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Ruth King

MARILYN PENN: ONLY SOME BLACK LIVES MATTER

Across the African continent, black children and teenagers are being kidnapped and raped in routine recruitment tactics for various Islamic terrorist groups. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has taken children as young as 5, forcing them to use weapons, to witness beheadings and to agree to kill even their parents if necessary. It’s estimated that Boko Haram has taken 10,000 boys as well as many hundreds of girls, subjecting them to starvation, torture, drugs, rape and pregnancy, jihadist videos and becoming suicide bombers themselves. In Yemen, Somali and Mali, Al Qaeda has done the same. Yet Black Lives Matter, the militant organization headed by people who call themselves African/American has said little to nothing about this continuing enslavement and murder of its own kin.

Instead, Black Lives Matter has focused on Israel , which it accuses of genocide of brown people – not black. It calls for ending U.S. military aid to Israel which is described as an “apartheid state.” It stands in solidarity with BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) and with Muslim people despite the daily deadly violence perpetrated by Muslims specifically against African blacks. No mention of ISIS or any other terrorist group which enslaves young blacks by the most barbaric tactics. Why bother to use African as part of your ethnic identification if you are determined to ignore the fate of your own people? How do other Black activists and leaders reconcile their own failure to rally against these horrific abuses at the UN, in front of the White House , in Union Square and the various other public forums they have used as venues for their protests. And how shameful that the very same organization that is seeking reparations for slavery two centuries ago has blinded itself to current mass slavery and its ravages.

Jews in the United States have a long history of standing in the forefront of civil rights activism and blacks perversely , have a long history of anti-semitic railing against the very people who have contributed so much to their liberation. Their embrace of Islam in the face of Islamic brutality in Africa is a sober reminder of how politics make strange bedfellows and how important causes can be dangerously subverted by the notion of inter-sectionality. The plight of young African blacks has nothing in common with Islamic Palestinians who are neither enslaved, tortured , kidnapped, starved or raped. What they do both share is being oppressed by Muslims; the former by radical terrorists and the latter by their own leadership which refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, preferring to keep Palestinians in the faux state of “refugee” status indefinitely rather than make that concession to reality. Black Lives Matter loses both credibility and rationality by espousing the Palestinian cause instead of showing solidarity with the African/ black victims of radical Islam.

Review: Western Values Defended

Olivia Pierson’s Western Values Defended: A Primer, is just what its title says it is, a primer for those unread in what those values are that need to be upheld and defended. It is a short book, just a general survey of the Western values that are rooted in ancient Greece but which came to fruition in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. It is only 71 pages long, but it is loaded with ideas which most people are not familiar with.

An Amazon review best describes Pierson’s opus: “Olivia Pierson is the author of To Love Wisdom – Gateway to the Heroic for the Young – is an introduction to philosophy for young people aged 10-13 and Western Values Defended: A Primer – a punchy and relevant overview of the greatest gems of Western civilization, and how they came to define the daily character of individual liberty in the West. She writes about politics, history and culture on her website oliviapierson.org. A reader wrote, “An exceptionally well-written defense of Western liberal philosophy and culture! At a time when Western values are overwhelmingly menaced, Ms. Pierson systematically explains just what Western values are, and why they’re so overwhelmingly important. The West today is massively under assault from the forces of socialism and religion, and Ms. Pierson persuasively and passionately explains how we all can — and must! — fight back against the horrifically threatening darkness.”

For any well-read adult who is conversant in the issues covered by Pierson, her book is “old news.” What they must remember is that it is an introduction to those issues. It would make an incomparable text book in elementary and high school as an antidote to the government-mandated multicultural pap being taught in schools today (at least in the U.S.). She introduces the issues in an elegant, compelling style, one which “old hands” on the subjects will find attractive and informative (I learned a few things about some of the issues I’d not encountered elsewhere). It was difficult for me to choose my favorite chapters in Western Values Defended: “Religious Tolerance” (which includes a moving and much-earned tribute to Hypatia of Alexandria, horridly martyred by early Christians because of her mind), “The Emancipation of Women and Sexual Freedom,” “Freedom of Speech and the Press,” “A Commitment to Scientific Inquiry,” or “Capitalism and Innovation.”

Biblio File: A Life Less Ordinary : Book Review by Daniel Mandel

David Pryce-Jones’ writings span over five decades. Over that time, he has produced a series of books chronicling unusual lives with implausible loyalties and the destructive and self-destructive movements which attracted them.

Fault Lines
David Pryce-Jones, Criterion Books, New York, 2015, 364 pp., US$25.00

On the question of the underlying motif uniting such diverse individuals as Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Unity Mitford and Cyril Connolly, and such varied subjects as the Hungarian Revolt, Paris in the Third Reich, the Arab world and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pryce-Jones said this in an interview with me more than 20 years ago: “I’m fascinated with the question – why do people do the very strange things they do?”

I and doubtless others have wondered how he came upon this fascination. Now, with his autobiography before them, readers will find their wait for an answer to that question well worth it. Pryce-Jones has given us a vivid yet understated portrait of the rarefied world into which he was born in Vienna in 1936, a world of country estates, lavish apartments on broad boulevards and liveried servants – and what happened to it.

It was his great-grandfather, the prominent entrepreneur Gustav Springer, who coined the advice, “Buy to the sound of cannons and sell to the sound of violins,” (often wrongly attributed to one of the Rothschilds – to whom Pryce-Jones is also connected). Wise choices of this kind led his forbears to accumulate a fortune and enter the Continent’s aristocracy. The offspring of an unlikely match between a British man of letters from a landed Welsh family, Alan Pryce-Jones, and a Jewish heiress, Thérèse (‘Poppy’) Fould-Springer, Pryce-Jones grew up in Royaumont, a home adjacent to a famed Cistercian abbey laid waste by the French Revolution.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka on “Defeating Jihad” — on The Glazov Gang.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka on “Defeating Jihad” — on The Glazov Gang.
Dr. Gorka unveils the winning strategy against Jihad, unmasks the Radical-in-Chief, describes the horrific scenario of a Hillary victory, and much, much more.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2016/08/14/dr-sebastian-gor…-the-glazov-gang/

Islamic Islamophobia: When Muslims Are Not Muslim Enough, What Does It Promise for the Rest of Us? by Douglas Murray

Mr Shah’s murderer was a Sunni Muslim, Tanveer Ahmed, who had travelled to Glasgow to kill Mr Shah because he believed Mr Shah had “disrespected the Prophet Mohammed.” At this point the comfortable narratives of modern Britain began to fray.

If Mr Shah’s murderer had been a non-Muslim, there would be a concerted effort by the entirety of the media and political class to find out what inspirations and associations the murderer had. Specifically, they would want to know if there was anybody — especially any figure of authority — who had ever called for the murder of Muslim shopkeepers. Yet when a British Muslim kills another British Muslim for alleged “apostasy” and local religious authorities are found to have praised or mourned the killers of people accused of “apostasy,” the same people cannot bother to stir themselves.

Earlier this year there was a murder that shocked Britain. Just before Easter, a 40-year old shopkeeper in Glasgow, Asad Shah, was repeatedly stabbed in his shop; he died in the road outside. The news immediately went out that this was a religiously-motivated attack. But the type of religiously motivated attack it was came as a surprise to most of Britain.

The Seduction of Benedict Arnold Most Americans know Benedict Arnold as a traitor, but few know the reality of the times he lived in. By John Daniel Davidson

Just about the only thing most Americans know about Benedict Arnold is that he was a traitor, the turncoat par excellence of America’s founding. Today, his name is synonymous with “traitor.”

Beyond that, we tend to know as little about Arnold as we do about the rest of the American Revolution. To the extent that it is still taught in schools, the War of Independence is presented as a rather tidy affair. The Founders issued the Declaration of Independence, George Washington and his army spent a hard winter at Valley Forge and then crossed the Delaware, there was an exchange of musket fire and cannonry at Yorktown, and that was that. A new nation was born: Happy Fourth of July.

The reality is of course more complicated — and vastly more compelling. The American Revolution was anything but tidy, and the war was unlike any previous military conflict. It was a world war that lasted more than eight years, spanned two oceans and three continents, involved four European powers, and saw the largest deployment of ships and troops ever assembled by the British Empire. From it emerged a wholly new form of government, proclaimed by a fledgling and fractious republic clinging to the edge of a vast unsettled wilderness.

In the middle of all this was Benedict Arnold, a war hero who earned the title “American Hannibal” for his daring but unsuccessful assault on Quebec early in the war. He went on to distinguish himself as a patriot and valiant battlefield commander willing to risk everything for victory. In the end, of course, he convinced himself that the real enemy wasn’t Britain but his fellow Americans, who were tearing the country apart. As far as Arnold was concerned, he betrayed his country to save it from itself.

No contemporary author is better suited to reintroduce readers to this high drama than Nathaniel Philbrick. Author of the award-winning books Mayflower and In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick has a knack for cinematic depictions and dramatic pacing, and he uses these to great effect in his new book.

The Revolutionary War, writes Philbrick in his new book Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, wasn’t just a rebellion against Great Britain; it was also a civil war “so widespread and destructive that an entire continent was seeded with the dark inevitability of even more devastating cataclysms to come.” Along the ragged edge of British-occupied New York, “where neither side held sway, neighbor preyed upon neighbor in a swirling cat-and-dog fight that transformed large swaths of the Hudson River Valley, Long Island, and New Jersey into lawless wastelands.” It was the same along stretches of the New England coast, where Viking-style raids by alternating boatloads of patriots and loyalists harassed towns and villages.

Does Anyone Actually Believe Cheryl Mills Was Just Helping the Clinton Foundation for Fun? Sorry, but I’m actually not an idiot. By Katherine Timpf

I can’t decide what’s more infuriating: Those e-mails suggesting inappropriate links between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation, or her campaign’s explanation of those e-mails suggesting that they think I’m a total, complete moron.

At the same time that Cheryl Mills was working as chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office, she was also conducting interviews for the secretary of state’s foundation. That is a textbook example of a situation that, at the very least, looks like someone using her public resources for personal gain. Any reasonable person can recognize that.

But the Clinton campaign — apparently hoping that voters completely lack critical-thinking skills – has released a statement in response insisting that all suspicions are completely ridiculous, that Mills was just doing “volunteer work for a charitable foundation,” and that “the idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd.”

That’s right . . . Mills was just doing it for fun! She was just like, “Hey I’ve got some time off . . . you know what my favorite thing to do in the whole world is? Watch TV? Drink wine? Nahhhhh, I want to go interview potential candidates for the Clinton Foundation! And she definitely chose that specific foundation solely because it was so great and fun, and definitely not because it was one that was run by her boss. How “absurd” to think that someone spending her free time doing work for her boss’ foundation might possibly indicate she was receiving anything from her boss for doing so. In fact, I’m sure they never even talked about it! And if you think otherwise, then you are the one who is being “absurd!”

Does anyone else hear how ridiculous that sounds?

When Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state, she and her foundation agreed to conduct their affairs in a way that would not “create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts for Senator Clinton as Secretary of State.” Got that? Not even the appearance of conflict — and regardless of what you think about what actually happened, you still can’t deny that this is a situation where that “appearance” is definitely, glaringly, blatantly present.

Of course, Hillary Clinton knows all of this, and she knew it at the time. She’s a career politician. Not only was she well aware of how it would look, but she also knew enough about political media to have predicted that people would find out about it when she ran for president. But guess what? She did it anyway, which suggests that she believes that she doesn’t have to worry about what she does or how it will look. She just does what she thinks is best for herself, no matter how glaringly inappropriate, because she is confident that no matter what, she will never, ever have to suffer any real consequences for her behavior.

What’s even worse is that this attitude is par for the course for the Clintons. Whether it’s this kind of shady business with her slush fund foundation, or her husband Bill having a private chat with Loretta Lynch as the Department of Justice was deciding whether or not to indict her, it’s clear that the Clintons are so confident in their total power that they are certain they will never, ever have to answer for anything.

Investigations and indictments aside, we already know that the way Hillary Clinton conducted herself as secretary of state was dishonest, inadequate, and fueled by her own self-interest. Scandal surrounds this woman, and for her campaign to claim that it’s “absurd” — not even understandable but incorrect, but actually “absurd” — to be suspicious about the objectively suspicious behavior of a woman with an objectively suspicious track record is, objectively, insulting.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

Obama’s Iraq Policy Did Not Create ISIS Our challenge in the Middle East is that sharia supremacism fills all vacuums. By Andrew C. McCarthy

The early Cold War wisdom that “we must stop politics at the water’s edge” has never been entirely true. In endeavors as human as politics, no such altruistic aspiration ever will be. But Senator Arthur Vandenberg’s adage does reflect a principle critical to effective national security: The United States is imperiled when partisan politics distorts our understanding of the world and the threats it presents.

We’ve been imperiled for a long time now. The most salient reason for that has been the bipartisan, politically correct refusal to acknowledge and confront the Islamic roots of the threat to the West. It has prevented us from grasping not only why jihadists attack us but also that jihadists are merely the militant front line of the broader civilizational challenge posed by sharia supremacism.

Inevitably, when there is a profound threat and an overarching strategic failure to apprehend it, disasters abound; and rather than becoming occasions for reassessment of the flawed bipartisan strategy, those disasters become grist for partisan attacks. From 2004 through 2008, the specious claim was that President Bush’s ouster of Saddam Hussein created terrorism in Iraq. Now it is that President Obama is the “founder of ISIS,” as Donald Trump put it this week.

The point here is not to bash Trump. He is hardly the first to posit some variation of the storyline that Obama’s premature withdrawal of American forces from Iraq led to the “vacuum” in which, we are to believe, the Islamic State spontaneously generated. Indeed, this narrative is repeated on Fox News every ten minutes or so.

The point is to try to understand what we are actually dealing with, how we got to this place, and what the security implications are. There is no denying that American missteps have exacerbated a dangerous threat environment in the Middle East to some degree. It is spurious, though, to suggest that any of these errors, or all of them collectively, caused the catastrophe that has unfolded.

The problem for the United States in this region is Islam — specifically, the revolutionary sharia-supremacist version to which the major players adhere. There is no vacuum. There never has been a vacuum. What we have is a bubbling cauldron of aggressive political Islam with its always attendant jihadist legions.

Germany in new anti-terror plan to thwart Islamist militants

Germans with dual nationality will lose their German citizenship if they fight for militant Islamist groups abroad under new anti-terror proposals.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also announced plans to speed up the deportation of foreign criminals.

He announced extra personnel, equipment and surveillance powers for the police.

But he rejected banning the public wearing of the burka (the Islamic full veil). And he resisted pressure to ease medical confidentiality.

Some of his conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) colleagues have urged a burka ban but Mr de Maiziere said it would be “problematic” and “you cannot ban everything that you reject”.

Mr de Maiziere was responding to recent attacks linked to militant Islamists. Two terror attacks by Islamist migrants shocked Germany last month – in Wuerzburg and Ansbach.
Citizenship debate

“I propose that German citizens who are fighting with terror militias in other countries, and take part in combat operations there, if they have a second nationality – and only then – they would lose German citizenship,” he told a news conference.

There was a move in France recently to deprive jihadists of their French citizenship, but it did not get through parliament.

German media report that the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) – the CDU’s coalition partners – strongly oppose any general ban on dual citizenship. The Greens are also against the idea.

German Intel: ISIS Hit Squads Entering Europe Disguised as Syrian Refugees Daniel Greenfield

For months experts and the media insisted that it was inconceivable and impossible for Muslim terrorists to enter Europe or America by pretending to be Syrian refugees. Now it’s just a fact of life. That’s the way it usually is with the left. The disastrous outcomes of their policies are denied and then they’re just a reality that we’re expected to cope with.

German intelligence services have evidence that “hit squads” from the Islamic State terror group have infiltrated the country disguised as refugees, the deputy head of Bavaria’s spy agency told the BBC Thursday.

“We have to accept that we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, the vice president of the Bavaria region’s intelligence gathering agency, BayLfV, told the Today program.

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads. There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves. We are still following up on these, and we haven’t investigated all of them fully,” said Hauser.

Why do we have to accept them? Because we keep accepting Muslim migrants who claim to be refugees. We have to keep eating the whole bowl of candy wondering which of the pieces is poisoned.