Stop Being Shocked

None of the recent horrors you witnessed this last week, not the massacre of Jews, not the betrayal by public figures and popular activist movements, not the moral insanity of our universities and cultural spaces, happened by accident.

For the past decade or so, an elite consensus began to emerge. It was marketed as a worldview of optimism, of progress and justice brought about by the dawning of new correct morality. It favored using the power of digital monopolies and elite institutions to reeducate Americans in new and better ways of thinking, writing, speaking, and being.

But something was bothering from the very beginning about these ideas, and the people pushing them. Every time we pressed on one of the newly mass-embraced policy proposals or narratives - intersectionality, decolonization studies, the Iran nuclear deal, Russiagate, Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, critical race theory, COVID lockdowns—a weird thing would happen: The idea itself fell apart at the seams within seconds of contact with reality. And yet its defenders got more sure of themselves, more performatively boastful, more passionate and gleeful about smearing anyone who dared to question them.

The more we listened to freshly minted universal experts, the more we were struck by the increasing lunacy of their pronouncements and the seemingly automatic acceptance by the media  on every topic under the sun, always said to be backed by ‘studies’ and ‘science.  Where COVID-19 came from, how many genders there are, which skin tones and personal experiences qualify a person for protection status and which do not, whether it was OK for a Syrian dictator to bomb and gas 500,000 of his people, whether the U.S. should ally itself with a Holocaust-denying medieval theocracy, whether the president of the United States was secretly a Russian agent, whether large American cities should let drug addicts and violent schizophrenics get high on the streets and steal stuff—and more.

Over time we were struck by how little the ideas themselves seemed to matter. What so many people seemed most attached to was the power.

The increasingly strident calls for forced uniformity of opinion and perception struck us as dangerous and wrong. Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Civil Liberties Union, once the protectors of the vulnerable, became handmaidens of power.  Internet monopolies merged with the federal government to produce a censorship and surveillance apparatus that would ensure that only the voices of some could be heard. Think tanks and politicians and journalists gave cover for policies that seemed obviously destined to set the world on fire.

* by the Editors of Tablet Magazine

~ Thank You WHATFINGER NEWS for the Linkage! ~

US Drone Strike Destroys Classic Dylan Album Supply

WASHINGTON- MFNS — The Pentagon is refusing to either confirm or deny that late friday night one of its unmanned Predator Drones targeted an undisclosed warehouse somewhere in the middle east containing a large stock of the classic Bob Dylan album "Desire", which features the 7 minute iconic track “Isis”

At a press conference Saturday a Pentagon spokesman, while refusing to comment on the alleged strike, did asserted that the U.S. military does not include music warehouses on it's terrorist target list, or intentionally target civilian or humanitarian supply depots.  “Ultimately the responsibility for this sort of tragic collateral damage lies with the ISIS terrorists group themselves,” the source said.

The carefully-worded statement leaves open the possibility that someone high up in the pentagon is still pissed off about Dylan’s controversial 1965 embrace of electric amplification at the Newport Folk Festival, and may have left him open to attack.

The Reason Jihadist Fear Kurdish Guerrillas Units

Having a Mental Edge Over Your Enemies.

WSJ

"Battle-hardened after two years fighting Islamic State and other Islamist rebel groups in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, Kurdish guerrillas linked to the PKK have in recent weeks made a series of military gains that have spotlighted their growing sway.

Syrian commanders say the security and quality of life is improving as the Kurd guerrilla forces expand rapidly, propelled by thousands of young volunteers...."

"Recruitment is boosted by the deployment of women soldiers on the front line, often in all-female units."

“The jihadists don’t like fighting women, because if they’re killed by a female, they believe they won't go to Paradise."

I say Gear Up Ladies, and send them to hell where they belong!

h/t Young Cons

Breeding an Army of Hate

Israel gave Gaza over lock, stock and barrel, moved out their people and said "Make it Flourish." Instead of investing the billions in aid to help the Palestinian people and create a trading block with Israel, Gaza invested in terrorism. They now reap the consequences.

Hamas urge women to have more children

to create a larger army of Hate.

Some 63 Israelis and about 1500 Palestinians have died since the current conflict started a month ago, with children accounting for at least 245 of the deaths. But why so many children? It turns out that there are unusual features about the population structure in Gaza that make it an enigma in the modern world and helps explain the high numbers of casualties in the current conflict the media does not see fit to site in their reporting.

New Scientist:

"First, the Gaza Strip's population of roughly 1.8 million has an unusually large proportion of children. Figures for 2013 from Index Mundi, the internet source of country data, show that that 43.5 per cent of the population is aged 14 or under, compared with 32 per cent in Egypt and 27 per cent in Israel.

The median age in Gaza is 18, compared with a world average of 28. In most European countries it's about 40, and it is 30 in Israel. Only in a dozen or so African countries is the median age lower, reaching 15 in Uganda.

The data from Index Mundi show that the fertility rate in Gaza, 4.4 children per woman, is among the highest in the world.

A study involving interviews with 16,204 Gazan women and 4900 Jordanian women for comparison, concluded that the Intifada of of 1989 and 1990 was a key driving factor for the surge in marriage and fertility. In the Intifada years of for example, women were 1.4 times more likely to marry than in 1980. The rate during the Intifada was even higher, at twice that in 1980, for more educated women.

A sense of duty to expand the population is a factor that can't be dismissed. "There have been statements from Hamas urging women to have more children to create a larger army."