RUTHFULLY YOURS

Political violence by leftists is on the rise – not only in the United States, but in Iceland as well, it appears. Robert Spencer, who has devoted his life to combating the global jihad, was poisoned by a political antagonist, it appears. Writing in Front Page Magazine, he reports on his brush with assassination:

Last Thursday, I gave a lecture on the jihad threat at the Grand Hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland. Shortly thereafter, a young Icelandic Leftist registered his disapproval of what I said by poisoning me.

It happened after the event, when my security chief, the organizers of the event, and Jihad Watch writer Christine Williams, who had also been invited to speak, went with me to a local restaurant to celebrate the success of the evening.

At this crowded Reykjavik establishment, I was quickly recognized. A young Icelander called me by name, shook my hand, and said he was a big fan. Shortly after that, another citizen of that famously genteel and courteous land also called me by name, shook my hand, and said “[F—] you.”

We took that marvelous Icelandic greeting as a cue to leave. But the damage had already been done. About fifteen minutes later, when I got back in my hotel room, I began to feel numbness in my face, hands, and feet. I began trembling and vomiting. My heart was racing dangerously. I spent the night in a Reykjavik hospital.

What had happened quickly became clear, and was soon confirmed by a hospital test: one of these local Icelanders who had approached me (probably the one who said he was a big fan, as he was much closer to me than the “[F—] you” guy) had dropped drugs into my drink. I wasn’t and am not on any other medication, and so there wasn’t any other explanation of how these things had gotten into my bloodstream.

For several days thereafter I was ill, but I did get to Reykjavik’s police station and gave them a bigger case than they have seen in good awhile. The police official with whom I spoke took immediate steps to identify and locate the principal suspects and obtain the restaurant’s surveillance video.

Iceland is a small country. Everyone knows everyone else. And so as it happened, I was quickly able to discover the identity, phone number, and Facebook page of the primary suspect, the young man who claimed he was a “big fan.” I don’t intend to call him. Icelandic police will be contacting him soon enough, if they haven’t done so already.

You can expect our American mainstream media to completely ignore this horrifying tale of an attempted political assassination.

In “Bonfire of the Vanities,” Tom Wolfe satirized the tendency of prosecutors and the media to label every black child victimized by crime an honor student He must be smiling at the legacy that tendency has spawned which can be seen in the title of this piece. It is a portion of a NYT headline for an article about an ex-con who recently graduated and is pictured smiling and shaking hands with another graduate, both in the full regalia of cap and gown. (Walking the Long Road From Isolated in Prison to Magna Cum Laude, Katharine Q Seelye, NYT 5/14/17). Kyle Gathers, now 31, has spent the better part of ten years in prison, two in isolation, for drug-dealing and shootings. Since being released, he enrolled in a program at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, specializing in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning technology; it is this program to which the title refers.

In googling such programs, I discovered that they vary from two to four semesters for which students earn a certificate or technical certificate. It is laudable that Mr. Gathers seems to have turned his life around and is now qualified to get a bona fide job and become a law-abiding member of society. It is ludicrous to apply the honorific of magna cum laude to this endeavor. It is universally accepted that students must have a GPA between 3.8 – 3.9 and be in the top 3- 5% of their graduating class in order to qualify for this honor. Until recently, this was reserved for students who completed a B.A. , B.S. or equivalent degree. Now it is used for students who complete two semesters of a technical course and perhaps soon it will apply to those who get certified as cosmeticians, hairdressers, manicurists and health care aides.

Even though achieving members of society have been told to check their privilege, we don’t call every college graduate “doctor” just as we don’t use the terms “Officer, senator, justice or maestro” indiscriminately. By buying in to the charade that students who complete a non-academic program are deserving of the ceremonial trappings of academe, we devalue the achievement of those who have earned those merit badges the hard way – appropriately. The tradition of wearing caps and gowns dates back to 12th century early European universities in which clerics, who were the scholars of that time, wore their robes for warmth in unheated buildings. The caps, known as mortarboards, reputedly derive from the birettas worn by scholarly clerics to signify their intelligence and superior accomplishment. In succeeding centuries, this garb became popular for other educated people down into the 21rst century But since both the clothing and the honorifics are symbols of academic scholarship, they don’t belong in completion ceremonies for technical certification. The sombrero is a Spanish hat adapted in the 15th century from those worn by Mongolian horsemen for several previous centuries. Yet wearing one on Halloween has been deemed an act of cultural appropriation by today’s snowflakes and their academic leadership. Their voices have not been raised to protest the use of clothing and terminology traditionally reserved for high scholarship in ceremonies for technical certification. This is not only cultural appropriation – it is more specifically fraudulent misrepresentation.

Last night after binging on”Fauda” a terrific Israeli series on terrorism and counter-terrorism, I reluctantly turned on the news….CNN to be exact, and Anderson Cooper to be more exact. The news, as everyone not settled down in Mars knows by now is that the Washington Post and the New York Times issued reports that President Trump gave “highly classified” information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in the Oval Office the day after firing Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey. General McMaster, the National Security adviser said” I was in the room, it did not happen.”

General McMaster’s denial was streamed in the news feed under the blathering of the CNN panel which agreed that McMaster’s denial proved that the story was true. Huh??? They then went on to speculate that Trump’s conversation with the Russians endangered lives. What a leap.

When the media dust-up settles we will know the truth, but the way CNN reports it, I prefer the fiction in Fauda to the fiction on CNN which passes as journalism. rsk

This occurred three years after World War Two ended. When it was over one in every three Jews in the world were killed. Today, Israel, with a population of 8,304,088 (.11% pof the planet’s population) is a thriving democracy with advanced and state of the arts scientific and medical institution which makes outsize contributions to the health, safety and welfare of the entire world. Happy Birthday to Israel- a miracle nation.rsk

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People’s Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People’s Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called “Israel”.

Thomas Paine, a founding father of our nation ( 1737-1809) famously wrote: ” These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The leftist media and their acolytes are now shrieking about President (not theirs) Donald Trump and his firing of James Comey. More troubling is the number of “summer and sunshine” Republicans who are wringing their hands and speaking in hushed tones of impeachment. I don’t deride their patriotism but marvel at their buckling knees.

Donald Trump makes it easy for the them. He twitters and sputters, and he is often crude with a tin ear for public relations, but he has broken no law….and James Comey deserved to be fired.

Tom Bailey writes in Spiked online http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/comey-hero-of-the-resistance-please/19810#.WRbggcYpCUk

Before the firing, however, Democrats were condemning Comey, and even calling for his head. A few days before the presidential election, Comey wrote a letter to Congress saying the FBI would reopen its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Back then, Schumer said he’d lost confidence in Comey. Democratic lawmakers were outraged by his actions. Democrat representative Steve Cohen even called for him to resign.

Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation gave him top billing on the Democrat establishment’s list of extenuating circumstances that cost it the election. He was the man who cost Clinton her crown. Clinton herself partly blamed him for her loss.

He was a Trumpist in a federal windbreaker jacket, people suggested. Some even said the FBI itself was politically compromised and out to get the Clintons. As a writer for the liberal magazine Mother Jones argued, ‘The FBI is full of middle-aged white guys’ with an anti-Clinton bent, due to their listening to ‘lots of Rush Limbaugh’.

Now, post-firing, as if he were entering the federal witness protection programme, Comey is viewed entirely differently; he’s becoming an almost legendary figure. He’s no longer a Trump stooge – he’s a fallen member of the #Resistance. He’s been reimagined as the man who was about to bring down Trump.”

Mark Steyn argued that exclusively blaming the other political side for your troubles can provide false comfort. When everything is falling apart the problem is probably bigger than any one point of view. “The point about civilizational collapse is that it’s a civilization that’s collapsing, not merely your political arrangements.” Take the ransomware attacks which paralyzed Britain’s national health service which forced the cancellation of operations and other medical treatments. “A global cyberattack leveraging hacking tools widely believed by researchers to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency hit international shipper FedEx, disrupted Britain’s health system and infected computers in dozens of other countries on Friday.” Everybody was affected. It didn’t matter how you voted.

The incident revealed at least ten NHS trusts still relied on the Windows XP. The instrusion allegedly relied on NSA tools stolen during the Obama administration from a contractor. “According to one source, that includes more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the Tailored Access Operations. TAO is an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys some of the world’s most sophisticated software exploits.”

An unnamed US official told the paper that Martin allegedly hoarded more than 75 percent of the TAO’s library of hacking tools. It’s hard to envision a scenario under which a theft of that much classified material by a single individual would be possible.

When Shadow Brokers appeared in October, it published hundreds of TAO-developed exploits, including one that, for years, had exploited what was then a critical unknown vulnerability in a widely used firewall sold by Cisco Systems. Last month, the person or group said it was shutting down in a post that dumped 61 Windows-formatted binary files. Whether Martin was somehow involved with Shadow Brokers or was a compulsive hoarder working alone, the events underscore serious security lapses inside the NSA.

It was a long time coming. The defection of Edward Snowden, the Office of Personnel Management data breach and the now infamous Hillary hacks all predated Trump though the vulnerabilities will probably continue under him. The list of commercial data breaches is also stunningly long. “It is estimated that in 2015 alone, 707 million records were exposed as a result of data breaches”. These suggest that too many of our systems may be built on rotten props or false assumptions. The ice looked solid enough until the weight of civilization stepped on it and things fell through.

One of the weaknesses of the anti-Trump resistance is their inability to address the factors which brought the current administration into existence. Too many think it’s all about one man. This may explain why the Resistance to the Resistance has been surprisingly hard to push off the Hill and why Bernie Sanders is the most popular Democratic politician in America. The key insight into the problem is that people didn’t vote for Trump but against Hillary, PC, and the ending of their world. Charles Sykes in New York Times noted this element of sheer reaction. “Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters don’t have to defend his specific actions as long as they make liberal heads explode”.

A hundred years ago the liberal project seemed easily attainable. “I have seen the future and it works,” wrote Lincoln Steffens, yet it’s proved surprisingly hard to close the sale. The reason why the masses should reject such a brilliant vision were hard to explain. Despite Leftist fears their foes were never more than a coalition of amateurs with no particular ideology. The alt-right didn’t even know it was alt-right until they were properly analyzed and labeled. CONTINUE AT SITE

Two hundred and forty-one years since America’s birth and 226 years since the adoption of the Bill of Rights protecting our freedom of speech, Americans seem to be confused about what free speech actually means. We need a refresher course in what is not free speech, and what it is that speech is free from.

As a free society, we must protect speech in the public square. That’s why the Westboro Church lunatics are accompanied by a sizable police force when they protest military funerals. It is our job as a society to permit speech, even and especially speech we find repugnant, and to protect the speaker from violent reactions to that speech. Additionally, speakers must not face repercussions from the government for what they say. If Donald Trump doesn’t like it when Saturday Night Live makes fun of him, he can tweet about it. He can’t send a police force to arrest Alec Baldwin.

This does not, however, mean that speech comes without consequences. If Westboro Church leader Fred Phelps applied for a job at your company, you would be fully within your rights to turn him down because he is a vile, hateful person whom you do not wish to employ. This general distinction has been difficult for people to grasp in the wake of several recent high-profile incidents.

Last week, Tomi Lahren settled a lawsuit with her previous employer, the conservative network The Blaze. Lahren was fired after an appearance on The View in which she told the audience that she was pro-choice. She had previously proclaimed herself pro-life; her position on abortion is one that matters to both her audience and her (now former) employer. Speaking to Joy Behar and other View co-hosts, she explained:

I’m pro-choice, and here’s why: I am a constitutional — y’know, someone that loves the Constitution. . . . I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government, but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies.

Of course, her viewers at The Blaze also consider themselves “constitutionals” (if that were a real word), believe in limited government, and yet are pro-life. She called her own audience hypocrites — and then she was fired for it.

Handshakes all around when Obamacare is replaced, but for seniors on Medicare nothing has changed for the better. During the Reagan administration a major change occurred for those on Medicare. Previously, seniors could purchase additional “major medical” insurance which would pay those expenses not covered by Medicare which set the reimbursement fees for doctors of all specialties.

However, under Ronald Reagan, the schedules for reimbursement to the physicians was set as the bar for all “medigap” an “major medical” plans.

To simplify: Let us say a doctor charges $850.00 for a procedure including the services of an anesthesiologist. An actuary in Washington working for the government decides that $475.00 is the “acceptable” fee and the doctor is paid 80% of the acceptable fee which comes to $380.00. The “medigap” insurance is tied to that number and only will add the 20 percent deducted by Medicare which is $95.00. The doctor is then forced to accept the fee that Medicare has set and cannot negotiate with the patients or he will lose participation in Medicare.

For this reason, throughout the country, doctors are not accepting Medicare insurance.

This is a form of price controls that the government uses, and even if a senior accepts the facts and fee for service, Medicare insurance is still deducted from the monthly social security checks.

With the new healthcare bill will this still remain? Stay tuned. rsk

Dear President Trump,

You are embarking on a ruinous path that bedeviled all American Presidents since Richard Nixon, whose Secretary of State William Rogers proposed the “Rogers Plan” Plan of 1969-namely, the ahistorical and strategically wrong suggestion that a territorial compromise by Israel would bring peace between Israel and the Arabs.

All these plans given their imprimatur by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama, ignored the faith driven Jihads against Israel which followed the Camp David Treaty, by which 92% of all territory won by Israel in 1967, including the entire Sinai Peninsula and its Israel built airfields and thriving towns were ceded; the Olso and Wye “Accords”which surrendered control of Jewish towns and shrines to the Arabs, including Hebron, the locus of the Jewish faith and East Jerusalem; the withdrawal from Gaza where Arab hate driven rampages destroyed homes and farms and agricultural equipment purchased for them by American philanthropists.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry, reports that since September 13, 2015, Palestinian Arab assailants have carried out 1,754 stabbing attacks, 113 attempted stabbings, 143 shootings; 58 vehicular ramming attacks, and one bus bombing. Forty-eight people were killed in these attacks and 713 injured, including four Palestinians.

The fingerprints on all these crimes are those of Mahmoud Abbas who names streets, monuments, and buildings for those who commit these attacks, supports their families with hefty financial rewards, and promotes vicious hatred of Jews in textbooks, sermons and speeches in Arabic while fancy dancing peace talk for his English speaking advocates.

You greet this terrorist and call him “a partner for peace.”

With respect for your office and in the hope that you will fulfill the promises that led me to vote for you, I remind you that there is no art in making a deal with a monster. rsk

British hospitals report an average of fifteen cases of female genital mutilation each day, yet despite the practice being illegal since 1984 there have been no successful prosecutions. Where are the feminists on this and other issues such as forced marriages and ‘honour’ killings? Nowhere, it seems.
“Islam is the world’s most feminist religion,” the Australian Muslim woman Yassmin Abdel-Magied claimed on the ABC’s Q&A on February 13. Her controversial thesis has been shot down as ridiculous by conservative writers and politicians across the nation. However, her claim that Islam is “the most feminist” of all religions is not entirely wrong, if one considers it through the lens of a particular variant of radical feminist ideology—cultural feminism.

Abdel-Magied’s observation about women under Islam is typical of cultural feminists who demand that individual members of “societal cultures” be endowed “with meaningful ways to live across the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational, and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres”. Since cultural identity is said to play a more pervasive role in the lives of certain minority groups, cultural feminists argue that the individual members of such groups should be accorded special rights (privileges) lest their minority status be endangered by the dominant culture. Any criticism of cultural or religious practices—including female genital mutilation and forced marriage—is summarily dismissed as a form of “colonialist imperialism”, one which is disrespectful of the more deep-seated traditions of non-majoritarian ethnic and religious groups.

Above all, cultural feminism advocates that special consideration must be given not just for the legal status of individual women in Western societies, but also for the position of individuals belonging to minority groups. Since the alleged deprivation experienced by certain minority groups is regarded primarily as a result of “white male oppression”, cultural feminists generally support state-imposed measures which attempt to correct “past injustices” in the workplace and other spheres of social activity.

From a human-rights perspective, however, there are serious problems with the ideology of cultural feminism. By prioritising collective rights at the expense of the basic rights of the individual, cultural feminists risk themselves justifying the ill-treatment of individual women, both within and outside Western societies.