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Haiti Gang Kidnaps 17 American Missionaries, Including Children By Rick Moran

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/17/haiti-gang-kidnaps-17-american-missionaries-including-children-n1524532

A grim report out of Haiti, where 17 U.S. missionaries returning home after building an orphanage were kidnapped, according to a voice message sent to various religious missions by “an organization with direct knowledge of the incident,” per Fox News.

According to a message from Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, the missionaries were on their way home after building an orphanage in Port-au-Prince and were taken, along with several of their children.

Haiti has been plagued by periods of lawlessness its entire history, but the combination of the murder of President Jovenel Moïse and a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 Haitians has thrown the country into more chaos than usual.

At least 328 kidnapping victims were reported to Haiti’s National Police in the first eight months of 2021, compared with a total of 234 for all of 2020, according to a report issued last month by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti known as BINUH.

Gangs have been accused of kidnapping schoolchildren, doctors, police officers, busloads of passengers and others as they grow more powerful. In April, one gang kidnapped five priests and two nuns, a move that prompted a protest similar to the one organized for this Monday to decry the lack of security in the impoverished country.

The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, known as BINUH, Issued a report recently. “Political turmoil, the surge in gang violence, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions – including food insecurity and malnutrition – all contribute to the worsening of the humanitarian situation,” BINUH said in its report. “An overstretched and under-resourced police force alone cannot address the security ills of Haiti.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Virginia Parents Announce ‘Not a Domestic Terrorist’ March in Washington By Rick Moran

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/17/virginia-parents-announce-not-domestic-terrorists-march-in-washington-n1524549

By the time Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland realizes what an incredibly stupid memo he wrote to the president accusing parents of ‘”harassment and intimidation” of school board members, his boss will probably be a lame-duck president ready to be put out to pasture.

Republicans couldn’t have drawn it up any better. What’s the best way to show how radical the Biden administration is? How about threatening parents with a federal investigation because they want a say in what their children are being taught?

That parental pushback will take substantive form on October 17, when there will be a “Not a Domestic Terrorist” rally in front of the Department of Justice Building.

The parental pushback issue has roiled the Virginia gubernatorial race. Democrat Terry McAuliffe made the gaffe of the race — so far — when he said he didn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” His opponent, Republican Glenn Youngkin, is firing with both barrels, blanketing the state with $3 million in ads about education.

That, along with Garland’s stupidity, has given a sizable edge on the issue to Republicans.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Happened to the Beloved Military? There are too many concurrent Pentagon crises. Any one of them would be dangerous to our national security. Together they imperil our very freedoms and security. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/17/what-happened-to-the-beloved-military/

The highest echelon of the U.S. military is becoming dysfunctional. 

There are too many admirals and generals for the size of the current U.S. military. It now boasts three times the number of four-star admirals and generals than we had during World War II—when the country was in an existential war for survival and when, by 1945, our active military personnel was almost nine times larger than the current armed forces. 

Somehow a gradual drift in the agendas of our military leadership has resulted in too many various emphases on domestic cultural, social, and political issues. And naturally, as a result, there is less attention given to winning wars and leveraging such victories to our nation’s strategic advantage.

The consequences of these failures are downright scary for a world superpower upon which millions at home and billions worldwide depend. 

There are too many concurrent Pentagon crises. Any one of them would be dangerous to our national security. Together they imperil our very freedoms and security. 

Reform? 

What is to be done? The Uniform Code of Military Justice must be enforced, and not selectively applied on the basis of rank: officers below the rank of general and admiral now face severe penalties for disparaging in personal terms the current administration, while one stars and above are given de facto exemptions for comments about the previous administration. If the code is not considered law but merely a recommendation, then it should be scrapped. 

The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General and the inspector generals of the various branches of the military must enforce existing laws that carefully define the limits of the Joint Chiefs of Staff activity. And they must punish those officers who violate such statues to interrupt the legal chain of command. 

There must be a cooling off period to prevent retiring military officers from rotating onto the boards and lobbying teams of corporate defense contractors, with the presumption that their knowledge of the operation of the Pentagon can be monetized to the advantage of particular corporations. Five years seems a reasonable period in which our top brass should refrain from joining firms that are seeking lucrative contracts from the Pentagon. 

BOOKS Comments turned off

Saying Ngo to Antifa The reporter who knows Antifa best tells its story. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/saying-ngo-antifa-bruce-bawer/

Reporting on the events of June 29, 2019, when the gutsy freelance reporter Andy Ngo was beaten half to death by Antifa goons during a disturbance in Portland, Oregon, journalist Katie Shepherd – then at the local rag Willamette Week, now at the Washington Post – described the demo as “mostly unremarkable.” Later, Jerry Nadler called Antifa “imaginary” and Post “fact-checkers” denied Antifa’s brutality. When, in August 2020, Ngo addressed a Senate hearing at the invitation of Ted Cruz, Hawaii’s Mamie Hirono dismissed his testimony out of hand, while other Democrats left the chamber. So it goes on both sides of the Atlantic: pols and pressmen alike repeatedly deny or defend even Antifa’s worst depredations (“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence,” pronounced New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, notorious for rewriting American history in the 1619 Project) while celebrities like Steve Carell shell out sizable sums to bail out Antifa thugs.

Some of these supporters (such as, presumably, Carell) are fools who’ve drunk the Antifa Kool-Aid; the likes of Nadler and Mirono, meanwhile, crave power at any cost, and view Antifa as a handy tool. (The Nazis had the Gestapo and SS; the Democrats have Antifa and Black Lives Matter.) Some Democrats don’t love Antifa, but much of their base does; better, they reason, to let innocents be killed than to alienate voters.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Critical Qur’an: A Weapon In An Ideological War In his version of the Islamic holy book, Robert Spencer gives us a valuable tool in the civilizational war of ideas. Bill Warner

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/critical-quran-bill-warner/

Robert Spencer’s new book The Critical Qur’an is a one volume encyclopedia of the Qur’an. It is a superb reference book with a sound foundation, using multiple translations. It is detailed. All of the knotty problems are solved by direct scholarly references.

In The Critical Qur’an, Spencer clarifies the problems that cloud our understanding of the Qur’an, which lurches from one subject to the next. Ideas come out of nowhere with no context. Topics – like “hell” – repeat again and again and again.  The constant repetition is tiresome.

There is no recognition of time in the Qur’an. The chapters are laid out in order of their length, not in a time sequence.  It starts with the longest chapter and ends with the shortest. To add to the confusion, it uses many strange names and foreign terms. Basically, it is unintelligible, confusing, repetitive and filled with hate towards the Unbelievers.

The most problematic to most non-Muslim readers is that the Qur’an presents contradictory ideas. One verse will teach tolerance and the next will call for the death of the Unbelievers. Islamic ethics are contradictory or dualistic, with one set of rules for dealing with other Muslims and another set of rules for the Unbelievers.  

So no one can understand the Qur’an by simply reading it. There must be auxiliary commentators, exegetes, in order to find meaning in the words of Allah. Robert Spencer guides us through the mire of this contradictory and perplexing work using all the tools of exemplary scholarship.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Buttigieg: The Weak Link In The Supply Chain

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/18/buttigieg-the-weak-link-in-the-supply-chain/

The only thing more laughable than Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that spending two months on paternity leave counts as “work” is that the massive infrastructure bill in Congress would do anything to fix the supply chain crisis.

When asked on CNBC why the administration waited so long to take action, Buttigieg responded that “we’ve been working this issue from day one”.

Well, not exactly.

As Politico reported, Buttigieg was “mostly offline” starting in mid-August, and only went on a media blitz after Politico disclosed the fact that he’d been on an unannounced leave.

It’s true that Biden issued a supply chain executive order in early February, saying that “we’re not going to wait for a review to be completed before we start closing the existing gaps.”

In June, Biden announced the creation of a new Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force with Buttigieg one of the key members. The next month, Buttigieg said, he’d “convened the entire ecosystem of supply chain actors.”

Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in an attempt to defend the administration’s response, told reporters that “we’ve not only been talking about this since January, we’ve been working to put in place a range of steps to help address the challenges in the supply chains.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Epic Fail at Unity Debra Saunders

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/10/17/bidens_epic_fail_at_unity_146577.html

“As I write this, Biden’s job RealClearPolitics average approval rating is underwater by 7.9%. His low numbers, they’re becoming bipartisan.”

As a candidate, now-President Joe Biden said that if elected, he would bring the country together, heal partisan divisions and get things done. How’s that working out?

Sure, on the campaign trail, Biden seemed so convincing. He was the seasoned hand, a former vice president with 36 years in the Senate who knew the ways of Washington.

“We need to revive the spirit of bipartisanship in the country,” he said in Ohio in October 2020. He said he wanted to “work with one another.” If he occupied the Oval Office, he promised, “there will be no blue states and red states with me.”

Some nine months into his tenure, it’s evident that Biden’s unity pledge ranks with former President Barack Obama’s campaign whopper, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” which won him PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year in 2013.

It’s not just that Biden isn’t producing unity; it’s also that he’s squandering the moment for a bad idea.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why the Kurds deserve a state, not the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians Victor Sharpe

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe

There are some twenty sovereign Arab states throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but much of the world demands in a chorus of barely disguised animosity towards tiny Israel, that yet another Arab state be created. It would be imposed upon the Biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland of Israel, known as Judea and Samaria – or still called by a maliciously hostile world, the ‘West Bank.’ That was the grotesque name the Jordanians gave it during their invasion and 19 year old theft from 1948 to 1967 of the ancient and Biblical Jewish heartland – an illegal occupation recognized only by Pakistan and Britain.

Reconstituted Israel, a territory no larger than the tiny principality of Wales or the state of New Jersey, would be forced to share its G-d given inheritance with a deeply hostile Arab jihadist entity, already termed the ‘Palestinian Authority.’ It would then be criminally elevated and demonically sanctified with the name ‘State of Palestine’ by those throughout the world whose hatred of the Jewish faith knows no bounds. This would result in Israel’s present narrow waist reduced yet again to a suicidal width at its most populous region – what an earlier Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, described as the Auschwitz borders and for good reason.

There has never existed in all of recorded history an independent sovereign nation called Palestine – and certainly not an Arab one. The term “Palestine” has always been the name given to a non-state geographical territory, as for instance, Siberia or Patagonia. It has never been a sovereign independent state even though the Arab League and the 57 member Islamic states in the corrupt UN routinely pressure the equally corrupt UNESCO to falsely add Western Sahara and so-called Palestine as sovereign Arab states.

But there is an indigenous people in the Middle East who deserve a state and, like the Jews, trace their ancestry back thousands of years They are the Kurds, and it is highly instructive to review their remarkable history in conjunction with that of the indigenous Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustice imposed upon them over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Struggle of Our Time: The Battle for Reality By Vasko Kohlmayer

Posted By on October 18th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_great_struggle_of_our_time_the_battle_for_reality.html

With societal turbulence all around us, many people feel that we are locked in some great and portentous struggle. But because it is so pervasive and multifaced, the nature of this struggle is not readily obvious. There are many fronts on which this struggle is being fought: racial relations, education, healthcare, popular culture, financial system, and freedom of speech, among others. It is not easy to make sense of it all, especially since the battles are highly pitched and emotions are running very high.

What characterizes these battles, besides their intensity, is deep polarization. The possibility of the warring camps coming together and meeting on some common ground seems to be growing more distant by the day. There is even talk that the two sides will either come to blows, or they will each go their own way in some form of secession.

Many have observed that the contenders seem to be separated by an unbridgeable gap, and yet no one has been able to explain the nature of this gap, or what exactly it is that separates the mindsets of the opposing sides.

In our view the great struggle in the grip of which we find ourselves cuts much deeper than the immediate issues we argue over. The real fight extends beyond any particular point of public friction.

The great battle of our time is a battle about the very nature of reality. More precisely, what the two sides war over on the most fundamental level is what constitutes truth and how it should be determined.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Nebraska AG’s devastating critique of the suppression of effective COVID therapies By Jarrad Winter

Posted By on October 17th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/nebraska_ags_devastating_critique_of_the_suppression_of_effective_covid_therapies.html

What the AG’s formal opinion amounts to is a full and complete takedown of the conspiracy to suppress cheap and effective early Covid-19 treatments.

Legal opinions usually aren’t terribly fun to read, but if you’ve been an ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine advocate for use against Wuhan Plague, this one definitely will bring you much joy.

It’s a rather lengthy and full spectrum opinion issued by Doug Peterson, Nebraska’s Attorney General, in response to a query from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services as to whether physicians can be persecuted and tormented for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to patients sick with the China Flu. What the AG’s response amounts to is a full and complete takedown of the conspiracy to suppress cheap and effective early Covid-19 treatments.

All the players — FDA, CDC, Fauci, Big Pharma, the media, all of them — get a glorious and swift kick in the rear end. Portions of it even made me laugh out loud. As far as legal documents go, it’s definitely easy reading and understandable to everyone. It seems clear that the AG’s office went to some trouble to layout the whole saga in a way the masses can understand without translation by legal scholars.

What follows are some of the most relevant parts (at least in my sometimes-humble opinion), but it really is in everyone’s best interest to personally read the opinion in full. People must individually understand what’s actually happening for themselves. This is what will enable We The People to course correct and divert from the ruinous path set for us by the overlords.