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No Canada

June 12, 2016

No Canada, PJ Media, David Solway, June 11, 2016

(Europe? Obama’s America? Leading or following into the abyss? –DM)

burning_toronto_canada_police_car_banner_6-6-16-1.sized-770x415xcToronto police car torched during the G20 protest on June 26, 2010. Photo by arindambanerjee / Shutterstock.com.

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber  may have been tactless when he spoke of the “stupidity of the American voter,” but I suspect he might have trotted out the same insult had he surveyed the West in general or the Canadian electoral scene in particular. After all, Canada, a comparatively peaceable country that regards itself as an “honest broker” in international affairs and a beacon of cultural—and multicultural—enlightenment, is fundamentally no different from other Western countries marching down the Hayek Highway. I have written before of the collective foolishness of a presumably educated nation installing a majority Liberal government to manage its affairs despite the readily available evidence of the social and economic malaise that left/liberal politics have inflicted on Western democracies. A cursory reconnaissance of the U.S., the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and others should have sounded a clear warning to Canadians, or at any rate to anyone still capable of cerebral functioning.

But no. We fell for the media hatefest against the Conservative party and its leader Stephen Harper, while subscribing to our own version of “hope and change” as represented by the jejune and deceptive Justin Trudeau and his troupe of trendy mediocrities strutting on the national stage. How could we have travelled this route? As David Mamet points out in The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, we “reject any request for information about the actual mechanics of this ‘Change,’ by referring to ‘Hope’.” Unfortunately, hope is not a policy or a platform, and it is certainly not an expression of a practicable future. It should come as no surprise, then, that electoral promises have been duly and rapidly broken in favor of vanity projects and that a host of destructive policies have been legislated, or are about to be legislated. To take a number of examples:

  • By introducing Bill C-14, the Liberals have reified their advocacy for physician-assisted dying, depriving doctors and health professionals of moral choice on the issue. Claiming a “deep respect” for Parliament, they have nevertheless imposed substantial limits on debating time.
  • Trudeau is eager to engineer a change to our “first past the post” electoral system, replacing it with one of a wide variety of possible reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation and online voting. The proposed reforms, based on vote transferability and leftist coalitions, would both introduce an element of needless complexity into the electoral process and, in Canada’s multiparty system, which leans collectively to the left, virtually ensure a permanent Liberal majority. A transformation this vast should require a national referendum, but Trudeau’s minister of Democratic Institutions—a label straight out of Orwell—cites a Twitter hashtag #electoralreform as sufficient reason to sidestep a plebiscite. The 30-year-old, out-of-her-depth, Afghan-born, newly created Minister Maryam Monsef is hostile to referenda because they supposedly exclude the “marginalized.” As National Postcolumnist Rex Murphy comments, “Evidently, women, people of color, the disabled—build your own list—are allergic to voting in a referendum.” But she is merely doing the bidding of her leader, who intends to strike a committee, in which Canada’s one conservative party will be outnumbered 9 to 3 by left-oriented parties, to determine the best way to implement what is nothing less than a political coup. The Liberals have recently shown signs of relenting on the referendum issue, but the situation reveals their arrogant disregard of the people they presumably answer to.
  • The Liberals deny that they inherited a balanced budget from the previous Conservative government and have now projected a $30 billion debt, sure to increase in the future, that will serve not only as a fiscal drain on the present but as an economic drogue on generations to come.
  • Trudeau eliminated selective income splitting for families, a measure ostensibly intended to deprivilege the “wealthy” and thus burnish the party’s popular image, but obviously designed to work against the traditional family structure by making it more costly to sustain the stay-at-home wife/mother arrangement. Cost, however, is not a personal consideration for Trudeau, as it happens, heir to a multi-million dollar trust fund. The nannies looking after his children will soak the Canadian taxpayer $100,000 per annum. Indeed, when he visited Washington to confer with Obama, he was accompanied by a 44-member entourage consisting of celebrities, fundraisers, in-laws and, of course, the nannies, at taxpayers’ expense.
  • Trudeau has enthusiastically endorsed the feminist agenda and established a gender-balanced cabinet, irrespective of merit or competence. The embarrassing spectacle that Chrystia Freeland, minister of International Trade, made of herself o Bill Maher’s show is no accident. We can expect more of such sophomoric ineptitude in the years ahead. A government that eschews proven or demonstrable talent in favor of gender parity, much like our current universities, and hires or appoints on the basis of sex is monstrously irresponsible.
  • To strengthen their “social justice” credentials as the party for the times, the Liberals, who long ago jumped on the same-sex marriage bandwagon, have, additionally, projected Bill C-16 providing for an up to two-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of fomenting “hate propaganda” against transgenders. The word “hate” clearly furnishes enormous latitude for interpretation and renders critical discourse problematic and even dangerous, now that the Criminal Code is about to be amended. It seems that freedom of expression contracts with every new piece of social legislation, by no means astonishing in a country whose left/liberal Supreme Court has already pronounced that truth is no defense in cases where offense is given to marginalized groups or individuals.
  • No less damaging, Trudeau’s well-documented sympathy for Islam has resulted in the importation of many thousands of so-called “Syrian” refugees, all improperly vetted, who will swell the welfare rolls, glut an already grossly dysfunctional single-payer medical network, further disrupt a progressively concessionary educational system, and create more social havoc in the form of Sharia ghettoes and eruptions of Muslim-inspired violence. Bet on it. As Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah reports in the Toronto Sun, Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell accused him of lying and of Islamophobia (!) when Fatah testified to the Senate about Canadian mosques that feature seditious preaching against secular democracy, about Israel as “useless garbage,” and about the necessity of spilling blood. “While this was unfolding,” he continues, the Trudeau government “had authorized a $200,000 grant to a southern Ontario mosque with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In moving decisively to the left and bringing in programs that will inevitably fray the economic fabric of the country while diluting its traditional substance, Trudeau boasts that “Canada is back”—a slogan, Murphy writes, “that’s saccharine and weirdly jingoistic at the same time,” as if his election were “a victory, not for [the] party—which it was—but for the country itself.” Such hubris is both typical and unforgivable.

Perhaps what is no less troubling is that the cultural sycophancy practiced by the Liberals has now infected the Conservative party, which, despite its objection to Liberal spending and dubious policy initiatives, has, under interim leader Rona Ambrose, slotted the same-sex marriage plank into its party platform. “I think our party got a little more Canadian today,’ Calgary MP Michelle Rempel said after the convention vote. Indeed it did, and that’s a real shame. The Conservatives didn’t stop there. Ambrose has suddenly discovered that she too is a fan of legislation to prohibit criticism of transgenderism; “who you love, how you identify,” she pontificates, “should never be cause for fear or anxiety.” Interestingly, when the Daily Caller asked if she would then support or approve of pedophilia, no reply was forthcoming. By striving to emulate the Liberals as a matter of crass and misguided expedience—as if the Liberal base comprising the general run of leftists, Muslims, aboriginals, journalists, talking heads, environmentalists and global warmists, colonies of indoctrinated students and the entitlement crowd will gratefully change their voting habits—the Conservative party has betrayed its principles and its core constituency.

The real problem, however, is not the political party or the leader in question, but the intellectual laxity of the electorate. Canadians, who have always preened themselves on their moral and intellectual superiority to Americans, in reality merely ape the customs and usages of their neighbors to the south, generally a decade or so later. Mutatis mutandis, we would have flocked to the polling stations to vote for an Obama, a Hillary or a Bernie. The Donald would have been anathema.

Admittedly, there is a rather more modest Trump-like figure on the conservative scene who seems interested in running for the leadership of the party with a view to the 2019 federal election, namely, successful businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary. (See CBC’s Dragons’ Den and ABC’s Shark Tank.) Responding to questions about a potential leadership bid, O’Leary said he was not prepared to sit in perpetual Opposition, preferring to wait until he sees whether the party is willing to jettison the political hacks who led it to defeat. “I’m proud of the country,” he continued, but “I’m depressed that it’s not competitive and I see so much incompetence, mediocrity and stupidity when it comes to managing it and I’m just tired of it.” Like Trump, O’Leary is nothing if not confident. “One way or another,” he says, “I’m going to figure out how to fix it.” But in the present narcoleptic milieu his prospects are probably slight.

Ten years hence the country may wake up, as innumerable U.S. citizens appear to be doing today. This is assuming we still have a country that is anything like the country we used to have. Given an oppressive direct and indirect tax structure, the proliferation of “hate speech” laws, the discursive ravages of political correctness, the faux “social justice” agenda, the malignant influence of feminism on business, government, the courts and the academy, the ongoing inroads of Islam into the body politic and the culture at large, the faddish convictions of the intellectual and artistic communities swimming with the brackish tides, and the flaccid surrender of the public to these toxic developments—including the reluctance to seek out and process reliable information, as Mamet intimated—the issue is alarmingly moot.

To arrive at reasonably dependable insights for one’s political thinking, one needs to distrust any single media outlet and take the time to review multiple sources in order to factor out feasible assumptions in making political choices. It takes work, civic dedication and the willingness to pay attention. Laziness is not an option. A rudimentary knowledge of history is also essential. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a January 6, 1816 letter to Colonel Charles Yancey: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.” This is true not only of the American republic but of any democratic nation, and Canada is no exception. Lacking a vigilant and enlightened citizenry, there can only be worse to come.

Decree by government decree, the ship of state is listing ever further portside, abetted by the shifting weight to the left of a lumpen public. This is how a once-proud nation must eventually founder. Captivated by a liberal/socialist media consortium and unwilling to do our homework, we have become increasingly sanctimonious and uninformed, denizens of Gruberland. Even hockey may not save us.

Categories: Canada, Canadian politics, Clash of civilizations, Cultural correctness, Democracy, Fantasy, Islamic immigration, Leftists, Socialism
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The West’s Most Important Ally: Islam’s Dissidents

June 12, 2016

The West’s Most Important Ally: Islam’s Dissidents, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, June 12, 2016

♦ Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the rebels, the non-believers and the heretics.

♦ This rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents is the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics.

♦ They are alone against all. Against Islamism which uses Kalashnikovs and against an intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as “traitors” by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of “stigmatizing.”

♦ We should support them — all of them. Some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

Islam, warned the best-selling Algerian novelist, Boualem Sansal, is going to split European society. In an interview with German media, this brave Arab writer painted a vision of Europe subjugated by radical Islam. According to Sansal, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels are directed at the Western way of life: “You can not even defeat the weak Arab states, so they have brought in fifth columns to bring the West to destroy itself. If they succeed society will fall.”

Mr. Sansal, who has been threatened with death, belongs to a rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents. They are the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics. These Muslim dissidents pursue freedom of conscience, interreligious coexistence, pluralism in the public sphere, criticism of Islam, and respect for the rule of common law. For the Islamic world, their message could be devastating. That is why the Islamists are hunting them down.

It is always individuals, such as Lech Walesa, who make all the difference. The Soviet Union was defeated by only three beings: Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II — and the dissidents. When Professor Robert Havemann died in East Germany, few people noticed it. This intrepid critic of the regime was confined under house arrest in Grünheide, guarded by the Stasi. But the old professor never allowed himself to be intimidated. He continued to fight for his ideas.

A hero of Czechoslovak anti-Communism, Jan Patočka, died under grueling police interrogation. Patočka paid the highest price of silencing. His brilliant lectures were reduced to a clandestine seminar. Although unable to publish, he continued to work in a tiny underground apartment.

Hunted by the KGB, Alexander Solzhenitsyn set down the chapters of his Gulag Archipelago and hid them with different trusted friends, so no one possessed the entire manuscript. In 1973 only three copies existed. When the Soviet political police managed to extort the typist, Elizaveta Voronyanskya, to one of the hideouts, thinking the masterpiece was lost forever she hanged herself.

Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the heretics, the rebels, and the non-believers. It is no coincidence that the first victim of a fatwa was Salman Rushdie, an Indian-British writer from a Muslim family.

Pascal Bruckner called them “the free thinkers of the Muslim world.” We should support them — all of them. Because if the enemies of freedom come from free societies, those who kneel before Allah’s enforcers, some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

One, an Algerian author, Kamel Daoud, who called Saudi Arabia “an Isis that had made it,” recently sparked an “Islamophobia” row for having directed his own anger at the naïve people, who he says ignore the cultural gulf separating the Arab-Muslim world from Europe.

Another, an Iranian exile, now in the Netherlands, the jurist Afshin Ellian, works at Utrecht University, where after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, he is protected by bodyguards. After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, while Europe’s media were busy in blaming the “stupid” cartoonists, Ellian promoted an appeal: “Don’t let terrorists determine the limits of free speech.”

Another brave dissident and author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had to flee from the Netherlands to the U.S., where she rapidly became one of most prominent public intellectuals.

1644Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a brave Muslim dissident and author, had to flee from the Netherlands to the U.S., where she rapidly became one of most prominent public intellectuals. (Image source: Gage Skidmore)

The Moroccan mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, is also guarded by police. He recently told fellow Muslims who protested against freedoms they found while living in the West to “pack your bags and f… off.” A heroic Christian defender of these freedoms in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, is now on trial accused of “discrimination.” “I am in jail,” he has said, referring to his safehouses, “and they are walking around free.”

Many of these dissidents are women. Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan politician and journalist, declared war on Islamic fundamentalists after the Taliban’s religious police beat her for daring to walk without a male escort. A suicide bomber blew himself up near her car, killing three. Kadra Yusuf, a Somali journalist, infiltrated Oslo’s mosques to denounce the imams, especially regarding female genital mutilation, not even required in the Koran or the Hadith (reports about Mohammad). In Pakistan, Sherry Rehman called for “a reform of Pakistani blasphemy’s laws.” She risks her life every day. She is branded by Islamists “fit to be killed” for being a woman, a Muslim and a secular activist. The Syrian-American author and psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, was also branded an “infidel” deserving of death.

Le Figaro recently published a long report about Muslim French personalities threatened with “execution”. “Placed under permanent police protection, regarded as traitors by Muslim fundamentalists, they live in a hell. In the eyes of Islamists, their freedom is an act of betrayal of the ummah [community].” They are writers and journalists of Arab-Muslim culture who denounce the Islamist threat and the inherent violence of the Koran. They stand alone against Islamism which uses the physical terrorism of Kalashnikovs, and against the intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as “traitors” by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of “stigmatizing.”

The French journalist Zineb El Rhazoui has more bodyguards than many ministers in the government of Manuel Valls, and for security, has to change houses in Paris often in recent months. For this young scholar, born in Casablanca and who works at the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, walking down the street in Paris has become unthinkable. A fatwa put out after January 7, 2015 reads: “Kill Zineb El Rhazoui to avenge the Prophet.”

Threats against another dissident, Nadia Remadna, do not come from Raqqa, Syria, but her own city: Sevran, in Seine-Saint-Denis. They reflect the growing influence of Islamists in the lost territories of the French Republic. What “crime” was she found guilty of? She created the “Brigade of Mothers” to combat the Islamist influence on young Muslims.

A philosophy teacher, Sofiane Zitouni, has also quit his job at a Muslim French school over “insidious Islamism.”

The French-Algerian journalist, essayist and author of several investigations into Islamist circles,Mohamed Sifaoui, is the victim of a double threat. He is a prime target for both fundamentalists and the “tolerant” grand inquisitors. Sentenced to two years in prison by the Algerian regime for “press offenses,” then harassed by Islamists, Sifaoui requested asylum in France in 1999 and has never set foot in Algeria again. Since then, Sifaoui has seen his picture and name next to the words “le mourtad,” the apostate, on Islamist websites, meaning that he is targeted for death. French police protection around him has been total since 2006, when he defended freedom of expression for the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

About fifteen witnesses made a deposition in favor of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Among them were the late Muslim Tunisian essayist, Abdelwahab Meddeb, who had the courage to challenge the entire French Muslim establishment which tried to stop Charlie Hebdo. Meddeb wanted to show “this is not about anyone against Islam, but enlightened Islam against obscurantist Islam.”

Also in France, Hassen Chalghoumi, the courageous imam of Drancy, preaches while wearing a bullet-proof vest. When he goes out on the street, he is accompanied by five police officers with semiautomatic weapons. This is not outside Baghdad’s Green Zone; this is in the heart of Paris. Chalghoumi backed the ban on burkas; made an unprecedented visit at Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial; paid tribute to the victims of Charlie Hebdo and favored a dialogue with French Jews.

Naser Khader, a Muslim liberal with Danish citizenship, who called for “a Muslim reformation,” and authored “Honour and Shame,” is threatened by Islamic groups with death.

In Italy, an Egyptian-born writer, Magdi Cristiano Allam, is protected by bodyguards for having criticized political Islam. As the deputy editor of Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Mr. Allam published a book whose title alone was enough to endanger his life: “Viva Israele.”

Ibn Warraq lives protected behind a pseudonym since writing a seminal book, “Why I am Not a Muslim.”

The Palestinian blogger Walid Husayin is also a rarity. Jailed for “satirizing the Koran, he recently published a book in France about his experience in the Palestinian territories, where his “atheism” nearly cost him his life.

In Tunisia there are a handful of filmmakers and intellectuals who fight for freedom of expression, especially after a secular opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, was assassinated. Also Nadia El Fani, the director of “Ni Allah ni maître” [“Neither Allah nor Master”], and Nabil Karoui, the manager of Nessma TV, are threatened with death and are being taken to court to answer charges of “blasphemy.” If Tunisia’s “Arab spring” did not turn into an Islamist winter, as elsewhere, it is largely thanks to these dissidents.

Those heroes know what happened to their predecessors in “the war on Arab intellectuals.” Writers such as Tahar Djaout were killed in 1993 by the Islamists in Algiers, as was the journalist, Farag Foda, famous for his sharp satires on Islamic fundamentalism. Prior to his murder, Foda had been accused of “blasphemy” by the great mosque of al-Azhar. A dozen Bangladeshi bloggers have also been murdered in cold blood by Islamists for the “crime” of “secularism.”

Last year, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al- Sisi called for reforming Islam and the way it is taught as did Sunni Islam’s leading cleric, Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, head of Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the center of Sunni Islam. And he said it in Mecca, no less. Egypt’s conservatives however did their best to tamp that down – at least for the moment.

There are, however, more and more dissidents successfully speaking out and leading bold, farsighted movements. In the U.S., M. Zuhdi Jasser, author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam,” and a practising physician, founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Last year, more than two dozen Muslim personalities promoted an appeal “to embrace a pluralistic interpretation of Islam, rejecting all forms of oppression and abuses committed in the name of religion.”

In Canada, Raheel and Sohail Raza founded “Muslims Facing Tomorrow,” and there is the outspoken Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Salim Mansur.

In the U.K., Maajid Nawaz heads the influential Quilliam Foundation, and Shiraz Maher, who defected from the Islamist organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, now serves as a Senior Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London.

These are just a few of today’s heroes. Some had to be left out; there were too many to list.

The proud and painful resistance of these “Allah’s rebels” is one of the most beautiful testaments of our times. These “Allah’s rebels” are also the only real hope of reform for the Islamic world — and of preserving freedom for all of us.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Freedom of speech, Human rights, Islam and human rights, Islam in America, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Islamophobia, Political Islam
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Swedish TV cancels film on jihad & anti-Semitism over Muslim backlash fears

June 12, 2016
Published on Jun 10, 2016

Sweden’s state broadcaster scrapped plans to air a documentary about anti-Semitism and jihad, fearing it could offend the nation’s growing Muslim population, Danish media reports. The station says it won’t be aired because it failed to document reality.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

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The Persistence of Mendacity (2)

June 12, 2016

The Persistence of Mendacity (2), Power Line, Scott Johnson, June 12, 2016

(Have we sunk so far that often repeated lies morph into truth, or simply don’t matter? — DM)

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Dick Morris polled possible responses for Bill Clinton. Morris determined that truth was not an option if Clinton wanted to remain in office. “Well, we just have to win then,” Clinton concluded. Thus Clinton’s finger-wagging denial of what proved to be the facts of the case.

When Clinton was finally questioned under oath by one of the lawyers working in the office of the independent counsel operating under Kenneth Starr, Starr’s office had obtained and tested Monica’s blue dress. The lying was over, but Clinton nevertheless prevailed in the court of public opinion.

Clinton’s lying bought him the time he needed to survive. With the time public opinion came around to the new line he had adopted about the whole thing being a private matter. Clinton succeeded in lowering public opinion to meet his gargantuan needs.

The missus was instrumental in helping Clinton buy the time he needed to sway public opinion. In her infamous interview on the Today show after the scandal broke (transcript here), Hillary decried the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that she asserted was the real story of the scandal. That helped, of course, but the key point she asserted twice in the course of the interview was this. The charges against the Big Dog would not be “proven true.”

The missus took a similar tack in her FOX News Special Report interview with Bret Baier last week. Clinton persisted in the falsehoods and evasions have reflected the order of the day in the matter of her private server for official State Department business (video below at about 4:15).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ok80PNqxDc

“You’ve said you’ll talk to anybody any time,” Baier observed. Why not the State Department Inspector General, Baier asks. He’s somebody.

Clinton’s response offered no subtlety. It did not depend on the meaning of “is.” The lying was rampant and obvious. It is the verbal equivalent of brute force.

“You said you sent or received nothing that was marked classified,” Baier notes, but she had signed a non-disclosure agreement providing that markings don’t matter. Classification inheres in the information, not the marking.

She purports not to recall that, but “the fact is, nothing that I sent or received was marked classified and nothing has been demonstrated to contradict that.”

Where have we heard that before? Ah, history!

We have seen every assertion of fact Clinton has made about the use of her private server fall by the way. As Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne now report, this one is no exception. Austin Bay has more here.

Does it make a difference at this point? As always in the scandals of Bill and Hillary, time allows us to accommodate ourselves to their lies. The best defense is the persistence of mendacity.

Today the editors of the New York Post take a look back at the week that was in Clinton emails. They have plenty of developments to review without even getting to the latest report from Herridge and Browne. The editors declare: “Hillary’s final email defense: Mass amnesia.” The Post editors ask whether anyone will hold the lady to account and provide this answer: “We strongly doubt the Obama Justice Department will indict the woman the president just endorsed to be his successor. Any ‘law enforcement’ action is up to the voters.”

I’ll take that as a “no.”

Categories: 2016 elections, Bill Clinton, e-mails, Hillary Clinton, Lies
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Live Updates — Terror in Orlando: Approximately 50+ dead, 50+ More Wounded at Gay Nightclub

June 12, 2016

Shooting, ‘Mass Casualty Situation’ At Orlando Gay Nightclub

CNN The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando

( It appears gunman was on a watch and no fly list and had made pro jihadi comments previously, that is all they are saying right now.   Big concerns it may be a precursor to a series of attacks from a cell.  He was apparently making ISIS statements inside the club… – JW )

UPDATE: ISIS Announced Florida Threat THREE Days Ago: “We Will Attack Florida”

Major Muslim Terrorists Makes This Declaration To All Americans: We Are Coming After You, We Will Attack Florida And Slaughter Americans There

AND

http://www.barenakedislam.com/

by AWR Hawkins

12 Jun 2016

Source: Shooting, ‘Mass Casualty Situation’ At Orlando Gay Nightclub – Breitbart

Associated Press

Orlando Police responded to reports of shots fired early Sunday morning and now report a gunman is dead inside the club and they are dealing with a “mass casualty situation”, with “multiple” dead.

Speaking at a press conference following the attack on the Orlando Pulse gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said there were “multiple” dead and 42 injured. There have been reports, including from the Chicago Tribune of “up to 20 dead”.

The police chief said the focus presently was on checking the club and surrounding area for possible explosive devices following a “controlled explosion” at the scene. Chief Mina said the deceased gunman had a device on his person, but gave no indication of what that device was. Mina said the gunman was armed with a handgun and a long gun and took hostages after a gun fight with an officer who was working the club.

Fox News reports that the owner of Pulse used to Facebook to urge people to stay away from the club sometime after 2 a.m. The post said, “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.”

 Facebook users responded to the night club’s own message, with one witness to the incident stating: “I was there. Shooter opened fire @ around 2:00am. People on the dance floor and bar got down on the floor and some of us who were near the bar and back exit managed to go out through the outdoor area and just ran. I am safely home and hoping everyone gets home safely as well”.

At 5:48 a.m EASTERN Orlando Police tweeted: “We can confirm this is a mass casualty situation.” At 5:53 a.m. the Orlando Police confirmed “the shooter inside the club is dead.”

There were various reports of an explosion once police responded, but there were quelled when Orlando Police tweeted that it was a “controlled explosion” at the scene. No details were given regarding the object or package that was detonated.

No reports on the identification of attacker, or motive for attack has been given at this point.

Live Updates — Terror in Orlando: Approximately 50 dead, 50+ Wounded at Gay Nightclub

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/12/shooting-mass-casualty-situation-orlando-gay-nightclub/

  • Shots rang out early Sunday morning at a gay bar in Orlando, Florida
  • Early reports suggest that this approximately 50 people are dead and 50+ more are injured
  • If these numbers are confirmed, it is the highest body count from a terror attack on American soil since 9/11/01. 
  • The FBI has suggested that the attacker could have ‘leanings to radical Islamic terrorism’
  • Suspect ID’d: Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents
  • This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States
  • STATE OF EMERGENCY
  • President Obama condemns ‘terror’ and ‘hate,’ does not mention Islam
  • FBI interviewed Mateen in 2013 and 2014 but was not surveilling him currently

Update 3:39 pm ET:

Shot.

Chaser.

Update 3:28 pm ET: 

Stop what you are doing. Bill Kristol has presented the hottest of takes:

Update 3:23 pm ET:

 Gay Republican org calls out President Obama. Reporting by Patrick Howley:

It’s no secret that abroad men who are gay — and merely suspected of being gay — are targeted for execution; today, that threat has reached the United States. Log Cabin Republicans extends our deepest sympathy, condolences, and sorrow to the victims and families of those targeted in this morning’s violence. If the shooter’s suspected motivations are indeed confirmed, we call upon President Obama and the presumptive nominees of both parties to condemn the attacker and acknowledge in no uncertain terms the cause of this massacre: Radical Islamic terrorism.

Update 3:20 pm ET: ATF spokesman said Mateen bought two weapons in recent days/weeks, a handgun and a long gun.

Update 3:19 pm ET: 

Update 3:07 pm ET: 

No mention of Islam in statement from Hillary Clinton campaign.

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/742070089076383744/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

 

Update 3:00 pm ET: 

Update 2:56 pm ET

: G4S, the private security company at which Mateen worked, issued the following statement: “We are shocked and saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Orlando nightclub. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since September 10, 2007. We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.”

Update 2:54 pm ET: 

New York Times reporter sheds light on Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State: instructions from spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani.

Update 2:46 pm ET: 

Via Warner Todd Huston: Mateen worked for the security firm G4S since 2007.

Update 2:32 pm ET: The Islamic State has claimed credit for Mateen’s massacre.

Source to #AmaqAgency: The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in #Orlando, #Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.

Update 2:22 pm ET: From Katie McHugh.

Elizabeth, a woman who was in the night club and spoke with Breitbart News but asked that her identity not be revealed, left Pulse at 1:45 am Sunday night, just as gunshots rang out.

“I don’t really have family, I just have friends, and I don’t know what friends are living or dead, and it’s so terrible,” she said.

“I left my home around 10:50 [PM] so I could get in the club no charge,” she said, adding that she goes every week and has been going to Pulse for three years. “And yesterday as I was coming in, I saw the vibe was good,” she said, and the club was packed. “Everybody was drinking and having a good time.”

“Every time I go there all I see is happy people enjoying their time and loving each other, and just being them,” she said. “And at the end of the night as I was walking out at 1:45, I was getting in the car and we heard gunshots. And we just left, because it was scary!”

“So we just drove out and rolled out, and within two or three minutes there were cops coming everywhere. I didn’t know if it was an accident, or the gunshots I heard… So I just went home and went to sleep, and now I see all the news, and the Facebook, and all of my friends,” she said, adding that she was getting frantic calls asking if she was safe.

She getting into her parked car on the other side of the club when she heard the gunshots. “I couldn’t see where they were coming from, but they were real loud, like BAM BAM BAM… And we speeded out. Thank God we were on the other side of that.”

Update 2:05 pm ET: Obama does not take questions from the press.

Update 2:03 pm ET: Obama references gun control and says killer used a “powerful assault rifle.” Says America must choose whether it wants to change whether people can “easily” purchase weapons. “To actively do nothing is a decision, as well.”

Update 2:01 pm ET: Obama says this is even more heartbreaking in light of the killer’s targeting of LGBT victims. Says that it is an attack on all Americans.

Update 1:59 pm ET: Obama speaking now. Says the attack was clearly “an act of terror and an act of hate.” No mention of Islam yet. We have reached no definitive judgments on the motivation of the killer, he states.

Update 1:56 pm ET:

Bradd Jaffy

NBC News: Orlando gunman referenced the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston bombers, during his rampage, law enforcement source tells

Update 1:53 pm ET: Horrific.

Update 1:45 pm ET: More details on weapons found in California suspect’s car:

Update 1:42 pm ET: L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti says the city believes the arrest last night is “completely unrelated” to the Orlando massacre.

Update 1:38 pm ET: A man has been arrested heading to the Los Angeles Pride Festival with an arsenal of weapons, according to breaking news reports.

Early Sunday,  Santa Monica police received a call of a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. Patrol officers responded and encountered an individual who told officers he was waiting for a friend. That led officers to inspect the car and find several weapons and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb.

Update 1:35 pm ET: Mateen’s father is on video praising the Taliban.

Orlando shooting suspect’s father hosted a political TV show and even tried to run for the Afghan presidency http://wapo.st/1rk2yu8

Update 12:42 pm ET — The Washington Post reports:

Ex-wife of suspected Orlando shooter: ‘He beat me’ 

The ex-wife of the 29-year-old man suspected of killing 50 people in a Orlando nightclub early Sunday said that he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married.

The ex-wife said she met Omar Mateen online about eight years ago and decided to move to Florida and marry him.

At first, the marriage was normal, she said, but then he became abusive.

“He was not a stable person,” said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”

Update 12:27 pm ET — The Daily Beast reports:

Omar Mateen, Terrorist Who Attacked Orlando Gay Club, Had Been Investigated by FBI 

Mateen was a ‘known quantity’ to federal law enforcement before he killed 53 people in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. 

Omar Mateen of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, came to the attention of federal authorities twice prior to being identified as the gunman in the Orlando nightclub mass shooting, a senior law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.

[…]

The senior law enforcement source reports that Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.

Update 12:21 pm ET — From Breitbart News’s Michelle Moons:

Fox News’ Bret Baier reported that Florida Senator Bill Nelson told the media that he has talked to intelligence staff who say that “it is believed that there is some connection here to ISIS.”

Baier went on to say, “He says it’s not completely confirmed, it’s not from the FBI, but that intelligence staff believes there is some connection to ISIS.”

Update 12:21 pm ET — From Breitbart News’s Charlie Spiering:

President Barack Obama will deliver a statement at the White House 1:30 p.m. in reaction to the Orlando shooting. The president has been briefed by counter-terrorism officials

Update 12:16 am ET:

@RepAdamSchiff, top Democrat on House Intel Committee, says Orlando gunman Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS http://read.bi/1PmKaa7

Update 11:40 am ET: NBC News interviews suspect’s father:

NBC News spoke with the suspect’s father: ‘We’re apologizing for the whole incident… This had nothing to do with religion,” he said. He went on to say that “his son got very angry when he saw two men kissing in downtown Miami.”

The NBC News report also notes that approximately 320 people were in club when the shooting began.

Update 11:33 am ET: 

Florida Gov has declared a state of emergency. City of Orlando also declared state of emergency.

9:59 AM – 12 Jun 2016 · Orlando, FL, United States

Update 11:12 am ET:

More from Badolato: Many of those brought into area hospitals, local reports say, were in grave critical condition. Hospitals are preparing for intensive trauma surgeries. In addition, local eyewitnesses reported seeing police officers doing chest compressions on victims in the back of pickup trucks.

Update 11:09 am ET:

ORLANDO, Fla — Breitbart News’ Andy Badolato, reporting from the scene, says the local police have swept the night club for bombs. They have not, however, removed any of the at least 50 dead bodies yet. At least 53 people were also taken to local hospitals putting, the victim count at at least 103 total. The status of those taken to area hospitals is unclear.

Update 10:54 am ET:

NBC’s Pete Williams reports that terrorist was on a “watch list” over associations w “suspicious” ppl several yrs ago.

Update 10:32 am ET:

BREAKING: Mayor: Orlando nightclub shooter used assault rifle, ‘there’s blood everywhere’

Update 10:29 am ET:

AP

BREAKING: Mayor: 50 casualties, including shooter, and 53 hospitalized in mass shooting at Orlando nightclub.

9:29 AM – 12 Jun 2016

Update 9:54 am ET — Sessions:’More of these attacks are coming’

The GOP Senator said on Fox News:

And it’s not stopping as we see apparently today. More of these attacks are coming. It’s a real part of the threat that we face and if we can’t address it openly and directly, and say directly that there is an extremist element within Islam, that’s dangerous to the world and has to be confronted.

Meanwhile, #GunControlNow is trending on twitter.

Update 9:50 am ET: Blood donors needed.

Update 9:30 am ET: 

CBS reports he is a U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents. CBS also notes that there may have bee multiple explosive devices that did not detonate.

Update 9:10 am ET: From USA TODAY:

  • Witnesses reported seeing a bomb in the gunman’s possession, but the police did not confirm that detail
  • Hostage situation lasted approximately three hours

Update 9:03 am ET: CNN reports that local hospitals are on lockdown:

A few miles away, the Orlando Regional Medical Center was placed on lockdown, the hospital said in a statement. Only essential workers are being allowed access into the building.
Arnold Palmer Hospital and Winnie Palmer Hospital were also placed on lockdown out of an abundance of caution, officials said.

Update 8:22 am ET: The FBI believes the massacre may have perpetrated by someone “leanings to radical Islamic terrorism.”

https://youtu.be/T93ebEOtc8I

https://youtu.be/YFe4v2FmuEs

https://youtu.be/LYoE0QoLD9o

 

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun took hostages and opened fire inside a crowded Florida nightclub, killing approximately 20 people dead and wounding 42 others before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said Sunday.

Police Chief John Mina also said the shooter had some sort of “suspicious device.” He said the suspect exchanged gunfire with an officer working at the club around 2 a.m., then went back inside and took hostages.

Around 5 a.m., authorities sent in a SWAT team to rescue the hostages, and the suspect then died in a gunfight with those officers. Mina said police have not determined an exact number of casualties, but that “approximately 20” people were dead inside the club.

FBI spokesman Danny Banks said during a news conference that the mass shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. He says authorities are looking into whether this was an act of domestic or international terror, and if the shooter was a lone wolf.

Police had said previously on Twitter that there was a “controlled explosion” at the scene of the shooting at Pulse Orlando. Mina said that noise was caused by a device intended to distract the shooter.

Mina Justice was outside the club early Sunday trying to contact her 30-year-old son Eddie, who texted her when the shooting happened and asked her to call police. He told her he ran into a bathroom with other club patrons to hide. He then texted her: “He’s coming.”

“The next text said: ‘He has us, and he’s in here with us,’” she said. “That was the last conversation.”

Dozens of police vehicles, including a SWAT team, swarmed the area around the club. At least two police pickup trucks were seen taking what appeared to be shooting victims to the Orlando Regional Medical Center.

Pulse Orlando posted on its own Facebook page around 2 a.m.: “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.” Just before 6 a.m., the club posted an update: “As soon as we have any information we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.”

Police said local, state and federal agencies were investigating.

The incident follows the fatal shooting late Friday of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie, who was killed after her concert in Orlando by a 27-year-old Florida man who later killed himself. Grimmie was a YouTube sensation and former contestant on “The Voice.”

Jon Alamo said he was at the back of one of the club’s rooms when a man holding a weapon came into the front of the room.

“I heard 20, 40, 50 shots,” Alamo said. “The music stopped.”

Club-goer Rob Rick said it happened around, 2 a.m., just before closing time.

“Everybody was drinking their last sip,” he said.

He estimated more than 100 people were still inside when he heard shots, got on the ground and crawled toward a DJ booth. A bouncer knocked down a partition between the club area and an area in the back where only workers are allowed. People inside were able to then escape through the back of the club.

Christopher Hansen said he was in the VIP lounge when he started hearing gunshots. He continued to hear shooting even after he emerged, where police were telling people to back away from the club. He saw injured people being tended to across the street.

“I was thinking, are you kidding me? So I just dropped down. I just said please, please, please, I want to make it out,” he said. “And when I did, I saw people shot. I saw blood. You hope and pray you don’t get shot.”

Gays Must Die Says Speaker At Orlando Mosque – WFTV 9 Orlando Report

 

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The Iran Threat to America

June 12, 2016

The Watchman – Episode 4: The Iran Threat to America

The Watchman

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Lebanese expat describes Islamification of Germany

June 12, 2016

Vlad Tepesblog

Published on Jun 6, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muVzd4islIM

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Hillary Appointed Clinton Foundation Donor, Financial Bundler to Sensitive Intel Post

June 12, 2016

Hillary Appointed Clinton Foundation Donor, Financial Bundler to Sensitive Intel Post

by Aaron Klein

11 Jun 2016

Source: Hillary Appointed Clinton Foundation Donor, Financial Bundler to Sensitive Intel Post – Breitbart

Andrew Burton/Getty Images/AFP

Hillary Clinton is facing controversy over the appointment to a sensitive State Department intelligence advisory board of a Clinton Foundation donor who also served as a financial bundler for Clinton’s campaigns.

Businessman Rajiv K. Fernando seems to have no obvious qualification to serve on the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), which, according to its charter, provides the State Department with “independent insight and advice on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation, international security, and related aspects of public diplomacy.”

Fernando’s position on the board came with top secret security clearance and provided him with access to highly sensitive U.S. government information.

Emails obtained by the conservative Citizens United group under a Freedom of Information Act show that after ABC News sent inquiries on the matter, Clinton’s staff worked to “protect the name” of Clinton, and “stall” the news network in its reportage on the matter. Days later, Fernando resigned from the board, claiming he did not have any more time to spare due to work constraints.

Following requests for comment on his July 2011 appointment, State Department official Jamie Mannina sent an August 15, 2011 email expressing concern about the issue. “We must protect the secretary’s and under secretary’s name, as well as the integrity of the board. I think it’s important to get down to the bottom of this before there’s any response,” he wrote, in the email released by Citizens United.

An email response by Clinton aide Wade Boese reveals that Fernando was added to the board at Clinton’s insistence by Clinton’s then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills.

“The true answer is that S staff (Cheryl Mills) added him. The board’s membership preceded me. Raj was not on the list sent to S; he was added at their insistence,” Boese wrote. According to ABC News, “S” was commonly used to refer to Clinton.

Another telling email was sent in response to an ABC News inquiry regarding another board appointee, Rep. Harold P. Naughton, Jr.  ABC News reported:

Boese wrote to Hartman to say the department would have a far easier time explaining Naughton’s credentials. “The case for Rep. Naughton is an easy one. We are on solid ground,” he said.

In 2011 and 2012, ABC News sought answers from Fernando himself:

Fernando himself would not answer questions from ABC News in 2011 about what qualified him for a seat on the board or led to his appointment. When ABC News finally caught up with Fernando at the 2012 Democratic convention, he became upset and said he was “not at liberty” to speak about it. Security threatened to have the ABC News reporter arrested.

Fernando’s expertise appeared to be in the arena of high-frequency trading — a form of computer-generated stock trading. At the time of his appointment, he headed a firm, Chopper Trading, that was a leader in that field.

Fernando is currently a superdelegate pledged to Clinton.  He is listed on the Clinton Foundation website as having given between $1 million and $5 million.

ABC News reports on Fernando’s longtime financial support to Clinton and Democrats:

He was an early supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 bid for president, giving maximum contributions to her campaign, and to HillPAC, in 2007 and 2008. He also served as a fundraising bundler for Clinton, gathering more than $100,000 from others for her White House bid. After Barack Obama bested Clinton for the 2008 nomination, Fernando became a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign.

Prior to his State Department appointment, Fernando had given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation, and another $30,000 to a political advocacy group, WomenCount, that indirectly helped Hillary Clinton retire her lingering 2008 campaign debts by renting her campaign email list.

Fernando was also reportedly one of Obama’s top 2012 financial bundlers, raising at least $500,000 for Obama’s reelection bid.

In May 2015, Clinton attended a fundraiser at Fernando’s Chicago home.

Like Bill Clinton, Fernando’s father C K Fernando, was a Fulbright Scholar. C K Fernando founded an NGO that first received recognition from the Bill Clinton White House.  C K Fernando served as chairman of Sri Lankan Americans for President Obama in 2009.

Fernando’s name, meanwhile, does not appear on the State Department’s list of former ISAB board members.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey, who served on the ISAB board from 2006 to 2009, elaborated on the seriousness of the information to which board members were exposed.   “Most things that involve nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy are dealt with at a pretty sensitive basis — top secret,” he said, telling ABC News that the meetings take place in a secure facility.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott.

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