RUTHFULLY YOURS

Multiple individuals suspected in the terror attacks over the past week in Turkey and Israel appear to be additional examples of the phenomenon I have termed “known wolf” terrorism. The attacks were committed in part by people already known to law enforcement and national security authorities as being dangers.

Saturday’s horrific suicide bombing of a Kurdish peace rally in Ankara killed more than one hundred people and injured more. According to Reuters, the suspects are thought to be members of a previously identified terror network – the “Adiyaman cell”:

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday Islamic State was the prime suspect. Officials in Ankara said they were focusing on the so-called “Adiyaman cell” — a group of Turks, some of whom had traveled to Syria, and who were thought also to have been behind a suicide bombing in July in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border, which killed 34 people.

The cell is also believed to have been involved in the bombing of a pro-Kurdish opposition rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on the eve of Turkey’s last election in June.

The Obama administration has given America’s closest ally in the Middle East a fair number of cheap shots in recent days as Israel confronts a rapidly escalating terror situation.

One of the things the administration can’t get straight is its accusations that Israel violated the status quo on the Temple Mount.

Earlier today, State Department Spokesperson John Kirby falsely claimed that that the status quo had been violated, and tonight he substantially misrepresented his statement in an effort to walk back his comments.

Sadly, Kirby is not the first to do so. Just the other day, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called for a restoration of the status quo:

The Obama administration condemned escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians and called for a full return to the status quo at the Temple Mount.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

Climate is always changing, but luckily, we live in an era with a stable, benign, warm climate and a healthy, abundant biosphere.

Alarmists who claim that today’s climate changes are unprecedented have not checked climate history written in the rocks, the ice cores, the satellite registers and the tide gauges.

Ice core records show that current temperatures and sea levels are not extreme – they are more stable than they were as the last ice age ended just 12,000 years ago. At that time, global temperature increased quickly, the great ice sheets melted, sea levels rose rapidly (130 meters), and the warming seas expelled much of their dissolved carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As a result of this natural global warming and the additional moisture and carbon dioxide plant food in the atmosphere, plant life recovered, and the great forests and grasslands were re-established.

Check the Ice Core Records:
http://carbon-sense.com/index.php?s=ice+cores&Submit=Go
http://carbon-sense.com/2009/10/03/taxing-ambulances/

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spent over $15 million on outside public relations consultants despite employing nearly 200 full-time in house PR workers.

A new report on EPA spending released by Open the Books, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transparency, found numerous examples of questionable expenditures within the agency.

Among them, the EPA spent over $15.1 million on outside public relations consultants between 2000 and 2014. The funding was on top of the $141.496 million in salaries and $1.5 million in bonuses on full-time public affairs officers the EPA has spent since 2007. As of 2012, the EPA employed 198 public affairs employees. The average EPA employee salary is $111,165.

“Everyone is under the impression that the EPA is spending money to ‘clean the environment.’ But, it turns out EPA is running a $160 million PR Machine, $715 million police agency, a near $1 billion employment agency for seniors, and a $1.2 billion in-house law firm,” said Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of Open the Books.

EPA’S $160 MILLION SPIN MACHINE
Last night, Special Report with Bret Baier showcased our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – U.S. Environmental Agency. Why does a major federal agency have nearly 200 PR staff employees?

Recently, the New York Times exposed the EPA for PR excess which was covered last night on Special Report…

Using a Thunderclap social media product to generate nearly one million online “grassroots comments” on new regulations regarding the Clean Water Act. 90% of the comments were positive. But, the Anti-Lobbying Act prohibits the use of tax dollars to advocate for a public position.

Our story first broke on Monday at Washington Free Beacon by reporter Elizabeth Harrington – click here to read the article.

“The EPA wasting $160 million on public relations dwarfs our recent exposure of their high-end furniture purchases ($92 million), Nothing is emblematic of government excess like an army of highly compensated PR agents sitting in their easy chairs. It’s simply waste.” OpenTheBooks

The Obama Administration’s crusade against carbon returned to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the Justices heard an important federalism challenge to an energy scheme that usurps state powers to promote the green agenda. The oral arguments suggested they may be queueing up another judicial rebuke.

The culprit this time is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which regulates most of the electric grid. In 2011 FERC ordered transmission operators to pay retail energy users to reduce their power consumption during peak periods, a program known as “demand response.” The idea is to send a price signal to encourage large consumers to use power when the most capacity is available—instead of, say, on a hot summer afternoon when everybody’s air conditioners are running.

In FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association, the problem is that Congress explicitly limited the commission’s mandate to the interstate power markets—i.e., to the wholesale power supply. Under a 2005 law, the “exclusive jurisdiction” of retail pricing and patterns of energy consumption belongs to the states.

How does Islam understand the concept of non-Muslims or “different” Muslims? Do Sunnis believe non-Sunni Muslims have rights equal to Sunnis? Is there one central authority that can decide today who speaks for all Muslims?

Sadly, the Muslim world is in total turmoil. We could discuss the traditional Muslim legal code regarding non-Muslims, but, given the political upheaval now going on in the Muslim world, none of the historic answers seem relevant.

Why is this so? Though we in the West tend to view Islam as a religion and understand it in that context, Islam has always had another side—the political side—that throughout Islamic history has often been the dominant factor in Islamic politics. This is true both when the Muslim world is stable, and most definitely so when that Muslim world is filled with instability, as it is today.

Those who know their place

The notion of an Islamic economy or of “Islamic economics,” is rife with fallacies. An Islamic economy is a contradiction in terms. Why?

As the term economy is understood to be a system of trade – a barter system, or laissez-faire, or a mixed economy with the freedom to trade and produce hampered, saddled and skewed by government controls and regulations – on the other hand, the notion of an Islamic economy or of “Islamic economics,” is rife with fallacies.

An Islamic economy is a contradiction in terms. Why?

Islam is a looter’s system of wealth seizure and expropriation. It produces nothing, it does not encourage the production of values to trade, and it is essentially anti-capitalist and anti-life. Overall, it is a system for the maintenance by force of a class of parasites. Islamic “economics” prescribes, as its essential and inherent goals, the sustained activity of wealth, social, and – need we remind anyone – sexual plunder. Its Economics in One Lesson is the Koran. Instead of a genuine economist such as Henry Hazlitt, Islam has as its primary “economist” the delusional, “voice-hearing” cave-dweller Mohammad.

Islam has been a looters’ system from the very beginning of the Islamic calendar, when Mohammad left Medina in 630 A.D. with his 10,000 converts/warriors and marched on Mecca, which he had fled eight years before because his “peaceful” proselytizing for his own moon-worshipping religion netted him few converts but many enemies. Or so the legend goes. Robert Spencer casts serious and well documented doubts on whether or not the Prophet of Plunder even existed in his excellent, eye-opening book, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins.

Campus groups press anti-Israel message with seemingly little money, but gain leverage with allies.

The arts district along Mamaroneck Avenue in downtown White Plains is something of a cultural hub in Westchester County. Special blue street signs — Arts Ave., they read — and colorful flags give the area the feel of a historic district, anchored by ArtsWestchester’s handsome brick headquarters.

There, on the fourth floor of 31 Mamaroneck Ave., is the office of a group that is far more interested in politics than arts. And controversial politics, at that.

Suite 403 houses the nonprofit group WESPAC Foundation, and its location in an arts-rich area belies its role as one of the key conduits in a mysterious network that helps to fuel the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

In recent days I suggested that things might have unfolded in a very different manner in Europe had the Jewish people been armed and better able to defend themselves.

Sometimes it is hard to find the right words to talk about the kind of evil that defies reason and destroys lives. We saw that evil on full display during the Holocaust perpetuated by the fanatical and tyrannical Nazi regime under Adolph Hitler. The lessons to be drawn from those darkest of days in world history are plentiful, and as relevant today as they were nearly 80 years ago.

In recent days I suggested that things might have unfolded in a very different manner in Europe had the Jewish people been armed and better able to defend themselves. What would have been the impact on Hitler’s war machine if his victims had had more access to guns? It is something that we will never know for sure.

What I do know however, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that I never intended for my words to diminish the enormity of the tragedy or in any way to cause any pain for Holocaust survivors or their families.

Both those who perished and those who survived the Nazi camps deserve our deepest reverence, as do the partisan fighters who rose in armed opposition.