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A discussion in the comments on yesterday’s post about the San Bernardino massacre brought up an important topic: lying and sacred misdirection under Islam. According to Islamic law, lying is not only permissible under certain circumstances, it is mandatory if the goal it serves is obligatory upon Muslims and cannot be accomplished by other means.

Spreading Islam over the entire globe is an obligatory goal for Muslims. For that reason there is absolutely no doubt that Muslims are sometimes lying to us in furtherance of that goal.

I am indebted to Major Stephen Coughlin for the sources and analytical framework used in the following examination of lying and sacred misdirection under Islamic Law.

Read it. And watch the video.

They must have a demon to point to, and witches are no longer fashionable.

Read it.

The World War II generation had more faith in the federal government than any other Americans ever. Who could blame them? The federal government won the war and appeared to be guiding the nation’s economy to smooth and never-ending growth. Later, it put a man on the moon and returned him safely to earth.

But the success did not last. The wars in Korea and Vietnam did not end well. The economy spiraled out of control in the late ’60s and struggled for more than a decade. The bank bailouts of this century and other events eroded public confidence in the federal government. For those who grew up during World War II, this lack of trust was hard to understand. They still remembered the government that saved the world after Pearl Harbor.

In retrospect, that generation’s extraordinary faith in the federal government was a temporary aberration brought about by unique circumstances. Their world no longer exists, and the political system it created is collapsing around us. Our challenge now is to rebuild a political system that recognizes the inability of the federal government to lead our nation.

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We’ve rounded up all the ways terrorists finance their activities below, drawing on the report and other investigations, and ranked them based on how profitable each activity is estimated to be.

Read it.

A man is reportedly suing the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for exhibiting paintings portraying Jesus Christ as a blond-haired white man.

Justin Renel Joseph, 33, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court alleging that four masterpieces exhibited in the museum are the product of “offensive aesthetic whitewashing” in their portrayals of Christ.

…

He claims Christ had “black hair like wool and skin of bronze colour” and that, as a man with the same physical traits, he felt “rejected”.

At last, another candidate for the Full Frontal Stupidity category.

I’ll bet he votes Democrat.

Read it.

50 species of French cheese to have vanished in the past four decades

With all the whining going on these days, we certainly need more cheese.

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At least 72 employees at the Department of Homeland Security are listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to a Democratic lawmaker.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.) disclosed that a congressional investigation recently found that at least 72 people working at DHS also “were on the terrorist watch list.”

“Back in August, we did an investigation—the inspector general did—of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had 72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security,” Lynch told Boston Public Radio.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

This past summer when Dylann Roof killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, SC, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch—a black woman—expressed zero concern about protecting neo-Confederates against a looming public backlash.

But last week, a mere day after two radical Muslims slaughtered 14 people in San Bernardino, she told a group of Muslim advocates that her “greatest fear” is that the shooting would lead to anti-Muslim “rhetoric.”

The day after she said that, she announced publicly that the feds were opening an investigation to determine whether a Muslim teen in Texas had his civil rights violated after being arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school that officials had mistaken for a bomb.

As we learned in Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.

Taki sums it up.

Who said that African-Americans lack initiative? It was obviously a fool, and a racist to boot. White folks never came up with terrific initiatives such as speech codes, political correctness, and boycotting speakers you don’t like. Well, maybe some white folks did, mostly Jewish intellectuals on the far left. But our black brethren sure caught up fast. They now control more than three dozen American campuses, disrupting student life with a very long list of demands. Fascism lives on at American campuses, although these modern fascists lack the sartorial brilliance of Benito’s mobs.

…

Missouri’s student president, Payton Head, is a black gay man from Chicago. If bigotry is prevalent, how come he got elected from a student body 77 percent white and overwhelmingly heterosexual? Don’t bother trying to figure it out, most protests have Barack Obama’s blessings. He’s encouraging and bankrolling a nonstop riot against invented slights and insults. (Organizing for Action is a well-funded group that mobilizes college protesters.) The media are having a field day, pointing fingers at racist killer cops, as permanent protesters call them, but when a pregnant white woman—wife of a minister—was murdered in Indiana by two black thugs, none of the major networks, and certainly not The New York Times, reported it.

Bryan Caplan lays it out.

At this point, the iniquity of practicing politicians should be clear. How much time and mental energy does the average politician pour into moral due diligence? A few hours of year seems like a high estimate. They don’t just fall a tad short of their moral obligations. They’re too busy passing laws and giving orders to face the possibility that they’re wielding power illegitimately.

Such negligence is scarcely surprising. After all, what’s in it for the politicians? Political systems reward them for seeming good by conventional standards. If we’re lucky, this spurs leaders to do what most people consider good. More likely, it spurs leaders to spin control – packaging even their worst actions in conventional moral garb. If there’s a political system that affirmatively rewards politicians for conscientiously questioning mainstream moral standards, I’ve never heard of it. Politicians have no excuses for their shameful behavior, but like almost all wrong-doers, they have reasons.

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Poor babies.

Read it.

As Ross Douthat observes, these fits of radicalism, beginning in the 1960s and continuing apace to the present dramas, are in fact attempts to erect a new moral scaffolding, to restore the higher purpose higher education has lost in recent decades. The drama of the moment may reflect an unyielding reverence for identity thought (and not a little egoism), but it is primarily the effect of the decline of the liberal arts.

…

The contemporary character of the university has been molded by strange bedfellows that include gargantuan administrative apparatuses, ideologically homogenous faculties, and the commodifying forces of capitalism. Two features particularly seem responsible for the deterioration of the liberal arts: the displacement of ethical and aesthetic thought by theory (or, put more capably by a dear friend, the “1970s poststructuralist gnashing of teeth”) which hurled the university gates open to all manner of passing fads, and a democratizing effect that forged the campus in the crucible of egalitarianism and made the application of reason virtually impossible.

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Last week’s Congressional passage of the 1,301-page Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act represents, for the most part, a five-year extension of existing highway and transit programs with several steps backwards. Once a program that was entirely self-funded out of dedicated gasoline taxes and other highway user fees, over the past two-and-one-half decades the surface transportation programs has become increasingly dependent on deficit spending. The FAST Act does nothing to mitigate this, neither raising highway fees (which include taxes on Diesel fuel, large trucks, trailers, and truck tires) nor reducing expenditures.

…

Aside from deficit spending, the greatest mischief in federal surface transportation programs come from competitive grants. When Congress created the Interstate Highway System in 1956, all federal money was distributed to the states using formulas. But in 1991 Congress created a number of competitive grant programs, supposedly so the money would be spent where it was most needed. In fact, research by the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation showed that Congress and the administration tended to spend the money politically, either in the districts represented by the most powerful members of Congress or where the administration thought it would get the greatest political return for its party.

The 2012 surface transportation law contained no earmarks and turned all but two major competitive grant programs into formula funds, thus taking the politics out of most transportation funding. This upset some members of Congress because they could no longer get credit for bringing pork home to their districts. So it is not surprising that the FAST Act goes backwards, putting more money into political grants than ever before.

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Three professors at Malik’s university said they had been advised not to talk to the media, while men claiming to be from Pakistan’s security agencies told reporters to drop their investigations into her background on pain of arrest.

…

Men claiming to be from security agencies, but who refused to provide identification, also sought to discourage Reuters from further reporting on Malik’s background, threatening journalists with arrest for unspecified offences.

 

As in the old Soviet Union, the Ministry of the Interior in Muslim Countries is in charge of the political police.

Read it.

Before sharing their places of worship, it is crucial that Westerners discover what Muslims are saying when they recite the Islamic mandatory prayers. A few days ago, an Ontario synagogue invited Muslim worshippers to lead the Friday prayer. This article explains what the Islamic daily prayers mean, with focus on the Friday prayer within the context of Islamic law or sharia. Being better informed will make Westerners think twice before opening the doors to Muslim for prayer.

…

A deep hatred and rejection of Judaism and Christianity are hardwired into Islamic doctrine, including the Koran. Many of its chapters are incorporated into mandatory daily Islamic prayer. The very first Koranic chapter, considered the most exalted of all chapters, is a prayer directed to Allah asking him to keep Muslims away from the misguided path of Jews and Christians. This chapter is a necessary part of the five mandatory daily prayers, and is recited not once, but anywhere from 17 to 100 times a day by devout Muslims (or in a broader sense, 6,200 to 36,500 times a year).

Read it.

Here’s one of them:

Ross Douthat in the New York Times uncovers a rock. (The Times is allowed one token ‘conservative’ columnist; David Brooks formally filled that slat until it got to where no one would believe his Clever Plastic Disguise any more, and so Ross was brought in.)

I DO NOT own guns, and the last time I discharged a firearm was on “Second Amendment Day” at a conservative journalism program many years ago. (Yes, dear reader, that’s how conservative journalism programs roll.) My political commitments are more communitarian than libertarian, I don’t think the constitution guarantees a right to bear every kind of gun or magazine, and I think of myself as modestly persuadable in the gun control debate.

So, as you can see, what is ‘conservative’ to the New York Times is not necessarily conservative to an actual conservative.

Does that make “getting to Australia” a compelling long-term goal for liberalism? Maybe, but liberals need to count the cost. Absent a total cultural revolution in America, a massive gun collection effort would face significant resistance even once legislative and judicial battles had been won. The best analogue is Prohibition, which did have major public health benefits … but which came at a steep cost in terms of police powers, black markets and trampled liberties.

Or, even closer to home, the ‘war on drugs’, which doesn’t seem to have reduced drug use very much (when did you ever hear of rock stars finding it impossible to get cocaine when they wanted it?), but which has enriched drug-running cartels to the point of undermining public order in Columbia and Mexico.

I suspect liberals imagine, at some level, that a Prohibition-style campaign against guns would mostly involve busting up gun shows and disarming Robert Dear-like trailer-park loners. But in practice it would probably look more like Michael Bloomberg’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, with a counterterrorism component that ended up heavily targeting Muslim Americans. In areas where gun ownership is high but crime rates low, like Bernie Sanders’ Vermont, authorities would mostly turn a blind eye to illegal guns, while poor and minority communities bore the brunt of raids and fines and jail terms.

What Ross dare not say is that such a result would actually work as intended, since most ‘gun violence’ occurs in poor and minority communities rather than in Bernie Sanders’ Vermont and such.

Paul Sperry in the New York Post nails it.

Last month, when a Colorado Christian entered a Planned Parenthood clinic and fatally shot three people, the mainstream media rushed to make the connection to “right-wing domestic terrorism,” even though police hadn’t made any connection and the evidence was thin.

When two California Muslims shot up a government office several days later, massacring 14, national journalists refused to call it Islamic terrorism even though evidence of the shooters’ motive was overwhelming.

When something bad happens, the Drive-By Media will move heaven and earth to shoehorn it into their Narrative; when reality smacks their Narrative in the face, then they fidget and flounder all over the place trying to spin it.

The Beltway punditry is twisting itself into knots trying to avoid admitting the obvious motive — violent Islamic jihad. Now, in a desperate fit to re-spin it all, we’re hearing from CNN that poor Farook was actually acting out over a “turbulent childhood,” and that Malik was suffering from “postpartum syndrome.”

…

When it comes to Muslim terrorism, sorting out motives is oh-so-complicated for the mainstream media. So used to telling us what we should think, they’re suddenly left scratching their heads.

But when it comes to “right-wing domestic terrorism,” the motive is instantly clear to them. And they are miraculously lucid and articulate in ­explaining it to us.

Read it.

China and South Korea are both quite uneasy about the prospect of the North Korean government collapsing. This is by both as a question of when not if as the economy and public support for the hereditary dictatorship in North Korea continues to decline. Unless the North Korean leadership makes some fundamental, and long opposed, changes the government control of the country will collapse. Both China and South Korea say they should take over but neither is enthusiastic about actually doing so. According to opinion surveys more South Koreans are agreeing with letting China take over up there. That’s because since the 1990s South Korean reunification planners have been studying what happened in Germany after the communist East Germany was absorbed by the democratic West Germany in the 1990s. That cost the West German taxpayers over two trillion dollars. Estimates of what it will cost South Koreans to absorb North Korea are now over five trillion dollars. Then there was the fact that Germany had a GDP four times that of South Korea, meaning that the average South Korean will have to pay ten times what the average West German paid to rebuild their lesser half. This could cost South Koreans up to ten percent of their GDP for a decade or more. Many South Koreans fear that rebuilding the north could wreck the South Korean economy. No one knows, and everyone is scared. But someone will have to pay, and the most likely candidate is the South Korean taxpayer. Unless, of course, China is allowed to take over. This is something China is not only willing to do but is kind of insisting on.

Read it.

Be prepared to hold your nose.

Read it.

Reminder for the dimwitted: Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology with which no co-existence is possible.

Read it.

Have you heard the one about how you can tell someone is a vegan? Answer: Because they’ll fucking tell you. Sounds about right. Meanwhile: why should you eat meat? Don’t just answer with the obvious and self-evident truth: Because it really tastes great—especially grilled!

Turns out eating meat may be essential for your mental health.

Read it.

When a group of Eritrean “refugees” were shown their latest residence — a resort hostel in southeastern Switzerland, just across the border from Italy — they were unhappy with their new accommodations. The place was too small, too far away from the city, and besides, they were tired of being moved around. However, the manager of the place had no sympathy for them, and managed to engineer an attitude adjustment on their part.

Read it.

Vagrants are urinating in the street, hassling passers-by for cash — and now they’ve ruined Christmas in The Bronx.

The annual outdoor Christmas tree lighting in the borough’s famed Little Italy section was canceled because the soaring panhandler population forced the sponsors to spend so much on security that there was no cash left for the celebration.

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What gets lost in the media frenzy over recent Islamic terrorist attacks in Mali is why Islamic terrorists even bother with such an out-of-the way place. It’s all about money, which even Islamic terrorists need to survive. Mali is a key component of a smuggling route from central Africa to Europe. The 2012 Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali triggered an international peacekeeping response in 2013 that made moving the drugs north more difficult and, for a time, nearly impossible. The Islamic terrorists operating in northern Mali must maintain access so they can enter and move through Algeria, to the coast and thence to Europe. Doing this is a major source of income for Islamic terrorist groups who will also use this network to move weapons and Islamic terrorists. Normally bribes would work to safely get through but the Islamic terrorism angle in northern Mali and Algeria means that fewer military or police officials will accept the money and the smugglers have to rely on skill and luck or firepower to get through. That often isn’t enough, as can be seen by the constant clashes on the Algerian border and throughout northern Mali.

Read it.

Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga has criticised demands for evidence that his country is suffering harm caused by anthropogenic climate change.

No fair! That would unravel the scam!

Read it.

And there you have it.

Read it.

The Drive-By Media can be depended upon to fill up their pages and minutes of air time with hand-wringing about the fear of an ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ every time Muslims go nuts and start killing people.

But the much-feared backlash never seems to happen.

But wait! The Post tells us there is an “intense backlash.” But the opening paragraphs don’t describe a backlash, they describe the fear of one by an activist. Where is the actual backlash?

By dint of much digging around, eventually a news outlet will discover an instance of someone being rude to a Muslim, or shouting at hin/her, or maybe even throwing a punch — you know, the sort of thing that a white person would encounter in any Black Lives Matter demonstration.  Pretty wimpy for an ‘intense backlash’.

Even more toxic than what? The FBI’s latest statistics, for 2014, show a total of 1,140 religion-based hate crimes in the U.S. Only 16% (182) were directed against Muslims, about one for every 44,000 Muslims living in the U.S.

Perennially, the ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ is the dog that doesn’t bark in the night. And yet the Drive-By Media seem to assume that it’s there, just because they wish it to be there.

Actually, Muslims are more likely to perpetrate hate crimes than to be victimized by them. In 2014, more than half of the religion-based hate crimes–58%–were directed against Jews, and in many instances were perpetrated by Muslims. Does the United States currently have a “toxic climate” for Jews? Apparently so.

Not that you’ll know it by paying attention to the Drive-By Media.

Lion of the Blogosphere is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Trump said that Syrian refugees could be ISIS supporters.

Obama says no way, the refugees are subject to rigorous background checks.

Farook’s wife Tafsheen Malik came to the U.S. on a K-1 visa. K-1 visa’s are supposed to be subject to the same rigorous background checks. And of course, we now know that she was an ISIS supporter.

According to ABC News, the address in Pakistan that Malik used on the visa application “does not exist.”

Well, I guess it wasn’t really a hard question after all.

The People’s Cube has the answer to the ‘God Isn’t Fixing This’ meme.

Every time we suffer the consequences of climate change and hateful GOP rhetoric, Republicans always respond by offering “thoughts and prayers.” The Party has decreed that Thoughts and Prayers do not address the problem, and only highlights how little Republicans care about anything.

So what does work more effectively than Thoughts and Prayers? Presented below, for your consideration, are just a few of The Party’s tried and true methods for showing how much more we care than they do.

1. Awareness Ribbons:

Wearing an awareness ribbon shows everyone how much you care. When you see someone wearing an awareness ribbon, you know they care.

Awareness ribbons come in different colors for different issues. Don’t know what issue a certain color signifies? Ask the wearer, and they’ll tell you! Just like that, you’ll be aware of the issue! See how that works? The ribbon really works! And since you don’t want to be seen as uncaring, you’ll want to wear one, too!

You can’t wear Thoughts and Prayers on your lapel or bra strap. – See more at: http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/8-things-that-work-better-than-thoughts-and-prayers-t17272.html#sthash.KV7phkLN.dpuf

Read it.

ABC News has its nose rubbed in its own cluelessness.

Read it.

Well, socialism will do that to you.

Thousands of Venezuelans have been pouring out of their home country in recent months as it’s spiraled into ever-deeper crisis levels under the socialist administration of President Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela, home to the largest oil reserves in the world, became one of the world’s worst performing economies this year, with triple-digit inflation, severe shortages of basic household goods and soaring rates of violent crime propelling those who can afford it to leave the country. The festering crisis is set to hit a pivotal point Sunday, when Venezuelans vote in long-awaited parliamentary elections that could put the political opposition back into a seat of power for the first time since late President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999.

Wrap-A-Nap Travel Pillow. Can also be used at work for a quick snooze in the handicapped stall.

HandyBar Vehicle Support Handle.

Read it.

Democratic lawmakers are planning to attend prayer services at a Washington-area mosque that has been accused of acting as a front for Hamas and that served as the home of terrorist spiritual leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who reportedly mentored two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Haters of America flock together.

On the heels of a deadly mass shooting by two Muslim individuals in San Bernardino, California, a group of Democratic lawmakers said they would attend Friday prayer services at the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Virginia, which has been linked to the financing of terrorists and where al-Awlaki served as the spiritual leader.

Just in case they win, you understand.

Beyer told the Times that the visit could help diffuse tensions with the Muslim community in the wake of the San Bernardino attack and the recent terrorist massacre in Paris.

‘It’s okay, you’re safe, we’ll still ignore you, jihad can continue in peace.’

Dar al-Hijrah has come “under numerous investigations for financing and providing aid and comfort” to extremist groups, according to these records compiled by the Investigative Project.

No wonder Democrites feel right at home.

Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst and national security reporter who has covered the mosque, told the Washington Free Beacon that Dar al-Hijrah has been a “premier” spot for “terrorist recruitment” and questioned why Democrats would choose this as a site to promote tolerance.

Trade tips? Get some pointers?

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Putin has employed the tactic of turning a civil war into a counter-terrorist operation before—in Chechnya, where Russia launched a war in 1999 that lasted for almost a decade. The Kremlin regards its campaign in the small Muslim republic as a model of conflict resolution to be replicated elsewhere. Last year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called it “one of the business cards of Russia” and a “good, unique example in history of combat of terrorism.” In thinking about how Russia’s folly in Syria might develop, Chechnya provides a number of important lessons.

Russia’s war in Chechnya was brutal. The Kremlin initially defined all those who opposed its military action as terrorist sympathizers, entirely indistinguishable from Islamic extremists. It bombed the Chechen capital of Grozny indiscriminately, killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians (official figures were not compiled) and forcing thousands more from their homes. Later, it began to target moderate Chechens; in 2005, the FSB murdered Aslan Maskhadov, the democratically elected leader of Chechnya’s independence movement. His predecessor, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was assassinated by car bomb in Qatar in 2004. Though the Russian government denied any involvement in the attack, a Qatari court convicted two Russian security agents for their roles in the bombing.

Read it.

During a press event on Wednesday, the NFL singled out San Diego as a problem city, in danger of losing our professional football team. The problem, they said, is what we lack. We lack certainty. We lack a simple, uncomplicated plan. And most of all, we lack the will to build an expensive stadium, using public money, without voter approval. “Certainty means no further votes required,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. He demanded competing cities have their certain, uncomplicated, voter-unapproved plans delivered to him by Dec. 28.

Why the citizens of football cities (and baseball, and basketball, and hockey cities) fall for this scam is beyond me. Fortunately, when Jerry Jones wanted to offload his costs while holding on to the profits for the new Cowboys Stadium, Dallas passed and Arlington took the bait. (Arlington is the Blue pimple on the ass of the DFW metroplex, being the home of University of Texas at Arlington and thereby having a average level of intelligence lower than anywhere else in North Texas.)

Read it.

The Guardian, in Britain, is a tediously tendentious left-wing rag, whose writing is superior to The Daily Worker but whose political agenda — and lack of intellectual rigor — are exactly the same.

Does the massive foreign and national corporate buying of urban buildings and land that took off after the 2008 crisis signal an emergent new phase in major cities? From mid-2013 to mid-2014, corporate buying of existing properties exceeded $600bn (£395bn) in the top 100 recipient cities, and $1trillion a year later – and this figure includes only major acquisitions (eg. a minimum of $5m in the case of New York City).

Oh, noes! Things are being bought! Things are being owned! The sky is falling!

Well, not really. Because of land-use restrictions, urban property, especially urban core property, has skyrocketed in price to the point where only corporations, or extremely wealthy individuals, can buy it. Why this comes as a surprise to a ‘journalist’ escapes me; I have no trouble explaining it to a 10-year-old. (Of course, if extremely wealthy individuals were doing this buying instead of corporations, I suspect that the Guardian would still think that the sky is falling.)

I want to examine the details of this large corporate investment surge, and why it matters.

Prediction: Details will be few and far between, and airy generalities will rule. Like this one:

Cities are the spaces where those without power get to make a history and a culture, thereby making their powerlessness complex.

Actually, they go there to get jobs and support themselves and raise families. But nobody could do a Studies major in that.

If the current large-scale buying continues, we will lose this type of making that has given our cities their cosmopolitanism.

People are actually paid to write this stuff. If this guy wants to talk about ‘people without power’, he ought to look to small farmers and small businessmen, who have the least power in our society. But no — they aren’t fashionable, and the Guardian is all about The Narrative.

The rest is simply more of the same. Picking it apart is left as an exercise for the reader, not involving not much exercise at all.

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

And it’s in the New York Times, which means it MUST be true.

Read it.

CFACT has participated in the UN climate process going back to the original Rio Earth summit.  We are an officially recognized NGO observer at COP 21.

CFACT’s display is in the NGO pavilion at booth 37c.

We used our space to inject four “inconvenient facts” into the COP.  They are the kind of rock solid, 100% scientifically valid points that leave the warming-indoctrinated spluttering.

In summary:

1. Global temperatures lower than climate models predict.
2. Sea level only rising 1-3 mm per year, for generations.
3. We have more polar bears than 40 years ago.
4. There is nothing abnormal about extreme weather.

Read it.

A radical foreign policy adviser fired by President Obama years ago for meeting with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is back as the administration’s new czar in charge of countering the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).

The White House downplayed the new appointment by burying it deep in a press briefing delivered at a Paris hotel during the recent climate summit. “The President recently elevated Rob Malley, the NSC [National Security Council] Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, to serve now as the Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during the briefing at the Marriott Rive Gauche Hotel and Conference Center. Before moving onto the next topic Earnest said the president has directed Malley to “support our reinvigorated diplomatic track toward a political transition in Syria…”

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The problem is, Kozinski is one of a very few judges to question the integrity of prosecutors. And for all the umbrage being hauled in by the semi-truckful, Kozinski was rather restrained when discussing federal prosecutors. Still, the DOJ cannot sit idly by while someone suggests a few prosecutors don’t play by the rules and that the rules themselves are faulty. So, it does what the DOJ always does in these situations: defends the honor of the (not even directly) accused. When the DOJ takes down a local police force for misconduct or abuse, it always makes sure to rub the bellies of the police force at large before getting to the bad stuff.

Read it.

Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong.

…

He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His P.R. return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Mr. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.

Told you so.

So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Mr. Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor to DealBook. He explained that if the L.L.C. sold stock, Mr. Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing.

If the L.L.C. donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That’s a nice little bonus. But the L.L.C. probably won’t do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the L.L.C. donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax.

Told you so.

Read it.

For a little historical perspective on the events of the day, let us turn to Sam Borden’s New York Times story “Long-hidden details reveal cruelty of 1972 Munich attackers.” Borden reports suppressed details of the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes by PLO terrorists in Munich during the 1972 games. “Among the most jarring details are these,” Borden writes. “The Israeli Olympic team members were beaten and, in at least one case, castrated.”

…

Borden omits to mention any current PLO officials connected to the Munich outrage, but he might have. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has nearly completed the eleventh year of his four-year term. Back in the day Abbas worked as a Black September operator in Europe. He has been cited as the paymaster of the Black September operation in Munich.

Steven Hayward at PowerLine blog passes on some observations by a commenter on the parallels between Now and Then:

One of the main characteristics they share is an obsession with “identity.” Reading on the collapse of Nazi Germany, about the last thing that went for them was “identity.” Even at the bitter end they were obsessed with it. Everyone had an identity – some mix of “race” or “ethnicity,” occasionally spiced with “gender” or conduct (usually misconduct). But by and large the identity you were born with defined you forever. It could never be transcended. Jews who had been heroes in World War I found themselves pilloried, at best barely tolerated. Successful (even lapsed) “Jewish” businessmen or doctors or academics found themselves scooped up almost as easily as the most mundane but orthodox Jewish clerk. Jews were simply irredeemable and no matter what they did to serve the Reich, they were always doomed. The same, only in a slightly lower degree of vehemence, went for Freemasons (whom the Nazis had an inexplicable obsession with), Gypsies, Slavs, et al.

Pace Godwin’s Law, there is a lot of resemblance between what is going on now on campus and what was going on then on campus. If the Black Lives Matter people start singing Tomorrow Belongs To Me, it’s time to leave.

Read it.

What’s the inverse of ‘Islamophobia’, where Muslims act with irrational hatred toward non-Muslims?

Protesters from the Goldsmiths University’s Islamic Society (ISOC) are said to have “heckled and aggressively disrupted” a talk from ex-Muslim and feminist campaigner Maryam Namazie after a video, this week, surfaced on YouTube.

And the feminists say:

The university’s Feminist Society says it ‘stands in solidarity with Goldsmiths Islamic Society’

So obviously some females are more equal than others.

The group claimed the ASH invited Namazie, whom they referred to as “a notorious islamophobe,” to speak at the event, “despite our polite request for them to reconsider.” The ISOC’s statement added: “The university should be a safe space for all our students. Islamophobic views like those propagated by Namazie create a climate of hatred and bigotry towards Muslim students.

Sounds as if it’s the Muslim students that are creating a climate of hatred and bigotry.

Read it.

Perhaps Michelle Obama and her Obesity Patrol ought to investigate. Tell her black kids are getting too fat and THIS RACISM MUST STOP!

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The rifles used in the San Bernardino mass shooting were illegal under California law because they were modified and violated the state’s ban on assault weapons, ATF officials said.

… which puts paid to the Leftist Lie, promoted by Barack Obama among others, that stricter gun control laws would have had any impact on this tragedy. If just one of the people at that center had had a gun, perhaps the body count wouldn’t have been as high. But that’s not an option that the Usual Suspects are prepared to entertain, despite the fact that there is more evidence for it than for their precious Global Warming.

‘When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns’ is an Eternal Truth that needs to be tattooed on the forehead of every government employee.

Read it.

Illegal immigrants based in the “Jungle” camp near Calais have become increasingly aggressive when attempting to climb into tractor-trailer trucks hauling freight on their way to the Channel Tunnel leading to the UK. Drivers and trucks have been threatened and even attacked when they attempt to stop “refugees” from entering the cargo area in the back of their trucks.

The following brief video shows the reaction of an unidentified German-speaking man when he discovers a series of pig parts attached to the back of a truck trailer, put there in an effort to discourage would-be boarders (most of whom are presumed to be Muslims).