The Demise of the Private Colleges

Private colleges are in financial straits, induced by their own progressive policies.


Private colleges are in serious financial trouble.  According to Bloomberg, they may have to merge with others or close their doors.  The seeds planted by the “homeless, tempest-tossed” academics from Frankfurt, Germany, 84 years ago, are now bearing fruit.

The private colleges are yet another casualty of the plot against American values and exceptionalism initiated by those outcasts from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory who arrived in New York, in 1935.  The theorists began their long march through the Institutions,” including higher education, changing the system that was among the best in the world, and poisoning the wells as they advanced.  Whether fools or rogues, they soon realized that the Judeo-Christian West’s superiority could only be destroyed from within, by having their operatives join the machinery of the old institutions, and by collaborating with Third World liberation movements and other dissident minority.  It would take some generations, but the prize of the most envied capitalist country in the world – America and the Free West — was worth their patience.

The learned academics within the private colleges readily complied with the new Common Core curricula, textbooks, teaching films and scripts, recognizing the Frankfurt stamp of approval.  They introduced identity politics, which now requires a six-figure professional to help the children cope with the resultant tribalism and victimhood – sorely needed funds down the drain.

They welcomed new professors who spew antisemitism and anti-Americanism and stood mutely by while guest speakers with opposing opinions were jeered out of the lecture halls.  The students are emerging as leftists, socialists, communists, and Islamists, decidedly ignorant in every discipline, but eagerly engaged in social justice courses, community organizing, political protests, and deadly violence to destroy the spirit of freedom and the soul of our nation.  Critical Theory has taught the younger generation to break down fences before they understand why they were erected.

These are the rebels with a thousand empty causes, the socialists who will not support their universities, but who will expect compassion.  Unsurprisingly, this is affecting the coffers of Academe; the alarms have been sounded.

The business of destroying American education from within is gathering momentum.  As  Walter E. Williams explained in Fraud in Higher  Education, only 37% of white college students test as college-ready, but 70% are admitted, and  only 17% of black high school graduates test as college-ready, but 58% are admitted, with most unable to read, write, and do math at 12th grade level.  Forty percent of college students require developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of ~$7 billion.  Only 25 percent of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the readiness benchmarks in English, reading, math and science.  Students are advanced by their racenot by achievement, showing no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore year.  Education Secretary Betsy deVos just confirmed, “The country is in a student achievement crisis.”

Ronald Reagan famously said, ”Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Every generation must uphold the legacy of freedom and to do so, it must understand the origins of democracy, our government structure, rights and responsibilities, and methods of public engagement.  But the work of the so-called Progressives (ultra Regressives) has brought the knowledge of civics and government to an all-time low.  Some young people are even learning tolerance and social justice from books supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an FBI-recognized global and domestic terrorism-inspiring hate group, a perfect example of the bedfellows recommended by the Frankfurt outcasts.

National pride and patriotism are slated for destruction, corroborated by history classes that use Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” which focuses on the communist’s views of America’s historic injustice, with its dubious evidence and conclusions.  America is shown as colonialist oppressor of the poor and disenfranchised, with no reference to our 13th amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery here.  The students are intentionally dumbed down about America’s history, and taught to accept a whitewashed Islam and Communism.  Their violence against the monuments is denial of our history and extends to disrespect and breakdown of our laws and law enforcement.

Progressives vilify our national pride and corrupt public trust so as to destroy our society and reconstruct it into another – hideous – image, with the morale or soul of the generation siphoned out.  Therefore, the bulk of high-quality fiction, poetry, theater and other imaginative and inspiring texts are replaced by informational prose, newspaper and social media stories – dry topics of social studies designed to enervate the individual and discourage reading.  Instead of topics that encourage and inspire, young teens read of emotional difficulties and social justice issues – topics such as teen angst, bullying and sexual harassment, underage drinking, sexual molestation, complex relationships in dysfunctional families, and suicide.  These depressing social issues, irrespective of the students’ emotional maturity, may well have a direct correlation to their increased suicide ratedoubled for boys and tripled for girls.  Our thirty million illiterate adults are a step toward the illiteracy of despotic regimes.

The intellectual depletion shows our 15-year-olds to be lagging behind in math at 39th of their peers in 69 other countries.  These are not “cultural differences,” as math is the most concrete and easiest way to judge across cultures.  Common Core math offers a “one size fits all” approach that holds the children back and thwarts autonomy.  DeVos reported that eighth graders failed to meet the low standard of the ‘90s, sinking below their predecessors from two years earlier.

In an unexpected twist, Progressives have found some inspiration in Islam and the two are now cooperating to destroy and restructure the society that has nourished them.  Common Core includes the study of LGBTQ history for a full year, with transgender organizations, activists, and websites abetting gender confusion, encouraging life-altering “treatments” that damage their bodies and mental health.  This is sold as “inclusivity,” but is a step toward fully accepting and imitating the Islamic family unit of one man with four wives as young as age 7, and the approval of pedophilia.  The Islamic family unit is a hotbed of dysfunction, complete with rivalry, tension, childhood rape, stealth homosexuality, blame, shame, and extreme violence.

The closer we come to emulating Islam, the further we fall from grace, from the morality of Judaism and Christianity, until we become no better than lower species.  Quotes from Islam’s most famous spokesman, Ayatollah Kohomeini, provided only partially here, may be found on the Internet: Sex and Islam.

Pedophilia and Bestiality in Islam, by Jennifer King, stipulates that all Muslims are ordered to imitate Muhammad’s perfect example in thought, word and deed.  The Prophet engaged in bestiality; it is not forbidden, but bathing instructions must be followed.

The traditional family, based on fidelity, is the surest bastion against the collective-hive society that is being planned for us.  For this reason, schools are increasing sexualization even in Kindergarten, encouraging masturbation, sexual intimacy and intercourse. The comparison with Islamic practice is inescapable: the man has no need to develop self-control and the woman is responsible only to him, invisible, covered from head to toe and obedient under the threat of rape or death.  The Progressive is coalescing with the Islamic mindset to shape the future agenda.  The schools have replaced our Judeo-Christian values with a shared commitment to social causes – racism, supremacism, climate change, America’s evils, boycotting Israel, gun control, unlimited abortion, and more.

David Coleman was the architect of the Common Core standards.  It was developed by a leftist-Washington-based think tank, Achieve, and funded with millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress, and others, allies of the left and George Soros groups.  Coleman’s vision was profoundly flawed, and parents were not consulted.

Secretary of Education Betsy deVos admitted, “The results are, frankly, devastating.”  Literacy and civics must be made a national priority and it is time to denounce what socialism is doing to our children. This is America’s wake-up call.

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Enemies of America are Our Best Friends Forever

“Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani.”President Donald J. Trump on January 3, 2020.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Robert K. Hudnut, A Sensitive Man and the Christ, 1971


It has become clear there are those in the Democrat Party, the media and in Hollywood who take exception to the termination of Iranian al Quds General Qasem Soleimani. Some members of Congress, like Nancy Pelosi, are upset that they were not notified prior to the termination of this “number-one terrorist.” Others have shouted that this termination is tantamount to an act of war against Iran.

It seems like the Democrats are tripping over themselves to undermine our national security.

Iran, Democrats Best Friends Forever

Let’s look at a few Twitter posts to understand how the enemies of America are the Democrats best friends forever.

First Rose McGowen, NYT bestselling author of #BRAVE Amazon.

Here is Max Blumenthal the Editor, the @GrayzoneProject, Co-host of Moderate Rebels, @moderate_rebels  Author, The Management of Savagery. Note Blumenthal is at the White House standing shoulder to shoulder with Code Pink, Answer Coalition and Pop Resistance.

MSNBC Iran’s BFF

The big lie from Susan Rice on speaking to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC stating that during the entire eight years of the Obama administration wasn’t “presented an opportunity” to terminate Soleimani.

Representative Ilhan Omar Iran’s BFF

President Trump stated in his announcement of the termination of Qasem Soleimani:

We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

This statement was not good enough for Ilhan Omar (D-MI). She has made this a campaign issue and is using it to raise funds for her reelection.

Omar and war crimes.

Iran’s new Quds Force Commander Ismael Qaani.

CONCLUSION:

In a TownHall.com column titled There Is Something Fundamentally Wrong With Democrats Derek Hunter writes:

It’s odd how the political left cheers America’s shortcomings and mourns its victories.

[ … ]

Weirdly, the people who use the word “justice” most often saw no justice in the death of a man who’s been killing innocent people for their whole lives. Ilhan Omar reacted the way someone would when their childhood hero passes away, then tried to fundraise off of it because anti-Americanism translates into cash on the left.

Rashida Tlaib warned about a “lawless President recklessly moves us closer to yet another unnecessary war that puts innocent lives at risk.” She expressed no concerns for the innocent lives Soleimani had taken over his career.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whined that “the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war against Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people.”

Democrats and their supporters support Iran. They have, since President Trump withdrew from the Iranian Nuclear Deal, tried to undermine him and his foreign policy in the Middle East.

© All rights reserved.

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Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here’s What the Data Say.

Is it true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety?


From Parkland, Florida, to San Bernardino, California, the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and its variants have seemingly become the weapons of choice for mass shooters in the United States.

Many people simply cannot believe that regular civilians should be able to legally own so-called “weapons of war,” which they believe should only be in the hands of the military.

According to Pew Research, for example, 81 percent of Democrats and even 50 percent of Republicans believe the federal government should ban “assault-style rifles” like the AR-15. Given the massive amount of carnage AR-15s and similar rifles have caused, it makes sense that the civilian population simply cannot be trusted to own such weapons, right?

Perhaps, but is it really true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety, so dangerous that it deserves to be banned or even confiscated by the federal government?

It cannot be emphasized enough that any homicide is a tragedy, but in order to get a sense of how dangerous to public safety “assault-style” rifles are, it’s useful to compare their usage in homicide to other methods.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are the two authoritative sources for homicide statistics in the United States.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the CDC reports “produce more accurate homicide trends at the national level” because they capture less under-reporting than the FBI statistics.

However, the homicide data recorded by the CDC includes all homicides committed by civilians regardless of criminal intent. The FBI data instead focuses on intentional homicides (i.e murder) known to law enforcement and excludes non-negligent homicide (i.e manslaughter.)

According to the BJS, the FBI data is “better suited for understanding the circumstances surrounding homicide incidents.” This is especially true given that the FBI, but not the CDC, records the type of firearm used in a given homicide. For the purposes of this analysis, the data from the FBI will be used.

There are two further limitations of FBI data worth noting.

Firstly, the FBI reports do not look at “assault-style” rifles specifically, but rather, murders involving all types of rifles, whether they are committed with an AR-15 or a hunting rifle.

Secondly, each year there are a few thousand homicide cases where the type of firearm used goes unreported to the FBI. This means that some murders listed under “unknown firearm” may, in fact, be rifle murders.

To account for this under-reporting, we will extrapolate from rifles’ share of firearm murders where the type of weapon is known in order to estimate the number of “unknown” firearms that were in actuality rifle homicides.

If we take the time to look at the raw data provided by the FBI, we find that all rifles, not just “assault-style rifles,” constitute on average 340 homicides per year from 2007 through 2017 (see Figure 1.). When we adjust these numbers to take under-reporting into account, that number rises to an average of 439 per year.

Figure 2 compares rifle homicides to homicides with other non-firearm weapons. Believe it or not, between 2007 and 2017, nearly 1,700 people were murdered with a knife or sharp object per year. That’s almost four times the number of people murdered by an assailant with any sort of rifle.

Figure 1. The Relative and Absolute Frequency of Rifle Homicides 2007-2017

Figure 2. Homicides per year by weapon 2007 – 2017

In any given year, for every person murdered with a rifle, there are 15 murdered with handguns, 1.7 with hands or fists, and 1.2 with blunt instruments. In fact, homicides with any sort of rifle represent a mere 3.2 percent of all homicides on average over the past decade.

Given that the FBI statistics pertain to all rifles, the homicide frequency of “assault-style” rifles like the AR-15 is necessarily lesser still, as such firearms compose a fraction of all the rifles used in crime.

According to a New York Times analysis, since 2007, at least “173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s.”

That’s 173 over a span of a decade, with an average of 17 homicides per year. To put this in perspective, consider that at this rate it would take almost one-hundred years of mass shootings with AR-15s to produce the same number of homicide victims that knives and sharp objects produce in one year.

With an average of 13,657 homicides per year during the 2007-2017 timeframe, about one-tenth of one percent of homicides were produced by mass shootings involving AR-15s.

Mass shootings involving rifles like the AR-15 can produce dozens of victims at one time, and combined with extensive media coverage of these events, many people have been led to believe that such rifles pose a significant threat to public safety.

However, such shootings are extremely rare, and a look at the FBI data informs us that homicide with these types of rifles represents an extremely small fraction of overall homicide violence. Banning or confiscating such firearms from the civilian population would likely produce little to no reduction in violent crime rates in America.

Image courtesy of Gun Holsters and Gear.

COLUMN BY

Being Classically Liberal

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The 20 Biggest Advances in Tech Over the Last 20 Years

Despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.


Another decade is over. With the 2020s upon us, now is the perfect time to reflect on the immense technological advancements that humanity has made since the dawn of the new millennium.

This article explores, in no particular order, 20 of the most significant technological advancements we have made in the last 20 years.

  1. Smartphones: Mobile phones existed before the 21st century. However, in the past 20 years, their capabilities have improved enormously. In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, the first touchscreen smartphone with mass-market appeal. Many other companies took inspiration from the iPhone. As a consequence, smartphones have become an integral part of day-to-day life for billions of people around the world. Today, we take pictures, navigate without maps, order food, play games, message friends, listen to music, etc. all on our smartphones. Oh, and you can also use them to call people.
  2. Flash Drives: First sold by IBM in 2000, the USB flash drive allows you to easily store files, photos or videos with a storage capacity so large that it would be unfathomable just a few decades ago. Today, a 128GB flash drive, available for less than $20 on Amazon, has more than 80,000 times the storage capacity of a 1.44MB floppy disk, which was the most popular type of storage disk in the 1990s.
  3. Skype: Launched in August 2003, Skype transformed the way that people communicate across borders. Before Skype, calling friends or family abroad cost huge amounts of money. Today, speaking to people on the other side of the world, or even video calling with them, is practically free.
  4. Google: Google’s search engine actually premiered in the late 1990s, but the company went public in 2004, leading to its colossal growth. Google revolutionized the way that people search for information online. Every hour there are more than 228 million Google searches. Today Google is part of Alphabet Inc., a company that offers dozens of services such as translations, Gmail, Docs, Chrome web browser, and more.
  5. Google Maps: In February 2005, Google launched its mapping service, which changed the way that many people travel. With the app available on virtually all smartphones, Google Maps has made getting lost virtually impossible. It’s easy to forget that just two decades ago, most travel involved extensive route planning, with paper maps nearly always necessary when venturing to unfamiliar places.
  6. Human Genome Project: In April 2003, scientists successfully sequenced the entire human genome. Through the sequencing of our roughly 23,000 genes, the project shed light on many different scientific fields, including disease treatment, human migration, evolution, and molecular medicine.
  7. YouTube: In May 2005, the first video was uploaded to what today is the world’s most popular video-sharing website. From Harvard University lectures on quantum mechanics and favorite T.V. episodes to “how-to” tutorials and funny cat videos, billions of pieces of content can be streamed on YouTube for free.
  8. Graphene: In 2004, researchers at the University of Manchester became the first scientists to isolate graphene. Graphene is an atom-thin carbon allotrope that can be isolated from graphite, the soft, flaky material used in pencil lead. Although humans have been using graphite since the Neolithic era, isolating graphene was previously impossible. With its unique conductive, transparent, and flexible properties, graphene has enormous potential to create more efficient solar panels, water filtration systems, and even defenses against mosquitos.
  9. Bluetooth: While Bluetooth technology was officially unveiled in 1999, it was only in the early 2000s that manufacturers began to adopt Bluetooth for use in computers and mobile phones. Today, Bluetooth is featured in a wide range of devices and has become an integral part of many people’s day-to-day lives.
  10. Facebook: First developed in 2004, Facebook was not the first social media website. Due to its simplicity to use, however, Facebook quickly overtook existing social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace. With 2.41 billion active users per month (almost a third of the world’s population), Facebook has transformed the way billions of people share news and personal experiences with one another.
  11. Curiosity, the Mars Rover: First launched in November 2011, Curiosity is looking for signs of habitability on Mars. In 2014, the rover uncovered one of the biggest space discoveries of this millennium when it found water under the surface of the red planet. Curiosity’s work could help humans become an interplanetary species in just a few decades’ time.
  12. Electric Cars: Although electric cars are not a 21st-century invention, it wasn’t until the 2000s that these vehicles were built on a large scale. Commercially available electric cars, such as the Tesla Roadster or the Nissan Leaf, can be plugged into any electrical socket to charge. They do not require fossil fuels to run. Although still considered a fad by some, electric cars are becoming ever more popular, with more than 1.5 million units sold in 2018.
  13. Driverless Cars: In August 2012, Google announced that its automated vehicles had completed over 300,000 miles of driving, accident-free. Although Google’s self-driving cars are the most popular at the moment, almost all car manufacturers have created or are planning to develop automated cars. Currently, these cars are in testing stages, but provided that the technology is not hindered by overzealous regulations, automated cars will likely be commercially available in the next few years.
  14. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC): With its first test run in 2013, the LHC became the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It’s also the world’s largest single machine. The LHC allows scientists to run experiments on some of the most complex theories in physics. Its most important finding so far is the Higgs-Boson particle. The discovery of this particle lends strong support to the “standard model of particle physics,” which describes most of the fundamental forces in the universe.
  15. AbioCor Artificial Heart: In 2001, the AbioCor artificial heart, which was created by the Massachusetts-based company AbioMed, became the first artificial heart to successfully replace a human heart in heart transplant procedures. The AbioCor artificial heart powers itself. Unlike previous artificial hearts, it doesn’t need intrusive wires that heighten the likelihood of infection and death.
  16. 3D Printing: Although 3D printers as we know them today began in the 1980s, the development of cheaper manufacturing methods and open-source software contributed to a 3D printing revolution over the last two decades. Today, 3D printers are being used to print spare parts, whole houses, medicines, bionic limbs, and even entire human organs.
  17. Amazon Kindle: In November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. Since then, a plethora of e-readers has changed the way millions of people read. Thanks to e-readers, people don’t need to carry around heavy stacks of books, and independent authors can get their books to an audience of millions of people without going through a publisher.
  18. Stem Cell Research: Previously the stuff of science fiction, stem cells (i.e., basic cells that can become almost any type of cell in the body) are being used to grow, among other things, kidney, lung, brain, and heart tissue. This technology will likely save millions of lives in the coming decades as it means that patients will no longer have to wait for donor organs or take harsh medicines to treat their ailments.
  19. Multi-Use Rockets: In November and December of 2015, two separate private companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, successfully landed reusable rockets. This development greatly cheapens the cost of getting to space and brings commercial space travel one step closer to reality.
  20. Gene Editing: In 2012, researchers from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Broad Institute each independently discovered that a bacterial immune system known as CRISPR could be used as a gene-editing tool to change an organism’s DNA. By cutting out pieces of harmful DNA, gene-editing technology will likely change the future of medicine and could eventually eradicate some major diseases.

However you choose to celebrate this new year, take a moment to think about the immense technological advancements of the last 20 years, and remember that despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.

This article was reprinted from Human Action.

COLUMN BY

Alexander Hammond

Alexander C. R. Hammond is a researcher at a Washington D.C. think tank and Senior Fellow for African Liberty. He is also a Young Voices contributor and frequently writes about economic freedom, African development, and globalization.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

A Sad Baltimore Tale

Over the Christmas holiday, Mary and I drove from West Virginia to visited her widow birth mother who lives in Baltimore. I’ll call her Ruth. Mary and I grew up in the Baltimore area.

Wow! What a striking decline in our beloved hometown, once renowned as Charm City. We saw countless blocks of empty trashed row-houses.

Baltimore is also known for great neighborhoods; Fells Point, Little Italy and so on. We drove through Highland town, pronounced, “Hollin” town by locals. I was shocked to see so many Highland town businesses which once thrived were gone, boarded up. They should have grown rather than failed.

Upon our arrival, Ruth excitedly greeted us with a hug.

Ruth has lived in her Dundalk home for 39 years, a block from the city line. Her companion is Corky, her old fat hound dog. She said thugs from the city have begun spilling over into her neighborhood. There is a party house a few doors down from her with loud music filled with expletives. She called the police a few times but nothing has changed.

We were told that the East Point Mall which was once a hub of family activity has become a place to avoid, infected with drugs and criminals.

Ruth said her old female friend barely escaped being carjacked in Baltimore in broad daylight by locking her doors before thugs could open them. Ruth does not venture into Baltimore unless it is absolutely necessary. Baltimore hit a new record high for homicides over the holidays.

Because Ruth is white and I am black, I sensed Ruth’s discomfort expressing how horrible Baltimore’s black female mayor has been. Ruth said, “I heard her say the police should allow rioters to destroy businesses to get out their frustrations.” I told Ruth that she heard correctly. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well…”

Democrat controlled cities are insanely obsessed with pandering to criminals and illegals against the safety, best interest and rights of law abiding citizens. NYC Mayor de Blasio’s latest soft-on-crime initiative includes giving freed inmates gift cards and cell phones. The gift cards are ending up at liquor stores. Democrat presidential candidates boldly proclaim that if elected, they will declare war on law enforcement which includes ICE and police.

Ruth served Mary and I delicious cake she baked from scratch. She moved to Baltimore as a child with her mother and baby brother. The word in West Virginia was those folks in Baltimore don’t want to work. Ruth’s mom moved to Baltimore for a job. Her mother was never without a job. Ruth’s dad stayed in West Virginia working in the coalmine.

Ruth shared a horrible story about a relative who got too close to the fireplace. Her robe caught fire. She pushed her two children outside the house but could not save herself. Grandparents raised the two children.

Hearing Ruth share about the lives of her and her family, Mary and I later discussed how clearly Ruth’s generation was not whiners. They simply kept moving forward doing whatever they needed to do to survive. They were not snowflakes.

Mary and I made sure to get-outta-Dodge (Baltimore) before dark. It is truly tragic what 50 years of Democrat control has done to a once great American city.

© All rights reserved.

Iran’s Supreme Leader vows jihad for Qassem Soleimani’s killing

Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has threatened the United States with ‘jihad’ after an American drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, the chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

“All Enemies should know that the jihad of resistance will continue with a doubled motivation, and a definite victory awaits the fighters in the holy war,” Khamenei said in a televised statement.

In his Friday’s sermon, Khamenei vowed revenge for the slain terrorist, saying, “this is the time to clear the region from these insidious beasts.” The chants of “Death to America” followed the weekly Islamic prayer.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed terrorist group Hizbollah, which operates in Lebanon, also joined in the Iranian call to jihad, urging “all resistance fighters worldwide” to avenge the killing of the top Iranian commander.

Soleimani, considered to be one of the most powerful figures in the Iranian regime, was the chief architect of Iran’s network of terrorist groups across the Middle East. The head of Quds Force, the elite wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was responsible for the killing of hundreds of American servicemen and women in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Department confirmed. At the time of the attack, he was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon disclosed.

Soleimani’s Quds Force is tasked with carrying out terrorist operations beyond Iran’s borders, propping up pro-Iran regimes, and building proxy terrorist militia. For two decades, he was in charge of Iran’s foreign intelligence and terrorist operations. “The killing of Qassim Soleimani is one of the biggest developments in the Middle East for decades – it far eclipses the deaths of Bin Laden or Baghdadi in terms of strategic significance and implications,” the UK newspaper Telegraph noted.

Iran’s allies, Russian and China, condemned the U.S. anti-terror operation, calling all sides to exercise restraint, “especially the United States.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry offered glowing praise for the slain terrorist: “Soleimani served the cause of protecting Iran’s national interests with devotion. We express our sincere condolences to the Iranian people.” His killing “was an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region,” the Russian news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS reported citing Foreign Ministry sources.

The response from the EU and European leaders was muted, with Germany and France calling for “easing” of the tensions and “deescalating” the situation.

The French TV channel EuroNews reported the European response the U.S. counter-terrorism strike:

The first European country to react to the killing of Soleimani is France. The country’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin said on RTL radio, “we are waking up to a more dangerous world. Military escalations are always dangerous.” She added that “escalation is underway.”

Montchalin indicated that urgent reconciliation efforts are being launched behind the scenes. French President Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister were reaching out to “all the actors in the region,” she said.

The British government is urging caution, saying “further conflict is in none of our interests.””

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab stated that the UK has “always recognised the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani.“

The statement does not explicitly endorse or condemn the actions of the U.S., a major British ally.

Germany says the situation in the Middle East has reached ” “a dangerous escalation point” and that conflicts in the region can only be resolved diplomatically.

German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer characterised the U.S. move as “a reaction to a “whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility,” pointing to attacks on tankers and a Saudi oil facility.

The drone strike that killed Soleimani also took out Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. The terrorist group was behind the storming of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Sunday. The terror outfit also carried out a recent rocket attack at a U.S. military base in northern Iraq, killing one American civilian contractor and injuring several soldiers.

Hours after the strike, Iran was busy regrouping its terrorist network in the region. Iranian leader Khamenei appointed Esmail Qaani (Ghaani) as commander of Quds force to replace the slain terrorist.

Cross-posted from Legal Insurrection.

COLUMN BY

Vijeta Uniyal

Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian journalist based in Germany. He is Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

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Sweden: Professor warns that mass Muslim migration could unravel the country’s “democratic welfare society”

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