Turkey’s role in the kinetic action against ISIS appears to be a cover for the extermination of the Kurdish people in Turkey. Erdogan is not letting a crisis go to waste as this second Turkish genocide is ignored by his good friend and ally, pResident Obama.

David DeGerolamo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Turkey Airstrikes Target Kurdish Militants

Turkey’s military said Tuesday warplanes had carried out airstrikes against 17 Kurdish rebel targets in southeastern Turkey.

A statement said the strikes focused on the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Hakkari province, which borders Iraq and Iran.

The airstrikes follow deadly attacks Monday blamed on the PKK that killed nine people in neighboring Sirnak province and in Istanbul. Overnight, Kurdish rebels attacked a military post in Sirnak, killing a Turkish soldier.

Turkey has been bombing PKK targets in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq since late July after announcing a new anti-terror offensive. Turkish forces also are targeting Islamic State militants across the border in Syria, but most of the raids have hit Kurdish positions.

Turkish newspapers have captured the unrest with bold headlines, with one saying, “Chaos,” and another, “Attacks come from everywhere.”

One Turkish security analyst, Nihat Ali Ozcan, said the violence is likely to extend for a while and is rooted in the country’s political fortunes.

More…

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. – James 1:19-20

Liberals managed to pressure South Carolina lawmakers to remove the Confederate flag from the state house because a white man in Charleston killed black people in a church. They’re calling for lawmakers to remove Confederate monuments and even dig up Confederate graves.

Now a group has called for the removal of a black monument from the South Carolina state house grounds, because it was erected as a compromise to keep the Confederate flag flying.

Where will it end? If we’re going to tear down reminders of people who held views back in the day that are unpopular in 2015, you could argue for the destruction of the entire country. Just wipe “racist” America off the map.

But not even liberals want to do that. Where else could they make up things to complain about and denounce ideas that protect their right to complain and denounce? Despite America’s history of slavery and government-mandated racial segregation, and the sad reality of abortion and the redefinition of marriage to the point of absurdity, this is still the best country on the planet.

Pro-lifers are proving that two can play at the removal game. A group of black pastors asked the National Portrait Gallery to remove a bust of Margaret Sanger from its “Struggle for Justice” exhibit. Led by E.W. Jackson, the group wrote that Sanger was a eugenist and no champion of justice. She was “an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded;’ speaking at rallies of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers. Also, the notorious ‘Negro Project’ which sought to limit, if not eliminate, black births, was her brainchild.”
More…

John Kerry Warns “Dollar Will Cease To Be Reserve Currency Of The World” If Iran Deal Rejected

As Jared Bernstein previously explained…

There are few truisms about the world economy, but for decades, one has been the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It’s a core principle of American economic policy. After all, who wouldn’t want their currency to be the one that foreign banks and governments want to hold in reserve?

But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status.

The reasons are best articulated by Kenneth Austin, a Treasury Department economist, in the latest issue of The Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (needless to say, it’s his opinion, not necessarily the department’s). On the assumption that you don’t have the journal on your coffee table, allow me to summarize.

It is widely recognized that various countries, including China, Singapore and South Korea, suppress the value of their currency relative to the dollar to boost their exports to the United States and reduce its exports to them. They buy lots of dollars, which increases the dollar’s value relative to their own currencies, thus making their exports to us cheaper and our exports to them more expensive.

More…

The rising of the tide is slow. He who watches the ocean for only a few minutes would fail to notice it. Only he whose attention persists through several rotations of the Earth has a chance of grasping what’s at work…or of glimpsing the mechanism behind it.

History, particularly the history of ideas and their applications, is important for that reason. It’s an old saw that “you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been,” but it is nevertheless true. Old ideas have almost all been tried. Those that succeeded were tried again. Those that succeeded repeatedly, such that we became confident that we could trust them to perform as advertised, became part of the conceptual infrastructure of our society.

Infrastructure of any sort has a bifurcated character. We need it, but we resent having to tend to it. When it fails us, we repair it with many a grumble. When it’s sound, it tends to vanish from our attention. Thus it is with the ideas on which our society was founded: as we gained confidence in them, we gradually ceased to think about them.

In the above three paragraphs lies a complete explanation for the gradual disintegration of the United States of America.

This morning, the esteemed Dystopic delivers an illuminating piece on the proper response to a Leftist’s attacks on one’s character:

     Treat the Leftist like what he is: a lunatic, a self-absorbed, arrogant asshole with pretensions of intellectual superiority. How do you do this? Mock him. Ridicule him. Use statements like: “Oh, sure, Socialism is great. Why, just yesterday I was thinking about how wonderful the world would be if Stalin had been immortal.” Don’t attack the Leftist’s character — he has none — attack his intelligence instead. He doesn’t have much of that, either, but he will take offense to the notion that you think he is stupid. He cares about that. That will force him on the defensive and expose him for the worthless liar he is.

More…

Four civilians carrying military-style rifles and sidearms patrolled a riot-torn street in Ferguson, Missouri, early Tuesday, saying they were there to protect a media organization but drawing swift criticism from police and protesters alike.

The appearance of the four men, all white, quickly drew stares in the mostly black neighborhood, which exploded into violence again on Sunday night as protesters marked the police killing of an unarmed black teen a year ago.

The men identified themselves as part of a group called “Oath Keepers,” which describes itself as an association of current and former U.S. soldiers and police who aim to protect the U.S. Constitution.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights organization, has described the “Oath Keepers” as a “fiercely anti-government, militaristic group,” and St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar condemned their appearance in Ferguson.

“Their presence was both unnecessary and inflammatory,” he said, adding that police would work with county prosecutors to see if the men had broken any laws.

More…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since the Oath Keepers are representing the Rule of Law under the Constitution, why are county prosecutors trying to find a reason to arrest them?

David DeGerolamo

Muslims condemn killing of Zimbabwean lion

Joining worldwide condemnations of the killing of the prized African lion Cecil, the Egyptian Fatwa House [Dar al-Iftaa al-Masriyyah], a renowned center for Islamic scholarship, has issued a fatwa denouncing hunting the lion as against teachings of Islam.

“Islam calls on humanity to treat animals and all Allah’s creation with mercy,” a statement posted on the Dar al-Iftaa al-Masriyyah’s Facebook page reads, International Business Times reported on Thursday, July 30.

“Islam punishes those who are unmerciful to Allah’s creation.”

More…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where to even start? Muslim and mercy? A fatwa denouncing lion hunting? Should non-muslim lions pay jizya?

David DeGerolamo

A British special forces sniper saved the lives of a boy and his father who were about to be beheaded by Islamic State jihadists by firing a shot at the head of the executioner from his position more than half a mile away, a British newspaper reported.

According to the Daily Star, a unit of Britain’s special forces Special Air Service carrying out covert patrols on the Syrian-Turkish border was tipped by an Iraqi spy to the execution site where Shiites accused of being “infidels” were going to be beheaded.

An unnamed military source told the newspaper that “there were several decapitated bodies already lying on the ground” in the village where the field trial and punishment were underway.

More…

Pope Francis has called the rejection of migrants fleeing violence “an act of war”.

Speaking to a youth group, he said the situation where desperate migrants were bounced from country to country seeking shelter was “an unresolved conflict… and this is war, this is violence, it’s called murder”.

In his speech on the island of Lampedusa in southern Italy the Pope called on European powers to do more to help the migrants that have been arriving on the island, according to the Gazzetta del Sud.

More than 2,000 migrants are believed to have died in the past eight months while making the journey across the treacherous Mediterranean sea in overfull, unseaworthy boats operated by people smugglers, according to Doctors Without Borders.

More…