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May 2017

Remedial ISIS Tutorial Steers Jihadists Toward Heavier, Deadlier Truck Attacks By Bridget Johnson

The Islamic State just published a remedial step-by-step pictorial for lone jihadists on how to use a heavy vehicle to kill, walking would-be terrorists through how to acquire a vehicle and which targets to strike.

ISIS’ monthly Rumiyah magazine, which publishes online in 10 languages including English, last covered vehicle attacks in their November issue “Just Terror Tactics” segment, using Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who plowed a cargo truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers in Nice, France, last summer, as their key example.

In that article, ISIS encouraged shying away from budget sedans and “off-roaders, SUVs, and four-wheel drive vehicles” that “lack the necessary attributes required for causing a blood bath” as “smaller vehicles lack the weight and wheel span required for crushing many victims.” They recommended trucks with double wheels for “giving victims less of a chance to escape being crushed by the vehicle’s tires.” Long semi trucks were discouraged because of the possibility of jack-knifing.

The terror group encouraged jihadists to find a vehicle with a “metal outer frame which are usually found in older cars, as the stronger outer frame allows for more damage to be caused when the vehicle is slammed into crowds, contrary to newer cars that are usually made of plastics and other weaker materials.” A picture of a U-Haul truck was shown with the caption “an affordable weapon.” A picture of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was shown with the words “an excellent target.”

Shortly after the article was published, a ram-and-stab attack by Ohio State student Abdul Razak Ali Artan on a sidewalk full of students and faculty caused several injuries, but no fatalities. He used a silver sedan in the attack.

In December, Anis Amri hijacked a Polish semi truck and killed the driver, then plowed the big rig into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 11.

This March, Khalid Masood rented the Hyundai Tuscon he used to run over five pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before crashing into the palace fence and stabbing a police officer. Last month, Rakhmot Akilov stole a beer truck and drove it down a busy Stockholm shopping street, killing four.

Eager to build on those attacks no matter the IQ of the jihadist, ISIS this week published the how-to with pictures — trying to steer terrorists toward vehicles more like Berlin and Stockholm.

“The ideal vehicle,” says the page, has a “slightly raised chassis and bumper,” is a “double-wheeled, load-bearing truck” that “large in size, heavy in weight” and is “fast in speed or rate of acceleration.”

Then comes the very remedial lesson on where to get the attack vehicle (“kafir” means disbeliever, while “murtadd” means apostate Muslim): CONTINUE AT SITE

No, the FBI Was Not a Trump Partisan The Democrats’ latest canard ignores difference between criminal and intelligence investigations. By Andrew C. McCarthy

There is nothing more inequitable than treating two fundamentally different things as if they were the same. This should be the retort to the media-Democrat complex’s latest “we wuz robbed” 2016 election narrative: The claim that the FBI became a rogue partisan, publicizing the investigation of Hillary Clinton while keeping mum on the investigation of Donald Trump.

This theme was hammered by Democrats in the questioning of FBI director James Comey during Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. It was, moreover, the leitmotiv of the New York Times’ 8,000-word report on the FBI’s handling of the two investigations — the losing side’s best shot at writing the definitive history.

It is also dumb as a doornail.

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, based on mountainous evidence of law-breaking, resulted in a criminal investigation. The suspicion that associates of Donald Trump have troubling ties to Kremlin insiders, based on comparatively sparse evidence, has resulted in a foreign-intelligence investigation. The two types of inquiry are fundamentally different — dissimilar in their objectives, their processes, and their presumptions about secrecy and disclosure. The only similarity is that each is called an “FBI investigation.” To contend that this makes them equivalents, suitable for similar treatment, is akin to saying red and blue must be the same thing because each is a color.

A criminal investigation is launched when investigators have a good-faith basis to believe one or more penal laws may have been violated. It is an inquiry that targets a particular person (or persons in the case of concerted criminal activity). Once investigators are convinced that a crime has been committed by the suspect, the objective of the investigation is to build a case fit for prosecution in a court of law — i.e., to amass sufficient evidence to prove the essential elements of the statutory offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The investigators fully anticipate making a formal public charge against the suspect (i.e., an indictment), which will be followed by a public trial — the presentation of witness testimony and tangible evidence in a judicial proceeding open to the media and other spectators.

For commonsense reasons, various aspects of criminal investigations are secret. Search warrants and wiretaps would not be very useful if police had to notify the suspect in advance of their raids and surveillances. It would be very difficult to get the cooperation of witnesses or compel the production of relevant documents if grand jury proceedings were conducted in public. Most significantly, the suspect is presumed innocent. To publicize investigative information before a person has an opportunity to test its credibility under due-process rules would undermine the presumption and brand the person a criminal.

Nevertheless, even amid the secrecy, an expectation of publicity hovers over every criminal investigation. Because resources are finite and crime is plentiful, police agencies rarely waste their time on unprovable cases. It is anticipated that charges will be filed, and that eventually everything will be revealed: Affidavits supporting warrants will be unsealed and provided to defense counsel; there will also be discovery of the evidence to be presented at trial, the grand-jury testimony of the witnesses, investigative reports detailing surveillances and witness interviews, and any potentially exculpatory information in the prosecution’s files.

All of this is disclosed because of what a criminal investigation, in essence, is: an effort by the government to deprive a person of his constitutional right to liberty. We permit this only under the strictures of due process — a trial of the accused before a jury of his peers in which he enjoys the assistance of counsel, the right to confront witnesses, and an opportunity to present any defense he may have. Because the whole point is to assure the society that the government has met its burden of proof before a person’s liberty is removed, the proceedings must be public.

Another day, another capitulation to the threat of force on a University of California campus By Thomas Lifson

It’s so normal now for universities to surrender when confronted with the fear of force coming from the left that what follows is only local story on Channel 8 in Salinas:

Students protesting what they believe is a “hostile climate” toward black students at the University of California Santa Cruz were locked inside an administrative building for three days until they scored a sweeping victory Thursday.

Members of the university’s African/Black Student Alliance organization took over Kerr Hall Tuesday, locked all of the doors, covered the windows with slogan-filled posters, and vowed to not leave until their demands were met.

“If the university fails us, there will be no business as usual,” A/BSA told the university’s newspaper.

That’s a pretty explicit threat of disruption by force.

But don’t worry: a heroic surrender was on the way.

Despite fearing for his safety, Chancellor George Blumenthal sat down at a negotiating table with 10 protesters at 4 p.m. Thursday.

Blumenthal declined to meet protesters inside Kerr Hall because he had received threats. Instead, the meeting was moved to the biology building, and Blumenthal agreed to meet all four of the group’s demands.

The student’s primary demand was over the Rosa Parks African-themed house, as well as combating racism at the university.

As far as the Rosa Parks residence house, some of what was demanded could have been discussed and probably achieved with much less trouble. They wanted control of the lounge. Fine. Just ask. They wanted the university to repaint the house in their own bright colors. How about offering to repaint it yourselves, instead of demanding that the university spend a lot of money hiring people to do it? You’ll get it done the way you want it, and self-reliance is a virtue that even Kwanzaa pays lip service to.

Emory University rewards law-breakers By Carol Brown

Emory University will now fund 100% of financial aid to students who are in the United States illegally. It means that if you are in the country illegally, you are rewarded for breaking the law, while Americans who are working hard to attain a college education receive no such blanket aid.

Like so many things these days, it’s inverted, upside down, and backwards.

Breitbart reports:

“Emory meets 100% of demonstrated financial need for undergraduate Undocumented Students (with or without DACA) who are admitted as first-year, first-degree-seeking students, and who graduated from a U.S. High school through a combination of grants and scholarships, institutional work study (DACA students only), and institutional loans. Undocumented Students without DACA status may receive an institutional loan in place of the typical work study award,” the university’s website states.

Speaking to The College Fix, Megan McRainey, a spokeswoman for Emory, claimed that providing full financial aid relief to undocumented students reflects the university’s commitment to welcoming students from diverse backgrounds. [snip]

International students, who are not afforded the same aid privileges as undocumented students, will be forced to foot a $70,000 per year tuition bill if they wish to attend the prestigious Georgian university.

“Diversity!”

It’s one of the left’s favorite buzzwords which they pull out of the proverbial hat to rationalize all manner of insanity.

(Also, noticed how the university’s statement capitalizes the term “undocumented students,” elevating them to new heights (as if giving them a free college education isn’t enough.)

Taking a short walk down memory lane, readers may recall that last year some students at Emory University were traumatized by the words “TRUMP 2016” written in chalk on the pavement. Their “safe space” was violated, they were “in pain,” and they demanded action! Which they got, when university administrators pledged to get to the bottom of who wrote the “controversial markings.” The drama was of epic proportions, with protestors chanting the words of a cop killer as they ranted about their pain and, ironically, their commitment to fighting for freedom (here and here).

So this is Emory University. Where illegals get a free ride, Americans pay through the nose, and chalk is a dangerous weapon.

Europe’s Childless Leaders Sleepwalking Us to Disaster by Giulio Meotti

As Europe’s leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent.

“Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument”. — Douglas Murray, The Times.

“‘Finding ourselves’ becomes more important than building a world.” — Joshua Mitchell.

There have never been so many childless politicians leading Europe as today. They are modern, open minded and multicultural and they know that “everything finishes with them”. In the short term, being childless is a relief since it means no spending for families, no sacrifices and that no one complains about the future consequences. As in a research report financed by the European Union: “No kids, no problem!”.

Being a mother or a father, however, means that you have a very real stake in the future of the country you lead. Europe’s most important leaders leave no children behind.

Europe’s most important leaders are all childless: British PM Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron. The list continues with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

As Europe’s leaders have no children, they seem have no reason to worry about the future of their continent. German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski wrote:

“for the childless, thinking in terms of the generations to come loses relevance. Therefore, they behave more and more as if they were the last and see themselves as standing at the end of the chain”.

Living for today: Europe’s most important leaders are all childless, among them German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) and Mark Rutte (right), Prime Minister of the Netherlands. (Image source: Minister-president Rutte/Flickr)

“Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide”, wrote Douglas Murray in The Times. “Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument”. Murray, in his new book, entitled The Strange Death of Europe, called it “an existential civilisational tiredness”.

Angela Merkel made the fatal decision to open the doors of Germany to one million and half migrants to stop the demographic winter of her country. It is not a coincidence that Merkel, who has no children, has been called “the compassionate mother” of migrants. Merkel evidently did not care if the massive influx of these migrants would change German societ

Decades in an Asylum Wasn’t the Worst Fate My mentally ill great-uncle spent 72 years in custody. Today he’d be isolated in a prison cell—or maybe homeless and dangerous. By Howard Husock

To say I didn’t know my great-uncle, Wolfe Levine, would understate things. Though my grandfather and I were close, for years I didn’t know he had a brother. In retrospect, it’s clear Wolfe was simply unmentionable. We’d write it off today as the stigma of mental illness.

Wolfe’s story is tragic, dating from an era of large public asylums that America has sought to forget. His journey to the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Lima, Ohio, began in 1910 with a criminal conviction: one to five years in a reformatory for pickpocketing. Six years before, Wolfe had immigrated to America at age 14. Theft was not a shocking charge for a young man in Cleveland, living on a block of ramshackle frame houses with his widowed mother and her three other children. Once convicted Wolfe would never again be a free man.

After less than two years in the reformatory—later made famous as the setting for “The Shawshank Redemption”—he exhibited “persecutory delusions” and “auditory hallucinations.” That’s how he wound up in Lima, where the conditions were so bad that by 1974 a federal judge chastised Ohio for failing to ensure “dignity, privacy and humane care.”

My great-uncle was still there. He died in custody in 1982, at 92, and was buried near Toledo, the costs covered by a fund for indigents supported by a local Jewish federation. Wolfe had spent 72 years in institutions. In the language of reformers, he had been “warehoused” for his entire adult life. His aspiration to be a playwright, the occupation he listed when admitted to the reformatory, would prove a dark irony for someone formally diagnosed with dementia praecox—schizophrenia, as it later came to be called.

Yet the story is not so straightforwardly bleak as it seems, and it casts light on how far America has come—and not come. Are we treating the severely mentally ill better today than we did a century ago?

Wolfe did not do well at the reformatory. In a year’s time, more than 300 days were added to his sentence for misbehavior. This almost certainly reflected an onset and worsening of his mental illness. The family may have been involved in the decision to transfer him to the hospital. My great-aunt, now nearly 100, recalls my grandparents discussing what to do with Wolfe. “Dave and Ethel were just starting their own family,” she says. “They just couldn’t take care of him.” Nor was his extended family well-off. My grandmother’s immigrant father was still making deliveries on Cleveland’s East Side with a horse-drawn wagon well into the 1920s.

Thus did Wolfe arrive at Lima in 1915. Little information exists on daily life there, but census records portray an institutionalized American melting pot. My great-uncle was listed as a “Russian Jew”; his neighbors—all of whose occupations were listed as “patient”—included natives of Alabama, Indiana, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Italy. The hospital was enormous, with 17 wings for 1,400 patients. It was considered the largest poured-concrete structure in the world until the Pentagon.

The nationwide hospital system was the product of a 19th-century reform movement, led by Dorothea Dix and Horace Mann, outraged by the imprisonment of so many of the mentally ill. By 1940, America had institutionalized 450,000 patients. Though the care given was far from perfect, it aspired to be therapeutic.

A little-known book provides a remarkable window into the era. In 1931, a 52-year-old journalist named Marle Woodson checked himself into Eastern Oklahoma Hospital in an attempt to kick his alcohol problem. As he dried out, he wrote “Behind the Door of Delusion,” which did not describe a quiet warehouse: “About me the daytime activities of the hospital hummed. All the work was done by the patients. There was little detailed supervision by the attendants, although they were here, there, and everywhere all the time.” A “floor gang” polished and shined, and a crew for making up beds did its work “with a neatness which would shame many of the maids in good hotels.” Patients worked in the “art department, bakery, the store, or other departments of the institution.” CONTINUE AT SITE

How to Raise an American Adult Many young Americans today are locked in perpetual adolescence. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse on how he and his wife are encouraging their own children to become fully formed, independent grown-ups see note please

Nice column by an erudite senator who is a GOP star…..but Diana West wrote a splendid book on this issue back in 2008
The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization by by Diana West Sep 16, 2008

We all know the noun adult. But I was perplexed last year to hear the new verb to adult. In social media, especially on Twitter and Instagram, it birthed a new hashtag: #adulting. As in: “Just paid this month’s bills on time #adulting,” or “Decided I couldn’t watch Netflix 8 hours straight and went to the grocery store instead #adulting.” It even got a nomination from the American Dialect Society for the most creative word of 2015.

“Adulting” is an ironic way to describe engaging in adult behaviors, like paying taxes or doing chores—the sort of mundane tasks that responsibility demands. To a growing number of Americans, acting like a grown-up seems like a kind of role-playing, a mode of behavior requiring humorous detachment.

Let me be clear: This isn’t an old man’s harrumph about “kids these days.” I still remember Doc Anderson standing in the street in 1988, yelling at me to slow down as I drove through his neighborhood in our small Nebraska town. I was 16 and couldn’t stand that guy. Years later, when I had children of my own, I returned to thank him. Maturation.

What’s new today is the drift toward perpetual adolescence. What’s new is seeing so much less difference now between 10-year-olds and young adults in their late teens and early 20s.

As many parents can attest, independent adulthood is no longer the norm for this generation. Data from the Pew Research Center show that we crossed a historic threshold last year: “For the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.” Fully one-quarter of Americans between 25 and 29 live with a parent—compared with only 18% just over a decade ago.

A great many factors have contributed to this shift toward perpetual adolescence. The economy has something to do with it, of course—but social and cultural developments do too. The list of culprits includes our incredible wealth and the creature comforts to which our children are accustomed; our reluctance to expose young people to the demands of real work; and the hostage-taking hold that computers and mobile devices have on adolescent attention.

Our nation is in the midst of a collective coming-of-age crisis. Too many of our children simply don’t know what an adult is anymore—or how to become one. Perhaps more problematic, older generations have forgotten that we need to teach them. It’s our fault more than it’s theirs.

My wife, Melissa, and I have three children, ages 6 to 15. We don’t have any magic bullets to help them make the transition from dependence to self-sustaining adulthood—because there aren’t any. And we have zero desire to set our own family up as a model. We stumble and fall every day. CONTINUE AT SITE

A Sorely Needed Change in Climate avatar by Ruthie Blum

Last weekend, during a visit to Washington, DC, I was nearly knocked down by a mob of demonstrators. Had they known I was attempting to cross through the marching throng in order to make it to an appointment in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel, I likely would have been lynched.https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/05/05/a-sorely-needed-change-in-climate/

As bad luck would have it, guards at the barricade separating the crowds on Pennsylvania Avenue from the hotel would not let me through for understandable security reasons. So, after phoning the person I was supposed to meet for drinks in the majestically refurbished Old Post Office building to suggest a different venue, I was forced to slither my way back again without getting trampled on by poster-wielding protesters sweating profusely in the afternoon sun.

This was no easy feat, particularly since each segment of the tens of thousands of people expressing their ire over “climate change” — the social cause whose name was changed from “global warming” when freezing temperatures made the term as laughable as the phenomenon itself — booed loudly as they passed by the hotel.

“No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” many chanted, pushing babies in strollers, carrying toddlers on shoulders or simply walking alongside friends, proud of themselves for being seen and heard by like-minded left-wingers bent on rescuing the planet from destruction at the hands of human beings with differing views. This did not prevent dozens of them from entering nearby air-conditioned restaurants to escape the heat and enjoy some pricey food generated by the very corporations “guilty” of inflicting tsunamis and other unforgiving acts of nature on the world. Oops. I forgot for a moment that the word “nature” is forbidden in the United States these days, as it connotes a belief in the innateness of things like gender.

Yet, while talking about “nature” is a no-no among enlightened Americans, “science” is all the rage. This was also evident at the rally, many of whose participants waved placards denouncing those who do not support spending billions on climate-change research and rectification as “anti-science.” This is despite the tens of thousands of physicists and physical chemists who have debunked claims by the climate-change fanatics.

In any case, what the storm on Pennsylvania had to do with President Donald Trump, the Klu Klux Klan or fascism was not made clear. Such is the method to the madness of intersectionality, according to which all extreme liberal positions are interconnected and live under one large umbrella of malcontent. The fact that these stances often run counter to one another does not seem to bother their adherents.

Why this Filipina is fighting for Israel :By Andrew Tobin

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Staff. Sgt. Joana Chris Arpon isn’t Israeli, or even Jewish. Her service in the Israel Defense Forces is personal.

Arpon, 20, is the daughter of Filipino parents who came to Israel to find work. She said she enlisted as a combat soldier because an Israeli army team rescued her grandmother in the aftermath of the 2013 typhoon that devastated the Philippines.

“It was amazing to see the soldiers show up and help people. They saved my grandmother when her house was destroyed,” Arpon said. “I was like, “Whoa, that’s what I want to do.’”

On Tuesday, Israel’s 69th Independence Day, Arpon will be one of 120 soldiers recognized by Israel’s president for distinguished service. Later this year, Arpon and her mother will be granted Israeli citizenship thanks partly to her time in the army.

Born in Israel, Arpon always felt like part of the Jewish state. While many Filipinos live clustered in Israel’s big cities, her mother raised her and her older brother in the small town of Mishmar Hashiva, in central Israel. At their high school in nearby Rishon Lezion, they were the only Filipino students.

Arpon’s mother immigrated to Israel in 1988 to work as a nanny, and stayed to raise her children even after her husband left. The vast majority of the some 31,000 Filipinos who live in Israel are female caregivers.

As a rule, Filipinos are only allowed to live in Israel as temporary workers. But Arpon and her brother are among the hundreds of Filipino children the government has granted permanent residency, along with their immediate family members. After the children serve in the army, their families qualify for citizenship.

Arpon long knew she would follow in the footsteps of her brother, who served as a paramedic and is now a citizen. But it was only recently that she decided she wanted to be a combat soldier. Only about 7 percent of Israeli combat soldiers are women, though that number is growing despite opposition from some Orthodox Jews and others.

In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines with record-breaking force. At least 6,300 people were killed, and tens of thousands lost their homes, including Arpon’s grandmother.

OIG Report: More Than 100 Veterans Died While Waiting for Care at Los Angeles VA VA employees failed to follow proper procedure Natalie Johnson

More than 100 veterans died while waiting for care at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Los Angeles, Calif., over a nine-month span ending in August 2015, according to a new government report.

The VA Office of Inspector General found in a recent healthcare inspection that 225 veterans at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System facility died with open or pending consults between Oct. 1, 2015 and Aug. 9, 2015. Nearly half—117—of those patients died while experiencing delays in receiving care.

The inspector general reported that 43 percent of the 371 consults scheduled for patients who ended up dying were not timely because of a failure by VA employees to follow proper procedure. The report was unable to substantiate claims that patients died as a result of the delayed consults.

Concerned Veterans for America, a D.C.-based nonprofit, cited the OIG findings as evidence that problems persist at the Department of Veterans Affairs despite a series of legislative reforms implemented after the 2014 wait time scandal in Phoenix, Ariz.

“VA negligence can be a matter of life or death,” CVA policy director Dan Caldwell said in a statement Thursday. “While the VA wait scandal received the most attention a few years ago, the reality is that Congress hasn’t done anything to change the toxic culture at the VA and we can’t be sure that veterans still aren’t dying waiting for care.”

Caldwell told the Washington Free Beacon that it’s important to recognize the OIG investigation covers a period that occurred two years ago, suggesting that changes have since been implemented. He said the report reinforces findings that wait list manipulation took place at VA facilities nationwide and was not isolated to a handful of hospitals, as initially suspected.

The VA did not return a request for comment.