On the 100th anniversary of the birth of John F. Kennedy (if you’re dead you don’t really have birthdays anymore), Larry Elder asks:
President Ronald Reagan said: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” Actor and former president of the National Rifle Association Charlton Heston, who called himself a “Kennedy Democrat,” switched to the Republican Party after the 1960s.
On racial preferences, JFK, in 1963, said he opposed them: “I don’t think that is the generally held view, at least as I understand it, of the Negro community, that there is some compensation due for the lost years, particularly in the field of education. What I think they would like is to see their children well-educated so that they could hold jobs and have their children accepted and have themselves accepted as equal members of the community. So I don’t think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now. That is what we are trying to do. I don’t think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race or color, or nationality.
“I think we get into a good deal of trouble. Our whole view of ourselves is a sort of one society. That has not been true. At least that is where we are trying to go. I think that we ought not to begin the quota system. On the other hand, I do think that we ought to make an effort to give a fair chance to everyone who is qualified, not through a quota, but just look over our employment rolls, look over our areas where we are hiring people, and at least make sure we are giving everyone a fair chance, but not hard-and-fast quotas. We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.”
On tax cuts, in a 1962 speech Kennedy said: “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. … The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy, which can bring a budget surplus.”
On dealing with foreign enemies, JFK believed, as Reagan did, in peace through strength, not strength through peace. In his inaugural address, Kennedy said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
On the Second Amendment, this lifetime member of the NRA believed it conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. In 1961, Kennedy said: “Today we need a nation of minutemen: citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.”
Abortion was not an issue during the 1960 presidential campaign. Nor was it an issue during his presidency. Kennedy did say this: “Now, on the question of limiting population: As you know, the Japanese have been doing it very vigorously, through abortion, which I think would be repugnant to all Americans.”
In 1971, in a letter to a constituent, John Kennedy’s brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy, wrote: “It is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old. … Once life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire.”
On guns, taxes, racial preferences, foreign policy and abortion, John F. Kennedy would not be comfortable in today’s Democratic Party. He was, after all, a Kennedy Democrat.
Teddy’s letter about abortion is interesting given not only the proclivity of the Kennedy brothers to violate the commandment about adultery, but also the youngest Kennedy’s shift on abortion rights after Roe v. Wade. It is unimaginable that JFK would have asked the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev for help in his 1960 campaign as Teddy did from Yuri Andropov. Teddy Kennedy could not really be described as a Kennedy Democrat either.
Paul McCartney must like releasing albums in May. Today in 1971, he released his second post-Beatles album, “Ram,” which included his first post-Beatles number one single:
Birthdays today include Papa John Creech of the Jefferson Airplane:
The James Bond I grew up with died earlier this week.
The 007 franchise, the longest currently running in movies, is now on its sixth Bond, Daniel Craig. Sean Connery started the series, left for two (the original “Casino Royale” and “On His Majesty’s Secret Service”), and returned for one (plus another not from the series’ producers).
It may be that “Diamonds Are Forever,” but Connery was not. His replacement was Roger Moore, who had already played a similar role on British TV that was picked up by NBC, “The Saint”:
I saw Connery’s Bond on TV (generally ABC’s Sunday Night Movie). I saw Moore’s Bond in theaters.
Between that and the fact that Moore acted as Bond the most of any of the Bonds (besides Connery there was one-Bond George Lazenby, parody Bond David Niven, Moore’s successor Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and now Daniel Craig), Moore has always been Bond to me. Connery may be more popular, and Craig may be more the Bond that author Ian Fleming intended, but Moore’s Bond is who I think of.
… squares with what this column heard from a source who occasionally had the pleasure of Moore’s company. The actor was witty and well-read, but often preferred listening to others rather than telling stories of his own. The Times of London notes that despite his huge celebrity, Moore remained self-deprecating:
Sir Roger Moore may not have been the best Bond, indeed by his own estimation he was the fourth best, but off screen he was undoubtedly the most endearing of the actors who played the role. This likeability had much to do with his unwillingness, perhaps inability, to take himself too seriously. When he was cast in the 007 role, for example, he was asked what he thought he could bring to it. More brooding menace than Sean Connery, perhaps? More sex appeal than George Lazenby? He replied: “White teeth.” And when critics accused him of being a one eyebrow actor, he countered that this was unfair because he was, in fact, a two-eyebrow actor.
“The eyebrows thing was my own fault,” he once said in an interview. “I was talking about how talentless I was and said I have three expressions — eyebrow up, eyebrow down and both of them at the same time. And they used it — very well, I must say.”…
When he first took the role, the films’ producer Cubby Broccoli told him he needed to “lose a little weight and get into shape”. He replied: “Why didn’t you just cast a thin, fit fellow and avoid putting me through this hell?
Elsewhere in the U.K., the Gloucestershire Echo reports that “touching tributes are pouring in” for Moore and that among those with fond memories is a hotel manager named Olivier Bonte. Mr. Bonte tells the paper: “He was a very nice person to look after unlike some of the other A-listers we entertain. He was a true gentleman: polite and traditional.”
While this column appreciates the talent of Mr. Connery, Moore was the James Bond that your humble correspondent grew up watching. Leave it to the indispensable Kyle Smith to make the case that “Roger Moore Was the Best Bond:”
Sean Connery, with his big shoulders and his swaggering physicality, his touch of cruelty and menace, was a much larger screen presence than Moore. But it was Moore’s lighter touch — the arched eyebrow, the deadpan sense of humor, the movements graceful rather than aggressive — that was perfect for the times, when the ideal of screen manhood evolved from the irony-impervious scowl of John Wayne to the sardonic smirk of Burt Reynolds and the puzzled uncertainty of Warren Beatty.
If Connery’s Bond was a fantasy figure who projected British might, Moore’s Bond was a synecdoche for the new role of Britain — no longer the lion of the globe, it would measure its influence in soft power. For more than half a century, Britain has exerted its primary influence not through its troops and warships but in its popular culture, particularly in pop music, which without its British elements would scarcely be recognizable today. Moore’s Bond, like his country, had to be clever because he could no longer be overwhelming.
Mr. Smith, lion among movie critics, describes the new Bond finesse in the signature films of that era:
Who can forget how, in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moore’s Bond socked Richard Kiel’s steel-toothed thug Jaws in the midsection as hard as he could — and was rewarded by being picked up and rammed against the ceiling by his much larger foe? Yet Bond won that round when he used Jaws’s deadliest attribute against him — by electrocuting his mouth with a lamp. What better illustration is there of the superiority of fancy footwork over brawn than in Live and Let Die (1973), when Moore’s Bond finds himself on a rock in the middle of a pond full of ravening crocodiles, uses the beasts as stepping stones and smartly walks away from them without even loosening his tie?
This column hasn’t mentioned the famous Bond girls and of course any discussion of this film franchise is bound to raise complaints, often justified, about the treatment of women at the hands of 007. But this week Jackie Bischof gamely argues that the Roger Moore films were distinctive for their strong female characters, including KGB Major Anya Amasova.
At least in a fictional story on film, here was a case where there really was collusion between a western power and a Russian state actor. Mr. Smith describes the closing moments of “The Spy Who Loved Me”:
Escaping from certain death with Russian spy Barbara Bach in a submersible pod that doubled as a ’70s love nest at the end of the film, Bond disdained to comment on the havoc around him and turned his attention to a surprise stowed in the pod. “Maybe I misjudged Stromberg,” he says. “Anyone who drinks Dom Perignon ’52 can’t be all bad.” With a single line (“Let’s get out of these wet things”), he convinces the foe sworn to kill him to sleep with him instead, then closes the curtain on his bosses as they peer through the window.
That sound you hear is the slowly dawning realization that something horrifying is happening, a swelling of screams of panic. And it’s the panic of hundreds and hundreds of young girls (boys too, but the sound of girls’ screams is unmistakable.) Let that sink in. This attack was the virtual equivalent of walking into a middle school auditorium for the express purpose of maiming and mutilating children.
There is no reasoning with this hate. There is no “legitimate grievance” with the West that triggers such violence. It is the product of fanatical devotion to the most evil of all causes, a cause that perversely promises paradise for the slaughter of innocents. There is no way for the West to be “good” enough to appease terrorists. There is no policy short of religious conversion that will cause them to relent. The best deterrent to jihad is the obliteration of jihadists. They thrive on victory, not defeat.
Tonight, sadly, they won a victory, and here’s all you need to know to understand the character of our enemies – they relish the sound of young girls’ screams.
Make no mistake, there is an emerging bipartisan consensus that a certain amount of terrorism is just the price we have to pay to live the way we want to live. Now, to be clear, very few people will come out and say this explicitly, and national-security establishments do their best — within certain, limited parameters — to stop every single terror attack, but more than 15 years after 9/11 it’s clear that there are prices our societies aren’t willing to pay. And neither our nation nor any of our European allies is willing to pay the price to reduce the terror threat to its pre-9/11 scale.
Consequently, an undetermined number of civilians will die, horribly, at concerts, restaurants, nightclubs, or simply while walking on the sidewalk. It almost certainly won’t be you, of course, but it will be somebody. And they’ll often be kids.
While it’s impossible to predict any given terror attack, there are two laws of terrorism that work together to guarantee that attacks will occur, and they’ll occur with increasing frequency. First, when terrorists are granted safe havens to plan, train, equip, and inspire terror attacks, then they will strike, and they’ll keep striking not just until the safe havens are destroyed but also until the cells and affiliates they’ve established outside their havens are rooted out. Second, when you import immigrants at any real scale from jihadist regions, then you will import the cultural, religious, and political views that incubate jihad. Jihadist ideas flow not from soil but from people, and when you import people you import their ideas.
Let’s look at how these two ideas have worked together in both Europe and America. The map below (from AFP) charts significant terror attacks in Europe (including Turkey). You’ll note a significant increase in activity since 2014, since ISIS stampeded across Syria and into Turkey and established a terrorist caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. There existed a safe haven and a population to inspire back in Europe. The result was entirely predictable:
What about the United States? A similar phenomenon was in play. This Heritage Foundation timeline of terror attacks and plots documents a total of 95 incidents since 9/11. The numbers are revealing. After the implementation of the (now) much-derided Bush strategy, there were a grand total of 27 terror attacks and plots — almost all of them foiled.
After the end of the Bush administration, the numbers skyrocketed, with 68 plots or attacks recorded since. A number of them, including the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, the San Bernardino mass murder, and the Orlando nightclub massacre, have been terrifying successful. Indeed, there have been more domestic terror plots and attacks since the rise of ISIS in the summer of 2014 than there were in the entirety of the Bush administration after 9/11. And make no mistake, jihadist terrorists are disproportionately immigrants and children of immigrants.
What did Bush do that was so successful? He not only pressed military offensives in the heart of the Middle East, he fundamentally changed the American approach to immigration and implemented a number of temporary measures that, for example, dramatically decreased refugee admissions and implemented country-specific protective measures that have since been discontinued. And don’t forget, aside from their reckless immigration policies, our European allies weren’t just beneficiaries of the Bush doctrine but also participants in Bush’s military offensives. Our NATO allies have been on the ground in Afghanistan since the war launched in earnest. Britain was a principal partner in Iraq.
Here is the bottom line — since the end of the Bush and Blair administrations, it seems clear that all of the great Western democracies would rather face an increased terror risk than make the sacrifices that have been proven to mitigate the danger. There is little appetite across the entire American political spectrum for an increased ground-combat presence in the Middle East. So the slow-motion war against ISIS continues, and terrorist safe havens remain. In the United States, even Trump’s short-term and modest so-called travel ban has been blocked in court and lacks public support.
If you listen closely, you’ll note that some politicians are actually starting to level with their people. They’re not willing to do what it takes to reduce the terror threat to substantially lower levels, so they’re trying to adjust their populations to the new reality. After the Nice truck attack, the French prime minister said, “The times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.” German chancellor Angela Merkel also told her people that they have to “live with the danger of terrorism.”
All too many Americans, sadly, still seem to labor under the fiction that they can have it all — tolerant immigration policies, no land wars in Asia, and Muslim allies who finally pick up the slack with the right level of prodding and with appropriately minimal air support. When necessary, we can send in our SEAL Team superheroes to take care of the truly tough tasks.
Well, that’s a strategy, but it’s one that means that every few months we’ll put memorial ribbons up on Facebook and Twitter, express pride in our valiant first responders, and wrap our arms around grieving parents who have to close the casket on their eight-year-old girl. It’s a strategy that expresses pride that we foil most attacks, and it’s one that leads us to hope and pray that the losses remain acceptable.
The Western world knows the price it has to pay to decisively reduce the terror threat. It’s no longer willing to pay that price. It’s no longer willing even to let their militaries truly do the jobs they volunteered to do. So there will be more Manchesters, more Parises, more Nices, and more Orlandos. But that’s what happens when we’re not willing to do what it takes. I hope at least our hashtags can make us feel better about our choice.
Speaking of hashtags, James Woods chronicles a collection and asks:
Even after all these years, all these attacks and all these dead, the West still keeps asking the same question after events like those of Monday night: ‘Who would do such a thing?’ The answer is always the same. Sometimes the culprits are home-grown. Sometimes they are recent arrivals. Sometimes they have been in the West for generations, eat fish and chips and play cricket. Sometimes — like last month’s attacker in Stockholm, or last year’s suicide bomber in Ansbach, Germany — they arrived in Europe just a few months earlier. Sometimes people claim the perpetrator is a lone wolf, unknown to the authorities. More often it turns out (in a term coined by Mark Steyn) to be a known wolf, on the peripheral vision of the security services.
Yet still our society wonders: what would make someone do such a thing? The tone of bafflement is strange — like a society that keeps asking a question, but keeps its fingers lodged firmly in its ears whenever it is given the answer.
Only last month this now traditional national rite was led by no less a figure than the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall. At the beginning of April, Westminster Abbey was the venue for a national act of mourning for the victims of the previous month’s terrorist attack. The Dean used his sermon — at what was billed as ‘a service of hope’ — to announce that Britain was ‘bewildered’ by the actions of Khalid Masood.
‘What could possibly motivate a man,’ asked the Dean, ‘to hire a car and take it from Birmingham to Brighton to London, and then to drive it, fast, at people he had never met, couldn’t possibly know, against whom he had no personal grudge, no reason to hate them and then run at the gates of the Palace of Westminster to cause another death? It seems likely we shall never know.’
Actually, most people could likely make a guess. And had the Dean waited just a few days, he could have joined them. Masood’s final WhatsApp messages, sent to a friend just before he ploughed his car along Westminster Bridge, revealed this Muslim convert was ‘waging jihad’ for Allah. The Dean was hardly going to get back up into his pulpit and say: ‘Apologies. Turns out we do know. It was jihad for Allah.’ The impossibility of that scenario speaks to the deeper disaster — beneath the bodies and the blood — of the state we’ve got into.
For their part, the Islamists are amazingly clear about what they want and the reasons why they act accordingly. You never have to read between the lines. Listen to Jawad Akbar, recorded in the UK in 2004 as he discussed the soft targets he and his al Qaeda-linked cell were planning to hit. The targets included the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London. What was the appeal? As Akbar said to his colleague, Omar Khyam, no one could ‘turn round and say “oh they are innocent, those slags dancing around”.’
It is the same reason why ten years ago next month Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed (an NHS doctor and an engineering PhD student respectively) planted a car bomb outside the glass front of the Tiger Tiger club on London’s Haymarket on lady’s night. They then planted another just down the road in the hope that those ‘slags’ fleeing from the first blast would run straight into the second. It is why when Irfan Naseer and his 11-member cell from Birmingham were convicted of plotting mass casualty terror attacks in 2013, one of their targets was — once again — a nightclub area of the city. In familiar tones, Naseer speculated on these places where ‘the kuffar [a derogatory term for non-Muslims], slags and whores go drinking and clubbing’ and ‘have sex like donkeys’.
Where does it come from, this hatred the Islamists hold — as well as everyone else they loathe — for half the human species? Even moderate Muslims hate it when you ask this, but the question is begged before us all. What do people think the burka is? Or the niqab? Or even the headscarf? Why do Muslim societies — however much freedom they give men — always and everywhere restrict the freedom of women? Why are the sharia courts, which legally operate in the UK, set up to prejudice the rights of women? Why do Islamists especially hate women from their faith who raise their voices against the literalists and extremists?
Do people think this stuff comes from thin air? It was always there. Because it’s at the religion’s origins and unlike the women-suspecting stuff in the other monotheisms (mild though they are by comparison), too few people are willing to admit it or reform this hatred, disdain and of course fear of women that is inherent in Islam. It is a constant of Islamic history, along with the Jews, the gays and the ‘wrong type of Muslim’: always and everywhere, the question of women. It’s our own fault because we have been told it so many times. As the Australian cleric Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali famously said to 500 worshippers in Sydney in 2006: ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside without cover, and the cats come to eat it, whose fault is it — the cat’s or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.’ …
Theresa May and other politicians stress we will never give in. And they are right to do so. But beneath the defiance lie deep, and deeply unanswered, questions. Questions which publics across Europe are increasingly dwelling on, but which their political representatives dare not acknowledge.
Exactly a year ago, Greater Manchester Police staged a carefully prepared mock terrorist attack in the city’s shopping centre to test response capabilities. At one stage an actor playing a suicide bomber burst through a doorway and detonated a fake device while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘Allah is Greatest’). The intention, obviously, was to make the scenario realistic. But the use of the jihadists’ signature sign-off sent social media into a spin. Soon community spokesmen were complaining on the media. One went on Sky to talk about the need ‘to have a bit of religious and cultural context when they’re doing training like this in a wider setting about the possible implications’.
Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan was hauled before the press. ‘On reflection,’ he admitted, ‘we acknowledge that it was unacceptable to use this religious phrase immediately before the mock suicide bombing, which so vocally linked this exercise with Islam. We recognise and apologise for the offence that this has caused.’ Greater Manchester’s police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, followed up: ‘It is frustrating the operation has been marred by the ill-judged, unnecessary and unacceptable decision by organisers to have those playing the parts of terrorists to shout “Allahu Akbar” before setting off their fake bombs. It didn’t add anything to the event, but has the potential to undermine the great community relations we have in Greater Manchester.’ Perhaps when the blood has been cleared from the pavements of Manchester, someone could ask how many lives such excruciating societal stupidity – from pulpit to police force – has saved, or ever will save?
In Piccadilly Gardens, at lunchtime on the day after the attacks, crowds of people listened to a busker play the usual post-massacre playlist: ‘All You Need is Love’ and ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.’ But just like the renditions of ‘Imagine’, the buskers are wrong. We need to do more than imagine. We need more than love. Everything is not all right. We need to address this problem, and start at the roots. Otherwise, our societies will continue to be caught between people who mean what they say and a society which won’t even listen. And so they’ll keep meeting, these two worlds.
On Monday night, Ariana Grande was in her traditional suspenders, singing: ‘Don’t need permission / Made my decision to test my limits / ’Cause it’s my business, God as my witness… / I’m locked and loaded / Completely focused.’ Outside, waiting, was someone who was really focused. It is time we made some effort to focus, too.
James Taylor of the Spark of Freedom Foundation (and thus not the singer):
Anti-fracking activists are resorting to a curious line of argument in their zeal to ban natural resource recovery through hydraulic fracturing: that rural communities are better off with economic stagnation than the ‘harms’ of abundant jobs and a vibrant economy.
In an Associated Press story published Friday, Sierra Club spokesperson Wayde Schafer called the North Dakota oil boom a “nightmare.” With the advent of new fracking and directional drilling technologies a decade ago, North Dakota’s shale oil deposits fueled unprecedented economic growth in the state. Even during the Great Recession, unemployment never topped 4.3 percent in the state. Unemployment currently stands at 3.0 percent.
“There are hundreds more jobs than takers in the heart of North Dakota’s oil patch,” the Associated Press reports.
Young workers without a college degree can earn over $100,000 per year in the oil fields. Job Service North Dakota spokesperson Phil Davis told the Associated Press oil production is creating jobs throughout the economy. In Williston, the heart of North Dakota oil country, “Every business on Main Street needs staff,” says Davis.
North Dakotans are quite pleased with the benefits of energy production, fracking, and the pro-fracking Republican Party. Republicans outnumber Democrats by a greater than four-to-one margin in the State Senate (38-9) and by a greater than six-to-one margin in the House of Representatives (81-13). Even the few Democrats elected to higher office, like U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, are decidedly pro-fracking.
Despite North Dakotans showing through their votes that they are ecstatic with the benefits of fracking, the San Francisco-based Sierra Club and the anti-fracking left engage in twisted pretzel logic attempting to spin the fracking economy as a nightmare. According to CNBC, all the high-paying jobs and dramatic rise in living standards means North Dakotans are being “crushed by truck traffic, plagued by lagging infrastructure, and shocked by a surge in violent crimes.”
Of course, a vibrant, expanding economy will always generate more truck traffic. A growing population will create more acts of charity as well as more acts of crime. And infrastructure always needs to be expanded and updated when people are using them more. These are small prices to be paid for rising living standards, and Norther Dakotans are proving with their votes that they are happy to meet these modest challenges that accompany economic opportunity.
Despite proof positive in North Dakota and other states that communities appreciate the benefits of fracking wealth and economic opportunity, the Sierra Club is not alone claiming a vibrant economy and rising living standards are bad for rural America. In a paper attempting to justify the ban on fracking in New York State, New York State Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker – a Bronx native – argues “community impacts” are a factor justifying the ban. Zucker defines these impacts as “increased vehicle traffic, road damage, noise, odor complaints, increased demand for housing and medical care, and stress.”
It is easy for Bronx natives who were educated and who spent most of their careers in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Washington DC, to tell the rural communities they occasionally drive through that they are better off being poor and without economic opportunity. The people who actually live there feel differently.
One of the less-noticed causes of the Great Recession that began in 2008 (and ended when Barack Obama left office) was the 2008 spike in energy prices, when gas prices jumped over $4 per gallon and diesel prices jumped over $5 per gallon. Since fuel costs figure heavily in the transportation of any product, including food, remember what happened to food prices?
If energy independence is a goal, but so is transportation freedom, it makes sense to generate as much energy in this country as possible. Energy independence helps further the goal of destroying OPEC and the oil sheiks.
Two unusual anniversaries in rock music today, beginning with John Lennon’s taking delivery of his Rolls-Royce today in 1967 — and it was not your garden-variety Rolls:
Ten years to the day later, the Beatles released “Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, 1962,” which helped prove that bands don’t need to be in existence to continue recording. (And as we know, artists don’t have to be living to continue recording either.)
Meanwhile, back in 1968, the Rolling Stones released “Jumping Jack Flash,” which fans found to be a gas gas gas:
As a longtime reader wrote in [Tuesday] morning, “Jesus walks beside us, but the devil’s not far behind.” The latest from the deadly terror attack in Manchester:
Police and the security services believe they know the identity of the suicide bomber who killed 22 people — including children — in an explosion that tore through fans leaving an Ariana Grande pop concert in Manchester.
As the first arrest was made in connection with the attack, Prime Minister Theresa May disclosed that the authorities think they know who carried out the atrocity and confirmed they are working to establish if he was acting as part of a terror group.
Mrs. May said “many” children were among the dead and 59 injured in the bombing at the Manchester Arena on Monday night as thousands of young people streamed from the venue.
Her statement came moments before police disclosed that a 23-year-old man was arrested in South Manchester on Tuesday morning in connection with the bombing.
Moments before this e-mail newsletter was sent to the editors, an ISIS posted a message online claiming responsibility for the attack. Then again, these guys take credit for anything bad that happens.
… There’s no crime in applying past experience to current conditions. This explosion didn’t happen in a vacuum. It comes after the Madrid train bombing in 2004, the Beslan school attack that same year, London’s 7/7 bombings in 2005, the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the attack on Bataclan and other targets in 2015, the bombing of the airport in Brussels in March 2016, the truck attack in Nice in July 2016, the Christmas-market attack in Berlin in December, the Westminster Bridge attack in March, the subway bombing in St. Petersburg in April…
Damn these jihadist murderers of children. And damn the politicians who have, in many cases, helped make these murders possible but who are quick, this time and every time, to serve up empty declarations of “solidarity”even as the bodies of innocents are still being counted.
London mayor Sadiq Khan (who recently dismissed terrorist attacks as “part and parcel of living in a big city”): “London stands with Manchester.” Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer (who, in the wake of the Pulse nightclub massacre, proclaimed a CAIR-backed “Muslim Women’s Day”—you know, the kind of event that proclaims hijabs “empowering”): Orlando “stands in solidarity with the people of the UK.” L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti (who went berserk when Trump tried to impose that temporary travel ban from a half-dozen Muslim countries): “Los Angeles stands with the people of Manchester.”
Meaningless words, all of them. But Angela Merkel takes the cake: “People in the UK can rest assured that Germany stands shoulder to shoulder with them.” Well, isn’t that . . . reassuring. In what way do such words help anybody to “rest assured” of anything? In any case, how dare she? This, after all, is the woman who opened the floodgates—the woman who, out of some twisted sense of German historical guilt, put European children in danger by inviting into the continent masses of unvetted people from the very part of the world where this monstrous evil has its roots.
Then there was this from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker: “Once again, terrorism has sought to instill fear where there should be joy, to sow division where young people and families should be coming together in celebration.” Beneath the innocuous-seeming surface of this statement is a slick rhetorical ruse: Juncker to the contrary, these savages aren’t out to “sow division”—they’re out to kill infidels. By introducing the concept of “division,” Juncker, like so many others, is implying that the important message here is: Hey, whatever you do, don’t let this little episode put any bad thoughts about Islam into your head!
Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese also spoke of “fear” and “division”: “Manchester is a proud, strong city and we will not allow terrorists who seek to sow fear and division to achieve their aims.” Guess what, pal? They did achieve their aims: they killed 22 people, including children, and injured several dozen. Dead infidels: that’s their objective, period. (Or, as you would say, full stop.)
Naturally, Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, put out a statement. Burnham, as it happens, is a radical socialist who has wrung his hands for years about Islamophobia and has fought tooth and nail against a nationwide “anti-extremism” program called Prevent on the grounds that it “singles out one community for different treatment.” After yesterday’s atrocity, Burnham said: “We are grieving today, but we are strong.”
Strong? No, Mr. Burnham, you are anything but strong. You are cowards, all of you. You are more scared of being called bigots than of the prospect of children under your official protection being slaughtered by jihadists.
Three-quarters of a century ago, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder in true solidarity while under violent assault by the diabolical ideology of Nazism. Today, its leaders speak of the same kind of solidarity—but it’s nothing but talk. In Rotherham, gangs of Muslim men sexually abused 1,400 girls—and police and other officials who knew about it did nothing for years lest they be accused of racism or Islamophobia. Almost certainly, similar mass-scale rapes are still occurring right now in other British cities, with similar silence and inaction on the part of pusillanimous authorities. Today, British leaders refuse to deport imams who preach murder but ban from their shores respected writers and knowledgeable critics of Islam who dare to take on those imams and their theology.
Strength? Don’t you dare speak of strength. You have the blood of innocent children on your hands.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 