The Left's Base Motive: Vengeance...the historical basis is irrefutable.

The Left's Base Motive: Vengeance

By J.R. Dunn

American leftism has gotten an awful lot of mileage by monopolizing the moral high ground. It is the sole force in American that
favors the poor. The sole enemy of racism. The sole comforter of rape victims. The sole protector of defenseless Muslims. The sole guardian of the environment, and so on ad nauseum.
It all falls apart eventually -- with friends like the left, nobody needs enemies. But often overlooked is that fact that it’s bogus from the start. Any prolonged glance at the left reveals it to be an ideology of power, its major tool violence, its goal revenge.
Leftism has always been about revenge. The works of Marx are filled with fantasies of retribution and judgment. Their tone reeks of resentment and paranoia, with blame cast for even the most trivial. "The bourgeoisie,” Marx once declared in a letter to Engels, “will remember my carbuncles until their dying day.” That’s leftism in a nutshell.
The Paris communards of 1870, the first instance of an actual leftist government-in-being, immediately began shooting bourgeois on taking power, giving full rein to the European hatred for the middle class that is all but incomprehensible to Americans. That practice has been repeated by every hard left government that has ever taken power -- the USSR, communist China, Castroite Cuba, Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, down to minor examples such as Bela Kun’s Hungarian “Regime of Light” (1919), which reintroduced the Roman practice of decimation.
This unvarying tendency toward atrocity suggests that all these regimes had something in common, and it’s not that they all suffered from boils. It’s the lust for vengeance -- revenge for slights and crimes either real or imaginary, that can be found in every leftist from Nechaev to Bill Ayers. No less than Barack Obama spilled that when, his back apparently against the wall in 2012, he began ranting about “voting for revenge”.
This was displayed clearly enough this past holiday season.
First in the wave of bogus rape stories, brought up not to assure prosecution or to curtail such crimes, but solely as ideological weapons for use by feminists.
American leftism has always been about magnifying trivial complaints to serve as excuses for revolutionary action. The U.S. has never had a feudal system, nor a proletariat, nor any other conceivable reason for revolution. (German Marxist Werner Sombart pointed out in 1903 that the American masses already possessed what the left was promising them. His comrades badgered him mercilessly for this insight.) Instead we see trivia blown up to apocalyptic proportions -- and nowhere less than in feminism. Betty Friedan hated the suburbs. Gloria Steinem served as a Playboy bunny and never got over the humiliation. They therefore set out to upend Western civilization by inflating these slights while millions of other women fastened on atrocities such as “the male gaze,” having doors opened for them, “manspreading,” and attempted pickups -- or lack of the same.
The one actual atrocity available was rape, which feminists have utilized as heavy artillery -- “all men are rapists”, “all sex is rape”, and the like. The latest barrage came from Tawana Dunham and Rolling Stone’s “Jackie.”
Dunham, the East Coast sophisticate’s 300-lb. “It” girl, claimed in a memoir that she had been raped by an infamous Republican while at college, while “Jackie” regaled Rolling Stone with a tale of gang rape at the hands of the always-reliable frat house.
Suffice to say not a single detail of either story help up. A “Barry” did attend Oberlin, and he was a power in local campus conservative politics, but he lacked a handlebar mustache and he’d never met Dunham. The fraternity in “Jackie’s” yarn threw no party the night in question, nor did she show any signs of suffering such an ordeal.
One of the grotesque aspects of this scandal is that nobody in the legacy media so much as alluded to the Brawley and Duke hoaxes, which in many ways were identical to these accounts. In the Brawley case a black teenage girl, afraid to return home

after a late night out, claimed to have been raped by a gang of whites under degrading circumstances. A gullible media hooted the story to the skies, egged on by the “Rev.” Al Sharpton. In the Duke case, the entire lacrosse team was publicly indicted for the mass rape of a stripper brought in to entertain a stag party.
Both these stories began to collapse almost immediately, but proponents insisted it didn’t matter -- white men had raped black women innumerable times before, so collective guilt demanded that someone be persecuted. As for Duke, lacrosse was an upper- class WASP sport, and the team deserved to be punished for that alone.
Dunham and “Jackie” would do well to contemplate the fates of the accusers in these hoaxes. Although Brawley’s champion Al Sharpton used the incident as his next step in clawing his way to the heights (if that’s the word) of MSNBC, Brawley herself today lives pseudonymously in Northern Virginia owing millions in legal fines. The Duke athlete’s accuser, Crystal Mangum, is serving hard time for the murder of a paramour.
Both Dunham and “Jackie” were looking for revenge for something -- all that we know is that it wasn’t rape.
Even more serious -- for the nation as a whole as well as those directly involved -- is current racial unrest triggered by blatant attempts to manipulate racial tensions through the actions and rhetoric of Barack Obama and Eric Holder et al. Long-term efforts to decriminalize the actions of black lawbreakers, beginning with the Trayvon Martin incident and progressing to the Ferguson shooting, have dovetailed with several standard episodes of police incompetence in Cleveland and Staten Island to create as fraught a racial atmosphere as at any time since the late 60s. (So much for the “post-racial” president.) This culminated in the assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn by an unstable career criminal, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had boasted on his Facebook page that he was out to avenge the Brown shooting by “giving wings to pigs.” (With the customary competence of the urban gangster, Brinsley shot not white officers but Wenjian Liu, an Asian, and Rafeal Ramos, a Hispanic.)
Here is a case where the leftist yearning for vengeance was reified by a maniac -- a not at all uncommon occurrence. Their rhetoric and posturing brought their fantasies and desires for vengeance to life before their eyes -- though certainly not in a way that they would have approved of, seeing as there can be little opportunity to exploit it. Whatever else he was, Brinsley is in no way a revolutionary hero.
The left’s entanglement with vengeance is easily understood -- it has nothing else. Their messiah has failed to lead them into Eden -- his policies, both domestic and foreign, have failed catastrophically one after another, leaving him nothing to show for six years as president and a nightmare gauntlet for the remainder of his term. His response -- and the response of the left as a whole -- amounts to little more than disjointed and incoherent actions. In the past six years, every last hope and dream of the left has been exposed -- there is nothing left.
So what does the left have but vengeance? It got them this far -- it will have to maintain them through the rest of Obama’s tenure, and beyond.
So it follows that we will see more of it over the coming two years. It could be argued, in fact, that a number of Obama’s recent actions amount to revenge. His immigration “reform” was punishment for a nation not worthy of him. His “opening” to Cuba acts as a punishment of Hispanics for letting him down in the midterms.
“Revenge is a dish best eaten cold”; “When seeking vengeance, be sure to dig two graves”. All the adages concerning revenge are cautionary. It’s something to be avoided, to left to fate or karma or the hands of the Almighty. This is not something to be overlooked, if the condition of Tawana Brawley and Crystal Mangum are any indication.
But the left will overlook it. They despise ancient wisdom and they don’t have an Almighty. That being the case, we should prepare for a parade of Trayvons and “Jackies”, Lenas, and Ismaaiyls. 

Collective punishment is a one way street...it's at the heart of black liberation theology

The Future of Collective Punishment

Posted By Richard Fernandez On January 2, 2015 

An acquaintance related a conversation he had with a friend from South Asia.  ”Americans are bad people,” the South Asian said. “Why do you say that?” my friend asked. “Because president Obama is a bad man and Americans share in the guilt for electing him.” Welcome to the world of guilt by association, a theory with a long and bloody history which is making a comeback on the world stage.  In ancient China the most severe punishment for a crime was the so-called “nine familial exterminations ^[1]“. This is the epitome of collective punishment. The nine familial exterminations were:

typically associated with offenses such as treason, the punishment involved the execution of all relatives of an individual, which were categorized into nine groups. The occurrence of this punishment was somewhat rare, with relatively few sentences recorded throughout history. There were also variants of the punishment found in ancient Korea and Vietnam.

The practice has not completely died out as Vladimir Putin ^[2] has recently demonstrated. He made news in Russia by incarcerating “the apparently apolitical younger brother of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in what seems like an effort to ensure his good behavior.” It’s not quite as severe as the “nine familial exterminations” of ancient China, but it is an idea in the same vein.

taking hostages from the family of political rivals was a common practice in Europe during the Middle Ages and indeed in feudal societies around the world. A political leader would demand high-ranking captives, often the sons of lesser nobles, as evidence of their good faith in pledging him their allegiance, or take hostages to ensure safe passage or a truce during wartime. Hostages served as guarantees for international treaties.

Modern terrorism is in many ways just a revival of customary tribal retaliation or the application of ‘guilt by association’. The September 11 hijackers had no particular beef with the individuals in the World Trade Center. They were out to slaughter anyone in New York. None of the people in New York had to be individually guilty of anything. They were simply the most handy targets available to expiate the collective Western guilt for its real or imagined offenses against Islam.
The participants of the Jihad see it as a matter of “them” against “us”. Even though Western politicians are at pains to deny there is any “them”, “they” know who “they” are, despite the fact that “we” do not acknowledge who “we” are.  ’Us’ versus ‘them’ pervades everything. When the Taliban could not strike at the Pakistan military directly it struck at the Pakistani Army Public School ^[3] in Peshawar.  The hand-wringing articles asking why innocent children were attacked miss the point completely.  To the Taliban there are no “innocent children”.  In a world of collective guilt there is naturally only collective punishment.

The clash between the culture of collective punishment and the Western idea of individual guilt was on display when the FBI decided to investigate reports that private companies were privately retaliating against hackers who had attacked their companies. Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson write in Bloomberg ^[4] that the FBI is jealously reserving the administration’s right to act against hackers — or not to act against them.

U.S. officials have shown little appetite to intervene as banks, retailers, casinos, power companies and manufacturers have been targeted by foreign-based hackers. Private-sector companies doing business in the U.S. have few clear options for striking back on their own.
That has led a growing number of companies to push the limits of existing law to consider ways to break into hackers’ networks to retrieve stolen data or even knock computers offline to stop attacks, the cybersecurity professionals said in interviews. Some companies are enlisting cybersecurity firms, many with military or government security ties, to walk them through options for disrupting hacker operations or peering into foreign networks to find out what intellectual property hackers may have stolen.
In one case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether hackers working on behalf of any U.S. financial institutions disabled servers that were being used by Iran to attack the websites of major banks last year, said two people familiar with the investigation. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) advocated such a move in a closed meeting in February 2013, these people said. A bank spokeswoman said no action was ever taken. Federal investigators are still trying to determine who was responsible, the people said.

As far as the authorities are concerned, only the collective state may legitimately mete out justice —  then only upon the guilty individual. This is the exact reverse of an individual or individual company engaged in retaliation against a collective target.  Unfortunately hacking by its very nature is designed to obfuscate the precise source of the attack. You can sometimes identify only the Usual Suspects.  And you cannot retaliate against the Usual Suspects.  You can only punish convicted individuals.
In the Western legal model it  is illegitimate to impose “collective punishment” and being unable to do so, nothing is done.  There is a strict  injunction against profiling Muslims and other groups precisely because group guilt is forbidden.  And that is as it should be, if the taboo is to be maintained. Collective punishment is a very destructive and blunt model which arises from a lack of information and a conviction that discrimination is a hopeless task.
But the prohibition does not run the other way.  There is no strong taboo among ISIS or al-Qaeda, for example, against punishing individual Jews for the collective guilt of Israeli existence. It is enough to kill a Jew, any Jew. It doesn’t matter who.  Their model of punishment doesn’t require detailed information.
The key distinction between lawfare and warfare is that the former recognizes only individual guilt, while the latter consists of nothing but collective punishment. Warfare is an information-poor form of conflict. In World War 2 style conflicts all the necessary information was encapsulated in the uniform. The people in American uniforms shot the people wearing German uniforms. The moral state of individual wearer of the uniform mattered not a whit. Anyone wearing an German uniform was liable to be shot, burned, blown up, stabbed or run over by a tank operated by an individual with an American uniform and vice versa. It was collective punishment all the way.
A whole system had to be brought down.  An entire state and perhaps even an entire way of life had to be terminated.  Under these conditions, the only information required was ‘whose side are you on?’
Provided  the soldiers obeyed the conventions of war, they might kill hundreds or thousand and acquire no individual guilt at all. Paul Tibbets may have been proximately responsible for piloting the Enola Gay to Hiroshima, but the act was America’s. The foremost hero of the underground resistance, Wing Commander Forest Frederick Edward “Tommy” Yeo-Thomas GC, MC & Bar, also known as the White Rabbit ^[5] was “a surprise defence witness in the war crimes trial of Otto Skorzeny, particularly on the charge of Skorzeny’s use of American uniforms in infiltrating American lines. Yeo-Thomas testified that he and his operatives wore German uniforms behind enemy lines while working for the SOE.” As far as the White Rabbit was concerned, Skorzeny had no individual guilt even if Skorzeny had caused the death of hundreds in the course of his illustrious military career.
When hackers bring down companies or terrorists commit outrages and then obfuscate their identity, the Western moral code goes “tilt” because it cannot resolve the contradiction between having to punish somebody and not knowing the name of that someone to punish.  Although we might guess the identities of the guilty parties — more or less — that’s not good enough to mete out only individual punishment. Without the names of individuals to punish the whole Western defense and legal mechanism grinds to a halt.  Without information and the ability to punish individuals lawfare is nothing but a pitiful, helpless giant ^[6].
Terrorism uses obfuscation to defuse lawfare knowing that the West will not turn to the alternative form of warfare.
The danger of course is that a “pitiful, helpless giant” sooner or later loses the the legitimacy to govern.  A sufficiently enraged public will demand something more than impotence. Collective punishment is what happens when individual justice is seen to fail.  When lawfare collapses then warfare eventually ensues, a point which I made in the Three Conjectures.  Maybe not immediately, but inevitably, with all the tragedy that implies.
It is therefore in the public interest to create effective methods of retaliation between the extremes of Mirandizing terrorists and implementing the “nine familial exterminations” of ancient China. A form of conflict which requires more information than warfare but less than lawfare. In order to avoid the horrors of war The King’s Justice cannot afford to be seen as totally impotent. The best way to forestall private revenge is for the King to act against those who would disturb his realm, if not strictly according to the law then at least in the spirit of justice.
If the Obama administration simply stands impotently to one side as American firms are hacked, sooner or later someone will revenge himself on the usual suspects. That is human nature. Every king worth his throne must defend his subjects or they will defend themselves.

CAMPAIGNER: MUSLIM SCHOOLS LEAST DIVERSE IN UK AND ACT AS BARRIER TO INTEGRATION

An equality campaigner has singled out Muslim faith schools in Britain as the worst culprits for encouraging division and failing integration, amid new research that shows the British are increasingly rejecting multiculturalism and choosing to socialise only with people like themselves.

Matthew Taylor, the chairman of the Social Integration Commission and a former advisor to Tony Blair, cited the exceptionally homogeneous nature of student intake at Muslim faith schools as a stumbling block towards integration. The Independent newspaper reports the cost of all the people of Britain failing to get along perfectly is some £6 billion a year.

Taylor’s comments appear to match the experiences of the Department for Education, which spent much of 2014 dealing with the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, in which a number of British schools were found to have been ‘taken over’ from the inside by Islamist school governors, who were in the process of forcing out Christian or moderate Muslim members of staff.

While the department has tackled many of the identified ‘Trojan Horse’ Muslim schools, it has gone much farther, targeting previously rated ‘Good’ Christian schools and criticising them for failing to welcome foreign cultures into the classroom. Some church schools have had their OFSTED report scores damaged for failing to invite an Imam into the classroom to lead assemblies or lessons, an essential part of what the department believes is necessary to prepare children for “modern Britain”.

As well as criticising Muslim schools for purposefully recruiting a homogenous student body, Taylor also scorned children themselves for naturally forming social groups of similar children, even within schools that were superficially otherwise diverse. He said it was the responsibility of staff to break up these social groups and to force children to play with others unlike themselves.

Taylor told the Independent: “even when the kids do arrive in the school, very often the schools don’t pay sufficient attention to the fact that there are very, very different groups in the playground and they don’t attend to the need to bring them together.

“One of the ways in which we should be preparing young people for the world in which they’re going to live is getting them used to and relaxed about mixing with people from different classes, different ages and different ethnicities.

“Britain’s becoming more diverse and if we don’t think about this and we’re not willing to act on it, the danger is that we’ll become more separate”.

“We have to recognise that Muslim faith schools seem to be much more monocultural than Catholic faith schools or Church of England faith schools.

“It’s a very difficult policy because if you have Catholic and Church of England faith schools you can’t really deny the need for Muslim faith schools, but there is a different character, they tend to be much less diverse”.

He added: “I think schools should be asked to report on their level of integration and their strategies for integration… I think it’d be a great question to ask school governors: what are you doing to make sure the pupils in your school are mixing with a broader cross-section of society?”

These are people who teach your kids revisionist history...

UAW teachers branch joins boycott of Israel

BY SEAN HIGGINS | DECEMBER 31, 2014 | 5:00 AM
A local branch of the United Auto Workers has become the first U.S. labor organization to join the international movement to boycott Israel, according to liberal groups.
UAW Local 2865, which represents teaching assistants at the University of California, voted to join it on Dec. 4, saying that Israel was engaging in "ongoing human rights violations" against the Palestinians.
A total of 66 percent of the members backed joining the movement, which supporters call "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel." Only 2,168 members participated in the Dec. 4 vote, a small fraction of Local 2865's reported 13,000 members.
The ballot language asked members to support the boycott and to call on both the university and the UAW to join in by "divest[ing] their investments, including pension funds, from Israeli state institutions and international companies complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations as part of the Israeli oppression of Palestinian people." It also called on UAW and the university not to do business with any such companies and for the federal government to end economic aid to the country.
An explainer document handed out by backers before the vote said Israel used "Apartheid policies," linking it to South Africa's pre-1994 whites-only rule. The document says the push to link Local 2865 to the movement was in reaction to Israel's July bombardment of Gaza, which Israel launched to counter the terrorist threat from Palestinian-controlled territories.
"Even though there certainly have been really horrible acts on both sides, there is something about the way the Israeli government has acted about this all that has been an injustice, especially since they are the far more powerful country," Skylar Covich, a University of California-Santa Barbara graduate student and Local 2865 officer, told the liberal magazine In These Times.
UAW did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Local 2865 could not be reached. The group's website was down and getting a "makeover," according to a statement posted at its web address.
No other U.S. labor groups apparently have joined the boycott movement, which claims 170 groups, according to the Nation. Organized labor leaders, including the UAW leadership, have rejected calls from liberal allies to adopt the boycott. Then-UAW President Ron Gettelfinger co-signed a joint 2007 statement with other prominent labor officials critical of the movement.

The statement said, in part: "We note with increasing concern that virtually all of these resolutions focus solely on objections to actions or policies of the Israeli government, and never on actions or policies of Palestinian or other Arab governments, parties or movements. We notice with increasing concern that characterization of the Palestinians as victims and Israel as victimizer is a staple of such resolutions."
In a November letter to the local, the UAW said its position on the boycott had not changed.
Last year, University of California President Janet Napolitano rejected joining the movement, saying: "An academic boycott goes against the spirit of the University of California, which has long championed open dialogue and collaboration with international scholars." 

Terror attack on India thwarted

Explosives-laden Pakistani boat bound for India blows up

Modal Trigger

This handout photograph released by the Indian Ministry of Defense is said to show a burning vessel off the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat in the Arabian Sea. Photo: Getty Images 

A Pakistani fishing boat laden with explosives bound for India blew up, killing all four people on board, after the Indian coast guard tried to stop and search it, the Indian government said Friday.

Indian intelligence said the crew planned “an illicit transaction” when the boat was intercepted on New Year’s Eve in the Arabian Sea, 225 miles (365 kilometers) off India’s western coast, according to a government statement.

Ajay Kumar Pandey, a spokesman for the Indian coast guard, declined to comment when asked whether the explosives believed to be on board the fishing boat, which sank, were intended for use in an attack.

India’s vulnerability to militant attacks along its long coastline was exposed in 2008 after the seaborne assault by Pakistani gunmen on Mumbai, the nation’s financial capital. Ten Pakistani gunmen arrived on a rubber boat in Mumbai for the commando-style assault on two luxury hotels, a train station and a Jewish center that killed 166 people.

Since the attack, India has upgraded coastal security, spending money on patrol vessels, helicopters and building a coastal radar network.

The Indian goast guard chased the Pakistani boat for almost an hour and fired warning shots before it stopped, the statement said. The crew hid themselves below deck, set the boat on fire, which resulted in an explosion, causing the vessel to sink.  

Biological luck..

Biological bad luck blamed in two-thirds of cancer cases
By Will Dunham | Reuters – 21 hours ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Plain old bad luck plays a major role in determining who gets cancer and who does not, according to researchers who found that two-thirds of cancer incidence of various types can be blamed on random mutations and not heredity or risky habits like smoking.
The researchers said on Thursday random DNA mutations accumulating in various parts of the body during ordinary cell di- vision are the prime culprits behind many cancer types.
They looked at 31 cancer types and found that 22 of them, including leukemia and pancreatic, bone, testicular, ovarian and brain cancer, could be explained largely by these random mutations - essentially biological bad luck.

The other nine types, including colorectal cancer, skin cancer known as basal cell carcinoma and smoking-related lung can- cer, were more heavily influenced by heredity and environmental factors like risky behavior or exposure to carcinogens.

Overall, they attributed 65 percent of cancer incidence to random mutations in genes that can drive cancer growth.

"When someone gets cancer, immediately people want to know why," said oncologist Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Johns Hop- kins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, who conducted the study published in the journal Science with Johns Hop- kins biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti.

"They like to believe there's a reason. And the real reason in many cases is not because you didn't behave well or were ex- posed to some bad environmental influence, it's just because that person was unlucky. It's losing the lottery."

Tomasetti said harmful mutations occur for "no particular reason other than randomness" as the body's master cells, called stem cells, divide in various tissues.

Tomasetti said the study indicates that changing one's lifestyle and habits like smoking to avoid cancer risks may help pre-vent certain cancers, but may not be as effective for others.

"Thus, we should focus more research and resources on finding ways to detect such cancers at early, curable stages," Tomasetti added.

The researchers charted the cumulative number of lifetime divisions in the stem cells of a given tissue - for example, lungs or colon - and compared that to the lifetime cancer risk in that tissue.
Generally speaking, tissues that undergo more divisions - thus increasing the probability of random mutations - were more prone to tumors.

The study did not cover all cancer types. Breast and prostate cancer were excluded because the researchers were unable to as- certain reliable stem cell division rates.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Mohammad Zargham) 

The biggest problem with domestic covert operations is the loss of trust in government.

Congress demands answers on feds’ cellphone tracking by simulator towers

By David Sherfinski - The Washington Times - Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The chairman and ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee want answers from the Obama administration on cell-site "simulators," which are reportedly used by law enforcement to track suspects but also have the potential to capture information on cellphones in their vicinity.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, Sens. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, and Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, asked about federal policy and the usage of the simulators.

"The Judiciary Committee needs a broader understanding of the full range of law enforcement agencies that use this technology, the policies in place to protect the privacy interests of those whose information might be collected using these devices, and the legal process that DOJ and DHS entities seek prior to using them," the senators wrote in the letter dated Dec. 23 and released Wednesday.

The senators cite a November article from the Wall Street Journal that reported the Justice Department is targeting criminal suspects using the devices, which mimic cellphone towers and can also snag information and general phone locations of innocent Americans.

While not confirming or denying the existence of such a program, a Justice Department official told the paper that agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval, and that discussion of such matters would allow suspects or foreign powers to determine U.S. surveillance capabilities.

The senators also wrote that after briefings by FBI officials with staffers, the FBI changed its policy so that it now obtains a search warrant before deploying a simulator, with "a number of potentially broad exemptions."

Those exemptions include cases that pose an imminent public safety danger, cases that involve a fugitive, and cases where technology is being used in public places or areas the agency determines there's no "reasonable" expectation of privacy.

Among other things, the senators asked for details about the FBI's use of the simulators since Jan. 1, 2010, through the effective date of the new policy, and then afterward, as well as the agency's policy on retaining and destroying information collected by the simulators.

Beyond this specific issue, the debate over privacy and data collection has been front in center in Congress this year.

Earlier in December, the Obama administration said it renewed for 90 days the National Security Agency's program that collects and temporarily stores information on the dates and durations of phone calls to see if there are any ties associated with terrorism.

Senate Republicans filibustered a bill to halt the program after a different version easily won passage in the House earlier in the year. President Obama says he has taken steps to limit the snooping, such as asking investigators to get a court's sign-off, but opponents say the administration is relying on a faulty reading of the post-9/11 Patriot Act to justify the program.

Still looking for Obama's red line?

What Could Go Wrong? Obama Frees Nuclear Terrorist from Gitmo

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, December 31, 2014

What could go wrong?
Obama sends a nuclear terrorist back to Afghanistan.

Former Gitmo detainee Mohammad Zahir

Barack Obama released a nuclear terrorist back to Afghanistan this month.
Mohammad Zahir was in possession of uranium for use in making an atomic bomb when he was captured.
Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage Magazine reported:

If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet.

There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane trip out of Gitmo at taxpayer expense.

The last releases saw terrorists rated as high risk freed by Obama. They included fighters with experience on the battlefield and covert operations. Obama set loose a suicide bomber, a document forger and a bomb maker who trained other terrorists to make bombs. Those are exactly the sorts of enemies whose license to Jihad will cost lives.

But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s latest gift to the Jihad.

When Mohammed Zahir was caught, among his possessions was found a small sealed can marked, in Russian, “Heavy Water U235 150 Grams.”

According to the classified report, the uranium had been identified by Zahir “in his memorandum as being intended for the production of an “atom bomb.”

Zahir was not just another captured Jihadist. He was the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate and was in contact with top leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. His possessions included a fax with questions intended for Osama bin Laden and he had been arrested on suspicion of possessing Stinger missiles.

But that may not have even been the worst of it.

Among the items was a notebook containing references to large sugar shipments to Washington D.C. Investigators believed that sugar was used as a code word for heroin. The Black Sea stops mentioned in the notebook are major hubs for smuggling heroin and for nuclear smuggling as well.

Read the rest here.

Mohammad Zahir was carrying a memorandum on nuclear materials intended for the production of an “atomic bomb” when he was apprehended.

A report released by the House Armed Services subcommittee in 2012 revealed that 27% of Gitmo detainees return to a life of terror after their release.

At least 168 times released Gitmo detainees have returned to terrorism.

The stupid folly of wind farms.

Offshore wind farms drawing electricity from grid to keep turning in icy conditions

Energy firm confirms wind turbines need to draw electricity from grid at times, but point out that all power stations use electricity as well as generating it

Offshore wind farms need power to keep turning in icy conditions Photo: GETTY

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

6:25PM GMT 31 Dec 2014

Offshore wind farms are drawing power from the National Grid to keep turning and prevent them icing up in subzero temperatures, it has emerged.

The turbines need to idle slowly when temperatures plunge in calm conditions to stop ice forming and to power hydraulic systems that turn the blades into the wind. 

Critics of wind farms, which cost three times as much as conventional power stations per unit of energy produced, said it was “another example of why wind farms are difficult and expensive to manage”, but industry bodies pointed out that all power stations use electricity as well as generating it.

The phenomenon was pointed out in the Telegraph’s letters page by Brian Christley, of Conwy, who said that “over the weekend just gone, the coldest of the year so far, all 100-plus offshore wind turbines along the North Wales coast were idling very slowly, using grid power for de-icing”.

Rob Norris, a spokesman for the industry body RenewableUK, confirmed that wind farms used electricity to keep their systems running, but said it was a “tiny fraction” of the amount of power they generated.

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He said: “The best comparison is to think of how much electricity you’d use to boil a kettle compared to how much an entire village would need to power everything. All generators, including gas and nuclear plants, use some electricity as well as producing it.”

John Constable, of the Renewable Energy Foundation charity, said: “We know that in Denmark there are days when their wind farms are net consumers of electricity, so in some ways this is not surprising.

“It’s another example of how wind power is difficult and expensive to manage.”

The energy firm RWE, which owns 30 turbines off the North Wales coast, said that on the days in question they were net contributors to the National Grid.

A spokesman said: “All energy generators use a small amount of electricity to keep their systems running smoothly, in the case of wind farms drawing power from either an adjacent operating turbine or the grid.”

Wind power makes up around 10 per cent of the electricity used in the UK, with coal and gas making up around 30 per cent each and nuclear another 20 per cent.

It's because Democrats are so special they can violate normal conventions because they're working for the people.

Cylvia Hayes: new records show First Lady used Kitzhaber staff for mundane tasks

Gov. John Kitzhaber's office Monday released select email records showing his fiancé, Cylvia Hayes, tasked his staff with mundane personal responsibilities ranging from helping sneak cats into a hotel room to complaining over a delayed flight.
The 500 pages of records capture communications between Hayes on her personal email accounts and a scheduler in Kitzhaber's office. They were released as the governor's office continues to whittle away at a months-long backlog of public records requests.
The emails, spanning 2013 and part of 2014, are largely routine. In many of the emails, Hayes signs as first lady but also included her company name and contact information.
Earlier records have shown Hayes blurred the line between her public and private roles, such as claiming reimbursement for expenses that appear related to her private business. The records have also suggested that Kitzhaber's office has relaxed its ethical guidelines to allow Hayes more freedom to pursue her work in ways that the governor's attorney, Liani Reeves, considered questionable, such as the use of state-owned Mahonia Hall for Hayes' personal business meetings.
The new correspondence sheds little light on the controversy over whether Hayes used her position as first lady to enhance her private contracting work. The Oregon Government Ethics Commission is investigating possible conflicts of interest and other possible ethics violations for using her public position for personal gain.
The emails make clear Hayes often communicated as first lady, a honorary position with no salary. Oregon's ethics laws consider volunteers to be public officials when working for the government, experts say.
One email exchange illustrates the interwoven strands of Hayes' public work and paid consulting. She operated a company called 3E Strategies, which focused on environmental initiatives.
On Feb. 4, 2013, as CEO of 3E Strategies, she invited local environmental leaders to dinner with Lew Daly of the nonprofit Demos. The email, which Hayes copied to governor's staffers, said Daly was in town to evaluate Kitzhaber's education reforms.
Hayes mentioned Daly's work on "Genuine Progress Indicators" – an effort to measure government programs in ways that capture environmental and other values.
She subsequently got a $25,000 consulting agreement with Demos to be an "active and strategic" liaison between the nonprofit and Oregon government officials and business leaders on the GPI initiative, documents show. The contract was later revised to delete Oregon-centric tasks.
Hayes and Kitzhaber have since made the GPI a focus of his administration, trying to make it a part of state budgeting.
In an April 17, 2013 email, Hayes asked Mary Rowinski, her staff assistant in the governor's office, to book her a hotel room in Medford.
"I will have Tessa (and probably the cats – don't tell the hotel that part..." she wrote, adding a smiley-face emoticon to the sentence.
Rowinski responded that she had arranged a Medford hotel room.
"I called them to find out if you had to walk through the main lobby to get to your room (kitties). She said no, there's a side door, but I'm wondering if I should look for a place like a motel that you can basically drive up to your room." Rowinski wrote. "Your thoughts? Also, are the kitties taken care of during your Bhutan trip?"
"Smart woman!!" responded Hayes. "This sounds fine." She said that during the Bhutan trip – taken with Daly, Kitzhaber and others for more than a week -- her friends in Bend would probably pick up Hayes' two cats to take care of them. If not, both would remain at Mahonia and "I would ask you to check on them and clean the litter boxes..."
In a July 18, 2013 email, she complained a late flight returning from New York might mean she would miss a connecting flight in San Francisco. She asked Jan Murdock, personal assistant to the governor, to see if the airline would delay the next flight.
Murdock wrote back that United couldn't promise a delay, so she negotiated with the airline for a hotel if the flight was missed.
"They tried to tell me that they wouldn't cover your hotel. That conversation was over extremely quickly & now they will provide a hotel voucher!" Murdock wrote.
When Hayes wanted to complain to the airline, Murdock stepped in again. She reached out to an assistant to the director of the Port of Portland, a longtime Kitzhaber associate.
"I had a long conversation with Pam, Bill Wyatt's assistant, explaining what occurred with United last night," Murdock wrote. "She's going to get back to me with information on where best to send a letter of complaint that actually gets read and into the hands of the proper person."
In April 2013, Hayes asked Murdock and Rowinski to recommend good Salem hotels although she lives in Salem part time. They recommended three.
"Will you please get me contact info for those?" Hayes responded.
The emails between Hayes and Rowinski were requested in October. The governor's office has yet to release many key records sought through public records requests, such as ethics files kept by Kitzhaber's attorney, Reeves.
However, Kitzhaber's office appeared to increase the pace of records releases as the year drew to a close, promising Tuesday to provide Hayes' calendar for the first time this year.
--Nick Budnick

Israel is omitted from HarperCollins atlas because including country would be 'unacceptable' to customers

• Gaza and Jordan are included on the map, but Israel is not labelled
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• Publisher claims the amendment incorporated 'local preferences'
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• Bishop states the atlas will confirm Israel's belief that there is hostility towards the country from parts of the Arab world
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By JENNY STANTON FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 11:07 EST, 31 December 2014 | UPDATED: 16:52 EST, 31 December 2014

Publishing giant HarperCollins has been criticised for omitting Israel from an atlas.

The country is not labelled on the map - bought by English-speaking schools in the majority-Muslim Gulf, while Gaza and Jordan are clearly marked.

Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins, told The Tablet that including Israel would have been 'unacceptable' to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated 'local preferences'.  

Scroll down for video. 

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Omitted: The map in the Collins Bartholomew atlas, sold to English-speaking schools in the majority-Muslim Gulf, omits Israel

Bishop Declan Lang, chairman of the Bishops' Conference Department of International Affairs, told The Tablet: 'The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel's belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. Share

'It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence.' 

US-based HarperCollins Publishers is is a subsidiary of News Corp, whose executive chairman, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is famously pro-Israel.

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Comparison: The map included in the Collins Bartholomew atlas (left) omits Israel. The image on the right shows where the state should be labelled 

But HarperCollins has put the omission down to a genuine error. 

A spokesman said: 'HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas.

'This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.' 

But the decision to omit Israel on the map has sparked anger on social media, with some Twitter users calling for the boycott of HarperCollins. 

Dr Jane Clements, director of the Council of Christians and Jews, told The Tablet: 'Maps can be a very powerful tool in terms of de-legitimising "the other" and can lead to confusion rather than clarity. 

'We would be keen to see relevant bodies ensure that all atlases anywhere reflect the official UN position on nations, boundaries and all political features.' 

Maps which recognise Israel include Google Maps, Apple Maps, MapQuest, National Geographic, Peters World Map, Yahoo! Maps and Lonely Planet. 

RUPERT MURDOCH'S PRO-ISRAELI TWEETS

New York-based HarperCollins is one of the world's leading English-language publishers.

It is a subsidiary of News Corp, whose executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, is famously pro-Israel.

In the past, the media mogul has taken to Twitter to show his support for the war-torn country.

The Democrats will lie to get your vote as seen here....

Wendy Davis only supported open-carry to
get elected

BY ASHE SCHOW | DECEMBER 31, 2014

 And it didn’t even work.
Former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, in her first interview after losing by 20 points to governor-elect Greg Abbott, admitted she only claimed to support an open-carry gun law in order to win votes.
“There is one thing that I would do differently in that campaign, and it relates to the position that I took on open-carry,” Davis told the San Antonio Express-News on Monday. “I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn't really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue.”
Davis added that she does support “people’s right to own and to bear arms in appropriate situations,” but fears that open carry would be used “to intimidate and cause fear.”
Is that what she thinks of Texans?
The term “open-carry” refers to laws that allow gun-owners to carry their weapons in full view of the public. Typically (although not always) such laws still require those who want to carry concealed weapons to apply for a permit.
During her gubernatorial campaign, Davis said she supported an expansion of gun rights in Texas that included open-carry.
Davis now says that she has “always been true to my core beliefs.” Except, of course, when she wasn't.