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Ruth King

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Explosions at Brussels Central Station, Suspect with Explosive Belt ‘Neutralized’ By Patrick Poole

By on June 21st, 2017

There are reports of two explosions at Brussels Central Station, where a man wearing what appeared to be an explosive belt has been “neutralized” in what Belgian authorities are calling a terror attack:

Local media reports indicate the suspect shouted “Allah akhbar” before being shot:

Belgian authorities won’t confirm if the suspect is dead or alive, but are saying there are no further injuries.

The Independent reports:

The main square and central station in Belgium’s capital Brussels have evacuated by place after reports of a blast.

Witnesses said La Grande Place was cleared in seconds, while others took pictures of a fire in the nearby Central Station.

Belgian media have reported a man wearing a explosive belt has been “neutralised” by police.

Local police tweeted about an “incident with an individual at Brussels Central station”.

It said: “The situation is under control but please follow the instructions [of police]”.

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Report: As Many as 5.7 Million Non-Citizens Voted in 2008 Election By Rick Moran

By on June 21st, 2017

A report from the conservative/libertarian think tank Just Facts shows that up to 5.7 million people who cast their ballots in the 2008 presidential election were non-citizens. The group used data from a Harvard study as well as US Census Bureau data to arrive at that conclusion.

Just Facts also estimated that up to 3.6 million non-citizens cast their vote in 2012.

Washington Times:

Just Facts’ conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.

In one camp, there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

On the other side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero” noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was “debunked.”

The ODU professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left, concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted.

Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.

With voter ID laws in so many states, how did the non-citizens get away with it?

“The details are technical, but the figure I calculated is based on a more conservative margin of sampling error and a methodology that I consider to be more accurate,” Mr. Agresti told The Washington Times.

He believes the Harvard/YouGov researchers based their “zero” claim on two flawed assumptions. First, they assumed that people who said they voted and identified a candidate did not vote unless their names showed up in a database.

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Three Americans Still Held by North Korea By Bridget Johnson

By on June 21st, 2017

Kenneth Bae was seized by North Korean officials in November 2012. Two years later, after suffering myriad health problems brought on by forced labor, Bae’s 15-year sentence was cut short and he headed home to Washington state.

The Christian missionary thought he could help suffering North Koreans in part by leading a tour company in the special economic zones that would help reveal the people’s plight. Pyongyang accused Bae of trying to topple the communist regime.

After the release and death of University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, Bae said he was grieving with and praying for the young man’s family.

Bae called attention to the many people “living without freedom in the country of 24 million people – enduring horrible circumstances and forced labor – and we do not even know their names.”

“We plead with the U.S. government, the international community, and leadership in North Korea to value human lives. Every life is important — Otto’s life, lives of the American detainees, and the lives of each person in North Korea. I am a Christian, and part of what that means is to act justly and to have mercy on the innocent. Although we don’t know everything about life in North Korea, this much is sure: innocent people like Otto are suffering. I pray that these innocent people suffering in North Korea are not forgotten in this high-stakes game of weapons, sanctions, and international diplomacy,” Bae’s statement continued.

“Please join me in prayer and be a voice for the innocent. Please join me in praying for Otto’s family. This did not have to happen and should never happen again.”

Bae was released at the same time as Matthew Todd Miller, who had been arrested after entering North Korea in April 2014. In October 2014, Jeffrey Fowle, an Ohio tourist arrested after a Bible was discovered in his hotel room, was released — a month after being sentenced to six years of hard labor. The Pentagon sent an aircraft to pick up Fowle at North Korea’s request.

Ten Americans were detained and released by North Korea during the Obama administration, with Bae serving the longest period in captivity. Warmbier was seized in January 2016, and is believed to have suffered the brain damage that left him in an unresponsive state soon after being sentenced that March.

In June 2016, North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency blamed Bae’s

“babbling” about the regime for the prisoners’ plight, claiming Pyongyang would “not proceed with any compromise or negotiations with the United States on the subject of American criminals, and there will certainly not be any such thing as humanitarian action” as long as the former hostage spoke out about his experiences and advocated for those still suffering.

“As we grieve Otto’s passing, I also want people to know that other Americans remain detained in North Korea right now,” Bae added in his statement this week. “There are three Americans — Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, Kim Hak-Song — and the Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim.”

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A silent minority fights for its rights at San Francisco State U By Ethel C. Fenig

By on June 21st, 2017

San Francisco State University leftists, who dominate that university, as per the left’s modus operandi, will allow only certain minorities it deems acceptable their “rights” while trampling on the rights of others – minorities, majorities, or just sincere non-identity-obsessed students. SFSU’s administration has, at most, passively accepted this state of affairs while often enabling the suppression of the rights of some in the face of violence by leftists.

And now, one minority group that has suffered in silence for years has said, “Enough! We have rights too and we’re demanding them!” No, not by counter-violence but by a lawsuit.

San Francisco State University Accused of Pervasive Anti-Semitism in Groundbreaking Federal Lawsuit Filed by Students and Members of the Jewish Community

A group of San Francisco State University students and members of the local Jewish community today filed a lawsuit alleging that SFSU has a long and extensive history of cultivating anti-Semitism and overt discrimination against Jewish students. According to the suit, “SFSU and its administrators have knowingly fostered this discrimination and hostile environment, which has been marked by violent threats to the safety of Jewish students on campus.” The plaintiffs are represented by a team of attorneys from The Lawfare Project and the global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and also names as defendants, the Board of Trustees of the California State University System, SFSU President Leslie Wong and several other University officials and employees, alleges that “Jewish students at SFSU have been so intimidated and ostracized that they are afraid to wear Stars of David or yarmulkes on campus.”

The lawsuit was triggered following the alleged complicity of senior university administrators and police officers in the disruption of an April, 2016, speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. At that event organized by SF Hillel, Jewish students and audience members were subjected to genocidal and offensive chants and expletives by a raging mob that used bullhorns to intimidate and drown out the Mayor’s speech and physically threaten and intimidate members of the mostly-Jewish audience. At the same time, campus police – including the chief – stood by, on order from senior university administrators who instructed the police to “stand down” despite direct and implicit threats and violations of university codes governing campus conduct.

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ISIS Has New Plans of Attack Janet Levy

By on June 21st, 2017

In an article entitled “Just Terrorist Tactics: Hostage Taking,” the recently released issue of ISIS’ online magazine, Rumiyah (Rome), features new techniques to terrorize non-Muslims.

Volume 9 of the terrorist group’s recruitment and propaganda tool introduces several new ideas of note for aspiring jihadists which involve 1) advertising for fake jobs, 2) falsely advertising property for rent and 3) participation in online sales sites such as Craigslist, Gumtree and eBay.

The advertising of a job at a local unemployment center is presented as a way to lure a particular type of target for “job interviews” (i.e. any male kafir). The “soldier of Allah” is informed that this should take place at various locations and times in order to eliminate the victims as they arrive by “attacking, subduing, binding and then slaughtering them.”

Falsely advertising a property for rent in the local classified section or with “For Rent” advertisement posters is suggested as another effective ploy. Perpetrators are instructed to describe the available property as a single room or studio so potential “tenants” will likely come alone to view the rental.

As the collection of goods is often conducted in person, the use of buy and sell websites is encouraged as well by the latest Rumiyah feature. The writer specifies that the viewing and collecting of the item in question should be arranged at a suitable location for carrying out a terrorist operation.

The recent Rumiyah article cautions Muslims to remind themselves that these actions constitute “worship” and that “Allah has obliged us to “kill the mushrikin*” wherever we find them and to “fight the disbelievers who are closest**” to us.” It stresses the importance of having a room specifically reserved for the disposal of bodies so that future victims are not alerted to any danger. The use of background noise to drown out sounds of a struggle is encouraged. It is suggested that in order to maximize the “terror in the hearts of the disbelievers***” and enhance the publicity value of the operation, some victims should be kept alive and used as hostages. The “ideal scenario” is depicted as the storming of the site by armed forces as the jihadist is killed as a shahid or martyr.

In issues of a prior ISIS publication, Dabiq, Muslims were urged to kill children and attack Christians.

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Is Netanyahu building bridges with left-wing Israeli leadership? Caroline Glick

By on June 20th, 2017

Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu courted the former foreign minister.

The homes of the terrorists who murdered Border Police officer Hadas Malka on Friday evening are now bedecked with Fatah flags and banners reading, “Our heroes.”

Far from condemning the terrorist attack, Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his comrades are condemning Israel. Its security forces, they allege obscenely, committed a “war crime” when they killed the three terrorists to stop their rampage.

The only reason that these actions are not enough to warrant the US and the rest of the West – not to mention the Israeli Left – treating Fatah/PLO as the terrorist group they are and have always been, is because doing so would require them to stop playacting at peace making.

And they couldn’t have that.

Instead, they mimic or recycle “peace process” lingo about “windows of opportunity,” and reincarnate failed peace processors.

In apparent bid to do the latter, last Friday Channel 10 first reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked MK Tzipi Livni to join his government with her Knesset faction and serve as his foreign minister.

While Likud denied the report, Livni claims Netanyahu made the offer through mediators that have been carrying out indirect negotiations between the two politicians.

Livni also has said that she rejected Netanyahu’s offer because she doesn’t believe he is willing to adopt her expansively pro-PLO positions.

Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu made the attempt.

There’s certainly no love lost between the two. Netanyahu’s last campaign centered on Livni’s radicalism.

The fact that the Labor Party formed a joint candidates list with Livni radicalized the party, he argued. Livni, for her part, was the main reason Netanyahu’s last government fell apart. She was disloyal and subversive throughout her brief tenure as justice minister.

Politically Livni has nothing to offer Netanyahu. As things stand today, Livni has no future in politics. She is unpopular in the Labor Party. And if she as an independent list, she is unlikely to even pass the four-seat threshold to be reelected to Knesset.

Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid Party has been leading Labor as the most popular Center-Left political party, has evinced no interest in joining forces with Livni.

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Prestige As A Tool Of Foreign Policy Thanks to Trump, the days of America “leading from behind” are over. Bruce Thornton

By on June 20th, 2017

Reprinted from Hoover.org.

In April, President Trump took three actions to radically reset the course of American foreign policy. In response to Syrian president Bashar al Assad’s use of sarin gas, Trump had the air-field from which the attack originated bombed. To counter North Korea’s threats and continuing testing of intercontinental missiles, he ordered the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its accompanying strike group to deploy closer to the Korean peninsula. And he gave military commanders leeway to drop the largest non-nuclear bomb in our arsenal, the Massive Ordnance Air Burst, colloquially known as the “Mother of All Bombs,” on an ISIS tunnel-and-caves complex on the Afghan border, killing about 100 jihadists.

These bold moves alerted the world that the days of America “leading from behind” are at an end. And they have achieved something important for every foreign policy no matter its ideological compass: restoring our country’s damaged prestige.

Whether we call it “credibility” or “deterrence,” prestige involves the old concept of “honor” that Thucydides recognized as one of three major causes of conflict, the other two being “fear” and “interest.” The subsequent 2,400 years of military philosophy have not improved on the Athenian historian’s catalogue. “Fear” and “interest” are more familiar to us, for we too make national security and interests our foreign policy goals. But “honor” often strikes us a concept from a bygone age, one we rational moderns have progressed beyond. But as the classical military historian Donald Kagan has written, “Arguments about morality and ideology involve what Thucydides called honor, and nations from antiquity to our own world cannot ignore it.”

Prestige is like honor in that it refers to the perception other countries have of a nation’s worth or value, and the respect it is due. This estimation of worthiness determines other states’ behavior. If a nation consistently rewards friends, punishes enemies, and matches its words to its deeds, enemies and rivals will honor it as a faithful ally and a fearsome foe. This perception of resolve and loyalty in turn acts a force multiplier, inasmuch as when enemies believe that a country will use its military power, often it won’t have to; the fear of a country’s willingness to act decisively can deter aggression. As Virgil writes in the Aeneid, “They have power because they seem to have power.” Likewise, if a rival or an enemy perceives that a country is unwilling to use its power to defend its interests and security, it will seek opportunities to achieve its aims at a country’s expense, inciting others to do the same.

A people’s morale, their confidence and zeal in countering threats and attacks, is part of prestige. When a nation believes in its way of life, honors in action its principles and values, and is proud of its achievements, its citizens are more apt to defend their prestige against those who would challenge or attempt to destroy them. As Napoleon said, morale is three times more important than physical factors in winning a battle. The willingness to fight, the confidence in victory, and the assurance that your side morally deserves to win are more crucial than superiority in material resources. Countering aggression by defending prestige requires morale to overcome the fear of unforeseen consequences, the cost in lives and resources, or the risk of an escalation into full-blown war.

History provides a large catalogue of conflicts precipitated by an aggressor who disdained a rival’s prestige and judged that its people had lost their morale. The two decades between the world wars is a record of incremental aggression by the Axis powers that was left unpunished by the more powerful Allies. The infamous Munich Conference of 1938, of course, remains the supreme example of appeasement that damaged the already weakened prestige of England and France and led to the catastrophe of World War II.

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Giving Terrorists a Heads-Up A proposed law would force the NYPD to publicize the details of its surveillance technology. Heather Mac Donald

By on June 20th, 2017

A bill in New York’s city council would require the New York Police Department to reveal crucial details about every surveillance technology that the department uses to detect terrorism and crime. Ninety days before the NYPD intends to implement a new surveillance technology, it would have to post on the Internet a technical description of how the new tool works, and how the department plans to use it. The public would have 45 days to comment on the proposed technology; the police commissioner would then have 45 days to respond to the public comments before he could actually start using the new capacity. Existing technologies would also have to be retroactively submitted to public review.

Perhaps aware that this moment may not be ideal for promoting what would be, in effect, a terrorists’ manual on how to evade discovery in New York City, the bill’s supporters have hilariously taken to casting it as a pro-illegal alien, anti-Trump gesture. New York is a “sanctuary city, now in open resistance to the Trump administration,” two members of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in an op-ed advocating for the so-called Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act. (The Brennan Center wrote the POST Act for council members; the center has pushed similar bills across the country, including in Seattle and Oakland, two cities that have been particularly vulnerable to “anti-fascist” violence.) The city council press release claims that the bill “strengthens New York City’s commitment as a sanctuary city . . . as the Trump administration seeks to increase surveillance across America.”

In fact, the proposed law has nothing to do with New York’s deplorable status as a sanctuary city. Criminal illegal aliens avoid lawful deportation in New York because city and police officials release them back to the streets in defiance of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer requests, not because of sophisticated surveillance technologies. But though the bill would have no effect on the city’s campaign to thwart immigration enforcement, it would impede the city’s ability to stay one step ahead of terrorist planning. Memo to the council: counterterrorism is not a leisurely activity compatible with lengthy public review and administrative red tape. It requires nimbleness and speed in the face of a rapidly evolving threat. And disclosing to the enemy the extent of, and details about, your surveillance capacities provides an invaluable blueprint for foiling those capacities.

Supporters of the bill are playing the race card as well, claiming that the bill is necessary to counter the NYPD’s historic tendency to oppress minorities. The managing director of the Bronx Defenders claims, without evidence, that the NYPD has illegally surveilled Black Lives Matter activists. Council members Dan Garodnick and Vanessa Gibson argue that “Surveillance technology often has a disproportionate, harmful impact on communities of color.” This claim is ludicrous. The radiation detectors that ring the city looking for nuclear threats, say, or the network of public cameras that protect critical infrastructure and sensitive buildings, have no disproportionate impact on minorities or any other group, other than on someone looking to do the city harm.

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Anger Privilege Only leftists are allowed to be angry. Daniel Greenfield

By on June 20th, 2017

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn’t, follow the anger.

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can’t. If you’re angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn’t.

James Hodgkinson’s rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he’s not alone. There’s Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you’re black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you’re white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you’re on the side of the angry angels.

But if you’re white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you’re an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you’re an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is “dangerous” because you aren’t allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn’t described as anger at all. Instead it’s linguistically whitewashed as “passionate” or “courageous”. Bad anger however is “worrying” or “dangerous”. Angry left-wing protesters “call out”, angry right-wing protesters “threaten”. Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama’s victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like “Lock her up”.

Why were chants of “Lock her up” immoderate, but not Bush era cries of “Jail to the chief”? Why were Tea Party rallies “ominous” but the latest We Hate Trump march is “courageous”? Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It’s not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

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Bret Stephens’s Exclusionary Politics His Swiftian satire is a misguided approach to citizenship. By Fred Bauer

By on June 20th, 2017

One of the more interesting trends of recent years has been the effort to view citizenship through a kind of debauched meritocratic lens. This approach is favored particularly by those who oppose enforcing immigration laws, who argue that somehow immigrants (including illegal immigrants) are more “American” than poor Americans. Like some earlier iterations of Social Darwinism, this worldview combines moral self-righteousness with a crass materialism.

In a recent column for the New York Times, Bret Stephens offers a “Modest Proposal”–style recommendation to deport poor Americans: “Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning.” Stephens says he doesn’t really want to deport struggling Americans; his tongue is firmly in his cheek. His main purpose is to criticize the deportation of illegal immigrants by pointing to the supposed shortcomings of many native-born Americans. However, rather than destroying the case for enforcing immigration laws, this satirical proposal far more effectively skewers efforts to dissolve national fellowship in the name of the pseudo-meritocracy.

Stephens’s proposal cherry-picks evidence to show the supposed degeneracy of native-born Americans. But it does not account for the fact that immigrant households rely on government assistance at a much higher rate than native-born households do. Nor does it account for research finding that the children of many immigrant families sometimes face more challenges than their immigrant parents did. For instance, sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz found that the economic prospects of those descended from Mexican immigrants often stall or even decline after the second generation. To note the struggles of immigrants and their families is not to pile moral blame on them. These difficulties do, though, indicate that immigrants face many obstacles, some of which are greater than those faced by the native-born. In many areas, illegal immigrants are prime competitors to legal immigrants, so widespread illegal immigration almost certainly makes it harder for legal immigrants to climb the ladder of success.

Intellectual shortcomings radically compound the economic deficiencies of the meritocratic denigration of the native-born. The worldview that poor Americans can’t cut it and should therefore be replaced by more “competitive” immigrants might fit comfortably in a corporate boardroom, but it profoundly misunderstands the purpose of citizenship and the enterprise of inclusive politics. Whether or not a poor American “deserves” to be an American is beside the point — what matters is that he is American and that, by virtue of his citizenship, he has an inherent claim to the public square and public concern. While pseudo-meritocratic initiatives to cull the weak are chic on Wall Street, they inject poison when applied to politics. Arguing that the poor and disadvantaged are somehow less worthy citizens exacerbates civic alienation; it cuts the materially unsuccessful out of the body politic and flatters the indifference of the successful, whispering to them that they are justified in sneering at the struggles of the weak. In its high-handed dismissal of the struggles of the poor, the argument that the native-born are degenerate trash-people is almost a recipe for even more populism, a force that has caused Stephens himself no small angst in recent years.

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