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‘Tactical Patience,’ ‘Zero Casualties’ and Still no Goal By Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

The peak of lunacy in the American fight against ISIS may have been reached.

Remember that in October 2013, with ISIS bearing down on a Yazidi city in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby told reporters U.S. air power wouldn’t save Kobane, but that there was a “larger strategy” in place. “The primary goal of the campaign is not to save Syrian cities and towns,” U.S. Central Command officials echoed, “but to go after ISIS senior leadership, oil refineries, and other infrastructure that would curb the group’s ability to operate.” Individuals caught in the maelstrom were just unfortunate.

Last week, U.S. forces took out 116 of about 300 ISIS oil tanker trucks headed for Turkey. Not bad? Oh, yes it was – and it explains a lot about the ineffectual “war” we fighting.

Asked by The Washington Examiner why it took 14 months of air warfare to make the first strike on oil tanker trucks, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren replied that American officials were deeply worried about harming the truck drivers, who were working for the Islamic State but might not be ISIS themselves. U.S. officials settled on a plan to drop leaflets on the trucks about 45 minutes before the raid, warning the drivers that an attack was coming, while U.S. pilots flew low passes over the area. Planning all that took time.

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We’ll Always Have the Illusions of Paris The climate talks will have zero impact on global temperatures.

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

The running melodrama of the world climate-change talks reassembled in Paris this week, and word from the worthies is that this time the 196 nations are poised for a momentous breakthrough. Well, not quite. The politicians want a deal so badly that they’ll accept anything that can pass as one, but it won’t amount to much.

Not that you’d know this from the grandiose rhetoric. President Obama called it an historical “turning point,” the “moment we finally determined we would save our planet.” French President François Hollande declared: “Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, since what is at stake is the future of the planet, the future of life.” And Pope Francis chimed in that “if I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the edge of suicide.” The theme is Apocalypse Right Now.
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The last climate talks collapsed in 2009 amid differences between rich and developing nations. The International Energy Agency estimates developing countries will emit 70% of world CO2 by 2030 and contribute 170% of emissions increases between now and then. Without their participation in a deal, atmospheric CO2 will continue to accumulate whatever the U.S. does.

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An Alternative to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Narrative Black activists in the 300 Men March are working with police instead of antagonizing them. Jason Riley

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

“We have one message,” Brandon Scott tells me. “We must stop killing each other. We’re not focused on any other issue.”

Mr. Scott is a city councilman in Baltimore, where jury selection began Monday in the trial of the first of six police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray in April. The deaths of Gray and other young black men who encountered police have prompted nationwide protests and ample media coverage over the past year. But Mr. Scott says that “it is unhelpful to only talk about the police behavior. For the most part in Baltimore, the violence is citizen-on-citizen.”

To that end, Mr. Scott and Munir Bahar, a community activist, co-founded 300 Men March, a volunteer organization that trains young men to patrol tough neighborhoods, urges kids to reject gang culture, and calls attention to the far more common inner-city violence that doesn’t involve police. The group, started in 2013, holds a yearly march in honor of the hundreds of annual victims of gun violence perpetrated mostly by gangs and drug crews in the city. Members sport T-shirts emblazoned with the simple message: We Must Stop Killing Each Other.

Mr. Scott stresses that reaching the men in these neighborhoods is key. “For far too long in Baltimore and many cities across the country, overwhelmingly the work at the community level has been done by women,” he says. “This is about getting men involved. When men are consistently engaged in a community and are present, a lot of the nonsense doesn’t take place.”

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Sanction North Korea’s Forgotten Maniac Kim Jong Un has fallen out of the news, which only allows the threat posed by his regime to grow. By Sen.Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) see note please

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

Senator Gardner was a Congressman who defeated Mark Udall the Incumbent Democrat Senator in 2014…rsk
Chaos in the Middle East has diverted Western eyes, but Kim Jong Un’s reign of terror in North Korea continues. Last month one high-ranking official was conspicuously absent from an important military funeral, leading to speculation of a new purge. On Oct. 10, North Korea marked the 70th anniversary of its ruling Workers’ Party with a military parade. “Our party can confidently state,” Mr. Kim said in a speech, “that our revolutionary armament today can deal with any kind of war U.S. imperialists ask for.”

It is time for the U.S. to counter this forgotten maniac. North Korea is a proliferator that has tested nuclear weapons on three separate occasions in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. This past weekend it test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine. That attempt failed, but Mr. Kim will try again. “They have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on a rocket that can range the homelands,” Adm. William Gortney, head of the U.S. Northern Command, said in October.

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Those Israel Boycotts Are Illegal In many cases, educational associations that shun Israel may be sued for violating their charters. By Eugene Kontorovich And Steven Davidoff Solomon

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) voted on Nov. 20 to boycott Israel, though the resolution—which would prohibit Israeli academic institutions from any involvement in the organization, such as participation in conferences and hiring events—must still be approved by the group’s full membership in coming months. Ten days later the National Women’s Studies Association voted to call for a boycott of “entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel.” Boycott votes are also scheduled at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association.

The moral myopia and academic perversity of these boycotts have been widely discussed. Less well understood is that in many cases they also are illegal. Under corporate law, an organization, including a nonprofit, can do only what is permitted under the purposes specified in its charter.

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America the Indispensable Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.By Rupert Murdoch

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

Before I thank Henry Kissinger, and before delivering my modest message, I feel obliged to alert college students, progressive academics and all other deeply sensitive souls that these words may contain phrases and ideas that challenge your prejudices. In other words, I formally declare this room an “unsafe space.”

I was honored when the Hudson Institute asked me to address this gathering, particularly as you, Henry, agreed to make the introduction—at the very least I knew that you would be diplomatic. Having been in China recently, and spent some time with President Xi Jinping, it is very clear to me how much China has changed and how much Henry played a role in that change.

And beyond China’s borders, your insightful volumes have taught us much on the arts of diplomacy and the profound role played by leaders and leadership, a quality in somewhat short supply today.

Leaders sense when difficult decisions must be taken, and that is a rare quality in an age too often defined by narcissism. No leader will fight for values, for principles, if their government is a value-free vacuum. Moral relativism is morally wrong.

For a U.S. secretary of state to suggest that Islamic terrorists had a “rationale” in slaughtering journalists is one of the low points of recent Western diplomacy, and it is indicative of a serious malaise.

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David Archibald Boots On The Ground. What Next?

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

For civilisation to continue in the civilised parts of the world, we have to seal off the Middle East and the pestilence it nurtures. The sooner we start that process, the better. The latest barbarities in Paris are a good enough excuse>
At the time of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush asked rhetorically if the Iraqi people deserved to be ruled by dictators in perpetuity. Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to embrace democracy and appreciate its benefits, as in the good countries on the planet? Subsequent events proved those liberated from Saddam Hussein unable and unwilling to set aside their tribal hatreds and religious animosities, in effect proving President Bush wrong.

Cut to the current day. Parts of Iraq and Syria are now controlled by ISIS which does the basic functions of a state, including collecting garbage, running schools and hospitals, and so on. ISIS also likes to inflict murder and mayhem on other countries near and far. The state of ISIS runs at a loss so it is kept in business by funding originating in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and by support from Turkey and the United States.

You read the last bit correctly. ISIS does not grow enough food to keep body and soul together. Starvation is averted by imported grain, supply of which is organised by UN agencies with the full approval of the United States. At the same time the United States is conducting an air campaign against ISIS — but that is more aimed at behaviour modification of the regime, rather than changing facts on the ground. Australia is contributing to this Children’s Crusade-level endeavour, with our aircraft operating under rules of engagement which make them ineffectual.

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John Izzard :Maurice Strong, Climate Crook

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

The consummate sleazebag, thief and all-round corruptocrat who launched and shaped the UN effort to rid the world of CO2 has died, appropriately enough as his heirs gather in Paris to rob the world blind. Good riddance
Editor’s note: Five years ago, Quadrant Online published this profile of Maurice Strong (left), the man who, more than any other, redefined a trace gas as the meal ticket for tens of thousands of climate functionaries — the same people whose light-fingered heirs are today gathered in Paris. To mark his passing, we once again present John Izzard’s profile of the man who did very nicely by costing everyone else dearly.

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The Yellow Brick Road to Climate Change

January has certainly been a defining month in the quest for truth about climate change, and the custodians of that “truth” aren’t looking that flash at the moment. Indeed in the month of January some of the major doomsday prophecies unravelled and the prophets themselves seemed to undergo vows of silence. Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong, Tim Flannery — who are never lost for words — seemed, well… totally lost for words!

Like Dorothy, Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, we’ve all been dancing down the Yellow Brick Road of “settled science” in search of answers from the Emerald City, only to find that what we suspected all along — the Wizard has been telling us fibs.

But who exactly is the Wizard? And where did this seeming-madness all begin?

Undoubtedly there are many “wizards”, but the man behind the green curtain, the man who managed to get the climate industry to where it is today is a mild mannered character by the name of Maurice Strong. The whole climate change business, and it is a business, started with Mr Strong.

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Open doors and open perils Robert Wargas See note please

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

The Schengen Agreement led to Europe’s borderless Schengen Area. comprising 26 European countries that have abolished passport and any other type of border control at their common borders, also referred to as internal borders. It mostly functions as a single country for international travel purposes. rsk
Watching all the videos and news coverage of Americans blitzing the stores on the day after Thanksgiving, the day we know as Black Friday, I found myself thinking about our priorities. The news cycle reminds me daily that they aren’t quite in order. I learned last Friday from Reuters that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the malevolent author of the latest terrorist attacks in Paris, “boasted of the ease with which he had re-entered Europe from Syria via Greece two months earlier, exploiting the confusion of the migrant crisis and the continent’s passport-free Schengen system….”

Now, I know there are some who really think the Schengen Agreement is an indispensable part of the newer, better, enlightened Europe. But I’m going to be straight with you about this: it strikes me as odd that anyone could place so much emphasis on passport-free travel as a measure of our civilisation’s moral worth. After all, those most likely to be titillated by the Schengen ideal are generally the same people who think the government should decide what kind of lightbulbs we use in our homes. How odd that these obsessed micro-managers become total anarchists at the border, one of the few places the state should have a say.

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SYDNEY WILLIAMS: NOVEMBER THE MONTH THAT WAS

Posted By on December 2nd, 2015

Paris may not have burned, but it came under attack again by ruthless, Godless Islamic radicals. One hundred and thirty – mostly young – people were murdered in six incidents on Friday, the 13th of November. This was only the latest in a series of killings by terrorists invoking Islam as reason and cause. Earlier they had downed a Russian airliner and a few days later 41 Shiite Muslims were killed by two suicide Islamic terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. Religion is a great comfort for those in need of spiritual uplift. It does far more good than harm. But religion, throughout the centuries, has also been a cause of wars, something we should not forget. The horror the world is now experiencing will not end until peace-loving Muslims assert leadership. And it will not end as long as the West fails to connect Islam with the terror and the desire for a caliphate that some of its members’ advocate.

After the Charlie Hebdo massacres, Western leaders traveled to Paris to march in solidarity. Millions of people wore signs, “I am Charlie.” In April, 2014, 200 school girls in Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Like the “I am Charlie” signs, millions of people, including Michelle Obama, posted the hashtag, “save our girls.” That was the extent of the West’s involvement – feel-good symbols that made the wearer feel sanctimonious, but did nothing for the victims. This time there have been neither marches nor signs

Equally disturbing, though less deadly, have been the obsequious Uriah Heep’s that pass for college administrators and professors in many of our colleges and universities. Protests have risen supporting the concept of “safe places,” places where students can be assured of never hearing words that make them uncomfortable or feeling vulnerable. Yale president Peter Salovey sent an e-mail to his university’s community, which captured today’s campuses fawning, liberal orthodoxy. In the e-mail he apologized for the university, and said the he is committed “to a campus where hatred and discrimination are never tolerated.” In fact, he was yielding to a subtler, but equally insidious form of intolerance – toward those whose ideas do not conform with the liberal perspective that dominates his university. He wants a place where the prejudices of “victims” are never challenged – an institution that prefers the comfort of a student’s psyche to the confrontation of ideas. In doing so, he encourages fragility among his students. Whatever happened to the nursery rhyme my mother used to recite: “sticks and stones will break my bones…” Is Yale preparing its young women and men for the world outside its college gates?