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November 2015

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Who Attacked Paris? House Chairmen Say It’s Still Unclear By Bridget Johnson

By on November 14th, 2015

A graphic that appeared in the summer 2015 issue of al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine

“House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said “we do not yet know what specific group is responsible, but their strategy of attacking soft targets, spreading terror and uncertainty, and using the fear they create to further radicalize and recruit is one we will have to get much better at confronting.”

Congressional leaders said Friday night that it still wasn’t clear which terrorist group was responsible for coordinated terror attacks that killed more than 150 people.

Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula was behind the January attacks in the city on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a grocery store. The terror group talked about their operation in the summer issue of Inspire magazine and threatened new attacks on France, “the party of Satan.”

“It is France that has shared all of America’s crimes. It is France that has committed crimes in Mali and the Islamic Maghreb. It is France that supports the annihilation of Muslims in Central Africa in the name of race cleansing,” said the magazine. “They are the party of Satan, the enemies of Allah the Almighty and the enemies of His Prophets – peace be upon them.”

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After Paris Attacks, Will the West Continue on the Road to Suicide? By Richard Fernandez

By on November 14th, 2015

Beirut came to the 10th arrondissement today. It will come to other Western cities soon.

f there was any doubt that the world is now in crisis, the mass casualty attack on Paris a few hours ago should lay the question to rest. In response to the assault, France closed its borders, declared a state of emergency and declared a curfew, a trifecta of measures unseen since World War 2 [1]. The wave of attacks is temporarily over. The period of damage assessment, which includes totaling up the doleful toll of casualties, and political posturing now begins.

This is the first time France has declared a state of emergency since the Algerian war, which took place between 1954 and 1962. It is also the first time a curfew has been imposed since the dark days of world war two in 1944.

It’s significant that the attacks occurred during a period of heightened alert associated with big soccer matches. French president Hollande himself was watching a game when he had to be unceremoniously shuttled to the safety of a government building. That suggests that French security forces and intelligence were genuinely surprised by the attack and therefore there exist terror networks they don’t know about capable of large-scale operations. Scotland Yard and MI5 must realize this and will inevitably be burning the midnight oil tonight.

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Bufoon Trump: Carson ‘Pathological’ Like Child Molester, Iowans Picking Neurosurgeon in Polls ‘Stupid’ By Bridget Johnson

By on November 14th, 2015

Donald Trump called Ben Carson “pathological” several times yesterday — even comparing the pathology to child molesters — and asked “how stupid are the people of Iowa” to be favoring the neurosurgeon in polls.

In a CNN interview, Trump first said he likes Carson and gets along with him well. “I’m not bringing up anything that’s not in his book,” he said.

“And you know, when he says he went after his mother and wanted to hit her in the head with a hammer, that bothers me. I mean, that’s pretty bad. When he says he’s pathological and he says that in the book, I don’t say that. And again, I’m not saying anything. I’m not saying anything other than pathological is a very serious disease and he said he’s pathological,” Trump continued. “Somebody said he has a pathological disease. Other people said he said in the book and I haven’t seen it. I know it’s in the book — that he has got a pathological temper or temperament. That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that. That’s like, you know, I could say, they’ve say you don’t cure — as an example, a child molester, you don’t cure these people.”

“You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that. Now, I didn’t say it. He said it in his book. So when I hear somebody’s pathological, when somebody says, I went after my mother with — and he’s saying it about himself with a hammer and hit her in the head, I say, whoa. I never did. You never did. I don’t know anybody that ever did personally. But that’s a big statement. When he says he hit a friend of his in the face with a lock — with a padlock right in the face, I say, whoa, that’s pretty bad. And when he said he stabbed somebody with a knife but it hit a belt buckle, I know a lot about knives and belt buckles.”

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Of Microbes and Climate Change By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on November 14th, 2015

In the unrelenting clamor about global cooling of the 1970s, global warming of recent times, and now the current renamed climate change, reasonable people would be well served to read the 1926 book entitled Microbe Hunters by Paul De Kruif. As a little girl, I was fascinated by the exploits of Antony Leeuwenhoek and his “wretched beasties.” As a grown woman, I am struck by the relevance of the world of science in the 17th century. Thus:

Leeuwenhoek was cautious about calling anything the cause of anything else. He had a sound instinct about the infinite complicatedness of everything – that told him the danger of trying to pick out one cause from the tangled maze of causes which control life.

Yet daily we are told by the prophets of climate change that humans are solely responsible for the natural changes of climate, and thus, we must accommodate and transform our way of living even if it results in lowering the quality of our lives.

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Raping the Swedish Corpse : by Edward Cline

By on November 14th, 2015

Gatestone ran a comprehensive report on the state of Sweden under the press of tens of thousands of immigrants, most of whom who have neither an affinity for Sweden nor a fondness for Swedes, except as prey for rape, robbery, and mayhem. The article, “Sweden descending into anarchy,” of November 13th, by Ingrid Carlqvist, recounts the alarm Swedes are now feeling as the consequence of their government inviting countless barbarians into the country are becoming manifest. The reality of multiculturalism is hitting home, and hard.

But while reading Carlqvist’s article, I couldn’t help but remember that the Somali immigrant who raped a dying woman in a hotel garage, and then proceeded to rape her corpse, won’t be deported after he has served his sentence. Once he’s released, he is sure rape again, and commit other crimes. Why won’t he be deported? Janna Brock wrote in 2013:

It was early in the morning of 27 September. Police received an alarm that the two men were having intercourse with a woman who was completely unconscious on the floor of a parking garage under the Sheraton Hotel in Vasagatan in Stockholm.

When police arrived at the scene they found a 34 year old man from Somalia, who was in the midst of an anal intercourse with the woman. Police checked the woman’s pulse and found that she was dead. The police caught the 34-year-old Somali Islamist in the act of brutally violating a corpse. What was he arrested for? It doesn’t get more disgusting than this, but in Sweden one must not assume the man was guilty of murder.

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Jon Gertner: On Global Warming and Glaciers (Unsettled Science at the NYTimes)

By on November 14th, 2015

By studying the largest glaciers on earth, scientists hope to determine whether we’ll have time to respond to climate change or whether it’s already too late.

At one point several hundred thousand years ago, snow began falling over the center of the earth’s largest island. The snow did not melt, and in the years that followed, storms brought even more. All around Greenland, the arctic temperatures remained low enough for the snow to last past spring and summer. It piled up, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. Eventually, the snow became the Greenland ice sheet, a blanket of ice so huge that it covered 650,000 square miles and reached a thickness of 10,000 feet in places. Meanwhile, in Antarctica, a similar process was well underway. There, as snow fell upon snow for years without end, the ice sheet spread out over a much vaster area: 5.4 million square miles, an expanse far larger than the lower 48 states. By the start of the modern era, when power plants and electric lights began illuminating the streets of Manhattan, about 75 percent of the world’s freshwater had been frozen into the ice sheets that lay over these lands at opposite ends of the earth.

The ice sheets covering Greenland and large areas of Antarctica are now losing more ice every year than they gain from snowfall. The loss is evident in the rushing meltwater rivers, blue gashes that crisscross the ice surface in warmer months and drain the sheets’ mass by billions of tons annually. Another sign of imbalance is the number of immense icebergs that, with increasing regularity, cleave from the sheets and drop into the seas. In late August, for instance, a highly active glacier in Greenland named Jakobshavn calved one of the largest icebergs in its history, a chunk of ice about 4,600 feet thick and about five square miles in area.

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Clinton’s Coal Reparations First put miners out of work. Then put them on the taxpayer dime.

By on November 14th, 2015

Hillary Clinton has promised to continue the Obama Administration’s carbon cleanse of the U.S. economy, which is proving to be politically toxic in coal country. So this week she rolled out a plan for government to rescue the coal miners who the government has put out of work.

Coal production nationwide has declined by about 15% since 2008. A Duke University study in April estimated that 50,000 coal jobs were lost between 2008 and 2012, with Appalachia, Utah and Colorado among the biggest victims. Unemployment in eastern Kentucky exceeds 8% and is in the double digits in southern West Virginia.

Shale fracking for natural gas has contributed to the carnage, but the Environmental Protection Agency has assisted by promulgating rules on mercury emissions and ash disposal. The Administration’s new Clean Power Plan will finish off the industry, which still accounts for about a third of U.S. electric generation and two-thirds in Ohio and Iowa.

Several coal companies are slouching toward bankruptcy, which could cause retirees and laid-off workers to lose health coverage. In May Patriot Coal filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in three years. Thousands of workers fear they’ll be forced into Medicaid or the ObamaCare exchanges.

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The End of ‘One China’ After a historic surprise meeting with the leader of Taiwan, Xi Jinping could go down in history for recognizing the island democracy—or choose conflict instead By Andrew Browne See note please

By on November 14th, 2015

To say that the Japanese ruled Taiwan well is a misstatement…efficiently and brutally are better words. Furthermore, there is a lesson from Taiwan. Nixon/Kissinger betrayed Taiwan by accepting Communist China’s goal of absorbing Taiwan into “one China.”Jimmy Carter removed the US Embassy to Peking, ducking principles and loyalty to Taiwan a productive, capitalist nation building real democracy. The United Nations effectively barred Taiwan from independent membership. Taiwan persevered with its building of democracy, and stuck to its guns on independence…good for them.Israel should pay heed….rsk
When the leaders of China and Taiwan met last weekend for the first time since 1949, the unseen presences in the room were the ghosts of Mao Zedong, the Communist Party’s Great Helmsman, and his bitter rival, the gaunt Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. They had been adversaries in the Chinese civil war for more than two decades, before Mao’s victorious peasant revolutionaries took power in Beijing that year.

Chiang was driven into exile on Taiwan, taking with him his Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. The enmity of Mao and Chiang endured across a Cold War frontier—for a time, their troops hurled shells and propaganda messages at each other across the narrow strait separating Taiwan from the mainland—but they always shared a dream, born of their long struggle: “One China.”

The unification of China and Taiwan has been the sacred mission of every Communist leader since Mao, including the current president, Xi Jinping. And though the idea of “One China” today commands virtually no popular support on Taiwan, which prizes its fledgling democracy, it nevertheless clings to life as a legacy within the Kuomintang, the party of the country’s current president, Ma Ying-jeou.

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Paris Attacks’ Scale Underscores Global Threats Level of violence raises new questions about open-border travel accords throughout EuropeBy Margaret Coker, Julian E. Barnes and Devlin Barrett

By on November 14th, 2015

The sophistication, resources and scale of Friday’s attacks in the heart of Paris underscored to officials across the globe that the challenges of containing extremist violence have reached a new level, and that the calculus of the Western effort against terrorism had fundamentally changed.

European governments in the past few months have sought various means to guard against national security threats, with some erecting barbed-wire fences to stem the flow of migrants, while others, including France, devoted hundreds of millions of euros to strengthening electronic surveillance systems.

Friday’s attacks highlight the weakness of those strategies in a world where global extremism flows across nations. It also raises questions about transnational agreements on open-border travel that have been a bedrock of modern Europe. In his first comments to the nation after the attack, French President François Hollande announced the closing of his country’s borders.

French authorities didn’t immediately name a culprit, but the nature of the attacks left little doubt they were the work of a well-organized terrorist group. A French official said Friday the attacks were “unfortunately well-prepared and coordinated.” The apparent use of explosives and the likelihood that a significant number of people were involved were particularly alarming to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

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Blood, Toil, Tears and Debt A month after becoming prime minister in 1940, Churchill was broke. By Mark Archer

By on November 14th, 2015

‘These filthy money matters are the curse of my life and my only worry,” the 24-year-old Winston Churchill complained to his mother in 1898. Money troubles dogged Churchill throughout his life, as David Lough reveals in “No More Champagne,” his fascinating study of Churchill’s finances. On several occasions, the author shows, Churchill was “bailed out” by friends with gifts or loans when his debts threatened to push him into bankruptcy.

A month after becoming prime minister in 1940, Churchill ran out of money to pay his household bills, his taxes and the interest on his large overdraft. His personal assistant, Brendan Bracken, approached Sir Henry Strakosch, an Austrian-born banker who supported Churchill’s anti-Nazi stance. Strakosch promptly wrote out a check for £5,000, which the author estimates to be equivalent to $250,000 today. (Each page includes a helpful multiplier for calculating the rough modern equivalent of financial figures quoted in the book.) “The amount reached Churchill’s account on 21 June,” Mr. Lough writes. “Thus fortified, he paid a clutch of overdue bills from shirt-makers, watch-repairers and wine merchants before he turned his attention back to the war.”
No More Champagne

By David Lough
Picador, 532 pages, $32

Strakosch had also had to rescue him two years before, in the same week Hitler’s troops marched into Austria and Churchill gave an impassioned speech to Parliament warning that Britain “would soon have to choose between resisting Hitler’s campaign of aggression or submitting to it.” On that occasion, Mr. Lough reveals, Strakosch bought Churchill’s entire portfolio of shares, which had been plunging in value, at their original price of £18,000 (equivalent to $1.2 million today), even though their value had fallen precipitously in the market’s panic at the impending war. He never asked for the money back.

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