Monthly Archives: December 2016

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Berlin Attack

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The heading comes from this story: Berlin truck attack, ambassador assassination point to Trump challenges. It’s from The Wall Street Journal reprinted in The Australian. They haven’t caught whoever has done the actual deed, but if ISIS is claiming responsibility, at the very least they are claiming that they would have been quite happy to have done it even if in this case they did not, although they probably did. But look at this story, as Trump is contrasted with Obama. The question left unanswered in the story – which is written as if the problems had just descended from outer space – is who is responsible for the mess Trump will inherit?

The assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey and the apparent terror attack on a Berlin Christmas market underscore the global tinderbox President-elect Donald Trump is set to inherit in coming weeks, and his initial response suggests his White House will take a sharply different approach to such unexpected crises.

Mr Trump’s written statements just hours after the incidents were a notable contrast from those coming out of the Obama White House.

He labelled the assassin in Ankara a “radical Islamic terrorist,” even though Turkish authorities hadn’t yet drawn conclusions about the gunman’s possible affiliations or motivations, whereas the White House simply stressed President Barack Obama’s “determination to confront terrorism.” Mr Trump called the Berlin ambush a “horrifying terror attack,” while the White House called it a “horrific incident” that “appears to have been a terrorist attack.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is “shocked, shaken and deeply saddened” by the attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed at least 12 people yesterday. ​ ​Ms Merkel ​said that it would be “particularly sickening” if it turns out the attacker was an asylum-seeker who sought refuge in Germany.

“It’s a completely different style for better or for worse,” said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, adding there are upsides and downsides to both approaches.

James Jeffrey, who served as Mr Obama’s ambassador in Iraq and is now a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointed to Mr Trump’s immediate use of the term “Islamic” terrorism, contrasted with Mr Obama’s steadfast refusal to link Islam with extremism — something Mr Trump frequently criticised during his campaign.

You obviously cannot get a more neutral authority than Obama’s ambassador to Iraq. Obama has not just let this problem fester for eight years, but in almost everything he did do has made things worse. He has not fought Islamic terrorism and extremism, but preferred to look at its manifestations as a problem that has been exaggerated because of the sensationalism that surrounds all such events. The journalist in this story seems to have taken the same approach: asleep at the wheel of history. But for a sample of the vast ignorance and incompetence of such journalists to even conceive beyond a first year university level of superficiality the goings-on in the world, this is truly bizarre:

Mr Trump receives intelligence briefings several times a week, though not daily as Mr Obama has.

Trump won’t even be president for a month. He was only formally elected yesterday. Obama notoriously and regularly skipped out on his intelligence briefings. Obama is responsible, to the extent anyone can be held responsible, for the problems we have. I’d be interested if someone could point to a single act Obama took to diminish the threat from Islamic terrorism. Journalists who cover for Obama are just as evil and morally culpable as the president himself.

“We are responsible for our own destruction”

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Let us begin with this passage from an op ed in The Australian today by Tim Wilson on 18C requires non-racial remit without curbs on free speech. There we find:

No other area of federal law seeks to make public acts unlawful simply for offending, insulting or humiliating someone.

In its present form 18C has more in common with anti-blasphemy laws in theocracies than it does with other federal laws.

To put into context just how bad 18C is, under federal law you can urge violence against groups of people with a disability, gays or women but you can’t offend people on the basis of their race.

In its present form 18C is not a protection of people’s human rights on the basis of race; it grants a special privilege that isn’t afforded to others in society.

Absolutely. You cannot rule out public debate because someone might find themselves insulted by what someone else is saying. Take for instance this from the letters page in The Oz today, just opposite Tim’s column. Can it make any sense to prosecute any of the letter writers below?

Islam is winning the world war and will be victorious, culminating in the destruction of Western civilisation and democracy.

The writing is on the wall, on the footpath and on the road, written in blood because Western leaders and politicians, mainstream media and academics appeases the enemy by refusing to name Islam for what it is.

Islam is a religion invented to give divine sanction to Arabic military expansion through a supremacist, totalitarian ideology dominated by intimidation, fear, ignorance and irrationality. It has violence at its core.

It has no place in an ordered, rational society. But it’s too late now. We are responsible for our own destruction.

PT, Cornelian Bay, Tas

The only good that can come from the shocking carnage in Berlin is a New Year’s resolution from the Germans to oust Angela Merkel from office. As Tony Abbott said in his recent Prague address, effective border protection is not for the squeamish, but it is absolutely necessary to save lives and to preserve nations.

MM, Singleton, NSW

Germany has wonderful Christmas markets and such a fantastic atmosphere but now this latest atrocity from what we are always told are peace-loving Muslims. Germany welcomed them in with open arms. What a way to repay the kindness.

The Russian ambassador murdered, again by a peace-loving Muslim in Turkey.

No wonder Pauline Hanson is doing well as she does at least speak the truth. We deplorables are not that stupid.

MS, Halls Head, WA

A Russian diplomat is assassinated by a man “using Arabic phrases”.

Yet Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and Malcolm Turnbull still sit inert and in bemusement at why the likes of Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson are being elected. Society clearly wants someone with the courage and mettle to call out and challenge intolerant religious ideology.

AM, Port Melbourne, Vic

It is getting harder to say certain things, but unless the aim is to hasten the destruction of our way of life, all of this has to be open for debate, irrespective of the personal feelings of those who might merely pretend to be offended to prevent others from saying what they think.

Politics and friendship

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There is nothing at all surprising about this: Poll: Dems more likely to unfriend people due to political posts. The only thing that’s possibly surprising is how low the ratio is, but there is an obvious reason for that. But first the stats:

Democratic voters are almost three times as likely to have “blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media” after Donald Trump’s victory, according to a study released Monday.

The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI ) found 24 percent of Democrats distanced themselves from people on social media because of a political postings. Nine percent of both Republicans and independents reported doing the same to those in social media circles.

Additionally, 28 percent of liberals surveyed said they removed someone from their social media circle because of the content that person posted, compared with 8 percent of conservatives.

And the reason it’s only 3:1 is that Democrats already live in a self-imposed bubble so that by the time Trump won the election, most Democrats would already have blocked people of the right out of their lives. And I have to say that most people on the left are defenceless against anyone on the right who has even a modest understanding of the political news. What can anyone on the left really say that is equivalent to our saying – come on, I mean really, you don’t know that Castro was a mass murderer who held the Cuban people in an island prison for almost sixty years? So you either don’t say it to preserve your friendships, or you do say it and have them write you out of their lives.

Trump will be president

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trumpland

The last hurdle has been cleared with Donald Trump having received the 270 electoral votes that will make him the 45th president. It ought to have been a mere formality, but not only were there many in the Democrat rabble who thought that the Electoral College might be turned, no one at the top of the Democrat establishment would say that the vote had been determined, and that Trump was legitimately the president-elect. This will be part of the Democrat drumbeat for the next four (or even eight) years, as they will insist that the Russians did it and Hillary received more votes. The very clever map above shows just what it means that Hillary received more votes. California, a bit of the north-east and a few scattered islands elsewhere. The rest of the country voted Trump. It is exactly this kind of distorted voting pattern that the electoral college was designed to overcome. Here is Bill Clinton discussing the election, just yesterday, after all the voting was done:

On the question of Russian cyberattacks damaging the candidacy of his wife, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the former president said “you would need to have a single-digit IQ not to recognize what was going on.”

I think it requires a single-digit IQ to have voted for Hillary, but honest people might differ on this one. But then he goes on with what I think is true:

He blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss, telling those gathered around him that he had “cost her the election” by announcing with less than two weeks to go before the election that the bureau was examining fresh evidence related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

This is the 650,000 emails in Anthony Weiner’s laptop that were suddenly discovered which no one has a plausible reason to explain how they got there. I agree with Bill that that is what turned the tide. I therefore also need a plausible reason to explain why Comey opened this issue up just when he did since he had already closed the email question down a couple of weeks before. I think still that it was because Obama was trying to engineer a Hillary win, an early need to resign and a Tim Kaine presidency, but we will never know. It does explain things to me in a way that nothing else does.

Instead it is President Donald Trump. Now it will be four years of relentless media slanging, where there is continuous and ongoing effort to find anti-Trump narratives at every turn. The media are almost entirely of the left, and we have seen how it works. What remains remarkable is that even though everyone says the media are on the far left, they nevertheless can create issues and then run with them. The fake news and Russian cyberattack stories are just inventions for which evidence is entirely lacking.

But Trump will be president. He will change the direction of American economic and foreign policy, and he will get to choose at least one justice for the Supreme Court and possibly as many as three. He will also build the wall. Is it too late? We shall see.

Why are these people not being prosecuted?

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Threatening to kill someone is illegal. So how are these people issuing death threats allowed to walk the street. Here is the story, Electoral College Members Receive Death Threats for Promising to Back Trump as President. Here is one of the electors being quoted:

“I’ve had death wishes, people just saying ‘I hope you die. Do society a favor, throw yourself in front of a bus.’ And just recently, I was reading a blog about me, and unfortunately these people not only called for the burning of myself, but my family, which is completely out of line.”

Is that it – “completely out of line”? Do Americans just take it as it is that there are mentally ill people out there who would see their own Constitution subverted just so they can hang on to power which has been legitimately lost. They are criminals if not actually traitors.

Then there’s this: Black Father-Daughter Trump Electors Receive Death Threats, Called Bigots for Supporting Trump. These people are mentally ill. Eight years of Obama with hardly a word said in anger, and certainly many fewer than he deserved. Trump will have his work cut out for him in dealing with Hillary’s deranged supporters, who ruin lives and do no one any good. Free stuff is a social disease.

Meanwhile, you can see how the “truth” is being manufactured right before our eyes: Commentary: Here’s how Obama can hit back at Putin over hacking. It’s from Reuters and is not a news story, just the views of one of their lamebrain journalists:

The verdict is unanimous: President Barack Obama and every U.S. intelligence service agree that Russian President Vladimir Putin has run a sophisticated intelligence operation designed to disrupt American democracy and elect Donald J. Trump. The lone dissenter? Trump himself.

It’s not just that they are fools but that they are criminally stupid. Unanimous, is it? Such lying scum.

The left steals everything so why not an election?

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https://youtu.be/gbjfRypEEYw

The story is in last-shot bid, thousands urge electoral college to block Trump at Monday vote. The moral authority of the left is anyway abysmal but the notion of playing by the rules seems to have escaped them. They are all Lenins and Castros in waiting.

Pressure on members of the electoral college to select someone other than Donald Trump has grown dramatically — and noisily — in recent weeks, causing some to waver but yielding little evidence that Trump will fall short when electors convene in most state capitals Monday to cast their votes. . . .

The 306 Republican electors who are supposed to cast their votes for Trump have been subject to intense campaigns orchestrated by anti-Trump forces to convince them that they alone can block the reality-television star from the White House.

Others have targeted Democratic electors, who are supposed to cast votes for Clinton, to persuade them to switch to a more conventional Republican who could also draw enough support from GOP electors to swoop into office.

While there is little sign the efforts will prove successful, the push has unleashed intense pressure on individual electors, who have now been thrust into a sometimes uncomfortable spotlight.

They believe themselves so virtuous that they can see no wrong in trying to reverse an election result that if it was rigged at all, it was rigged to see the Democrats win.

MORE OF THE SAME: There is no reason to think the election was hijacked, but even more important is ensuring that the political system is recognised as delivering an outcome that represents the will of the voters. The worse that can be said is that the leaks revealed the truth about the Democrats, which enhances the validity of the election. The left, as always, preys on the ignorance of the population – there are those at the top who want power and there are those at the bottom who believe they will be made better off with socialists in government. There is not an ounce of benevolence in voting of the left, only ignorance. Think about this: Podesta refuses to say election was ‘fair and free’. How dangerous this is for the future of the United States even to suggest any such thing. How despicable for these people to attempt such fraud to steal an election they have most assuredly lost.

There needs to be a strategy to deal with this

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salon

There are two facets at least. The first is that while this is a bit early, it is how the news will be portrayed as long as Trump, or any other Republican, is president. The laughable bit is that there would never be such a post with the intention of criticising Obama.

The second part is that while it has its funny part, this is not actually just for laughs. We treat this as just another example of how ridiculous the left is. The left here is just practising and will do this day after day once Trump really is president. He will never be given credit for anything positive and will be continuously criticised for everything that the media thinks they can use to undermine his authority. There needs to be a strategy that goes beyond showing our own side what a bunch of fools the left is made up of.

Fake news and real totalitarians

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How do such liars get away with it. Because they have no shame in lying right to your face and the established left – in the press, within political parties and throughout social media – are willing to fall instantaneously into line the minute the latest news narrative is stated. A low-information voter is someone whose only source of news are the large conglomerate news organisations. By definition, almost the whole of the population in any of our societies are the products of fake news. If you get your facts only from The New York Times or ABC news, you are as ignorant and possibly more ignorant than if you had not paid any attention at all to what they report.

Think of this which is right now the headline at Drudge:


FAKEBOOK TO LABEL ‘NEWS’
RISE OF TRUTH POLICE!

They label truth as fake news and will do all they can to see it suppressed. They have no shame, but the very fact that we must discuss this and work out ways to push these vile, deceitful scum away from influencing the societies in which we live, means we are losing. How many people might watch the video. Maybe half a million. Meanwhile there are tens of millions on facebook who have no ability, and often no desire, to look outside what they find there. Zuckerberg and others like him are evil people, who like the Lenins and Castros of the world, are trying to guide you to a better future which they can run for your own good, and to protect you from yourself. The big issue for us is to work out how to fight back.