The gagging of America 130
Pat Condell speaks freely – with brilliant withering sarcasm – in anger and sorrow for the passing of free speech.
(He calls on “God” to bless America, but he is in fact a firm atheist.)
(Hat-tip our reader Stephen Stern)
More scenes of Muslim savagery 98
Leaders of the Western world, including Obama talking from his behind, want us to believe that Islam is a beautiful and peaceful religion.
Here are scenes, pictured or described, showing how beautiful and peaceful Islam really is. –
Musicians punished for making music. Wonderfully made musical instruments smashed to pieces.
Boys killed for watching football.
Men killed for breeding pigeons.
Homosexuals hurled from the top of tall buildings.
The words and pictures come from the Daily Mail:
Islamic State religious police have been filmed beating musicians and destroying their instruments as punishment for playing an “un-Islamic” keyboard.
The men were pictured being hit across the back and legs with a wooden stick in a public square after ISIS’s fanatical Islamic enforcers ruled the electric keyboard was “offensive to Muslims”.
Another picture shows two keyboards and what appears to be a lute smashed to pieces after raids thought to have taken place in Bujaq, a few miles to the east of Aleppo in Syria.
Musicians in Syria were given 90 lashes each after they were caught by the Islamic State’s religious police playing an electric keyboard …
Pictures show the men being beaten on their backs and legs by tribal elders in a public square believed to be in Bujaq, a town to the north east of Aleppo. …
The men were apparently caught playing electronic keyboards, and what appears to be a lute, instruments that were deemed to be “un-Islamic” by ISIS’s fanatical religious police …
Earlier today, it was reported that at least 15 pigeon breeders in eastern Iraq were rounded up after ISIS ruled the sport distracted them from praising Allah.
Three of those held by the group in the eastern province of Diyala have reportedly been killed, according to a security official.
Abu Abdullah, a farmer, said a total of six gunmen barged into his home earlier this week and dragged away his 21-year-old son. Mr Abdullah’s son is just one of the 15 young men – all aged between 16 and 22 – who have reportedly been captured in the province for breeding birds.
Yesterday it was reported that 13 youngsters were killed by firing squad in Iraq’s second city of Mosul for watching an Asian Cup football match between Iraq and Jordan.
Activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which operates out of Syria, reported that the teenagers were shot in public and their bodies left there as their parents are too afraid to go and get them.
The boys’ ‘crime’ – breaking religious laws by watching football – was read out on a loudspeaker before their executions.
It came just days after ISIS released a video showing two men being thrown off the top of a tower block in Raqqa, Syria, for being gay.
A masked Islamic State fighter announced the charges against the accused using a small handheld radio, before declaring them guilty of engaging in homosexual activities.
He said they should be punished by death, in accordance with Islamic State’s radical interpretation of Sharia law.
The men were then bound and blindfolded before being pushed off the 100ft tower block to their death.
Why the CDC is short of money for an Ebola vaccine 26
Where did the tax-payers’ money go when it was entrusted to the Centers for Disease Control, leaving insufficient funds for the development of an Ebola vaccine?
This information and comment come from Newsbusters:
For years, government watchdog groups have chronicled numerous instances of waste and abuse at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and its National Institutes for Health (NIH).
An establishment press corps doing its job, upon hearing the director of the National Institutes for Health claim that “if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine” for Ebola by now, and especially upon hearing leftist politicians then claim that it’s all Republicans’ fault [for “making cuts in public expenditure”], would look into whether part of the problem might be poor bureaucratic stewardship. But they’re not doing their job.
The CDC’s budget today is 25% bigger than it was in 2008 and 188% bigger than in 2000.
The NIH budget [is] at a level that’s more than double what it was 14 years ago.
If the NIH was really so concerned about developing an Ebola vaccine, it could have directed more grant money to that effort, rather than wasting it researching such things as:
- diseases among male sex workers in Peru ($400,000)
- sexual attraction among fruit flies (nearly $1 million)
- a study that will send text messages in “gay lingo” to meth-heads ($509,840)
- a study on “Massage in Rabbits” ($386,000)
- numerous studies exploring the effects of meditation (costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each)
The CDC –
- dumped $106 million into a swanky visitors’ center in Atlanta even though it already had one
- bought $10 million worth of furniture for its lavish new headquarters
- spent $1.7 million to advise Hollywood on medical plots
- granted $702,558 for a study of the impact of televisions and gas generators on villages in Vietnam
- granted $175,587 to the University of Kentucky to study the impact of cocaine on the sex drive of Japanese quail
- granted $55,382 for a study of hookah smoking in Jordan
- granted $592,527 for a study to determine why chimpanzees throw objects
The economist who was right 37
One man, Peter Schiff, an Austrian School economist, stands alone against an onslaught by Keynesians.
They sneer, they mock, they try to laugh him out of court.
But, as we all know now, HE WAS RIGHT.
Will those who mocked and derided Peter Schiff ever admit they were wrong? Apologize? Will any of them “sign a letter saying he/she was wrong”? Could they change their minds as to which school of economic thought – the Keynesian or the Austrian – has proved to be right in the real world?
Almost certainly, no.
Ben Bernanke, current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, hasn’t changed his mind, although (in the video) he claims open-mindedness when Ron Paul asks him what it would take to persuade him he was wrong.
(Hat tip Don L for the video link)
Bloodbaths, lies, and after 224
The pretense continues that “the rebels’ – a crowd of untrained Libyans dangerously armed – achieved the conquest of Tripoli and now the defeat of Gaddafi’s last defenders in Sirte and his capture.
Here is a report from the Telegraph in which the writer tries to uphold the internationally agreed lie, while yet supplying the information that a US drone guided from the Nevada desert, and French bombers, and British “advisers” – actually strategists and leaders and, probably, effective fighters in sufficient number – ended Gaddafi’s forces’ last stand and flushed out the man.
Deep in the lunar landscape of the Nevada desert, American specialists trained to their computer screens spotted unusual activity at around 7.30am in District Two. From their windowless bunker, lit by constantly flickering computer screens, the analysts directed their unmanned Predator drones to zoom in on the convoy [of trucks] as it picked up speed and headed west. Nato’s eyes were suddenly trained on Gaddafi’s convoy. …
Around 40 miles off the Libyan coast a Nato AWAC early-warning surveillance aircraft, flying over the Mediterranean, took control of the battle and warned two French jets that a loyalist convoy was attempting to leave Sirte.
As the convoy sped west, a Hellfire missile was fired from the Predator and destroyed the first vehicle in the convoy.
By now, the NTC troops had realised that the loyalists were escaping and a small number of lightly armed rebels began to give chase.
To me it seemed like a wild, chaotic situation. But we now know that it had, in fact, been foreseen by the British SAS and their special forces allies, who were advising the NTC forces.
British military sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that small teams of SAS soldiers on the ground in Sirte, armed but under strict orders not to get involved, had warned them throughout the siege to be alert to the fleeing of loyalists.
Assisted by other special forces – in particular the Qataris [put in because they’re Arabs which makes it okay if they have “boots on the ground”? – JB] with whom the SAS have a long relationship dating back 20 years – the SAS tried to impress on the Libyans the need to cover all escape routes.
But despite the advice, the breakout seems to have taken the rebels on the Zafran front completely by surprise.
In the previous two weeks I had repeatedly seen the militiamen fail to hold forward positions at night as they fell back to their encampments. Again and again loyalists had used cover of darkness to surprise the militiamen and manoeuvre into new firing positions.
Once more their surveillance was lax, and one rebel fighter confessed to me that in the early hours of Thursday they had failed to keep proper watch on the western front and they were surprised by the convoy. …
At this point the SAS urged the NTC [National Transitional Council] leaders to move their troops to exits points across the city and close their stranglehold.
After the Hellfire missile struck its target, the convoy changed direction, possibly hoping to avoid a further strike, before heading west again. It had begun to fracture into several different groups of vehicles.
The French jets were also given permission to join the attack.
By now a group of 20 vehicles in the convoy had reached a point around three miles west of the city. The shattered streets had been left behind, and the convoy had halted next to a walled electricity sub station, in arid farmland dotted with breeze block compounds and trees.
Just then, the French pilot began his bombing run, seconds later releasing two 500lb GBU-12 laser-guided bombs, into the centre of the convoy.
The bombs unleashed massive force. Arriving at the site, a few hours later, their devastating power was clear to see: at least a dozen vehicles were shredded and burned out, while I counted more than 25 bodies, some lying twisted and charred inside the vehicles and others lying in clumps nearby.
The air strike marked the end of any attempt at an ordered retreat and the convoy’s remnants scattered. …
Col Gaddafi had survived the air strike, but was apparently wounded in the legs. With his companions dead or dispersed, he now had few options.
He and a handful of men … appeared to have made their way 300 yards north from the devastation and taken shelter in a drainage culvert running under a dual carriageway. …
Members of the Al Watan revolutionary brigade who had been following the convoy at a distance witnessed the explosion, but at that point still had no idea who was in the vehicles.
Saleem Bakeer, a rebel fighter who said he was among those who came across Gaddafi hiding in the pipes said they had approached on foot.
“One of Gaddafi’s men came out waving his rifle in the air and shouting surrender, but as soon as he saw my face he started shooting at me,” he said.
“Then I think Gaddafi must have told them to stop. ‘My master is here, my master is here’, he said, ‘Muammar Gaddafi is here and he is wounded’.”
“We went in and brought Gaddafi out. He was saying: ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s going on?'”
The initial astonishment [on the part of the rebels] appears to have quickly switched to jubilation, and then rage.
“I don’t think that anyone thought he would be there, we all thought that he would be in the south, or maybe across in Niger or Algeria. We were as shocked as he was at first,” said Abdullah Hakim Husseini, one of the band of men who found him. “We were so happy when we knew it was him. I thought, ‘at last, it’s all over’.”
Mobile phone footage shows Col Gaddafi alive but weak and bloodied, with blows raining down on him from frenzied fighters. At one point he was hauled onto the bonnet of a pickup truck, then pulled down by his hair. His weighty golden gun, intricately engraved and decorated with the words “The sun will never set on the Al Fattah revolution”, was snatched by one of the revolutionaries. His satellite phone was seized, and it was later discovered that he had made one last call to Syria.
Omran el Oweyb, the commander who captured Gaddafi, said that he only managed to stagger ten steps before he fell to the ground. …
One rebel was heard screaming in his face: “This is for Misurata, you dog.”
Gaddafi – confused, bloodied, stumbling – can be heard to reply, in what could be his last, laughably philosophical words: “Do you know right from wrong?”
What happened in the next minutes is the subject of intense controversy. Sometime in the next hours or minutes he died of a bullet wound to the left temple. The official NTC account says he was caught in crossfire as he was being driven to hospital. …
However the ambulance driver who ferried him said Col Gaddafi was already dead when he was loaded into the ambulance, around 500 yards from his point of capture.
One NTC member, who did not want to be named, admitted that this version of events was likely. “They beat him very harshly and then they killed him,” he said. “This is a war.”
So British SAS soldiers directed the last battle on the ground.
A Hellfire missile and bombs released from French planes hit the truck-convoy in which Gaddafi was trying to flee from Sirte. Gaddafi and at least one of his men sought shelter in a large drainpipe. And only then the Libyan savages moved in for the kill.
This is also from the Telegraph:
In Benghazi, on the main square where it all started, they were slaughtering camels in celebration. … They daubed their hands in the camel-blood, and gave the V-for-victory sign with dripping fingers. …
In the cafes, people were watching TV pictures – more graphic than any shown in Britain – of a bloodied Gaddafi dragged along and beaten, feebly protesting, before a gun was put to his head.
The picture then cut to the dead ex-leader being rolled onto the pavement, blood pooling from the back of his skull. …
Gaddafi’s death is already showing up some of the weaknesses of Libya’s new rulers.
The claim by the interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, that he was killed in “crossfire” looks ever more false with every new piece of video.
Both he and his son Mutassim were alive when captured, and dead soon after. A statement by an anonymous NTC source that “they beat [Gaddafi] and they killed him” seems closer to the mark.
But Mr Jibril angrily rejected demands by the United Nations and some in the West for a proper investigation into the circumstances of Gaddafi’s death.
“People in the West don’t understand the agony and pain that the people went through during the past 42 years,” he said.
The dictator’s treatment – before and after death – underlines that Libya does not have a government, or a state with functioning standards, only a collection of militias.
After he was killed, his [torn and bloodied] body was taken by the Misurata militia and put on display in a shopping centre, where yesterday the corpses of his slain son Mutassim and Gaddafi’s army chief, Abu Bakr, were placed alongside.
Libyans from hundreds of miles away came to queue up and, some wearing gloves and masks, view the three bodies. …
The various militias are quarreling over who should take possession of the corpses. It is a harbinger of fiercer quarrels to come. Trouble looms.
Most of the militias are based on a particular town, financed and commanded largely autonomously. Gaddafi’s death means that the main thing which united them – the war against him – is over. Now, the many rivalries and disputes between them, and between them and the NTC, may come to the fore. …
The NTC is indeed going to vanish: Mr Jibril, along with the rest of the council, have already said they will serve only until elections in eight months’ time, and he repeated that yesterday. Eight months is quite enough time for political disputes to fester and harden into something more serious.
Such as more civil war?
This comes from DebkaFile:
[National Transitional Council leader] Mustafa Abdul-Jalil will be little more than a figurehead. Even now, he is confined in Benghazi by three strongmen, who control most parts of the capital, and have not given him permission to move the seat of the interim government to Tripoli. …
The regime taking shape could not be further from the Western ideal of a free democracy.
Behind the grisly images of Muammar Qaddafi’s last moments spilling out since Thursday, Oct. 20, a quiet contest is afoot between the US and at least two NATO allies, France and Germany, over who deserves the credit for his termination and therefore for ending the alliance’s military role in Libya.
American sources are willing to admit that US drones operated by pilots from Las Vegas pinpointed the fugitive ruler’s hideout in Sirte and kept the building under surveillance for two weeks, surrounded by US and British forces.
Both therefore had boots on the ground in breach of the UN mandate which limited NATO military intervention in Libya to air strikes. …
According to the London Daily Telegraph, his presence in the convoy was first picked up by the USAF River Joint RC-135V/W intelligence signals plane, which passed the information to French warplanes overhead who then carried out the strike on Qaddafi’s vehicle.
The German Der Spiegel reported Monday, Oct. 24, that the tip revealing Qaddafi’s last hiding place came from German BND intelligence agents. Although Chancellor Angela Merkel was dead against German participation in the NATO operation in Libya, the BND nonetheless played an important role in intelligence-gathering.
It is increasingly obvious now that without the active intervention of the US, Britain, France and Germany, the anti-Qaddafi rebels on their own would never have beaten Qaddafi or been able to end his life.
As usual, however, the foreign offices of all the NATO countries involved in the operation will follow a long established custom of the Western powers and allow the Arabs to lie.
The lie will be that the people of Libya overthrew a tyrant. The truth will be that they’ll instate an Islamic regime in his stead; and the West, for all its talk of helping Libya become a free democracy, will not raise a finger to prevent that from happening.
A note to readers 3
The comments facility for the post immediately below – Another al-Qaeda leader is killed, but Islam is winning – was accidentally closed.
It is now open and comments are welcome.
Cheers! 75
New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions. ~Mark Twain
WE WISH OUR READERS A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR
Note to our readers 0
By some accident we cannot account for, comments on our post The camel treatment were blocked.
This was particularly regrettable because we want answers to our questions.
The comment section is open now, and we hope to receive replies.
‘War on Want’ and the Jewish People 28
Sam Westrop asks why John Hilary of War on Want suggests Shlomo Sand’s ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ is suitable for ‘learning more about Palestine’. This piece was originally published at The Propagandist:
The debate regarding anti-Zionism’s anti-Semitic overtones is as ever applicable and is as ever strenuously contested. On a British University campus, I regularly experience screaming denials of bigotry from not just British Islamists and their morally anaemic far-Left supporters, but also from persons considered – or at least self-perceived – to be moderates.
For a while now, I have taken what I consider to be a reasonable and positive perspective: if one ignores the unquestionable suffering and the consequent emotional and rational incentives of the Jewish people to provide themselves with the optimism, prosperity and success of the self-reliance and security of a homeland, then one can reject Zionism – or Jewish nationalism – but only on the absolute condition that one also rejects Palestinian nationalism. To choose one over the other is a consummate hypocrisy that assumes absolutely no rational premise or a desire for peaceful resolution.
One particular NGO, which any rational yet uninformed observer would expect to take an enlightened and progressive position, would be ‘War on Want’ – a registered British charity which received just under half a million pounds from the European Commission and about £160,000 from the British Government in 2009.
The stated aims of War on Want include the promise ‘to relieve global poverty however caused through working in partnership with people throughout the world’. Such wording presupposes a forward-thinking organisation that acts in the interest of progress and prosperity; regrettably, the very opposite is true.
