Teddy Bears and Hashtags — the Best We can Do About Islamist Terror?

Teddy Bears and Hashtags — the Best We can Do About Islamist Terror?

BY RAHEEM KASSAM 

 
A teddy bear left in memorial to the victims of the Manchester bombing (Photo: BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images)
Teddy bears, tears, candles, cartoons, murals, mosaics, flowers, flags, projections, hashtags, balloons, wreaths, lights, vigils, scarves, and more. These are the best solutions the Western world seems to come up with every few months when we are slammed by another Islamist terrorist attack. We are our own sickness.

If the words above look familiar, it is because they are. They are the same words I wrote on March 23rd, 2016, just over one year ago, after coordinated suicide bombing attacks in the NATO/European Union capital of Brussels, Belgium, which left 32 dead and 340 injured.

On May 22, another 22 people died, and at least another 60 have been injured at a former Disney star’s concert in Manchester, England.

The targeting of an audience predominantly comprised of young girls should haunt even the most callous of cynics, and the most relativist of liberals. But it won’t.

Already we have witnessed large news sites demanding Britain refuse to change its approach to terrorism and extremism. Just keep sucking it up. Keep watching your friends and family die. After all, according to London’s mayor, terrorism is “part and parcel” of everyday urban life, right?

All of it, ultimately, is a distraction. I don’t know if it’s meant to be or not. But it is a massive distraction from the facts of this case. And the reality of European life today.

Let’s take 2017 alone so far. May 22nd marked the 142nd day of 2017. Until this date, in 2017, there were at least 15 attempted terrorist attacks on European, British, or West Russian soil, killing dozens, and injuring hundreds. That’s one attack attempted every 9 days in Europe.

Think about that. One attack every nine days.

In the meantime, the Independent website wants us to “carry on exactly as before.”

I suggest we don’t “carry on exactly as before.” In fact, I suggest we do away with the trite “Keep Calm and Carry On” mindset that has been adopted by hipsters and tourist tat sellers.

Instead, I suggest we look back in history a little further, for how we deal with this scourge.

St. Augustine of Hippo (not to be confused with the homonymous St. Augustine of Canterbury who brought Christianity to England) once said: “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

This is our news mantra.

This is our new slogan.

This is our new way of life.

For news sources like the Independent, the ostensible fight in defense of multiculturalism is even more important than the news story itself, let alone pro-security positions. Over the past 16 hours, the Independent has published and promoted at least seven separate articles targeting the critics of mass migration or lax security.

I cannot for one second imagine being that editor and having the callousness to shout across the newsroom: “Let’s hammer Nigel Farage for what he said on Fox!” while young girls are still bleeding in hospitals in England. I encourage you to read their article, by the way, and find anything wrong in what Mr. Farage told Tucker Carlson last night.

This is their new normal.

Terror attacks are now political footballs for the left, while they, without a scintilla of self-awareness or irony, accuse the right of using these events for partisan gain.

How heartless does someone have to be otherwise, to tweet something like this by David Leavitt? (see left)

We now know that girls as young as eight years old died in the terror attack in Manchester last night.

We know in neighboring communities, young girls were targeted, groomed, and raped by Pakistani, more often than not Muslim, men living in the United Kingdom.

And while the political left hurls accusations of a “war on women” at the right, for refusing to accept taxpayer subsidy of contraception or abortion, the real war on women is taking place in British towns and cities, conducted by fellow travelers of the high chiefs of multiculturalism.

We must protect our beautiful daughters with the beautiful daughters of St. Augustine: courage, and anger.

Anyone who cannot agree to this basic statement should find no support in public life. 

Raheem Kassam is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and editor-in-chief of Breitbart London.

https://clarionproject.org/teddy-bear-hashtags-islamist-terror/

How Team Obama tried to hack the election

By Paul Sperry

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New revelations have surfaced that the Obama administration abused intelligence during the election by launching a massive domestic-spy campaign that included snooping on Trump officials.

The irony is mind-boggling: Targeting political opposition is long a technique of police states like Russia, which Team Obama has loudly condemned for allegedly using its own intelligence agencies to hack into our election.

The revelations, as well as testimony this week from former Obama intel officials, show the extent to which the Obama administration politicized and weaponized intelligence against Americans.

Thanks to Circa News, we now know the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama routinely violated privacy protections while snooping through foreign intercepts involving US citizens — and failed to disclose the breaches, prompting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a month before the election to rebuke administration officials.

The story concerns what’s known as “upstream” data collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which the NSA looks at the content of electronic communication. Upstream refers to intel scooped up about third parties: Person A sends Person B an e-mail mentioning Person C. Though Person C isn’t a party to the e-mail, his information will be scooped up and potentially used by the NSA.

Further, the number of NSA data searches about Americans mushroomed after Obama loosened rules for protecting such identities from government officials and thus the reporters they talk to.

The FISA court called it a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” that NSA analysts — in violation of a 2011 rule change prohibiting officials from searching Americans’ information without a warrant — “had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

A number of those searches were made from the White House, and included private citizens working for the Trump campaign, some of whose identities were leaked to the media. The revelations earned a stern rebuke from the ACLU and from civil-liberties champion Sen. Rand Paul.

We also learned this week that Obama intelligence officials really had no good reason attaching a summary of a dossier on Trump to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave to Obama just weeks before Trump took office.

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Ex-CIA chief warned of Russian contact with Trump campaign officials

Under congressional questioning Tuesday, Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan said the dossier did not “in any way” factor into the agency’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election. Why not? Because as Obama intel czar James Clapper earlier testified, “We could not corroborate the sourcing.”

But that didn’t stop Brennan in January from attaching its contents to the official report for the president. He also included the unverified allegations in the briefing he gave Hill Democrats.

In so doing, Brennan virtually guaranteed that it would be leaked, which it promptly was.

In short, Brennan politicized raw intelligence. In fact, he politicized the entire CIA.

Langley vets say Brennan was the most politicized director in the agency’s history. Former CIA field-operations officer Gene Coyle said Brennan was “known as the greatest sycophant in the history of the CIA, and a supporter of Hillary Clinton before the election. I find it hard to put any real credence in anything that the man says.”

Coyle noted that Brennan broke with his predecessors who stayed out of elections. Several weeks before the vote, he made it very clear he was pulling for Hillary. His deputy Mike Morell even came out and publicly endorsed her in The New York Times, claiming Trump was an “unwitting agent” of Moscow.

Brennan isn’t just a Democrat. He’s a radical leftist who in 1980 — during the height of the Cold War — voted for a Communist Party candidate for president.

When Brennan rants about the dangers of strongman Vladimir Putin targeting our elections and subverting our democratic process, does he not catch at least a glimpse of his own reflection?

What he and the rest of the Obama gang did has inflicted more damage on the integrity of our electoral process than anything the Russians have done.

Paul Sperry is the author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.”

http://nypost.com/2017/05/26/how-team-obama-tried-to-hack-the-election/

Renewable Jobs Claims Based On Deception, False Comparisons

James Taylor ,  

 CONTRIBUTOR

I am president of the Spark of Freedom Foundation.  

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Renewable energy advocates often claim renewable energy creates more jobs than conventional energy, but such claims are based on deception and false comparisons. In reality, renewable energy isn’t even in the same universe of job creation as conventional energy.

A good example of renewable energy jobs deception is presented by Allan Hoffman, a former bureaucrat in the U.S. Department of Energy, in an article titled, “Jobs? Investing in renewables beats fossil fuels.” The article was recently published in the Energy Post, and linked via the Real Clear Energy website.

Hoffman summarizes his article by writing, “If a primary national goal is to create jobs in the energy sector, investing in renewable energy is considerably more effective than investing in fossil fuels.” Supporting his argument, Hoffman writes, “Solar Foundation data indicated that in 2016 the U.S. solar industry (8,600 companies) employed 260,000 workers.”

NEW YORK - MAY 09: Atmosphere during Michael Kors & Level Solar Team Up With Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project To Develop NYC's First Solar-Powered Community Garden on May 9, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for New York Restoration Project)

Comparing solar industry jobs to conventional energy jobs, Hoffman writes, “How do these numbers compare with numbers in the fossil fuel industries? In 2015 workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction numbered about 187,000.”

Hoffman then takes his comparison into the political realm, writing, “The U.S. Congress must recognize this and put policies in place that accelerate their [wind and solar energy] growth.”

At first glance, Hoffman’s claims appear to be a powerful argument in favor of preferential government policies for wind and solar power. Hoffman is not alone making these claims. In appearances at legislative hearings throughout the 50 states, I often encounter renewable energy advocates making the same jobs-based appeal to government policymakers. But are the claims true? The answer is no.

Did you notice anything different about Hoffman’s verbiage when comparing solar industry jobs to conventional energy jobs?  Hoffman doesn’t put any qualifiers on “solar industry” jobs, while he limits conventional energy jobs to “workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction.” Let’s look at the specifics of how this language impacts the number of reported jobs in each industry.

For solar jobs, Hoffman references data reported by the solar power industry. I looked up and found the Solar Foundation paper Hoffman references. What Hoffman defines as “workers” who are “employed” by the U.S. solar industry are actually defined by the Solar Foundation as jobs which the solar industry “supports.” The Solar Foundation liberally defines jobs “supported” by the solar power industry as to include every component on the solar industry chain, plus additional jobs like lawyers, lobbyists, public relations professionals, government employees overseeing the solar power industry, permitting officers, plumbers, electricians, salesmen, land acquisition specialists, and financiers.

For natural gas jobs, by comparison, Hoffman limits his definition to “workers employed directly in oil and natural gas extraction.” Hoffman does not include lawyers, lobbyists, public relations professionals, government oversight employees, permitting officers, plumbers, electricians, salesmen, land acquisition specialists, and financiers, as he does for the solar power industry. Even more importantly, he does not include construction workers who build natural gas power plants, workers who operate natural gas power plants, workers who survey and find natural gas deposits, workers who build equipment for natural gas power plants, etc.

Hoffman and other renewable energy advocates create the broadest possible definition of workers “supported” by the solar power industry, falsely claim that the solar power industry “employed” all these workers, and then compare that to the narrowest possible definition of just a single segment of workers “directly” employed in the “extraction” component of the much larger natural gas industry. This would be akin to McDonald’s claiming its Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Supersized Meal is a healthier and lower-calorie dietary option than a turkey sandwich – dry and without cheese – on multigrain bread because the entire turkey-on-multigrain sandwich entails more calories than the lettuce and pickles in the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Supersized Meal. The comparison is inaccurate and misleading. But unlike the McDonald’s-to-turkey-sandwich comparison, the deceitful nature of the renewable power jobs claims is not clearly evident at a quick glance. Many people, including public policy officials, get duped by the renewable energy advocates’ false jobs claims.

Public policy officials, do not be duped. The next time somebody claims wind and solar power create more jobs than natural gas and other conventional energy sources, ask them for specific definitions and parameters of the job numbers cited. If they falsely claim the definitions and parameters are similar, call them on it. If they truthfully answer that the definitions and parameters do not match up, ask them why they are presenting deliberately misleading data.