WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Howlers of Our Moon Bats : Edward Cline

Posted By on August 26th, 2016

Howling at the moon is an idiom meaning making an utterly ludicrous, transparently insane remark stated as a truism. It designates a statement that contradicts obvious or demonstrable evidence, and is contrary to what is clearly true, or to what is relevant to the facts. It isn’t certain yet why wolves howl at the moon, but we are certain that Progressivism and Islam cause human moon bats to howl at reality. Here are a few instances:

Reuters editors and the filterers of other news sources must have snickered when on August 17th they reported Chancellor Angela Merkel stating bald-faced that Germany’s violence is not caused by the “immigrants” or the barbaric “refugees.” They somehow didn’t bring rape, murder, and terrorism to Germany (or to Sweden, France, and other European nations). It’s those nasty jihadists who wish to terrorize Germany into submission. But they’ve already done that. They don’t practice the same Islam as the non-entities who can be seen on German streets pushing their welfare state paid prams of future “Germans.”

“The phenomenon of Islamist terrorism, of IS, is not a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees,” Merkel said at an election campaign event for her Christian Democrats in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern ahead of a regional vote on Sept. 4.

The influx of migrants, many of whom are Muslim, has boosted support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is expected to perform well in elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Who’s Afraid of Religious Liberty? Seeking to prohibit every kind of “discrimination,” activists in and out of government threaten the free practice of, among other faiths, Judaism.

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Not so long ago, doubts about the ability of Jews to live and practice Judaism freely in the United States would have been dismissed as positively paranoid: relics of a bygone era when American Jews could be turned away from restaurants and country clubs, when restrictive covenants might prevent their purchase of real estate or prejudicial quotas limit their access to universities and corporate offices.

None of that has been the case for a half-century or more. And yet recent developments in American political culture have raised legitimate concerns on a variety of fronts. To put the matter in its starkest form: the return of anti-Semitism, by now a thoroughly documented phenomenon in Europe and elsewhere around the world, is making itself felt, in historically unfamiliar ways, in the land of the free.

Statistics tell part of the tale. In 2014, the latest period for which figures have been released by the FBI, Jews were the objects of fully 57 percent of hate crimes against American religious groups, far outstripping the figure for American Muslims (14 percent) and Catholics (6 percent). True, the total number of such incidents is still blessedly low; but what gives serious pause is the radical disproportion.

The rise and spread of anti-Israel agitation, particularly on the nation’s campuses, is the most common case. Such agitation, expressed in the form of defamatory graffiti, “Israel Apartheid” demonstrations, and the verbal or physical abuse of pro-Israel students, feeds into and is increasingly indistinguishable from outright anti-Semitism. Even the most zealously “progressive” young Jews are targeted as accomplices-by-definition with the alleged crimes of Zionism. As one student who has fallen afoul of his campus’s orthodoxies has lamented, “because I am Jewish, I cannot be an activist who supports Black Lives Matter or the LGBTQ community. . . . [A]mong my peers, Jews are oppressors and murderers.” Such is the progressive doctrine of “intersectionality,” according to which all approved causes are interconnected and must be mutually supported, no exceptions and no tradeoffs allowed.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

As America Grows Less Religious, Can the Tocqueville Model Still Work? That is: can the separation of church and state function for an increasingly unchurched people whose secular passions rely on the exercise of state power?

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Richard Samuelson is associate professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino and a fellow of the Claremont Institute.http://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2016/08/as-america-grows-less-religious-can-the-tocqueville-model-still-work/

How did we get here?Wilfred McClay reminds us that, of late, large-scale religious fights seem to be breaking out all around the world. So the question really is whether America will remain an exception—the place where, as he writes with a nod to Tocqueville, “religious belief and practice have generally flourished . . . because they are voluntary and have not had to rely on a religious establishment to protect them.”

Can that model still work as America grows less religious in the traditional sense? To put it slightly differently, can the separation of church and state, which historically worked wonders both for American democracy and for the flourishing of religion, function for an increasingly unchurched people whose secular (though religiously-held) passions are reliant on the active exercise of state power? How will those passions be checked and balanced? For, under one name or another, there will be religion; the question is what sort of religion, and how and by whom American law will be shaped to suit the adherents’ way of life.

Peter Berkowitz’s comments shed light on this issue. The rise of a newly activist understanding of government’s role in shaping society did not begin with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which is where I focused attention in my essay). It actually began in the late-19th and early-20th century with the rise of the Progressive movement. Progressives, Berkowitz writes, “sought to overcome constitutional limits on government by redefining the Constitution as a living organism embodying progressive morals and authorizing activist government by elite-educated, impartial technocrats.”

This description perfectly fits Woodrow Wilson, our first and so far our only president with a PhD, and also the first to advocate either replacing the Constitution or transforming it fundamentally through creative interpretation. In the 1920s there would be significant pushback against Wilson’s efforts. But ever since the 1930s Depression, when the next generation of progressives took over, there has been little successful containment, let alone rollback, of what the New Deal’s trust-busting lawyer Thurmond Arnold called the “religion of government.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Bill Nye Isn’t a Scientist — He Just Plays One on TV For Nye, science is a weapon wielded to advance a certain type of politics. By Ian Tuttle —

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Bill Nye — “the Science Guy” — thinks that the recent deadly flooding in Louisiana is a result of climate change.

That’s not surprising. Bill Nye thinks everything is the result of climate change. Flooding in Missouri is climate change. Tornadoes in Kentucky is climate change. Fire in Alaska is climate change. A morning thunderstorm in Houston is climate change. One time, there was a blizzard in New York in January. That was climate change, too. The event doesn’t even have to be weather-related. The Islamic State’s massacre of 130 people in Paris last year? You guessed it.

When it comes to Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” it’s almost like “science” has nothing to do with it.

That would not be particularly surprising, either. After all, William Sanford Nye’s scientific bona fides consists of an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell, and a stint at Boeing. But you can be anything you want on television, and in the late 1980s, hard at work pursuing a career in comedy, Nye landed a recurring bit as Bill Nye “the Science Guy” on Almost Live!, a Seattle-area sketch-comedy television show, and a role as Christopher Lloyd’s laboratory sidekick on Back to the Future: The Animated Series. Nye then leveraged that success into his namesake PBS Kids show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, which from 1993 to 1998 filmed 100 half-hour episodes, each focused on a particular topic (dinosaurs, buoyancy, germs, &c.) and accompanied by a parody soundtrack (e.g., Episode 75, on invertebrates: “Crawl Away,” by “S. Khar Go” — a parody of “Runaway” by Janet Jackson). Somehow, because of this, Nye is now the go-to authority on exoplanets and dark matter and whether we are living in a computer simulation — and, of course, environmental policy.

Oddly, being America’s foremost “edutainer” is a sweet gig. When Nye is not pronouncing on all matters scientific, he pals around with pop stars and “bonds over Jay Z” with SNL actors. He does q-&-a’s with the New York Times and Esquire. He sits with Arianna Huffington at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and take selfies with rapper DJ Khaled — who, it turns out, is “concerned about climate change.” (What a coincidence!) Nerddom would seem to have come a long way from passing-period swirlies.

Except that Bill Nye is not exactly a nerd. He just plays one on TV. Whatever Bill Nye was — to be fair, it’s no small accomplishment making science hip and interesting for millions of students — he is now primarily the foremost science-side participant in the cycle of personal validation and political-agenda-pushing that has come to characterize the relationship between leftwing politics and science. Stipulate that Bill Nye is a scientist. He then proclaims that climate change is not only real, but an apocalyptic threat. Rachel Maddow and Touré and all the other people who already believed that about climate change for political reasons get a fuzzy feeling, because they have been validated by a Scientist. They tousle Bill Nye’s zany hair. Rinse and repeat. Everybody wins.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Diversity: History’s Pathway to Chaos America’s successful melting pot should not be replaced with discredited salad-bowl separatism. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Emphasizing diversity has been the pitfall, not the strength, of nations throughout history.

The Roman Empire worked as long as Iberians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls, and myriad other African, Asian, and European communities spoke Latin, cherished habeas corpus, and saw being Roman as preferable to identifying with their own particular tribe. By the fifth century, diversity had won out but would soon prove a fatal liability.

Rome disintegrated when it became unable to assimilate new influxes of northern European tribes. Newcomers had no intention of giving up their Gothic, Hunnish, or Vandal identities.

The propaganda of history’s multicultural empires — the Ottoman, the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian, the British, and the Soviet — was never the strength of their diversity. To avoid chaos, their governments bragged about the religious, ideological, or royal advantages of unity, not diversity.

Nor did more modern quagmires like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Rwanda, or Yugoslavia boast that they were “diverse.” Instead, their strongman leaders naturally claimed that they shared an all-encompassing commonality.

When such coerced harmony failed, these nations suffered the even worse consequences of diversity, as tribes and sects turned murderously upon each other.

For some reason, contemporary America believes that it can reject its uniquely successful melting pot to embrace a historically dangerous and discredited salad-bowl separatism.

Is there any evidence from the past that institutionalizing sects and ethnic grievances would ensure a nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom?

America’s melting pot is history’s sole exception of e pluribus unum inclusivity: a successful multiracial society bound by a common culture, language, and values. But this is a historic aberration with a future that is now in doubt.

Some students attending California’s Claremont College openly demand roommates of the same race. Racially segregated “safe spaces” are fixtures on college campuses.

We speak casually of bloc voting on the basis of skin color — as if a lockstep Asian, Latino, black, or white vote is a good thing.

We are reverting to the nihilism of the old Confederacy. The South’s “one-drop rule” has often been copied to assure employers or universities that one qualifies as a minority.

Some public figures have sought to play up or invent diversity advantages. Sometimes, as in the cases of Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, and Ward Churchill, the result is farce.

Given our racial fixations, we may soon have to undergo computer scans of our skin colors to rank competing claims of grievance.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Allahu Akbar” Stabbing has Nothing To Do With Religion Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

The media is describing the Muslim terrorist as a French man. Because if it’s anything the French are known for, it’s shouting “Allahu Akbar”. and stabbing random non-Muslims.

A French national allegedly shouted “Allahu akbar” during and after a stabbing attack that left a British woman dead and another Briton fighting for his life at a backpackers hostel outside of Townsville last night.

Possible extremist motivations for the attack are now being investigated by Queensland Police and the Australian Federal Police, with the man yet to be questioned by investigators.

Queensland Police Service Deputy Commissioner Steve Gollschewski said the 29 -year-old French man shouted the phrase following the attack at the hostel at Home Hill, south of Townsville, but police had not determined whether the incident was terror related.

Who knows. Maybe the “French” stabber was expressing his Francophonic distaste of Brits by shouting Allahu Akbar.

“While this information will be factored into the investigation, we are not ruling out any motivations at this stage, whether they be political or criminal,” he told reporters in Brisbane.

“Investigators will also consider whether mental health or drug misuse factors are involved in this incident.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Obama Provides Iran With $1.3 Billion, But Where Did The Money Go? Why the Obama administration is refusing to say where the funds ended up. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

It appears that when it comes to its dealings with the Islamic Republic, the Obama administration’s miscues are boundless. The latest fiasco involves the recent transfer of $1.3 billion in taxpayer money to Iran’s mullahs. Both the White House and the State Department are shamefully unable or unwilling to provide the public with any pertinent information concerning the transfer.

At a State Department briefing, spokesman Mark Toner remained opaque and evasive about the transaction and said that he did not know who in Iran received the money. Nor was he able to confirm the method of payment — check or cash, U.S. or foreign currency. All he was able to disclose was that the funds transferred reflected money — principle and interest — owed to Iran from a 1979 aborted arms deal.

An additional $400 million was transferred to Iran last month and was part of an overall payment of $1.7 billion. According to the administration, the monies paid reflected a settlement of Iran’s claims against the U.S. stemming from the 1979 aborted arms transaction. Ironically, the Iranians were not required to pay anything to the 52 American hostages they kidnapped in 1979. Those hostages were held in dungeon-like conditions for 444 days. Like all transactions conducted by the Obama administration, the benefits flow one way.

There are several troubling aspects to this story. Though the administration has issued strenuous denials, it is clear that the first installment of $400 million was a ransom payment made to secure the release of Americans held hostage in Iran.

At a briefing in early August, White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to directly address the following question posed by a journalist; “would these prisoners have been released if this money had not been paid?” The question was posed on no less than three occasions and required a simple “yes” or “no” response. The shifty Earnest was evasive and refused to provide a direct response. Instead, he offered painfully convoluted explanations that shed light on nothing except for how disingenuous he is.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Newly Unearthed Audio Details Iran’s Mass Executions Horrors of the Islamic Revolution confirmed by former Khomeini heir. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Shocking audio was released recently on the Internet in the Persian language. Immediately, Iranian officials ordered its removal. The audio clearly shows that the so-called “moderate” Iranian leaders are in fact world-class criminals based on every legal or humanitarian standard. The audio sheds light on horrific crimes against humanity that are not that distinct from those egregious crimes committed by the Nazis.

In the audio, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the ex-heir of Iran’s Supreme Leader, reveals the true character of the Islamic Republic and crimes committed by it in the name of Islam. Montazeri was born in Esfahan, Iran, and was one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic. He was an Islamic theologian and the designated successor to the Islamic revolution’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Rooh Allah Khomeini, until the very last moments of Khomeini’s life. His pictures were posted next to Khomeini’s in the streets. Nevertheless, Montazeri’s fate changed dramatically, as he could not stay silent and felt compelled to speak out.

Montazeri’s son, Ahmad, posted the audio on his website, but was ordered by Iranian intelligence (Etela’at) to remove it.

“You [Iranian officials] will in the future be etched in the annals of history as criminals,” Montazeri warns the Islamic Republic in the audio. “The greatest crime committed under the Islamic Republic, from the beginning of the Revolution until now, which will be condemned by history, is this crime [mass executions] committed by you.”

In reference to one of the worst mass executions in the modern history of the Middle East being carried by the Iranian government officials, Montazeri stated that “I am a straight-talking person. I don’t hold back what is in my heart. In contrast to some gentlemen who do what is politically expedient…. Believe me, I haven’t been able to sleep and this issue (executions) occupies my mind 2-3 hours every night … How will you respond to the families? How much did the Shah execute? Compare our executions to his!”

When an official asked him for his permission to execute 200 people, Montazeri retorted fiercely, “I don’t give permission at all. I am even against a single person being executed.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Muslim Wins Theological Argument With Christian Using Metal Pipe Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

Islamic theology tends to triumph with the sword and the spear. The bomb and the bullet. And when that fails, there’s always a metal pipe.

This latest tale of interfaith relations comes to us from Jamaica, of all places.

A Muslim landlord who attacked his Christian tenant with a metal pipe and broke her leg during a discussion about their religion, which had escalated into an argument, was remanded for sentencing after he was denied bail in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court last week.

A surprising turn of events.

According to the police, on May 28 the complainant and Lazarus were at home have a discussion pertaining to Christianity and Islam when it turned into an argument.

During the argument, Lazarus threw a metal pipe and hit the complainant in her head and on her leg, causing the leg to break.

Last Wednesday when the matter was mentioned, Attorney Davorna Wilson tried to get bail for Lazarus.

But the prosecutor objected on the grounds that Lazarus has been involved in a number of violent incidents in his community.

Again, totally unexpected. The Jihad, now in Jamaica.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

War and Peace in Putin’s Middle East With America on the sidelines, Israel and the Arabs play a new game. P. David Hornik

Posted By on August 25th, 2016

The Times of Israel reports that, on Tuesday night, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin…and discussed regional issues and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

It was hardly, of course, their first chat. In June, Netanyahu was in Moscow to meet with Putin. He was there, too, for that purpose in September 2015 and April 2016, and last November they met briefly at the Paris climate conference. Their agenda includes making sure there are no unwanted Israeli-Russian military confrontations over the skies of Syria, as well as the strong Israeli-Russian economic ties.

Meanwhile the Israeli daily Haaretz cites Egyptian media as reporting that “Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi said that…Putin has expressed a willingness to host…Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for talks in Moscow.”

What’s going on?

According to other reports, Sunni Arab states—particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia—want such talks and have been pushing for them. Both countries have close security cooperation with Israel. Egypt has recently warmed up diplomatic ties with a return of its ambassador to Israel and a visit to Israel by its foreign minister early in July. The Saudis, for their part, sent an unprecedented delegation to the Jewish state later in July.

This line of speculation says that Sunni Arab states want to keep building up ties with Israel—a crucial ally against Iranian expansionism and ISIS, and a source of energy and technological know-how—but need Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking to appease domestic populations that remain, for the most part, intensely hostile to the Jewish state.