TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
At the Highland Games in Lincoln, NH
Tom McLaughlin
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Officials Warn About 'Extremely Unusual'
Outbreak of Deadly Mosquito-Borne
Virus Across 6 States
By Jack Davis
{ westernjournal.com } ~ A rare mosquito-borne virus is spiking this year, resulting in five deaths already. Health officials said 21 people have been diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis... about three times the normal average, according to ABC News. On an average year, seven people contract the disease and three people die from it, the report said. Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and North Carolina have all reported cases. “This is an extremely unusual year,” said Al Gettman, head of Rhode Island’s mosquito control program. Massachusetts this week record its ninth EEE case, according to Boston.com. As of Wednesday, 35 communities in the state are at critical risk for the disease. Forty communities are at high risk and 128 are listed at moderate risk, according to the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services. Michigan is particularly hard hit with seven EEE cases, including three deaths, according to CNN.“Michigan is currently experiencing its worst Eastern Equine Encephalitis outbreak in more than a decade,” Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services chief medical executive and chief deputy for health, said in a statement on the department’s website. “The ongoing cases reported in humans and animals and the severity of this disease illustrate the importance of taking precautions against mosquito bites,” he said. Health officials in Michigan said the disease is focused in Barry, Berrien, Cass, Genesee, Kalamazoo, Lapeer, St. Joseph and Van Buren counties. They are urging those to postpone or cancel outside activities that would take place around dusk — a time when mosquitoes are the most active. “We strongly encourage residents to take precautions such as using insect repellent with DEET, wearing long-sleeved shirts and long pants when outdoors during the peak mosquito-biting hours which are dusk and dawn,” James Rutherford, health officer of the Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Department, said in a statement on the department’s website....
Socialist Family Feud: commie-Sanders
Campaign Lashes Out at dinky-Warren
by Andrew Stiles
{ freebeacon.com } ~ The 2020 Democratic primary is essentially a three-way race between centrist frontrunner loose lips liar-Joe Biden and socialism-inclined challengers Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D., Mass.)... dinky-Warren has sought to appropriate certain aspects of commie-Bernie's platform while subtly positioning herself as the "safer" socialist alternative to loose lips liar-Biden. It was only a matter of time before the commie-Sanders campaign started lashing out. Right on schedule, commie-Sanders's national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray is calling out dinky-Warren for refusing to back commie-Bernie's adorably socialist "housing for all" plan, which calls for $2.5 trillion in new spending and a nationwide rent control initiative. dinky-Warren does not think a nationwide rent control policy would work given the disparities among state economies, though such thinking has not stopped dinky-Warren from endorsing a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. Gray used dinky-Warren's own debate zinger to criticize the former Harvard professor for failing to support national rent control. Gray also attacked dinky-Warren over her record on union rights, including her campaign's failure to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement since recognizing her staff's union in June. For his part, commie-Sanders has also struggled to meet the demands of his own unionized campaign staff. The problem for commie-Sanders and dinky-Warren remains: As long as both continue to pursue the nomination, they are likely to split the anti-loose lips liar-Biden vote, which will only help the former vice president in the early primary states. Decisive victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and the like could go a long way to cement loose lips liar-Biden's somewhat tenuous status as the most "electable" candidate and "inevitable" nominee. https://freebeacon.com/blog/bernie-sanders-liz-warren-feud/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=86edcd6664-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_23_08_15_COPY_246&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-86edcd6664-45611665 .
France Welcomes the Saudis,
Condemns Critics of Islam
by Giulio Meotti
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ The French Institute of Muslim Civilization opened in Lyon on September 19, in the presence of the French Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner... He welcomed the project for an "open Islam" dedicated to the "fight against prejudice". The building, of five stories and 2,700 square meters, which now adjoins the Grand Mosque, will offer courses in Muslim civilization and languages, along with symposia, conferences and debates. The project is co-funded by the World Islamic League, the diplomatic and religious arm of Saudi Arabia, which has "ties" with the Federation of French Muslims. A few years ago, in 2016, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, sparked a heated debate by refusing to finance the project; he said he feared interference by Islamist countries. He was right. This month, Mohammed Al-Issa, general secretary of the World Islamic League, was in Lyon at the inauguration of the institute. "As everyone knows, the World Islamic League is a Saudi organization based in Mecca", wrote the scholar Razika Adnani in the weekly Marianne. "The principles of Wahhabism and its consequences on the world and especially the Muslim world are not a secret. It is therefore difficult to admit that the Wahhabis have suddenly become people who advocate a language of peace and solidarity, denouncing Islamic terrorism and obscurantism. If the World Islamic League denounces terrorism, how does one explain that men and women are beheaded publicly in Saudi Arabia? Why are human beings being bullied because they have different opinions about Islam and society than Wahhabis?"... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14907/france-saudis-critics .
dinky-Warren Pushes to Tax,
Regulate Investments That Enriched Her
by Yuichiro Kakutani
{ freebeacon.com } ~ Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth dinky-Warren's plan to crack down on the private equity industry would place stringent regulations on a source of funds that helped enrich her as a law professor at Harvard... The plan, which would heavily tax and regular private equity firms to stop what dinky-Warren has called Wall Street's "legalized looting," could also end up hurting her former Harvard colleagues and Massachusetts retirees. The Harvard endowment and the Massachusetts state pension system invest a considerable portion of their portfolios in private equity, an asset class with the highest return of all investment types for both funds. Harvard used these returns to pay the six-figure salaries of dinky-Warren and her husband. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, the senator's home-base, leaned on private equity yields to buoy its struggling pension fund, which covers 300,000 state employees, teachers, and retirees. Those holdings could soon be threatened by the Democratic presidential contender's plan to overhaul the industry. "The benefactors of private equity are diverse," Adam Michel, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Free Beacon. "They're people that are invested in these funds through their pensions or large endowments at schools across the country that are funding tuition for students that otherwise couldn't afford to go to those institutions." Private equity is an investment class composed of funds and investors that buy out struggling companies and enact drastic turnaround measures to shore up the firm's bottom line. While dinky-Warren acknowledged that some companies emerge better off as a result of private equity, she has pledged to heavily tax and regulate private equity to stop what she called Wall Street's "legalized looting." "Sometimes the companies do well. But far too often, the private equity firms are like vampires—bleeding the company dry and walking away enriched even as the company succumbs," dinky-Warren wrote in a Medium post in July. Harvard welcomed dinky-Warren as the new Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law in 1995, an endowed professorship established by a donation. She remained in that position full-time until her election as Massachusetts senator in 2011, earning $430,000 in the last two years of her time at Harvard, according to Senate disclosures....
Turkey is now a haven for terrorists
and an enabler of terrorism
by Jonathan Schanzer and Aykan Erdemir
{ fdd.org } ~ On Monday, four children of an American and his Israeli wife killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in 2015 filed suit against Turkey’s Kuveyt Turk Bank in a New York court... They charge that the bank helps Hamas finance its terrorist attacks, allegations the firm is almost certain to deny. The lawsuit against this Shariah-compliant bank, which counts the Turkish government as a shareholder, comes two weeks after the US Treasury sanctioned 11 Turkey-linked entities and individuals for supporting Hamas and other jihadist outfits. The evidence keeps mounting: Turkey has become a haven for regional baddies. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become a permissive jurisdiction for rogue regimes and their illicit bankers. Between 2012 and 2015, Tehran relied on Turkish banks and a dual Iranian-Turkish gold trader to circumvent US sanctions at the height of Washington’s efforts to thwart the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. It was the biggest sanctions-evasions scheme in recent history. Similarly, Venezula’s Maduro regime has been using Turkish-based companies in a money-laundering network involving the sale of Venezuelan gold. The US government sanctioned that network in July. Reports suggest that a Treasury-sanctioned money man for the Assad regime in Syria owns an extensive network of companies in Turkey, thus enabling Syria to circumvent US sanctions. Turkey has also proved a forgiving host to terrorists. In April, Treasury sanctioned six individuals and a Turkish money exchange for their role in bankrolling Islamic State. The action underscored how Islamic State terrorists continued to operate from Turkish territory well into 2018. Turkish law enforcement is known to turn a blind eye to jihadists, while the country’s courts treat them leniently, often releasing them pending trial or granting them parole — in stark contrast to harsh treatment meted out to secular and pro-democracy dissidents... https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2019/09/23/turkey-is-now-a-haven-for-terrorists-and-an-enabler-of-terrorism/ .
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At the Highland Games in Lincoln, NH
Tom McLaughlin
Old Castle Lachlan on Lachlan Bay in the Scottish Highlands
Ireland in the Early Christian period (A.D. 400-1177) was made up of at least 120 chiefdoms, usually described in surviving documents as petty kingdoms, typically having about 700 warriors. One of these petty kingdoms was Dál Riata, which occupied a corner of County Antrim, the island's northeasternmost part. Around A.D. 400, people from Dál Riata began to settle across the Irish Sea along the Scottish coast in County Argyll. Other Irish migrants were also establishing footholds along the coast farther south, as far as Wales and even Cornwall, but the migrants from Dál Riata were especially noteworthy because they were known to the Romans as "Scotti" and they would eventually give their Gaelic language and their name to all of what is now known as Scotland.
Isle of Skye Scotland
Another recent book came to mind as I observed people in the crowd. That would be the just-published Primal Screams by Mary Eberstadt, who claims the sexual revolution and related social upheaval of the sixties in America have “… whittled away at our primary attachments [and] have by now deprived a great many people of traditional answers to the question, ‘Who am I?’ These traditional answers involve our relations to others: I am a sister, mother, aunt, cousin, wife, etc. We define our identities relationally … But for a lot of us today, thanks to family vanishing, those fundamental familial building blocks of identity are harder to come by.”
Dancers with the RCMP Pipe and Drum Corps in Lincoln
Belonging to a clan adds another strong layer to all that. Those in attendance at the Highland Games in New Hampshire last weekend were roused by the frequent and riveting rhythms of pipes and drums, symbolic of Celtic heritage. It stirred something deep within me as if it were energizing my DNA. And, who knows? Maybe it was. I felt a certain pride — like I belonged to an ancient and esteemed tradition.
Performances including formal marching pipe and drum bands like one from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as more primal groups like Albannach, which is Gaelic for Scottish. Albannach really got the blood running in the tent where they put on their show. It was quite infectious. At one point they brought a young bagpiper on stage who couldn’t have been more than five years old. He had to stand on a box so the crowd would see him.
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