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The veneer of civilization

May 19, 2015

The veneer of civilization, Israel Hayom, Sarah N. Stern, May 19, 2015

Throughout the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, U.S. President Barack Obama frequently stated that “no deal is better than a bad deal” and that “all options are on the table.”

And then, on April 2, after a framework agreement was concluded in Lausanne, Switzerland (but without even a piece of paper to wave, Neville Chamberlain-like), Obama said, “Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented … is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”

As soon as the choice was altered from “a good deal or no deal” to “either this deal or war,” we witnessed a sudden surge in Iranian swagger and bravado, in both their words and their actions.

On May 7, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami told Fars television: “We welcome war with the United States, as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success, to display the real potential of our power. We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios, and this is no big deal.”

On May 12, Mojtaba Zolnour, a member of the IRGC and a close personal friend of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said: “The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has divine permission to destroy Israel. The noble Quran permits the Islamic republic to destroy Israel. Even if Iran gives up its nuclear program, it will not weaken this country’s determination to destroy Israel.”

This Iranian saber rattling has been accompanied by renewed provocations. On April 28, in the Strait of Hormuz — a major oil route — an Iranian crew commandeered the Maersk Tigris, a cargo ship flying under the flag of the Marshall Islands, a U.S. protectorate. They held the ship for six days before releasing it and its crew members. And just a few days after that, Iranian gunboats opened fire on the Alpine Eternity, a Singaporean-flagged ship, and tried to force it into Iranian territorial waters.

The more the U.S. treats Iranians with kid gloves so as not to offend them and to keep them at the negotiating table, the more the Iranians feel a renewed sense of triumph, and disdain toward the United States and its allies. (One would think the Americans were the ones who needed sanctions lifted to help our ailing economy).

On May 6, Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who has been held in an Iranian prison since July 2014, was charged with espionage. This trumped-up charge was a direct rebuke to the United States, demonstrating just how much contempt the Iranians have for the U.S. It is clear that the Iranians believe that we are determined to give them their cake, and to let them eat it, too. And like a spoiled child in the midst of a temper tantrum, the more we give the Iranians, the more they demand.

The sad fact is that the American negotiating team is basing its entire strategy on little more than wishful thinking. While visiting Beijing at the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that a deal with Iran “will have a positive influence on North Korea” (although he did add that he wasn’t sure that the North Koreans were capable of “internalizing the message”). One wonders whether the secretary of state also believes in unicorns and fairies.

History indicates that the nuclear negotiations with North Korea were precisely what led to their possession of a nuclear bomb. It is actually the Iranians who have taken note and learned from the North Koreans, and not the other way around.

It has become increasingly obvious that the Obama administration does not know how to negotiate. It seems that they are intent on making a deal, any deal, with the Iranians. And the more they grovel, the more contemptible the United States becomes in the eyes of the Iranians.

That is why the United States Senate needs to hold a free and open debate on the details of the negotiations. Over the last two weeks, the leadership of both the House and the Senate did no one any favors by putting the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015 (Corker-Cardin) on the suspension calendar. This means it requires a straight up or down vote, with no room for attaching amendments or for discussion.

The real danger in the Iran Nuclear Review Act of 2015 is that it has turned this negotiation, which has the standing of an international arms treaty, into a bill that would require a veto-proof majority to block. That means that it will become law even if only 34 Senate Democrats support it. While a treaty requires a positive action of two-thirds of the Senate to approve it, now it will take two-thirds of the Senate to veto it, which is much more difficult to achieve, particularly during the immediate aftermath of a euphoric deal-signing ceremony, probably on the White House Lawn, replete with lofty speeches of “peace in our time.”

The framers of the Constitution were prescient when they required two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty. And these negotiations are nothing short of a nuclear arms treaty that will impact the order of the world for generations to come.

When the final deal is signed on June 30, the U.S. Senate must insist that it has the international standing of a treaty and demand that if it does not have the support of 67 senators, it is null and void.

In the meantime, those congressmen and senators who want to pretend that they are attentive to the genuine concerns of the Saudis, the Israelis and patriotic Americans wary of the Iranian negotiations, are now able to hide behind the Iran Nuclear Review Act, this piece of paper that they recently signed.

As the late Congressman Tom Lantos — the only Holocaust survivor in the U.S. House of Representatives — was fond of saying, “The veneer of civilization is paper thin.”

Categories: Appeasement, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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You Can Put Lipstick on a Pig, But It’s Still a Pig

May 19, 2015

If (When) Baghdad Falls, Keep American Soldiers Away From the Mess Created By Bush and Obama
BY H.A. Goodman Posted: 10/24/2014 6:57 am EDT Updated: 12/24/2014 5:59 am EST


(I’m not one to fully agree with a left of center blog such as the Huffington Post, but I have to say, in this case I fully agree and am a bit surprised that myself and so many others here in the USA are finding common ground on this important matter. Many, myself included, do not want to engage our young and brave soldiers in yet another pointless and politically correct war. While there are a growing number of reasons to go to war in the Mideast, none of these hellholes are worth another drop of their precious blood, especially if the means and a plan for total victory are AWOL.  While this article is over a half a year old, I feel it still carries a relevant and somewhat prophetic message. – LS)

When President Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, long before ISIS controlled an estimated 12,000-35,000 square miles of territory between Iraq and Syria, the Decider stated the following in his now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech:

In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed…

In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world…

In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom…

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on…

Our mission continues. Al-Qaida is wounded, not destroyed…

The war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless.

From today’s vantage point, such rhetoric seems ludicrous, but it sounded good in the euphoria of the moment. Bush and his team made endless mistakes, proving time and again that flowery sentiments can’t stop a Sunni suicide bomber from blowing up a Shia mosque; even though both sides are Muslim. Removing Saddam from Iraq caused catastrophic upheaval and aroused a hornet’s nest of ancient hatreds. Also, Bush’s lofty nation building aspirations didn’t account for the fact that our soldiers would ultimately become targets of an unseen enemy.

Almost two-thirds of Americans killed or wounded in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been victims of IED’s. Ultimately, 4,487 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives during Operation Iraqi Freedom, while 2,349 American soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom. Including “non-fatal injuries,” which are often times life altering and debilitating, close to one million Americans (out of the 2.5 million Americans who served in both wars) have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Needless to say, the decision by Bush and his neocon advisors to play Stratego with the map of the world is one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.

Fast forward to 2014 and President Obama is quoted in The New Yorker as calling ISIS the “jayvee” squad of Al-Qaeda:

In the 2012 campaign, Obama spoke not only of killing Osama bin Laden; he also said that Al Qaeda had been “decimated.” I pointed out that the flag of Al Qaeda is now flying in Falluja, in Iraq, and among various rebel factions in Syria; Al Qaeda has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, too.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, resorting to an uncharacteristically flip analogy.

While President Obama and others have disputed he was actually referring to ISIS with this remark, Politifact.com has ruled that “…it’s pretty clear this is the group that was being referenced in the conversation. The transcript backs this up, as do news events from the time of the discussion.”

Not only did Obama grossly underestimate the threat posed by ISIS, but he’s on record in September as stating, “We don’t have a strategy yet” in Syria. U.S. weapons intended for Kurdish fighters recently ended up in the hands of ISIS and Syrian Kurds have stated recent U.S. airstrikes are not working. Bush’s initial debacle of invading Iraq has now turned into Obama’s inability to adequately address threats like ISIS in a timely and effective manner.

While Baghdad has yet to fall, Gen. Martin Dempsey states, “I have no doubt there will be days when they use indirect fire into Baghdad,” meaning ISIS mortars or artillery shells could hit the city. Baghdad is more heavily guarded than most other places in Iraq, but ISIS already commits terror attacks inside Baghdad and hasclaimed responsibility for the October 11 suicide booming that killed 43 people. Also, ISIS isn’t far from the Iraqi capital, controlling an estimated 80% of the Anbar Province. A quick glance at the map shows just how much territory Islamic State controls and how fragile Iraq looks in the face of imminent collapse. All this happened under Obama’s watch and although he isn’t Nostradamus, he nonetheless failed to accurately predict the capabilities of al-Qaeda’s jayvee team.

With Iraq falling apart and a new enemy on the horizon that’s simply a rebranding of the old one, there’s a striking observation to be made about two presidents, Congress, and the leaders who send our soldiers off to war. Whereas we are perhaps governed by intelligent people, these bureaucrats don’t necessarily possess the wisdom needed to put this country, and our soldiers, in a position to win against a word called “terror.” The days of presidents like Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower seem long gone, and instead we’re stuck with a generation of Bush’s and Obama’s; or the latest LBJs and Nixons.

Therefore, if and when Baghdad falls, President Obama should leave American troops out of any strategy to save Iraq.

A recent poll conducted by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal finds that 41% of Americans believe the military campaign against ISIS should include “air strikes and combat troops.” This poll runs in striking contrast to The Military Times poll indicating 70% of troops say “no more boots on the ground.” Unlike the vast majority of American’s who’ve never been to Iraq, a Marine interviewed in the poll states, “It’s kind of futile in the end — regardless of how well we do our job, the Iraqi government isn’t going to be able to hold up.

This sentiment is backed up not only by recent events, but also the fundamental reason why both Bush and Obama were clueless in recognizing their leadership faults in regards to the Iraq War. While Bush was convinced in his prediction that liberty would reign in Iraq, Obama was focused solely on not being another Bush. As a result, both presidents ignored the biggest obstacle to any military endeavor in Iraq: the Shia and Sunni rivalry and the implications of this centuries old sectarian battle.The Council on Foreign Relations explains this bloody conflict in The Sunni-Shia Divide:

In Iraq, for instance, remnants of the Ba’athist regime employed Sunni rhetoric to mount a resistance to the rise of Shia power following the ouster of Saddam. Sunni fundamentalists, many inspired by al-Qaeda’s call to fight Americans, flocked to Iraq from Muslim countries, attacking coalition forces and many Shia civilians. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded al-Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq, evoked ancient anti-Shia fatwas, or religious rulings, to spark a civil war in hopes that the Shia majority would eventually capitulate in the face of Sunni extremist violence.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq, decimated by the “Awakening” of Sunni Iraqis who joined the fight against extremists, the U.S.-led military surge, and the death of Zarqawi, found new purpose in exploiting the vacuum left by the receding Syrian state. It established its own transnational movement known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

No amount of American ground troops, or military might from other Western nations, will adequately address the hatred fostered by this Shia and Sunni rivalry. Consequently, any further involvement by U.S. soldiers will turn into another counterinsurgency war where the ally in the day turns into the enemy at night.

We’re still learning in Afghanistan (the longest war in U.S. history and a war that is still ongoing) the same lessons we’ve already learned in Iraq: counterinsurgency wars don’t put our soldiers and our military in a position to win or create a lasting political reality. We already learned this in Vietnam, but repeated the mistake with Iraq, and now might repeat the mistake once again because of ISIS. As stated by General Daniel Bolger regarding the lessons of the Iraq War, “This enemy wasn’t amenable to the type of war we’re good at fighting, which is a Desert Storm or a Kosovo.”

American soldiers have done enough in Iraq. Even if Bagdad falls, ISIS will never achieve the caliphate it desires; especially if both Saudi Arabia and Iran view them as heretics. In addition, with territorial gains comes the responsibility of holding this territory and that costs money, resources, and lives; something ISIS might not have in the long run. Most importantly, both Bush and Obama have proven that they’re not capable of using the U.S. Armed Forces for a war with decisive battles or a definite end date. So, until a war doesn’t involve religious rivalries and sectarian violence (or raiding houses in the middle of the night to capture insurgents), let’s keep our soldiers away from another Middle Eastern quagmire. Congress, as well as President Obama, should do everything possible to arm and fund the enemies of ISIS rather than send one more American to the Middle East.

Categories: Middle East
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Liberating Our Jerusalem

May 18, 2015

Liberating Our Jerusalem, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, May 17, 2015

[T]here are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

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When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city– the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

MigdalDavid0002

Since then, the annexation and ethnic cleansing has become an international mandate. It would be absolutely inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into a city where they had lived. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as “settlers” living in “settlements,” and describe them as an “obstruction to peace.” Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

Describing Jewish homes in Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest cities, a city that all three religions in the region associate with Jews and Jewish history, as “settlements” is a triumph of distorted language that Orwell would have to tip his hat to. How does one have “settlements” in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? To understand that, you would have to ask London and Washington D.C., where the diplomats insist that one more round of Israeli compromises will bring peace to the region.

They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that demands constant blood sacrifices to make peace possible, that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion’s name isn’t even Islam– it’s diplomacy.

Diplomacy says that the 1948 borders set by Arab countries invading Israel should be the final borders and that, when Israel reunified a sundered city in 1967, it was an act of aggression, while, when seven Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, it was a legitimate way to set boundaries. When Jordan ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem, it set a standard that Israelis are obligated to follow to this day by staying out of East Jerusalem.

Vice President Biden was so upset that the Jerusalem municipality had partially approved some buildings in the city during his visit that he threw a legendary hissy fit. Hillary Clinton stopped by MSNBC to tell Andrea Mitchell that, “It was insulting. And it was insulting not just to the Vice President who didn’t deserve that.” David Axelrod browsed through his thesaurus and emerged on the morning shows calling it an “affront” and an “insult.” Two for the price of one.

Editorials in newspapers denounced the Israeli government for this grave insult to the Obama Administration.”Israel’s Provocation”, the Chicago Tribune shrieked in bold type, describing it as a “diplomatic bomb” that went off in Biden’s face. The Atlantic, eager to get in on the action metaphors, described Israel slapping Biden in the face. A horde of other columnists jumped in to depict the Israelis kicking and bashing the poor Vice-President, while holding his head in the toilet.

Whether Joe Biden was the victim of the Jews or the Jews were the victims of Joe Biden is all a matter of perspective. The Hitler Administration was quite upset to find that Jewish athletes would be competing in the 1936 Munich Olympics. When you ethnically cleanse people, they are supposed to stay ethnically cleansed. It’s in poor taste for them to show up and win gold medals at the Olympics or rebuild their demolished synagogues. It’s insulting to the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices.

That sounds like a harsh accusation, but it’s completely and undeniably true.

bauernfeind-mur-lamentation-jerusalem

When Muslims move into a Jewish town, poor Joe doesn’t come crying that he’s been bombed with a diplomatic affront and slapped with a Menorah. When Muslim countries fund Muslim housing in Israel, there are no angry statements from Clinton and no thesaurus bashing from David Axelrod. Muslim housing in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel is not a problem. Only Jewish housing is. The issue is not Israel. If it were, then Arabs with Israeli citizenship would get Biden to howl as loudly. It’s only the Jews who are the problem.

The entire Peace Process is really a prolonged solution to the latest phase of the Jewish Problem. The problem, as stated by so many diplomats, is that there are Jews living in places that Muslims want. There were Jews living in Gaza before 1948, but they were driven out, they came back, and then they were driven out again by their own government in compliance with international demands. Now only Hamas lives in Gaza and it’s as peaceful and pleasant without the Jews as Nazi Germany.

But there are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone. That much is certainly undeniable. Just look at Gaza or Egypt or Iraq or Afghanistan, which has a grand total of two Jews, both of them in their seventies. Or Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria where peace reigns now that the Jews are gone. Some might say that violence seems to increase proportionally with the number of Muslims, but we all know that would be a racist thing to say. On the other hand suggesting that violence increases with the number of Jews living on land that Muslims want, that’s just diplomacy. A common sense fact that everyone who is anyone in foreign policy knows to be true.

How will we know when the Muslims have gotten all the land that they want? When the violence stops. Everyone knows that agreements mean nothing. No matter how many pieces of paper are signed, the bombs and rockets still keep bursting; real ones that kill people, not fake ones that upset Vice Presidents. The only way to reach an agreement is by groping blindly in the dark, handing over parcel after parcel of land, until the explosions stop or the Muslims fulfill their original goal of pushing the Jews into the sea.

That’s the wonderful thing about diplomacy if you’re a diplomat and the terrible thing about it if you are anyone else without a secure way out of the country when diplomacy fails. And diplomacy in the region always fails. Camp David and every single agreement Israel has signed with Muslim countries aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The only peace treaty that counts is the one made by tanks and rifles. It’s the one made by Israeli planes in Egyptian skies and Israeli soldiers walking the border. It’s the one made by Jewish farmers and ranchers, tending their sheep and their fields, with rifles strung over their backs. The only peace that’s worth anything is the peace of the soldiers and settlers.

In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders– and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Jerusalem-Scopus

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Jerusalem Day, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn’t about the Arab residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It’s not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It’s about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. The bloody god of diplomacy always assumes that they are the problem. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.

Categories: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Biden, Britain, Diversity, Foreign policy, Human rights, International Community, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Kerry, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank
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Ramadi’s fall opens ISIS road to Baghdad. Jordan warns US air strikes won’t stop the terrorists’ advance

May 18, 2015

Ramadi’s fall opens ISIS road to Baghdad. Jordan warns US air strikes won’t stop the terrorists’ advance, DEBKAfile, May 18, 2015

 

Jordan’s King Abdullah has warned the Obama administration in an urgent message that US air strikes alone won’t stop the Islamic State’s advances in Iraq and Syria and, what is more, they leave his kingdom next door exposed to the Islamist peril. ISIS would at present have no difficulty in invading southern Jordan, where the army is thin on the ground, and seizing local towns and villages whose inhabitants are already sympathetic to the extremist group. The bulk of the Jordanian army is concentrated in the north on the Syrian border. Even a limited Islamist incursion in the south would also pose a threat to northern Saudi Arabia, the king pointed out.

Abdullah offered the view that the US Delta Special Forces operation in eastern Syria Saturday was designed less to be an effective assault on ISIS’s core strength and more as a pallliative to minimize the Islamist peril facing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf emirates.

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that US officials refused to heed Abdullah’s warning and tried to play it down, in the same way as Secretary John Kerry tried Monday, May 18, to de-emphasize to the ISIS conquest of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largest province.

At a news conference in Seoul, Kerry dismissed the Islamists’ feat as a “target of opportunity” and expressed confidence that, in the coming days, the loss “can be reversed.”

The Secretary of State’s words were unlikely to scare the Islamists, who had caused more than 500 deaths in the battle for the town and witnessed panicky Iraqi soldiers fleeing Ramadi in Humvees and tanks.

Baghdad, only 110 km southeast of Ramadi, has more reason to be frightened, in the absence of any sizeable Iraqi military strength in the area for standing in the enemy’s path to the capital.

The Baghdad government tried announcing that substantial military reinforcements had been ordered to set out and halt the Islamists’ advance. This was just whistling in the dark. In the last two days, the remnants of the Iraqi army have gone to pieces – just like in the early days of the ISIS offensive, when the troops fled Mosul and Falujah. They are running away from any possible engagement with the Islamist enemy.

The Baghdad-sourced reports that Shiite paramilitaries were preparing to deploy to Iraq’s western province of Anbar after Islamic State militants overran Ramadi were likewise no more than an attempt to boost morale. Sending armed Shiites into the Ramadi area of Anbar would make no sense, because its overwhelmingly Sunni population would line up behind fellow-Sunni Islamist State conquerors rather than help the Shiite militias to fight them.

Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, who arrived precipitately in Baghdad Monday, shortly after Ramadi’s fall, faces this difficulty. Our military sources expect him to focus on a desperate effort to deploy Shiite militias as an obstacle in ISIS’s path to Baghdad, now that the road is clear of defenders all the way from Ramadi.

In Amman, King Abdullah Sunday made a clean sweep of senior security officials, firing the Minister of Interior, the head of internal security (Muhabarat) and a number of high police officers. They were accused officially of using excessive violence to disperse demonstrations in the southern town of Maan.

The real reason for their dismissal, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources disclose, is the decline of these officials’ authority in the Maan district,  in the face of the rising influence of extremist groups identified with Al Qaeda and ISIS, in particular.

Categories: Arab nations, Baghdad, Combat troops, Foreign policy, Gulf states, Iraq, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Jordan, Kerry, Obama, Saudi Arabia, Syria, U.S. airstrikes, U.S. Military
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Report: Saudi Arabia Seeking “Off-the-Shelf” Nuclear Weapons from Pakistan

May 18, 2015

Report: Saudi Arabia Seeking “Off-the-Shelf” Nuclear Weapons from Pakistan – Israel News.

With the signing of a final nuclear deal with Iran looming ever closer, the nuclear arms race in the Middle East has begun.

Saudi Arabia is said to have reached out to its ally Pakistan to procure “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons, the UK’s The Sunday Times reported.

According to a former US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, “For the Saudis the moment has come. There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

The official explained that the Obama administration does not believe that “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet” to the Saudis, adding “the Saudi mean what they say and they will do what they say.”

The report explained that over the last several decades, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have shared a mutually beneficial relationship. Saudi Arabia has supplied Pakistan will billions of dollars’ worth of subsidized oil while Pakistan unofficially agreed to supply nuclear warheads to Gulf states when the time arrived.

“Nuclear weapons programs are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was provided by Saudi Arabia,” explained Lord David Owen, who served as Foreign Secretary of England from 1977 to 1979.

“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” he added.

Over the last few months, a trifecta of tensions between the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran has increased dramatically. In Yemen, the Saudi’s have amped up its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

In the US, US President Barack Obama is attempting to placate Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations over their concerns of the emerging nuclear deal. Last week, in a special summit hosted at the White House, Saudi Arabian King Salman refused to meet with the president in a public sign of disapproval over the president’s handling of Iran’s nuclear program.

An anonymous British military official explained to The Sunday Times that Western military officials “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear.”

“The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers – Turkey and Egypt – may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/40395/saudi-arabia-seeks-off-the-shelf-nuclear-weapons-pakistan-middle-east/#4tDfxm5Xl0053rul.99

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Kerry – North Korea can have a great nuke deal like Iran if it becomes as moderate

May 17, 2015

Kerry – North Korea can have a great nuke deal like Iran if it becomes as moderate, Dan Miller’s Blog, May 17, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

North Korea played those negotiating its denuclearization for fools, much as Iran has been doing more recently with Obama. It must not have been difficult to do. To continue the process with Iran, and to repeat it with North Korea, makes no sense.

Speaking in the People’s Republic of China on May 16th, Secretary Kerry offered North Korea a nuke deal —

Kerry explained that an Iran deal could help in showing North Korea how “your economy can do better, your country can do better, and you can enter into good standing with the rest of the global community by recognizing — just like Iran — that there is a verifiable, irreversible, denuclearization for weaponization, even as you can have a peaceful nuclear power program.”

Iran has not agreed to “a verifiable, irreversible, denuclearization for weaponization” and likely never will. On April 15th, Iran disputed the accuracy of the Obama Administration’s April 2nd “fact sheet,” which had made such claims about the deal. In the highly unlikely event that Iran were it to claim to do accept such terms, it would “cheat” as it has done in the past. In this video, John Bolton speaks about the “deal” with Iran as well as the North Korean connection.

Nevertheless, Iran has already received many of the rewards of essentially irreversible sanctions relief, including augmented power, both military and financial, in the Middle East.

A deal like the one Iran is about to get by virtue of the Iran scam should be welcomed by North Korea. The countries have long cooperated on nukes and missile development, a matter apparently ignored during Obama’s P5+1 “negotiations” with Iran.

Kerry also said,

the United States will continue to work with its partners “to make it absolutely clear to the DPRK that their actions, their destabilizing behavior — unlike Iran’s — is unacceptable against any international standard.” [Emphasis added.]

Iran’s destabilization efforts and successes are, in Kerry’s view, apparently not “against any international standard.” Yet Iran does far more regional destabilizing than does North Korea — North Korea mainly relies upon bellicose bluster (with infrequent military actions against South Korea). Iran — a major if not the most active sponsor of terrorism —  sends its proxies throughout the Middle East while accusing America and others of destabilization. A likely “signing bonus” of up to fifty billion dollars for Iran if and when the “deal” is finalized will substantially further Iran’s hegemonic ambitions and power as well as its missile and nuclear weapons development.

Here’s a video of Iran having some fun:

According to Hossein Salami, Deputy Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Iran welcomes war with the United States:

This North Korean propaganda video purports to displays North Korean military prowess:

Conclusions

The rogue nations of Iran and North Korea are both intent upon maximizing their nuclear weapon capabilities. Both are totalitarian and have obscene human rights records. To trust either would be a gross mistake; yet that appears to be what Obama intends to do.

The only thing notably missing from Kerry’s offer is a requirement that North Korea abandon the Religion of Kim and adopt the glorious “Religion of Peace” instead. That would help North Korea to fit even better than at present into Obama’s policy of supporting America’s enemies and rejecting her friends. If Kim Jong-un would merely recognize Allah as the superior power, perhaps he could become the first Korean Ayatollah. Obama would probably be thrilled were North Korea to become the Democratic Islamic Republic of Korea (DIRK).

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, John Bolton, Kerry, Middle East, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, P5+1, Religion, Terrorists, Theocracy
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Saudi Rapist in Colorado Says Sex Offender Program is Against His Religion

May 17, 2015

Saudi Rapist in Colorado Says Sex Offender Program is Against His Religion, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 17, 2015

Homaidan-al-Turki

Rape however isn’t against his religion.

Homaidan al-Turki’s entire defense strategy from the beginning was Islam. The member of a prominent Saudi family claimed that the prosecution was Islamophobic.

“We are Muslim. We are different. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors is a focal point of the prosecution.”

He had a point, because the behavior he was charged with was commonplace back in Saudi Arabia.

The victim slept on a mattress on the basement floor, was paid less than $2 a day, and Al-Turki eventually intimidated her into sex acts that culminated in her rape in late 2004, according to prosecutors.

Once in prison, the Saudis tried to get him transferred/released back home, but public outrage stopped that at least temporarily.

Now we’re apparently back to Al-Turki’s insistence that he shouldn’t have to undergo sex offender treatment.

Al-Turki told prison officials in 2013 that the sex offender treatment programme “conflicts with [his] Islamic faith”, according to a letter by the then executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Tom Clements.

His lawyers told the court in the same year that the program: “would require [him] to look at photos that included women in bathing suits or undergarments as part of the evaluation process”, AP reported.

That would be the Abel Screening which is supposed to test for assorted deviancies. Undergoing it would be an important prerequisite to parole or transferring Al-Turki to a Saudi prison/resort.

Al-Turki’s people have rejected it because it would mean admitting that he did something wrong, also the group would be run by a woman and there are the photos of men, women and children in swimsuits.

Obviously Saudi mores and Islamic law say that Homaidan Al-Turki did nothing wrong. ISIS’ rapes and sex slaves show us how that works, but Saudi Arabia runs a low key version of the same thing.

The entire premise of the program is incompatible with Islam. It’s Islamophobic since it rejects the Islamic idea that Muslim men can rape non-Muslim women within the context of a hostile environment, especially in a non-Muslim country.

So we just have to decide between Saudi ISIS law and American law. It’s that simple.

Categories: Freedom, Human rights, Islam, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Muslims, Saudi Arabia, Sharia law
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Cartoon of the day

May 17, 2015

Source: Jerusalem Post

Angel-of-Peace

Categories: Abbas, Human rights, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Pope
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Muslim Rape Gangs, Terrorists as ‘Pop-Idols,’ and the Trafficking of Children

May 17, 2015

Muslim Rape Gangs, Terrorists as ‘Pop-Idols,’ and the Trafficking of Children, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, May 17, 2015

(What is an “extremist?” — DM)

  • “The boys want to be like them [jihadists] and the girls want to be with them. That’s what they used to say about the Beatles… [Muslim teenagers] see their own lives as poor by comparison, and don’t realize they are being used.” — Nazir Afzal, Britain’s leading Muslim prosecutor.
  • “The extreme views of a ‘racist, homophobe and anti-Semite’ who supports killing non-Muslims and ‘stoning adulterers’ are being made available to prison imams and prisoners…with the blessing of [prison] authorities.” — Newsweekmagazine.
  • “Mohammed was selling me for £250 to paedophiles from all over the country. They came in, sat down and started touching me… Sometimes, I would be passed from one pervert to another… Mohammed’s defense was laughable… His barrister, a woman, implied I was a racist because all the defendants were Muslim.” — Excerpts from Girl for Sale, by Lara McDonnell.
  • “Democracy… violates the rights of Allah. Islam is the only real, working solution for the UK.” — Election posters in Cardiff, Wales.

What follows is a summary of some of Islam and Islam-related issues in Britain during April 2015, categorized into four broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism; 2) British multiculturalism; 3) Muslim integration; and 4) Muslims and the British general elections.

1. Islamic Extremism and Syria-Related Threats

British police believe that about 600 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began in early 2011. About half of those are believed to have returned to the UK.

On April 1, police in Turkey detained nine British nationals from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, who were allegedly seeking to join the Islamic State in Syria. The nine — five adults and four children, including a one-year-old baby — were arrested in the Turkish city of Hatay.

One of those arrested was Waheed Ahmed, a student of politics at Manchester University. His father Shakil, a Labour Party councilor in Rochdale, said he thought his son was doing an internship in Birmingham. He said:

“It’s a total mystery to me why he’s there, as I was under the impression he was on a work placement in Birmingham. My son is a good Muslim and his loyalties belong to Britain, so I don’t understand what he’s doing there. If I thought for a second that he was in danger of being radicalized I would have reported him to the authorities.”

Also on April 1, Erol Incedal, 27, a British national of Turkish origin, was jailed for 42 months for possessing a bomb-making manual. His friend, Mounir Rarmoul-Bouhadjar, 26, a British national of Algerian origin, who admitted to having the same manual, was given three years. Both men had been to the Syrian-Turkish border and mixed with jihadists, who taught them about weaponry and explosives.

Meanwhile, it emerged that the father of one of the three teenagers from Brent, northwest London, who were arrested in Turkey in March on suspicion of trying to join the Islamic State in Syria, works for the British Ministry of Defense. The father, who may have had access to the names and addresses of British military personnel at home and overseas, was placed on “compassionate leave.”

On April 2, Yahya Rashid, of Willesden, also in northwest London, was charged with “engaging in conduct in preparation for committing an act of terrorism, and engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting others to commit acts of terrorism, between November 2014 and March 2015.” Rashid, 19, was arrested at Luton Airport after arriving on a flight from Istanbul. The Middlesex University electronics student was allegedly returning from Syria after travelling there via Morocco and Turkey.

On April 3, six Muslims were arrested at the Port of Dover in Kent on suspicion of attempting to leave England to join the Islamic State. The Crown Prosecution Service said that three of the individuals were found in the back of a truck in an apparent attempt to smuggle themselves out of Britain. They were charged with “preparing acts of terrorism.”

On April 5, Abase Hussen, the father of runaway British jihadi schoolgirl Amira Hussen, conceded that his daughter may have become radicalized after he took her to an extremist rally organized by the banned Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, run by Anjem Choudary, the British-born Muslim hate preacher.

Amira, 15, was one of three girls from Bethnal Green Academy in East London who flew to Turkey in February to become “jihadi brides” in Syria. During a hearing at the Home Affairs Select Committee in March, Abase blamed British authorities for failing to stop his daughter from running off to Syria. Asked by Chairman Keith Vaz if Amira had been exposed to any extremism, Hussen replied: “Not at all. Nothing.” The police eventually issued an apology.

Abase, however, changed his story after a video emerged which unmasked him as an Islamic radical who had marched at an Islamist hate rally alongside Choudary and Michael Adebolajo, the killer of Lee Rigby. Abase, originally from Ethiopia, said he had come to Britain in 1999 “for democracy, for the freedom, for a better life for children, so they could learn English.”

On April 8, Alaa Abdullah Esayed of South London admitted to posting 45,600 tweets in support of the Islamic State in just one year. The tweets included pictures of dead bodies and encouraged children to arm themselves with weapons. Esayed’s tweets also included a poem, “Mother of the Martyr,” which advises parents on how to teach children about jihad. Esayed, 22, faces up to 14 years in prison for encouraging terrorism and disseminating terrorist publications.

On April 9, the families of two teenage boys from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, who are believed to have traveled to join the Islamic State, said that they were “in a state of profound shock” and deeply worried about the safety of their “ordinary Yorkshire lads.” The 17-year-old boys, Hassan Munshi and Talha Asmal, are believed to have gone to Syria after heading to Turkey on March 31. The boys reportedly told their relatives that they were going on a school trip, but instead used the Easter holidays as a “window of opportunity” to flee Britain.

On April 20, a 14-year-old schoolboy from Blackburn, Lancashire, became Britain’s youngest terror suspect. He was arrested in connection with an Islamic State-inspired terror plot in Melbourne, Australia. Police said messages found on his computer and mobile phone indicated a plan to attack the centenary celebrations of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli during the First World War. (Anzac Day — April 25 — marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.)

Also on April 20, police in Turkey arrested a British couple and their four young children on suspicion of seeking to travel to a part of Syria controlled by the Islamic State. Asif Malik, his wife Sara, and the four children — aged between 11 months and 7 years — were detained at a hotel in Ankara. Turkish officials said the family had crossed into Turkey from Greece on April 16 and that they had been detained after a tip-off from the British police.

On April 24, Hassan Munir of Bradford was jailed for 18 months for posting links to Dabiq, an Islamic State propaganda magazine, on his Facebook page. The court heard that Munir, 27, had ignored repeated warnings by Facebook and by police after he posted jihadist material, including items about beheadings. The judge said magazine posed a serious danger because it incited people to take up arms for the Islamic State.

On April 27, Mohammed Kahar of Sunderland was arrested after being caught disseminating extremist material, including documents such as “The Explosive Course,” “44 Ways To Serve And Participate In Jihad,” “The Book Of Jihad,” and “This Is The Province Of Allah.” Kahar, 37, was also accused of plotting Syria-related terrorism acts, supporting a proscribed organization and financing terrorism — in all, 10 offenses stretching back 18 months.

On April 28, an 18-year-old jihadist, Kazi Jawad Islam, was convicted of “terror grooming” for trying to “brainwash” his friend, Harry Thomas, “a vulnerable young man with learning difficulties,” into attacking British soldiers with a meat cleaver.

The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (aka Old Bailey) was told that Kazi Islam — allegedly inspired by the beheading of serviceman Lee Rigby in 2013 — befriended the then-19-year-old Thomas in October 2013 after meeting him at college. The court heard how Islam also “ruthlessly exploited” his autistic friend into preparing to make a bomb.

In an interview with the Guardian, Nazir Afzal, Britain’s leading Muslim prosecutor, warned that more British children are at risk of “jihadimania” than previously thought because they see Islamic terrorists as “pop idols.” He said:

“The boys want to be like them and the girls want to be with them. That’s what they used to say about the Beatles and more recently One Direction and Justin Bieber. The propaganda the terrorists put out is akin to marketing, and too many of our teenagers are falling for the image.

“They see their own lives as poor by comparison, and don’t realize they are being used. The extremists treat them in a similar way to sexual groomers — they manipulate them, distance them from their friends and families, and then take them.

“Each one of them, if they go to Syria, is going to be more radicalised when they come back. And if they don’t go, they become a problem — a ticking time bomb — waiting to happen.”

2. British Multiculturalism

In April, officials at the Lostwithiel School in Cornwall publicly humiliated nearly a dozen pupils between the ages of eight and 11 whose parents had refused to allow them to participate in a school trip to a mosque in Exeter. Some parents said they were concerned about the safety of their children, while others said they were opposed to the teaching of Islam in school. But school officials forced the non-compliant pupils individually to give an explanation in the student assembly.

On April 5, Victoria Wasteney, 38, a Christian healthcare worker, launched an appeal against an employment tribunal that found she had “bullied” a Muslim colleague by praying for her and inviting her to church. Wasteney was suspended from her job as a senior occupational therapist at the John Howard Centre, a mental health facility in east London, after her colleague, Enya Nawaz, 25, accused her of trying to convert her to Christianity. Wasteney’s lawyers say that the tribunal broke the law by restricting her freedom of conscience and religion, which is enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

On April 8, the Guardian reported that there has been a 60% increase in child sexual abuse reported to the police over the past four years, according to official figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request that make public for the first time the scale of the problem in England and Wales.

The number of offenses of child sexual abuse reported to the police soared from 5,557 cases in 2011 to 8,892 in 2014. At the same time, the number of arrests for child sexual abuse offenses in England and Wales fell from 3,511 in 2011 to 3,208 — a drop of 9%.

The biggest increase in reported cases in a single police force over the past four years took place in South Yorkshire. The force saw an increase of 577% in cases from 74 in 2011 to 501 in 2014, apparently reflecting the exposure of the Muslim sexual abuse scandal in Rotherham.

On April 14, the president of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lord Neuberger, said in a speech that Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils in court. He added that in order to show fairness to those involved in trials, judges must have “an understanding of different cultural and social habits.” He said:

“Well known examples include how some religions consider it inappropriate to take the oath, how some people consider it rude to look other people in the eye, how some women find it inappropriate to appear in public with their face uncovered, and how some people deem it inappropriate to confront others or to be confronted — for instance with an outright denial.”

Neuberger’s comments came after a judge upheld a ruling allowing Rebekah Dawson, a 22-year-old convert to Islam, to stand trial wearing a niqab, a veil that only leaves the eyes visible.

On April 15, Newsweek magazine reported that the “extreme views of a ‘racist, homophobe and anti-Semite’ who supports killing non-Muslims and ‘stoning adulterers’ are being made available to prison imams and prisoners throughout England and Wales, with the blessing of [prison] authorities.”

The magazine interviewed Haras Rafiq, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism think tank, who warned that British prisons have become “incubators for Islamic extremism” because inmates are being allowed to read the works of controversial South Asian cleric Abul Ala Maududi. Rafiq described Maududi, who died in 1979, as the “grandfather of Islamism.”

Newsweek discovered that hundreds of copies of Maududi’s analyses of the Koran were distributed in March at a training event for prison imams and chaplains held at the prison service college in Rugby. The books came from the Markfield Institute for Higher Education, part of the Islamic Foundation, a UK-based organization that is “inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood.”

On April 22, the Daily Mail published excerpts of a new book, Girl for Sale, which describes the shocking ordeal of Lara McDonnell, who became the victim of a Muslim paedophile gang when she was only 13 years old. She wrote:

“Mohammed was selling me for £250 to paedophiles from all over the country. They came in, sat down and started touching me. If I recoiled, Mohammed would feed me more crack so I could close my eyes and drift away. I was a husk, dead on the inside.

“Sometimes, I would be passed from one pervert to another. In Oxford, many of my abusers were of Asian origin; [in London] these men were Mediterranean, black or Arab.

“Then, at the start of 2012 [some five years after the abuse began], Thames Valley Police asked to see me. They had been conducting a long-overdue investigation into sexual exploitation of young girls and wanted a chat. I told them everything, and by the end of March, Mohammed and his gang were in custody. Unbeknown to me, five other girls were telling police the same story.

“Mohammed’s defense was laughable: he claimed I’d forced him to take drugs and have sex with me. His barrister, a woman, implied I was a racist because all the defendants were Muslim.

“Because the defendants were Muslim, the case had opened sensitive issues about race and religion. My view is clear: they behaved that way because of differences in how they viewed women.”

On April 25, the Telegraph reported that British taxpayers are paying the monthly rent for Hani al-Sibai, the Islamist preacher who “mentored” Mohammed Emwazi (aka Jihadi John, the Islamic State executioner). Al-Sibai, 54, a father of five, lives in a £1 million home in Hammersmith, a district in West London. According to the Telegraph:

“The public purse has also paid for a number of legal actions brought by al-Sibai against the British government in his battle to prevent his deportation to Egypt and also attempts to have his name removed from terror sanctions lists.

“From his home, al-Sibai, also known as Hani Youssef, runs an effective al-Qaeda propaganda machine that includes the al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies. In recent months he has used various Internet sites to praise bin Laden and glorify al-Qaeda for waging war against ‘the Crusader-Zionists.'”

Also in April, the Reverend David Robertson, who will soon take over as Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, wrote a hard-hitting essay on the Christian Today website in which he argued that “fear of Islamophobia is blinding many of our politicians to the threat we face from Islam.” Robertson wrote:

“Christianity is the bedrock and foundation of our secular society. Islam is different. Islam has no doctrine of separation of the spiritual from the political. Islam is, and has always been, a political movement. There can be no such thing as secular Islam. In the Islamic view the world is divided into two houses, Darus Salma, the house of Islam, and Darul Har, the house of war. The former is the actual area controlled by Islam, full political and religious control; the latter is those areas of the world still unsubdued by Islam. Islam means ‘submission,’ not peace.”

Robertson added:

“I recently attended a Monday night meeting at a mosque in my city. … I was impressed by what I observed. There were 150 mostly young men on a Monday night at a prayer meeting. This was not Friday prayers. This was only one of five mosques in the city. And there was a community, social and political aspect which was very impressive. But I was also depressed. Because I knew that there was no church in the city that would have 150 men coming to pray. Because I knew that there was no political or social organization in the city that could come remotely near matching what I observed. And this in a city where only 2 per cent of the population are Muslim. Imagine what power they can hold in a town or city where 25 per cent are Muslim?

“It’s not so much the numbers — government is not done by opinion poll. It’s the organization, social cohesion, wealth and internal discipline that brings the political power; if you want it. And Islam does. A survey was released this week which shows that in the UK as a whole Islam will be 11 per cent of the population within a couple of decades.”

3. Muslim Integration

On April 8, the Leicester Crown Court jailed Jafar Adeli, an Afghan asylum seeker, for 27 months after he admitted to attempting to meet “Amy,” an underage girl, after grooming her online. Adeli, 32, who is married, arranged to meet the girl after engaging in sexual conversations online and sending an indecent image of himself. But he was duped by a paedophile vigilante group called Letzgo Hunting. “Amy” was in fact a vigilante named John who was pretending to be a young girl.

Adeli, who has filed an appeal to remain in Britain, was placed on a ten-year sexual offenses prevention order. Judge Philip Head said: “It was your intention to have full sexual activity with someone you believed to be 14 and something you know to be a crime in this country. You were grooming this person for sexual activity.”

1072Jafar Adeli (left), a 32-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, was jailed in April for 27 months, convicted of arranging to meet an underage girl for sexual relations. Pakistani-born Mohammed Khubaib (right), 43 was convicted in April of sexually grooming girls as young as 12 with food, cash, cigarettes and alcohol.

On April 10, Abukar Jimale, a 46-year-old father of four who sought asylum in the UK after fleeing war-torn Somalia, walked free after sexually assaulting a female passenger as he drove her across Bristol in his taxi. Although Jimale was found guilty of sexual assault and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without her consent, he had his two-year sentence suspended. The defending counsel said that Jimale, who left Somalia in 2001 because he was being persecuted, was a hard-working father who had lost his job and good name as a result of the offenses.

On April 13, Mohammed Khubaib, a Pakistani-born father of five, was convicted of grooming girls as young as 12 with food, cash, cigarettes and alcohol. The 43-year-old married businessman, who lived in Peterborough with his wife and children, befriended girls in his restaurant and then “hooked” them with alcohol — normally vodka — in an attempt to make them “compliant” to sexual advances.

After a trial at the Old Bailey, Khubaib was found guilty of forcing a 14-year-old girl to perform a sex act on him and nine counts of trafficking for sexual exploitation involving girls aged from 12 to 15 between November 2010 and January 2013.

On April 14, Mohammed Ali Sultan, 28, of Wellington, Telford, was sentenced to five years in prison after having been found guilty of two counts of rape and one count of attempted rape. The sentence is in addition to a seven-year sentence after he pled guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child and one count of controlling child prostitution in 2012.

On April 22, four Muslim men were charged with sex crimes against children in Rochdale. Hadi Jamel, 33, of Rochdale, Abid Khan, 38, of Liverpool, Mohammed Zahid, 54, of Rochdale, and Raja Abid Khan, 38, of Rochdale, were each been charged with one count of sexual activity with a child. The charges relate to alleged offenses against one girl who was under 16 at the time.

The charges are the latest to be brought following Operation Doublet, a probe by the Major Incident Team of the Greater Manchester Police into allegations of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale. In March 2015, ten men were charged with sex offenses alleged to have been committed against the girl and six others.

On April 23, Britain’s Electoral Court found Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, guilty of election fraud and ordered him to vacate his post immediately. The Bangladesh-born Rahman and his supporters were found to have used religious intimidation through local imams, vote-rigging and wrongly branding his Labour rival as a racist to secure his re-election for a second term on May 24, 2014.

Rahman, who has been banned from seeking office again, was also found to have allocated local grants to buy votes. He was ordered to pay immediate costs of £250,000 ($390,000) from a bill expected to reach £1 million.

On April 23, the Birmingham Crown Court sentenced Imran Uddin, 25, a student at the University of Birmingham, to four months in jail for hacking into the university computer system to improve his grades. Uddin used keyboard spying devices to steal staff passwords and then increased his grades on five exams. Uddin is believed to be the first ever British student to be jailed for cheating.

On April 23, a jury at Chester Crown Court heard how Masood Mansouri, 33, from Saltney, Flintshire allegedly kidnapped and raped a 20-year-old woman, from Mochdre, near Colwyn Bay, after pretending to be a taxi driver to a woman trying to hail a cab. Five days later, the woman took a fatal overdose, the court heard. Mansouri denied all the charges.

On April 28, Aftab Ahmed, 44, of Winchcombe Place, Heaton, was charged with threatening to behead David Robinson-Young, a candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in Newcastle East.

4. Muslims and the British General Elections

On April 4, the Telegraph reported that a front group for Muslim extremists boasted that it would act as “kingmaker” in the May 7 general election, and that it was “negotiating with the Tory and Labour leadership” to secure its demands.

According to the paper, Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) built links with both parties after claiming to promote “democratic engagement” by Muslims. However, it was actually “a façade to win political access and influence for individuals holding extreme, bigoted and anti-democratic views.”

During a MEND event on April 3, a man named Abu Eesa Niamatullah, who has called British people “animals,” demanded that women should not work, attacked democracy and said that “the Creator is the one who should decide what the laws should be.”

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband, the Labour Party’s candidate for prime minister, vowed to ban “Islamophobia” if he emerged victorious in the elections. In an interview with The Muslim News, Miliband said:

“We are going to make it [Islamophobia] an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime.

“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country.”

The move — which one observer called “utterly frightening” because of its implications for free speech in Britain — was widely viewed as part of an effort by Miliband to pander to Muslim voters.

Previously, Home Secretary Theresa May pledged that if the Conservatives win the elections, every police force in England and Wales would be required to record anti-Muslim hate crimes as a separate category, as is already the case with anti-Semitic crimes.

In Derby, Gulzabeen Afsar, a Muslim candidate for the town council, sparked outrage after she referred to Ed Miliband as “the Jew,” in comments made in Arabic.

Meanwhile, the British-born Islamist Anjem Choudary actively discouraged Muslims from voting. In a stream of Twitter messages using the #StayMuslimDontVote hashtag, Choudary argued that voting is a “sin” against Islam because Allah is “the only legislator.” He has also said that Muslims who vote or run for public office are “apostates.”

Other British Islamists followed Choudary’s lead. Bright yellow posters claiming that democracy “violates the right of Allah” were spotted in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, and Leicester, as part of a grassroots campaign called #DontVote4ManMadeLaw.

One such poster stated:

“Democracy is a system whereby man violates the right of Allah and decides what is permissible or impermissible for mankind, based solely on their whims and desires.

“Islam is the only real, working solution for the UK. It is a comprehensive system of governance where the laws of Allah are implemented and justice is observed.”

Categories: Antisemitism, Britain, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jews, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Sharia law
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Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit

May 16, 2015

Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit, Times of Israel, May 16, 2015

(Update: According to an article at PJ Media, the words weren’t precisely as reported. Instead, the Pope said “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.”  For the Pope, in the course of recognizing “Palestine,” even to express a hope that Abbas may be an “angel of peace” seems as odd as expressing a hope that a rattlesnake may be a good and friendly companion for one’s children.  — DM)

********************

(The Pope seems to have an odd sense of humor. — DM)

000_DV2030018-e1431765591751-635x357Pope Francis welcomes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a private audience on May 16, 2015 in Vatican (AFP Pphoto pool/Alberto Pizzoli)

Pope Francis praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican.

Francis made the compliment Saturday during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.”

Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”

Abbas is in town for the canonization Sunday of two new saints from what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. It also comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty with the “state of Palestine,” making explicit its recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas, for his part, offered Francis relics of the two new saints.

Vatican-Palestinians_Horo-e1431781749661Pope Francis exchanges gifts with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas during an audience at the Vatican Saturday, May 16, 2015. (Alberto Pizzoli/Pool Photo via AP)

The treaty, which was finalized Wednesday but still has to be signed, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

A bilateral commission is putting the final touches to the agreement, on the Catholic Church’s life and activities in Palestine, which then “will be submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a debate in the near future for the signing,” the Vatican said on Wednesday.

Some observers speculated that the agreement could be signed during Abbas’s visit.

The news of the treaty immediately drew ire from Israel.

“Israel heard with disappointment the decision of the Holy See to agree a final formulation of an agreement with the Palestinians including the use of the term ‘Palestinian State’,” said an Israeli foreign ministry official.

“Such a development does not further the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct bilateral negotiations. Israel will study the agreement and consider its next step.”

The agreement, 15 years in the making, expresses the Vatican’s “hope for a solution to the Palestinian question and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians according to the two-state solution,” Antoine Camilleri, the Holy See’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview earlier this week.

In an interview with the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper, Camilleri said he hoped “the accord could, even in an indirect way, help the Palestinians in the establishment and recognition of an independent, sovereign and democratic State of Palestine.”

The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 countries to have recognized Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

Abbas’s visit came a day before two nuns who lived in Ottoman Palestine during the 19th century will be made saints at a Vatican ceremony.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas of Jerusalem and Mariam Bawardy of Galilee will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

Ghattas was born in Jerusalem in 1847, and died there in 1927. She was beatified — the final step before canonization — in 2009.

Bawardy was born in Galilee, now in northern Israel, in 1843. She became a nun in France and died in Bethlehem in 1878.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1983.

Although there are several saints who lived in the region during Christianity’s early days, Bawardy and Ghattas are the first to be canonized from Ottoman-era Palestine.

The canonization of a third Palestinian — a Salesian monk — is still under review by the Church.

Categories: Abbas, Christians, Human rights, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Palestinian Authority, Pope, Two state solution
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