#1
Women know I have more money than I have. They know I love their angry man hating friends. They know I will accept paternity of their black children although I am not black. Uh. Yeah....
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 4:59 Comments ||
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#2
And they know that woman is better than a man - in doing male job.
[Guardian] The climate emergency is a "challenge of civilisation" requiring sweeping changes to economic systems, but political leaders have not done enough, the pope has said in a message to governments meeting at the annual climate summit in Madrid.
"We must seriously ask ourselves if there is the political will to allocate with honesty, responsibility and courage, more human, financial and technological resources [to the climate crisis]," he said, in the pontifical message, which was welcomed by activists.
"Numerous studies tell us it is still possible to limit global warming. To do this we need a clear, far-sighted and strong political will, set on pursuing a new course that aims at refocusing financial and economic investments toward those areas that truly safeguard the conditions of a life worthy of humanity on a healthy planet for today and tomorrow."
He put particular emphasis on the role of young people, who "show a heightened sensitivity to the complex problems that arise from this emergency. We must not place the burden on the next generations to take on the problems caused by the previous ones."
As a small state, the Vatican has observer status at the talks, so the pope is able to send a representative but has no voting rights on key decisions. As an Argentinian, Pope Francis’s words carried particular resonance as this is still regarded as a Latin American COP, despite the last-minute change of venue from Chile to Madrid following political unrest in Santiago.
#4
The best way to counteract this nonsense is to go back and read The Limits to Growth, published in 1975 (or thereabouts) by the Club of Rome, which predicted dates when the world would run out of just about everything. It was terrifying in 1975 but hilarious in 2019, when all of their deadlines have long since passed. Fool me once, you know...
Posted by: Tom ||
12/08/2019 11:34 Comments ||
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#5
This Pope has totally lost it.
His only job was to cleanse the church of the child molesters.
It is not his job to re-write the Bible or make up sins from whole cloth. This is how you got into trouble in the first place.
There is also, for additional amusement, a 30-years-later update from the original authors using the same modelling approach on faster computers: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. It should be subtitled NOW WITH IMPROVED PANICKING!!!. Even the book blurb at the link is laughable.
#9
My career included 20 yrs of system auditing in one form or another.
Until I see a valid audit done of all these "models" I don't believe a word from their pushers.
The few code fragments in the climate gate fiasco that was the University of East Anglia included 3 screaming, flashing, warning lights of fraud that were never addressed, yes I can read Fortran.
#10
The few code fragments in the climate gate fiasco that was the University of East Anglia included 3 screaming, flashing, warning lights of fraud that were never addressed, yes I can read Fortran.
I saw some of that janky code. Big arrays of temperatures being "adjusted" for no obvious reason and not a code comment in sight.
[AlAhram] The transitional government in Sudan is moving painfully slow in curtailing Moslem Brüderbund influence ‐ a seeming reluctance that may return to haunt the country.
Sudan’s transitional government has made considerable strides in pushing back the influence the Moslem Brüderbund gained under the Omar al-Bashir ...Former President-for-Life of Sudan He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself head cheese. He fell out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Hee was overthrown by popular consent in 2019. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it... regime. But if it has succeeded in closing some avenues that the Moslem Brüderbund and its affiliates had controlled for so long, it is still a matter of debate as to whether it will be possible to take the necessary measures to forestall the infiltration of Moslem Brüderbund members and allies into government institutions.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2019 00:00 ||
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Hattip to badanov. Long, with map and video, so get a large cup of coffee or your favourite equivalent, dear Reader, and enjoy some Sunday reading.
[SouthFront] The situation in the Sahel region is rapidly deteriorating and the region is about to turn into the zone of chaos and terrorism. According to the US, EU and the UN, it is becoming the new global frontline in the fight against terror, but the current news of the region are discouraging, at best.
The Sahel region is an area situated between North African countries and those of sub-Saharan Africa.
The countries that are most afflicted by violence from armed jihadist groups are Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso, for example, has recorded more than 700 deaths and 500,000 internally displaced persons and refugees as a result of incursions by armed groups since 2015.
This would never have happened if it was still Upper Volta
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2019 12:50:59 AM ||
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[Barely a Blog] The "family of London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan ’totally condemn his actions,’" but the father of Khan’s victim, David Merritt, is too busy condemning those who wish to condemn Khan and his ilk to life in a cell.
Usman Khan slaughtered Jack Merritt on November 29. Come December 2, the lad’s dad, David Merritt, was already penning woke op-eds about clemency and leniency for prisoners like killer Khan.
This minute-made forgiveness, claimed Merritt senior, sanctimoniously, would have been Jack’s wish. By calling his son’s murder a "tragic incident," Merritt senior also minimizes what was murder with malice aforethought.
How obscene is the progressive mindset!
Wrote Mr. Merritt sanctimoniously:
If Jack could comment on his death ‐ and the tragic incident on Friday 29 November ‐ he would be livid. We would see him ticking it over in his mind before a word was uttered between us. Jack would understand the political timing with visceral clarity.
He would be seething at his death, and his life, being used to perpetuate an agenda of hate that he gave his everything fighting against. We should never forget that. What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens.
That door opens up a world where we do not lock up and throw away the key. Where we do not give indeterminate sentences, or convict people on joint enterprise. Where we do not slash prison budgets, and where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge. Where we do not consistently undermine our public services, the lifeline of our nation. Jack believed in the inherent goodness of humanity, and felt a deep social responsibility to protect that.
Compared to such woke sentiments, the family of the London-Bridge Killer was mundane in its normal and correct expiation:
"We are saddened and shocked by what Usman has done," said the family . "We totally condemn his actions and we wish to express our condolences to the families of the victims that have died and wish a speedy recovery to all of the injured."
No need to apologize. Speaking for his dead son, David Merritt appears to have already made peace with his killer. (Dad, if you ask me, is rather presumptuous in speaking for his son.)
Jack, apparently, had "devoted his energy to the purpose of ’Learning Together: a pioneering programme to bring students from university and prisons together to share their unique perspectives on justice.'"
If young Merritt’s murder proves anything it is that Cambridge University’s social justice outreach, Learning Together, is a costly indulgence.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
12/08/2019 01:42 ||
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#1
What Jack would want from this is for all of us to walk through the door he has booted down, in his black Doc Martens.
I'm sorry for the man's loss.
That said, what kind of grieving father would write such fulsome nonsense as this - barely 48 hours after his son's murder by a terrorist?
Was this idiotic tripe already published somewhere? Did he rip it off from some PC version of a dime novel? (Is that essentially what the Marvekcheritage
#2
Merrit's just like people who would disown their child for "disgracing the family". He places his social position above the lives of his children.
And I submit you cannot "rehabilitate" jihadis and other political criminals. They did not commit crimes of passion -- they carefully planned and plotted, and came up with justifications for their violence.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
12/08/2019 2:19 Comments ||
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Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 4:47 Comments ||
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#7
I'm sorry for the man's loss.
I'm not. In my experience people like him are very good at getting other people's kids killed. And, in any case, an apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.
#9
I just saw his rambling about BoJo and can't help but think if a cheque from Corbyn was involved. I wouldn't put it past such a man. None of these altruistic sounding eulogies to his son sound sincere to me.
#11
Dumbass, it's bad enough that you don't mind yourself and your loved ones being killed by jihadis. But the rest of us would prefer to keep these mad barbarians where they cannot harm us. After all, providing for the security of its citizens is one of the primary functions of a civilized society. If you cannot understand or appreciate that, maybe you should move to the Middle Eastern cat box of your choice, live among the barbarians whom you love so much and leave the rest of us alone.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2019 15:07 Comments ||
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#12
The father is speaking from the cozy comfort of his bubble. It is sad.
[Epoch Times] The Chinese communist regime is heading towards disintegration and the West needs to be prepared to manage the fallout, according to a leading China scholar.
Arthur Waldron, China historian and Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, made the remarks in a recent interview on The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders. He shared his views on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) imminent collapse, U.S. foreign policy on China, and the relentless Hong Kong protests that have posed a major challenge to Beijing’s rule.
The CCP has started on a path of decline and is headed towards a similar fate as the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991, the professor said.
"I believe that China is in this stage of disintegration or ’jie ti (解體)’, and it’s something that you don’t see immediately," said Waldron.
The Chinese regime’s practice of forced organ harvesting‐which results in an estimated tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience killed every year to supply its organ transplant market‐and its treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, made it "the most evil regime" since the Nazi Germany, Waldron said.
He recalled a conversation with an unidentified person, who is a close advisor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
"He said to me, Arthur, what the hell are we going to do? Everybody knows that this [political] system doesn’t work. We have reached a "si hu tong" (死胡同)," said Waldron said, explaining that the Chinese phrase means a "dead-end street."
The advisor continued: "But what we don’t know is what is the next step to take because ... there are mines everywhere and if we take a step, we may set off a terrible explosion."
The Chinese economy is not high-flying as it used to be. The country’s third-quarter (GDP) growth rose 6.0 percent year-on-year, the slowest rate in 27 years. According to Reuters, the growth decline was attributed by economists to weakness in export-related industries, particularly the manufacturing sector.
"This regime knows it’s in grave peril, domestically," Waldron said, before adding "So the real intellectual problem is how do you exit communism?"
#3
Now I'm not saying that Xi haven't lost the Mandate of Heaven. However, this doesn't mean China disintegrating - all it means that I expect to read, within a few months, that the revered leader died of heart failure - because he worked so hard on behalf of the People. And the replacement will be a lot more Deng-like than Mao-like.
#5
If it does crump, the PRC won't go quietly like the Soviet Empire. Every one star general and not a few colonels will try to carve out their own little slice of Heaven, Mandate or no.
#6
Cush would be advised to forgate about Mandates and start concentrating on their waalking shoes. When they do this, and they always do, they get broken into a million pieces.
Victor Davis Hanson lays it out for us in his inimitable style — this time covering China, Iran, and North Korea. A taste to tempt you to go to the link and read the whole thing:
[NationalReview] Donald Trump promised to shake up U.S. foreign policy. He has certainly done that from the Middle East to Asia. The U.S. is currently engaged in a three-front, maximum-pressure standoff with China, Iran, and North Korea ‐ involving everything from tariffs to possible military action and the strictest sanctions in memory.
At first, Trump critics saw these policy recalibrations as either impotent or counterproductive. Pessimists asserted that China, with a population four times the size of the United States’, was fated for world hegemony. Why antagonize those who might soon control our political and economic future?
Bipartisan experts talked not of the heresy of "stopping" China’s ascendance, but of "managing" America’s relative decline. Translated, the implicit policy conceded that the U.S., in its trade concessions, should overlook systematic Chinese trade surpluses, flagrant violations of world commercial norms, neocolonial provocations throughout Asia, stealing U.S. patents and copyrights, product dumping, currency manipulation, and technological appropriation. Supposedly, the more we appeased China through acts of magnanimity, the more they would reciprocate by becoming like us.
Our classic model for China’s supplanting the U.S. was the prior gradual hand-off of world hegemony from the British Empire to the Americans, as the United Kingdom in the 1940s tutored us on our global responsibilities and tried to play Athenian philosophers to our Roman legions.
The canard was that there was no alternative to appeasement, given China’s more dynamic economy and cold-hearted efficiency ‐ so beloved by progressives when it came to Beijing’s construction by fiat of high-speed rail, shiny airports, and solar and wind farms. Trump, we were told, was a ridiculous Quixote tilting at Chinese windmills, with his 19th-century talk of counterproductive "tariffs" and ossified "trade wars."
Not now. The U.S. economy is still humming. The stock market is at record highs. Unemployment stays at near-record peacetime lows. Oil and gas production is beyond anyone’s wildest imagination just a few years ago. The Chinese economy, from what we can tell from its state-controlled media and censored state agencies, is slowing down. Human-rights activists are coming out of the shadows to damn China’s reeducation camps. Riots continue in Hong Kong, along with Orwellian surveillance of China’s own citizens at home.
Beijing’s only hesitation in seeking an armistice seems to come from an expectation that Trump will not be reelected and that a Democratic administration will return to the status quo ‐ even as China claims that it sees Trump as an easily manipulated patsy. The bottom line is that China views the present recalibration as intolerable and is desperately seeking some way to nullify it.
So we are entering dangerous territory not because we are losing our trade war with China, but because we are beginning to win it. Xi Jinping not Trump has overplayed his hand. The Chinese know that they cannot end the standoff by returning to the former asymmetrical status quo. Nor can they embrace a new fair relationship ‐ it would be antithetical to the very means by which China obtained its enormous wealth in the first place. Something then has to give.
And the bow tying up the whole thing:
In the next few months, we should expect a major provocation from either an increasingly beleaguered Iran or a flummoxed North Korea ‐ and some sort of desperate quid pro quo from China presented as a last chance, a rare and magnanimous offer to stop the tariffs so "we can all just get along."
Trump should stay the course and not let up until he achieves the original aim of his maximum pressure campaign. Nothing is more dangerous than to enter an existential standoff, feel momentum accruing, and then appease and grant concessions that destroy all prior sacrifice that heretofore had been finally paying off. Instead, he should expect our strapped adversaries at some point to do their worst, and then meet that challenge with our best ‐ and ensure that our adversaries in their decline lack the power to take us down with them.
#1
Of all the wrongheaded, misguided, self-destructive follies perpetrated by our political elites over the last 30 years, building up China stands out as the stupidest.
#3
Why antagonize those who might soon control our political and economic future?
Uh, because it might not be too cool when they do.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/08/2019 15:21 Comments ||
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#4
I think that Trump has been reading Peter Zeihan's book, The Accidental Superpower, or talking to him about the concepts.
He has been shaking up those that have been taking advantage of the US by calling their bluff and informing the other countries that the US will have fair bilateral relationships only.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/08/2019 20:13 Comments ||
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[AlAhram] Dina Ezzat reviews a book by Turkish historian Soner Cagaptay that tries to explain the peculiar case of Erdogan and its impact on the future of his country as a modern state rather than a head of a 'political Islam' empire.
A “democratic” Muslim-majority country with notable ethnic diversity, a NATO member, and a former colonial power of the Arab and other Muslim countries, Turkey is a very complex state.
However, even by these standards over the past 15 years and since Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 when he amended the Turkish constitution to allow himself to be president, Turkey has received an enormous amount of world and regional attention.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/08/2019 00:00 ||
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#1
More like the new Khadafi, just with more armor.
[NYP] A professor who has accurately predicted the winner of eight of the last nine presidential elections says 2020 is still officially "too close to call."
"This is a very close and very difficult call. I don’t think either the Democrats or the Republicans should be sending up any victory flags at this point," Allan J. Lichtman, a political historian at American University, told The Post. "Too much is still up in the air and in the age of Trump, things can change very quickly."
Lichtman, 72, has become a cult figure in American politics for developing a set of 13 criteria which he has used to make his prediction. Metrics include things like scandal, foreign military failure and social unrest. The theory is laid out in his 1996 book "The Keys to the White House." The system was able to predict Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection back in 1982 ‐ during a recession.
(In 2000, he predicted Al Gore would win the popular vote, though tripped up on the ultimate outcome of the electoral college. Something he still doesn’t accept. "2000 was a stolen election," he says.)
#1
Hold on there, Perfesser - according to your own decision rule / criteria, it is not even close. We get it: everyone around Prof. Lichtman, all those in all his circles, professional and social, hates OrangeMan and therefore the Professor can't follow logic and evidence where they lead without destroying himself professionally and socially.
But eppur si muovo.
These are Prof. Allan Lichtman's 13 binary factors, or "jets" as he calls them. Per Prof. Lichtman, if the incumbent is running, then any 6 of these "keys," if TRUE, will predict re-election.
Let's review -- dispassionately, with no shading or virtue-signaling BS allowed. Count the TRUEs, using cold logic and
solid evidence:
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. FALSE
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. TRUE #1
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. TRUE #2
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. TRUE #3
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. TRUE, in spades #4
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. TRUE #5
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy. (debatable)
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. TRUE #6 ... Panty-Fa =/= secession or the burning cities and multiple assassinations (MLK, RFK) of 1968
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. TRUE but let's not count this, as half the country thinks the existence of IrangeMan is itself a scandal
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. TRUE #7
Nb. We're already ABOVE Prof. Lichtnan's threshold of 6 "True" statements for the incumbent to be likely to be re-elected, but let's continue...
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. (debatable)
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE #8
Prof. Lichtnan, your test threshold was SIX out if 13. Even being generous to the Anti-Trumpers, using your own criteria I come up with an unbiased total of EIGHT "True" statements.
Sorry but it's not "too close to call." It's Trump's to lose.
#3
...Donk controlled states have outright legislated that federal electors have to vote a certain way. When in this country has the government had any authority to tell any voter how to vote?
You misconstrue the nature of Electors. They are agents of the State they represent, not unfettered voters. In that scheme the States themselves set the rules for their Electors as to how they vote. Some States its a winner take all deal. Others its proportional.
#5
Donk controlled states have outright legislated that federal electors have to vote a certain way.
You mean the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Procopius2k. They seem stalled at 196 electoral college votes (36%), with another eight states (90 votes/17%) having bills still underway in various state legislatures that are probably more Republican than when the process started.
Pick up the news. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in a 2-1 decision against the Colorado secretary of state in a case stemming from the 2016 presidential race.
The appeals court ruled that the Constitution provides “presidential electors the right to cast a vote for president and vice president with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.” - cite.
Very few Americans are able or willing to state their true political opinions anymore, for fear of jeopardizing their personal and professional relationships and reputation.
Lichtman is a social science professor in Washington DC. His circle is almost certainly over 90% Trump-haters -- maybe 100%.
He cannot possibly state the truth, that Trump is the overwhelming favorite and that the polls severely understate Trump's support, without incurring a sh!tstorm of denunciation and bitter attacks (and even worse) upon his head.
[PJ] Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, an aviation officer in the Saudi Air Force, opened fire at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, killing four people and wounding many others. In doing so, he showed yet again that the prevailing politically correct obfuscation and denial regarding the jihad threat is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. If we had a realistic approach to the jihad threat, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani’s victims would be alive today.
Before he embarked upon his killing spree, someone who appeared to be Alshamrani ranted on Twitter about the evils of America. First, he rejected the George W. Bush explanation for jihad terrorism, "They hate us because of our freedom": "O American people ‐ I’m not against you for being American, I don’t hate you because your freedoms, I hate you because every day you [sic] supporting, funding and committing crimes not only against Muslims but against humanity."
Alshamrani went on to elucidate exactly what those crimes were: "What I see from America is the supporting of Israel which is invasion of Muslim countrie [sic], I see invasion of many countries by it’s [sic] troops, I see Guantanamo Bay. I see cruise missiles, cluster bombs and UAV." He added: "I’m against evil, and America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil."
This statement, if it did indeed come from Alshamrani, as appears likely, makes clear that he was a jihad terrorist. He was killing because of America’s supposed crimes against Muslims; that rules out the alternative explanation for his acts, that he was lashing out after some negative incident or mistreatment at the Naval Air Station.
Many credulous Americans, meanwhile, will believe his list of grievances, and think that if we just stop committing these supposed "crimes," that the jihad will disappear. Actually, grievance lists such as Alshamrani’s are common from jihadis, who have to couch their jihads as defensive in the absence of a caliphate. In Sunni law, only the caliph can declare offensive jihad. So when there is no caliph, all jihad must be defensive. The enumerated grievances are pretexts that enable a jihadi lawfully to kill in accordance with Islamic law.
Alshamrani was in the country to get aviation training. No one flagged him as a potential jihadi. No one would even have dared to question him to try to ascertain his thoughts about the United States and the global jihad. Any effort to have done so would have been denounced as "Islamophobic," and would have been career suicide for whoever did the questioning.
We saw this with the Fort Hood jihad mass murderer, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was praised and promoted despite alarming his colleagues with his talk of violent jihad. None of his superiors dared do anything except promote him; they knew that if they questioned him about his loyalties, they would be the subject of a CNN feature story the next week on "Islamophobia in the Military," and they would be looking at a dishonorable discharge.
#6
Me also. The old woman wants to live. She isn't worried about shaming her fambly.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 4:44 Comments ||
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#7
Pensacola Jihad Massacre Proves We've Learned Nothing Since the Fort Hood Attack
Frankly, I don't think we've learned a damn thing since Yassir Arafat and his crew started hijacking airplanes more than 50 years ago.
Muslims don't hate us because of anything we've done to them, or anything we've failed to do for them; they hate us because their evil "religion" tells them to.
We need to stop this idiotic Stockholm Syndrome habit of thinking that "if only we were nicer to the poor Muslims and show them how inclusive we are, they won't hate us so much" and replace it with "let them hate us, so long as they fear us."
Posted by: Dave D. ||
12/08/2019 6:22 Comments ||
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#8
I think "most of us" had it figured out a long time ago. We just don't happen to have a say in the matter...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 8:55 Comments ||
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#9
Pisslam is a religion of peace. Thanks boosh...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 8:56 Comments ||
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#10
#8 Murcek for the win.
Most Americans still have common sense. It's our idiot political class and virtue-signaling morons in the press and other left-dominated institutions who've refused to see the obvious.
#11
Agree with you Lex #10 - Libs think if we would just give in a little they would come around - NOT - will never happen that way. These muslims will take a mile if we give an inch. The only thing they might possibly "understand" is if we pounded them all into sand - we just might be able to put the fear of "Allah" into them.
[Dawn] WITH the passage of four months since New Delhi put India-held Kashmir ...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there.... under lockdown, another grim milestone has been passed. While the people of the forsaken Valley suffocate under India’s stifling restrictions, there is no sign that those who call the shots are willing to relent. As pointed out by the Foreign Office on Friday, the situation in IHK is getting worse, as millions of Kashmiris continue to live in an open-air prison. In fact, it would not be wrong to compare the situation in Indian Kashmire to the miserable plight of the Paleostinian enclave of Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , where similar restrictions on fundamental rights are enforced by the Israeli military machine. Perhaps this is not coincidental, as an Indian diplomat in the US was recently quoted as saying that his country should follow the ’Israeli model’ in Kashmir; it is evident that quite a few of Tel Aviv’s brutal tactics are being replicated by the Hindutva-infused government in New Delhi.
Continued on Page 49
[IsraelNationalNews] Countries gone to the bad through hating Israel can fill a page, but how does it work? Rulers hate a slither of a Jewish homeland, and a whole country goes up in smoke? Who or what turns the screws and afflicts: God or man?
In anyone’s book such a claim is a strange, if not spurious one to make. Yet I have made the claim that a prosperous country at the tip of Africa went to wrack and ruin, and that an anti-Israel record played no small part. IMO, it's a package deal - whose who hate civilization (for not being perfect), also hate Jews
...In the words of Hannah Arendt, the great scholar on totalitarianism, the Final Solution was not a part of Germany’s war effort; instead it was fully equal to the effort. The German high command thought nothing of diverting resources needed for victory to the higher priority of putting "cockroaches" to death. Operation Barbarossa was a turning down point. Trains needed to keep the army going were diverted to transport Jews to death camps. Hitler let his troops perish in the Russian winter so that trains to the gas chambers would continue to run and oven chimneys continue to smoke.
...To look for self-defeating behaviour at work we don’t have to go back to ages past. And there is nothing like trouble over public access to water to bring out behaviour of the worst kind. In 2019, touring the Eastern Cape I encountered towns and trendy resorts with this trouble. The government blamed drought. Residents who knew better blamed comrades out of their depth who’d got winks and nods from higher comrades to run town councils.
Israel stepped up to the plate. The ambassador put Israeli know-how for desalination and other fresh water solutions at the disposal of dry towns. He might have saved breath. Political leaders would rather leave them dry and dying if the alternative meant getting into bed with Isaac’s seed.
...In her book World on Fire, Amy Chua argues that ethnic hatred will always be directed by the host society against a minority that fares well. Three conditions must be met:
[1] The hated group must be a minority or people will fear to attack it. Nowadays it doesn't have to be a minority --- look an anti-white/anti-male discrimination in USA.
[2] It must be successful or people will not envy it.
[3] It must be conspicuous or the majority will fail to notice the group.
Isaac fitted all three. That is why the Philistines hated him. Israel fits all three. That is why most member states of the UN hate it. The global community disputes with a minority of one ‐ an Isaac ‐ who grew its flocks and dug its wells and made itself mightier than it had the right to do.
The bearded, bookish, landless wanderer had no business turning into a conspicuous juggernaut winning wars and starting up many tech enterprises. As day follows night, anger and hate follow envy. And where hate incapacitates the faculty to reason and make sane choices, there we find self-destructive rulers, countries and cause groups on the road to wrack and ruin.
#1
In SAfrica and Venezuela socialism was more of a cause of economic collapse. It was coincidental that the top dogs were also Israel haters. In Iran Islam was the principal cause with Israel hatred a tangential
Posted by: Lord garth ||
12/08/2019 6:33 Comments ||
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#2
'And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.' - GaWD (!)
#6
It's very simple, really. Nothing economic, political or sociological about it.
If you are someone whose very existence is an affront to Gawd, if He's simply decided you are not worth having in the universal register - you will hate Israel. You may not even be able to explain it. You may go to church, whine over candles and kiss the Pope's pinkie every year.
[Zero Hedge] Most people know my name, George Zimmerman, largely due to negative stereotypes propagated by the media as a result of the 2012 incident in Sanford, Florida, in which Trayvon Martin died.
Unfortunately, most people don’t recall the fact that I was exonerated of any wrongdoing after a thorough investigation by the Sanford Police Department in March 2012. They had interviewed dozens of witnesses, analyzed 911 calls, and examined the physical evidence of my broken nose, the lacerations on the back of my head, as well as the bruised knuckles of my assailant.
Submitted a while back by Angolugum Gloluth6118 without a source URL.
A quick search did not reveal where it came from, but in the spirit of inquiry I tracked down the author, who gave me permission to post his letter to the editor — though he admitted he submitted it to several places, and has no idea who published it. Michael Ra Bouchard is a licensed s3x and relationship therapist, currently based in Hawaii, where hopefully he is doing much good.
Letter to the Editor
November 20, 2019
Dear Friends,
Earlier this week the Durham, New Hampshire town council cancelled their annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony and the hanging of street decorations downtown, then renamed their event "Frost Fest," allegedly after a private citizen complained to them that the decorations were "offensive."
Are you kidding me?
So much for the state motto, "Live free or die."
Even in today's mixed up, inside out, upside down world I had to do a double-take after reading this decidedly un-American announcement.
Where does it stop?
We must name and fight insanity whenever and wherever we find it or it will inevitably lead to our collective ruin. If we don't speak out, we risk the very real possibility that our nation and cultural heritage become lost and unfamiliar to us.
As a native-born New Hampshire former resident and 1980's UNH Durham undergraduate and graduate degree holder, I'm stunned by the town council's blockheaded and flat-out wrong overreaction.
Especially in today's highly polarized society, does anyone really believe achieving 100% consensus on anything (other than the possible exception of lowering taxes) is ever possible?
We must not abandon our hard-fought rights, fundamental principles and cherished traditions that enrich us alike as individuals and as a community simply because someone chooses to take offense.
After all, what's the problem?
Taking offense is a choice. In my counseling practice I gently urge those with the hair-trigger habit of being easily offended to straighten out their reactive "crooked thinking" and thereby stop upsetting themselves to everybody's betterment.
Stubbornly refusing to be reactive requires those taking offense to work on increasing their emotional intelligence by actively practicing tolerance of others. It further requires learning to live and let live with dignity and respect, as has been practiced by every generation of Americans going all the way back to our country's founding.
We all know that many of the colonies original settlers emigrated to this country for the express purpose of enjoying religious liberty, then commonly considered the most precious right of all, reflecting an enduring and deeply-held piousness still shared by many of us today.
People will always have differences of opinion. Suffice it to say, allowing a minority of disgruntled citizen's to dictate public policy for all is misguided and contemptibly stupid, standing against the very principles on which democracy is founded.
During my service as a U.S. Marine, it was understood by all who served that our purpose included helping to ensure the safekeeping of the very rights, values and traditions that define us as a people and a nation, including the practice of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
To get along best in this world, each of us must learn to respect our differences and the beliefs of others unlike our own, religious or otherwise, and safeguard the expression of those beliefs without interference so long as they are legal and cause no real harm to anyone.
And not just in Durham, but in every town or city in America wherever attacks on our basic rights and precious principles which have guided our nation from its very beginning hazards to raise its ugly head.
Thus even as we seek to make the circle bigger to reasonably include everyone, we must stand steadfast in vigorously protecting our values from those who would take away our individual and collective rights to freely express our culture and traditions as they have been practiced in America for hundreds of years; for personal expressions as such are ultimately what give our lives meaning.
Otherwise, it won't be long at all before we find ourselves devolving into a joyless, valueless and soulless people.
Think about it.
I therefore urge the Durham Town Council to immediately reverse their Grinch-like decision to cancel the lighting ceremony and placement of decorations, and to unflinchingly refer to the event for what it is and has always been: The Annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.
In the spirit of the season, let us dare to imagine and strive to create a world of inclusivity, peace on earth, and good will towards all!
#4
Related: Read an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal entitled, "Don't believe in God? Lie to your kids." It seems that even secular therapists and psychologists are realizing the harm to children in particular from mindless secularization.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/08/2019 11:39 Comments ||
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[American Thinker] Our Founders created a nation in which the rule of law would prevail and be applied equally to citizens from all walks of life and also would act as a restraint on the power of our leaders. The tradition also includes the assumed duty of all Americans, including our political leaders, to live within the established and agreed upon laws of society.
The Democratic Party's increasingly progressive, left-leaning, radical political agenda contests this fundamental and longstanding American tradition of the law applying equally to all our citizens. Whether I am walking on the streets of my city or viewing the news, I am witnessing on a daily basis increasingly uncivil, lawless, and visibly politically corrupt conduct being tolerated by our country.
Democratic Party policies today support the idea that adhering to the rule of law is no longer obligatory for several designated and politically favored groups selected by them. Progressive politics is attempting to move Americans to accept and adopt a multi-tier justice system based on the unequal application of the law, whereby treatment by the system is increasingly dependent on subjective political considerations.
On a local level in many cities and communities, Democrats in power are by their actions undermining the rule of law. For example, expected compliance with the law in several of our leading cities run by Democratic Party leaders, including most notably New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, is now often based on a person's economic and immigration status, race, sex, sexual orientation, and increasingly an indication of a person's political and religious affiliations. The reason for these exemptions being granted is based on the dual ideologies of identity politics and social justice.
The creation of an implied multi-tier justice system expressly violates our fundamental value of the law applying equally to citizens from all walks of life and most importantly results in the increasingly intolerable and dangerous conditions existing on the streets of these cities and an overall perception of communities in decline. It has led to environments where ordinary people feel increasingly unsafe due to a lack of enforcement of quality-of-life crimes such as rampart homelessness and loitering, open drug use, and the willing accommodation of numerous illegal aliens performing criminal acts.
Their policies absolve individuals belonging to their politically favored groups of their responsibilities to adhere to our agreed upon laws and act in civil ways. They contend that challenging social and economic conditions are responsible for criminal and antisocial behavior rather than the individual person acting in a negative way. Progressive leaders in these locations are resisting enforcing the law, especially against quality-of-life violations, because they label these actions as the criminalization of poverty and accuse the police of the ongoing use of racist tactics.
#1
Q: Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?
A: Because of The Shitshow.
Q: Why and how did The Shitshow - the absurd virtue-signaling rhetoric, the gross incompetence, the destruction of due process and absence of good faith - why did this M.O. come to dominate our legislatures, our culture and our press?
A combination of:
1. Identity Politics: Since the collapse of Communism, western leftist and liberals went full-bore on All Identity Politics All The Time
2. Mau-Mauing the Cops (again): since 2014, since Trayvon the gentle Honor student and Michael Brown the Gentle Giant, we've heard nonstop lies about the extent of police brutality.
3. Twitter, the cesspool of the internet, the Collective Id. Remember: Twitter degrades all it touches; Twitter makes every conversation or discussion worse.
4. Facebook NewsFeed. See #3.
5. The complete clown-ification of The NYT, WaPo and talking heads cable.
6. Shitty public schools and progressively shitty public schoolteachers - made worse by, ironically, an extremely robust economy.
7. Careerist, rent-seeking politicians partnered with corrupt Deep State shadow government decision makers.
#4
Where's my tree stump ? Where did it go ?! Someone... ! Which one O' you removed my stu... Chill, Dron. They can't remove a stump like that. You see any holes in the ground ? It must be here somewhere. There ! The stump ! [gets on stump]
Now I've forgotten what I wanted to say ! Oh, P2k's already done said it.
[gets off stump]
#5
A lot of it has been said here but I would highlight #1.5.
There were always supposed to be honest brokers in the news industry that would spotlight the corruption among the powerful from the local level on up.
The muckrakers served a purpose and then the politicians could tip-toe around and keep this degradation in check at some level. See also Boss Tweed and Thomas Nast.
When the journalists sold out there was nothing to keep the sun shining on the scum.
#6
Democratic Party policies today support the idea that adhering to the rule of law is no longer obligatory for several designated and politically favored groups selected by them.
This nails it. Nothing is more insidious than this assault on the rule of law - dressed up, predictably, by the Shitshow as a righteous defense of rule of law.
So a universally-respected, middle-of-the-road jurist nominated by the evil Orange One is slandered and libelled, in a carnival of perjury, witness tampering and extortion, as a Gang Rapist.
So teenage school kids on a trip to an anti-abortion rally on The Mall are subjected to another national Shitshow of slander, libel, false accusations that they assaulted a toothless whackjob and professional provocateur, with calls for the boys to be ruined for life or even murdered coming from across the left-lib Shitter-sphere.
So a little family of college town bakers gets smeared as vicious racists by idiot students of a major liberal arts college, whose leaders rally the kids and lead the defamation effort and then try to interfere in and ruin the family's business.
So college boys across the country now face the potential risk of being dragged in front of one of the thousands of Kampus Kangaroo Kourts set up on the instructions of Obama's Shitsgow known as the Equal Opportunity Commission where they face being ruined for life because of bogus rape allegations.
And now a three-year Congressional Shitshow in which the party whose candidate's operatives broke laws and enlisted foreign intel agents to intervene in an election against the evil Orange One now accuse him, in Through the Looking Glass fashion, of the same crimes they committed.
Etc etc
And these shitheads have the gall to proclaim they're defending the rule of law.
#7
#5 What AlanC said. There has always been in every society a tendency toward misrule - the March of Folly, the corruption of the mighty, the ambition of Caesar and the stupidity and brutality of the mob etc.
What distinguished our blessed system for 200 years was not the absence of graft and grift, of slander and stupidity and misrule, but the control and containment of same by a culture and a set of self-correcting democratic institutions: a free and independent press, well-functioning courts, and major factions in each party which, though not always prevalent, at least produced heroic leaders such as Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.
Those days are behind us. We are saddled with a generation of absurd, puffed-up, self-aggrandizing fools like Schiff, Fartacus, Fauxcahontas, KamalHo, Pierre Delecto, Carlos Danger and the rest of the repulsive clownshow; Schiff's Deep State clownish weaselblowers; the pseudo-sophisticated hard left academic clowns like "Dr." Blowsey Ford and Perfesser Karlan, and the endless parade of media and entertainment industry Mad Hatter talking heads and barking bots.
We will have to wait another 20 years for this mad generation to pass, and hope that the next generation of Americans will restore our democratic institutions to sanity.
#8
Has "Insty" weighed in on why Musk is allowed to make unsubstantiated claims of pedophilia and get away with it? I don't go to his site so I don't know.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/08/2019 9:10 Comments ||
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#9
The defamation laws in this country are in serious need of a major overhaul.
#11
We will have to wait another 20 years for this mad generation to pass, and hope that the next generation of Americans will restore our democratic institutions to sanity.
Actually, the young generation: AOC, Antifa, Muslim congress persons; is even crazier.
#12
The US has faced similar problems before and something bigger always came along to focus us and bring us together. I don't think a modern World War would do that as it would be instantly disastrous or drawn out for twenty years so as to avoid the worst nastiness.
Maybe a grand push towards space again, a new frontier. Maybe. Probably not.
#13
Given I have small children, we see many families opting toward private/religious schools that will actually educate their children. There's a huge amount of worry about the gender craziness, teaching islam, climate insanity, etc. They don't want their kids becoming fanatics. So there is pushback against this stuff on the local level. Many of these parents are from younger generations as well, so they understand that we can't continue down the path of insanity.
#14
The left has taken control (sometimes slowly and subtly) of almost every "pressure point" of society --media, culture, human resources departments, bureaucracy, etc. and the right allowed them to do so because it was too "pragmatic" to care about such things.
Instead, the right spent all its time brushing on debating skills, not realizing that while such things have their place, they are not sufficient for the task before us.
The left understands the nature of power; the modern right does not.
It also doesn't help that fighting back will get you stabbed in the back by "principled conservatives" screeching "That is not who are!"
#15
These are all the kind of quality comments I come here to read, but I lean toward #3 as hitting the nail on the head. On a positive note, I think the Communists are confusing dominating "elite" opinion with dominating public opinion. (And the opinion polls are worthless -- who would tell a pollster what they actually think?) Who actually cared what Nadler's law perfessors had to say?
Posted by: Matt ||
12/08/2019 11:38 Comments ||
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#16
"This is not who we are!"
= The Party is Right, Comrade
= The Chairman is in Power, and the Situation is Excellent
= All Hail the Glorious Soviet Identity-Politics Woke Revolution
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Guardian] The climate emergency is a "challenge of civilisation" requiring sweeping changes to economic systems, but political leaders have not done enough, the pope has said in a message to governments meeting at the annual climate summit in Madrid.
...Former President-for-Life of Sudan He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself head cheese. He fell out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to 
[Barely a Blog] The "family of London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan ’totally condemn his actions,’" but the father of Khan’s victim, David Merritt, is too busy condemning those who wish to condemn Khan and his ilk to life in a cell.
[AlAhram] Dina Ezzat reviews a book by Turkish historian Soner Cagaptay that tries to explain the peculiar case of Erdogan and its impact on the future of his country as a modern state rather than a head of a 'political Islam' empire.
[NYP] A professor who has accurately predicted the winner of eight of the last nine presidential elections says 2020 is still officially "too close to call."
[PJ] Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, an aviation officer in the Saudi Air Force, opened fire at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla., on Friday, killing four people and wounding many others. In doing so, he showed yet again that the prevailing politically correct obfuscation and denial regarding the jihad threat is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. If we had a realistic approach to the jihad threat, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani’s victims would be alive today.
[Dawn] WITH the passage of four months since New Delhi put India-held 
Letter to the Editor 
[American Thinker] Our Founders created a nation in which the rule of law would prevail and be applied equally to citizens from all walks of life and also would act as a restraint on the power of our leaders. The tradition also includes the assumed duty of all Americans, including our political leaders, to live within the established and agreed upon laws of society.
