940s to early 1950s that it is surprising that the plural of the word exodus—exodi?—is not used in reference to this period.

For all sorts of reasons, ethnic groups were either forcibly or voluntarily moved during that troubled period, and usually in far worse circumstances and for far longer distances than the Palestinians. There were no fewer than 20 different groups—including the Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus of the Punjab, the Crimean Tatars, the Japanese and Korean Kuril and Sakhalin Islanders, the Soviet Chechens, Ingush and Balkars—many in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, if not millions, who were displaced and taken to different regions.

Yet all of these refugee groups, except one, chose to try to make the best of their new environments. Most have succeeded, and some, such as the refugees who reached America in that decade, have done so triumphantly. The sole exception has been the Palestinians, who made the choice to embrace fanatical irredentism and launch two intifadas—and perhaps now a third—resulting in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis.

After Germany lost World War II in 1945, more than three million of its people were forced to leave their homes in the Sudetenland, Silesia and regions east of the Oder and Neisse rivers—lands that their forefathers had tilled for centuries. These refugees embarked on a 300-mile journey westward under conditions of extreme deprivation and danger with only what they could carry in suitcases.

Prosecutors have taken a yen to civil forfeiture laws, which they’ve used to shore up state and municipal budgets with sums from confiscated private property. One happy joiner is Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, whose U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has been an enthusiastic grabber of private assets.

Prosecutors love the practice because it allows them to seize cash and property before the target is charged with a crime. Intended to be used against drug dealers and their ill-gotten gains, the law has become an all-purpose cash machine for police departments and prosecutors who often make forfeiture calls based not on the suspected crime or the perpetrator but on the desirability of the available goods to be seized.

For Jeffrey, Richard and Mitch Hirsch, three brothers in Long Island, the law allowed the federal government to drain their bank account while never charging them with a crime. In May 2012 the feds confiscated $446,651.11 from the account the brothers use for deposits from their 27-year-old Bi-County Distributors, which stocks convenience stores in the region with candy and snack food.

According to the federal government, the brothers came under suspicion because of the frequent small deposits they made in the bank. Under federal law, banks are required to report cash deposits of more than $10,000 at a time to the Internal Revenue Service. Frequent deposits beneath the $10,000 threshold can also trigger federal scrutiny on suspicion the depositors are seeking to evade federal oversight for crimes like money laundering or drug trafficking.

The Hirsch brothers run a small business that deals in small amounts of cash, a fact that the government surely noticed, since they were never charged with a crime. But more than two years after the government grabbed the hundreds of thousands of dollars, none of it has been returned. According to the Institute for Justice, which is representing the family in a lawsuit, the government has also denied the Hirsches a prompt hearing on the forfeiture, putting it in violation of the 2000 Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act.

Ms. Lynch’s office is a major forfeiture operation, bringing in more than $113 million in civil actions from 123 cases between 2011 and 2013, according to the Justice Department. This is a trend across the country. Under a program known as equitable sharing, state and local law enforcement also get a piece of federal civil forfeiture actions. Between 2003 and 2011, annual payments from that program rose to $450 million from $218 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The Supreme Court declined to draw a clear line on racial discrimination in university admissions in last year’s Fisher v. University of Texas decision. Now new lawsuits are moving to challenge how far colleges can go in using racial preferences.

A group called Students for Fair Admissions filed lawsuits Monday against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in federal court. The suits argue that the schools use race preferences to reach a specific racial balance on campus and have failed to abide by the strict scrutiny of racial preferences required by the Supreme Court.

The Harvard challenge concerns what the lawsuit calls a de facto quota on the number of Asian students the school admits. The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities who would have been admitted based on academic merit.
Over the last eight years Asian students have comprised between 17.6% and 20.7% of students admitted to Harvard. Though the number of Asians applying for admission has increased, the percentage of offers has barely budged. In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants, compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology, a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students.

Similar admissions percentages at Harvard have held steady for other racial groups with remarkably little variance. In other words, while schools like Harvard say the goal of racial preferences is to achieve a “critical mass” of minority students, the admissions evidence suggests that the school is reserving pre-rationed pie slices for racial groups.

The other lawsuit argues that UNC at Chapel Hill is evading Fisher’s strict-scrutiny requirement that a school cannot use race preferences to achieve diversity if it can get the same result using race-neutral methods. The lawsuit says UNC hasn’t adjusted admissions policies since the Fisher decision. The university itself did a study showing that it could increase diversity on campus by admitting the top 10% of the state’s high school classes more than with racial preferences. UNC rejected that alternative because it would have slightly lowered the school’s average SAT scores.

In a recent appalling surge of innovative terrorist violence, Palestinians have driven cars into Jewish civilians whose only crime was walking or waiting near the light rail that runs through Jerusalem. In late October a Hamas fanatic murdered a three-month-old Israeli-American baby whose parents were returning from her first visit to the Western Wall. In a similar attack two weeks later, another Hamas zealot killed two pedestrians.

Palestinians were ecstatic. An animated cartoon showed three religious Jews with a Star of David on their hats frantically fleeing a pursuing car painted with the colors of the Palestinian flag. Another, labeled the “Run Over Organization,” called on followers to “hit the gas . . . for Al-Aqsa,” the Temple Mount mosque. Palestinians were urged to “Run over, friend, run over the foreign settler!”

Climaxing the current wave of Palestinian atrocities was the brutal slaughter earlier this week of four rabbis (three of whom were Americans) at prayer in their Jerusalem synagogue. Palestinian cousins armed with meat cleavers and a gun left ghastly images of murdered Jews wrapped in blood-smeared prayer shawls lying on the blood-splattered floor. These barbaric images will endure forever as testimony to the demented insanity of Palestinian terrorists.

Responses from Arab political leaders were predictable. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas complied with Secretary of State Kerry’s firm request that he condemn the attack, adding his universal denunciation of “the killing of civilians no matter who is doing it.” A senior Hamas official more precisely proclaimed his support for “any military action against the occupation anywhere it can be carried out.”

As political leaders worldwide condemned the brutal assault, President Barack Obama, the obtuse master craftsman of moral equivalency, chimed in. “We condemn in the strongest terms these attacks,” which he properly labeled “outrageous acts.” That would have been the perfect place to stop. But the preening universal moralist who resides in the White House could not resist the opportunity to generalize and equivocate, seizing upon the pitiless slaughter of innocent Jews to bracket Palestinian murderers and Israeli victims.

“Too many Israelis have died, too many Palestinians have died,” Obama continued, as though the synagogue slaughter was an equal-opportunity participatory event. He stressed the importance of collaboration between Israelis and Palestinians “to lower tensions and reject violence.” In conclusion, the President offered his familiar trope, for which there is not a shred of supporting evidence: “We have to remind ourselves that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis overwhelmingly want peace.”

With Obama’s promised amnesty for illegal people, America has committed culturist suicide. Culturism is the belief that a traditional majority culture has the right and duty to protect, promote, and promulgate itself. This mission is now lost beyond hope. And this is fatal to America, because cultural diversity is real and important.

Obama claims that his amnesty will impact only 5 million people. How will they check that? Who will check that? Believe me, fraud will be rampant and we do not have the resources or will to check it. And, this news will – as did Obama’s earlier promise not to deport children – create an enormous spike in illegals. We no longer have a southern border.

As a culturist, I hold that America had a traditional majority culture that made it great. Mexicans are not Americans. They have a different language, holidays, and heroes. Multiculturalism claims we never had a core culture; the US is just as Islamic, Pilipino, etc., as it is Protestant European. No. We had a traditional majority culture, and the new immigrants are not of it.

Culturism believes in assimilation. When minorities are pressured to assimilate, over time, they will. But this means schools must push majority culture pride. When large swaths of the nation are Latino, when multiculturalists push Spanish and Latino pride, we will assimilate to them, not the reverse; the majority culture will be replaced.

Cultural history matters. The U.S. and Mexico had a war over the U.S.’s southwestern territory. Mexicans are extremely proud culturists. Thus, “re-conquering the land” and “we didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us” sentiments will thrive. Even if these ever-present sentiments don’t predominate during peacetime, they will undermine all attempts as assimilation.

So the cultural composition of America has been forever changed. Does this matter? Might the overwhelming of America’s traditional culture be not just a matter of aesthetics? It matters, because cultural diversity is real. Mexican culture – their high birth rates and low educational motivation – leads inexorably to third-world economic realities. We will increasingly become a third-world nation.

Britain, Australia, and Europe must resist multiculturalism. Practice culturism. Teach pride in your heritage. Cut off immigration from hostile and poor-performing cultures. Maintain your traditional majority cultures. America no longer exists. In the mission of keeping Western civilization going, you’re now on your own.

Bachmann is brave and smart and way ahead of others in recognizing the evil of militant Islam. However, she should not have entered the Presidential GOP follies in 2012…..all she managed to do was snipe at Perry and Romney and those ridiculous and over hyped “debates” only weakened the party and its chances…..rsk

When the new Congress is sworn in next year, Michele Bachmann will no longer be serving. And it will be a major loss to America.

Bachmann has been a rare and nearly lone voice sounding the alarm about the threat of Islam and about government infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood.

And for speaking the sobering truth, she has been mocked, ridiculed, dismissed, and/or ignored. Not just by those on the left, but by those on the right, as well.

In honor of Congresswoman Bachmann, I’ve selected a few interviews and articles that highlight her courageous voice.

Here is an excerpt from a 2012 interview with Glenn Beck:

CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: … After the Fort Hood tragedy, a report was issued that said the real problem in our government is that we are not teaching FBI agents or our military to recognize radical Islam … in response to that … over 50 Muslim organizations wrote a letter requesting that the White House start a task force to stop that from happening. Five days after the White House got this letter … they started the purge of the federal government. Let me tell you, the federal government doesn’t do anything in five days. But they started the purge of the FBI … This is serious. This is also happening throughout our United States military, Department of Justice, and Homeland Security. And the word “purge” isn’t my word. That’s the word used by the 50 Muslim organizations. They demanded that the president purge the training materials and the trainers. And so already people have been fired who formerly were teaching what radical Islam is. They’ve been fired or they’ve been reassigned. And they ask that the library be purged. Americans don’t purge libraries, but they demanded that the FBI’s library be purged. All of this was happening and so we wrote a letter to the inspectors general asking the question: Don’t you think you should look into the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and what it is they’re seeking to do.

GLENN: Okay. So you write this, which is your job.

Although outwardly more liberal than the Saudis, the Qataris have surpassed them as financiers of extremism and terrorism.

U.S. officials reckon that Qatar has now replaced Saudi Arabia as the source of the largest private donations to the Islamic State and other al-Qaeda affiliates.

Qatar, the world’s wealthiest country per capita, also has the unsavory reputation for the mistreatment and effective slavery of much of its workforce.

Leaders of Western states threatened by jihadi advances are happy to sit down with the largest financiers of terrorism in the world, offer them help, take as much money as they can, and smile for the cameras.

There is a central weakness in the coalition against the Islamic State [IS] in Syria, as pointed out by Bryan Bender in the Boston Globe. There are 62 members of the coalition, some of which are Arab states: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Qatar. The U.S., however, carries the greatest weight in the air campaign against the self-proclaimed Caliphate. America had carried out 3,589 sorties by August 8, its partners 8; between September 23 (when most partners joined in attacks) and November 3, U.S. sorties numbered a further 3,320, with 1,090 by other coalition members.

The U.S., therefore, flies over 75% of missions — an indication of American intent? It’s not quite that simple.

One of those partners, Qatar, seems to be committed to the mission in other ways. It hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the regional headquarters of U.S. Central Command, and stations American and British aircraft and personnel at al-Udeid Air Base.

The U.S. Congress has authorized and appropriated many millions of dollars over the years in return for use and maintenance of this important base.[1]

Qatar is now prepared to pay in full for the U.S. military presence during the campaign in return for American protection.[2]

Except, as a recent headline in the New Republic put it: “Qatar Is a U.S. Ally. They Also Knowingly Abet Terrorism. What’s Going On?” Other views are harsher: “Qatar’s overall cooperation, however, is the worst in the region.”

REMEMBER THIS?

http://markhumphrys.com/israel.conflict.crimes.html

Image from the killing of Danielle Shefi, age 5, by Hamas, 27 Apr 2002.
She was sitting awake in her bedroom in the morning, with her mummy and two baby brothers, when the Hamas gunman came in and sprayed them with automatic fire.
Image from here.

OR THIS ?EVEN OBAMA WAS “OUTRAGED”….

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-palestinians-israel-violence-idUSTRE72B0B920110312

Jewish couple and three children killed in West Bank By Rami Amichai

ITAMAR, West Bank (Reuters) – A Jewish couple and three of their children were stabbed to death in bed in a West Bank settlement in what Israeli officials said Saturday was an attack by one or more Palestinians who broke into their home.

Israeli troops set up roadblocks and were searching the area around the Jewish religious settlement of Itamar, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, for the killer or killers.

In a televised speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed shock that the parents and three of their children — including a baby — were “brutally murdered on Sabbath eve while sleeping.”

“I instructed our security forces to make all efforts to find the murderers and we will not rest until we find them and bring them to justice,” he said.

The office of President Barack Obama said: “There is no possible justification for the killing of parents and children in their home. We call on the Palestinian Authority to unequivocally condemn this terrorist attack.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later put out a statement condemning “all acts of violence against civilians, regardless of who carried them out and their motives.”

Netanyahu, who spoke with Abbas by phone, said the statements by the Palestinian leadership were not enough and that they must take action to end incitement against Israelis in Palestinian schools, mosques and media.

The general reaction from the anencephalic media and “peace groupies” was that this act would “complicate” efforts to restart the peace talks.

AND HOW ABOUT THIS: http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/08/123-israeli-children-killed-by.html

The 123 Israeli Children Killed by Palestinian Terrorists

There are no Palestinians. There are no moderate Syrian rebels. There is only Islam.

The axe that fell on the head of a Rabbi in Jerusalem was held by the same hand that beheaded Yazidi men in the new Islamic State. It is the same hand that held the steering wheel of the car that ran over two Canadian soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec and the same hand that smashed a hatchet down on the skull of a rookie New York City cop in Queens all in a matter of months.

Their victims were of different races and spoke different languages. They had nothing in common except that they were non-Muslims. This is the terrible commonality that unites the victims of Islamic terror.

Either they are not Muslim. Or they are not Muslim enough for their killers.

The media shows us the trees. It does not show us the forest. It fragments every story into a thousand local narratives. In Jerusalem the killers were angry because of Jews praying on the Temple Mount. In Queens and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, they were outraged because we were bombing the Islamic State.

And in the Islamic State they were killing Christians and Yazidis because America hadn’t bombed them yet.

Our leaders and our experts, the wise men of our multicultural tribes, who huddle in their shiny suits around heavy tables, believe in the good Muslim terrorist the way that the Muslim believes in Allah. The good Muslim terrorist who is willing to make peace for the right price is their only hope of salvation. The good Muslim terrorist willing to settle for Palestine or Syria at 50 percent off is their way out of a war.

And so like Chamberlain at Munich and FDR at Yalta, like a thousand tawdry betrayals before, they make themselves believe it. And then they make us believe it.

A thousand foreign policy experts are dug out, suited up and marched into studios to explain what specific set of un-Islamic Muslim grievances caused this latest beheading and how the surviving non-Muslims need to appease their future killers. And then another tree falls. And another head rolls.

This week’s terror attack in a Jerusalem synagogue evoked a 300-word unsigned editorial from the New York Times.

Seemingly, this was a straightforward case: two terrorists with a gun, axes, and knives entered the synagogue and proceeded to butcher peaceful, unarmed worshippers. But for the Times, nothing involving Israel is straightforward.

Yes, the Times called the attack a “bloody rampage” and said Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas “has a duty to make the moral case that such brutality and inhumanity can only bring shame upon the Palestinian people” (which, by the way, he’s never going to do).

But the Times also called the attack

a tragedy for all Israelis and Palestinians. The two communities appeared increasingly locked in a cycle of hatred and hopelessness, where chances for stability, much less permanent peace, seem nearly impossible.

… it also is part of an alarming wave of violence fueled by a dispute over a holy site in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

The drift of that could not be clearer: both sides are at fault, both evincing “hatred” and “violence” that make peace “nearly impossible.”

But is that really true?

The attack on the synagogue immediately killed four Jews, three of them rabbis; a fifth person—an Israeli Druze policeman who fought the terrorists—died the following day.