RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/weaponizing_children.html

In an Afghan cave, men slept rolled up in their patus, the thin woolen shawl that served as blanket, cloak, camouflage, shelter, shroud. In the dark, a small shape stirred and slipped silently out of its patu. There was no sound but snoring from the other shapes. The light from a small, dying fire reflected on a steel blade in the hand of the small shape, a boy of perhaps ten or twelve hard years.

He had wandered, a scrawny, dirty, barefoot kid, into the mujahed camp, starved, begging for food. The muj took him in, wrapped him in a patu, shared their food with him and treated his sores. The child’s pathetic story was a common one. Half of Afghanistan’s preinvasion population was dead or displaced. Many of the living were maimed, starved and sick, their orchards, crops, and livestock destroyed. 

This child was different. He was weaponized. He crept soundlessly, less than a shadow, in the dark toward the sleeping leader of this small band of fighters, approached from behind, grabbed the man’s beard and yanked the head back. With one quick move he sliced the exposed throat. He slipped toward the next target, but the man rolled over and opened his eyes. Before a question could form, the boy was out the cave’s mouth and melted into the night. Before the sun set again, he was back with his Spetsnaz handler. There are war dog handlers, and there were war child handlers in the Soviet army.

The Soviet attempt to make Afghanistan a captive nation by installing a puppet government in Kabul hadn’t worked out, so they went to Plan B: Invading the country, killing their puppet president, installing another, and then proceeding to systematically wipe out the indigenous population. “We only need ten thousand Afghans left alive to be administrators of the country,” a Soviet official said.

Thousands of Afghan boys aged four to eight were taken by the Soviet army to the USSR. Most of them would be trained as Communist cadre to rule a future Soviet Afghanistan. Some would be weaponized.

For both groups, the first phase of the training was the same: deprogram them as Muslims and sons of a mother and father, make them sons of the State and the State only. Islam demands modesty and forbids alcohol and drugs. The boys were forced to drink alcohol and use drugs until they had no moral resistance to them. They were conditioned to nudity and taught sex by mature female trainers who lay naked with them in bed. Every tie to the mores and customs of their ancestral culture was severed. Their memories of childhood were erased. They had new parents, new beliefs: the State and Marxism.

The children of the administrative group received a secular education to run a country, learned to be good atheists and Marxists. The other group were trained to kill.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/manchins-rebuke-shows-bidens-energy-views-are-toxic/

It’s not often that a senator launches a brutal, frontal assault on a president from his own party. It’s even rarer when he does it just before a national election. But that is exactly what West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin just did to Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s recent speech attacking coal, a bedrock of the West Virginia economy. Manchin was furious over Biden’s promise to shut down all of America’s coal-fired power plants.

That view might be red meat for Biden’s audience of green-power advocates and rich California donors, but it is poison in West Virginia. And it is those West Virginians who elected Manchin, the only Democrat still standing in a state that is now deep red.

Manchin didn’t just criticize Biden. He blasted him full-bore, and threw the lifeless carcass over his shoulder on the way back to the truck:

President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs. …Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting. The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-president-slowly-deteriorates-before-our-eyes/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=native-evergreen&utm_term=first

n the past two weeks or so, President Biden has…

insisted that the economy is “strong as hell” (it isn’t; even the Nation is begging him to stop bragging about how great the economy is doing)
off-the-cuff claimed that the situation in Ukraine was headed toward “Armageddon” (so far, it hasn’t, and no one else in the U.S. government seemed to know what Biden was talking about)
insisted that his student-loan bailout was passed by Congress (it wasn’t)
claimed he had brought down the cost of energy (he hasn’t, by any measure or form, since the start of his presidency — electricity, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, heating oil)
exhibited a long, odd pause during an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, and
declared that John Fetterman’s wife will make “a great lady in the Senate.”

Please stop telling me that this man, who turns 80 next month, is fine, that he’s sharp as a tack, that he’s not showing signs of old age in his ability to think and speak, and that he’s got so much energy, not even press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre can keep up with him. The president is old, and he’s tired no matter how little he travels and how light his schedule, and he struggles to get through mundane interviews and brief question-and-answer sessions with reporters. Either his staff is feeding him a line of unrealistic happy talk, or he can’t remember what he’s been briefed and just chooses to believe that everything is going fine. We can see this man, we remember what he was like as vice president, and he was not this doddering, this oblivious, this blank-eyed, this stubbornly in denial during the Obama years.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19086/twitter-censorship

“[W]e have nothing to fear from the demoralizing of some if others are left free to demonstrate their errors, and especially the law stands ready to punish the first criminal act produced by false reasoning. These are safer correctives than the conscience of a judge.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1801.

Jefferson’s distrust of “the conscience of a judge” would probably be even greater if the censors were the CEOs of companies that rely on advertisers for their profits.

[C]ensorship requires censors, and once censors are given the ability to pick and choose what the public will hear, this slippery slope moves us away from freedom and toward repression.

The issue is whether in an open society we must endure these pains in order to avoid being in even great pains of selective censorship.

The Framers of the First Amendment chose to endure the pain of too much speech over the dangers of speech controlled by the government. But Twitter is not the government. Neither is Facebook or YouTube. They are giant media companies that dominate and control the flow of speech throughout the world. And the dangers of putting control of those flows in the hands of invisible elitist censors threatens to undercut our most important freedom.

The first casualty of divisive extremism is nuance. And it is nuance that is sorely needed with regard to this issue of internet censorship…. Let nuanced proposals be offered and discussed.

And most important, let free speech not become weaponized as a partisan issue.

A campaign is currently underway by left-wing organizations and politicians to demand that Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, continue its practice of censoring hate speech and other “objectionable” postings.

A letter sent to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, signed by 40 activist organizations, including the NAACP, the Center for American Progress, GLAAD and the Global Project Against Hate and extremism, contained the following veiled threat:

“We, the undersigned organizations call on you to notify Musk and publicly commit that you will cease all advertising on Twitter globally if he follows through on his plans to undermine brand safety and community standards, including gutting content moderation.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/03/if-republicans-win-they-will-raze-your-home-steal-your-possessions-take-your-lives-and-laugh-when-they-enslave-your-children/

Schadenfreude doesn’t normally do it for me, but I have to admit watching people who think they’re about to lose political power engage in panic-stricken hysterics has a certain appeal.

I’m sure, by now, you’ve heard that the end is near-ish. About a week away. Sure, there were rumblings it was coming when we passed net neutrality. Those who survived were subjected to the fiery lake of burning sulfur known as the Trump tax cuts, which Nancy Pelosi had presciently noted was “armageddon.” “People will die if Trumpcare becomes law,” she warned. Then came the overturning of Roe v. Wade — a decision that “released the whirlwind.” And, now, here we are at the midterms of 2022, the most momentous election not only in your life but perhaps in the history of mankind.

Last night, the President of the United States, a man whose pathological lying has been ratcheted up to surreal levels lately, gave one of the most transparently toxic partisan speeches in memory. Biden, quite paradoxically, warned that American “democracy” could only survive if the nation functioned under one-party rule. Despite historic early turnouts, the president lied about widespread attacks on voting rights, preemptively engaging in the kind of election denialism he contends is “un-American.” Biden has probably forgotten that virtually every major Democrat was an “election denialist” not only in 2016 but in 2000, as well.

The president then blamed the actions of the mentally ill, drug-addled individual who viciously attacked the husband of Nancy Pelosi on all of MAGAdom — which, according to Democrats, includes everyone who disagrees with any of their positions, including a pro-life movement that’s been around forever. Biden, who has likely engaged in more blatant executive abuses than any post-war president, leads a party that makes little distinction between “democracy” and its own power, treating any deviation, whether it be by the courts or voters, as illegitimate and “undemocratic” — a word that has been sapped of any real meaning.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/03/the-democrats-insurrection-flop/

If there is a poster child for the Democrats’ humiliating failure to make the events surrounding January 6, 2021 a winning issue in the midterm elections, it is U.S. Representative Elaine Luria (D-Va.).

The two-term congresswoman is fighting for her political life in a race now categorized as a toss-up; a recent poll showed Luria tied with Republican State Senator Jen Kiggans just a few weeks before an expected red wave election, despite Luria outspending Kiggans by a more than 2-1 margin. (Before the state’s remap process, Luria represented a district that voted for Joe Biden by 5 percentage points and Hillary Clinton by 6 percentage points. Her new district now has a 3-point Democratic advantage.)

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. No doubt anticipating a tough reelection for Luria, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appointed her to the January 6 select committee—an exercise sold to the American people as a way to investigate what happened that day and prevent future “insurrections.” Primetime televised coverage promised to make Luria a national star, a defender of “democracy,” and a voice of reason in a country purportedly under siege by domestic terrorists—i.e., Trump voters.

“We must leave behind any veil of partisanship at the door because the American people deserve answers on what happened on that day and how we can ensure this does not happen again,” Luria said in July 2021, before the committee’s first public hearing.

But that, of course, didn’t happen. The committee instead descended into the latest iteration of the “Get Trump” crusade; rather than press law enforcement and congressional leadership to explain why they failed to secure the Capitol or identify the alleged “pipe bomber,” or release thousands of hours of surveillance video, the committee, including Luria, fixated on the former president and his inner circle.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19082/diesel-shortage

During World War II, the Allies’ aerial assault on the Nazis did not begin to have the strategic means to bring the enemy to its knees until Germany’s oil reserves were destroyed and it was unable to refuel its tanks. Then, as now, destroying the energy infrastructure of an adversary can bring about the destruction of a nation. America’s current enemies have not forgotten that historic lesson.

Which is why Americans should view with alarm the unconscionable news reported by industry analysts that we are facing a severe shortage of diesel fuel this winter.

Understandably, we have been focused on the price of gasoline, but it is diesel that actually runs America. It is diesel that powers America’s freight trains, trucks, freighters, barges and buses. It is the fuel that runs our farming and construction equipment. And for many, diesel is the fuel that heats their homes.

How is it that diesel reserves have dropped to frightening levels while the energy-demanding cold weather has not even arrived in most of the country yet? How is it that the Biden Administration continues to buckle to a Progressive agenda that has prevented us from accessing the energy that resides within our borders?

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/11/us-midterms-on-the-road/

EXCERPT

“Simply put, the Democrats have nothing better to offer than fear, which they have been serving in heaped helpings for months.”

American politics can plumb some bizarre depths even at the best of times and just now, six days before the midterm elections that will determine control of House and Senate, there is something in the air only those word-stacking Germans might be able to capture in contiguous syllables. Fear, yes indeed, on the part of Democrats, who need lose only six lower house seats to see Ms Pelosi replaced as Speaker. For Republicans, riding high on polls that suggest seats might turn from blue to red in record numbers, the big challenge is to maintain with straight faces that the outcome remains in doubt and only a massive turnout of the party faithful on November 8 can guarantee victory.

In the House, that a ‘red wave’ will crash down on Democrats is beyond dispute. Where goes the Senate is somewhat less certain, allowing for the impact of early voting and the usual chicanery involving vote harvesting, cemeteries, old folks’ homes and, a new wrinkle as of 2020, mail-out ballots. Pennsylvanians, who will decide one of the four key battleground states, began voting as long ago as mid-September and by the time the Senate contenders met for the their one and only debate last week more than a million ballots were already waiting to be counted. Those early votes will likely favour Democrats, most originating with the political machines of the big cities, where Democrat administrations oversee both the canvassing, the tallying and, that old Tammany Hall term, the “ward heeling“. That said, the GOP needs to pick up only one Senate seat to gain an absolute legislative majority, which the bookies reckon easily doable.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-rhetoric-is-a-threat-to-the-republic/

“That kind of rhetoric is typical, but under Obama and Biden, it’s been backed up by arrests, investigations, surveillance, raids, imprisonment, censorship and the whole banana republic gamut.”

The only good thing about this speech is that it didn’t have a color scheme out of V for Vendetta and didn’t feature Marines in the background. Whoever runs these things at least learned from that attempt at looking like Biden was about to declare martial law, suspend habeas corpus and make everyone read Gender Queer and How To Be An Anti-Racist at gunpoint in a gulag.

The bad news is no one cared about that speech except conservatives. They care even less about this one.

With the countdown underway, voters have made it clear that they care about the economy and crime. Anyone who finds the “threat to democracy” routine persuasive is already a solid blue voter and ActBlue donor who probably showed up for at least one D.C. protest.

This isn’t just pandering to the base, it’s pandering to the Elizabeth Warren base.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/weekend-soldier-of-allah-anniversary/

The U.S. Army plans to rename Fort Hood, Texas, a 214,968-acre base “ideal for multifaceted training and testing of military units and troops.” The name change does not alter reality of a terrorist attack that marks an anniversary three days before the midterm election.

At Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers and support personnel and wounded more than 40 others. The massacre marked a failure of political and military leadership, but there was more to it.

The Fort Hood massacre was also the worst failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 9/11, which the FBI also failed to stop. The attack could have been easily prevented, long before Hasan, an ally of the Taliban, claimed so many American lives.

Born in 1970 to Muslim immigrants, Nidal graduated from Virginia Tech and in 2003 completed psychiatry training at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Hasan served his residency at Walter Reed Medical Center, where instructors cited his “pattern of poor judgement and lack of professionalism.”

As Lessons from Fort Hood notes, during his residency and post-residency fellowship, Hasan demonstrated evidence of violent extremism and wrote papers defending Osama bin Laden. Two officers described Hasan as a “ticking time bomb,” but the Army promoted the “soldier of Allah,” as Hasan described himself,  and considered him competent to counsel soldiers returning from combat.

On December 17, 2008, Hasan visited the website of radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the al Qaeda leader who endorsed deadly violence as religious duty. Hasan sent a message to al-Awlaki and another on January 1, 2009. The messages were acquired by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in the San Diego Field Office. In early January of 2009, the emails were sent to the Washington Field Office (WFO) and FBI headquarters.