Month: February 2023

By Andrea Widburg

A report is circulating that Biden expressly ordered U.S. Navy divers to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines through which Russian natural gas flowed to Europe. If that’s true, Biden committed an act of war. I have a proposal, though, to keep Putin from launching an ICBM in our direction.

The allegation comes from Seymour Hersh, 85, the journalist the highlight of whose long career Wikipedia describes. In 1969, Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre that had happened the year before. Since then, Hersh has alleged that U.S. intelligence tricked the Soviets into shooting down Korean Air Flight 007 in 1983; claimed that Nicholas Davies, an editor for the Daily Mirror, was a secret Mossad agent (something Davies denied); broke the Abu Ghraib story; claimed that the U.S. was trying to destabilize the Iranian mullahs during the George W. Bush presidency; alleged that the Obama administration systematically lied about every detail of Osama bin Laden’s death, except for the fact that he was dead; and has a laundry list of “interesting” claims revolving around John F. Kennedy.

Sometimes Hersh nails things (e.g., My Lai; Abu Ghraib), but his record for accuracy, in my opinion, can be hit or miss (based on my observations over the years). I’ve also felt that he dislikes America and Israel, a perceived bias that prevents me from trusting his reporting in the first instance. He’s also deeply suspicious of America’s intelligence agencies, although (sadly) events of late have proven that he’s probably right to be.

All of this means that, when Seymour Hersh alleges something, I wait before reaching a conclusion. That’s definitely my attitude regarding Hersh’s latest allegation at his new Substack; namely, that Biden ordered the attack on Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. Here’s the key language, which relies solely on an anonymous source:

Last June, the Navy divers [from the U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center], operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

[snip]

Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

Hersh has a lot of details but names no names to back his key assertion, which is that Biden gave the order to blow up the pipelines.

Do I think Biden would give that order? Yes, especially if his handlers pushed him to do so. Do I think he did give that order? I sincerely hope not because it seems to me—and beware that I’m not versed in international law—that destroying another country’s pipeline is an act of war. My understanding further says that Putin would be within his rights to respond with an attack on the U.S.

For the moment, let’s assume solely for the sake of argument that Biden did what Hersh alleges. Is there a way to prevent Putin from attacking? Well, I think there is. It’s a simple three-step plan: Immediately impeach Biden (who will have started a war without Congress’s permission); try him for war crimes; and, if he’s found guilty, hand him over to Putin for a punishment consistent with the Geneva Convention. (As an added bonus for those who believe in anthropogenic climate change, keep in mind that blowing up the pipelines is said to have released up to 32 billion pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/seymour_hersh_claims_biden_ordered_the_attack_on_the_nord_stream_pipelines.html

Bombshell Report: Joe Biden Gave Approval to Bomb Russia’s Nord Stream Pipeline https://t.co/Qcfqk68SIB

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) February 8, 2023

Ireland has long prided itself on greeting visitors with warmth, styling itself the land of “a hundred thousand welcomes”, but now there is a new slogan: #IrelandIsFull.

It appears on placards and on social media and is chanted at rallies alongside other exhortations such as #IrelandForTheIrish and #IrishLivesMatter.

They are the cry of an anti-immigrant backlash that has spread across Dublin and other towns in recent weeks, earning praise from far-right allies abroad.

“Unlike the English, who say very little, the Irish are speaking out – and protesting on the streets – about the huge number of young, male ‘asylum seekers’,” tweeted Nigel Farage.

Pickets and blockades of roads are often held outside refugee centres in working-class neighbourhoods but on Saturday activists marched in the heart of the capital.

🇮🇪 Toujours aucun article en France mais les irlandais continuent de manifester contre l’immigration. #Irlandeisfull

pic.twitter.com/Z1zKAKlN0r

— Damien Rieu (@DamienRieu) February 7, 2023

“It’s not about racism. There is no room for them,” said Gavin Pepper, 37, as he and about 350 others denounced the increasing number of asylum seekers. “Why should migrants skip Irish people on the housing list? I won’t accept it.”

An acute housing and homelessness crisis has collided with the state’s struggle to accommodate Ukrainians and asylum seekers, fuelling accusations that foreigners receive preferential treatment.

Protesters also say centres with “unvetted” young male refugees make them feel unsafe. “I have five girls and two boys and the girls are afraid to go out at night,” said one man, who declined to give his name.

Holding Irish tricolours and banners, the rally marched from Stephens Green through the Grafton Street shopping district to the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, a landmark in the Easter 1916 rebellion.

Malachy Steenson, an organiser, told the crowd such protests had shattered a taboo about questioning the welcome for migrants and refugees. “We have moved the political ground in this country. This was the great unspoken.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/22/anti-immigration-protesters-march-dublin-ireland-refugees

By M.B. Mathews

Has affirmative action hiring practices caused overall competence to plummet? The record appears to show exactly that.

For no good reasons whatsoever, competence was allowed to die on the vine in order to give the less competent a leg up. Not equality but superiority rules the hiring, firing, and education of Americans. Worse, many of those who were affirmatively hired do not do as good a job as those whose excellence was obvious. You can see it in customer service, which for many businesses is abysmally incompetent. There is a resentful casualness in those who are hired to serve others that would not have been acceptable even two decades ago. The competence level one deals with on a daily basis is on life support.

While there are pockets of the competent in places like Florida and some Southern states, much of America is being run by children with no sense of responsibility or pride in accomplishment. That is because there is little real accomplishment in their lives; children get passed through the public education system having to learn little of value. Instead, they are taught perverse sexual practices and aberrant lifestyles. They are taught how to be activists but are not taught to be competent breadwinners.

It is harder and harder to find good computer techs to service the average home computer user. Instead, salespeople are sent out to do the most basic installations, utterly lacking the sophistication to handle a complex computer problem that may come up. Training in many fields is rudimentary. Surgeons and physicians are being put through university because of their skin color, not necessarily their competence. Ditto pilots. Do you want to fly or get operated on by these hires? I’ll pass.

I had a running battle with my heating and air company for four years. I have told this service company at least two dozen times to please schedule 4x annual AC filter replacements because my spouse and I suffer from allergies. Not once have they done what I asked. The last time after I vociferously complained, the “service manager” called to apologize with renewed promises to fix the situation. He didn’t. Finally, I cancelled them with a lengthy explanation mainly having to do with competence. Few seem to care.

Not that many businesses in 2023 go out of their way to please customers and many of their employees have a slumped demeanor which makes me think they’d grunt if I engaged them in conversation.

But a few businesses I have dealt with recently go out of their way to keep in contact and ask if there is anything that can be improved in order to keep my patronage. Those are the businesses I use. For example, Instacart is stunningly competent. During COVID, Instacart became wildly popular for stay-at-homes because they deliver food and goods to your home for a small fee. In the two years plus that I have used their service on a regular basis, it has dramatically improved and because they solicit your satisfaction level and then make it right, no questions asked. I can see the competence and appreciate it. The user interface is amazingly competent and the delivery people are almost always polite, fast, and mostly competent, shopping for quality items.

While I hate to admit it because of their wokeness, Amazon does a stellar job of cataloguing purchases, delivering at lightning speed, making returns easy, and tracking preferences. Say what you will about their hiring practices, their software and their customer service is a study in competence. At least that has been my experience.

Another competent group is the Apple tech support people. I have dealt with some whose second language is clearly English but they have been remarkably competent and easily understandable. And patient.

Bring back real education so that those we pay to serve us will be competent and will stop pointing fingers at the other guy who was supposed to take care of it.

Bring back competence by bringing back a cultural work ethic of purpose and individual responsibility, which can only happen when people truly care about competence and doing an excellent, not just an adequate job. Stop giving people degrees in fields where they are not competent, and for God’s sake, stop the diversity programs. Diversity doesn’t guarantee competence.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/competence_is_dead_and_diversity_killed_it.html

In the Hardoi area of Uttar Pradesh, a mob of roughly 30 Muslim attackers broke into Mashal Singh’s home on Sunday, February 5. The mob attacked with sticks and rods and hurled stones as well. Five members of Mashal Singh’s family suffered injuries from the attack. A woman was also injured. A case has been registered by the police, and an investigation has been initiated on the basis of Mashal Singh’s complaint. The victim’s family has claimed that the police did not take strict action against the accused.

The incident took place in the Majhila police station limits. In his complaint, victim Mashal Singh stated that he was while he was returning home from the fields on February 5,  Aseer Ahmed, Nabi Ahmed, Pappu Khan, Guddu Khan, Puttan Khan, Chutna Khan, Arshad, and Razi Ahmed attacked him with a stick and rod. As per the complaint, Mashal ran toward his home to escape the assault. Reportedly, the accused Aseer Ahmed is the head of the village (Gram Pradhan).

The complaint states that when the accused saw Mashal Singh rushing towards his home, they all followed suit, along with 25 other unidentified attackers. All of the assailants are said to have stormed into Mashal Singh’s home and started fighting with Mashal’s family members.  The attackers are also alleged to have used licensed firearms and pistols in addition to sticks. Along with Vivek Singh, Man Singh, and Shivam Singh, Laxmi Singh also sustained injuries in this attack. Mashal Singh said that the attackers also heavily damaged three of his motorcycles.

The victim claims that the accused fled their family members following the uproar in the village. On their way out, the attackers allegedly threatened the victim’s family with severe consequences. In this case, the police have filed an FIR against 25 unidentified attackers, including 8 candidates. Under IPC sections 147, 148, 149, 323, 427, 452, and 504, a case has been filed against the accused. The video of the attack went viral on social media. In the viral video, the assailants can be seen hurling stones. 

‘We are the only Kshatriya, Muslims want us to leave the village’

OpIndia spoke to the victim, Mashal Singh. Mashal Singh expressed his discontent with the police operation, claiming that two suspects were caught and then released. Mashal Singh claims that despite having a police guard posted at his home, none of the accused have been apprehended yet. When asked about the motive behind the attack, Mashal Singh, one of the victims, said his village is 20 per cent Hindu and 80 per cent Muslim and the Muslims want them to leave as they are the only Kshatriya family in the village. Mashal Singh also asserted that local Muslims often harassed the members of the OBC and SC communities.

According to the victim, the Muslim population in his village had drastically increased during the previous 30 years. He said that no one knows from where and how people from outside settled here. Mashal says that he has purchased a truck to bear the family’s means of subsistence and that when it is brought to the village, chickens are left in front of it to be crushed. Later, it is allegedly done to extort the increased price of chickens. Mashal Singh was receiving medical attention for his injured family members in Sitapur, a neighbouring district of Hardoi, as he spoke to OpIndia.

https://www.opindia.com/2023/02/up-hardoi-village-head-aseer-ahmed-leads-a-mob-to-attack-hindu-family-demographic-change/

Vox is Spain’s only conservative party and one of the few in the world willing to defend its national sovereignty and identity from foreign and domestic enemies at any cost.

Following the recent Islamic terrorist attack in Algeciras, Spain, by a Moroccan illegal migrant, who targetted Christians and murdered the sacristan of a local church, Spanish politician Ignacio Garriga declared, “Islamism is incompatible with Western culture. The VOX party’s secretary general said, “it generates violence, social exclusion, and the degradation of our neighborhoods.” The leader slammed Spain’s left-wing government’s open border “multicultural policies” that continue to have grave consequences in the lives of its citizens.

https://rairfoundation.com/spains-vox-party-islamism-is-incompatible-with-western-culture-generates-violence-video/

by Giulio Meotti

In Central Africa, most inhabitants are lactose intolerant. Further north, in Western Europe, we suffer from intolerance of the truth. Fish have gills to breathe in water and we Europeans need gills to swim in the sea of lies. The biggest is that the transformation of Europe into something that has never existed before is progress and that opposing it is racism.

“Let’s repeat it, so that everything is really very clear: we are in the heart of Europe, in Brussels, and not in Kabul or Tehran. Terror worked well. Censorship and self-censorship have been imposed on us. Such a determination to turn the tables is a sign of a profound destabilization of our values. Theaters and exhibition halls close their doors to events that could shock our executioners. Terror turns us upside down and makes us more permeable to an Orwellian post-truth…”.

So writes the Belgian anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler in her new book, “Le Frérisme et ses réseaux. L’Enquête” (preface by Gilles Kepel, the greatest French Islamologist). Florence Bergeaud-Blackler devotes several chapters to the accomplices of the Islamist international, within the European institutions, in France and Belgium. It shows how the Belgian capital has become “the caliphate of Brussels” thanks to “a business of infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood in the media, institutions and the associative world”. And thanks also to the cowardice and submission of most of the actors in the political world and media.

“The Muslim Brotherhood believes that European societies weak in terms of values will be transformed by a skillful combination of winning hearts and minds and by war”.

How are the authorities reacting? Weakness, interests, “humanistic” dogmatics, these are the guidelines, together with the more imperious silence and complicity of the media.

Bergeaud-Blackler also has some words for George Soros: “Since the beginning of the 2000s, the American billionaire’s NGO has played a decisive role in spreading the term ‘Islamophobia'”.

Bergeaud-Blackler writes, speaking of Brussels: “In the representation of the supporters of political Islam, Europe has become a ‘land of Islam’ (Dar al-Islam in Arabic). In other words, the community of muhajiroun – the ’emigrants’ – entered the ‘force phase’ (marhalat at-tamkîn) which would have allowed them to claim the application of sharia for their personal status at first. Then, it should be extended to the global Islamization of the Old Continent, based on the demographic shift expected by the rapid growth of the Muslim population, thanks to the high fertility of immigrant women and the accentuation of migratory flows, both legal and illegal. This aspiration is based on the model of the Prophet who, during his exile from Mecca to Medina, passed from the ‘phase of weakness’ (istid’af) to the ‘phase of strength’ in which they engaged in the conquest of power in Medina”.

Now even fiction has noticed it.

“It looks like they took all of Gaza to Brussels,” says Eli, the head of Israel’s counterterrorism unit who works undercover on the Netflix series Fauda.

The fourth season of the Israeli series takes place among the palaces, mosques and streets of the Belgian capital.

Let’s try to line up the data about Brussels, the parts which are real and not part of a television series.

-All the mosques in the Belgian and European capital are in the hands of the Salafis, as the mayor revealed.

-Jews are leaving many neighborhoods, replaced by Islam (the chief rabbi of Brussels, Albert Guigui, was attacked by a group of Arabs, who spat and kicked him and since then Guigui has not worn a kippah in public).

-Ethnically, Brussels has more Moroccans than Flemings or Walloons, the two Belgian nationalities.

-In Flemish schools, 60 per cent of pupils are Muslim.

-Mohammed is the most popular name among newborns in the city.

-The Muslim presence is 33.5 percent and a majority is expected within twenty years, perhaps even less.

-Islam, more than the Catholic Church, trade unions or political parties, is the social reality with the most associations.

-In the Brussels region, the cities are all on the road to being Islamized, the Italian-Belgian professor Felice Dassetto explains: they range from Schaerbeek at 40 percent Muslim to Molenbeek (39 percent) and Anderlecht (27 percent).

Just read the local press: “In the shadow of the neo-Gothic town hall of Schaerbeek, typical of the late 19th century, Hamid closes the door of his hairdressing shop. Like every day, customers waited in front of images of Mecca broadcast live by a Saudi channel. Schaerbeek is for him ‘a Muslim city,’ where well-stocked mosques have definitively prevailed over increasingly deserted churches. Islam, here, has its door open and its head held high”.

The European caliphate is under construction and the “Qatargate” is only the emerged part of an iceberg against which we are going to crash.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/367134

Police on Tuesday arrested a man suspected of expressing death threats against Parisian priests. According to information from Europe 1, it was the staff of the Saint-Sulpice church (photo) , who alerted the police to the presence of the person, who was already wanted for death threats and insults against several priests.

One person was arrested by police forces for making threats against clergy. He is suspected of having threatened priests of the parishes of Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Germain-des-Prés on January 26 and February 6. The victims had filed a complaint. According to a police source, the person was the subject of a wanted poster for a temporary ban from French territory and another entry for activities related to terrorism. He was taken into police custody. The Paris Criminal Investigation Department is in charge of the investigation. (…) Europe 1

https://www.fdesouche.com/2023/02/08/paris-un-migrant-iranien-fiche-s-au-titre-dactivites-liees-au-terrorisme-interpelle-apres-avoir-profere-des-menaces-de-mort-a-lencontre-de-plusieurs-pretres/