The Bookworm Beat 11-18-15 — “the mother of all round-ups” edition and open thread
I have been collecting links for days and will try to share them all with you. Here goes:
Only conservatives are paying attention
In an attempt to deflect attention of Muslim depredations in Paris, the Left and its foot soldiers (all of whom seem to be my Facebook friends) immediately attacked Americans and other Westerners for failing to pay attention to a bombing the day before in Lebanon (an ISIS v. Hezbollah bombing, so it was Horrible People v. Horrible People). I eventually got tired of commenting on their posts to the effect that I have been paying attention to all of these attacks, primarily because they are all different manifestations of a single radical Islamic entity, and I’ve been trying to get everyone to pay as much attention as I do.
Emma Kelly says what I was too polite to say explicitly to these Leftists: The reason you didn’t know about these other attacks isn’t because the newspapers didn’t report them, it’s because you weren’t paying attention.
I’ll add something that Kelly didn’t, though: You weren’t paying attention because American and European media outlets don’t want you to see that Islam is a problem, so they report on these incidents, but downplay them. Meanwhile you get loud noise about Ben Carson’s alleged lies, Hillary’s brilliance, Republicans’ meanness, Donald Trump’s hair, and Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy.
The Syrian Chessboard
With France and Russia rendezvousing at sea off the Syrian coast to engage in joint military operations against ISIS in Syria, you may find interesting Sarah N. Stern’s excellent “The Syrian Chessboard.” The situation in that benighted land is more complicated than most of us realize and has been for some time.
Part of me is grateful that Obama refuses to go in there, because he’s such an appalling commander-in-chief that Syria has the potential to be a tar baby permanently entrapping America in a place that’s pretty much Hell on earth. If Russia is victorious there, its stock will rise, while ours will fall, but it may find itself stuck there too, reliving the horrors of its own Afghanistan years.
Following the Paris Massacre, Mark Steyn nails Europe’s self destructive streak
Trust Mark Steyn to zoom in on Europe’s — and the West’s — suicide:
When the Allahu Akbar boys opened fire, Paris was talking about the climate-change conference due to start later this month, when the world’s leaders will fly in to “solve” a “problem” that doesn’t exist rather than to address the one that does. But don’t worry: we already have a hashtag (#PrayForParis) and doubtless there’ll be another candlelight vigil of weepy tilty-headed wankers. Because as long as we all advertise how sad and sorrowful we are, who needs to do anything?
[snip]
Among his other coy evasions, President Obama described tonight’s events as “an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share”.
But that’s not true, is it? He’s right that it’s an attack not just on Paris or France. What it is is an attack on the west, on the civilization that built the modern world – an attack on one portion of “humanity” by those who claim to speak for another portion of “humanity”. And these are not “universal values” but values that spring from a relatively narrow segment of humanity. They were kinda sorta “universal” when the great powers were willing to enforce them around the world and the colonial subjects of ramshackle backwaters such as Aden, Sudan and the North-West Frontier Province were at least obliged to pay lip service to them. But the European empires retreated from the world, and those “universal values” are utterly alien to large parts of the map today.
And then Europe decided to invite millions of Muslims to settle in their countries. Most of those people don’t want to participate actively in bringing about the death of diners and concertgoers and soccer fans, but at a certain level most of them either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live – modern, pluralist, western societies and those “universal values” of which Barack Obama bleats. So, if you are either an active ISIS recruit or just a guy who’s been fired up by social media, you have a very large comfort zone in which to swim, and which the authorities find almost impossible to penetrate.
Who’s in charge here?
If you’ve been wondering what’s been going on with America’s military when faced with radical Islam’s existential threat, that’s a very good thing to wonder. We know that the men and women who make up America’s armed forces, the ones in the field so to speak, are good people with very few “bad apple” exceptions. They’re brave, committed, hard-working, and ready to defend their nation.
Unfortunately, they’re led by politicians, and that’s true whether they’re civilian politicians or military ones. Ray Starmann gives a rundown of the cast of characters Obama has put into place to direct America’s defense and, quite frankly, it’s a scary list — and that’s true of the good and decent people (kind of helpless) as well as the ideologues (damn dangerous).
ISIS craves the end of the world
I have been saying forever that the Left’s foolish credulity and fawning negotiations with Iran arise in part because the Left refuses to recognize that the Iranian’s Shia version of Islam is an apocalyptic faith. The difference between it and apocalyptic Christian creeds or the equally apocalyptic Church of Global Warming is that the Iranians aren’t trying to survive or forestall the apocalypse. Instead, they believe it is their religious obligation to bring it about.
Fridi Ghitis suggests that ISIS, although it’s the Sunni branch of Islam, also has an apocalyptic vision, one that could be dubbed “Global Caliphate or Bust.” They’re gambling everything on their caliphate, and seem content with the possibility of either outcome, whether that end is their version of world sharia or the actual end of the world.
And old German flag comes into play again
If you were a Leftist who’s noticed that ordinary Germans are not happy about the Muslim refugee invasion and who then read that “an old German flag comes into play again,” you’d undoubtedly think I was referring to the Nazi flag. You’d be wrong. In fact, Germany has its own version of the Gadsden flag, and it’s making its appearance as Germans realize that they may have to fight for their nation and their culture to survive.
Yes, Obama hates Israel
Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama has come and gone, and superficially it appears that he’s achieved a rapprochement with Obama. Don’t let that fool you. Obama hates Israel and uses his minions to wage a constant low-grade war against it.
Obama’s lies
The “Ben Carson lies” news cycle is already over. The MSM played it up as much as it could, watched Carson drop in the polls (which I think happened because voters realized he was unprepared, not because of his story about West Point or a serendipitous belt buckle), and then abandoned the attack. Still, if you haven’t already read Jack Cashill’s list of 25 Obama lies — none of which the media called upon and all of which are proven falsehoods — I think you’ll still enjoy it.
Will it change the political scene today? Nope, but it still feels good to know that you’re not crazy when you think Obama is the lying-ist liar who ever occupied the White House.
Hamas is every bit as genocidal as the Nazis were
One of the rules of thumb for survival is that, when someone says he wants to kill you, believe him. This holds true with even greater force when an ideology has as its central idea exterminating a specific group of people. Hamas has been remarkably clear that one of its foundational goals is to wipe about the Jewish people. Robert Avrech address the fact that so many people (meaning Leftists) refuse to believe that Hamas means what it says.
Is The Guardian guilty of latent antisemitism or am I paranoid?
Mr. Bookworm sent me an article he thought I’d find charming and, up to a point, I did. It seems that a treasure trove of thousands of letters written 300 years ago turned up in an old leather trunk in Holland. I love it when we think we know everything possible about an era, only to have history sneak out from a hidden chest, an underground cave, an excavated grave, or somewhere else, to surprise us and expand our knowledge.
My problem is with the story in The Guardian. I did mention, didn’t I, that there are thousands of letters. Nevertheless The Guardian chose to focus only on one: the one in which a Jewish man’s mistress finds herself pregnant and implores him for help, only to have the letter returned unopened. In the last couple of paragraphs, the article mentions two other letters en passant, but the heavy focus is on that mean Jewish merchant who lived 300 years ago. Given The Guardian’s virulent anti-Zionism, which is a PC version of antisemitism, I can’t help but find the article offensive, rather than charming.
Are “gingers” maddened Islamic killers?
When I was growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, we might have poked gentle fun at redheads, e.g., calling them “carrot top,” but the general feeling was that the red hair was intrinsically beautiful. When I was living in England in the early 1980s, two of my flatmates had gorgeous red hair, and I don’t recall either ever getting teased or insulted because of it.
Something happened in England by the 1990s, though, and redheads ended up on the receiving end of a virulent “anti-ginger” campaign, so much so that some families had to move from their old neighborhoods and dye their children’s hair to get a fresh start. This twisted pathology seems to be reaching its end point now with a disproportionate number of those tortured British redheads converting to Islam and going radical. Catholic Mary Tudor and Protestant Elizabeth I, both redheads, must be turning in their graves.
A website for Zionist Trump supporters
I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around Donald Trump as the ultimate Republican presidential candidate. As you all know, my heart is with Ted Cruz. Be that as it may, the fact is that Trump has shown remarkable staying power and needs to be taken seriously. Also, despite my concerns about his ego and unpreparedness, I still would vote for him over Hillary or Bernie. I’d therefore like to recommend a site with which a blogfriend is involved, called Zionists4Trump. For those of us who may end up coming late to the Trump party, it behooves us to understand why his supporters trust and believe in him.
I think this is the year that breaks the prediction record
Western Illinois University boasts that, since 1975, it has predicted presidential elections with 100% accuracy. Somehow I suspect that something went wrong with this year’s edition — or something is about to go very, very wrong with the United States as a whole:
The results of WIU’s 2015 mock election are in, and if you tend to take the mainstream media seriously, the results of that election will more than likely surprise you: Bernie Sanders won the presidency, then the general election… and he did both in a massive landslide.
The WIU mock election, in which thousands of students from multiple schools form parties and caucuses and play out a small-scale election over the course of several days, has Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton in 22 out of 26 primary states; Hillary Clinton survives past Super Tuesday, but loses out before the month of March is concluded.
The epitaph to the college meltdowns
I have no doubt that the college meltdowns will continue into the future. Having tasted power, the Mini-Maos across American campuses are not going to stop now. Nevertheless, I think Noah Rothman has already penned the perfect epitaph to this burgeoning, self-destructive movement: “A Generation That Hates Free Speech.”
The damage the religion of climate change has done to science
My friend Wolf Howling wrote a wonderful, comprehensive, accessible post about the way in which climate change dogma, which is based on faith, not fact, is corrupting politics, economics, and science. Perhaps someone at The Onion read it, because the brilliant minds there came out with a suggestion for an additional step to be added to the “scientific method.”
And there’s another brilliant climate change article in town
Wolf Howling ruefully told me that, if he’d known about David Siegel’s article, he never would have bothered to write his own. I think that both are valuable contributions to the body of literature opposing the anthropogenic climate change religious revival. Siegel, a one-time climate change-ista has seen the light and now, with the passion of all converts, is trying to save others from going down the economically and emotionally disastrous apocalyptic path he once traveled.
Wealthy Leftists agree to commit economic suicide
Marin County has some of the best air quality in the world. And why not? We have only one real freeway, we have no industry, and we are the beneficiaries of the wonderful ocean breezes washing off the Pacific. But Marin County is also about 70% Democrat, and if you’re a Democrat, economic self-destruction is the rule of the day (plus it pairs nicely with the existential self-destruction we’re now seeing in connection with the Syrian refugee debate):
Ambitious goals to curb greenhouse gas emissions were approved this week by county officials who pledged to meet aggressive targets outlined in a climate change action plan.
The county, updating its climate change program, said that by 2020 it intends to cut community greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent below 1990 levels, and those generated by government activities by 15 percent.
[snip]
While capital improvements and related investments will generate costs, reduced energy use and maintenance could produce net savings for the community from about $3 million to almost $4 million a year by 2020, planners said. One-time costs to county government might range from $1 million to $4 million while yielding net savings of up to $400,000 a year, according to rough estimates.
I’m willing to bet that those numbers underestimate costs and overestimate savings. I’ve been suffering for years with solar panels. It is true that we haven’t paid an energy bill in years, but we’ve achieved this by paying $15,000 up front for the solar panels and then by drastically, often painfully, reducing our energy usage so as not to trigger the excessive charges on homeowners with solar panels who use electricity during the summer.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s PRI speech
I wrote about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s wonderful PRI speech here. The video is now available.
To the Left, children are useful tools
Does anybody really believe that two 9-year-olds authored a letter to Disney containing the following paragraph:
We are third graders from New York City at The Cathedral School. We learn about stereotypes, and the impact they have on people’s identities. For instance, in the jungle cruise, all the robotic people have dark skin and are throwing spears at you. We think this reinforces some negative associations, we think you should replace them with monkeys throwing rotten fruit.
The Nation triggers a funny anti-Hillary campaign
The Nation magazine was trying to stir up some excitement for the Hillary campaign. Things went awry, and “hillarity” ensued.
