Archive for April 26, 2016

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries

Cartels Help Terrorists in Mexico Get to U.S. to Explore Targets; ISIS Militant Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir Among Them

April 26, 2016

Cartels Help Terrorists in Mexico Get to U.S. to Explore Targets; ISIS Militant Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir Among Them, Judicial Watch, April 26, 2016

Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks, according to information forwarded to Judicial Watch by a high-ranking Homeland Security official in a border state. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by JW’s government source.

Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by JW’s source reveals. Staking out U.S. targets is not difficult and Khabir actually brags in an Italian newspaper article published last week that the border region is so open that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.” Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz, Mexico’s top diplomat, says in the article that she doesn’t understand why the Obama administration and the U.S. media are “culpably neglecting this phenomenon,” adding that “this new wave of fundamentalism could have nasty surprises in store for the United States.”

This disturbing development appears on the Open Source Enterprise, the government database that collects and analyzes valuable material from worldwide print, broadcast and online media sources for the U.S. intelligence community. Only registered federal, state and local government employees can view information and analysis in the vast database and unauthorized access can lead to criminal charges. Updated data gathered on Khabir reveals he’s 52 years old and was ordered to leave Kuwait about a decade ago over his extremist positions. Khabir is currently on ISIS’s (also known as ISIL) payroll and operates a cell in an area of Mexico known as Anapra, according to the recently obtained information.

A year ago Judicial Watch reported on an ISIS camp in this exact area, just a few miles from El Paso. JW’s April 14, 2015 report identified Anapra as the location of the ISIS base, details that were provided to JW by sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector. Anapra is situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At the time JW reported that another ISIS cell was established to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas to target the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming. Sources told JW that, during the course of a joint operation, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

A few months later JW reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling Middle Eastern terrorists into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and that they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers. The foreigners are classified by the U.S. government as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they are transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. At the time JW’s government sources revealed that terrorists have long entered the U.S. through Mexico and in fact, an internal Texas Department of Public Safety report leaked by the media documents that several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations have been apprehended crossing the southern border in recent years.

Earlier this year, as part of an ongoing investigation into national security risks in the porous southern border, JW obtained evidence that proves the U.S. government has known for more than a decade about the partnership between terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. State Department documents made public by JW in January say that for at least ten years “Arab extremists” have entered the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Categories: Islamic terrorism, Mexico, U.S. borders
Tags: , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

If some bearded buffoons or some bag-headed bimbos tell us how offended they are …

April 26, 2016

If some bearded buffoons or some bag-headed bimbos tell us how offended they are …, Pat Condell, April 5, 2016

(He seems overly optimistic. — DM)

Categories: Islam, Islamophobia
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

What Is More “Annoying” Than A Suicide Bomber?

April 26, 2016

What Is More “Annoying” Than A Suicide Bomber? CounterJihad, April 25, 2016

(Dear me! Trump lacks Islamist moral values. Tsk tsk. — DM)

According to the International Union of Muslim Scholars, the answer is Donald Trump.

Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) Ali Qara Daghi told the AFP that his organization finds it annoying that so many Americans support business magnate Donald Trump in the 2016 election.  “This is really annoying us so much that he has these levels of support,” he told reporters.  “His remarks are not consistent with common sense or moral values because he is not honest and exploits attacks on Islam in order to gain access to power.”

It is good to hear that Daghi thinks that remarks by important people should be consistent with common sense and moral values.  The IUMS and its leadership have issued a number of statements we should revisit in light of this new standard.

[T]he International Union of Muslim Scholars [is] run by Muslim Brotherhood chief jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi. Under Qaradawi the IUMS issued fatwas in support of Hamas suicide bombings, and the targeting of Americans in Iraq during the Iraq War, and on called for jihad against secular leaders in Syria, Egypt and Libya. IUMS is considered a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Is it consistent with common sense and moral values to endorse suicide bombings?  Should Americans have been “annoyed” when someone called for their sons and daughters to be targeted in Iraq?  What should we think of the common sense or moral values of people who have endorsed these practices?

Qaradawi and the IUMS also took a hand in the attacks on Danish embassies in the wake of the publication of Mohammed cartoons.  Qaradawi says this in his own words.

[I]n the matter of the cartoons of the Prophet  Muhammad in Denmark, that wronged the Prophet. We called on [da’awna] the Islamic umma, the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and the umma rose up, from one end to the next, in the Easts and the Wests, in the North and the South, hundreds of millions rose up. The Islamic umma, if it found who to awaken it, would rise up and responded [to the call]. The umma has not died.

Qaradawi is facing a demand for extradition by Egypt for his role in the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to overthrow the constitution in that country in 2013.  In the wake of the Egyptian army’s move to prevent the destruction of their constitution, Qaradawi issued a formal call for jihad against Egypt.

Yet somehow Qaradawi has managed to pass as a “moderate” in the Western press even while he was expressing support for Hamas’ suicide attacks.  No one should be fooled.  Neither Qaradawi or the IUMS is moderate.  However annoying Donald Trump may be, the reason his rhetoric garners such widespread support is because of people like them.

Categories: Donald Trump, Islamist moral values
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

How Islam Erased Christianity from History

April 26, 2016

How Islam Erased Christianity from History, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, April 26, 2016

wer

Originally published by PJ Media.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory.

Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire.   As one report put it, ISIS was “burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of” Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam.

As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam’s normative approach.  This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era,” “many historical mistakes,” and “unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum.”  “Tenth grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region.”  Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate, including the portrayal of Christianity as a Western (that is, “foreign”) source of colonization, said al-Kaldani.

Of course, Christian minorities throughout the Middle East—not just in Jordan—have long maintained that the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region’s Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam.

“It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians,” said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt: “Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640].  The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt.  The Christian era was gone.  Disappeared.  An enormous black whole.”[i]

This agrees perfectly with what I recall my parents, Christians from Egypt, telling me of their classroom experiences from more than half a century ago: there was virtually no mention of Hellenism, Christianity, or the Coptic Church—one thousand years of Egypt’s pre-Islamic history. History began with the pharaohs before jumping to the seventh century when Arabian Muslims “opened” Egypt to Islam. (Wherever Muslims conquer non-Muslim territories, Islamic hagiography euphemistically refers to it as an “opening,” fath, never a “conquest.”)

Sharara Yousif Zara, an influential politician involved in the Iraqi Ministry of Education agrees: “It’s the same situation in Iraq.  There’s almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books, and what there is, is totally wrong.  There’s nothing about us being here before Islam.  The only Christians mentioned are from the West.  Many Iraqis believe we moved here.  From the West.  That we are guests in this country.”[ii]

Zara might be surprised to learn that similar ignorance and historical revisionism predominates in the West.  Although Christians are in fact the most indigenous inhabitants of most of the Arab world, I am often asked, by educated people, why Christians “choose” to go and live in the Middle East among Muslims, if the latter treat them badly.

At any rate, the Mideast’s pseudo historical approach to Christianity has for generations successfully indoctrinated Muslim students to suspect and hate Christianity, which is regularly seen as a non-organic parasitic remnant left by Western colonialists (though as mentioned, Christianity precedes Islam in the region by some six centuries).

This also explains one of Islam’s bitterest ironies: a great many of today’s Middle East Christians are being persecuted by Muslims — including of the ISIS variety — whose own ancestors were persecuted Christians who converted to Islam to end their suffering. In other words, Muslim descendants of persecuted Christians are today slaughtering their Christian cousins.  Christians are seen as “foreign traitors” in part because many Muslims do not know of their own Christian ancestry.

Due to such entrenched revisionism, Muslim “scholars” are also able to disseminate highly dubious and ahistorical theses, as seen in Dr. Fadel Soliman’s 2011 book, Copts: Muslims Before Muhammad.  It claims that, at the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the vast majority of Egyptians were not, as Muslim and Western history has long taught, Christians, but rather prototypical Muslims, or muwahidin, who were being oppressed by European Christians: hence, the Islamic invasion of Egypt was really about “liberating” fellow Muslims.

Needless to say, no historian has ever suggested that Muslims invaded Egypt to liberate “proto-Muslims.” Rather, the Muslim chroniclers who wrote our primary sources on Islam, candidly and refreshingly present the “openings” as they were—conquests, replete with massacres, enslavement, and displacement of Christians and the destruction of thousands of churches.

In the end, of course, the Muslim world’s historical approach to Christianity should be familiar.  After all, doesn’t the West engage in the same chicanery?    In both instances, Christianity is demonized and its history distorted by its usurping enemies: in the West, by a host of “isms”—including leftism, moral relativism, and multiculturalism—and in the Middle East, by Islam.

Notes:

[i] Quote from The Last Supper: The Plight of Christians in Arab Lands by Klaus Wivel.

[ii] Ibid.

Categories: History, Islam and Christianity
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Poetry in Erdogan’s Turkey: Jihad in, Satire out

April 26, 2016

Poetry in Erdogan’s Turkey: Jihad in, Satire out, Clarion Project, Uzay Bulut, April 26, 2016

Erdogan-Jan-Bohmermann-HPTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) reads a poem about violent jihad in May, 2015, at a public opening ceremony in the province of Siirt. The Turkish government has called a satirical poem about Erdogan by German comedian Jan Bohmermann (right) a ‘serious crime against humanity.’

On March 8, the Turkish Minister of Finance Naci Agbal read verses from a poem titled Amentu (“I believe”) by Ismet Ozel. The verses recall the Turkish -Greek war in 1920s in Anatolia and refer to the Greeks as kafirs (infidels).

“The adhan (call to prayer) is no longer heard. The cross has been erected on minibars (mosque pulpit),

The kafir Greek has flown his flag on mosques, on everywhere

Then come, my brother, join our hands altogether

Let’s explode the bombs and silence the [church] bells everywhere.”

While the finance minister of Turkey, a country that fancies itself as a candidate for EU membership, read these verses during his speech at Turkey’s parliament, the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, met with his Greek colleague, Alexis Tsipras, in Izmir and told him, “Let’s remove the word ‘war’ from our relations.”

Apparently, the poem which openly calls for “exploding the bombs and silencing the [church] bells everywhere” is perfectly fine according to Turkish-Islamic standards. No state authority or prosecutor has demanded the minister be brought to account for reading it.

At the same time, the satirical, obscene poem read by the German comedian, Jan Bohmermann, which was critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, put the Turkish government in an extreme state of rage.

On March 31, Bohmermann “offered to illustrate impermissible ‘abusive criticism,’ saying, ‘You’re not allowed to do this,’ and read the poem on German TV. Besides its crude sexual references, the piece accused Erdogan of repressing minorities and mistreating Kurds and Christians,” reported Reuters.

If there were a normal government in Turkey ruled by somewhat democratic people, the poem by the German artist would never be a matter of such a frantic debate.

Some people would just laugh at it, others would be disturbed. Some would think it was an intriguing example of artistic expression; others would think it was done in poor taste. Wise ones in Turkey would probably try to learn lessons from it: “Why is that artist criticizing or even mocking us like that? Maybe we are at fault and we should change our ways.” All in all, the poem would probably be in the news for a few days, and then be mostly forgotten.

But above all, the artist would never be exposed to any criminal prosecution for reading a poem that contained profanity but that did not call for violence in any way, shape or form.

The Turkish government authorities could have as well ignored the poem and focused on the real problems of the country – including why the perpetrators who sell Yazidi women in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, Turkey were recently acquitted of any crime.

In December, 2015, the German NDR and SWR TV channels produced footage documenting the slave trade being conducted by the Islamic State (ISIS) through a liaison office in the province of Gaziantep in Turkey, near the border with Syria.

On April 17, 2016, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that the Gaziantep police department had raided the said office and found $310,000, many foreign (non-Turkish) passports and 1,768 pages of Arabic receipts that demonstrate the transfer of millions of dollars between Turkey and Syria.

Six people were brought to court for their involvement in crimes including “being members of an armed terrorist organization.” But the complainant, the Gaziantep Bar Association, was not even invited to attend the hearings that lasted for only 16 days.

“We learnt the ruling accidentally. The court made the decision of acquittal without looking into the documents found by police,” said Bektas Sarkli, the head of the Gaziantep Bar Association, adding that they will go for an appeal.

Apparently, in Turkey, selling Yazidi women and children is not a very big deal. The real “crime,” according to the Turkish government, is the poem of Bohmermann.

Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy Prime Minister of Turkey, and the spokesperson of the government, called the poem a “serious crime against humanity.”

The comedian, who now stands accused of “insulting a foreign leader,” a crime in Germany, could face jail time for reciting a satirical poem on German television. The “sensitive” Turkish government prefers to prosecute those who recite “offensive” poems, but not the ISIS members who sell Yazidi women and children.

Erdogan, too, made a complaint against Bohmermann as a private person on charges of “being insulted by the poem.”

Ironically, in 1999, Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul, spent four months in jail after a conviction for religious incitement through a poem he publicly read. The poem by the pan-Turkic author Ziya Gokalp (1876 – 1924) had an overtly violent message:

“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

In July, 2011, Erdogan, who was then prime minister, read the same verses at Turkey’s parliament.

In May, 2015, at a public opening ceremony in the province of Siirt, President Erdogan read the poem once more (see video below) – this time together with his supporters.

The poem openly called for jihad – but according to the Islamic ideology, if violence will bring about the Islamization of the victims or their descendants, it is not criminal.

Many Islamists do not see jihad as a crime. For their scriptures openly command them “to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.”

Historically and today, the expansionist Islamist raids against non-Muslim peoples are accompanied by mass murders, mass rapes, sex slavery, forced conversions, looting, plundering, mass deportations and so on.

Hence, what the rest of the world would describe as “genocide,” “massacre,” “terrorism” or “ethnic cleansing,” many Islamists describe as “righteous” ways of spreading Islam and of liberating “infidel” lands as well as a good deed (halal) that will open the “doors of Heaven.”

The problem in general seems to be that according to the Islamist mindset, anything inside Islamic scriptures or sharia law such as beating, raping, throat-slitting, beheading, crucifying or selling women as sex slaves is acceptable and not a crime.

But anything outside sharia such as Christmas, a satirical poem, a cartoon of Mohammad and free speech is a crime and must be dealt with by the full force of the law.

The key point is to see the enormous differences between the Islamist ideology — which aims for supremacism, global caliphate and death to or subjugation of non-Muslims — and Western civilization, which protects and even encourages intellectual dissent, free expression and human freedom.

Under German law, prosecutions for insulting a foreign leader can only take place with the express permission of the German government. Although there are currently attempts to pass a bill to abolish the law before Bohmermann’s case can come to court, the Merkel government decided to allow the prosecution to take place.

Sadly, Germany chose to disregard this gigantic civilizational difference and has taken a noxious step to kneeling down to the stealthy threats of Islamists.

Categories: Erdogan, Erdogan and Islamic jihad, Europe, Freedom of speech, Germany, Islam and human rights, Islam and terrorism, Turkey
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself

April 26, 2016

The Death of Free Speech: The West Veils Itself, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, April 26, 2016

♦ The West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto “Je Suis Avijit Roy,” the name of the first of the several bloggers butchered, flogged or jailed last year for criticizing Islam.

♦ Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, sided with the Turks. She condemned the German comedian’s poem, called it a “deliberate insult,” then approved the filing of criminal charges against him for insulting the Turkish president.

♦ The West is veiling its freedom of speech in the confrontation with the Islamic world: this is the story of Salman Rushdie, of the Danish cartoons, of Theo van Gogh, of Charlie Hebdo.

♦ Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, just released an interview with Italy’s largest newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, where he suggested a kind of grand bargain: We Iranians will discuss with you our human rights situation, if you Europeans suppress freedom of expression on Islam.

Last week, Nazimuddin Samad sat at his computer at home and penned a few critical lines against the Islamist drift of his country, Bangladesh. The day after, Samad was approached by four men shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”) and hacked him to death with machetes.

These killings have become routine in Bangladesh, where many bloggers, journalists and publishers are being killed in broad daylight because of their criticism of Islam. There is a hit list with 84 names of “satanic bloggers.” A wave of terrorism against journalists reminiscent of that in Algeria, where 60 journalists were killed by Islamist armed groups between 1993 and 1997.

But these shocking killings have not been worth of a single line in Europe’s newspapers.

Is it because these bloggers are less famous than the cartoonists murdered at Charlie Hebdo? Is it because their stories did not come from the City of Light, Paris, but from one of the poorest and darkest cities in the world, Dhaka?

No, it is because the West has capitulated on freedom of expression. Nobody in the West launched the motto “Je Suis Avijit Roy,” the name of the first of these bloggers butchered last year.

From Bangladesh, we now receive photos of writers in pools of blood, laptops seized by police looking for “evidence” and keyboards burned by the Islamists. We receive images reminiscent of the riots in Bradford, England, over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in 1989, ten years after the Ayatollah Khomeini had revolutionized Iran into a stronghold of Islamic extremism.

Yet the stories of these bloggers from outside Europe remain shrouded by a ghastly transparency, as if their death has been only virtual, as if the internet had become their grave, as if these fallen bloggers did not deserve the virality of social networks.

There is also the case of Raif Badawi, in Saudi Arabia, sentenced to 1,000 lashes, ten years in jail and a fine of $270,000 for blogging thoughts such as, “My commitment is…to reject any repression in the name of religion…a goal that we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way.” The lashing order added that he should be “lashed very severely.” In addition to that, Badawi’s human rights lawyer, Walid Abu al-Khayr, was sentenced on July 6, 2014, to 10 years in prison. He was accused of: “inciting public opinion,” “disobedience in matters of the sovereign,” “lack of respect in dealings with the authorities,” “offense of the judicial system,” “inciting international organizations against the Saudi kingdom” and, finally, for having founded illegally, or without authorization, his association “Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.” He was also forbidden to travel for fifteen years after his release, and fined 200,000 riyals ($53,000) according to Abdullah al-Shihri of the Associated Press.

Also in Saudi Arabia, in a clear violation of international law, according to Amnesty International, on March 24, the journalist Alaa Brinji was sentenced to five years in prison, an eight year travel ban and a fine of $13,000 for a few tweets allegedly “insulting the rulers,” inciting public opinion,” and “accusing security officers of killing protestors in Awamiyya,” the kingdom’s eastern province where the oil fields and the Shiites are.

Unfortunately, Western governments never raise Badawi’s case when they visit Saudi Arabia’s rulers, and turn a blind eye to the way this country treats its own citizens.

Look also at what happened not in the poor and Islamic Bangladesh, but in the wealthy and secularized Germany, where a comedian named Jan Böhmermann mocked and insulted Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a television show. The prosecutor of Mainz just opened a case against Böhmermann under paragraph 103 of the German Penal Code, which provides up to five years in prison for insulting a foreign head of state. Chancellor Angela Merkel sided with the Turks. She condemned the comedian’s poem, called it a “deliberate insult,” then approved the prosecution against him.

Meanwhile, the German public television station, Zdf, removed the video from their website, and Böhmermann raised the white flag by suspending his show. The comedian, after Islamist death threats, got police protection.

The West is veiling its freedom of speech in the confrontation with the Islamic world: this is the story of Salman Rushdie, of the Danish cartoons, of Theo van Gogh, of Charlie Hebdo.

1053 (1)Theo van Gogh (left) was murdered by an Islamist because he made a film critical of Islam. Salman Rushdie (right) was lucky to stay alive, spending many years in hiding, under police protection, after Iran’s Supreme Leader ordered his murder because he considered Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses “blasphemous.”

A few weeks ago, at Rome’s Capitoline Museum, a famous repository of Western antiquities, the government of Italy called for “respect” for the sensibilities of Iran’s President Rouhani and placed large boxes over nude sculptures.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, just released an interview with Italy’s largest newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, where he suggested a kind of grand bargain: We Iranians will discuss with you our human rights situation, if you Europeans suppress freedom of expression on Islam: “Human rights are reason for concern for everyone,” Zarif said. “We are ready to dialogue. We shall make our observations on alienation of the Muslim communities in many European societies, or how freedom of expression is abused to desecrate the symbols of Islam.”

And that is exactly what is happening right now — of course with no mention of how freedom of speech or human rights are abused in “many Muslim societies.” Or how violent repression there “is abused to desecrate the symbols of the free world.”

The Iranian ayatollahs recently added to the bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie. And as it happened with Saudi Arabia’s or Bangladesh’s bloggers, nobody in Europe protested and Mrs. Merkel has been willing to abandon the German comedian to the autocratic Turkish Islamists.

In Pakistan, a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, is now fighting for her life in prison, where, condemned to death for “blasphemy,” she awaits her fate. European public opinion, which is always generous in rallying against “the persecution of minorities,” did not fill the streets and the squares to protest Asia Bibi’s imprisonment.

Further, for Europe’s journalists and writers, it has become increasingly difficult to find publishers. This is true of, for instance, Caroline Fourest, author of the French book Eloge du blasphème. “The treatment of her work by the publishing industry shows how much has been lost” wrote the British journalist, Nick Cohen. “No Anglo-Saxon publisher would touch it, and only fear can explain the rejection letters.”

“No American or British publisher has been willing to publish the book” Mrs. Fourest told this author. “‘There is no market for this book’, I was repeatedly told, to justify their desire not to touch something explosive. It was an important project which Salman Rushdie tried to sponsor with his own publishing houses. It is alarming because more and more I see that my colleagues behave as useful idiots.”

Europe is also suppressing freedom of expression for the very few moderate Islamic voices. On January 31, 2016, an Algerian writer named Kamel Daoud published an article in the French newspaper Le Monde on the events of New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany. What Cologne showed, says Daoud, is how sex is “the greatest misery in the world of Allah.”

A few days later, Le Monde ran a response by sociologists, historians and anthropologists who accused Daoud of being an “Islamophobe,” Jeanne Favret-Saada, an orientalist at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, wrote that Daoud “spoke as the European far-right.” Daoud has been defended only by a few other Arab writers exiled in Europe.

The affair is the mirror of Europe’s forsaking freedom of expression: a great Arab writer expresses precious truths and the mainstream European media and intellectuals, instead of protecting Daoud while Islamists threatened him with death, press the novelist to choose silence.

Categories: America, Europe, Freedom of speech, Iran - human rights, Islam and human rights
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Security Expert: N. Korea Has Capability To Incapacitate US

April 26, 2016

Security Expert: N. Korea Has Capability To Incapacitate US, Western Journalism, Randy DeSoto, April 25, 2016

A defense expert warns that North Korea now has two satellites orbiting the United States, capable of engaging in an electromagnet pulse attack that would bring the nation to a standstill.

“Peter Vincent Pry told G2 Bulletin that the satellites can be commanded either to de-orbit and hit a target on the ground or explode at a high altitude to create an EMP effect that would knock out the unprotected U.S. national electrical grid system and all life-sustaining critical infrastructures that depend on it,” World Net Daily reported.

“The threat,” Pry said, “continues to race, hare-like, at an alarming rate, compared to the tortoise pace of our preparations.”

The U.S. intelligence community does not know what, if any, payload North Korean satellites KMS-3-2 and KMS 4 contain, according to Pry, but they orbit the country at approximately 300 miles above the earth and from that altitude a detonated low yield hydrogen bomb could incapacitate America.

Additionally, the Washington Examiner reported that the communist nation launched its first submarine based missile over the weekend. “This is something that started as a joke, but has turned into something very serious,” a Pentagon official told the news outlet.

While the launch from the submarine “Gorae” was successful, the flight of the KN-11 missile was failure, with it only traveling a distance of 20 miles. According to the Pentagon official, the rogue regime’s diesel-powered submarines, like the Gorae, pose little threat to the United State because they lack the range to reach the North American coast without being detected.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon is taking the launch seriously. “North Korea’s pursuit of ballistic missile nuclear weapons capabilities continues to pose a significant threat to the United States, to our allies in the region and remains obviously a significant concern, said Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook. “It is just the latest in a series of steps they’ve taken that we think have been counterproductive.”

Categories: EMP attack, North Korea, U.S
Tags: , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Terror ties of BDS backers revealed

April 26, 2016

Terror ties of BDS backers revealed, Israel National News, David Rosenberg, April 26, 2016

BDSBDS activists (file) Wikimedia Commons

While the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has done little to hide its malicious anti-Israel hatred, the movement hitherto has succeeded in maintaining the appearance of legitimacy, presenting itself as the peaceful alternative to terrorism.

Despite rhetoric which pro-Israel activists have noted signals a rejection of Jewish statehood per se and draws upon the kind of terrorist propaganda disseminated by Hamas and the PLO, no clear link tying BDS to supporters of terror organizations could be found.

Last week, however, a former terrorism finance analyst for the US Treasury Department offered testimony to congress suggesting connections between the BDS movement and supporters of the Hamas terror group.

Jonathan Schanzer, who worked for the US Treasury Department from 2004 to 2007 monitoring terrorist funding, spoke before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee last Tuesday regarding the ties between the BDS movement and terror fundraisers including the now defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

Schanzer noted that three prominent Islamic organizations – the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the KindHearts for Charitable Development – had been prosecuted and eventually shut down after serving as fronts for the Hamas terror group.

While many of the organizers responsible for these three groups were given prison sentences or deported from the US, others high-level members were involved in the founding of American Muslims for Palestine.

An inquiry by the Investigative Project on Terrorism found that five high-ranking officials in American Muslims for Palestine had been members of the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Schanzer pointed out other senior Islamic Association for Palestine members now operating in the AMP.

Rafeeq Jaber, for instance, had served as President of the IAP. Today, he is an official working for the AMP’s Educational Foundation. Former IAP secretary general, Abdelbasset Hamayel, is now listed as an AMP agent in the organization’s Chicago branch.

Other AMP members include Hossein Khatib, a former regional director for the Holy Land Foundation who now serves on the AMP board of directors.

Salah Sarsour is another AMP board member with ties to the Holy Land Foundation. Both Salah and his brother, Jamil, had served time in Israel over their ties to Hamas. Jamil admitted that he and his brother Salah had raised funds for the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

Anti-Israel organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which operates on college campuses across the US, are heavily funded by the AMP. In recent years the AMP has become one of the leading financial backers of BDS groups like the SJP.

Aside from direct financial support, the “AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials… and grants to SJP activists. AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups,” Schanzer testified.

In some cases, terrorists were involved directly in the operation of BDS organizations. Schanzer offered the example of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel, a Chicago-based BDS group run by a former PFLP terrorist.

“The group’s president is Chicago resident Ghassan Barakat, a consular notary for the Palestine Liberation Organization who has been identified… as a member of the Palestine National Council.”

Barakat was a “’fighter in the ranks of the mountain brigade’ for the PFLP,” a reference to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terror group responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in Israel including the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre and 2014 Jerusalem Synagogue Massacre.

Categories: BDS, Israel, Terrorism
Tags: , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Islamisation is banned by the constitution in Hungary

April 26, 2016

Islamisation is banned by the constitution in Hungary, Website of the Hungarian Government, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, April 25, 2016

At a ceremony on the fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the Fundamental Law, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Islamisation is banned by the constitution in Hungary.

The Hungarian government cannot support any mass migration movements which could lead to results conflicting with the National Avowal contained within the Fundamental Law. “Neither the legislature nor the government of the day may pursue such a policy within constitutional boundaries”, he said.

He said that in drafting the “Schengen 2.0” action plan, the Hungarian government is fulfilling its constitutional obligation to protect Hungary’s citizens. The external borders must be protected, and procedures regarding those wishing to come to Europe must be conducted outside the EU, in enclosed and guarded areas, the Prime Minister reiterated.

OrbanHe said that in drafting the “Schengen 2.0” action plan the Hungarian government is fulfilling its constitutional obligation to protect Hungary’s citizens. Photo: Gergely Botár/kormany.hu

In his view it is likewise reasonable to expect illegal migrants to be sent back without delay to safe transit countries, or to their countries of origin if the latter are safe. He also argued that development and visa agreements with countries outside Europe must be tied to conditions.

Mr. Orbán pointed out that it is important that the responses to demographic and labour market challenges are the sovereign decisions of Member States.

The Prime Minister said that, in order to meet the constitutional obligation of protecting the citizens of Hungary, “we must know who wants to come to our country and why; in other words, we have the right to choose whom we wish to live together with and whom we do not wish to live together with”. He added that this is not in conflict with the principle of the universal protection of refugees.

HungaryHungary and Central Europe are anxious to take action, and are full of energy. Photo: Gergely Botár/kormany.hu

Speaking further on the issue of constitutionality, the Prime Minister said that while the European Union has no workable solutions to its various crises, Hungary and Central Europe “are anxious to take action, and are full of energy”. In his view the reason for this difference can be found in the fact that Hungary has a modern constitution, and the Hungarians are able to define where they come from, where they are and where they are heading. “By contrast, Europe denies where it came from and is reluctant to admit where it is heading”, he said.

Mr. Orbán said that, according to the figures, the EU should be the world’s leading power. By contrast, however, “it only has energy for self-reproach”, which is clearly shown in the attacks against Hungary and Poland, which often refer to their respective constitutions.

In conflict with its founding treaty, he said, the EU is made up of its institutions, and the Member States are being required to assist these. In his view, this is why the EU is unable to explore the opportunities which its existence has created.

New constitutionThe new constitution was not conceived in an academic debate, but in a battle, in a great political struggle. Photo: Gergely Botár/kormany.hu

Mr. Orbán also spoke at length about the circumstances surrounding the drafting of the Fundamental Law five years ago. He said that the new constitution was not conceived in an academic debate, but in a battle, in a great political struggle, of which “we, who are sitting here today, are the winners”. With this victory, he continued, Hungary and its citizens have gained firm foundations for their lives, which can serve as the basis for a period of improvement.

He said that the adoption of the Fundamental Law was preceded by a series of consultations, and the majority views coming from these consultations were all incorporated, without exception. These included some, he said, with which he did not personally agree. As an example he mentioned the plan to grant parents the right to vote on behalf of their children.

The Prime Minister also said that “the siren voices were loud” which sought to prevent Hungary pursuing the idea of creating a new constitution – particularly at the beginning of the government term, as this could have damaged Hungary’s EU presidency. “We would like to thank everyone who resisted those siren voices, and who understood that […] in politics, timing is at least as important as content”, he said.

PoliticsIn politics, timing is at least as important as content. Photo: Gergely Botár/kormany.hu

The Prime Minister added that they knew precisely what kind of attacks would be launched after the drafting of the new constitution. In this context he also thanked the President of Hungary at that time, Pál Schmitt – who also attended the ceremony. Mr.  Schmitt, the Prime Minister said, was also aware of the consequences of his signing the document. “External and foreign forces will never forgive him […] for this act. This is important, and it places an obligation on us; because if they never forgive him, we can never forget what he did”, Mr. Orbán said.

The Prime Minister believes that there will always be “debates within the elite” on the constitution, in particular in a country with as sophisticated a culture as Hungary’s. “Our country has some strata of thinkers who always generate more thoughts than can be used”, he said, explaining that debates of this type regarding the constitution can also be expected over the long term.

The Fundamental Law can be solid and durable despite this, he stated, saying that “the foundations for the durability of the constitution can be laid by its tangible political and economic achievements”. In his view, if it is followed by a period of prosperity and improvement, the new constitutional order will strengthen.

foundationThe foundations for the durability of the constitution can be laid by its tangible political and economic achievements. Photo: Gergely Botár/kormany.hu

He pointed out that, despite the fact that different intellectual concepts on the foundations of a constitution are mutually exclusive, the possibility of peaceful coexistence in observance of the fundamental law of the day is a question of will. To this end, we must acquire “the culture of peaceful disagreement”, he said, arguing that “in a democracy, opposing parties do not cut off heads, but count them”.

At the same time, the Prime Minister voiced dissatisfaction that the principles laid down in the constitution are being only very slowly realised in lower-level legislation and in public administration and judicial rulings. As an example he mentioned the maintenance and care of parents: we have seen very little of the practical implementation of this, he said.

In response to the words of Péter Darák, President of the Curia, Mr. Orbán remarked that further debates can be expected on the issue of the division of tasks under the constitution. He also mentioned that the legislative amendment of the freedom of assembly would be timely.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)

Categories: Europe, European Union, Hungarian Constitution, Islamisation, Viktor Orbán
Tags: , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Dutch Newspaper Publishes Front Page Cartoon Mocking Erdogan After The Arrest Of Dutch Journalist

April 26, 2016

Dutch Newspaper Publishes Front Page Cartoon Mocking Erdogan After The Arrest Of Dutch Journalist, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, April 26, 2016

Netherlands cartoon

Erdogan (like Vladimir Putin) is the face of modern authoritarianism — promising prosperity in exchange for the dismantling of basic civil liberties. The question is whether the West will rally to the side of free speech in time to stop these leaders from returning the world to the age of criminalized speech and censorship.

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

As Western leaders like Angela Merkel cave into the authoritarian demands of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in crushing free speech, journalists and cartoonists are fighting back. After a Dutch journalist was arrested in Turkey this weekend for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most-read newspaper in the Netherlands threw down the gauntlet and published a front-page editorial cartoon that shows Erdogan as an ape crushing Europe’s free speech. Since Erdogan demands the prosecution of journalists even outside of Turkey who insult him, the publication could force another confrontation with the aspiring dictator. In the meantime, the West (including the United States) continue to prop up Erdogan as he destroys secular government in Turkey, arrests journalists, and denies the most basic forms of free speech.

The cartoon, entitled “the long arm of Erdogan” was published by the populist daily De Telegraaf, has an ape with Erdogan’s face squashing a woman who appears to be Ebru Umar, the Dutch writer who was arrested in Turkey on Sunday. In the cartoon, the Turkish president is standing on a rock labeled “Apenrots” — a Dutch term meaning “monkey rocks” that is used to refer to the Dutch Foreign Ministry but can also refer to a place where one dominant individual holds power.

It will now to interesting to watch whether the government follows Merkel’s lead in profusely apologizing to Erdogan for the exercise of free speech and/or attempts to bring charges of some kind in the case. The problem for Western leaders who have been leading the rollback on free speech is that citizens are beginning to see the implications of the loss of this defining right for Western Civilization. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).

Erdogan (like Vladimir Putin) is the face of modern authoritarianism — promising prosperity in exchange for the dismantling of basic civil liberties. The question is whether the West will rally to the side of free speech in time to stop these leaders from returning the world to age of criminalized speech and censorship.

Categories: Erdogan, Freedom of speech, Germany, Merkel, Netherlands, The West, Turkey
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries