Daily Archives: 6 August 2014

An Attack on the UNRWA School in Rafah

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…for which the US—President Barack Obama and his mouthpiece, Valerie Jarrett and Samantha Power, and his State Department’s mouthpiece, Jen Psaki, have roundly condemned Israel. A typical Obama administration rush to judgment without tarrying for such trivia as facts.

Lenny Ben-David, Managing Director of the Israel Consult, Inc, and erstwhile Israeli Deputy Chief of Mission in DC, has put together some imagery that sheds light on the…incident…with the school. I’ve reproduced them below, together with Ben-David’s twitter captions of them.

Propagan Scandal at Rafah UN school 1. #Israeli attack took place OUTSIDE school, vics dragged inside. see drag marks pic.twitter.com/s48UVUciG5Rafah_1Propag Scandal at Rafah UN school 2. Pic of vics arranged inside school. All 4 men of military age. See drag marks pic.twitter.com/1ZsDtPkJ5yRafah_2Propag Scandal at Rafah UN school 3. Need a child in pic. Striped shirt man brings her. #Israel claimed hit PIJ men pic.twitter.com/hWWBZdSyIC [To which I add: compare the background of this image with the background of the first image: the child, here, clearly is being carried into the school from the outside.]Rafah_3Propag Scandal at Rafah UN school 4. Striped shirt arranges her pathetic body next to PIJ men. Photogs ate it up pic.twitter.com/KTEgM3qgAdRafah_4Prop Scandal at Rafah UN school 5. Poor girl’s final act. Run w her for cameras. Note water to wash away drag marks pic.twitter.com/5f5k6D602oRafah_5These “casualties” obviously were generated well outside the school and carried in for a cynical arrangement. Which our administration, among others, fell for.

That the school wasn’t even hit, much less the target, is shown here.

Will we see soon (or at any time) an apology to Israel by Obama or any of his minions? Maybe not.

 

h/t Power Line

Another Government Overreach

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In a recent op-ed piece, The Wall Street Journal correctly decried the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s CARDS program. This program, cynically named “Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System,” is a program that wants to require all of our brokerage houses to report to FINRA massive amounts of data concerning our investment accounts, including what we’re doing in (with?) those accounts.

The op-ed correctly objected to CARDS’ massive collection of data, saying

FINRA says the ocean of data will help it spot a problem almost in real time, far earlier than if it showed up during a regular examination. …

But the financial crisis showed that more data doesn’t guarantee that regulators will know what to do with the information, and it’s as likely the data flood will overwhelm FINRA.

 

But the WSJ missed a far larger problem with CARDS (and with FINRA generally). The piece cited FINRA’s Chairman and CEO Richard Ketchum’s statement about CARDS’ purpose:

CARDS will allow us to collect and manage data from firms in such a way that we can quickly identify trends and product concentrations that are harmful to investors and take swift, responsive action.

Whose definition of “product concentrations that are harmful?” Why, Big Government’s, of course. This is the real danger of this sort of program: government usurping the free market’s role—and so, deprecating the market—in determining what is harmful. This simply makes the definition of “harmful” a political one, rather than a legitimate one.