RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/rewarding-hostage-taking-and-terrorism-only-brings-more-of-the-same/

All caring and loving people are delighted that 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper have been released by their Hamas captures. Their grandchildren, in particular, must be thrilled to see their grandmothers again. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s negotiations to release American hostages, no matter how well-intentioned, only makes it more likely that Yocheved’s and Nurit’s grandchildren will be either murdered or taken hostage in the future.

Hamas, in close consultation with their paymasters Iran, is not releasing the elderly hostages for nothing. They are getting something in return. We are not yet certain what the quid pro quo is. But we do know that Israel’s ground invasion has not yet begun. We also know that the United States is not pressuring Qatar to turnover Hamas leaders like Ismail Haniyeh who are living in five-star hotels in Doha. To the contrary, Qatar is being publicly thanked by the White House for its role in facilitating the negotiations.

We can expect the slow drip of one or two American hostages being released every week or so. We should expect that most, if not all, will be the elderly or infirm. This puts Israel in a difficult position. If Jerusalem attacks while the negotiations are ongoing, it runs the risk of being blamed for the deaths of Americans if Hamas murders them, as they surely will. “If only Israel showed restraint,” her critics will say.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/biden_and_islamophobia.html

I was hoping against hope that Joe Biden would totally and irrevocably expose the evil of radical Islam in speaking of the dastardly Hamas attacks.

But once he asserted that “we must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia” in bis October 2020 speech to the nation, it was patently clear that he had fallen into the clutches of those who would demand utter capitulation to Islamists and thus destroy free speech, and independent thinking.

Islamists would assert that “Islamophobia is “an allegedly irrational fear of losing life or liberty to Islamic rule merely because the laws, sacred texts, and traditional practices of Islam demand the submission of culture, politics, religion and social expression. But, in the real world, it is a product of rational observation.”

After all “[a]n ideology that has as its stated goal to put the entire world under its eternal rule, by force if necessary, and to kill those who stand in its way, criticize it or leave it, is genuinely dangerous. Having some healthy doses of fear and skepticism of such a force is perfectly rational.”

As thereligionofpeace.com explains that:

To obscure the fact that the same problems and reactions follow Islam into every country, no matter how tolerant, a word has been invented to suppress any assessment or criticism of Islam. 

Consider that Hinduism is different in almost every way from every other major world religion, but no one is accused of having Hinduphobia. 

In fact, Islam is the only religion that requires a pretend word to protect against critical inquiry.  The sole purpose of ‘Islamophobia’ is to conflate ideological truth with anti-Muslim bigotry.  The irony is that of all religions, the tenets of Islam are the least tolerant and most hostile toward the others.

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/johnson-begins-house-speakership-focus-debt-inflation-and-border-catastrophe#google_vignette

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives kicked off his leadership role on Wednesday with a commitment to establish a fiscal commission dedicated to rolling back excessive government spending as a way to reduce inflation. He also called on the Senate and White House to stop ignoring the “catastrophe” at the southern border.

Johnson described the nation’s rising $33 trillion national debt as the greatest threat to national security and connected it to the level of inflation that America’s families have been grappling with the last few years.

“The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt and while we’ve been sitting in this room – that’s right – the debt has crossed almost $33.6 trillion and in time it’s going to take me to deliver this speech, we will go up $20 million in debt. It’s unsustainable,” Johnson said on the House floor to a standing ovation from Republicans and a handful of Democrats seated in the chamber.

“We have to get the country back on track. We know this isn’t going to be an easy task and tough decisions will have to be made but the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable. We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well and we’re going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately,” he added after formally taking the gavel.

At this point, Congress has until Nov. 17 to pass a federal budget to avoid a government shutdown. The White House and congressional leaders will soon be negotiating on an agreed upon level of federal spending, which will be the first major test of Johnson’s speakership.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the House Budget Committee, told Just the News on Wednesday that the GOP-led House might pass a temporary spending bill or “Continuing Resolution” through January.

“I don’t like CRs. I definitely don’t like omnibuses being crammed, you know, during the Thanksgiving or the Christmas holidays has got to end,” he said. “But he’ll [Johnson] have some leeway on that. He’s talking about January and we’ll see what the overall numbers look like and then go from there.”

The House has been working on passing single subject appropriations bills to fund each cabinet agency separately, which conservatives argue is a way to reduce wasteful spending. The House lost time in that process given that votes were frozen while the GOP conference searched for a speaker after McCarthy’s ousting. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/department-of-justice-congress-spying-jason-foster-empower-oversight-f2d6235e?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Justice Department’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation is the fiasco that keeps on giving, and look no further than this week’s revelations of abuse of power. The latest news is that Justice snooped on the Congressional investigators who dared to conduct oversight of its snooping on the 2016 Trump campaign.

Numerous current and former congressional staffers have learned that Justice subpoenaed their personal phone and email records in 2017, likely under the pretext of a leak investigation. The targets included Republican and Democratic staffers in the Senate and House.

***

They join staffers and Members of the House Intelligence Committee, who over the past two years said they were notified by Google or

Apple

that Justice seized their data. By our count, executive-branch prosecutors have now been caught fishing through the records of more than a dozen employees of the congressional branch. DOJ’s inspector general is probing the matter.

Last week Google notified Jason Foster, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s former chief investigative counsel on the Judiciary Committee, that Justice sought and received Mr. Foster’s personal records. In a subsequent Freedom of Information Act request to Justice, Mr. Foster’s nonprofit, Empower Oversight, lays out the scope of Justice’s search.

The FOIA letter to Justice says Google received a federal subpoena on Sept. 12, 2017, for records related to a Foster family telephone number, as well as other accounts that are redacted but that Empower Oversight believes belonged to other staffers.

“For each of the listed telephone and email accounts, the subpoena compelled Google to release customer or subscriber information, as well as subscribers’ names, addresses, local and long distance telephone connection records, text message logs, records of session times and durations, length of service and types of service utilized for the period from December 1, 2016 to May 1, 2017,” says the letter. DOJ wanted to know Mr. Foster’s sources and methods.

Recall what was going on at that time. The Washington Post in 2017 reported on a wiretapped phone call between incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—an egregious leak of classified information. The Senate Judiciary Committee sought answers from DOJ about the Flynn probe and the leak.

DOJ provided few answers to Congress, though in an effort to justify its snooping it revealed that it also had a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. Details of that classified Page warrant soon leaked to the press, via stories that sought to bolster the FBI’s narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.

At the time DOJ was essentially run by career officials, after then Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from Trump-Russia questions, while former FBI Director James Comey had been fired that May.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-are-showing-you-who-they-are/

I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1938; then, I had to check the books I owned to make sure they weren’t actually written in German. Once I confirmed it is 2023 and I live in the United States of America, I was left only to shake my head in disgust at what Democrats have exposed themselves to be.

Make no mistake, I never really thought they were great people. The party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation isn’t suddenly going to pull a 180 and not be monsters; it’s who they are. They’ve never changed their objectives, only their tactics. Now, their embrace of segregation is done in the name of tolerance, of providing a “safe space” to minorities. But make no mistake, the end result is the same.

That’s the thing about the left – they’ll happily tell you who they are and the horrible things they hold dear; all you have to do is believe them.

The terrorist attack in Israel two weeks ago brought out the worst in the left, but it’s also their true self. You can’t cheer for the wholesale murder of innocent people and “really be a good person, deep down.” No, that’s not how it works. It’s the opposite – they are raging bigots and monsters who manage to tamp it down below the surface most of the time until there’s something to protest or celebrate. It’s really that simple.

I’m not Jewish, and I’m disgusted. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal and horror Jews feel, as friends, neighbors, and colleagues felt so compelled to defend the murderers of Jews, for the express reason that they were Jewish, 24 hours after the attack. The Democratic Socialists of America, who count Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and pretty must every other Nazi scum “progressive” among their ranks and supporter, marched in support of Hamas in New York City, the next day, before there was anywhere near an accurate body count, let alone an understanding of the scale of the evil. They didn’t march against Israel; they marched in favor of Hamas, literally celebrating the paragliders in the posters promoting it.

That’s a special kind of evil.

In the face of that, how can any normal person care what they have to say or do anything but recoil in disgust at what they’re advocating? They can’t.

The examples of the aforementioned Members of Congress spewing their anti-Semitism or lying about 500 dead in the most densely populated hospital on the planet, when there was really just a small parking lot fire caused by “friendly” terrorist fire, are well known. What isn’t as well known are the examples of small people in positions that wouldn’t get the attention an MSNBC host would, showing people the monsters they are.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-pentagon-finally-admits-to-dozens-of-u-s-casualties-amid-iran-backed-attacks/

Israel isn’t the only target.

In the 18 days since the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas murdered over 1,400 people, the network of terrorist proxies aligned with the Islamic Republic that populate the Middle East have taken similar aim at U.S. forces throughout the region. U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria have come under at least 13 drone and missile attacks. Last week, the Iran-aligned Houthi militia fired off a fusillade of rockets and unmanned vehicles “potentially headed for Israel” that were intercepted by an American Navy destroyer in the Red Sea.

And yet, the U.S. emerged from these attacks relatively unscathed. At least, that’s what the silence from Joe Biden’s Defense Department regarding the fallout from these attacks implied.

On October 18, the Pentagon revealed that one American contractor in Iraq died after experiencing a cardiac event while trying to seek shelter from an incoming rocket attack, which turned out to be a false alarm. The following day, a Defense Department spokesman acknowledged the “uptick” in attacks from Iran’s Shiite militia groups, but assured reporters that there was “no direct linkage” between their activities and Israel’s war with another Iran-backed terrorist entity.

When asked about casualty figures, the Pentagon could only say with confidence that no civilians were injured in the attacks. As for U.S. service personnel, the “numbers” were “all over the map” and therefore unreliable. “That’s another aspect that we’re looking at right now,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder assured reporters on October 19.

This week, the Pentagon finally got its hands around the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and its assessment is shocking. At least 24 U.S. troops were wounded in the attacks on American positions in the Middle East, Defense officials admitted on Tuesday. Most of those are classified as “minor injuries,” but they nonetheless jeopardize the readiness of America’s forward positions. Moreover, the Pentagon expects these figures will rise in the coming days. “What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel across the region in the very near-term coming from Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran,” Ryder advised. The Defense Department is “preparing for this escalation” and for the eventual prospect of “responding decisively.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-hatred-on-our-doorsteps-antisemitism?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last Tuesday, Free Press staffers arrived for work in New York to discover antisemitic graffiti sprayed on hallway walls outside of our office. Fuck Israel and Fuck Jews, read the messages. The graffiti was found on three floors of the building as well as in the freight elevator. At the time of this writing, the police have not identified any suspects, but they are investigating it as a hate crime.

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, a wave of antisemitic hate—from physical violence to harassment—has affected Jews across the globe. So the vandalism in the building where some of us work, while vile, was hardly a bolt out of the blue.

It also pales into comparison to what many Jews in this country and across the world have experienced in recent days.

A synagogue in Berlin was firebombed. In Paris, the door of an elderly Jewish couple’s apartment was burned; theirs was the only one in the building to display a mezuzah. According to London police, there were 218 antisemitic hate crimes reported in the capital between October 1 and 18, a 1,350 percent increase over the same period last year. Mobs across the world have gathered to cheer for Hamas’s barbarism. And, as we have reported, Jews have been intimidated and demeaned in American cities and on U.S. university campuses in recent weeks.

If there is anything more ulcer-inducing than the rise in explicit Jew-hatred, it is the denial and downplay of it.

Take, for example, an exchange at the White House press briefing on Monday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about President Biden’s “level of concern right now about a potential rise of antisemitism.” Jean-Pierre could not even bring herself to acknowledge the problem. Instead, she pivoted to anti-Muslim hate crimes:

We have not seen any credible threats. I know there’s been all these questions about credible threats. And so, [I] just want to make sure that’s out there. But look, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks, and certainly President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/in_the_mouth_of_marxist_madness.html

At the beginning of October, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán denounced the European Union’s 1984-inspired manipulation of language: “Brussels is creating an Orwellian world in front of our eyes.  They buy and supply weapons through the European Peace Facility.  They want to control the media through the Media Freedom Act.  We didn’t fight the communists to end up in 1984!”  The “Peace Facility” is responsible for transferring billions of dollars worth of artillery and ammunition to Ukraine.  The “Media Freedom Act” gives European bureaucrats extraordinary powers to censor any speech or ideas they dislike.  

Although Orbán is absolutely correct in his assessment of European madness, there is no sign that his warning will have any corrective effect.  The Eurocrats are so steeped in self-deluding propaganda that it would be not at all surprising to see them pull another page straight out of 1984 by carving on one of their marble government buildings the same three slogans that adorned Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth”: “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”  Such is the depth of the rabbit hole into which the European hive mind has descended that too many ordinary citizens would miss the depressing irony.

As if recognizing that Europe’s embrace of censorship, surveillance, and social control inconveniently mirrors Orwell’s condemnation of Big Brother and Big Government to perfection, the British “ruling class” attempted this month to “cancel” Orwell by using an article in The Telegraph to accuse the prophetic genius of being “sadistic, misogynistic, homophobic, and sometimes violent” — in other words, someone who should not be “tolerated” and no longer “deserves” to be read.  If “cancelling” the author who warned the world about such forms of slithery government tyranny is not “peak Orwell,” then the crazy train still barreling down the tracks promises to be a doozy.  

Americans, of course, are similarly under siege from an Orwellian deep state that manipulates the public by distorting history and undermining the meaning of words.  In a nation that celebrates George Floyd as a hero, clings to the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie as a sacred “truth,” and blames Hillary’s election loss on Russian bots, propaganda is king.  The U.S. government fights racism by institutionalizing racial preferences.  It supports Black Lives Matter and Antifa domestic terrorists while locking up American patriots as “domestic enemies.”  It replaces impartial justice with “social justice” and equality under the law with “equitable” special privileges.  “Climate change” communism kills property rights.  Meme-makers are imprisoned, but Russia collusion hoaxers are not.  Gene-altering serums are called “vaccines.”  And generations of judges have replaced the U.S. Constitution with their own postmodern revisions.  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-periodic-reminder-that-evil-is-real-rage-history-israel-hamas-6b255ebd?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Justice Potter Stewart observed in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) that while hard-core pornography is difficult to define, “I know it when I see it.” The same is true of evil.

A decent conscience, uncontaminated by ideology, knows what it is looking at. The torments that Hamas “militants” inflicted on Oct. 7—mass slaughter, rape, the beheading and incineration of babies—amounted to behavior that the high court of any uncorrupted intelligence in the world would describe as evil.

What other word would be sufficient? Wicked? Gruesome? Atrocious? Naughty? No one with any brains uses the word evil lightly. I tend to capitalize it to give the concept (vile, mysterious, theologically absolute) its metaphysical due. President Biden chose his language carefully when he spoke of the Hamas raids as “pure, unadulterated evil.” Since Oct. 7, the word—from which people used to shy away, regarding it as radioactive, over-the-top—has become commonplace and almost unavoidable.

Some years ago I wrote “Evil: An Investigation.” Preparing the book, I would sometimes ask people if they knew anyone they considered to be truly evil. Most would think for a moment, then shake their heads: “Not really. Hitler, of course. But I didn’t know him.” When I asked William F. Buckley Jr., he replied without hesitation, “Gore Vidal.” I laughed. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t.

Many people believe evil doesn’t exist. That view is especially common among the rational and enlightened, who insist that events always have a scientific, clinical or political explanation. They are mistaken. Evil is real, with a spooky, inscrutable life of its own.

Evil resides, a law unto itself, in the penetralia of history and human nature. Anyone who doubts its existence should study, in no particular order: the Cambodians’ mass killings under Pol Pot (1975-79), the Japanese Rape of Nanking (1937-38), the Belgians’ atrocities in the Congo (1885-1908) and of course the Holocaust. You might begin your studies in that last topic by reading “Into That Darkness” by Gitta Sereny. It’s about how Franz Stangl, an ordinary Austrian policeman and family man, morphed into the monster who presided over the Nazi death camp at Treblinka.

https://www.thefp.com/p/qatars-war-for-young-american-minds?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Right now, senior leaders of Hamas, the perpetrators of the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, are huddled in Qatar. They’ve been there for years. But American foreign policy has turned a blind eye. Why? One reason might be that for the last 25 years, this small, energy-rich state has pumped billions into America to purchase influence and good favor. 

The Qataris have spent their lavish fortune at American law firms, on lobbying contracts with former senior officials, and on junkets and partnerships with big media companies. The biggest recipients of Qatari largesse, though, have been major universities and think tanks. 

The numbers are staggering. According to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar today is the largest foreign donor to American universities. The study found that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. These schools have partnered with the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities: 

Since 1997, Qatar has donated more than $103 million to Virginia Commonwealth University for a fine arts campus. 

Since 2001, Qatar has donated $1.8 billion to Cornell for a medical school. 

Since 2003, Qatar has donated nearly $700 million to Texas A&M for an engineering campus. 

Since 2004, Qatar has donated $740 million to Carnegie Mellon University for a computer science campus. 

Since 2005, Qatar has donated $760 million to Georgetown University for a school of politics. 

Since 2008, Qatar has donated nearly $602 million to Northwestern University for a school of journalism. 

One might expect that scholarly institutions that have benefited from this autocracy’s money would rethink their partnership after Qatar’s foreign minister said that “Israel alone is responsible” for the pogrom perpetrated by Hamas terrorists. Or after Qatar’s prime minister on Friday declined to close the office Hamas maintains in its capital. But these universities have given no indication that they will end their profitable partnership with Qatar.