RUTHFULLY YOURS

There is always the chance that the next attack will knock the scales from our eyes. Always the chance that we will realize the enemy is at war with us, even as we foolishly believe we can end the war by not fighting it, by surrendering.

As this is written, the death count in Paris is 158. That number will grow higher, and very many more will be counted among the wounded and terrorized.

“Allahu Akbar!” cried the jihadists as they killed innocent after French innocent. The commentators told us it means “God is great.” But it doesn’t. It means “Allah is greater!” It is a comparative, a cry of combative aggression: “Our God is mightier than yours.” It is central to a construction of Islam, mainstream in the Middle East, that sees itself at war with the West.

It is what animates our enemies.

Barack Obama tells us — harangues us — that he is the president who came to end wars. Is that noble? Reflective of an America that honors “our values”? No, it is juvenile.

I am not going to blame Barack Obama entirely for what happened in Paris Friday — but mostly. And that’s not just because he famously called ISIS the jayvee team, when they are now unequivocally the New York Yankees or the Manchester United of terror, repellent as that analogy may be (he started it).

But what is clear from the carnage at The Bataclan theatre and elsewhere in Paris that we will be studying for weeks or months to come is that the West has no leader in our evident civilizational war — no Churchill, no Roosevelt, no de Gaulle, not even a George W. Bush. It’s certainly not Barack Obama, a ludicrous man who thinks the world’s greatest problem is climate change in the face of Islamic terror. This is the same man who oversaw, indeed instigated, a large-scale American démarche for the first time since World War II.

And look what happened. Well, we all know. We are living at a time when the Islamic world is having a nervous breakdown, actually more like a violent psychotic break, in its encounter with modernity and is determined to bring us all down with it.

Beirut came to the 10th arrondissement today. It will come to other Western cities soon.

f there was any doubt that the world is now in crisis, the mass casualty attack on Paris a few hours ago should lay the question to rest. In response to the assault, France closed its borders, declared a state of emergency and declared a curfew, a trifecta of measures unseen since World War 2 [1]. The wave of attacks is temporarily over. The period of damage assessment, which includes totaling up the doleful toll of casualties, and political posturing now begins.

This is the first time France has declared a state of emergency since the Algerian war, which took place between 1954 and 1962. It is also the first time a curfew has been imposed since the dark days of world war two in 1944.

It’s significant that the attacks occurred during a period of heightened alert associated with big soccer matches. French president Hollande himself was watching a game when he had to be unceremoniously shuttled to the safety of a government building. That suggests that French security forces and intelligence were genuinely surprised by the attack and therefore there exist terror networks they don’t know about capable of large-scale operations. Scotland Yard and MI5 must realize this and will inevitably be burning the midnight oil tonight.

Gatestone ran a comprehensive report on the state of Sweden under the press of tens of thousands of immigrants, most of whom who have neither an affinity for Sweden nor a fondness for Swedes, except as prey for rape, robbery, and mayhem. The article, “Sweden descending into anarchy,” of November 13th, by Ingrid Carlqvist, recounts the alarm Swedes are now feeling as the consequence of their government inviting countless barbarians into the country are becoming manifest. The reality of multiculturalism is hitting home, and hard.

But while reading Carlqvist’s article, I couldn’t help but remember that the Somali immigrant who raped a dying woman in a hotel garage, and then proceeded to rape her corpse, won’t be deported after he has served his sentence. Once he’s released, he is sure rape again, and commit other crimes. Why won’t he be deported? Janna Brock wrote in 2013:

It was early in the morning of 27 September. Police received an alarm that the two men were having intercourse with a woman who was completely unconscious on the floor of a parking garage under the Sheraton Hotel in Vasagatan in Stockholm.

When police arrived at the scene they found a 34 year old man from Somalia, who was in the midst of an anal intercourse with the woman. Police checked the woman’s pulse and found that she was dead. The police caught the 34-year-old Somali Islamist in the act of brutally violating a corpse. What was he arrested for? It doesn’t get more disgusting than this, but in Sweden one must not assume the man was guilty of murder.

To say that the Japanese ruled Taiwan well is a misstatement…efficiently and brutally are better words. Furthermore, there is a lesson from Taiwan. Nixon/Kissinger betrayed Taiwan by accepting Communist China’s goal of absorbing Taiwan into “one China.”Jimmy Carter removed the US Embassy to Peking, ducking principles and loyalty to Taiwan a productive, capitalist nation building real democracy. The United Nations effectively barred Taiwan from independent membership. Taiwan persevered with its building of democracy, and stuck to its guns on independence…good for them.Israel should pay heed….rsk
When the leaders of China and Taiwan met last weekend for the first time since 1949, the unseen presences in the room were the ghosts of Mao Zedong, the Communist Party’s Great Helmsman, and his bitter rival, the gaunt Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. They had been adversaries in the Chinese civil war for more than two decades, before Mao’s victorious peasant revolutionaries took power in Beijing that year.

Chiang was driven into exile on Taiwan, taking with him his Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. The enmity of Mao and Chiang endured across a Cold War frontier—for a time, their troops hurled shells and propaganda messages at each other across the narrow strait separating Taiwan from the mainland—but they always shared a dream, born of their long struggle: “One China.”

The unification of China and Taiwan has been the sacred mission of every Communist leader since Mao, including the current president, Xi Jinping. And though the idea of “One China” today commands virtually no popular support on Taiwan, which prizes its fledgling democracy, it nevertheless clings to life as a legacy within the Kuomintang, the party of the country’s current president, Ma Ying-jeou.

The sophistication, resources and scale of Friday’s attacks in the heart of Paris underscored to officials across the globe that the challenges of containing extremist violence have reached a new level, and that the calculus of the Western effort against terrorism had fundamentally changed.

European governments in the past few months have sought various means to guard against national security threats, with some erecting barbed-wire fences to stem the flow of migrants, while others, including France, devoted hundreds of millions of euros to strengthening electronic surveillance systems.

Friday’s attacks highlight the weakness of those strategies in a world where global extremism flows across nations. It also raises questions about transnational agreements on open-border travel that have been a bedrock of modern Europe. In his first comments to the nation after the attack, French President François Hollande announced the closing of his country’s borders.

French authorities didn’t immediately name a culprit, but the nature of the attacks left little doubt they were the work of a well-organized terrorist group. A French official said Friday the attacks were “unfortunately well-prepared and coordinated.” The apparent use of explosives and the likelihood that a significant number of people were involved were particularly alarming to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The international campaign to degrade and defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria is showing its first signs of real life in nearly a year. And not a moment too soon. As we went to press Friday night, a wave of shooting and bombing attacks in the streets of Paris was another grim reminder that what used to be called the war on terror is escalating—and still global.

On Friday the Pentagon reported that it was “reasonably certain” it had killed Mohammed Emwazi, the ISIS executioner better known as Jihadi John, in an airstrike in eastern Syria. Among Emwazi’s many victims were American journalists Steve Sotloff and James Foley, Japanese reporters Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto, and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

If confirmed, Emwazi’s death will deprive ISIS of its most notorious spokesman and puncture jihadi illusions that their Mideast strongholds are immune to U.S. reprisals. It also comes on the heels of ISIS’s loss of the Iraqi city of Sinjar after an assault by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters supported by U.S. air power. The Yazidi city had been mostly empty of inhabitants after ISIS massacred some 2,000 of its people, causing a mass exodus. Retaking the city will help Kurds sever the links between the ISIS strongholds of Raqqa in eastern Syria and Mosul in northern Iraq.

“If only we Arabs,” they wrote, “who kill people cruelly and wholesale, cared as much about people as the Jews care about animals.” We often hear Arabs privately saying, “the Zionists have never done to us what we do to ourselves.”

Every Palestinian youth knows that the weekly riots at the “traditional friction points” serve as social events, later used by Palestinians operatives for propaganda.

As our elders have said for years: “Falastin [‘Palestine’ in Arabic] begins with falas [bankruptcy] and ends with teen [mud].”

Palestinian bloggers were amazed when Israelis protested the cruel slaughter of chickens in poultry-packing plants, and during epidemics. “If only we Arabs,” they wrote, “who kill people cruelly and wholesale, cared as much about people as the Jews care about animals.”

Civilian cameras often record events of startling cruelty carried out in Arab countries, in areas of conflict. We often hear Arabs privately saying, “The Zionists have never done to us what we do to ourselves.” This is usually said by Syrians, who have hated the Jews for generations, when they give their thanks for the medical treatment they receive in Israel. Despite the hatred fostered by Hamas, after the most recent military operation, many Gazans admitted that the IDF did in fact warn civilians before attacking terrorist targets protected by “human shields.”

The secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has finally been made public. No time has been lost in debating its terms. Congress adopted a “fast track” procedure that limits floor debate and bans the filibuster and any consideration of amendments to the legislation required to implement the agreement by changing American law. President Barack Obama would like a vote by the end of this year. However, due to a short and crowded schedule, Congress is unlikely to get to the issue until next year. Thus, everyone will have time to voice opinions and interpretations.

Before getting into the specific details of the text, one thing must be understood from the outset. TPP is not about “free trade” in the sense of that great sophistry of economic theory. If this was about academic notions it would not have taken diplomats from 11 countries six years to negotiate its terms (after earlier attempts collapsed). As Alexander Hamilton noted, “There are some who maintain that trade will regulate itself [but] this is one of those speculative paradoxes…rejected by every man acquainted with commercial history.” Each nation entered the talks with the objective of gaining an advantage for its own interests. The verdict on the TPP should rest entirely on whether sober analysis concludes that the agreement promises net gains to U.S.-based producers.

The man is an absolute cretin!!! rsk
Marking 40 years since Chaim Herzog tore up the “Zionism is racism” resolution before the United Nations, Secretary of State John Kerry vowed to resolve to “do all in our power to prevent the hijacking of this great forum for malicious intent.”

He also said the “Zionist dream” of Israel “as a Jewish democracy” won’t be realized without a peace deal with the Palestinians.

The event was organized by the nonprofit Yad Chaim Herzog and Israel’s Mission to the UN. In addition to Kerry, UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon was there along with Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, and Herzog’s sons opposition leader Isaac Herzog and Brigadier-General (Res.) Michael Herzog.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recorded a video that was played at the event, saying the high point of the distinguished service of the late ambassador and president was the speech in which he tore up the resolution. “His response to that UN obscenity was both right and just,” Netanyahu said. “Because that resolution was designed to undermine the very legitimacy of Israel. And this just 30 years after the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust. So the very organization that was born in the fight against Nazism had betrayed its own sacred mission.”