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Obama Isn’t a “Consoler”, He’s an Arsonist

July 12, 2016

Obama Isn’t a “Consoler”, He’s an Arsonist, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 12, 2016

Dallas guy

The media is pushing two wildly dishonest narratives

1. That Micah X was unrepresentative of a movement which routinely celebrates cop killers.

2. That Obama doubling down on the anti-police narrative by backing BLM is “consoling”.

The most insane headline describes him as a “consoler-in-chief”. The nation does not need consoling. It needs to prevent massacres like Dallas from happening again. And the way to do that is to end the support that racist black hate groups like Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panther Party, along with their anti-police narratives, have received from the highest levels of government.

And yes that means Obama.

Obama isn’t a consoler, he’s an arsonist. After the Dallas attack, he continued to defend anti-police incitement while trying to push gun control. That’s not consolation. It’s whitewashing your own crime.

Categories: Black Lives Matter, Dallas killing of police, Media, Obama and Black Lives Matter, Obama and racism
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Obama to BLM Supporters: Cool it For Now

July 12, 2016

Obama to BLM Supporters: Cool it For Now, Dan Miller’s Blog, July 12, 2016

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

Obama plans to nationalize State and local police forces to make them focus on fighting white “racism” in much the same way that his “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) farce focuses on attacking “Islamophobia” rather than Islamist terrorism. Under Obama’s plan, black violence and its causes will be ignored if possible; if they can’t be ignored, they will continue to be minimized.

As I suggested in The Contempt Obama and Clinton Have For America,

In response to public concerns about potential Islamist terror attacks, Obama turned the nation’s “war on terror” into a “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) farce, the focus of which has been largely on promoting the agenda of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist organizations. To that end, the Department of Homeland Security has stricken the study of Islam from its teaching materials and banned the use of words such a  “jihad” from the lexicon of Federal law enforcement officials. Its primary focus has been on combating “Islamophobia,” rather than on preventing Islamic terror attacks.

As I also noted in the same article, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is closely allied with Black Lives Matter and other racist Black groups.

It seems quite likely that CAIR, et al, are assisting Obama in structuring His program to federalize State and local law enforcements to make it focus on white “racism,” while continuing to encourage or at least to ignore black racism and violence.

As reported by Breitbart today,

President Barack Obama is warning his angry supporters that more violence and “rhetoric” by the Black Lives Matter movement could derail his campaign to federalize state and local police forces. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

For the moment, Obama and his deputies are simply pretending that the Dallas attack had nothing to do the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the killer’s decision to explain his anti-cop, anti-white motives to Dallas police. “The shooter is not reflective of the large movement to bring about change that was out in Dallas to peacefully demonstrate,” Jeh Johnson, Obama’s loyal head of the Department of Homeland Security, told a CBS interviewer on Sunday. [Emphasis added.]

But the growing wave of attacks on cops has put Obama on the political defense, and his supporters may spin further out of control to create more riots or attack that would delegitimize his campaign to federalize state and local police forces — and also damage Hillary Clinton’s election chances. [Emphasis added.]

Although Obama condemned violence against law enforcement personnel, he said this as well:

The flip side of that … [I] would hope that police organizations are also respectful of the frustration that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness, or as politics or attacks on police.  There are legitimate issues that have been raised, and there’s data and evidence to back up the concerns that are being expressed by these protesters. [Emphasis added.]

Victor Davis Hanson, in an article titled Have we reached a point of no return? published today by National Review, traces Obama’s promotion of and reliance on racial disharmony to suit His political ambitions.

“Punish our enemies” characterized Obama’s approach to race and bloc voting. Each time an explosive racial confrontation appeared on the national scene, Obama — always in his accustomed academic intonations — did his best to exploit the issue. So the Skip Gates farce was leveraged into commentary about police stereotyping and profiling on a national level. The police officer in the Ferguson shooting was eventually exonerated by Obama’s own Justice Department, but not before Obama had already exploited the shooting for political advantage, as part of a larger false narrative of out-of-control racist cops who recklessly shoot black suspects at inordinate rates to the population (rather than in the context of their national incidence of contact with police). [Emphasis added.]

Yep.

When the full video of Obama’s Dallas address is available at YouTube, I’ll update this post. In the meantime, here’s a summary from The Washington Times.

President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement Tuesday at a memorial service for five slain Dallas police officers, saying bigotry remains in police departments across the U.S.

While paying tribute to the fallen officers for sacrificing their lives to protect others from a sniper, Mr. Obama also called on law-enforcement agencies to root out bigotry.

“We have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point,” Mr. Obama told an audience of several hundred at a concert hall in Dallas.

“None of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.”

Here’s the only video I have found thus far; it focuses on gun control.

UPDATE: Here’s a video of Obama’s full remarks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1940&v=L8gNihaXJgM

What do you think?

Categories: Black Lives Matter, CAIR, Countering violent extremism, Dallas killing of police, Department of Homeland Security, Federalization of state and local police, Gun control, Human rights, Obama and Black Lives Matter, Obama and racism, Racism
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Comments: 3 Comments

“Gangster Islam” in Europe

July 12, 2016

“Gangster Islam” in Europe, Gatestone Institute via YouTube, July 12, 2016

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

The blurb beneath the video states,

“Gangster Islam,” a crime wave packing prisons and overtaking Europe, is a problem the mainstream media will not report. Ordinary Europeans — for fear of being called “racist” or even being imprisoned for “hate speech” — are afraid even to talk about it.

Categories: Crime, Europe, Gangster Islam, Islam and Jews, Islamic culture, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Political correctness
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Why Iran Might WANT To Get Nuked After Nuking Israel

July 12, 2016

Why Iran Might WANT To Get Nuked After Nuking Israel, PJ Media, ROBERT SPENCER, July 12, 2016

Nukes away

In all the controversy about the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran’s nuclear aspirations, it has been little noted that the leaders of the Islamic Republic may have reasons of their own actually to want to nuke Israel.

And their motivation is not in spite of the fact that Iran would almost certainly be nuked in retaliation … but because of it.

Sounds crazy? Of course. But once you enter into the wild and weird world of Shi’ite Muslim eschatology, it all begins to make sense. As I show in my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran, there are specific conditions in Shi’ite tradition for the return to earth of their messiah-like figure — the Twelfth Imam.

Jafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam and central figure of Shia jurisprudence, prophesied that the Twelfth Imam would not return “till you are severely tested.” Jafar added:

At that time you shall be severely examined and you shall be differentiated and sieved. There will be famines. A person will become a ruler in the morning and put to death in the evening.

The return of the Twelfth Imam, Jafar went on, would come at a time when the Shi’ites were experiencing persecution to a terrible, unprecedented degree:

That which you look forward to will not be until you are tested … That which you look forward to will not be until you are sieved … That, which you look forward to, will not be until you are sifted. That which you look forward to will not be except after despair.

How severe would this test be? Jafar said that the Twelfth Imam’s return “will not occur till two-third population of the world is not destroyed.”

Presumably, then the Twelfth Imam will return when one-third of the world’s population has been destroyed.

This time of massive death and destruction, however, will herald the consummation of all things. A prophecy attributed to no less an authority for Shi’ites than Ali ibn Abi Talib, the foundational figure of Shi’ite Islam, says:

In the last period of time, the Almighty Allah will raise a man among the illiterate masses whom he will support by his angels and protect his helpers, help him through his signs and he will conquer the whole world. All would enter the fold of religion willingly or unwillingly. He would fill the earth with justice, equity and proof. No disbeliever will remain without accepting faith.

The emphasis on the Twelfth Imam only returning at a time of immense persecution of the Shi’ites has given rise to speculation that the leaders of the Islamic Republic might try to hasten his return by provoking that persecution.

The Iranian leader Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was President of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and remains influential in the Iranian government, said in December 2001:

“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing [sic] in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

It could also, with millions of Muslim dead, bring back the Twelfth Imam.

The Cold War deterrence strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction has no teeth in a situation in which one side welcomes death. One side is sure not only that Allah will reward martyrdom, but that such large-scale carnage will hasten the final victory of their party over not just one, but all of its enemies.

The Iranian leadership clearly takes the prophecies regarding the Twelfth Imam very seriously.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran from 2005 to 2013, had a highway built between Tehran and the Shi’ite holy city of Qom, approaching the Iraqi city of Samarra — the city in which the Twelfth Imam disappeared and from which he will return.

The highway is apparently intended for the Twelfth Imam himself, so that immediately after he does return, he can make his way to Tehran quickly to begin waging global war against the enemies of the Shi’ites.

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in June 2014: “The coming of Imam Zaman is the definite promise by Allah.” Imam Zaman is Imam of the Time, a title of the Twelfth Imam. But, Khamenei said, for the Twelfth Imam actually to return would require some changes, including “regional preparedness.” The Islamic Republic, in any case, “without a doubt will be connected to the worldwide revolution of Imam Mahdi.”

In light of former president Rafsanjani’s words about nuclear war and the prophecies about the persecution that would trigger the Twelfth Imam’s return, Khamenei’s term “regional preparedness” takes on a decidedly ominous cast.

Might the mullahs actually be willing to nuke Tel Aviv and take a retaliatory nuclear strike that could kill tens of millions of Iranians?

If it would hasten the Mahdi’s coming, why wouldn’t they?

Categories: Apocalypticism, Iran and Israel, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Mad Mullahs, Twelfth imam
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Cartoons of the Day

July 12, 2016

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

knit-kpg

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

leadership

 

Categories: Hillary Clinton, Humor, Obama
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Barack Obama Warns Black Lives Matter ‘Rhetoric,’ Violence, May Stop His Takeover of State, Local Police

July 12, 2016

Barack Obama Warns Black Lives Matter ‘Rhetoric,’ Violence, May Stop His Takeover of State, Local Police, Breitbart, Neil Munro, July 12, 2016

Obama and BLM

[T]he growing wave of attacks on cops has put Obama on the political defense, and his supporters may spin further out of control to create more riots or attack that would delegitimize his campaign to federalize state and local police forces — and also damage Hillary Clinton’s election chances.

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

President Barack Obama is warning his angry supporters that more violence and “rhetoric” by the Black Lives Matter movement could derail his campaign to federalize state and local police forces.

“In a movement like Black Lives Matter, there’s always going to be some folks who say things that are stupid, or imprudent, or overgeneralized, or harsh,” Obama told reporters at a Sunday press conference, just three days after an African-American cop-hating racist murdered five police officers who were guarding a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. 

“Everybody involved in the Black Lives Matter movement … I want all of them to maintain a respectful, thoughtful tone — because, as a practical matter, that’s what’s going to get change done,” Obama said. 

The shocking attack in Dallas has wrecked the political momentum gained by the Obama-backed movement when stressed police killed two African-American suspects during that first week of July, in Minnesota and Louisiana. Immediately after those shootings, Obama had sought to use the two shootings to push his campaign to get more federal regulatory control over state and local police forces.

But because his campaign has been accompanied by a growing number of riots and of attacks on police, including in Dallas, Obama is being forced to defend and calm his angry allies, amid growing criticism that his anti-cop rhetoric has ignored a nationwide, low-level “War on Cops.”

So far this year, 26 police have been killed in shootings, marking a 63 percent increase over 2015, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page. After the Dallas shooting, gunman shot at three more policemen in Tennessee, Missouri, and Georgia. On Sunday, in Missouri, an African-American man was shot and killed as he broke into a police officers’ home following an argument on Facebook.

The anger among Obama’s allies was recorded July 9, when a BLM activist in St. Paul, Minn., frantically berated a TV reporter, while others shouted ‘Get Out of Here,’ and urged each other to attack him. “He is the face of white supremacy,” the activist shouted.

The video can be viewed here:

https://vid.me/CHx4

The African-American anti-cop movement also put rioters on the streets of several cities over the weekend. In 2014 and 2015, African-American rioters wrecked the town of Ferguson, Mo., and damaged the center of Baltimore.

For the moment, Obama and his deputies are simply pretending that the Dallas attack had nothing to do the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the killer’s decision to explain his anti-cop, anti-white motives to Dallas police. “The shooter is not reflective of the large movement to bring about change that was out in Dallas to peacefully demonstrate,” Jeh Johnson, Obama’s loyal head of the Department of Homeland Security, told a CBS interviewer on Sunday.

But the growing wave of attacks on cops has put Obama on the political defense, and his supporters may spin further out of control to create more riots or attack that would delegitimize his campaign to federalize state and local police forces — and also damage Hillary Clinton’s election chances.

“I would just say to everybody who’s concerned about the issue of police shootings or racial bias in the criminal justice system that maintaining a truthful and serious and respectful tone is going to help mobilize American society to bring about real change. And that is our ultimate objective,” he said at the Sunday press conference.

Obama did briefly condemn attacks on police, but spent much of the Sunday press conference repeatedly telling his African-American allies that angry rhetoric against police is counterproductive to his political goals. 

Any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted.  But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush, without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric does not recognize that, then we’re going to lose allies in the reform cause.

Yet Obama simultaneously raised the political temperature by portraying the anti-cop movement as similar to the prior nation-changing political groups, some of which have include violent campaigns, such as the attacks launched by the terrorist groups, such as the Black Panthers, the Weathermen and violence by union members. Obama even cited the abolitionist movement, whose work was completed by the very bloody U.S. Civil War. 

One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power.  And that is sometimes messy and controversial.  But because of that ability to protest and engage in free speech, America, over time, has gotten better.  We’ve all benefited from that. 

The abolition movement was contentious.  The effort for women to get the right to vote was contentious and messy.  There were times when activists might have engaged in rhetoric that was overheated and occasionally counterproductive.  But the point was to raise issues so that we, as a society, could grapple with it.  The same was true with the Civil Rights Movement, the union movement, the environmental movement, the anti-war movement during Vietnam.  And I think what you’re seeing now is part of that longstanding tradition.

Obama also said that the “flip side” of non-violence by his allies is for the cops to admit they’re in the wrong.

The flip side of that …  would hope that police organizations are also respectful of the frustration that people in these communities feel and not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness, or as politics or attacks on police.  There are legitimate issues that have been raised, and there’s data and evidence to back up the concerns that are being expressed by these protesters. 

“If police organizations and departments acknowledge that there’s a problem and there’s an issue, then that, too, is going to contribute to real solutions,” he said, without describing what would happen if police organizations do not submit to his political demands. 

Categories: Black Lives Matter, Federalization of state and local police, Law enforcement, Obama and Black Lives Matter, Obama and racism
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Have we reached a point of no return?

July 12, 2016

Have we reached a point of no return? National Review, Victor Davis Hanson, July 12, 2016

“Punish our enemies” characterized Obama’s approach to race and bloc voting. Each time an explosive racial confrontation appeared on the national scene, Obama — always in his accustomed academic intonations — did his best to exploit the issue. So the Skip Gates farce was leveraged into commentary about police stereotyping and profiling on a national level. The police officer in the Ferguson shooting was eventually exonerated by Obama’s own Justice Department, but not before Obama had already exploited the shooting for political advantage, as part of a larger false narrative of out-of-control racist cops who recklessly shoot black suspects at inordinate rates to the population (rather than in the context of their national incidence of contact with police).

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

Multicultural societies — from 19th-century Austria–Hungary to contemporary Iraq, Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda — have a poor record of keeping the peace between competing tribes. They usually end up mired in nihilistic and endemic violence.

The only hope for history’s rare multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious nations is to adopt a common culture, one that artificially suppresses the natural instinct of humans to identify first with their particular tribe. America, in the logical spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was exceptional among modern societies in slowly evolving from its original, largely European immigrant population to a 21st-century assimilated, integrated, and intermarried multiracial society, in which religious and racial affiliations were incidental, not essential, to one’s public character and identity.

But such a bold experiment was always tenuous and against the cruel grain of history, in which the hard work of centuries could be easily torn apart by the brief demagoguery of the moment. Unfortunately, President Obama, ever since he first appeared on the national political scene in 2008, has systematically adopted a rhetoric and an agenda that is predicated on dividing up the country according to tribal grievances, in hopes of recalibrating various factions into a majority grievance culture. In large part, he has succeeded politically. But in doing so he has nearly torn the country apart. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that no other recent president has offered such a level of polarizing and divisive racial bombast.

Most recently, without citing any facts about the circumstances of the police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, Barack Obama castigated the police and the citizenry on their culpability for racial disparity and prejudicial violence. “[T]hese fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal-justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.” Obama did not yet know the race of the policemen involved (as in the case of Baltimore, the Minnesota shooting involved non-white officers), the circumstances that led to the shootings, or the backgrounds of either the officers or their victims.

Shortly afterwards, twelve Dallas law-enforcement officers were shot, and five of them killed, by a black assassin who declared solidarity with Black Lives Matter and proclaimed his hatred for white law enforcement. That outbreak prompted Obama to take to the podium again to recalibrate his earlier message. This time he amplified his gun-control message, and somewhat delusionally added that the upswing in racial polarization did not imperil national unity — in much the same way that, in years past, he had announced that al-Qaeda was on the run, we were leaving behind a stable Iraq, and ISIS was a jayvee organization. Note the Obama editorial method in the case of police incidents, from Skip Gates to Louisiana and Minnesota: He typically speaks before he has the facts, and when subsequent information calls into question his talking points and theorizing, he never goes back and makes the corrections. Nor does he address facts — from Ferguson to Dallas — that do not fit his political agenda. Finally, a police shooting of an African-American suspect is never an “isolated event,” while the shooting of an officer by a black assassin is isolated and never really thematic of any larger racial pathology.

We were introduced to Obama’s idea of career enhancement through racial polarization during the 2008 political campaign. Obama had earlier, when he saw it as being to his advantage, emphasized to the Chicago Sun-Times that as a devout Christian he dutifully attended Rev. Wright’s church: “Yep. Every week. Eleven o’clock service.” Indeed, Wright offered inspiration to Obama with his trite “Audacity of Hope” refrain, which Obama borrowed for the title of his 2008 campaign booklet.

Once Wright was exposed on video as an uncouth racist and anti-Semite, Obama made the necessary adjustments, as “every week” transmogrified into spotty attendance that explained why Obama was shocked — in Casablanca style — when his spiritual mentor was publicly exposed. In that era of Obamamania, most people shrugged that Obama surely never bought into Wright’s racist and anti-American sermonizing, but simply put up with the venom spewed every week at Trinity United as a political investment, both establishing his radical street credentials and bolstering support among the members of Chicago’s black churches.

But there were plenty of markers in Obama’s own turns of phrase to indicate that racial tranquility is not where we were headed: “Typical white person” and a litany of divisive campaign sloganeering followed (“bring a gun to a knife fight” and “get in their faces,” along with the stereotyping of the white working class of Pennsylvania, who had failed to appreciate Obama’s singular brilliance in the state’s Democratic primary).

Nothing much changed when Obama entered the Oval Office (and why should it, when Obama won record majorities of minority voters in 2008 and would again in 2012?). Attorney General Eric Holder, who almost immediately dropped a likely successful voter-intimidation prosecution against the New Black Panther Party (a group to which the Dallas police assassin at one time claimed affinity), set the new tone of the Obama Justice Department by referring to African-Americans as “my people” and deriding Americans in general as “a nation of cowards.”

“Punish our enemies” characterized Obama’s approach to race and bloc voting. Each time an explosive racial confrontation appeared on the national scene, Obama — always in his accustomed academic intonations — did his best to exploit the issue. So the Skip Gates farce was leveraged into commentary about police stereotyping and profiling on a national level. The police officer in the Ferguson shooting was eventually exonerated by Obama’s own Justice Department, but not before Obama had already exploited the shooting for political advantage, as part of a larger false narrative of out-of-control racist cops who recklessly shoot black suspects at inordinate rates to the population (rather than in the context of their national incidence of contact with police).

It mattered nothing that the signature line of Ferguson, and the founding motto of Black Lives Matter — “Hands up, don’t shoot” — was exposed as a myth by Eric Holder’s investigators. Right in the midst of the ongoing Trayvon Martin shooting trial, the president of the United States, in carrion fashion, weighed in by speculating whether the son he had never had would have looked like young Martin — not merely risking prejudicing the case (although the newly dubbed “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman was nevertheless exonerated by a jury of his peers), but reminding the country that our racial heritages are the basis of tribal resonance.

Black Lives Matter was founded on a separatist and radical racialism. When an inept Bernie Sanders tried to suggest that “All lives matter,” he was bullied into silence by activists who rushed the podium. “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” became a Black Lives Matter marching slogan last summer in Minnesota — rhetoric amplifying the calls for “Dead Cops” in an earlier New York City march that was in turn logically reified in Dallas by the assassin who “dead copped” white policemen.

When Obama invited Black Lives Matter founders to the White House in February, he praised them by asserting that they were “much better organizers” than he had been at a comparable age, adding that he was “confident that they are going to take America to new heights.” Prior Black Lives Matter marching death chants to police should have been known to Obama at the time.

Every problem has a resolution — but often not a good one. In the case of widely publicized shootings of black suspects by police, regardless of the landscapes involved, police already have proven less likely to respond promptly to inner-city calls for help, rightly or wrongly convinced that they either will be shot at by assassins, or will be forced to use force to protect themselves in a manner that will end their careers, or will hesitate and pay a lethal price for losing deterrence. They likewise assume that their politically appointed high-profile superiors will not support them under media and political pressures, and that society at large has no stomach for a candid conversation — ranging from history to culture to public policy to economics — about the dilemma of young black males, who constitute about 3 to 4 percent of the general population, and are responsible for between 25 and 50 percent of some categories of violent crime.

This spring Obama invited a series of rappers and activists to the White House, whose careers and rhetoric were often violent and divisive. Rapper Rick Ross — on bail pending trial on kidnapping and assault charges — had his ankle bracelet go off at a White House ceremony. Black Lives Matter and Ferguson activist Charles Wade abruptly declined his White House invitation, apparently because he had been recently arrested for pimping and human trafficking. Marquee rapper Kendrick Lamar’s Pimp a Butterfly album cover portrayed black men hoisting champagne bottles and displaying hundred-dollar bills on the White House lawn, in merriment over the corpse of a white judge with his eyes X’d out. Reality mimicked art when Lamar (whose video sets include singing from a vandalized police car) was invited to the White House — or perhaps when five fatally shot policemen on the ground in Dallas superseded Lamar’s image of a prone and eyeless dead judge. Obama, remember, has cited the police-hating Lamar (e.g., “And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga”) as his favorite rapper and the dead-judge album “as best album of the year.”

As the president has reminded us, words matter. So far in 2016 the shootings of police are up 44 percent over 2015. If celebrating the image of a murdered judge is no impediment to an Oval Office visit and a presidential endorsement, why would the more reckless activists see any real social odium in escalating the hatred? What does one have to do to be disqualified from a White House visit or earn the president’s disapproval? Be under indictment for a felony? Commercialize a picture of a judge’s corpse? That more police may have been targeted in Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri following the Dallas carnage was the logical result of more than a year of contextualizing Black Lives Matter rhetoric and expressing pseudo-hip adulation of purveyors of anti-police and anti-judicial venom — but always from a safe distance. What does a Secret Service agent think when Lamar, who became a multimillionaire from lyrics like “We hate Popo,” comes to visit the Oval Office?

Obama predicates such no-consequences racial trafficking on four astute assumptions: First, he believes that promoting racial identity, and the more raw the better, is good politics — that it will solidify his new Democratic coalition, energizing grievances to ensure record turnout and bloc voting. Second, he assumes that most of

Second, he assumes that most of America is still locked into an anachronistic 1960s dialectic of a white/black binary in the context of continuing bitterness over the racism of Jim Crow — rather than the complex reality of a 21st-century society of multiple races and ethnicities, well into our sixth decade of affirmative action and racial compensation.

Third, Obama assumes that his Ivy League metrosexual and teleprompted image, in wink-and-nod fashion, reassures white liberals that while he flirts with and manipulates the uncouth rhetoric and imagery that the cruder rappers or Rev. Wright routinely peddle, he could not possibly buy into their full progam.

Fourth, Obama assumes that his own racial heritage exempts his sloppy rhetoric and actions from the sort of accountability that would doom a non-minority politician who had compiled a similar oeuvre of tolerating racial incendiarism.

Yet when a society reaches a point at which the remedy — honest dialogue and debate — is considered worse than the disease — racial animosity — then chaos and disintegration are the prognoses. Up to now, the war zones in Chicago and Philadelphia and other inner cities that routinely experience abject killing each week have been largely ignored by progressives, given the nature of black-on-black violence in cities with strict gun-control laws, liberal governments, and ample social-welfare programs. Yet it may be that these recent shootings in Dallas and various other cities, rather than signaling a new dialogue, mark a strategy of exporting gun violence to purported white purveyors of racism. If that happens, then we are back to the 1960s — but worse. Read the online racist comments posted on any major news agency’s accounts of a crime involving

Up to now, the war zones in Chicago and Philadelphia and other inner cities that routinely experience abject killing each week have been largely ignored by progressives, given the nature of black-on-black violence in cities with strict gun-control laws, liberal governments, and ample social-welfare programs. Yet it may be that these recent shootings in Dallas and various other cities, rather than signaling a new dialogue, mark a strategy of exporting gun violence to purported white purveyors of racism. If that happens, then we are back to the 1960s — but worse. Read the online racist comments posted on any major news agency’s accounts of a crime involving race to sense the polarization that has intensified since 2008.

Meanwhile, abroad, the world looks not just at the tearing apart of American society under Obama, but at that society’s collective inability to even discuss the catalysts for either Islamic terrorism of the Orlando and San Bernardino sort, or the recent racial violence. When this is collated with seven years of failed reset with Russia, the Iranian deal, the rise of ISIS, the implosion of the Middle East, and the new belligerency in China and North Korea, we may be facing a final six months of a lame-duck presidency the likes of which have never been seen in modern political history.

Perhaps Obama has been prescient after all about American sins and the need for apologizing, contextualization, and reset. A 21st-century society that celebrates separatism and violence and that pardons the venom of Black Lives Matter and its more extreme manifestations, or that exempts Hillary Clinton from all legal accountability, may simply not be able to exercise a position of world moral authority after all.

 

 

Categories: Black Lives Matter, Obama and racism
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Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats

July 12, 2016

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats -One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: June 2016, Gatestone Institute, Yves Mamou, July 12, 2016

♦ Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels.

♦ Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

♦ After the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote in his blog that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

Islamization is gaining ground in the Muslim community of France. For a long time, this trend remained restricted to the cultural sphere and created strong controversies between Islamists and secular intellectuals (such as the ban on face-covering veils in schools and public places). But the debate stopped being a debate. Sometimes Islamic intolerance takes on the appearance of a civil war. The violence, which was mostly concentrated in the suburbs prior to the January 2015 terrorist attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is spreading now to the heart of French cities. Murders, assaults, death threats and “slut-shaming” happens almost every day here and there.

Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels. What is interesting is that judiciary system seems in disarray and does not know how to treat these types of conflicts: two jihadists back from Syria are condemned to a suspended sentence of six months in prison and a Muslim who slapped a female waiter because she served alcohol during the Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The absence of political guidelines spreads fear and aids the rise of the right-wing political party, the Front National.

June 1. Karim Benzema, a French soccer star of Algerian descent, declared, in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, that French national team’s coach, Didier Deschamps “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France” by not including him in the team. Benzema was not included in the national soccer team for the UEFA Euro 2016 championship because he is apparently involved in a sex-tape extortion scandal targeting his colleague, Mathieu Valbuena.

June 2. Patrick Kanner, Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sport, said in Le Parisien that Karim Benzema plays an “unfair and dangerous” game when he implies that “ethnic reasons” might have played a role in the decision not to include him in the French soccer team.

June 2. It was reported that the Saudi preacher, Mohammed Ramzan Al-Hajiri, was banned from entering France until 2050. The daily, La Voix du Nord, reported that on May 15, the salafist Abou Bakr Essedik mosque of Roubaix had arranged for him to preach by phone. In April 2014, the same Saudi preacher had declared in public: “Losing your faith makes you no better than an animal” and “to kill a Muslim is a less serious crime than to make him an infidel.”

June 5. A 25-year-old Frenchman was arrested at the border between Ukraine and Poland. According to the TV channel M6, his truck was loaded with three portable rocket launchers, more than 100 kilograms of TNT, 100 detonators and half a dozen Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was unknown to security services and was planning terrorist attacks against synagogues and mosques in France.

June 6. One thousand migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, who were living in tents in the 18th district of Paris (Les Jardins d’Eole), were evacuated peacefully by police. According to the media, it is the 23rd operation of this kind in Paris since 2015

June 6. Swastikas and the words “white power” were tagged on the walls of the synagogue of Verdun. A similar incident of vandalism took place two months prior, said Jean-Claude Lévy, leader of the Jewish community in Verdun.

June 6. Gérard Tardy, mayor of Lorette, a small city in the Loire region of France, posted two messages on the electronic information boards of the city:

  • “Ramadan must be lived in peace without noise”
  • “In the Republic, nobody covers his face.”

The far left and Muslims organizations said these messages were “outrageous” and “disrespectful” to Muslims.

June 7. A waitress at a bar in Nice was violently slapped by a Muslim because she was serving alcohol to customers on the first day of Ramadan. Both the owner of the bar and the victim filed a complaint at the police station. The attacker escaped.

June 8. In Grigny, an outer suburb of Paris, people filmed used their smartphones to film a riot between “youths” [the French media’s euphemism for young Muslims] and police, and aired it live on Periscope, an “app” for instant video. No one knows what caused the riot. A father living in Grigny said, “In my time, violence with cops had always a motive: arrest, a stolen car… But now, it is different. It looks like people fight with police for fun”.

June 8. At midnight, Aya Ramadan, a female activist of the Parti des Indigènes de la République, posted on Twitter her congratulations to the two Palestinian terrorists who shot people in a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three. She wrote; “Dignity and pride! Cheers to the two Palestinians who have led a resistance operation in Tel Aviv.”

Gilles Clavreul, the High Commissioner of the Fight against Racism and anti-Semitism, said he would sue Ramadan for acting as an “apologist for terrorism.” The maximum punishment for such an offense is two years in prison and €100,000 fine. The Parti des Indigènes de la République is a racialist organization developing a political ideology to take the power from the “whites” to give it to the “colored people” in France.

June 8. The Observatory of Secularism (Observatoire de la laïcité), an official body linked to the prime minister’s office, published its annual report. According to the report, anti-Semitic attacks remain at a high level (808 attacks) and anti-Muslim attacks have tripled (from 133 last year to 429 in 2015). The report failed to establish a proportion between the number of Jews in France (half a million) and the number of Muslims (between six to ten million). The report also does not relate that most anti-Jewish acts are committed by Muslims. The Observatory of Secularism found itself in the eye of a storm last year for its complacency towards Islamism.

June 9. Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, Mayor of Saint-Gratien, declared war on shops with veiled saleswomen. She wrote on her Facebook page. “I have decided to boycott all shops who impose veiled cashiers and veiled saleswomen on me.” She says she is committed to support, by all means possible, women who refuse to wear veil.

June 9. Provocation? The Parti des Indigénes de la République issued a public invitation to all Muslims to begin the night of Ramadan in front of Saint Denis Basilica, a huge Catholic monument that played an important role in history of France. The Catholic kings of France were crowned and are buried in the Basilica.

June 9. Soldiers protecting a synagogue in Garges (a Paris suburb) were attacked with a barrage of stones launched by a group of twenty people. One soldier was wounded.

June 8. Twenty MPs co-signed and published an open letter in the news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, addressed to Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. They were protesting the decision of the Ministry of Education to promote teaching Arabic at schools to young children of five or six years old. “This decision is stupid. Priority must be given to teaching French, the language of the Republic”.

June 13. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of left-wing New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), wrote in his blog after the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

June 13. Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). When police stormed the house, they rescued the three-year-old boy. According to Le Figaro, the killer had been sentenced in 2013 to three years of prison for participating in recruiting jihadists and funneling them into Pakistan, but was released almost immediately.

1691 (1)Paris police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing (left) and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider (right), were stabbed to death in front of their son by Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa (inset) on June 13. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

 

June 14. A 19-year-old female student was stabbed at a bus station in the city of Rennes. Passersby succeeded in capturing her attacker, a Muslim man who said he was obeying “voices” that ordered him to make a “sacrifice for Ramadan.” The young woman was taken to a hospital, and the attacker was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

June 14. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the government authorized all policemen to keep their gun on them when they are not on duty.

June 15. According to the Belgian daily La Dernière Heure, the Belgian antiterrorism service informed police departments that ISIS fighters left Syria at the beginning of June to be sent to France and Belgium to commit terrorist attacks.

June 15. Maude Vallet, 18 years old, was harassed, insulted and threatened by five women in a bus because she was wearing shorts on her way back from the beach. She wrote her story on Facebook: “Hi, I am a bitch”. She denounced traditions and the clergy, but refused to mention that these “slut-shaming” attackers were Muslim women. She said the ethnicity to which they belonged was not relevant.

June 15. Ali S, 32, a Tunisian who slapped a female waiter in a bar in Nice because she was serving alcohol during Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay 1000 euros to the waitress. Because he was residing illegally in France, he will be deported and prohibited from returning to France for three years.

June 16. A street encampment of around 400 Sudanese and Afghan migrants, mostly men, was evacuated by the police in the 18th district of Paris. It is the 24th evacuation since June 15, 2015.

June 16. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the right-wing politicians began campaigning to send 13,000 people registered as an “S” (people who live in France and suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization) to special “camps”.

June 16. A 22-year-old convert to Islam was arrested in Carcassonne with a knife and a machete. He confessed to the police that he wanted to kill American and English tourists before stabbing a policeman or a soldier. He is being held in custody in Toulouse. The man is registered as an “S”.

June 18. Abou Kamel Chahid threatened on Facebook to commit terrorist attacks in France. “We are four brothers, each has a mission. I swear by Allah, France is going leave the coalition. They won’t have choice. These kouffars [infidels] will never feel well in this country. Be careful, brothers and sisters, things are going to accelerate”.

June 18. For a year, the public multimedia library of Lannion (Britany) has been suffered a rash of vandalizations of its books, comics and DVDs — all relating to the Jews, such as books about the Holocaust and comics by Johan Sfar, the author of “La chat du rabbin” (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), a bestselling comic book.

June 19: An inmate of the Beziers prison in the south of France was sentenced to an additional six months in prison because he said he wanted to commit a terrorist attack against the nudist beach of the Cap d’Agde. The man, Alain G, a convert to Islam, was reported by other inmates.

June 19: 4000 French Muslims responded to a call launched by a group of Mosques in the area of Magnanville, a Paris suburb, to participate in a silent march in tribute to two police officers stabbed to death at their home. It is the first time that French Muslims showed some collective solidarity with non-Muslims against Islamic terrorism. Pressure from the media had been huge to make the demonstration into a show. There was, however, some criticism: MP Guénhaël Huet tweeted “sincerity or duplicity?”. Many other critics observed the absence of women among the marchers, which was analyzed as a sign of the deepening of Islamist ideology among the French Muslims. When the marchers arrived in front of the police station to lay down flowers, no policemen came out to thank them or shake hands.

June 20. After three days of controversy on social media, it appeared that the policeman who refused to shake hands with President François Hollande at a memorial ceremony for the two police officers murdered by the Islamist, Larossi Abballa, was not a member of right-wing Front National party. According to Le Monde, the policeman just wanted to protest against the shrinking budget of the police.

June 21. The NGO “Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture” (“Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture”) released a poll about the perception of torture by the French. The results were astounding:

  • 36% said it is acceptable to use torture “in exceptional circumstances.” The number was 25% in 2000 [Poll Amnesty/CSA. 2000].
  • 54% of those polled found it “justifiable” to use electric shocks to torture a terrorist suspected of planting a bomb.
  • 45% said they considered torture an efficient tool against terrorism.
  • 18% said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves. 40% of Front National supporters said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves.

June 21. More than 1000 women (mostly Muslims) signed a petition demanding separate hours for women at the public swimming pool of Mantes la Jolie, a Paris suburb. The petition included a request for only female employees to be present during women’s hours. Officials, in the name of secularism, refused the request.

June 21. The daily, Libération, published a report on the Turkish government’s strategy to gain control of Islamic institutions in France.

June 21. A Muslim security guard operating in the “fan zone” of the UEFA Euro soccer tournament in Nice was seen praying while on duty. Police were called to expel him; bystanders were afraid he was a terrorist.

June 22. The investment company Mayhoola, affiliated with the royal family of Qatar, the al-Thanis, spent half-a-billion euros for a controlling interest in the French fashion company Balmain. The same day, the news magazine Marianne published a full survey about the real estate properties of the royal Qatari family in France: 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion USD) in villas, buildings, malls, etc.

June 22. A Muslim from La Chapelle-Basse-Mer (western France) was given a four month suspended prison sentence, a €300 fine, and ordered to pay €1000 in damages each to the two people he threatened to kill, as well as €300 for court costs. In December 2015, he drove his car into a schoolyard and threatened to kill the cook and deputy cook of the school, because his eight-year-old son had eaten pork at the school cafeteria. The boy was hungry and apparently did not want to wait for a substitute meal for vegetarians and Muslims.

June 23: At 3am, in the heart of Barbes, the Muslim quarter of Paris, two men on a motor-scooter opened fire on a group of young men walking in the street. No one was wounded. The police found two 9mm bullet casings on the scene.

June 24: In Toulon, a hundred women demonstrated in the street, all of them wearing shorts. They said they wanted to support Maude Vallet who had been attacked in a bus by five women; the attackers had said that by wearing shorts, she did not respect herself. Like Maude Vallet, the demonstrators refused to mention that all the attackers had been Muslims. Instead, the demonstrators repeated the traditional litany that “it has nothing to do with Islam”.

June 24: In Portes-lès-Valence, an Islamist under surveillance by security services was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of his three-year-old stepdaughter. He had beaten the child to death. The mother was also charged for failing to report the abuse.

June 25: Can a female lawyer testify in court while wearing a veil? This controversy engulfed the bar association of Seine Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. On June 24, at a students’ moot court competition, a young woman appeared with a tuque, a traditional hat which no lawyers in France wear anymore. But, in a visible way, under the tuque, she was wearing a Muslim veil. The controversial question of whether this is now a hot topic. Many observers think that the tuque will be reintroduced in France by Islamist lawyers in the next few months.

June 26: Bernard Cazeneuve posthumously admitted Hervé Cornara to the Order of Légion d’Honneur. A year ago, Cornara, a businessman, was murdered and beheaded by his Muslim employee, Yassine Salhi, who claimed to act on behalf of the Islamic State. Salhi placed Cornara’s severed head on display, alongside twin ISIS flags, at the gas factory near Lyon where they worked.

June 27: The press reported that two days earlier, 300 hundred migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan engaged in a mass brawl in the 18th district of Paris. The brawl apparently erupted because a woman was sexually harassed by a man from a different ethnic group. The police used tear gas grenades to stop the violence.

June 27: In Ales (southern France), Abdellah, a Moroccan, apparently had no money to pay for his meal at the Sushi bar where he had eaten, so he ran out of the restaurant with his girlfriend. When the police caught him, he began to shout:

“You pork-eaters! You sausage-eaters… We are going to kick France’s ass. Long live the Kouachis [brothers who murdered the Charlie Hebdo journalists in January 2015]! I swear to God, I have a Kalashnikov…”

Abdellah was sentenced to two years in prison for “defending terrorism,” and was ordered to pay the Sushi bar bill.

June 28: Azzeddine Taïbi, a communist, was elected mayor of Stains, a suburban city known for its Salafist population. On the same day, the Administrative Court of Montreuil rejected an appeal by the Seine-Saint-Denis Prefecture demanding the removal of a banner in support of Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israel prison for

“orchestrating three shooting attacks that killed 5 people: one attack in Jerusalem… in which Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus was murdered… and one shooting and stabbing attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant in Tel Aviv (March 5, 2002). When arrested by Israel in 2002, Barghouti headed the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction).”

Barghouti’s supporters try to paint him as the “Palestinian Mandela.” So, today, the portrait of Barghouti is back covering “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” on the pediment of the Seine-Saint-Denis Hall.

June 29: The prosecutor’s office in Paris opened in inquiry into death threats posted on social networks against the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Some twenty “very threatening” messages, including the death threats, were posted on Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page for three or four days in mid-June, Le Parisien reported. Police are investigating.

June 30: The French government introduced amendments to the “Equality and Citizenship” bill, to fight against “prejudice” and make “diversity” (ethnic minorities) more visible on public television.

According to the latest “barometer of diversity,” only 14% of people perceived as “non-white” (in the terminology) are present on the air. Erika Bareigts, secretary of state in charge of “real equality,” said that “diversity is the reality of French society, and we must show it. This soothes the debate, and everybody needs it.” She added: “The media do not show non-whites in positive or starring roles. That must change.”

June 30: Two jihadists, back from Syria, where they joined the Islamic State, were sentenced to six-month suspended prison terms. The jihadists are 16 and 17 years old. They stayed only six months in Syria and said they left ISIS because of the “rotten ambiance” in their battalion, which was composed of French volunteers.

Categories: Antisemitism, France, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic jihad, Islamic perversions, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamic tolerance, Islamisation of France
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‘Hamas constantly trying to destabilize Jerusalem’

July 12, 2016

‘Hamas constantly trying to destabilize Jerusalem’ In report to Knesset Committee, Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman surveys number from recent terror wave as well as state of Fatah, Hamas.

Shai Landesman, 12/07/16 16:41

Source: ‘Hamas constantly trying to destabilize Jerusalem’ – Defense/Security – News –

Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman appeared at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee headed by MK Avi Dichter (Likud) today (Tuesday), and delivered a report about the wave of Palestinian terror that started last October.

Here are the main findings Argaman presented in the report:

Since the beginning of the current escalation on the 10th of October, 2015, over 300 significant terror attacks have been carried out or attempted (this excludes stone or Molotov cocktail throwing). Of these 180 were stabbing attacks, 90 were shooting attacks, and 30 involved running over with cars, (all rounded figures). Though October 2015 saw a dramatic increase in the scale of these attacks, this can be seen as a continuation of a more slow increase of attacks in Judea and Samaria starting in 2012.

The majority of the attacks were “lone wolf” attacks, with only a few perpetrated by the established terror organizations.

Security forces and the Shin Bet have thwarted some 240 attacks since October, and in the first five months of 2016 alone they’ve prevented 11 suicide attack attempts, 10 kidnapping attempts, and over 60 shooting attempts, most planned by Hamas, who are constantly acting to destabilize Judea and Samaria.

There is a decrease in attacks over the past few months versus October of 2015, when some 600 attacks were perpetrated, of which 81 were significant. In June of this year 103 were perpetrated, of which 9 were significant.

The decrease is attributed to the large number of thwarted attacks, improvements in intelligence, and deterrence focused in the immediate surroundings of the terrorists. All of these measures have produced a widespread feeling among the Palestinian population of Judea and Samaria that there is little to be gained by continuing to escalate hostilities, a feeling reflected in opinion polls conducted by Palestinian institutions.

Though the actual number of attacks is decreasing, the situation remains highly volatile, with the threat still very real (as evidenced by the number of thwarted attacks). Thus any significant event may cause a renewed breakout of hostilities.

It is also important to note that there is a general feeling in PA and Fatah circles that the Mahmoud Abbas-era is nearing its end (as he has announced his intentions to retire several times). There is therefore much jostling for position among Fatah leaders, as is usual in transition periods, and many of them are using belligerent language to bolster their status as strong leaders.

The report also dealt with the Gaza Strip; the quiet reigning there is deceptive, it said. The economic situation is worsening, ISIS is gaining power, and Hamas are rebuilding their strength.

Approximately 80 terror attacks were perpetrated from the Gaza Strip since operation Protective Edge, making this the most quiet period in a decade. Fringe Salafist groups are behind most of the attacks. The quiet is mainly due to Hamas’ feeling of lack of readiness for war, and the stability of Israeli policy in dealing with the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is in strategic crisis due to diplomatic isolation as a result of its feuds with the Sunni states led by Egypt, difficulties in its relationship with the Iranian led Shi’ite camp, and internal divisions between the military wing in Gaza and the political leadership outside. In practice this has led to greater control by the military wing.

Hamas is rebuilding its arsenal and operational capabilities in preparation for the next round of fighting, from which it plans to extract strategic gains such as the removal of the IDF blockade of the Gaza coast.

As to public opinion in Gaza, the Shin Bet has found that there is rising resentment toward Hamas for its inability to improve the economic situation. Yet it is unlikely that any overthrow will be attempted, due to widespread fear of Hamas reprisals, economic dependency, and general distaste for the alternative, namely ISIS.

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Tribunal rules there’s no legal basis for China’s claims in South China Sea

July 12, 2016

Tribunal rules there’s no legal basis for China’s claims in South China Sea, Associated Press via Fox News, July 12, 2016

South China SeaFILE – This May 11, 2015, file photo, shows land reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. (AP)
 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands –  A tribunal ruled in a sweeping decision Tuesday that China has no legal basis for claiming much of the South China Sea and had aggravated the seething regional dispute with its large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas.

Ruling on a variety of disputes the Philippines asked the tribunal to settle between it and China, the five-member panel unanimously concluded that China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing.

The tribunal also found that China had interfered with Philippine petroleum exploration at Reed Bank, tried to stop fishing by Philippine vessels within the country’s exclusive economic zone and failed to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone at Mischief Reef and Second Thomas Shoal.

The Philippines, which sought the arbitration ruling, welcomed the decision, and China rejected it outright.

“The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea,” Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said in Manila.

He pledged to pursue a peaceful resolution of his country’s territorial disputes with China.

China’s state Xinhua news agency said China “does not accept or acknowledge” the tribunal or the ruling. China has long maintained that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction over the dispute.

The ruling is binding on both countries under a U.N. treaty that both have signed, but there is no policing agency or mechanism to enforce it.

The tribunal said that any historic rights to resources that China may have had were wiped out if they are incompatible with exclusive economic zones established under a U.N. treaty.

It also criticized China for building a large artificial island on Mischief Reef, saying it caused “permanent irreparable harm” to the coral reef ecosystem and permanently destroyed evidence of the natural conditions of the feature.

China drafted its so-called nine-dash line to demarcate its claims to virtually the entire South China Sea. Manila brought the case because China’s claims infringe upon its own 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

The dispute centers on waters through which an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes through each year and are home to rich fishing stocks and a potential wealth of oil, gas and other resources. The ruling comes as the U.S. has ramped up its military presence in the region.

However a new Philippine leader who appears friendlier to Beijing could also influence the aftermath of the ruling.

China, which boycotted the case, summoned its demobilized sailors and officers for training drills in exercises that apparently started just days ago.

The People’s Liberation Army Daily newspaper said on social media late Monday that Chinese navy reserves have been called up to perform “functional tasks.” The post followed online rumors that reservists in central Chinese provinces were called up for an unspecified mission from July 10-22.

In the Philippines, more than 100 left-wing activists marched to the Chinese Consulate in metropolitan Manila, yelling, “Philippine territory is ours, China get out.” They called their campaign to push China out of the South China Sea, “CHexit” or “China exit now.”

Vietnam, meanwhile, accused Chinese vessels of sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat in disputed waters. Nguyen Thanh Hung, a local fisheries executive in the central province of Quang Ngai, said two Chinese vessels chased and sank the Vietnamese boat around midday Saturday as it was fishing near the Paracel islands. The five fishermen were rescued by another trawler around seven hours later.

China has argued that the tribunal has no jurisdiction and says it won’t accept the ruling. It has insisted that bilateral talks between Beijing and other claimants is the only way to address the dispute.

Findings of the tribunal are binding on the parties, including China. But the court — without police or military forces or a system of sanctions at its disposal — can’t enforce its ruling, so its potential impact remains unclear.

Categories: China, South China Sea
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