How Can We Deal With Terrorism in the West ?

Terrorism struck in London last Saturday night and PM Theresa May says, “Enough is enough “

Does she mean it ? Probably but that does not mean anything useful will be done.
Two thirds of British Muslims would not report a plot to police.

The same poll revealed that over half of all British Muslims think homosexuality, the very act of gay sex, should be illegal in Britain. Another 23% want to tear down British common law and replace it with Islamic Sharia. Moreover, 39% believe that wives should always, without exception, obey the commands of their husbands; 31% of Muslim also believed that men (not women of course) should be legally permitted to practice polygamy and marry more than one wife.

That doesn’t sound like assimilation. How about America ?

Minnesota Somalis sound pretty much the same.

‘Is it right to kill someone who insults the prophet?’

“Yes,” said the bearded man with the animated personality. “Because when you, every day you face frustration. And you know, every day you have, uh, you’re mad, or somebody says that, and you feel hate your soul. You could do anything you wanted. If you committed suicide, you don’t care, because your heart, your heart is telling you, ‘I don’t want to live no more,’ because you couldn’t take that much hate. Or you, you kill someone.”

It’s not just Somalis.

The Center for Security Policy released a poll Tuesday that should give all Americans pause. The results show that a startling number of American Muslims, our fellow citizens, agree that violence is a legitimate response to those who insult Islam. A full majority of 51% “agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”

According to the just-released survey of Muslims, a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.” When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that shariah should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%). …

Even more troubling, is the fact that nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”

A full 25% of those polled agreed that “violence against Americans here in the United States can be justified as part of the global jihad.”

What do we do with this ?

Spengler (David Goldman) has some suggestions.

Sherman and Sheridan suppressed sniping at Union soldiers by Confederate civilians by burning the towns (just the towns, not the townsfolk) that sheltered them. In other words, they forced collective responsibility upon a hostile population, a doctrine that in peacetime is entirely repugnant, but that in wartime becomes unavoidable.

I have read a lot about Sherman and his way of dealing with a hostile population was hang snipers and burn the villages that supported them.

Collective punishment has gotten a bad reputation from the Germans in World War I and World War II. They would round up innocent civilians and execute them to punish guerilla attacks in the area. I am not advocating anything like that.

Israel demolishes the homes of terrorists.

“The police are going deeply into the Arab neighborhoods [in Jerusalem], which has not been done in the past,” he said. “We will demolish terrorists’ homes. We are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs. This is necessary in order to safeguard the security of Israeli citizens on the roads and everywhere.”

Palestinians may consider children expendable but houses are more precious. How would we implement such a policy ?

Many mosques have been used to store weapons and plan attacks.

This is certainly the case in Israel.

The 38-page report includes photographic evidence of weapons being stored under pulpits and elsewhere in mosques during December and January’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. It notes that Israeli troops fighting Hizballah in Lebanon, U.S. troops fighting terrorists in Iraq and even Palestinian Authority officials in the West Bank have encountered similar practices.

How about in the US ? Mosques have been shown to teach violent extremism.

The mosques in the US are largely funded by the Saudis which promote the Wahhabi extreme version of Islam.

Firm figures are elusive, but estimates are that the Saudis fund up to 80% of American mosques, at least in part. And their goal is the same here as it is elsewhere in the world where Islam must compete with other religions: to prevent Muslims from integrating into the host society.

If a terrorist is shown to have attended a mosque, that mosque should be closed.

The terrorists are also winning a psychological war in Europe. They identify police informants and force them to become suicide bombers. That is why so many are “Known Wolves.”

These attacks, in other words, are designed to impress the Muslim public as much as they are intended to horrify the western public. In so many words, the terrorists tell Muslims that western police agencies cannot protect them. If they cooperate with the police they will be found out and punished. The West fears the power of Islam: it evinces such fear by praising Islam as a religion of peace, by squelching dissent in the name of fighting supposed Islamophobia, and by offering concessions and apologies to Muslims.

Demolishing or closing some homes and a few mosques might signal more resolution than speeches by politicians. Deporting a few families would also be salutary.

Memorial Day

In 1863, two of my ancestors, brothers of my great grandfather, enlisted in the 55th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Company G was recruited from La Salle County and my two great great uncles enlisted on August 6, 1861.

They enlisted at Camp Douglas and then were transferred to Benton Barracks, Missouri.

When they were transferred to St Louis in December 1861, there were already 50 men ill with measles, which was to take the life of James Kennedy later. Soon after their arrival, their new commanding general arrived, William T Sherman. There were rumors that he had been relieved of command in Kentucky and was crazy. All looked at him with curiosity. He wore no uniform or decoration. The 55th followed him throughout the war until the Grand Review in 1865.

The Story of the Fifty-fifth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, 1861-1865 has been used as an e-book for some of this story.

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A Slow Motion Coup d’Etat.

Here is a pretty good article about the Trump phenomenon.

I disagree with the premise that “Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job.”

The rest of the article is pretty much on target and follows Angelo Codevilla’s piece on the “Ruling Class.”

This is pretty much the way I see it.Then there is the spectacle of the country’s financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called “quantitative easing,” proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer, was “the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind.”

The news now is 99% Trump 24 hours per day. 97% of it is bad or negative on Trump.

Analysis: Only 3 percent of reports on CBS, NBC positive for Trump

A new analysis by a nonpartisan media research firm shows that just 3 percent of the reports about President Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were deemed positive.

The data comes from an analysis by Media Tenor, an independent media research firm founded in 1993.

The firm’s analysts watched 370 news stories about Trump on the “NBC Nightly News,” “CBS Evening News” and Fox News’s “Special Report” between Jan. 20 and Feb. 17. Trump took office the day the analysis began.

Overall the analysis found that on NBC and CBS, 43 percent of stories on Trump were negative, while only 3 percent were positive. Fifty-four percent of reports were considered neutral.

I’m not sure I would agree on what is “neutral.”

I am not the only one who thinks a coup d’etat is under way.

Spengler, who is my #2 go to guy after Fernandez,
thinks what is going on is a coup attempt.

A ranking Republican statesman this week told an off-the-record gathering that a “coup” attempt was in progress against President Donald Trump, with collusion between the largely Democratic media and Trump’s numerous enemies in the Republican Party. The object of the coup, the Republican leader added, was not impeachment, but the recruitment of a critical mass of Republican senators and congressmen to the claim that Trump was “unfit” for office and to force his resignation.

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Should we renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

There has been quite a bit of concern about an opposition to the Trump presidency set up in Washington by Obama and his allies.

Obama used the US intelligence apparatus to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign.

June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

October 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

Why would the FISA court approve such a thing ? Why would the Obama people continue when no evidence was found ?

The controversy has continued and Susan Rice, the Obama NSC head, seems to be at the center of it.

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The Riot at Middlebury College and Academic Life.

Recently, Charles Murray, author of the book, “The Bell Curve,” a study of intelligence in the population, was invited to speak at Middlebury college, a liberal arts college in Vermont. His attempt to speak was interrupted by a riot which injured a professor at the college.

Inside Higher Ed’s story on the event explains that college officials admonished the students prior to the talk that they could protest but not disrupt Murray’s talk, which was to be about the way white America is coming apart—the title of his latest book—along class lines. Unfortunately, that admonition did no good. “As soon as Murray took the stage,” we read, “students stood up, turned their backs to him and started various chants that were loud enough and in unison such that he could not talk over them.

The confrontation continued after he had left the stage and attempted to move to another location.

And then matters turned worse. Fearing that there might be a raucous, disruptive mob instead of an audience of students willing to listen and consider Murray’s arguments, school administrators had set up a contingency plan. Once it became clear that the mob had killed the lecture, they moved to another location where Murray would give his talk, which would be live-streamed to students.

Sadly, that location was soon beset by the mob, with banging on windows and pulling of fire alarms. Murray and Professor Allison Stanger, who was the moderator for the talk, tried their best to continue a rational discussion.

Finally, Murray, Professor Stanger, and a few others tried to leave campus.

Mayhem resulted when Professor Stanger, who had been willing to state her agreement that Murray should not have been invited, was injured.

Why did this happen ? Tribalism ?

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