RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is unfortunate that Charles Mackay is no longer alive to add yet another chapter or two to his insightful book of human follies, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. First published in 1841, his book chronicles in sixteen examples of crowd psychology with some of the notable economic and social foibles of the past. The preface includes his observation that “[w]e find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds on one object, and go mad in its pursuit: that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it, til their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.”

Chapter headings include The Mississippi Scheme, The South-Sea Bubble, The Tulipomania, Fortune-Telling, The Magnetisers, The Crusades, and The Witch Mania. These and the other chapters were chosen by Mackay to illustrate recurring but transient moral and economic epidemics, and to “show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes.” The foreword by Bernard Baruch in the 1932 edition references Schiller’s dictum: “Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd he at once becomes a blockhead.”

Despite Iran’s repeated claims to the contrary, a report just issued by the nuclear watchdog agency concluded that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program.

The Obama administration welcomed the report issued Wednesday, Dec. 2, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying it would likely pave the way for the removal of economic sanctions on Tehran as early as January. The report is titled “Final Assessment of Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme.”

What did the Administration find reassuring in the report? That the IAEA was unable to find evidence that Tehran’s efforts to pursue a nuclear bomb extended beyond 2009. What is the administration prepared to ignore? That Iran has been lying all along when its leaders said its nation had never pursued creating nuclear weapons.

What sheer hypocrisy at Princeton. Woodrow Wilson bad…but boycott and divest from Israel is just dandy. And the Center for African American Studies says nothing about the Jihads in Africa against innocent civilians…..rsk

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/04/cornel_west_urges_princeton_university_to_divest_f.html

PRINCETON — Princeton University has a moral obligation to divest from Israel and its systematic injustices, activist Cornel West told an audience on campus Wednesday, comparing the current divestment movement on campus to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s.

“The Israeli occupation of my Palestinian brothers and sisters is a crime against humanity,” West said. “They are killing hundreds daily — but where are the voices?”

West, professor emeritus in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, spoke alongside a panel of other divestment activists including Max Blumenthal, Larry Hamm, Molly Greene and Robert Tignor.

The Princeton Divests Student Coalition, made up of Princeton students and faculty who seek to bring divestment referendum before undergraduate students, organized the event in McCosh Hall.

“There will be no security for our Jewish and brothers and sisters — who have a right to security after 2,000 years of vicious hatred — as there can be no security predicated on violence,” West said.

I haven’t checked lately to see if the oceans are still rising, due to human sinfulness and love of big cars, or whether the waters are finally receding, as per Obama’s instructions seven years ago.

Peace is breaking out all over. In Syria 200,000-300,000 people are dead in a civil war, where Obama supported terrorist gangs like Al Nusra and the “Free Syrian Army.” The U.S. created the “moderate” FSA, and gave it TOW anti-tank missiles, which it used to shoot down that Russian rescue helicopter last week, as it was trying to pick up the downed jet pilot.

The Free Syrian Army now turns out to be a front for the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama’s close ally in all his Middle East adventures. Meanwhile, Yemen and Libya have fallen apart. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has actually killed more people than ISIS. BH is still raiding towns to steal African children for the slave markets, without a word of protest from Jesse Jackson or Jeremiah Wright.

Apparently All Black Lives don’t really matter. Not if they are in Africa.

The territory controlled by ISIS now covers the most strategic points in all of Iraq and half of Syria, making up the single biggest would-be state in that region.

The peak of lunacy in the American fight against ISIS may have been reached.

Remember that in October 2013, with ISIS bearing down on a Yazidi city in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby told reporters U.S. air power wouldn’t save Kobane, but that there was a “larger strategy” in place. “The primary goal of the campaign is not to save Syrian cities and towns,” U.S. Central Command officials echoed, “but to go after ISIS senior leadership, oil refineries, and other infrastructure that would curb the group’s ability to operate.” Individuals caught in the maelstrom were just unfortunate.

Last week, U.S. forces took out 116 of about 300 ISIS oil tanker trucks headed for Turkey. Not bad? Oh, yes it was – and it explains a lot about the ineffectual “war” we fighting.

Asked by The Washington Examiner why it took 14 months of air warfare to make the first strike on oil tanker trucks, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren replied that American officials were deeply worried about harming the truck drivers, who were working for the Islamic State but might not be ISIS themselves. U.S. officials settled on a plan to drop leaflets on the trucks about 45 minutes before the raid, warning the drivers that an attack was coming, while U.S. pilots flew low passes over the area. Planning all that took time.

Paris may not have burned, but it came under attack again by ruthless, Godless Islamic radicals. One hundred and thirty – mostly young – people were murdered in six incidents on Friday, the 13th of November. This was only the latest in a series of killings by terrorists invoking Islam as reason and cause. Earlier they had downed a Russian airliner and a few days later 41 Shiite Muslims were killed by two suicide Islamic terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. Religion is a great comfort for those in need of spiritual uplift. It does far more good than harm. But religion, throughout the centuries, has also been a cause of wars, something we should not forget. The horror the world is now experiencing will not end until peace-loving Muslims assert leadership. And it will not end as long as the West fails to connect Islam with the terror and the desire for a caliphate that some of its members’ advocate.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacres, Western leaders traveled to Paris to march in solidarity. Millions of people wore signs, “I am Charlie.” In April, 2014, 200 school girls in Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Like the “I am Charlie” signs, millions of people, including Michelle Obama, posted the hashtag, “save our girls.” That was the extent of the West’s involvement – feel-good symbols that made the wearer feel sanctimonious, but did nothing for the victims. This time there have been neither marches nor signs

Equally disturbing, though less deadly, have been the obsequious Uriah Heep’s that pass for college administrators and professors in many of our colleges and universities. Protests have risen supporting the concept of “safe places,” places where students can be assured of never hearing words that make them uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable. Yale president Peter Salovey sent an e-mail to his university’s community, which captured today’s campuses fawning, liberal orthodoxy. In the e-mail he apologized for the university, and said the he is committed “to a campus where hatred and discrimination are never tolerated.” In fact, he was yielding to a subtler, but equally insidious form of intolerance – toward those whose ideas do not conform with the liberal perspective that dominates his university. He wants a place where the prejudices of “victims” are never challenged – an institution that prefers the comfort of a student’s psyche to the confrontation of ideas. In doing so, he encourages fragility among his students. Whatever happened to the nursery rhyme my mother used to recite: “sticks and stones will break my bones…” Is Yale preparing its young women and men for the world outside its college gates?

New US ISIS Czar was Bumped From Obama Election Team as too Pro-Terrorist

While President Obama was in Paris for the past few days cavorting with other world leaders on the dire global threat of climate change (never a junior varsity issue in his book), his spokesperson made the announcement that Obama’s new ISIS czar will be none other than Robert Malley.

For a president who thinks that world leaders meeting in Paris to discuss climate change is the equivalent of a body blow to ISIS after the Nov. 13 Paris Terror Attacks, the appointment of Malley makes perfect sense.

Malley is the kind of new-age negotiator who thinks there is no tyrant too awful to shun – unless, of course, you are talking about Israel – and is always eager to play up the “positive” aspects of genocidal terrorist regimes as the justification for allowing them right there in the tent, seated next to you.

An early wet noodle in Malley’s public career was a 2001 New York Times op-ed in which he blamed Israel for the Camp David Peace Talks. Malley’s recollection squarely conflicted with every other major player present at the talks, including President Bill Clinton and Clinton’s Middle East Envoy, Dennis Ross.

Should private companies that provide users with encryption technology be required to assist law-enforcement and intelligence services to defeat that technology? This question is a more pressing one in the wake of November’s Paris terrorist attacks. But it is a very tough question that has vexed both the government and providers of communications services for years.

Part of what makes it so difficult is the new facts of life. As I noted during the debate over the NSA’s bulk-collection of telephone metadata, we are operating in a political environment that is night-and-day different from the aftermath of 9/11. Back then, a frightened public was demanding that the government do a better job of collecting intelligence and thwarting terrorist plots. Of course that sentiment was driven by the mass-murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, coupled with the destruction of the World Trade Center and a strike against the Pentagon. But it also owed in no small measure to the fact that government had done such an incompetent job gathering and “connecting the dots” prior to the attacks. There was a strong public sense that intelligence agencies needed an injection of muscle.

Today, the public’s sense tends in the other direction. There have been spectacular abuses of government power (e.g., IRS scandal), and intrusive security precautions infused by political correctness (e.g., airport searches). Americans understandably suspect that government cannot be trusted with enhanced authorities and that many of its tactics are more about the appearance of security than real security.

Every member of the military has a personal duty to report the facts they encounter truthfully to their superiors. That goes for everyone from the lowliest private to the four-star generals who report directly to the president.

But what happens when the colonels and generals disagree with the facts their junior officers and civilians report to them, not because they think the facts are wrong but because they want to satisfy their civilian bosses’ political agenda?

That’s exactly what is going on at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), according to the allegations made against CENTCOM senior officers by about 50 intelligence analysts. Several reports say CENTCOM analysts have taken these allegations to the Defense Department Office of the Inspector General, which has determined that there is enough substance to the allegations to compel a major investigation into how CENTCOM’s commanders handle intelligence that doesn’t comply with President Obama’s agenda.

CENTCOM, like other joint commands, has responsibility for an area of the world. CENTCOM’s responsibility includes 20 countries encompassing the entire Middle East and much of western Asia. It is responsible for defending America from whatever emanates from the most dangerous part of the world.