Archive for May 6, 2016

« WarSclerotic home page
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Real Flag Issue

May 6, 2016

The Real Flag Issue, Front Page Magazine, Lloyd Billingsley, May 6, 2016

Mex flag

Last year, South Carolina’s Republican Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia. The June 17 massacre of nine African Americans in a Charleston church launched efforts to take down the banner, which evoked racism, segregation and the 1861-1864 war between the states. Last July, when South Carolina lowered the Confederate banner for the last time, the crowd responded with chants of “USA! USA!” During the 2016 presidential campaign, a different flag issue is coming to the fore.

Violent anti-Trump protesters have been waving the flag of Mexico. The Mexican flag was on display in southern California last week, where one protest featured a child holding a sign reading “Make America Mexico Again.” Such fervor prompted a column from Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee. He argues that, aside from one public ceremony in Sacramento,  “the Mexican flag has no place in American politics, and it’s disturbing to see it popping up with increasing regularity.” This is hardly a new development.

When Californians vote on issues such as English as the state’s official language (Proposition 63, 1986); benefits for undocumented immigrants (Proposition 187, 1994); racial preferences in college admissions (Proposition 209, 1996) and bilingual education (Proposition 227, 1998) Mexican flags suddenly appeared by the thousands. This reflects the tenaciously held belief that California somehow remains part of Mexico, and that Mexicans are only coming to what amounts to their own country. They are therefore entitled to education, medical care, drivers’ licenses, welfare, and in-state college tuition. Politicians give tacit assent to this package.

Vice President Joe Biden explains that illegal immigrants are “already Americans.” In her recent book Hard Choices, Democratic presidential frontrunner and former First Lady Hillary Clinton helpfully explains, “after all, much of the southwestern part of the United States was part of Mexico.” So little wonder that Mexicans stream across the border, with additional encouragement from “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco. There Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi welcomed even violent felons such as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and five-time deportee accused of gunning down Kathryn Steinle. In similar style, in 2014 two Sacramento County police officers fell victim to Mexican national and repeat deportee Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, who said in court, “I killed them cops.”

Instead of restricting sanctuary cities, California politicians are more concerned with driving old Dixie down. A bill by Orinda Democrat Steve Glazer removes the names of Confederates such as Robert E. Lee from schools, public buildings and such. If politicians are in the mood for purges, they can find more fertile ground in Spanish colonialism.

Spanish colonialism was built on the enslavement of the native peoples they conquered. Under the encomienda system, native peoples were part of the land grants the conquistadores gave to Spanish settlers. The native peoples were required to work for the encomenderos, who considered them property. The white Spanish imperialists were also unabashed racists who exploited slaves from western Africa for mining and agriculture.

California’s chain of religious missions is the direct legacy of Spanish colonialism, as are city names such as San Diego, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara and many others. By the standards of the historical purge crew, these are due for some fundamental change. Los Angeles could become Mickey Mouse City and San Diego the Navy Base City. San Francisco could opt for “The City,” as residents call it now, or “Sanctuary City.” In all this fervor, the politically correct have lost sight of some historical realities.

The Confederate States of America lost the war of 1861-1865 to the United States of America, so it seems entirely fitting to take down the Confederate battle flag.  On the other hand, 168 years ago, a full 15 years before the Civil War, when the Ottoman Empire, Austrian Empire, and Prussia were major players, the United States of America fought a war with Mexico. Whatever the causes of that 1846-1848 conflict, the USA won and Mexico lost. Mexico duly signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican flag no longer flew over California and much of the southwestern United States. The rest should be history, but it isn’t.

“Donald Trump isn’t running for president of Mexico,” cautions Marcos Breton, but that’s how a violent faction of the Left sees it. The Mexican flag is their battle flag, and we will be seeing it more and more as November approaches.

Meanwhile, nobody is waving Prussian flags and yelling for “Prussian Power.” Nobody is posing children with banners reading “Make Italy the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Again.”  But the Left wants America to be Mexico Again.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Illegal immigration, Mexican flag in America, Mexico, Obama and uncontrolled immigration, Sanctuary cities, U.S. borders
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Gun attack on Turkish editor outside court during his trial for exposing Turkey-Syria weapons convoy( video )

May 6, 2016

Gun attack on Turkish editor outside court during his trial for exposing Turkey-Syria weapons convoy

Published time: 6 May, 2016 14:42 Edited time: 6 May, 2016 15:48

Source: Gun attack on Turkish editor outside court during his trial for exposing Turkey-Syria weapons convoy — RT News

An assailant has tried to shoot the editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper Can Dündar , before the court was to announce the verdict on his case, Reuters reported, citing witnesses. The paper had published reports implicating the Turkish government in having links with extremists.

The gunman shouted “traitor” before firing at least three shots at the journalist, an eyewitness told Reuters, adding that Dündar, who was unarmed, was not injured in the incident.

Reportedly at least one journalist who was covering Dündar’s trial was injured, however.

READ MORE: ‘Govt. trying to hide’: Turkey closes then postpones trials of two leading opposition journalists

Dündar, 54, and his colleague, chief of Ankara bureau of Cumhuriyet, Erdem Gul, 49, stand accused of trying to topple the government, something they allegedly attempted to do in May 2015 by publishing a video purporting to reveal truckloads of arms shipments to Syria overseen by Turkish intelligence.

The Cumhuriyet report in May 2015 claimed that Turkey’s state intelligence agency was helping to transfer weapons to Syria by trucks.

Both Dündar and Erdem spent 92 days in jail, almost half of that time in solitary confinement, before the Constitutional Court ruled in February that their pre-trial detention was a violation of their rights.

READ MORE: Jailed Turkish journalists say arrests were aimed at sending ‘clear message’ to the press

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly stated that the trucks really belonged to the MIT intelligence agency, but were carrying aid to Turkmens in Syria, who are fighting both Assad’s forces and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The journalists remain under judicial supervision and are banned from leaving the country, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.

READ MORE: Erdogan: ‘I don’t respect court ruling to free Cumhuriyet journalists’

Their detention fuelled criticism from international human rights groups, as well as from the EU. US Vice President Joe Biden said that Turkey was setting a poor example for the region by intimidating the media.

The journalists’ arrests and trial prompted numerous protests across Turkey.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Importing Terror

May 6, 2016

Importing Terror, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, May 6, 2016

Obama with Syrians

President Obama is willing to gamble with the lives of American citizens. He is intent on emptying Guantanamo of as many of the detainees as possible, even as some of the released jihadists have returned to the battlefield to fight against our soldiers. Now the Obama administration is reportedly planning to accelerate the screening process for Syrians claiming refugee status, so that they can be rapidly resettled in communities across the United States.

The Washington Free Beacon has reported that, according to its sources, “The Obama administration has committed to bring at least 10,000 Syrian refugees onto American soil in fiscal year 2016 by accelerating security screening procedures from 18-24 months to around three months.”

The current resettlement vetting process for self-proclaimed refugees begins with an initial screening by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  The applications of some who make it through this preliminary UN screen are referred to United States authorities for further consideration and possible resettlement. UNCHR’s role in the front end of the vetting process should be reason enough for alarm.

The United Nations has called for more open borders to accommodate the millions of “refugees” and other migrants whom have left the Middle East and North Africa. To this end, UNCHR is said to be looking for alternative avenues to admit Syrian refugees that are faster than the current refugee “resettlement” vetting process. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi suggested a number of such alternatives last March, at a high-level meeting held in Geneva to discuss “global responsibility sharing through pathways for admission of Syrian refugees.”

Among the alternative “pathways” listed by the UNCHR High Commissioner for Refugees were “labour mobility schemes, student visa and scholarships, as well as visa for medical reasons.” He added, “Resettlement needs vastly outstrip the places that have been made available so far… But humanitarian and student visa, job permits and family reunification would represent safe avenues of admission for many other refugees as well.”

The net effect of expanding the grounds for admitting Syrian refugees to include job and student related visas could be to bump American citizens from jobs and scholarships that are given to the refugees instead.

Apparently, the Obama administration is onboard with looking for alternatives to the current refugee resettlement system that depends on cooperation with the states. Perhaps it is reacting to the fact that numerous states have recently elected to opt out of refugee resettlement programs, including New Jersey.

“The United States joins UNHCR in calling for new ways nations, civil society, the private sector, and individuals can together address the global refugee challenge,” the State Department wrote in a Media Note following the Geneva conference. The State Department added that it has “created a program to allow U.S. citizens and permanent residents to file refugee applications for their Syrian family members.”

Who are such “family members?” Would they include siblings and cousins of fighting age? Do we really want to add more loopholes to the existing visa system, which was already breached by the female jihadist who took part in the San Bernardino massacre after being admitted to the United States on a “fiancé” visa? Apparently so, if the Obama administration gets its way. Speeding up the “refugee” admission process and avoiding state roadblocks in the current refugee resettlement pathway appear to have become its top priority.

Meanwhile, Obama administration officials tell us not to worry. They assure us they have a “robust” screening process in place to vet Syrians claiming to be refugees. Don’t believe them. They are deliberately turning a blind eye to the warnings of experts such as FBI Director James Comey, who said last year, during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing, that the federal government lacked the data to adequately vet “refugees” seeking entry to the U.S.

“We can only query against that which we have collected,” Comey told the committee. “So if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned earlier this year that he considered ISIS and its branches to be the number 1 terrorist threat. Clapper pointed to ISIS’s success in “taking advantage of the torrent of migrants to insert operatives into that flow.”

Even those “refugees” who enter the United States without pre-existing ties to ISIS are vulnerable to indoctrination by jihadists already in this country. Somali “refugees” are a prime example. As Andrew Liepman, who was serving as deputy director for intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center until he retired from government service in 2012, said during the first year of Obama’s presidency: “Despite significant efforts to facilitate their settlement into American communities, many Somali immigrants face isolation.”

Jihadists have been busy “recruiting and radicalizing young people,” Liepman added.

Nevertheless, seven years later, the Obama administration continues to send as many as 700 Somali “refugees” per month to cities across the United States, with the largest number settling in Minnesota where large concentrations of Somalis already live.

Barack Obama has said that it is wrong to “start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.” He refuses to associate Islam or jihad with acts of terrorism or with what he calls violent extremism. He rails against “negative stereotypes of Islam” and “those who slander the prophet of Islam.” But telling the truth about the violent and supremacist strains in Islamic ideology, rooted in the Koran and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad, is neither stereotyping nor slander. It is identifying the enemy we are fighting. And wanting to make sure that we have a foolproof vetting system in place before admitting more Muslims from the sectarian conflict-ravaged areas in the Middle East or North Africa is neither fear-mongering nor discrimination. It is common sense defense of the American people from undue risk of attacks in our homeland, which is the primary duty of every U.S. president as commander-in-chief including Barack Obama.

Categories: Homeland Security, Islam and human rights, Islam and terrorism, Islam in America, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Obama and GITMO, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America 2016, UNCHR
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump

May 6, 2016

Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump, Israel National News, David Friedman, May 6, 2016

Several weeks ago, I was “outed” as one of Donald Trump’s two advisors on the relationship between the United States of America and the State of Israel. It is an honor and a privilege to advise Mr. Trump on a critical issue that is near and dear to my heart, and I fervently hope that I have the opportunity to assist him in developing and implementing policies that strengthen both countries and the unbreakable bond between them.

Right now, however, the bloodsport of American presidential politics is in full bloom, and within that scented garden emerges a recent Op-Ed piece by CNN panelist, Peter Beinart, published in Israel’s left-wing paper Haaretz. Beinart, a well-known supporter of J Street, New Israel Fund and the BDS movement, decries Trump’s selection of Israel advisors as a cynical charade by which Trump leverages Jews in his employ to go “all in” on Israel solely to garner political capital. According to Beinart, these token Jews, myself included, are just willing pawns in a modern day Game of Thrones, all willing to fall on their proverbial swords for Trump the King.

I have never met Mr. Beinart nor do I care to, and he knows absolutely nothing about me. Had he made the slightest inquiry (apparently no longer necessary for modern journalists), he would have known that I am not in Mr. Trump’s employ,  have hundreds of other clients, and hold views on Israel that are entirely independent of any political movement or candidate.  Those views have been developed over more than thirty years of study of historical accounts and scholarly works, interaction with Israeli political, military and business leaders, and probably 100 trips or more to the Holy Land. I didn’t just come out of “central casting,” as Beinart implies, to facilitate some political theatre, and my beliefs are not for sale to the highest bidder. The same holds true for Jason Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s other advisor, whom I have known for years.

But I do want to thank Mr. Beinart for getting this issue out on the table, albeit clumsily and disingenuously. Because his reflexive reaction to my involvement in the Trump candidacy lays bare how dangerous the Jewish left is to the State of Israel.

Let’s look at the criticisms offered by Mr. Beinart of views that I have previously expressed. He thinks I’m no good because  (1) I have accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism,” (2) I have questioned the wisdom of Israel bestowing the benefits of citizenship, including free tuition at some of its best universities, upon those who advocate the overthrow of the State, and (3) I have likened J Street supporters to “kapos during the Nazi era.” Let’s unpack each of those a bit.

First, Obama’s anti-Semitism. Here’s the context – Hamas puts on school plays in which 10 year olds dressed as terrorists plunge fake knives into 10 year olds dressed as Jews to the delight of the audience, and Palestinian Authority leaders (they’re supposed to be the “moderate ones”) bestow praise upon all participating in the “knife intifada.” Asked to comment on the unspeakable tragedy of innocent Jewish civilians being murdered by knife-wielding Islamic radicals, Obama and Kerry do little more than condemn the proverbial “cycle of violence.” I’m sorry, but this is pure and outright murder and any public figure who finds it difficult to condemn it as such without diluting the message with geo-political drivel is engaging in “blatant anti-Semitism.”

Second, the wisdom of free stuff for those engaged in advocating the overthrow of the State of Israel. Every civilized country other than Israel punishes treason. In the United States, advocating to overthrow the government by force or violence can get you life in prison. In Israel, Islamic radical citizens speak this way all the time, often on the way back and forth from world class institutions of higher learning which they attend for free. Is this a good idea? Is there no minimal allegiance required for Israeli citizenship? Sure seems like a fair question to me.

Finally, are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps. The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.

Mr. Beinart, therefore, has done us a service, albeit unintentionally. He has shown us the danger of the Jewish left – the lost souls who blame Israel for not making a suicidal “peace” with hateful radical Islamists hell bent on Israel’s destruction. This is Hillary Clinton’s crowd, and they are no friends of Israel.

Donald Trump’s view of Israel isn’t quite as nuanced as that of Mr. Beinart nor as academic as that of President Obama. He thinks that when radical Islamic terrorists are trying to kill you, the right thing to do is kill them first. Don’t negotiate, reason or cajole. Just defeat them. Or as Mr. Trump would say, “win.”

So please read Peter Beinart’s latest column. It will leave you convinced to vote for Donald Trump.

Categories: 2016 elections, Abbas, Antisemitism, BDS, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Donald Trump, Foreign policy, Gaza, Haaretz, Hypocrisy, Islam and Jews, Israel, J Street, Leftists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama's anti-semitism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian incitement, Republicans
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Indiana Trump

May 6, 2016

Indiana Trump, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, May 6, 2016

Trump at Israel HayomRepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump | Photo credit: AP

“I was born for the storm, and a calm doesn’t suit me.” These words were uttered by Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, but could easily have come out of the mouth of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Indiana set the tone this week: The state, which is better versed in motor races than presidential races, demonstrated that Trump is the man Republican voters want. The Indiana primaries also showed that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is in real trouble, even if — as expected — she is nominated by her party.

In the Midwestern state’s primaries, it turned out that American citizens are not necessarily dreaming of seeing Clinton in the Oval Office. She is not whetting the Democrats’ electoral appetite, as the unexpected success of Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) in Indiana and 18 other states proves.

In Indiana, the gun for the real race went off: Clinton versus Trump. Yes, Trump. The man who put egg on the faces of pundits worldwide, even here in Israel; the man who became his party’s presumptive nominee before reaching the minimum of 1,237 delegates necessary to guarantee his candidacy for president. You can argue with the Republican voters, but they are the ones who decide.

Since the Indiana primaries, experts, pundits, and members of the GOP establishment, which produced former presidents Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, have changed their tune, falling in line with the winner. On their Twitter accounts, they expressed a unified opinion — in the end, when a serious decision has to be made, Trump is preferable to Clinton.

A little over two months from now, the Republican convention will take place in Ohio. It looks like those who did not want Trump as the party’s candidate could see him win the presidency in November.

Clinton is marking time. Trump, on the other hand, keeps moving up. The man whom many called “Mr. 30%” has risen to 50% within weeks. It happened just when he was expected to hit a bump in the road, just when his opponents, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich joined forces to stop him.

Trump’s leaps and bounds this past month defeated all expectations. Since the primaries in New York, his home state, Trump has won in five northeastern states — Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Delaware. On Tuesday, he managed a victory in Indiana and with the statistics of a real winner — between 50-60% support.

The wind went out of the sails

America is watching the finance stag from New York galloping on and cannot understand how it happen. Why did no one foresee this phenomenon? Why, when Trump declared his candidacy last June, did everyone treat it like a gimmick? The answers can be found in the eight years of U.S. President Barack Obama’s terms in office. Despite the efforts of his supporters to present the 44th U.S. president as a success story, his administration has been a failure, due mainly to the expectations that he himself created. From a president who wanted to change America and the rest of the world along with it, Obama turned into a president who mostly changed America, but not the world. And if so, not for the better.

Many Americans today think that the president, to a large extent, stole their country from them. Rationality has given way to emotions: They do not think in terms of numbers — unemployment percentages, inflation, deficit, GDP; they think about values — country, military, family. They are finding it hard to believe that their America, a superpower that once led the world, has changed its face and suddenly become just another country. A country that “leads from behind,” as Obama himself put it in the Libya campaign, and does so willingly.

That is not the American dream — but it might be the American nightmare. Once, even an immigrant to the U.S. from Asia, Europe, or Africa was asked to conform to American values. In the age of Obama, the immigrants learned that the U.S. may try to conform to them. Good? Bad? What is certain is that this isn’t the American spirit. And it might be the reason we were reminded this week of Andrew Jackson, considered one of the most successful American presidents. Although controversial in his time, he won the presidential election twice and captured the hearts of the masses. Jackson was not the establishment’s choice — the elite despised him — but the people voted for the hero general. And in America, the people are sovereign.

Jackson’s and Trump’s stories are very different, but there are similarities. Jackson was also very crude on one hand and popular on the other; like Trump, the establishment did not want him and in 1824 even managed to negate his presidency and hand it over to John Quincy Adams. The fact that Jackson won more votes and electorates did little to help, but Jackson — a hero of wars against the English and the Indians, won the next two election campaigns. Today, his image graces the U.S. $20 bill.

The seventh U.S. president was not one of the founding fathers, but he is still associated with many of the values America is proud of today: honor, independence, world recognition of America’s status and role, the importance of military service, the right to bear arms (under the Second Amendment of the Constitution), and of course courage, which includes willingness to die for the flag and for the safety of one’s family.

All these, if you like, are values attributed to the time of Jackson’s presidency, but also characterize Trump’s agenda. The former’s tradition has become the latter’s promise.

If America had not drifted so far away from Jackson’s legacy during Obama’s presidency, Trump’s promises might not have hit a soft spot with American voters. But luckily for the billionaire, the things he is saying hit home with the voters even if, like Jackson, they stand out for their crudeness.

A gentleman to the enemy

Let’s get back to Indiana. Time and again, reports said that this would be the decisive primary, and it was. This primary made Trump the party’s de facto nominee, and Cruz decided to pack it in.

Cruz, like General Custer, stood bravely to the last. Indiana was his last stand. After his losses in New York and the other northeast states, he was still trying to steal the show when he named Carly Fiorina his running mate. That nomination will remain on paper only.

Cruz, a fundamentalist Christian, was expected to win in Indiana, a state with a high percentage of religious voters. Two weeks ago, he even signed an agreement with Ohio Governor John Kasich, in which the latter agreed to support him in the fateful vote. In practice, the polls predicted a painful loss for Cruz, and turned out to be completely correct.

The last day of Cruz’s campaign was marked by mutual mudslinging with Trump. First, the finance baron from New York said in an interview to Fox News that Cruz’s father, Rafael, had ties to Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. He was repeating a very problematic report from the National Inquirer tabloid, which had run a picture that showed Cruz Sr. and Oswald allegedly handing out flyers praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Cruz Jr., who was deeply hurt by the remarks, called Trump a “pathological liar” and other choice names. That did not prevent Trump from commending Cruz after the latter’s loss in Indiana. There, another facet of the billionaire’s personality came out — that of a true gentleman.

Meanwhile, Cruz has yet to endorse Trump, and could still cause him some headaches at the convention given the number of delegates he won before suspending his candidacy. In theory, he could try to enlist superdelegates, who are not committed to voting for a certain candidate, but it looks like Trump’s path to the Republican nomination is paved. Nine states have yet to hold primaries, and he does not need more than 50% of the remaining delegates to win the party nomination. California (with 172 delegates), New Jersey, and West Virginia are already in his pocket. In effect, the nomination is his.

Even Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that Donald Trump would be the party’s presidential candidate, and that “we all need to unite and focus on defeating @Hillary Clinton.”

Indiana also proved what a CNN poll revealed on the eve of the election: 84% of voters already see Trump as the Republican presidential candidate, and 85% see Clinton as the Democratic candidate. No one is ruling out the possibility that the Republican convention in Cleveland could go over quietly, while the Democratic convention in Cleveland winds up being stormy. Who would have believed in February that such a scenario was even possible?

But even if a Rasmussen Institute poll showed Trump beating Clinton in the general election (41% to 39%), all other national polls are predicting a victory for the former secretary of state. Still, Clinton is in trouble. The victories of her rival Sanders are keeping him in the race, which shows that she has to take the left flank of the Democratic Party into consideration.

Centrist Democrats are threatening to go over to Trump or not vote. Clinton is not Sanders fans’ cup of tea. It will be hard for her to run after and sweep up his army of supporters. In Indiana, 70% of young Democrats voted for Sanders, and Independent voters preferred him as well.

One thing is clear — there are no rules and no logic in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. All preexisting concepts have collapsed. The Indiana primary, for example, buried the notion that religious and conservative voters follow a one-dimensional agenda. We also learned that American voters from both parties are looking for a candidate with unconventional ideas. Thorough, boring plans are greeted with suspicion, whereas someone who floats a simple, catchy idea will get the voters’ support.

National honor above all

Something happened in Indiana. It was the first time Trump had won more than 50 percent of the votes in a state not considered his home court. Another barrier fell.

“It won’t be easy to beat Trump in November,” said Senator Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), a man with a keen political sense. He believes that Clinton will win the nomination at the convention, but will have a hard time in the western states “among Reagan Democrats, who live in cities that still haven’t recovered from the [2008] economic crisis and are hostile toward Washington and the [political] establishment.”

In 2012, when Trump was first discussed as a possible presidential candidate, his chance of winning was one in 80. In 2015 his chances improved to one in 50, and now he is the de facto Republican candidate. Have we already said “moving ahead by leaps and bounds”? Clinton has another problem: It is very difficult for a candidate from one party to win after a president from that same party has been in office for two terms. Take the victory of George Bush Sr. in 1988, after Reagan’s second term in office. But we are not there yet. Most Americans start to take an interest in the elections only around September, after the primaries are over, and much could change by then. Trump and Clinton are expected to duke it out; it will not be a clean fight, and their televised debates should air after the kids are in bed. Trump has lots of skeletons in his closet, but Hillary has graveyards, and everything is about to come out. It is time to tune in.

Meanwhile, before the election, Trump should read the excellent biography of Andrew Jackson. Obviously, he will have to start thinking about a running mate, and former presidential hopeful Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s name came up more than once this week.

Aside from Jackson’s legacy, the billionaire must have thought about the words of fifth U.S. President James Monroe, who said, “National honor is a national property of the highest value.” Trump understands that well. America used to be something, and he wants it to be that way again.

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrats, Donald Trump, Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Multiculturalism, National honor, Obama's America 2016, Republicans
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

‘Tunnel war’ heralds Hamas-IDF next clash

May 6, 2016

‘Tunnel war’ heralds Hamas-IDF next clash, DEBKAfile, May 6, 2016

NahalOz_Tunnel_480_Kotert

The IDF and Hamas are engaged in another round of warfare both above and below ground. The two sides are exchanging fire in the Gaza border area while the IDF continues its operations to locate the terror tunnels of the Hamas military wing. The IDF did the correct thing on Thursday by declaring areas near Gaza with suspected  tunnels as “closed military zones”, amid concern that Hamas has already infiltrated into Israeli territory, even as training exercises. It is also important that the IDF is maintaining secrecy on the technological tools being used to locate the tunnels.

The exchanges of fire between the IDF and Hamas in the Gaza border area during the last few days have rattled the terrorist organization, making it fire mortar shells, rockets and light weapons at IDF forces in the area. The firing that intensifies each time that the troops approach a tunnel is helping the IDF locate the openings of the tunnels.

More than a year after the end of “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014, which was supposed to eliminate the threat of tunnels to southern Israel and restore calm among citizens, the Israeli government finally ordered the Defense Ministry and the IDF to listen to the complaints of Gaza border area residents, and to what was happening beneath the ground.

The noises from underground that were recorded over the last few months by frightened residents in the area’s communities and the shaking of the ground at night left no doubt that the digging was taking place nearby. In order to eradicate in  order to end the tunnel threat. IDF experts tested hundreds of devices, ideas, methods and means from various fields of research, including some that could be defined as bizarre.  Many new tunnels were been discovered with the help of hitherto untested technologies.

This with the human sources of intelligence like Mohammad Atauna, a commander in the Hamas tunnel network whose capture by Israeli intelligence was published on Thursday, could lead to the elimination of the tunnels in the coming days and weeks. All of these developments have made it clear to the heads of the military wing of Hamas, the Izzudin al-Qassam brigades, among whom only some follow the orders of the Hamas leadership and its political wing, that their biggest strategic asset, the tunnels, may disappear in the very near future. Whether the process takes a month or six months, it should now be very obvious to them that in the very near future the majority of the underground Hamas infrastructure will be destroyed, whether by explosives or flooding.

Since the heads of the Hamas military wing invested most of their budget and efforts in the digging, fortification and reinforcement of the tunnels that they planned to use to invade and attack Israel, the destruction of the underground network may have three main results:

1. In the coming days, the Hamas military wing may lash out in a desperate attempt to land a major blow against Israel. It is expected to be significantly weakened by the IDF operations in the near future but regain strength in the long term.

2. The military wing of Hamas will suffer a major defeat in the battle for popular support. The dire economic situation in Gaza that is partially due to the diversion of resources to the tunnels and other military means will weaken support among the public.

3. These developments will bring about a change in the balance of forces in Gaza that will benefit the political wing and weaken the military wing.

Under these circumstances, the desire by the head of the Izzuddin al-Qassam brigades, Mohammed Deif, who was seriously injured but is still alive and kicking, to get revenge against Israel has not been forgotten in IDF command in Tel Aviv and at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. The assessment in Israel’s intelligence community is that in the coming days he will use all the means at his disposal, with or without the permission of the political wing, and just before his last tunnels are discovered, in an attempt to launch a strike to deal a powerful and painful blow to Israel.

In the meantime, on Thursday, the IDF continued its preparations to bombard Hamas from the ground and the air as the terrorist organization’s mortar shelling increases.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Israel, Israel borders, Israeli military, Terror tunnels
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Sean Hannity: I’m Not Ready to Support Paul Ryan

May 6, 2016

Sean Hannity: I’m Not Ready to Support Paul Ryan, Fox News via YouTube, May 5, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFoxOLZrsUE

Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump, Republicans
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Donald Trump on Vicente Fox: ‘I Accept His Apology’

May 6, 2016

Donald Trump on Vicente Fox: ‘I Accept His Apology’

by Alex Swoyer5

May 2016Washington, DC

Source: Donald Trump on Vicente Fox: ‘I Accept His Apology’ – Breitbart

AP, Getty

During his campaign rally in West Virginia on Thursday night, Donald Trump responded to Breitbart News’s recent interview with former Mexican President Vicente Fox in California on Wednesday, in which Fox apologized for using vulgar language about Trump and invited him to Mexico.

“Vicente Fox was on television last night and he apologized and I accept his apology,” Trump told a crowd of more than 12,000 in Charleston, West Virginia on Thursday, the day after Fox’s apology and invitation. “I thought it was very, very nice, because I was giving him a little hard time about something and he apologized.”

“I thought it was very nice that he apologized,” Trump repeated, adding, “We’re going to have a great relationship with Mexico, but we need a border.”

On Wednesday, Fox told Breitbart, “I apologize. Forgiveness is one of the greatest qualities that human beings have, is the quality of a compassionate leader. You have to be humble. You have to be compassionate. You have to love thy neighbor.”

“Love your nation. Love the world,” Fox added. “Yes, I’m humble enough as leadership be, [a] compassionate leader. If I offended you, I’m sorry. But what about the other way around?”

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

Comments: 12 Comments

“Extremely Dangerous” IED Found Under Bridge In Texas

May 6, 2016

Extremely Dangerous” IED Found Under Bridge In Texas Tyler Durden’s picture Submitted

by Tyler Durden on 05/04/2016 11:32 -0400

Source: “Extremely Dangerous” IED Found Under Bridge In Texas | Zero Hedge

In recent weeks ISIS has been become far more brazen in its threats against US targets, and just last week released out a “hit list” which allegedly had the personal details of 3,600 New Yorkers whom it “wanted dead.” And while it is unknown if there is a terrorist link, the threat may have hit closer to home for residents in Rosebud, Texas when the McLennan County Sheriff’s office and a bomb squad used a water cannon to breach a suspicious device found under a bridge Tuesday night.

According to KCEN TV, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blasted water on the container found just outside Rosebud off Farm to Market Road 1963. Rosebud, about 40 miles southeast of Waco, is home to about 1,400 people.

Flammable liquid and shotgun shells were found inside the container, according to Sheriff Parnell McNamara. He said the IED was designed to blow shrapnel and would have been “extremely dangerous” had it gone off.

“Someone had made this to create lots of damage and harm,” McNamara said.

There were no injuries. The liquid was being sent to a lab for analysis.

No motive or suspects were named as the investigation continued early Wednesday. If this was indeed the work of some local terrorist organization, we are confident it will promptly take credit for the attempted bomb.

Categories: Uncategorized

Comments: Be the first to comment

D.C. ‘Terror Analyst’ Still Thinks Muslim Brotherhood a ‘Firewall Against Violent Extremism’

May 6, 2016

D.C. ‘Terror Analyst’ Still Thinks Muslim Brotherhood a ‘Firewall Against Violent Extremism’ PJ Media, Robert Spencer, May 5, 2016

bloody-cross.sized-770x415xc

Is the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, or one of the world’s foremost bulwarks against terrorism? Numerous mainstream terror analysts in Washington contend that it is the latter.

They have to ignore a mountain of evidence to do so.

Arguing in the Washington Post that Congress should not designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, Mark Lynch of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political Science asserts:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s firewall against extremism [was] a very real thing in the decade following 9/11.

However, Lynch thinks that, because of the al-Sisi government’s crackdown on the Brotherhood:

… the key mechanisms by which the firewall operated have now dramatically eroded.

More from Lynch:

Prior to the Arab uprising, I argued that mainstream Islamists served as a firewall against more violent extremists … [because] the Brotherhood publicly articulated an ideology of nonviolence and democratic participation. It competed with al-Qaeda for recruits and for public influence, and kept its members tightly embedded within its institutional structures. The Brotherhood could compete with al-Qaeda and other extreme groups in ways that liberals and state elites could not.

Hmm.

Lynch is apparently unaware that al-Qaeda founders Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden, as well as its current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, were all members of or trained by the Muslim Brotherhood. Even more importantly, in building his case that the Muslim Brotherhood is a competitor to and bulwark against al-Qaeda and other jihad terror groups, Lynch ignores the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda have exactly the same ultimate goal.

In his 2002 letter to the American people, Osama bin Laden wrote:

The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. … You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

The Muslim Brotherhood shares the goal of replacing democratic rule with Sharia, as even CNN acknowledged in 2013:

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious and political group founded on the belief that Islam is not simply a religion, but a way of life. It advocates a move away from secularism, and a return to the rules of the Quran as a basis for healthy families, communities, and states.

The key difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda — and other jihad groups — is that the Brotherhood works through the democratic process in order to undermine that process and ultimately destroy it. The jihadis choose the path of violently attacking the installations of democratic governments, but with the same goal of ultimate destruction.

For Lynch and other Washington policy analysts, this is an all-important distinction. In reality, it is a distinction without a difference. The Brotherhood and the jihad groups are two sides of the same coin, working for the same goal via different means.

What’s more, the assertion that the Brotherhood eschews violence is egregiously false.

Lynch writes:

[D]espite post-coup propaganda and arrests by the Egyptian regime, there is very little to substantiate the charge that the Brotherhood behaved like a terrorist organization during Egypt’s transition or embraced violence either ideologically or strategically.

Beltway fantasy, meet reality: Egypt’s El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence documented 359 cases of torture by the Muslim Brotherhood regime during its one year in power. By way of comparison, this was ten times more than the number of cases documented annually during the notoriously brutal Mubarak regime — the regime Obama and his Beltway terror analysts helped replace with the Brotherhood.

Even worse, when the Brotherhood was toppled from power, it blamed its failure on Egypt’s Christians – and that’s when Lynch’s “bulwark” against terror really began its campaign of, yes, terror.

Brotherhood members and supporters burned and looted nearly seventy churches, and destroyed 1,000 Christian businesses and homes. According to the Rev. Khalil Fawzi of Kasr El Dubarrah Evangelical Church, the Middle East’s largest evangelical church:

The Muslim Brotherhood were the ones who called for aggression. They are responsible.

In light of the Brotherhood’s willingness to engage in violence to further its ends, and the Sharia goal it shares with violent jihad organizations, Lynch’s recommendation that the U.S. work to strengthen the Brotherhood as a bulwark against al-Qaeda is the height of folly. It would be tantamount to aiding Mussolini in order to defeat Hitler, or electing Hillary Clinton to roll back the policies of Barack Obama.

By contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act is more realistic. It quotes testimony from former FBI Director Robert Mueller:

[E]lements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism.

Supporters of terrorism richly deserve the terrorism designation. Mainstream analysts such as Mark Lynch have led the U.S. down numerous policy blind alleys. His viewpoint needs to be decisively rejected now.

Categories: Islamic terrorism, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »