RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-wests-monster-within?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Many in Britain and the west have been looking aghast at a monster within that has reared up and bared its fangs. They have suddenly realised that they are staring at a civilisational crisis.

After the October 7 Hamas pogrom, with the barbaric slaughter of 1,400 men, women and children in southern Israel and the kidnapping into Gaza of more than 220 souls, decent people in the west have been horrified by the massive displays of jubilant bloodlust on the streets of London, New York, Sydney and elsewhere.

They have suddenly realised that there are thousands of their citizens who support Hamas and who call genocide against the Jews “resistance”.

Every day has brought fresh signs of an anti-Jewish psychopathy within their own societies. Countless thousands don’t appear to recognise that Jewish victims of genocidal attack are entitled to human sympathy.

In Britain and America, young people have been tearing down posters bearing pictures of  some of the kidnapped Israeli children.

Over the tannoy on a London Tube train, a driver led a chant of “Free Palestine” among cheering passengers on their way to demonstrate against an Israel that is being targeted by genocidal attack.

At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., messages including “Glory to Our Martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist Genocide Now” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” were projected for two hours on to the side of a library building.

Police and other authorities have been struggling to protect Jews from the rampant antisemitism that is now brazen, open and ubiquitous.

At Cooper Union College in New York, security officers had to lock Jewish students in the school library against threats from pro-Hamas students, eventually using tunnels to smuggle them out.

In Australia, where a mob chanted “Gas the Jews” in front of the Sydney Opera House, the police advised the Jewish community to “stay home” for their own safety.

In Germany, there have been mass arrests of pro-Hamas demonstrators. In France, President Emanuel Macron is threatening to deport Muslim demonstrators with dual nationality.

Those who are shocked and appalled by this savage support for Hamas observe that it is mainly coming from Muslim fellow-citizens but is also echoed by western “liberals”.

Even though Hamas is committing war crimes by using Gazan civilians as human shields, western “progressives” are accusing Israel of war crimes. Even though Israel has been warning Gazan civilians to flee for their own safety as required by international law, Israel is being accused of breaking international law.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4279277-joe-biden-fights-the-fed/

That’s the takeaway from the most recent report on the economy, showing that the third quarter grew more rapidly than expected in spite of rising interest rates. One reason is obvious: the president and his Democrat allies continue to pump up government spending, boosting growth, even as the Federal Reserve says a slowdown may be necessary to tame inflation “sustainably.”    

Investors are not happy. Stocks are nearing correction territory, down roughly 10 percent from the highs of the summer. There are concerns that interest rate cuts, which might propel another earnings surge and another market rally, are not likely any time soon. 

Simply put, soaring government spending has put the economy on a sugar high.  

In the third quarter, total real GDP grew 2.9 percent year-over-year; federal outlays accelerated, growing 5.5 percent over the year-earlier quarter. It was the largest jump since the height of the pandemic, when Congress and the Trump administration threw everything possible into the economy to stave off a deep recession. It worked; the U.S. experienced a very sharp downdraft when the government decreed that businesses had to shut down, but then it bounced back quickly, thanks to enormous government stimulus spending.  

What has gone so very wrong under President Biden is that federal and local government spending is still growing dramatically, even though the crisis has passed. Some of the increase in the most recent quarter stemmed from national defense spending, reflecting the war in Ukraine, which climbed 4.9 percent year-to-year in real terms. But more consequential was a 6.3 percent boost in nondefense spending. State and local government spending expanded 3.9 percent.  

None of this is surprising. Joe Biden has a singular approach to every issue: spend more money, even as inflation eats away at real incomes.  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12681617/What-irony-deranged-defence-Hamas-campuses-West-fuelling-counter-revolution-finally-loosen-stranglehold-wokeism.html

Has wokeism jumped the shark? In other words, have the radical Leftists who for years have exercised increasing power in our universities finally gone too far?

I dare to hope so. The recent disgraceful responses to the attacks on Israel that we have seen — from American university campuses to the streets of London and Sydney — have dramatically increased awareness that something is rotten in the state of higher education in the English-speaking world.

Some of us have been battling against the ideological takeover of academia for close to a decade. Each year, we have been getting better organised. But we have struggled to convince people in the real world just how bad things are.

The past three weeks may finally have changed that.

The expression ‘jump the shark’ was coined in 1977 when the scriptwriters of long-running comedy series Happy Days — into their fifth series and getting short of ideas — tried to pep up the storyline by having the main character, Fonzie, preposterously jump over a shark while on water-skis.

‘It is only now people outside academia are noticing – The campus Left’s response to the attacks of October 7 was equally far-fetched and over-the-top — but immeasurably more offensive’

The campus Left’s response to the attacks of October 7 was equally far-fetched and over-the-top — but immeasurably more offensive.

Let’s remind ourselves what happened three weeks ago. Two Gaza-based terrorist groups inspired by Islamist ideology, committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and backed by at least one government, staged a trailer for a second Holocaust. In their savagery, they exceeded even the horrors perpetrated by the Russian butchers of Bucha in Ukraine.

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.