RUTHFULLY YOURS

Vast sums are spent on public education, yet the dividend is a galloping ignorance which refuses to recognise that effect flows directly from cause. Our leaders’ politically correct fantasy that the defeat of ISIS will end Islamist violence extends that folly by mistaking symptom for disease.
It was the nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire who first remarked that “the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.” This maxim resonates when I think of ISIS. First, pairing the Devil and ISIS seems apropos as a general principle. But, second, ISIS has a disappearing trick too in its kitbag. In this case it works to persuade the ninnies in the West to think that terrorism will somehow disappear if only ISIS can be routed.

Almost all terrorist attacks these days are linked to the influence of ISIS. Ergo, where ISIS goes so does terrorism. Wrong, ninny, this is a non sequitur. The real instigator of terror existed long before ISIS and will exist long after ISIS is just a fetid memory.

I don’t care what anybody says about the vast amounts of money now being spent on education. Under the corrupting influence of political correctness, the general IQ and good old-fashioned common sense of people in the West is, and has been for some time, clearly plummeting. With a brave few exceptions, this is particularly evident among the political elite, academics, Christian church leaders, and those in the media.

Toeing the post-modern line, we sheep are meant to accept that Captain Cook ‘invaded’ Australia, presumably with cannons a-blazin’ against the well-fortified positions of the indigenous inhabitants; that gay marriage is only about equality; that ‘husbands and wives’ is an exclusionary concept; that all cultures are equally valuable (ahem, except our own); that those of European heritage are heirs to a history of bloodlust and exploitation; that bringing in millions of people with starkly different cultural values will produce a feel-good multicultural nirvana; that individuals can be whatever gender or ethnicity they would personally like to be; that ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists accept the alarmist global warming thesis (after all, in a post-modern world, a fiction repeated often enough will become true).

I could go on but I find it so mentally taxing and enervating that the apparition of death appears as a welcome release. But the debilitating effects of the above sophistries, all put together, will be as nothing if political correctness continues to obfuscate the blood-spattered trail between cries of Allahu Akbar and butchery.

A document leak known as the “Panama Papers” on Sunday pulled back the curtain on the secret financial dealings of the world’s rich, powerful and, in some cases, allegedly corrupt.

The papers were leaked to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and combed through in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other publications. They purport to document the dealings of the Mossack Fonseca law firm, which appears to have helped wealthy clients establish shell companies in Panama, a rare remaining bastion of bank secrecy.

Other media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, have investigated over the years the sources and disposition of the wealth of some of the individuals and families mentioned in these reports. But this leak offers a rare, comprehensive view and could yield new insights into global financial flows.

The scale is eye-popping. Longtime friends and associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin channelled $2 billion through Panama over the years, ICIJ says in its report on the documents. A Kremlin spokesman described the report as “Putinphobia.” A family member of Chinese President Xi Jinping allegedly has a Panama connection, as do the Saudi king and the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. Mr. Xi’s brother-in-law and the Saudi government declined to comment to ICIJ, while Mr. Najib’s son told the group he had used a Panamanian company “for international business.”

Some Western leaders also are mentioned in the leaks, including Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, and several former British members of Parliament as well as the deceased father of Prime Minister David Cameron. ICIJ says it has found evidence that some 140 leaders and politicians, and potentially hundreds of other individuals, established companies in Panama over the nearly 40 years for which it has obtained records. CONTINUE AT SITE

In a statement that reveals yet again how out of touch the administration is, Josh Earnest, White House spokesman, said that the massive suicide bombing in Lahore, in which 70 people were killed and about 300 injured, didn’t simply target Christians since many Muslims were victims as well.

Yet the terrorist organization that launched the attack and is a Taliban splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, said it specifically targeted Christians celebrating Easter in the park. The same militant group also took responsibility for the twin bombings of a Christian church in Lahore last year. Christians account for two percent of Pakistan’s total population.

Admittedly most of those killed were Muslims, and the loss of innocent life whether Muslim or Christian, is to be lamented. However, the U.S. State Department did not respond to the aftermath of the attack as one specifically targeting Christians.

This attack underscored the precarious position of Pakistan’s minorities and the significant fact that, despite increased military vigilance, extremists are still capable of staging wide-scale assaults. Prime Minister Sharif announced recognition of holidays celebrated by Pakistan’s minorities – the Hindu festival of Holi as well as Easter. Unfortunately, if the Taliban members got the message, they chose to ignore it.

Speaking to the bereaved who lost a son in battle during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln noted, “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.”

Disillusionment with Barack Obama coupled with concern that his legacy could help put Donald Trump in the White House has now entered respectable European political discourse. The notion reflects profound doubts at Europe’s core about a country with both a president who broke his word and failed to attack Syria for its use of poison gas—damaging American credibility as the West’s ultimate recourse to justice by military intervention—and a leading candidate for the White House whose campaign resounds with brutality, bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Norbert Roettgen, chairman of the German Bundestag’s foreign-affairs commission, pointed to a possible Obama-begets-Trump link last week. Mr. Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said the situation meant U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere were right to express their serious concern about America.

“Paradoxically, Trump is completely inward-looking,” Mr. Roettgen told me. “But he touches on a question of American pride. It’s there that many voters, in terms of the U.S. role in the world, feel that the country has lost considerable ground under Obama. What they see is Obama’s weakness. For example, his allowing the Russians to militarily establish the upper hand in Syria.”

Although polls late last year showed strong French support for sending ground troops within an international coalition to fight Islamic State, and Mrs. Merkel has said “military efforts” are needed as the first step in defeating the Islamist terrorists, Mr. Obama hasn’t dealt convincingly and head-on with the challenge.

“The damage is done,” said a senior European security official during an hour’s conversation after the murderous March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels. Over these past years, he made clear to me, America’s credibility as a reliable guardian against chaos has been broken.

“The United States’ relative power has decreased in relation to Russia and China,” the official said. “You can only play the American [guardian’s] role when you have communality at home. But I’m not sure the United States is ready to restore this or is able to. Vladimir Putin is present at the places where America and Europe are weak.” CONTINUE AT SITE