Iraqis Live in Constant Fear of Islamic State

The Obama administration doesn't really care. The recent shift to a larger U.S. role in Iraq is the result of political expediency. The White House wants to make it look like it's doing something before handing off its failed Middle East policy to its successor.

At USA Today, "Life under Islamic State rule in Mosul one of constant fear":

DOHUK, Iraq — Journalists are beaten or executed as spies. Children routinely witness executions and no longer go to school. A portion of government workers' salaries are seized.

That is what life is like living under the brutal rule of the Islamic State in Mosul since the extremist group captured Iraq's second largest city in 2014, according to residents lucky enough to escape to this Kurdish enclave about 45 miles to the north.

Yousuf Saba, 41, a former journalist with local news channel Sama al-Mosul, said he fled for his life in recent weeks after the militant group began rounding up journalists suspected of leaking negative information about the Islamic State.

“Anyone who was part of the journalist union in Mosul was taken,” Saba said. “They accused them of spying and threatened to kill their families. Some of my friends ... were interrogated and beaten, even though they had no proof against them.”

In early September, the militants executed 15 local journalists as suspected spies in front of a large crowd in the center of Mosul and forced children to watch, said Saba, who witnessed the killings.

Two weeks after he fled the city, the Islamic State killed his younger brother as an "example for others who were trying to escape," he said. "If more people leave, they will lose their credibility in front of the world."

Mohamma Bakour, 32, a schoolteacher who escaped in September, said the militants initially shut down all the schools. Now, he said, they have revised the courses to be consistent with their radical view of Islam.

“Books that discuss evolution are banned, and (many) science labs in schools have been burned," Bakour said. "'Only God created the world, and you don’t need experiments to tell them the world exists.' That’s their philosophy.”

Bakour said many children have been traumatized by the regime's brutality.

“When they cut a throat in front of the children, some children get psychologically affected and other children accept it as normal," he said. "In more than one year, the Islamic State has created a society where it’s normal for children to watch their elders being murdered by them.”

Most children don’t go to school and could end up joining the militants, Bakour said. Child labor is common. Many children “sell water and snacks on the streets to make $5 a day to support their families. But if they get recruited by (the Islamic State), they make much more money, and many families need that," he said...

Still more.

The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada

From Jeffrey Goldberg, at the Atlantic:

Knife attacks on Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere are not based on Palestinian frustration over settlements, but on something deeper.

*****

The current “stabbing Intifada” now taking place in Israel—a quasi-uprising in which young Palestinians have been trying, and occasionally succeeding, to kill Jews with knives—is prompted in good part by the same set of manipulated emotions that sparked the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s: a deeply felt desire on the part of Palestinians to “protect” the Temple Mount from Jews.

When Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem in June of 1967 in response to a Jordanian attack, the first impulse of some Israelis was to assert Jewish rights atop the Mount. Between 1948, the year Israel achieved independence, and 1967, Jordan, then the occupying power in Jerusalem, banned Jews not only from the 35-acre Mount—which is known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, the noble sanctuary—but also from the Western Wall below. When paratroopers took the Old City, they raised the Israeli flag atop the Dome of the Rock, but the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Dayan, ordered it taken down, and soon after promised leaders of the Muslim Waqf, the trust that controlled the mosque and the shrine, that Israel would not interfere in its activities. Since then, successive Israeli governments have maintained the status quo established by Dayan.

There is another status quo associated with the Temple Mount, however, that has been showing signs of weakening. This is a religious status quo. The mainstream rabbinical view for many years has been that Jews should not walk atop the Mount for fear of treading on the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple that, according to tradition, housed the Ark of the Covenant. The Holy of Holies is the room in which the Jewish high priest spoke the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of God, on Yom Kippur.

The exact location of the Holy of Holies is not known, and Muslim authorities have prevented archeologists from conducting any excavations on the Mount, in part out of fear that such explorations will uncover further evidence of a pre-Islamic Jewish presence. This mainstream rabbinical view concerning the Mount—that it should be the direction of Jewish prayer, rather than a place of Jewish prayer—has made the lives of Jerusalem’s temporal authorities easier, by keeping Muslim and Jewish worshippers separated.

In recent years, however, small groups of radical religious innovators who oppose the mainstream rabbinical view have sought to make the Mount, once again, a site of Jewish prayer. (Here is a New York Times Magazine story I wrote about these radical groups.) These activists have gained sympathizers among some far-right political figures in Israel, though the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not altered the separation-of-religions status quo.

Convincing Palestinians that the Israeli government is not trying to alter the status quo on the Mount has been difficult because many of  today’s Palestinian leaders, in the manner of the Palestinian leadership of the 1920s, actively market rumors that the Israeli government is seeking to establish atop the Mount a permanent Jewish presence.

The comments of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas—by general consensus the most moderate leader in the brief history of the Palestinian national movement—have been particularly harsh. Though Abbas has authorized Palestinian security services to work with their Israeli counterparts to combat extremist violence, his rhetoric has inflamed tensions. “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every martyr will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God,” he said last month, as rumors about the Temple Mount swirled. He went on to say that Jews “have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet.” Taleb Abu Arrar, an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, argued publicly that Jews “desecrate” the Temple Mount by their presence. (Fourteen years ago, Yasser Arafat, then the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told me that “Jewish authorities are forging history by saying the Temple stood on the Haram al-Sharif. Their temple was somewhere else.”)

Keep reading.

Competition Among Major Regional Players Fuels Rise of Islamic State

At WSJ, "Regional Discord Fuels Islamic State's Rise in Mideast":

Pretty much everyone in the Middle East is supposed to be fighting against Islamic State. Yet, the Sunni extremist group retains large swaths of Syria and Iraq and is spreading elsewhere in the region.

This isn’t because of its military might or strategic sophistication. The explanation is different: For most of the major players in the complicated conflicts ravaging the Middle East, the defeat of Islamic State remains a secondary goal, subordinate to more pressing objectives.

For some of these powers, Islamic State’s existence and its barbarism are actually useful, for now, because they serve as a lever in conflicts with more immediate and dangerous foes.

Though able to take advantage of sectarian fissures in Syrian and Iraqi societies to carve out a territory the size of the U.K., Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, isn’t strong enough to represent a conventional military threat to the region’s biggest nations.

But these countries do live in existential fear of some of their neighbors.

In particular, the Saudi-led bloc of Sunni Arab nations bitterly competes with Shiite-dominated Iran in what has become a zero-sum contest for influence—a contest that Russia has now entered on the Shiite side by supporting the Syrian regime.

That contest is also playing out in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been battling Iran-supported Houthi militants while Islamic State affiliates strengthen their position and attack both sides.

“Everyone hates their neighbor more than they hate ISIL,” said a senior Obama administration official.

Among the powers involved in the conflict, the U.S. is probably the only one, together with its European allies, focused on degrading and eventually destroying Islamic State as a primary goal.

But that effort, too is subordinated to the Obama administration’s overriding concern about preventing American casualties. This severely limits America’s ability to help forces fighting against Islamic State. It has also given rise to widespread theories claiming that Washington, too, doesn’t actually want the group to be defeated because it supposedly seeks to perpetuate regional instability.

The gap between American objectives and means has bolstered Islamic State’s narrative of invincibility, allowing it to draw thousands of recruits.

“We have an interest in defeating ISIS, but we don’t want to do that ourselves: We want other people to go in and lose their lives in doing it,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy...

More.

Turkey's 9/11 Divides Nation

At USA Today, "Turkish PM says ISIL is focus of bombing probe":

The Islamic State group is the “No. 1 priority” in the investigation into twin bombings that killed nearly 100 people in the Turkish capital, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Monday.

The premier told private broadcaster NTV that authorities were close to identifying the two suicide bombers who carried out the attacks in Ankara on Saturday. He declined to name the organization behind them, but said the focus is on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Yeni Safak, a newspaper close to the government, on Monday reported that investigators were testing DNA samples from the families of 20 Turks they believe belong to ISIL.

The Hurriyet newspaper said the type of device and explosives used in Saturday's attacks were the same as those used in a suicide bombing the government says ISIL committed near the town of Suruc, which borders Syria, that killed 33 peace activists in July...

Also, "Thousands of mourners gather near scene of Ankara's bombings":

ANKARA — Thousands of mourners flooded the streets of Turkey's capital on Sunday, a day after twin explosions killed at least 95 people and injured hundreds of others in the deadliest terrorist assault ever carried out on Turkish soil.

The mood was tense during the largely peaceful gathering, as demonstrators alternated between grief for lost loved ones and anger towards Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government, which many believe could have done more to prevent the attacks.

The crowd chanted slogans including “we want justice” and “Erdogan is a thief and a murderer,” as some mourners carried photographs of victims. Riot police and water canon vehicles surrounded the rally, but remained in the distance.

On Sunday, the government, which denies any involvement in the blasts, said it has appointed two chief civil inspectors and two chief police inspectors to investigate the bombings, which also wounded at least 246 people, according to the prime minister’s office.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that the attack could have been carried out by the extremist Islamic State, Kurdish militants or radical leftist groups.

Earlier in the morning, police used teargas to stop people bearing carnations in memory of those who lost their lives from entering the site of the blasts. About 70 people were eventually allowed to enter the cordoned-off area outside the main train station, the Associated Press reported. The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said in a statement that police attacked its leaders and members as they tried to leave flowers at the scene.

Saturday's attack, during a peace rally near Ankara's central train station, sent shockwaves across the country. The blasts, which came just seconds apart shortly after 10 a.m., happened when hundreds of demonstrators — many of them supporters of the HDP — had gathered to protest escalating violence between Turkish security forces and Kurdish separatist insurgents.

“This is as close as it gets to being Turkeys 9/11,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But whereas most countries would unite after a massacre like this, Turkey has become so polarized between supporters and opponents of Mr. Erdogan that almost immediately the reaction has been a blame game in which  supporters of the government blame the (Kurdish rebels) and opponents blame the government.”

After declaring three days of mourning and calling for national unity against terrorism, the prime minister exchanged barbs with HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas over responsibility for the violence...

More.

U.S. Concludes Russia Targeting CIA-Backed Rebels in Syria (VIDEO)

Holly Williams has the report at the CBS News clip below.

And at the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Sees Russian Drive Against CIA-Backed Rebels in Syria":

Russia has targeted Syrian rebel groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency in a string of airstrikes running for days, leading the U.S. to conclude that it is an intentional effort by Moscow, American officials said.

The assessment, which is shared by commanders on the ground, has deepened U.S. anger at Moscow and sparked a debate within the administration over how the U.S. can come to the aid of its proxy forces without getting sucked deeper into a proxy war that President Barack Obama says he doesn’t want. The White House has so far been noncommittal about coming to the aid of CIA-backed rebels, wary of taking steps that could trigger a broader conflict.

U.S. officials said Russia’s targeting of its allies on the ground was a direct challenge to Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. Underlining the distrust, the Pentagon decided against sharing any information with Moscow about the areas where U.S. allies were located because it suspected Russia would use that information to target them more directly or provide the information to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“On day one, you can say it was a one-time mistake,” a senior U.S. official said of Russia’s strike on one of the allied rebel group’s headquarters. “But on day three and day four, there’s no question it’s intentional. They know what they’re hitting.”

U.S. officials say they now believe the Russians have been directly targeting CIA-backed rebel groups that pose the most direct threat to Mr. Assad since the campaign began on Wednesday, both to firm up regime positions and to send a message to Mr. Obama’s administration.

Russian officials said last week that they had launched the air campaign in Syria to fight the extremist group Islamic State and other terrorists—adopting the language that the Syrian regime uses to refer to all its opponents. U.S. intelligence officials said the primary mission of the operation appeared to be shoring up the Assad regime and preventing rebels gaining any additional ground on government-controlled areas, rather than fighting Islamic State.

A spokesman for Russia’s Embassy in Washington said: “Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made it clear on multiple occasions that the airstrikes are targeted at ISIL [Islamic State], Nusra, and other terrorist groups.”

Top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have described the current campaign as limited to airstrikes. But Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the defense committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said he couldn’t rule out that Russian “volunteers” might surface in Syria, much as they did in Ukraine on the side of separatists, according to state news agency Interfax...

Russian "volunteers," like the "little green men" in Crimea back in early 2014. Funny how the "volunteers" just show up so conveniently in all the hot spots.

But keep reading.

Dana Loesch Slams Far-Left Ghoul 'Pin Head' on 'The Kelly File' (VIDEO)

Following-up from the other day, "Dana Loesch's Birthday Today, and She's Standing Strong."

She contacted the FBI about this ghoul, who's a typical leftist anti-gun extremist.

Here's Megyn Kelly's interview with Dana from Tuesday:



RELATED: At Twitchy, "Awful: Somebody made a DISGUSTING video of Dana Loesch shooting herself in the head [video]."

BONUS: At Mediaite, "Dana Loesch Speaks on Threat Video: Always Gun-Haters That 'Want You to Die by a Gun'."

More than 100 Killed by Boko Haram Bombings in Nigeria

How many times now could this headline have been posted?

People yawn at news like this, especially in the Obama White House.

At the New York Times:

ABUJA, Nigeria — More than 100 people were killed Sunday evening in northern Nigeria in a quick succession of what appeared to be carefully coordinated bombings by Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group.

The attacks, near the airport in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, were the deadliest in months. They suggested the group’s enduring strength despite the Nigerian government’s assertions that Boko Haram had been severely weakened and President Muhammadu Buhari’s pledge to wipe out its last members within three months.

The four explosions detonated within 25 minutes on Sunday evening in an area called Gommari in Maiduguri. The targets included a railway crossing, a mosque, a video center where fans were watching a soccer match and a market where Muslims were buying sheep and other provision for the coming Eid al-Adha holiday.

“More than 100 have died so far,” Abba Mohammed Bashir Shuwa, an aide to Gov. Kashim Shettima of Borno, said in a telephone interview on Monday evening.

Mr. Shuwa said Boko Haram insurgents had taken advantage of the Muslim holiday week, during which many residents of surrounding villages gravitate to Maiduguri to shop.

“That’s what happened,” he said. “They melted among the villagers and came in as traders.”

Mr. Shuwa said that recent military gains had significantly weakened Boko Haram and that the attacks had been carried out by “remaining pockets that seek opportunities to strike.”

Col. Sani Usman, the army spokesman, said in a statement that the “attacks signify high level of desperation on the part of the Boko Haram terrorists.”

In staging the attacks during the holiday week, Boko Haram ensured that casualties would be high. Also, in keeping with the group’s long campaign of terrorizing the population with bombings, abductions and plundering, the attacks were certain to disrupt the state’s holiday celebrations...

More.

Plus, flashback to January: "Boko Haram: The Islamic State of Africa."

USA Today Calls for Ground Troops in Iraq on Anniversary of September 11 Attacks

They're not mincing words.

From the editors, at USA Today, "ISIL haunts 9/11 anniversary: Our view":

Fourteen years ago, the United States suffered a shockingly successful surprise attack by a little known Islamic extremist group based 7,000 miles away in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Since then, a U.S. invasion chased al-Qaeda out of its haven, and targeted strikes eventually eliminated most of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden in 2011. The danger from the group that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, has waned.

Its influence lives on, however, through offshoot extremist groups that have eclipsed al-Qaeda — none more so than the Islamic State, the lightning spread of which through Syria and Iraq has been marked by medieval barbarity, adapted to the Internet age....

ISIL represents the embodiment of evil in the modern world, and it mustn't be allowed to establish a foothold from which to plot attacks against the United States or to inspire so-called lone wolf sympathizers to do so. But the U.S.-led effort to "degrade and ultimately defeat" ISIL has shown underwhelming results....

The administration asks for patience, insisting that with U.S. and allied airstrikes, and with the U.S. and its allies painstakingly rebuilding an effective Iraqi army, the tide will turn. Indeed, some metrics hint at progress; the administration says ISIL's movements have been effectively limited in nearly a third of the areas in Iraq it used to control. The U.S. has assembled a coalition of 62 nations and international organizations to counter ISIL, almost double the 34 nations that rallied behind then-President George H.W. Bush to push Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991.

The struggle against ISIL is likely to be long, one that will be won not just by driving the group out of the territory it claims as its caliphate but also by countering the ideology that has brought the group so many followers despite its depravity. Unless the current approach starts to show better results soon, America should prepare to take more aggressive actions, including the use of Apache helicopter gunships to assist ground fights, and deployment of U.S. forces to act as spotters for airstrikes and to bolster Iraqi units.

If there’s one lesson the nation should have learned from that awful day 14 years ago, it’s that the United States cannot afford to ignore a rabidly anti-American terrorist group that has established a haven in a faraway place.

U.S. forces on the ground, "to bolster Iraqi units."

This should happen. But it probably won't. And that's a shame, particularly on this day, 14 years after the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.

RTWT at the link.

Obama Administration Under Increasing Pressure to Change Syria Strategy

Well, yeah.

The refugee crisis is the product of the administration's global appeasement policies, and particularly this clusterfuck president's abandonment of the Middle East.

At the Los Angeles Times, "U.S. faces pressure to change its strategy in Syria":

The Obama administration is under increasing pressure from allied leaders to expand military action in Syria, as Russia funnels in more arms and troops, Islamic State militants seize new ground and waves of Syrian refugees fleeing the bloody conflict head toward European cities.

The pressure to change the United States' approach comes one year after President Obama said at a White House news conference that the U.S. did not yet have a fully developed strategy for dealing with the Syrian war. Obama has been repeatedly criticized for failing to set a clear strategy to deal with Islamic State militants who have taken control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq. But so far, he has resisted calls to commit American forces to the front lines in another prolonged war.

European officials have grown pessimistic about the U.S. strategy amid the daily influx of tens of thousands of migrants, many fleeing the Syrian fighting, and the failure of the U.S.-led coalition to dislodge Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group also known as ISIS or ISIL.

"We are not winning this at the moment," a senior Western diplomat told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. "We need to redouble our efforts collectively to see whether there isn't more that we can do to solve these dual problems: the humanitarian crisis and the growth of ISIL terrorism."

The advances by Islamic State and other opposition groups have rattled the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, causing him to rely increasingly on support from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has sent a detachment of marines to Syria, U.S. officials say, adding to an escalating military presence that includes increased flights of Russian cargo planes into an airport in western Syria, stepped-up deliveries of armored fighting vehicles and other weapons and the construction of housing for further Russian forces.

U.S. officials and allies do not yet know what Russia's intentions are in Syria, but fear its involvement could extend Assad's military capabilities and prolong a civil war that has killed more than 300,000 people over the last four years...

More at that top link.

And flashback: "Obama's Pathetic Bombing Campaign Hasn't Stopped Expansion of Islamic State in Syria."

Marine Le Pen Fights Father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Legacy in Bid to Recast Anti-EU National Front

At the Wall Street Journal, "A Family Drama Splits Far Right in France":

PARIS— Marine Le Pen’s quest to transform the far-right National Front party from a fringe movement into a dominant force in European politics is hitting a fundamental obstacle: her own father.

The clash erupted during a closed-door meeting in early May when Ms. Le Pen attempted to muzzle the 87-year-old Jean-Marie, who had recently outraged the public by repeating his claim that Nazi gas chambers were a mere “detail” of history.

“Either you stop talking in the name of the National Front, or you stop making such statements,” Ms. Le Pen said, according to people in the room.

The response from Mr. Le Pen—the firebrand who had put the National Front on Europe’s political map decades before handing the torch to his daughter—was unequivocal.

“Never,” Mr. Le Pen said.

Months later, Ms. Le Pen finds herself locked in a political and legal battle to oust Mr. Le Pen from the party he helped found. In his defiance, the octogenarian is standing in the way of his daughter’s carefully laid plans to seize power in the heart of Europe.

Ms. Le Pen has tapped a groundswell of anti-European Union sentiment in France to position herself as a front-runner for French president in 2017—a prospect that sends shivers through the European establishment.

Currently a member of the European Parliament, Ms. Le Pen espouses pulling France out of the euro—with rhetoric more extreme than that of the far-left Syriza party in Greece, whose antiausterity platform contributed to the latest euro-membership crisis. She also campaigns to roll back key tenets of the EU, which she blames for the surge in immigration.

Ms. Le Pen’s success at the polls, however, ultimately hinges on whether the National Front can broaden its appeal to mainstream voters by removing the stain of World War II-era recriminations that have long made far-right parties taboo in Europe’s highest offices. That struggle is embodied in Ms. Le Pen’s tug of war with her father, a hero of Europe’s far right.

“She needs the votes of those who today are still uncomfortable with the National Front’s affiliation to right-wing extremist parties,” said Emmanuel Rivière, director at French polling agency TNS Sofres.

Ms. Le Pen has punished her father by suspending his membership in the party and excluding him from a caucus she forged inside the European Parliament with other anti-EU forces. She tried to have the party’s rank-and-file vote on whether Mr. Le Pen should be stripped of his role as National Front’s honorary chairman, but a French court suspended the ballot. Ms. Le Pen released the results of the voided vote, which showed 94% of those voting wanted Mr. Le Pen out of the National Front.

On Thursday, Mr. Le Pen will appear before a National Front disciplinary hearing to decide whether he should be expelled from the party.

“Marine Le Pen killed the father,” said Wallerand de Saint Just, a former lawyer of Mr. Le Pen who currently serves as the party’s treasurer, adding: “Freud didn’t have it all wrong.”

Who knows, maybe the old man will buy the farm?

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in 2017, in any case, especially if the Europeans don't get their act together on the migration crisis.

Still more.

Islamic State Suspected of Using Chemical Weapon, U.S. Says

Is anyone surprised?

At the Wall Street Journal, "Militants likely used mustard agent on Kurdish forces in Iraq, officials say":

WASHINGTON—Islamic State militants likely used mustard agent against Kurdish forces in Iraq this week, senior U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first indication the militant group has obtained banned chemicals.

The officials said Islamic State could have obtained the mustard agent in Syria, whose government admitted to having large quantities in 2013 when it agreed to give up its chemical-weapons arsenal.

The use of mustard agent would mark an upgrade in Islamic State’s battlefield capabilities, and a worrisome one given U.S. intelligence fears about hidden caches of chemical weapons in Syria, where Islamic State controls wide swaths of territory.

It raises new questions about the evolving threat posed by Islamic State and the ability of U.S. allies on the ground to combat it. Frontline Kurdish, Iraqi and moderate Syrian forces say they aren’t getting enough U.S. support now to counter Islamic State’s conventional capabilities.

Officials say these forces may need specialized equipment and training to help protect them against unconventional weapons if they become a fixture on the battlefield.

U.S. intelligence agencies thought Islamic State had at least a small supply of mustard agent even before this week’s clash with Iraqi Kurdish fighters, known as the Peshmerga, U.S. officials said. That intelligence assessment hadn’t been made public.

The attack in question took place late Wednesday, about 40 miles southwest of Erbil in northern Iraq. A German Defense Ministry spokesman said about 60 Peshmerga fighters, who help protect Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, were reported to have suffered injuries to their throats consistent with a chemical attack while fighting Islamic State.

Mustard agent, first employed as a weapon in World War I, can cause painful burns and blisters, immobilizing those affected by it, but it is usually deadly only if used in large quantities.

“These were apparently chemical weapons. What it was exactly we don’t know,” the German ministry spokesman said, adding that experts were on their way to the scene to conduct a fuller analysis. He said German personnel weren’t present at the scene of the attack.

The possibility that Islamic State obtained the agent in Syria “makes the most sense,” said one senior U.S. official. It is also possible that Islamic State obtained the mustard agent in Iraq, officials said, possibly from old stockpiles that belonged to Saddam Hussein and weren’t destroyed.

U.S. intelligence agencies are still investigating the source and how it could have been delivered this week on the battlefield, officials said.

Islamic State has taken control of territory in Syria close to where President Bashar al-Assad’s forces stored chemical weapons, including mustard agent. The regime said in 2013 that all of its mustard stockpiles had been destroyed, either by Syrian forces themselves or by international inspectors.

Inspectors, however, have subsequently said they weren’t able to verify claims by the Syrian government that it had burned hundreds of tons of mustard agent in earthen pits. U.S. intelligence agencies now say they believe Damascus hid some caches of deadly chemicals from the West, possibly including mustard.

Intelligence officials and chemical-weapons experts have expressed concerns in recent months that some of those banned chemicals could fall into the hands of Islamic State or other extremist groups.

U.S. intelligence agencies have also warned the White House that the Assad regime could use chemical agents it still has to defend its remaining strongholds if they come under siege...

Still more.

The West Bank's Other Violent Extremists

You had the stabbing death at the gay rights parade, as well as the arson bombing attack that killed a Palestinian baby.

I had a couple of posts, "Israel Braces for Violence, Hamas Rockets, After Palestinian Baby Killed in Firebombing," and "Meir Ettinger, Grandson of Meir Kahane, is Held in Israel."

So, FWIW, here's a look back to Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs's piece from the September/October 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Rise of Settler Terrorism":

Late this past June, a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank defaced and burned a mosque in the small West Bank village of Jabaa. Graffiti sprayed by the vandals warned of a "war" over the planned evacuation, ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court, of a handful of houses illegally built on private Palestinian land near the Israeli settlement of Beit El. The torching of the mosque was the fourth such attack in 18 months and part of a wider trend of routine violence committed by radical settlers against innocent Palestinians, Israeli security personnel, and mainstream settler leaders -- all aimed at intimidating perceived enemies of the settlement project.

This violence has not always plagued the settler community. Although many paint all Israeli settlers as extremists, conflating them with the often-justified criticism of Israeli government policy in the West Bank, the vast majority of them oppose attacks against Palestinian civilians or the Israeli state. In the past, Israeli authorities and the settler leadership often worked together to prevent such assaults and keep radicalism at bay. Yet in recent years, the settler movement has experienced a profound breakdown in discipline, with extremists now beyond the reach of either Israeli law enforcement or the discipline of settler leaders.

Nothing justifies violence by extremists of any variety. But to be stopped, it must be understood. The rise in settler radicalism stems from several key factors: the growth of the settler population over the past generation, the diversification of religious and ideological strands among it, and the sense of betrayal felt by settlers following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Israel, through the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and other security agencies, must now assert control over groups that no longer respect the state or the traditional settler leadership. Yet just as radical settlers pose an increasing threat, mainstream Israeli society has become more apathetic than ever about the fate of the Palestinians. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians remain deadlocked, and even their meaningful resumption, let alone success, seems unlikely in the near future. The Israeli government thus feels little political or diplomatic pressure to confront the extremists.

But with the peace process frozen, what happens under Israeli control matters more, not less. With Israel likely to govern parts of the West Bank for some time, it can no longer shirk its obligations -- to protect not only its own citizens but Palestinian civilians as well -- by claiming that a two-state solution is on the horizon and that the Palestinians will soon assume full responsibility over themselves. And if Israel wants to preserve the possibility of a negotiated peace, it must address this problem before it is too late. Whenever extremist settlers destroy Palestinian property or deface a mosque, they strengthen Palestinian radicals at the expense of moderates, undermining support for an agreement and delaying a possible accord. Meanwhile, each time Israeli leaders cave in to the demands of radical settlers, it vindicates their tactics and encourages ever more brazen behavior, deepening the government's paralysis. In other words, Israeli violence in the West Bank both undermines the ability of Israel to implement a potential deal with the Palestinians and raises questions about whether it can enforce its own laws at home.

Recently, Israeli leaders have begun to recognize the problem. Following extremist vandalism against the IDF and mainstream settler leaders over the past year, some Israeli generals and government ministers began to label radical settlers as terrorists. Now, the Israeli government should translate that bold rhetoric into decisive action. To begin with, it should officially designate the perpetrators of violence as terrorists and disrupt their activities more aggressively. Security agencies should then enforce Israeli law, prosecuting violent settlers as they would terrorists, Palestinian or Israeli. And to slow the tide of radicalism, Israeli leaders must denounce extremists and shun their representatives, placing particular pressure on religious leaders who incite violence. Meanwhile, the United States and other countries seeking to revive the peace talks must encourage Israel to take these steps before things worsen. Washington should itself consider designating violent radical settlers as terrorists and should push Israel to crack down on them. Settler extremism tarnishes Israel's name and imperils its future. Friends of Israel, the Israeli government, and even those who support the settlements in the West Bank should fight back against this dangerous phenomenon...

Keep reading.

RELATED: At the New York Times, "Soul-Searching in Israel After Bias Attacks on Gays and Arabs."

Scores Dead in Wave of Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan

The Taliban claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack, in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz.

At WSJ, "Afghanistan Attacks Kill at Least 77":

KABUL — Violence surged in Afghanistan over the weekend including three separate bombings in the capital Kabul in one day—a wave of attacks that left at least 77 people dead.

It was the first spate of attacks on the capital since deep divisions emerged within the Taliban leadership over who should succeed their spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. The insurgents, however, have sought to dismiss talk of any rift after the Afghan government and the Taliban revealed last week that Mullah Omar had been dead for more than two years.

The latest attack struck the northern province of Kunduz on Saturday night. A suicide bomber targeted members of an irregular anti-Taliban militia, killing 25 people, according to a local police spokesman.

The Taliban, who have been battling Afghan forces for control of Kunduz for months, claimed responsibility.

On Friday, three separate attacks jolted Kabul, leaving more than 50 dead in less than 24 hours, according to Afghan and foreign officials. It was the deadliest day in years in the capital. The Taliban claimed responsibility for two out of the three attacks.

Friday’s violence ended a period of relative calm in the Afghan capital, where there hadn’t been a major security breach in more than a month.

The spike in attacks further complicates efforts led by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to broker a peaceful resolution to the 14-year conflict with the Taliban.

“We are still committed to peace but we will respond to such terrorist attacks with full force,” Mr. Ghani said in a statement on Saturday.

The Taliban have formally named a new leader, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour, who had been effectively in charge of the group for years.

But the appointment was immediately opposed by several senior Taliban, and religious scholars close to the movement are seeking to mediate between the rival factions, say people close to the extremist group.

The series of attacks on Friday began with a truck bomb that exploded near an Afghan military intelligence compound. Fifteen people were killed and around 300 wounded in one of the most powerful explosions to have ever shaken the Afghan capital. It left a deep crater, and caused residential and commercial buildings to collapse, a scale of destruction rarely seen in the city.

Scores of women and children were among the victims.

“Kabul, as the capital, should be an example for security in the country—but that’s not the case,” said Luca Radaelli, the country head of Emergency, an Italian nongovernmental organization that runs three hospitals in Afghanistan.

“The situation is just getting worse.”

No one claimed responsibility for the truck bomb. A Taliban spokesman said the group was assessing whether its fighters were involved...

More.

Also at AP, "Security Tight After Devastating Kabul Attacks," and Reuters, "Suicide attack kills 29 in northern Afghanistan."

PREVIOUSLY: "Afghanistan: At Least Six Dead in First Major Taliban Attack Since Leadership Transition (VIDEO)."

Israel Braces for Violence, Hamas Rockets, After Palestinian Baby Killed in Firebombing

Background at Russia Today, "Palestinian toddler burns to death in suspected Jewish ‘price tag’ attack," and France 24, "West Bank Arson: Palestinian child dies in suspected jewish extremist attack."

And at the Times of Israel:

Ali Dawabsha buried, doctors try to save rest of family; Israel condemns alleged Jewish terrorists who set fire to home; Abbas blames Israeli support for settlers; world slams attack; IDF sends extra troops to West Bank.

And from the IDF, "We condemn all acts of terrorism. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. We wish all a peaceful Shabbat."

And, "Terror Attack in the Duma Village."

Watch: "IDF Forces Airlift Palestinian Victim to Israeli Hospital."

John Russell 'Rusty' Houser

The "Hate Watch" blog (of the SPLC) posted an entry at the Medium site, "Lafayette Theater Shooter Fan of Hitler, Neo-Nazis, and Anti-government Conspiracies."

From just skimming it, this dude Houser definitely looks more the stereotypical "far-right extremist" than Dylann Roof ever did, but when you're dealing with the radical left, facts don't matter. All you have to do is find a couple of social media posts, or a photo with the Confederate flag, and poof! You've got your poster boy for the "contemporary radical right."

Of course, people like this are literally lone wolf losers, exactly the opposite of the so-called "lone wolf" jihadists who're radicalized by Islamic State and al-Qaeda hate-preachers like the now-dead Anwar al-Awlaki. They're part of a real movement of global jihad with millions of adherents. The Lafayette shooter not so much.

American society, from the White House to the mainstream media to college classrooms across the land, is now increasingly infected with cultural Marxism, and so you'll never get accurate coverage of the nature of extremist threats in the country today. No mainstream conservative, for example, embraces anything even remotely resembling the pro-Nazi rants of a guy like Houser. Meanwhile, mainstream leftists hail all kinds of historical figures from 20th century Communism as icons of movement progressivism. These are just facts. And that's the harsh reality mainstream and traditional Americans face in this country, as normal values have been rebranded as deviant and where murderous leftist and Islamist ideologies are simply redefined in meaningless terms like "workplace violence" and so forth.

Oh, and this Houser dude had serious mental illness, but that will be discounted by the radical left ghouls as they demonize conservatives and exploit the murders to hammer down their hateful, gun-grabbing extremist agenda.

In any case, see the New York Times (FWIW), "Lafayette Shooting Adds Another Angry Face in the Gunmen’s Gallery":

LAFAYETTE, La. — It was about 20 minutes into the 7 p.m. showing of “Trainwreck” when moviegoers heard a couple of pops, like a sound effect glitch. But when the sounds rang out again it became horribly clear that this was something else entirely.

“From the reflection of the movie, the light, you could see his gun shining,” said Lucas Knepper, who was seated in the same mostly empty row as the man in the short-sleeve, button-down shirt who had begun firing at the 20 or so people in the theater. “And then you could see the flash coming from the chamber.”

Soon two young women lay fatally shot, nine other people were wounded, and with that, on Thursday night, Lafayette, which boasts of being the happiest city in the country, joined Chattanooga, Tenn.; Charleston, S.C.; Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn., and so many others on the long list of cities scarred by gun violence. The gunman, John Russell Houser, became the latest figure in a gallery of angry men with weapons who walked into a movie theater, a church, a school or a workplace and shattered the lives of people there.

Accounts from acquaintances, law enforcement officials and court records portrayed Mr. Houser, 59, of Phenix City, Ala., who also took his own life, as a man with a diffuse collection of troubles and grievances — personal, political and social — who had a particular anger for women, liberals, the government and a changing world.

Because he had been accused of both domestic violence and soliciting arson, though never successfully prosecuted, he was denied a permit to carry a concealed pistol. His family repeatedly described him as violent and mentally ill; his mental health had been called into question going back decades, and he spent time in a hospital receiving psychiatric care. He vandalized the house he was evicted from last year, and tampered with the gas lines in a way that could have caused a fire or explosion.

Given his history, he should not have been allowed to own a gun, said Sheriff Heath D. Taylor of Russell County, where Mr. Houser lived.

President Obama has said repeatedly that each mass shooting cries out for stricter controls to keep mentally ill people and criminals from obtaining guns, but the issue has not resonated on the campaign trail.

The police identified the women Mr. Houser killed as Jillian E. Johnson, 33, who owned, with her husband, two stores that sell toys, jewelry and printed goods, and played in a bluegrass band; and Mayci Breaux, 21, recently a student at Louisiana State University at Eunice, who was soon to start radiology school at Lafayette General Hospital...

This Houser dude was a sick fucker, and I mean that in every sense of the word. And leftists are just as sick in exploiting the murderer's mental illness to score heinous political points.

God bless the families of these two wonderful women lost in this evil rampage. It was not "senseless violence." It was sick, evil murder the kind leftists just love. Call it what it is.

More at Memeorandum.

Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 31 in Turkish Border Town

At the Wall Street Journal, "Attack is near embattled Syrian town of Kobani":

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s government blamed Islamic State for a suicide bombing in a Kurdish border town that killed at least 31 people, one of the worst cases of spillover violence from the four-year-old war in neighboring Syria.

The attacker targeted a cultural center in the town of Suruc where some 300 members of socialist youth groups from across the country were meeting Monday to prepare rebuilding projects in the Syrian city of Kobani, just across the border. Authorities said they suspect a suicide bomber on foot waded into a crowd and detonated explosives, shattering windows and leaving limbs scattered in the yard. More than 100 people were wounded.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the deadliest attack along the border in more than two years. But if Islamic State was behind it, it would be the group’s first known suicide bombing in Turkey.

The Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani was the site of a major victory for Kurdish militia forces over Islamic State in January after a four-month battle. The Syrian Kurdish forces went on to push the extremist fighters from other parts of northern Syria more recently—raising the possibility that the attack in Suruc was retaliation for those Kurdish advances.

The bombing may also have been a response to an intensified Turkish crackdown on Islamic State in recent weeks, a government official in Ankara said. Authorities have arrested scores of suspected members of the group in raids across the country, stepping up ongoing raids. Officials have tightened border controls to try to stem the flow of foreign fighters, deporting about 1,500 mostly Western visitors to Turkey as allies increased intelligence sharing.

“Initial findings point to a suicide bomber and Daesh,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic acronym. Speaking after an extraordinary security meeting on the attack, he said terrorist organizations were trying to sabotage Turkey and derail a stable democracy in the region.

Suruc has emerged as a major staging ground for Kurds and their supporters seeking to cross into Kobani.

“They were targeted by anti-democratic forces that don’t want Kobani to be rebuilt,” said Idres Nassan Hassan, a Kurdish official in Kobani. “Those who carried out this attack are part of the terrorists that we are fighting.”

Thousands of people across Turkey protested the bombing, with some marching against Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

But others criticized the government and Mr. Davutoglu’s party, repeating oft-heard accusations that they support or tolerate Islamic State for the greater goal of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The prime minister vehemently rejected the charge.

Turkey’s government said it was tightening security along its 565-mile border with Syria after the bombing. Ankara’s effort to clamp down on supporters may trigger more strikes by terrorists going forward, another Turkish official said.

“We are aware of ISIS capabilities inside Turkey,” the official said. “Turkey is seriously prioritizing this issue to bring it under control.”

Still more.

Also, "Turkey Says One Suspect Identified in Suicide Bombing."

Abraham Lincoln 'Plotted' to 'Force the South' to Fire the First Shot at Fort Sumter?

Oh boy.

Stogie at Saberpoint might as well be a 9/11 truther, considering these outlandish blood libels he's spewing against Abraham Lincoln.

Now this is just downright bizarre, from the comments at Mediaite, "Memphis Mayor Wants to Literally Dig Up Confederate General and Move Him":

jim  rmiers1 • an hour ago

Very few people joined up to fight for the union to end slavery. They fought to restore the honor of a nation that had their flag torn town at Ft. Sumter and they weren't going to quit until the flag and their honor were restored. Now to many in the 21st century this sounds ridiculous and archaic but this was the mentality in the mid 19th century.

Stogie Chomper  jim • 28 minutes ago

That's why Lincoln and his staff plotted to force the South to fire the first shot -- by refusing to negotiate the peaceful return of the fort to South Carolina, by refusing to leave, and by attempting to resupply the fort with Yankee warships. People today still mistakenly believe the South started the war by firing the first shot -- but it was started by Lincoln, purposely for its propaganda value, by forcing the issue.

The truth is Lincoln pledged not to fight to reclaim Fort Sumter for the North. Indeed, he nearly let the U.S. Army forces of Major Robert Anderson run out of provisions, and then only sent supply ships to re-provision the troops there with the permission of South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens. But Pickens was an extremist who refused Lincoln's attempt to peaceably re-provision the fort. Confederate President Jefferson Davis piled on the belligerency, ultimately ordering Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard to bombard the Union forces at the fort. The North so refused to fire the first shot that Major Anderson responded to General Beauregard's demands to surrender by saying he'd rather run out of food before initiating hostilities.

These are just facts. Don't let old Stogie get away with his conspiracy bullshit. Man, this is really getting interesting. Get your tinfoil hats ready!

And check back for further iterations of the Stogie-Donald debates!

Bree Newsome, #BlackLivesMatter Extremist, Tears Down Confederate at South Carolina Statehouse (VIDEO)

Wow.

This is just extreme. No, it's beyond extreme. It's frankly insane.

The woman, Bree Newsome, is on Twitter here. She's a radical leftist and #BlackLivesMatter activist.

At Memeorandum, "Woman removes Confederate flag in front of SC statehouse."

“We removed the flag today because we can’t wait any longer. It’s time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality.”

And at the Charleston Post & Courier, "Woman removes Confederate flag in front of South Carolina statehouse (has video)."

...the flag is intolerable only because it primarily offends black people (who racists already feel are "taking over their country").

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 20, 2015

The refusal to firmly acknowledge and condemn the racism only fans the flames further because it makes it seem like...

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 20, 2015

They're trying to displace the decision from themselves; the flag has gotta come down because "some people" don't like it...

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 20, 2015

White politicians calling for removal of the confederate flag because "to SOME people it's a symbol of racism and hate" is problematic...

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 20, 2015

The flag will come down, neo-confederates will rise up and USA will face a day of reckoning for original sin it still refuses to acknowledge

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 21, 2015

They allow monuments to the confederacy all throughout the southern U.S. but suppress the history of the slave rebellions. Why is that?

— Bree Newsome (@BreeNewsome) June 21, 2015

Here We Go: At the New York Times, Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Supremacy and Ties to GOP

Folks may have seen the news that Earl Holt, president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, has given tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to Republican candidates over the last few years. When approached with the information, so far each of the GOP candidates questioned has renounced the CoCC and either returned the contributions or given them to charity.

But that's not enough. It's going to be a feeding frenzy against the so-called racist Republican Party. Here we go.

At the Old Gray Lady, on the front page, "Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Primacy, and G.O.P. Ties":

The Council of Conservative Citizens opposes “all efforts to mix the races,” and believes “that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.” It would severely restrict immigration, abolish affirmative action and dismantle the “imperial judiciary” that produced, among other rulings, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that integrated American education.

Those are among the core principles of the council, a Missouri-based organization with a long history of promoting white primacy. Now the massacre of nine black parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church has propelled the organization, which in recent years seemed in decline, back onto the national stage and embroiled the Republican Party in new questions about its ties to the group.

Many of the themes promoted on the council’s website resonate through an online manifesto apparently written by Dylann Roof, who has been charged in the killings last week in Charleston. The manifesto traced the motivation for the shootings to a twisted epiphany: a Google search that led to the council’s website, where “pages upon pages of brutal black on White murders” were tallied and described.

“I have never been the same since that day,” the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof said.

Since it rose in the 1980s from the ashes of the old and unabashedly racist White Citizens’ Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens has drifted in and out of notoriety. But it is clearly back in: Last weekend, three Republican presidential candidates — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — announced that they were returning or giving away donations from the council’s president, Earl Holt III.

Since 2011, Mr. Holt has also contributed at least $3,500 to Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who is expected to run for president. A spokesman for Mr. Walker said he would donate the money to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, which is helping families of the Charleston massacre. All told, Mr. Holt, who did not return calls for comment, has given at least $57,000 to Republican candidates for federal and state offices.

But those contributions, first reported by The Guardian, tell only part of the story of the council’s ties to Southern Republican officeholders. In the 1990s, the council counted influential Republican friends from town halls to the halls of Congress. Among those who have addressed its meetings were Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, at one time the Senate majority leader; Haley Barbour, a former national Republican chairman who was campaigning for governor in Mississippi at the time; and Mike Huckabee, the presidential candidate who was then Arkansas’ lieutenant governor. More recently, Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina dropped a council official in her state, Roan Garcia-Quintana, from her re-election campaign’s advisory committee in 2013 after his ties to the group became public.

In 1999, a cascade of reports linking Mr. Lott and other prominent Republicans to the council led the party’s national chairman, Jim Nicholson, to urge all Republicans belonging to the group to quit the organization, calling it racist. Back then, the council claimed 15,000 members, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, and was among the largest such groups in the country.

In the past decade, the council appeared to have lost its old vigor. “We were wondering whether they would survive,” Heidi Beirich, the director of the law center’s Intelligence Report, who investigates such groups, said in an interview. “They don’t hold as many events; they don’t have as many chapters.”

But the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof, posted on a website called lastrhodesian.com, suggests that the council continues to have influence among followers of so-called white power ideology...

Well, folks know my views on Dylann Roof and the origins of his racist manifesto, but the GOP's made numerous own-goals here, and it's patently stupid for any Republican to have the slightest association with the group. It's simply too perfect a gift to the Democrats and the leftist press, and frankly there's no defending the CoCC's views.

One good thing is that all of this is happening now, still about 16 months from the 2016 general election. You'd think Republicans would have some operatives with enough savvy to know that any associations with groups like this are highly radioactive and could doom GOP chances in the general.

But I'm not serving as an adviser to the Republican National Committee, nor to any of the individual campaigns, too bad for them.

More.

The Rise of Authoritarian Transgender Politics

Everything's escalating to DEFCON levels.

"Call me Caitlyn, or else."

From Brendan O'Neill, at the Spectator UK, "The Cult of Caitlyn confirms that there is nothing progressive in transgender politics":

The Vanity Fair photo of Bruce Jenner in a boob-enhancing swimsuit is being described as iconic. Bruce, one-time American athlete, now wants to be known as Caitlyn, having recently undergone some gender transitioning. And he’s using the cover of the latest Vanity Fair to make his ‘debut as a woman’. Next to the headline ‘Call me Caitlyn’, he’s all photoshopped svelteness, pampered hair and look-at-me breasts, in what many experts are already describing as ‘an iconic image in magazine history’.

The photo is indeed iconic. And not just in the shallow celeb meaning of that word. It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society. Yesterday’s Jennermania confirms how weirdly authoritarian, even idolatrous, trans politics has become.

There is a palpable religiosity to the wild hailing of Bruce/Caitlyn as a modern-day saint, a Virgin Mary with testicles. Within four hours, more than a million people were following Bruce/Caitlyn’s new Twitter account, hanging on her words like the expectant horde waiting for Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. Her every utterance, all banal celeb-speak, was retweeted tens of thousands of times. Celebs and commentators greeted her as a kind of messiah. ‘We’ve been waiting for you with open arms’, said an overexcited editor at Buzzfeed. Across the Twittersphere Caitlyn was worshipped as a ‘goddess’, a ‘goddess in human form’, a ‘goddess made manifest on Earth’. ‘Caitlyn Jenner could fucking stab me right now and leave me for dead and I’d die fucking overjoyed we are not WORTHY OF THIS GODDESS’, said one trans tweeter, and she wasn’t joking.

In the media, the talk is of how Caitlyn and her iconic likeness might give an adrenalin shot to humanity itself. A writer for the Guardian describes Caitlyn as a ‘queen’ and instructs us to ‘bow down, bitches’, telling us her icon on the front of Vanity Fair is ‘life-affirming’. Treating Caitlyn as a kind of Christ figure, only in a push-up bra rather than smock, Ellen DeGeneres says this goddess brings ‘hope for the world’, and we should all try to be ‘as brave as Caitlyn’. Susan Sarandon celebrated Bruce/Caitlyn’s mysterious ‘rebirth’ while Demi Moore thanked him/her for sharing with humanity ‘the gift of your beautiful authentic self’. A writer for the Huff Post says the name Caitlyn means ‘pure’ – ‘what a perfect meaning, right?’ Truly, yes, for St Caitlyn, reborn to educate us all, is most pure.

With its millions of agog followers, its worship of an iconic image, its insistence we all ‘bow down’, the Cult of Caitlyn gives Catholic mariolatry a run for its money in the blind-devotion stakes. And of course, as with all venerated icons, anyone who refuses to recognise the truth of Caitlyn’s Vanity Fair cover has faced mob punishment or finger-wagging corrections of their goddess-defying blasphemy.

So when Drake Bell, a former American child star, tweeted ‘Sorry… still calling you Bruce’, he became the subject of global fury. The Cult of Caitlyn went insane. Even after Bell deleted his blasphemous comment, tweeters mauled him, suggesting he deactivate his Twitter account, or better still, ‘deactivate his life’. Meanwhile, a Twitter robot called @she_not_he has been set up to correct any ‘misgendering’ of Caitlyn. Winning high praise from much of the media, this bot is ‘scrubbing Twitter, looking for anyone who uses the “he” pronoun in conjunction with Caitlyn Jenner’s name’. The bot’s inventor says he is delighted that these misgendering miscreants have been ‘apologetic in their replies to the bot’, and ‘some have even deleted their original tweet’.

In short, they’ve repented...

Well, payback's a bitch.

Folks can only estimate how long it'll be before "Caitlyn" flames out in divine glory. If the Kardashians are any guide, we'll be having many more cycles of soap opera madness before the crash and burn of "Caitlyn." Who knows what's going to happen? Either way, society's pretty fucked up.

More.

question for the male media types/extremist activists (but I repeat myself) insisting that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman: Would you fuck her?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

this question isn't as crude as it sounds. It's merely direct. If you are insisting that "Caitlyn" is in all ways a woman, then naturally...

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

..."she" would be on your list of possible sexual partners. Y'all keep saying how hot she is. So is she on your list of possible partners?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

if "she" is not on a straight progressive man's list of possible romantic dalliances, are you saying "she" is not entirely a woman?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

what is the truth here? The actual truth? Not the progressive falsehood we pressure people into agreeing to?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

I have no problem or interest in Caitlyn Jenner' decisions, except when it becomes formally demanded of me that I repeat a falsehood.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

Should she be credited as holding all Decathalon records for a female athlete?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

This is of a piece with the left's constant demand that we accept the crudest, most extremist restatements of their political desiderata.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

And these are "Political truths," by which I mean, Not Truths: absurdly crude falsehoods urged as true by a faction of the Prog caucus.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

the media, as always, swoops in as the angel-winged, spear-carrying Valkerie for segments of the Democrat political coalition.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015