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Ruth King

Hard War By Lt. Col. Kent S Ralston USMC (Ret.)

After World War II, the U.S. abandoned the concepts of total and hard war and adopted a more politically correct view of war.

Western civilization is immolating itself on the sword of political correctness. Our leaders fail to recognize the existential threat that we now face and are unwilling to take the decisive actions necessary to combat the threat of radical jihadist Islamists.

Leadership on both sides of the political spectrum refuse to identify how we might counter this threat. This is not necessarily a new type of threat that we have not experienced before. However, what is new is our refusal to properly utilize the tools at our disposal to combat this threat.

We often hear our leadership say that it is against our values as Americans to use some of these ruthless but effective tools. Gen. George S. Patton once said, “War is cruel, ruthless and brutal and it takes a cruel, ruthless and brutal man to fight it!” It was the implementation of this approach that ultimately secured victory in 1945.

Unfortunately, our nation does not presently possess Patton’s “cruel, ruthless and brutal man” in any senior leadership position in our government or military. Politicians and generals alike often state that it is against our long-held American values to target civilians or torture prisoners. However, our country’s history is replete with examples of our leadership doing what is necessary to win. We can only logically extrapolate that those who would refuse to fight hard war would be willing to sacrifice our lives and freedom on the altar of the absurd fallacies of American values crowd.

During the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington hanged spies and executed deserters. During the Mexican-American War, Gen. Winfield Scott ordered the execution of fifty members of the St. Patrick’s Battalion in 1847. Many members of this unit were determined to be deserters from the U.S. Army who joined forces with the Mexican army under Santa Ana. Both Union and Confederate generals during the Civil War executed prisoners in retaliation for executions by their counterparts. Gen. William Sherman during his famous march from Atlanta to the sea issued General Order V which stated,

Army Corps commanders alone are entrusted with the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton gins, etc., and for them this general principle is laid down: in districts in neighborhoods where the Army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.

The Mainstream Media Spreads Another False ‘Islamophobia’ Story by Raheem Kassam and Liam Deacon

Originally published under the title “Molenbeek Hit And Run: How The Mainstream Media Spread Another False ‘Islamophobia’ Story.”

The journalists and publications which implied the hit and run in Molenbeek borough of Brussels this weekend was a ‘far right’ anti Islam attack had no evidence to suggest that it was as they reported, but they knew what story they wanted to write.

That’s why most hesitantly wrote “during” a “far right demonstration” instead of bluntly labelling the driver a “far right activist” as did the Daily Mail, the first publication to report on the story.

Instead of acknowledging the categorical error, or clearly reporting the truth as it emerged, however, the Mail quietly edited their original article, burying the factual change three quarters of the way down the page, and failing to issue a correction or clarification.

Its headline shifted from “Muslim Women Is Mown Down by Grinning Far-Right Activist” to “by Grinning Driver” (see above) and the critical new details only appeared in the sixth paragraph:

Police later announced that they had arrested two men, believed to have been the car’s driver and passenger, who have been named as Redouane B. and Mohamed B – both of whom are thought to be residents of Molenbeek.

Numerous other articles in the Independent, Express, New York Post, and others have yet to be amended or followed up with the truth. Some, like Evening Standard, only published their misleading story this morning, after all the facts had become widely available.

Journalists who bothered to check with sources in Brussels were able to ascertain the man was not “far right,” but a local Muslim teenager, a fact reported two days ago by those such as Channel 4’s Paraic O’Brien.

When too much really is too much :Yisrael Medad

I wonder: is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu getting piqued? Is Jordan’s behavior beginning to annoy him? Is the pressure Jordan is applying vis a vis the Temple Mount starting to bother even him? First, despite promises to seek ways to permit Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, he succumbed to the so-called “status quo” (so-called because it is only static as regards Jews).

Second, when it was absolutely clear who was initiating violence and provocations (the Jordanian Waqf by allowing youths to infiltrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque and stay there overnight with firebombs, etc. as well as Sheikh Raad Salah’s Islamic Movement), he only spoke in a general fashion without blaming Jordan.

Third, he didn’t call out Jordan on the violation of Article Nine of the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty.

Fourth, he traveled to Amman (and Berlin) to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and King Abdallah II and bowed to the pressure of installing cameras.

Fifth, he stood idly by for some five months while nothing happens with the camera surveillance scheme.

Sixth, he demurred when the Waqf and Jordan announced that the cameras will not be placed inside the mosque or the Dome of the Rock thus completely undermining Israel’s case to prove Muslim-instigated violence.

And now we read that Jordan is protesting a rabbi storming of Jerusalem mosque :

Jordan Tuesday strongly protested a raid into Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound, led by ultranationalist rabbi Yehuda Glick of the ruling Likud party, and urged Israel, as the occupation power, to stop such provocations.

Pete Mulherin Want Fries With That PhD?

Given the post-grad worth of degrees in gender studies, queer studies and journalism, to name but a few of the modern academy’s taxpayer-subsidised growth areas, it is a monumental injustice to make others underwrite the ongoing exaltation of credentialed irrelevance.
That Australia’s current system of higher education is unsustainable is a fact most are willing to concede. The latest evidence, revealed by the ABC, is of a $13.5 billion debt accrued over four years. This news adds another nail to the coffin of Entitlement Era higher ed and must surely accelerate a large-scale overhaul of the present—pun intended—arrangement.

As a graduate of two-and-a-bit university degrees, I am aware of the doors my tertiary education has opened, and am grateful for the subsidies and deferred payment system through HECS/HELP. That being said, it seems ludicrous my higher education should be paid for by the government taxpayers, including many who did not receive higher education themselves. Despite what our society leads me and fellow Gen Y-ers to believe, we do not have a right to go to university, nor are we entitled to see those studies heavily subsidised.

Speaking for myself, I would have attended university even if required to pay the full fees for my courses—albeit under a deferred-payment scheme— because my interests and professional ambitions lie in academia. On the other hand, I can safely assume that many of my co-students chose to go to university precisely because of the current arrangements. They chose uni because it was the easy option: no upfront fees, Youth Allowance, low-cost courses that might be repaid (or not paid at all, should they go overseas) in the distant future, and — or so they believe — because of better job prospects.

Encouraging this mindset was the uncapping of university places under Labor, as it carried us one step closer to socialist Nirvana: a bachelor’s certificate on every mantelpiece, a gown and mortar board in every wardrobe! All that achieved was to lower the bar. Many university degrees, and here one thinks especially of arts grads, might more appropriately be hung in the garden shed than occupy pride of place in the recent graduate’s hallway. (editor’s note: the declining gradient of Australian journalism matches to a T the rise of “journalism” as a tertiary subject. If you doubt that, note the work-experience children delivering their oracular preconceptions in the guise of “news coverage” via the Fairfax press. )

What I’m getting at is not inspired by elitism; a university graduate is as likely to make a fool of himself as any other person. No, my gripe is twofold and it’s not based on a white-male, CIS-privileged, capitalist conspiracy, despite what you may hear. Firstly, there’s the issue of entitlement, which is raging unchecked among us Gen Y-ers. And secondly, there’s the frustrating notion that suggests: ‘a truly just society must provide—for free if possible—a university degree to everyone.’

Panama Bernie Bernie Sanders’s politics produced the Panama Papers. By Daniel Henninger

Bernie Sanders caused the Panama Papers. Bernie of Vermont didn’t do it by himself, of course. The world’s most famous socialist, and Hillary Clinton’s albatross, had a lot of help. Spare me the crocodile tears over the immorality of tax avoidance. Panama is an indictment of government greed.

After World War II, the governments of the West established tax regimes to support the reconstruction of their nations. Six decades later, that tax machinery, which runs the social-welfare states in the countries Bernie Sanders cites in every campaign stop as a model for America, has run totally amok—an unaccountable, devouring monster. Billionaires aren’t the only ones who run from it.

Most governments, including ours, overtax their citizens to feed their own insatiable need for money. Then the legal thieves running the government and their cronies, unwilling to abide the tax levels they created, move their wealth offshore to places like Panama. Arguably, all the world’s people should be able to move their assets “offshore” to escape governments that are smothering economic life and growth, which has stalled in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Speaking of crocodile tears, Barack Obama spent Tuesday bragging that corporate tax inversions are akin to Panama Papers’ tax avoidance. Mr. Obama said “corporations,” another swearword invoked by Bernie Sanders at every stop, are “gaming the system.” CONTINUE AT SITE

An Overheated Climate Alarm The White House launches a scary campaign about deadly heat. Guess what: Cold kills more people. By Bjorn Lomborg

The Obama administration released a new report this week that paints a stark picture of how climate change will affect human health. Higher temperatures, we’re told, will be deadly—killing “thousands to tens of thousands” of Americans. The report is subtitled “A Scientific Assessment,” presumably to underscore its reliability. But the report reads as a political sledgehammer that hypes the bad and skips over the good. It also ignores inconvenient evidence—like the fact that cold kills many more people than heat.

Climate change is a genuine problem that will eventually be a net detriment to society. Gradually rising temperatures across decades will increase the number of hot days and heat waves. If humans make no attempts whatsoever to adapt—a curious assumption that the report inexplicably relies on almost throughout—the total number of heat-related deaths will rise. But correspondingly, climate change will also reduce the number of cold days and cold spells. That will cut the total number of cold-related deaths.
Consider a rigorous study published last year in the journal Lancet that examined temperature-related mortality around the globe. The researchers looked at data on more than 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 areas: cold countries like Canada and Sweden, temperate nations like Spain, South Korea and Australia, and subtropical and tropical ones like Brazil and Thailand.The Lancet researchers found that about 0.5%—half a percent—of all deaths are associated with heat, not only from acute problems like heat stroke, but also increased mortality from cardiac events and dehydration. But more than 7% of deaths are related to cold—counting hypothermia, as well as increased blood pressure and risk of heart attack that results when the body restricts blood flow in response to frigid temperatures. In the U.S. about 9,000 people die from heat each year but 144,000 die from cold. CONTINUE AT SITE

They Want Your IRA The White House pushes investors toward government accounts.

President Obama’s regulators aren’t slowing down, alas. And on Wednesday they unveiled another part of their plan to push Americans out of private investment accounts and into government-run plans.

The Department of Labor says its so-called fiduciary rule will make financial advisers act in the best interests of clients. What Labor doesn’t say is that the rule carries such enormous potential legal liability and demands such a high standard of care that many advisers will shun non-affluent accounts. Middle-income investors may be forced to look elsewhere for financial advice even as Team Obama is enabling a raft of new government-run competitors for retirement savings. This is no coincidence.

Labor’s new rule will start biting in January as the President is leaving office. Under the rule, financial firms advising workers moving money out of company 401(k) plans into Individual Retirement Accounts will have to follow the new higher standards. But Labor has already proposed waivers from the federal Erisa law so new state-run retirement plans don’t have the same regulatory burden as private employers do.

This competitive advantage could be significant. Last month the board of California’s new “Secure Choice” retirement plan wrote to state legislators about their “exciting win” in Washington. They reported that employers enrolling workers in the new government-run plan “would have no liability or fiduciary duty for the plan.” Score! The California bureaucrats added that “we have been given the green light to auto-enroll workers into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA).”

Meanwhile, there are only losses for private competitors. The final rule Labor Secretary Tom Perez unveiled Wednesday is being marketed as less onerous than an earlier draft. Thus much of the financial industry is going to take a few weeks to decide on its response. But the main question is exactly how many billions of dollars in costs and lost opportunities will be visited upon investors. And how big the incentive will be to seek government options.

The White House claims it is solving a $17 billion problem for consumers who suffer from “conflicted advice,” but the investment advisory industry is already among the most regulated. The $17 billion figure was assembled from a variety of data sets, many of which weren’t measuring the alleged problem that Team Obama says it can solve, and some of which were generated by people who don’t endorse the White House analysis. In any case government-run plans will have their own conflicts of interest—politicians want the money—and will be expensive. CONTINUE AT SITE

Europe’s Stand Against Israel Is a Stand Against Itself by Luis Fleischman

Horrible attacks like those we saw in Belgium last month are likely to multiply, not just in Belgium, but throughout Europe.

ISIS is a determined monstrosity. The more they lose territory in Iraq and Syria, the more likely are they going to try to commit terrorist acts in Europe in order to inflict more pain and recruit more jihadists.

ISIS’ terrorists are not soldiers or conventional fighters in uniform. Nor are they terrorists that need to cross borders illegally in order to target their victims. Terrorists are mainly European citizens or residents moving in open borders, with easy access to their targets.

Furthermore, most terrorists hide among mass Muslim populations concentrated in specific neighborhoods. Muslim mass concentrations serve as shields and as convenient incubators for terrorist activities.

To a certain extent, this situation is similar to the one Israel has been facing for a long time. The Palestinian territories are where the terrorists come from and they find refuge among the population in order to have proximity to their target.

Most importantly in Europe, as in Israel, these are not freedom fighters seeking a specific objective, but nihilistic Islamist ideologues whose ultimate end goal is pain, destruction -and ideally, genocide.

In Europe there is no occupation and no ethnic conflict, but the continent is still trapped in a similar situation; Europe has been “Israelized.”

Now, Europe will have to take the bitter step of having to ask the Israelis how to establish a system of surveillance and a network of informers in order to prevent and dismantle the terrorist acts in the early planning stages.

Worse, they will have to admit that they were wrong when they judged Israel’s treatment of terrorism or exaggerated the responsibility of Israeli policies for such terrorism.

Europeans have never been able to understand the fanatic and irrational magnitude of Palestinian or Islamic terrorism.

Obama: Iran Plotting Destruction of Israel Violates “Spirit” of Deal Daniel Greenfield

Also Obama lying to Congress about the nuclear deal violates the “spirit” of the Constitution. But why dwell on the obvious. The deal was sold as ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Iran making it obvious that it’s still pursuing such a program violates more than just the “spirit” of the deal. In this case the lack of “spirit” shows that there is no actual deal in place. And Iran has said as much.

“Iran so far has followed the letter of the agreement, but the spirit of the agreement involves Iran also sending signals to the world community and businesses that it is not going to be engaging in a range of provocative actions that are going to scare businesses off,” Obama said at a press conference.

“When they launch ballistic missiles with slogans calling for the destruction of Israel, that makes businesses nervous.”

“Iran has to understand what every country in the world understands, which is businesses want to go where they feel safe, where they don’t see massive controversy, where they can be confident that transactions are going to operate normally,” he added. “And that’s an adjustment that Iran’s going to have to make as well.”

This sounds like Obama expressing a halfway concern about Iran’s violations. Except it’s just the opposite.

Obama is actually making the case for the next phase of his Iran bailout by giving the Shiite Islamic State access to the American economy. Thus he’s actually arguing that the more we do business with Iran, the less likely Iran is to set off a nuke.

Never mind that business ties have never interfered with Iran’s terror agenda before because terrorism is its top priority and business is just a means to that end. Iran is an Islamic State, not a capitalist one.

Rolling Stones and Obama Help Further Enrich Castro Family Aiding Cuba’s ruling billion-dollar crime family. April 6, 2016 Humberto Fontova

The curtain was just closing on president Obama’s benefit performance on behalf of the billionaire Castro family in Havana last month when another curtain opened on an adjacent stage.

Accompanied by a chorus of idiotic media hype The Rolling Stones arrived in Havana three days after Obama departed the island amidst a similar chorus of idiocies. Despite the insufferable media blather both sets of performers were helping further enrich the Castro family for one reason: their “legacies.”

You see, amigos: Cuba’s entire economic infrastructure is owned almost lock stock and barrel—not only by the Stalinist regime’s military and secret police sectors (the only people in Cuba with guns, in case you’d forgotten)—but more specifically by the Castro family itself. In Congressional testimony a few years ago, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Simmons, a recently retired Defense Intelligence Agency Cuba specialist, explained the issue in detail. He showed how through a corporation named GAESA, Raul Castro’s military owns virtually every corporation involved in Cuba’s tourism industry, among the Stalinist regime’s top money-makers lately.