United Nations Headquarter Struck and the World Yawns

 

Barcelona with thirteen murdered is a horrific event for which Daesh has taken credit. One week before, or a little more, another attack occurred striking a United Nations Peacekeeping Headquarters with fourteen casualties and thus far the silence has been deafening. Well, so it was not exactly New York City United Nations Headquarters, it was more like in Timbuktu. Really, it was the United Nations Headquarters in Timbuktu, Mali. Seven individuals were murdered and another seven injured and yet their lives did not matter, as they were not European. It was a machinegun attack by an individual or groups where Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin’ (JNIM), which is Al-Qaeda’s arm in Mali, has claimed responsibility. According to Reuters, the peacekeeping headquarters had been a frequent target of terrorists in the past. JNIM is one of numerous bands of Islamic radical terrorist fighters making war from Mali to Somalia all along the African Transition Zone (see below). Likely, the most covered of these groups operated largely in Nigeria and surrounding nations, including Mali, and is known as Boko Haram. They made world news with their kidnapping of two-hundred-seventy girls from a school in the town of Chibok in Borno State of the northern region of Nigeria. The entire horrific and never completely resolved terror of the situation was presumably caught and framed perfectly, at least according to the New York Times, Washington Post, numerous other mainstream media outlets in print, television, cable and Internet fascination with the Twitter post which swept the world and was the answer from the White House with Michelle Obama pouting picture holding a sing with #Bring Back Our Girls written in black marker on a standard size sheet of printer paper. This heartfelt plea somehow was ineffective on the terrorists in the Nigerian jungle but, and this is pitifully true, it was at least some effort. There were offers to send Special Forces from the United States and IDF advisors and soldiers by Israel, both politely refused by Nigeria who chooses to continue their methods against the Boko Haram terrorists.

 

African Transition Zone

 

These attacks along this region have been occurring for quite some period of time. In some areas, this war has a history reaching back as much as a thousand years if not longer. The war has been between Islamic forces and the Animists and Christians to their south. Islam spread across MENA starting in the Middle East and continuing across North Africa and on into Spain (Andalusia) finally being turned back in the Battle of Tours by Charles the Hammer Martel on October 10, 732. We could even use that date as a guide to the length of the wars in northern Central Africa. There is a message in the fact that over the past century, after a period of relative calm and only occasional bursts of violence, the war has returned and slowly gained intensity and will continue to gain in intensity until either the Animists and Christians are fleeing the Islamic purging of Africa on ships from Cape Town, South Africa or the Islamic forces have been roundly defeated forcing them to melt back into the Muslim populations to await their next test of the resolve of those who are unlike them. There is a parallel building to the north of this region where the troubles are just reaching their initial stages. The troubles are being birthed just across the Mediterranean Sea in industrialized Europe. Perhaps the people and leaders of Europe should take a long hard look across the waters and learn from the troubled times in northern Central Africa. There they might see their own future and decide not to travel down the same road. The people of Africa had no alternative as Islam burst upon them uninvited back when the world was a very different place. They saw the golden age of Islam and its fall as the Ottoman Empire collapsed ending in World War I. Europe had a different problem over which they have a modicum of control as they have invited Islam into their homes.

 

Terrorism is the initial entry into an area, the crack in the façade, the initial infiltration into which the takeover and the forces of conquest will flow. There is an entire Quranic method which Islam has used for centuries and only recently, they have dusted off the old instructions and have begun again. Their initial attempts were in the Balkans and Chechnya. The altercations and terrorism in Israel is of a different nature as that is a war where Islam must retake lands which they lost, something which is never supposed to occur and must not be permitted by Islam. The Quran tells them that Allah supports their efforts as long as they continue to follow Islam and the Five Pillars (see below) and surrender to Allah as Islam means surrender. They have faced a long period of confusion as the West gained wealth and power defeating them at every turn. This could only mean that they had failed to be sufficiently religious and fervent enough in following the laws of the Quran. Their Imams told them they must return now to the ways of Muhammad while he was in Medina as those were the times which had brought Islam its greatness. They shunned the teachings of Mecca which could have allowed cooperation and working in conjunction with others to build and not as destroyers to tear down. We described the different teachings in an introductory article titled, “Which Quran, Mecca or Medina?”

 

 

Their most highly revered Imams such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi are some who are making the loudest protestations that Islam is rising and about to enter their third and final stage of conquest and that at the end of this last and final stage the world will have fallen to the forces of Islam and they will rule from that point on forever. This is part of what is fueling the fires which are spreading slowly over Europe plus the United States and will continue onto the rest of the world unless prevented. Such prevention will take a will to stand and the stamina to see this war to its final end. Currently, the Western world has no stomach for this long fight and will fall rapidly as the forces of Islam gather the most modern weapons with the most lethal destructiveness and use them with no regard for the consequences for all that matters is the destruction of the other by any and all means available. As Jibril Rajoub stated in an interview by Al-Mayadeen TV in Lebanon, “There is no going back to negotiations unless the source of authority is the international resolutions, with a time frame and with the freezing of all unilateral Israeli steps: Jerusalem, the fence, settlements and prisoners.” When the Lebanese TV host responded, “You’ve heard Israel’s refusal.” Jibril Rajoub immediately retorted, “That doesn’t matter. Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.” We included the video below.

 

 

That is what Israel is facing and realizes this. This is also what the world will be facing once the terrorists gain access or knowledge and resources for nuclear weapons. Many in the Islamic world could not care about the other effects and ramification of the general use of nuclear weapons. They would just as joyously use enough nuclear weapons to lay waste to the entirety of the world which is not Islamic and then use the remainder to destroy those Muslims who practice the wrong kind of Islam. Imagine ISIS with nuclear weapons or Boko Haram with nuclear weapons or Bashir al-Assad with nuclear weapons or on and on through the entirety of the Islamic radical world and just imagine what would remain of the world if they possessed just the nuclear weapons sitting in France, Germany and Britain and then imagine it is fifty years hence and those three nations are now ruled by Islam.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Deadly Game Played on New York City Streets

The New York City Police Department, especially those stationed in mixed Jewish and minority neighborhoods, have their work cut out for them in their efforts to end a potentially deadly and most certainly repugnant “game” which was started in Crown Heights and may potentially spread to other neighborhoods if allowed to persist for any length of time. The “game” has been given the identifying name of “Get the Jew,” or “the Knockout Game,” according to a police spokesperson. The rules to this “game” are quite simple and simply repulsive and offensive to anybody with an ounce of decency. The object is to strike any identifiable Jew with one solid blow while passing them in the public walkways and knock the victim out cold or simply result in putting him on the pavement. The punch is always thrown when the perpetrator is with friends and the Jewish victim is a sole individual thus rendering the attacker sage from any reprisals due to numerical advantage. At least one known victim of this “game” was merely twelve years of age and there have been a small number of these instances caught on video security cameras and in some incidents fellow participants have taken video of the incident which is then posted to social networking sites on the Internet.

 

In an article Thomas Sowell wrote, “responsible authorities in New York seem to have been caught by surprise, even though this knockout game has been played for years by young black gangs in other cities and other states, against people besides Jews — the victims being either whites in general or people of Asian ancestry.” Writing in the New York Post, Sowell further pointed out that “attacks of this sort have been rampant in St. Louis. But they have also occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and elsewhere. In Illinois, the game has often been called ‘polar-bear hunting’ by the young thugs, presumably because the targets are white.” A final mention in Thomas Sowell’s coverage of these events states, “Because Jews have been singled out in these attacks, are considering prosecuting these assaults as hate crimes.”

 

There is another side to this story that will never be reported in the mainstream news, and that is that these crimes have been all but ignored by the mainstream media. Even when such assaults have been given coverage by the mainstream media, the racial angle of these being black on whites, black on Jews or black on other minorities have been omitted by never mentioning the race of the perpetrators. If a similar game were to be perpetrated in such a wide and overt manner and the victims were blacks the mainstream media would be giving such attacks rail to post coverage with front page banners and clocks counting the number of incidents and the elapsed time since the first reported case. Somehow this not fitting the mainstream media’s preferred slant and political shading this news is left with minor coverage if getting any coverage whatsoever.

 

Perhaps some day in the far off future we will be blessed with a press which actually reports facts without any slant or filtering news by its potential political effects and simply allow each individual to interpret the facts as they see fit. The current mainstream media apparently feels that they need to report the news in such a manner as they also instruct their audience exactly what the reported news means and what they should take away from the story as well as what their thoughts on the subject as a whole should reflect. This slanting and coloring of the news is most evident in the reporting during campaign season leading up to elections and has become so blatant that it is bordering on embarrassing. The slant on the news is also blatantly obvious in much of the reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict where one of the main tools used by the liberal-leftist mainstream media is to report any offensive actions taken by the Palestinians whether it be Fatah, the majority member of the Palestinian Authority and also headed by Mahmoud Abbas, or be it Hamas in Gaza using passive terms such as rockets struck Israeli farmlands doing minimal damage while reporting on Israeli counter terrorist measures in more active and violent terms such as the Israelis bombed numerous buildings causing serious damage to the structures and potentially injuring numerous bystanders. The difference is the ineffectiveness of any attack upon Israel is minimized while also often not even mentioning who launched the attack or from where it originated while any reprisal by the Israelis identifies Israel and even will state an implication of possible injuries where none were reported. The other mainstream media way of reporting these instances in a slanted manner is they first mention the Israeli counter-terror operation first and include the name of Israel and their retaliation as an attack in the article title while mentioning the initial attack by the Palestinian terrorists later in the article and then finish the article restating their slant of the Israeli strike thus making it appear as if Israel was the aggressor and not the recipient of the initial strike and only after being struck did they make any retaliatory strike. The mainstream media also tends to not bother to report that the Israelis have often absorbed weeks of multiple attacks, especially rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza as there is an extensive record, and they only bother to make any news articles after the Israelis have responded with a counter-terror-strike and then intentionally write an article more damning of the Israeli measures and making excuses for the Palestinians who were the ones on the offensive. The leftist-liberal-progressive media actually sides with the Palestinian terrorists and appears through their reporting to believe that Israel has no right to take measures in defense of their civilians or their property. The most famous of these cases was the “murder” of a young Palestinian named Muhammad al-Dura by French Channel 2 who were taken to court over their editing and misreporting and then slandering a critic and lost after the court forced them to turn over the entirety of their tapes and the truth became known to the court. To this day the entirety of the film shot by French Channel 2 of the al-Dura incident has never been released allowing the public to view the unvarnished and unedited truth. Perhaps the mainstream media should come with a warning label stating that all of what you are about to see and hear has been altered to fit the political slant and preferences of the well-known media bias, precautions should be taken and nothing should be accepted as actual fact without further corroboration from outside the mainstream media. Like that could ever happen in this somewhat less than perfect world. For those who may wish to point out the bias of the commentary here at BTC, may we remind you that this site does editorializing commentary where the slant is both obvious and to be expected, we try to report new events accurately and also include what our opinion may be and most of our readers are fully aware of this fact.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

What is the Real Story Behind Detroit?

If anything about Detroit is true, it was no surprise and everybody has watched this train wreck coming down the tracks for at least a decade or two if not longer. Detroit is not the first city to declare bankruptcy nor is it the first major city to go broke, but it may be the first major city to die from severe bankruptcy. One of the first cities of the modern era in the United States to dance around bankruptcy was Flint, Michigan which reinvented itself and made a comeback. There have been a number of the old steel mill cities which have found it necessary to reinvent themselves and come close to destitution. New York City is the largest of American cities to experience the threat of bankruptcy and received some assistance from the Federal Government in order to redirect the way the city was managed and adjusted the manner that the city government acted and its direction and New York City made a successful comeback. But Detroit is the first major city to not only go financially bankrupt but has also fallen to a level of collapse in the areas of population, functioning infrastructure, employment opportunities, functional education system, or anything which is considered as a basic service or property any modern city would possess. Detroit has few remaining operative emergency vehicles, the police take close to an hour to respond to an emergency situation, the majority of the citizenry are functionally illiterate, and it has an unfunded mandate in the form of retirement funds owed that would bankrupt most cities which have functioning systems. Detroit has slipped beyond the cusp and may very well never make a comeback. We may only have one choice concerning Detroit, plow it under and see if it can be transformed into a productive piece of farmland.

 

But enough about Detroit as there is a larger problem which has been made all the more evident by the calamity that has struck Detroit, and that is the financial disaster that is the National Government which is very close to bankrupt. We have been observing the Federal Government slowly circling the whirlpool of unfunded liabilities which is being enlarged through deficit spending that has risen beyond anything even imaginable just a few decades ago. We have heard for as long as can be remembered about how Social Security is almost broke, how Medicare costs are spiraling beyond the Government’s ability to fund, Government employee retirement benefit payments are ballooning out of control, and among other items, just the interest payment on the national debt is taking an ever larger chunk percentage wise from the national budget despite the inflated amount being spent. There is one thing which is allowing the United States to avoid the imminent financial doom that the payments of only the interest of the debt should have and that is the low interest rates. This is much of the reasoning at the Federal Reserve which is twisting and contorting monetary policy to near the breaking point in order to keep the interest rates at a level which allows payment of the interest on the debt to remain manageable. The government has even found it necessary to manipulate the definition of inflation in such a way as to hide the real rate of inflation which would require interest rates to be increased. What other reason can one give for omitting the cost of fuel, electricity, and food from the cost of living for the determination of the inflation rate? This has been done in order to cherry pick what items are used to measure inflation rates so as to minimize the official measure of inflation rates thus allowing the Federal Reserve to claim there is no measurable inflation that requires an increase in the interest rates allowing the Federal Government to make the payments on the debt.

 

Eventually the interest rates will have to be adjusted higher when the Federal Reserve finally reaches the point where they can no longer keep the lie that inflation rate is minimal if not negligible and they have to take steps to prevent inflation from hitting runaway rates. The Federal Reserve will find that necessity will require a fairly healthy rise in interest rates simply because the inflation resulting from the printing of money required under the Quantitative Easing, of which there have been three separate injections of which the third is one that has been spread over many months for as long as it was deemed necessary and is still being implemented each month. When the interest rates take off they will toll the knell of reckoning because should the interest double, the payments on the debt would double, if they triple the debt payments will triple, and should they grow by more the debt payments will rise accordingly. There have been pessimistic estimates that because of the games being implemented pretending to be a financial strategy that when the interest rates increase and the piper must be paid, the interest rates could rise by a multiple of five or more, that would mean at least a fivefold increase in the interest rates taking them from one and a half percent to seven and a half percent. There is no possible way the Federal Government will be able to operate should the interest rates have any sizeable increase and such an increase appears each day to be more and more inevitable. One has to worry of what happens when the United States follows the model of Detroit and hangs the sign on the doors reading, “Gone Out of Business.”

 

Beyond the Cusp