RUTHFULLY YOURS

Three days before Christmas, one unsuspecting holiday shopper was killed and nine others injured when a van ploughed through a crowded market in Nantes, located in western France. The attack came a day after a man, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” rammed his car into crowds in the eastern city of Dijon, injuring thirteen people; this, some twenty-four hours after an assailant stabbed and wounded three police officers in Joue-les-Tours, central France, likewise while yelling “God is the greatest” in Arabic.

A day after the Dijon attack, which the perpetrator dedicated to the children of “Palestine,” France’s Interior Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, called on the public “to not draw hasty conclusions since…[the driver’s] motives have not been established.” Nevertheless, and despite the fact that “the investigation had barely begun,” Dijon’s public prosecutor, Marie-Christine Tarrare, made clear that the incident was “not a terrorist act at all.”

In Cuba, freedom of expression is still trampled. Tania Bruguera “was [placed] under arrest at the Acosta Police Station in the Diez de Octubre municipality in Havana” because she wished to use social media and demand “freedom of expression for Cuba’s citizens.” But “claiming that her performance [was] not an artistic work but a political provocation, Cuban authorities denied her request to hold a rally at Havana’s revolutionary square on Dec. 30, 2014.”

Bruguera has been labeled a “CIA agent” and “a mercenary” by Cuban pro-government bloggers. The planned gathering was a hopeful endeavor as a result of the announcement from the Obama administration that Cuba and the United States “would reinstate diplomatic ties that were severed half a century ago.”

Dubbed “Yo Tambien Exijo” (I Also Demand), it is a campaign that uses social media to invite Cubans to have a say in the future of their island. Each participant would have one minute to express his or her views on the future of the island of more than 11 million people.

In the spirit of sermons and soda water, Mark Durie provides a clarifying essay that opens the historical horizons on last month’s deadly Martin Place jihad siege in Australia by comparing it to a strikingly similar jihad attack against picnickers in Australia on New Year’s Day, 1915 (via Ruthfully). In discussing these and other cases of “individual jihad” (including reference to the Dutch colonial experience in Aceh) where Muslim killers answer the Islamic call to jihad, Durie demonstrates that the go-to, feel-good explanations about “lone wolves” and “crazies” have no more relevance than fairy tales to explaining the chronic threat of Islam in the West.

Some excerpts below.

“From Broken Hill to Martin Place: Individual Jihad Comes to Australia, 1915 to 2015”

by Mark Durie

One hundred years ago today, a lethal jihad attack was staged against New Year’s Day picnickers in Broken Hill, Australia. This attack and the recent Martin Place siege, events separated by almost exactly a century, show striking similarities. …

Radical Islam has had its best year since 2001, and 2015 should be the year the U.S. leads a global counterattack. But you sure can’t detect any progress from events in Nigeria, where the jihadists of Boko Haram are extending their violent reach while cooperation between the U.S. and Nigeria disintegrates.

On the weekend the militant group seized Baga in northeastern Nigeria, the last town in the area that was still under government control. Baga hosted the Multi-National Joint Task Force, which is composed of troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger who are supposed to fight crime in the Lake Chad region. The task force inevitably confronted Boko Haram, and its rout shows that the jihadists are confident and strong enough to take on even an organized military force.

Who and where are the 53 Cuban political prisoners that President Obama promised would be freed by Havana as part of a deal to liberate three convicted Cuban spies serving lengthy sentences in the U.S.?

I asked the State Department this last week. State referred me to the White House. White House officials declined to provide the list of names citing “concern that publicizing it would make it more difficult to ensure that Cuba follows through, and continues with further steps in the future.”

Bottom line: The U.S. government cannot confirm that they have been released and is not certain they’re going to be released, even though the three Cuban spies have already been returned.

A government official told me that keeping the names of the 53 quiet will give Cuba the opportunity to release them as a sovereign measure, rather than at the behest of the U.S., and that this could allow for additional releases.

In other words, the Castros are sensitive boys who throw despotic tantrums when their absolute power is questioned. Asking them to keep their word is apparently a trigger.

Top Iowa Democrats Slow to Rally Around Hillary ClintonMany Say They Would Prefer a More Liberal Candidate or At Least a Robust Debate

Iowa Democratic leaders say they are troubled by the prospect that Hillary Clinton could win the state’s 2016 presidential caucuses without a serious challenge, a view primarily rooted in a desire for a more liberal candidate or at least a robust debate about the party’s policies and direction.

Interviews with more than half of Democratic chiefs in Iowa’s 99 counties show a state party leadership so far reluctant to coalesce behind Mrs. Clinton. County Democratic officials also voiced qualms about Mrs. Clinton’s ability to win a general election and her fundraising ties to Wall Street firms and corporations, which remain a target of liberal ire.

Israel faces a twin peril, far more menacing to its survival as the nation-state of the Jewish people than the Iranian nuclear program or a Palestinian state.

The minute we leave South Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It will most certainly no longer be relevant when Israel returns to its internationally recognized northern border.
– Amos Oz, “Try a Little Tenderness” (Interview), Haaretz, March 17, 2000

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood. If it becomes clear that [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months.
– Yossi Beilin, Ma’ariv, November 26, 1993

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas.
– Yitzhak Rabin, radio interview, July 24, 1995

I realize that what follows may raise a few eyebrows – some in disbelief, some in disapproval. I have no doubt it will ruffle feathers – on both sides of the political divide – but if the unpalatable truth is to be dealt with, it must be addressed squarely and honestly.

For unless the problem raised in this column is adequately addressed before the election, it will, like the ones before it, be meaningless, with roughly the same policy being adopted, no matter which party wins, and no matter what they promise their electorate. Indeed, the only difference is likely to be in the degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance with which they adopt it.

“It is difficult to say exactly when Brandeis, an esteemed center for higher learning, was deformed into a pathetic hive of postmodernist brainwashing for the perpetually aggrieved. But, as with every American university, Brandeis was a casualty of the poisonous sixties and early seventies–affirmative action to Woodstock–and has never recovered. It is probably safe to say that the biggest factor in Brandeis’s institutional devolution was its star faculty member from 1954 to 1965, the guru of the counterculture, Herbert Marcuse. His Eros and Civilization (1955) and his 1964 One-Dimensional Man resonated with the leftist student movement, and he soon became known as the “father of the New Left.” It was Marcuse who invented probably the silliest maxim of the Sixties: “Make Love, Not War.” Jonah Goldberg, in his fascinating book Liberal Fascism, makes a persuasive case that Marcuse, in his attack on Western society and “liberal tolerance” was, like so many self-proclaimed leftists, in reality a dangerous fascist.”

“Don’t send my boy to Harvard,”The dying mother said.

“Don’t send my boy to Syracuse,”I’d rather see him dead!

“Yes, send my boy to Princeton, or better still Cornell,”But as for Bran-D-E-I-S

“I’ll see him first in hell!”

In that ancient fraternity drinking song, the original punch line was “Pennsylvan-I-A.” But now Brandeis, certified (by Daily Caller) as America’s second “Most Rabidly Leftist, Politically Correct College for Dirty, Tree-Hugging Hippies,” walks away with the honor.

What in the world has happened to Brandeis, nestled in leafy, suburban Boston, named for Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, friend to Zionism, incorruptible crusader for justice? The opening of Brandeis in 1948 was called “one of the great moments in Jewish history,” its 13-member faculty, under president Abram Sachar, a distinguished roster of artists and scholars.

Brandeis now– despite a faculty and student body on the whole devoted to the ideals of its namesake–has become a miasmic bog of crazy Left-wing ideology. L

This is how pathetic the Ferguson protest losers are – they have so little respect for anything that they’d interrupt a ceremony honoring a 100-year-old veteran.

From Oregon Live:

U.S. Navy veteran Dario Raschio was all smiles Saturday as he awaited a special honor from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who joined him at Portland Community College’s Southeast Campus to present the 100-year-old with a handful of medals.

“I feel I’m no hero,” said Raschio, dynamic and spry, before the event. “I don’t accept it as being a hero. I accept it as being a part of my job.”

Shortly after Wyden began speaking, though, protesters erupted in the back of the room, shouting “hands-up, don’t shoot!” More than 100 pushed through the doors, banged on the windows from outside and hoisted signs.

He actually took the microphone and asked to speak to the degenerate maggots protesting, but they continued on:

A protester at the front of the room announced that “for 4.5 minutes we are going to take time to pay respect to everybody who has been killed by police in this nation.”

With that, the chanting began again. At 3:15, after waiting 45 minutes for the meeting to begin, organizers called it off.

Please share this so that more Americans, who love and revere the military, know just what little respect these cockroach protesters have for our veterans.

A version of this column will be posted Monday, Jan. 5, 2015, on the website http://yeoldecrabb.com/

The U.S. polity: a wonky fit

The polls tell us that those Americans interested in politics are split almost evenly into two groups: those who approve of President Barak Hussein Obama’s leadership and those critical of it.

Further analysis shows something quite basically differences between the two groups – and disturbing for those of us who want a country rich in diversity but engaged in a constant healthy exchange of ideas.

The President’s supporters are what my Mom in her retirement among the elderly in Florida, with some envy, used to call “the alright-nicks”. They are members of an elite who either financially or politically – or both – have disproportionately profited from the system. They see themselves, and their nominal leader, Obama, as tapped by some unseen but knowing source to lead — especially to guide a rabble [excluding themselves, of course] which does not know its own interests and therefore what is best for them.

In fact, their numbers have recently been reinforced as the economy has marginally improved and the noise around Administration scandals and policy failures has dissipated with time in a fast moving society. [IRS persecution of political opponents, veterans dying because of illtreatment at the VA, the sacrifice of lives at Benghazi, massive infractions of border security, mishandling of government lands, near collapse of the president’s personal security – Poof! Gone With the Wind!]