Archive for July 28, 2016

Hillary Obstructed Boko Haram’s Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In

July 28, 2016

Hillary Obstructed Boko Haram’s Terror Designation as Her Donors Cashed In, PJ MediaPatrick Poole, July 28, 2016

(But hashtags should have worked.

bring back our gals

— DM)

boka harem

In January 2015, I was one of the first to report on a massive massacre by Nigerian terror group Boko Haram in Borno State in northwest Nigeria, with reportedly thousands killed. Witnesses on the ground reported that bodies littered the landscape for miles as towns and villages had been burned to the ground, their populations murdered or fled.

By that time, Boko Haram had already become the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, now responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Just yesterday, the United Nations accused Boko Haram of “almost unimaginable” levels of violence and brutality.

And yet, as Boko Haram began to ramp up its terror campaign in 2011 and 2012, Hillary Clinton obstructed the official terror designation of the group over the objections of Congress, the FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department.

boko death

Why did Hillary Clinton’s State Department drag its feet on the terror designation in the face of near unanimous opposition from the rest of the U.S. government?

A recent series of reports exposes that a close Clinton family confidante — and Hillary campaign bundler — who profited from Nigeria’s lucrative oil fields. He engaged in multiple illegal deals throughout Africa.

Also, other donors to the Clinton Global Initiative are deeply involved in Nigeria’s corrupt oil industry.

Were they the motivation behind Hillary’s inexplicable position on Boko Haram?

As PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson has previously asked, is Boko Haram Hillary Clinton’s biggest scandal? Hillary Clinton is set to accept the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States. Why is no one in the media talking about Hillary and Boko Haram?

It is worth nothing that Congress had to drag a reluctant State Department kicking and screaming to get Boko Haram designated in November 2013, after Hillary Clinton had left office.

Hillary Clinton’s willful obstruction in the matter is easy to document:

  • Members of Congress discovered in 2014 that the Clinton State Department intentionally lied and downplayed the threat from Boko Haram, and worked to kill bills in both the House and the Senate calling for their designation in 2012.
  • As Reuters reported, the Justice Department’s National Security Division strongly urged the State Department to designate Boko Haram, but then a group of 21 American academics rallied to the State Department’s aid by sending a letter to Hillary Clinton strongly arguing against Boko Haram’s designation.
  • We also now know that the Obama administration was sitting on intelligence — obtained as a result of the Bin Laden raid — that revealed Boko Haram’s direct connection to al-Qaeda and the international terror network in 2011 and 2012. In other words, Hillary’s State Department was arguing that Boko Haram had no such connections, that it wasn’t a transnational terror threat, even though the Obama administration — and likely Clinton herself — knew that was false.

An important two-part investigative series by WORLD Magazine reporters Mindy Belz and J.C. Derrick provides some insight:

Belz and Derrick discovered that Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram designation, and the continuing chaos in northern Nigeria — Africa’s largest economy and the 10th largest oil producer in the world — directly benefited Clinton Global Initiative donors and a close Clinton confidante who bundled campaign cash for Hillary.

From Belz’s and Derrick’s second article:

Perhaps the most prominent Nigerian with ties to the Clintons is Houston-based Kase Lawal. The founder of CAMAC Energy, an oil exploration and energy consortium, Lawal had a long history with Bill Clinton before becoming a “bundler” for Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid, amassing $100,000 in contributions and hosting a fundraiser in his Houston home — a 14-room, 15,264-square-foot mansion. Lawal maxed out donations to Hillary’s 2016 primary campaign, and his wife Eileen donated $50,000 — the most allowed — to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural committee.Lawal describes himself as a devout Muslim who began memorizing the Quran at age 3 while attending an Islamic school. “Religion played a very important role in our lives,” he told a reporter in 2006. “Every time you finish a chapter they kill a chicken, and if you finish the whole thing, a goat.”

Today the Houston oil exec — who retired in May as CEO but continues as chairman of the board of CAMAC, now called Erin Energy — tops the list of wealthiest Nigerians living in North America. His firm reports about $2.5 billion in annual revenue, making it one of the top private companies in the United States.

In Africa, Lawal has been at the center of multiple criminal proceedings, even operating as a fugitive. Over the last decade, he faced charges in South Africa over an illegal oil scheme along with charges in Nigeria of illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lawal arranged a 2011 plot to purchase 4 tons of gold from a rebel warlord, Bosco Ntaganda, linked to massacres and mass rapes. Ntaganda was on a U.S. sanctions list, meaning anyone doing business with him could face up to 20 years in prison. Lawal contacted Clinton’s State Department, and authorities in Congo released his plane and associates in the plot.

He never faced charges in the United States, and he remains a commissioner for the Port Authority of Houston.

Lawal’s energy firm holds lucrative offshore oil licenses in Nigeria, as well as exploration and production licenses in Gambia, Ghana, and Kenya, where he operates in a conflict-ridden area largely controlled by Somalia’s al-Shabaab militants.

The firm also has held contracts in Nigeria for crude oil lifting, or transferring oil from its collection point to refineries. Until last year, when newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari began an effort to reform the process, contracting for lifting has been awash in kickbacks, bribes, and illegal activity.

Overland lifting contracts often involve partnership with the North’s past and present governors, including those who serve as quasi-warlords with ties to Boko Haram and other militants.

Lawal’s enterprises have long been rumored to be involved in such deals, as have indigenous oil concerns like Petro Energy and Oando, Nigeria’s largest private oil and gas company, based in Lagos and headed by Adewale Tinubu, another controversial Clinton donor.

In 2014, Oando pledged 1.5 percent of that year’s pre-tax profits and 1 percent of future profits to a Clinton Global Initiative education program. This year, Adewale gained notoriety when the Panama Papers revealed he holds at least 12 shell companies, leading to suspicion of money laundering, tax evasion, and other corruption.

In 2013 Bill Clinton stood alongside Adewale’s uncle, Bola Tinubu, while attending the dedication of a massive, controversial reclamation project called Eko Atlantic. Critics call Bola Tinubu, leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress party, Nigeria’s “looter in chief.” A Nigerian documentary says that when the billionaire landowner was governor of Lagos State (1999-2007), he funneled huge amounts of state funds — up to 15 percent of annual tax revenues — to a private consulting firm in which he had controlling interest.

In the United States, where he studied and worked in the 1970s and ’80s, Tinubu is still a suspect in connection with a Chicago heroin ring he allegedly operated with his wife and three other family members. In 1993 Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to American authorities, who believe he trafficked drugs and laundered the proceeds.

But wait, there’s more:

Beneath the surface, literally, Boko Haram was making it possible for illicit operators to lay claim to the area for their own purposes, and to pump oil from Nigeria’s underground reserves to Chad. Using 3-D drilling, Chad operators can extract Nigerian oil — without violating Nigerian property rights — to sell on open markets. One benefactor of the arrangement is Ali Modu Sheriff, a leading politician in the North, Borno State governor until 2011, and an alleged sponsor of Boko Haram, who is close friends with longtime Chad President Idriss Déby.The very terrorism that seems to be deterring oil exploration in reality can help illicit extraction, forcing residents to flee and giving cover to under-the-table oil traders. In 2015, a year when overall oil prices dipped 6 percent, Lawal’s Erin Energy stock value skyrocketed 295 percent—the best-performing oil and gas stock in the United States.

Every word of Belz’s and Derrick’s two-part investigative series is worth reading.

Of course, Hillary’s defenders will claim all of this — Clinton obstructing the terrorist designation of what is now the most lethal terrorist organization in the world on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors and close Clinton family confidantes — is crazy conspiracy talk.

But they also said that about Hillary’s role in the fast-tracking approval of Russia’s acquisition of a large chunk of America’s uranium supply — while the Clinton Foundation was taking money from those profiting from the deal.

Hillary Clinton’s obstruction of the Boko Haram terror designation in the face of FBI, CIA, DOJ, and Congressional urging to do so is a documented fact. But the reason for Hillary’s obstruction, which the establishment media has never pressed Clinton for, remains unanswered.

Don’t expect any of the talking heads on tonight’s coverage of Hillary’s DNC convention acceptance speech to press the matter, either.

Creeping Sharia in Health Care

July 28, 2016

Creeping Sharia in Health Care, American ThinkerCarol Brown, July 28, 2016

(If Islamists are to be our masters, we had best make them healthy, wealthy and wise. — DM)

Islamic supremacy is arriving in medical settings using stealth means, or what is often referred to as creeping sharia. Common themes include Muslim health care workers refusing to uphold infection control protocols, Muslim medical students refusing to study topics they deem forbidden according to Islamic law, Muslim visitors in hospitals ignoring hygiene guidelines to protect patients, and hospitals bending over backwards (or is it forwards?) to accommodate Muslim demands above and beyond anything done for members of any other religious or demographic group. Also covered are outright acts of violence perpetrated by Muslim men who attack hospital personnel.

Islamic supremacy + dhimmitude = the end of civilized societies. Before I begin the (by no means exhaustive) list of how this equation is playing out in health care settings throughout the West, I’d like to share a personal story.

Shortly after the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks I had occasion to speak with a Muslim doctor who lived down the street from me. At that point in time I was completely ignorant about Islam and was, in fact, still a leftist (though wouldn’t be for much longer).

The doctor, a meticulously groomed, soft-spoken, modern-appearing man made it clear that, among other things, he believed that Muslim females become “mature” when they turned nine and therefore can be married at that age. I ignored the alarm bell that went off in my head when he made that statement. Of course I’ve long since realized that this highly educated doctor who worked at a prestigious hospital had sanctioned, at the very least, child rape (in keeping with the teachings of his prophet, the king of all pedophiles, Mohammed).

And therein lies the rub with Muslim doctors, as with all Muslims. If they are good Muslims and follow the teachings of the Quran, their values will necessarily be in direct conflict with our own.

So with that in mind, let me begin our tour through Islamic supremacy in medial settings right here in the United States.

An Islamic medical association operating in this country was identified by the Muslim Brotherhood as one among several “organizations of our friends” — friends that could help the MB advance their goal of destroying America from within. Part of the association’s oath includes: “We serve no other God besides [Allah] and regard idolatry as an abominable injustice.”

Islamic supremacy also asserts itself through lawfare as when a Muslim medical student who was dismissed due to poor academic performance sued the medical school on grounds of discrimination. Another case involved a Muslim health care worker who was fired because she refused to get a flu vaccine (required in hospital settings to protect patients) claiming the vaccine violated her Islamic faith because it contained a pork by product and that the entire affair violated her civil rights.

In addition to lawfare there are many other ways Muslims push for special accommodations such as Muslim doctors and advocacy organizations calling on health care personnel to be more knowledgeable about Muslim traditions so they can better meet the needs of their Muslim patients.

And so hospitals across the country are implementing an array of services for Muslim patients,  including halal meals, alternatives to medications that contain alcohol and/or pork derivatives, gowns for women designed to protect their modesty, early morning and late night appointments during the month of Ramadan, hiring more Muslim chaplains, handing out Qurans to the parents of Muslim children after they’re born, providing prayer rugs, hosting Iftar events, and setting up prayers rooms exclusively for Muslims who often find existing multi-faith prayers rooms offensive and/or inconvenient.

One town in Illinois proposed a “Muslim-centric” medical facility replete with many of the features noted above as well as Arabic-speaking staff, private rooms to ensure a Muslim standard of modesty, and space for ritual foot baths. The state rejected the plan but it was resubmitted without any references to sharia law.

There has also been a proliferation of medical outreach programs for the Muslim community along with “sensitivity training” for medical staff who are expected to become so well versed in the array of Muslim patients’ needs that they can discern differences between the needs of a Muslim from Pakistan compared to a Muslim from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim-as-victim meme rears its head as well, such as the idea that Muslims “don’t have access” to healthcare, as was recently asserted by the vice president of cultural competence at a medical center in Brooklyn, NY.

And when Muslims do access health care, special demands may be made as when a Muslima in New Jersey went to an emergency room complaining of chest pain and insisted on a male technician after she was told she’d need an electrocardiogram. No male technician was available and she was informed of her options. She decided to sit and wait. After several hours her husband requested she be transferred to a different hospital. The couple then sued, claiming the Patient’s Bill of Rights entitled the Muslima to her demands.

The issue of Muslima patients demanding same-sex health care professionals in emergency situations is one I expect to escalate, as is happening in Europe. But first, let’s take a quick detour to Canada where medical professionals banned virginity tests and the issuance of “chastity certificates” (popular in the Muslim culture) after the discovery of four dead Afghan women who were victims of “honor killings.” Elsewhere in Canada on a maternity ward where shared rooms arranged four beds with privacy curtains in between, a Muslim couple received greater levels of privacy than were afforded to others when their demands ejected at least one non-Muslim couple out of the ward and into a much more costly private room that the couple had to pay for.

In Europe the situation is even more dire. And pervasive.

In the UK, an 87-year-old Alzheimer’s patient was forced to wait for care after she fell because the Muslim charge nurse withheld assistance until he finished his prayers. This delay in care lasted five to ten minutes. The patient died shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, in at least one British hospital, staff were turning the beds of Muslim patients up to five times a day so patients could face Mecca while they pray. Then staff turned them back when the patients were finished. Staff were also expected to provide Muslim patients with running water so they can wash their feet before prayer.

And then there is the issue of traditional Muslim attire, much of which doesn’t meet standards for infection control. The National Health Service requires staff providing direct care to patients to be in short sleeves to reduce the risk of transmitting increasingly deadly pathogens from one patient to another. Since many Muslim women consider it immodest to expose their forearms, some have refused to do so for proper hand-washing or scrubbing in prior to surgery. So the NHS developed disposable sleeves for Muslim health care workers who have direct patient contact.

Naturally the tale above would not be complete without the Muslim-claiming-discrimination story as when a British radiographer who was faced with having to choose between losing her job or complying with the dress code, chose Islam over her job, then complained about having to make the choice. Meanwhile, the Islamic Medical Association in the UK upheld the Islamic tenet that Muslim women out in public must be covered, stating: “No practicing Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse, or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow.”

But it doesn’t stop there. (It never stops when it comes to Islamic supremacism.) Some Muslimas working in hospitals in the UK also want sterile hijabs to wear in the operating room and a private place to scrub in so their modesty can be protected. Some Muslim health care workers also refuse to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer because they claim it is forbidden according to Islamic law.

And what of British Muslims studying to work in health care? Well, some have refused to attend classes or learn about anything that conflicts with the teachings of the Quran, such as material on evolution and health issues related sexual promiscuity and/or alcohol consumption. The commitment to avoid all things alcohol-related also impacts patient safety when Muslim visitors to hospitals refuse to use anti-bacterial gel before entering patient wards, ignoring signs posted throughout British hospitals asking visitors to use the gel in order to reduce the spread of infection. (Of note, there is nothing in Islamic law that would suggest Muslims cannot use alcohol-based sanitary gels and it appears that some Muslims are using this as a point of leverage to assert supremacy. See here, here, and here.)

The final exhibit of the UK tour is a Muslim dentist who insisted his female patients wear hijabs, keeping a stash of head scarves in his office to give them. He abandoned at least two patients in acute pain who refused to don the hijab and on at least one occasion provided lesser quality care to a patient’s son when the mother agreed to wear the hijab but apparently didn’t answer a question about her son’s prayer habits in a way that pleased the dentist. Of note, the dentist’s younger brother is an Islamic extremist who stated that the 9/11 terror attack served “the pleasure of Allah.”

Throughout Europe it has also become increasingly common for Muslim men to physically attack male doctors. In some cases, women are denied urgently needed medical care because their spouses are adamant that they be attended to by a female, or not be attended to at all.

In France, a newborn’s father called the midwife a “rapist” then broke into the locked delivery room after seeing a nurse remove his wife’s burqa so she could give birth, hit the nurse in the face, and demanded she put the burqa back on his wife. In another case a Muslim male physically attacked a gynecologist who stepped in to assist with his wife’s complicated delivery. A few months prior to that, another doctor was attacked by a knife-wielding Islamist.

In Belgium, when a Muslim woman needed an emergency c-section, her husband blocked the door to the operating room because the anesthesiologist was a male. After being told no female anesthesiologists were available a two-hour stand-off ensued after which time an imam was called upon who allowed the doctor to administer an epidural through a tiny opening in the woman’s burqa. A female nurse performed the surgery while the anesthesiologist remained outside the room shouting instructions to another nurse who was monitoring the anesthesia. An organization of anesthesiologists stated there have been other such incidents involving Muslim patients and their families.

In Sweden, it’s more of the same. When a male doctor answered an urgent call to assist with a mother who was bleeding heavily after giving birth, the woman’s husband screamed at him to leave the room immediately. When the doctor refused, the husband and the brother-in-law physically attacked him.

In addition to Muslim males becoming enraged if a male health care provider attends to their wife, there other things that may set them off. (Like just about everything.) And so a Turkish Muslim went on a violent rampage in a Catholic hospital in Germany because there were too many crosses on the walls.

Barbarism meets the West. (And I haven’t even touched upon the abject madness that has unfolded in hospitals across Europe as invaders invade en masse, here, here, and here.)

As the Muslim population in a society increases, expressions of Islamic supremacy become more and more aggressive. How it manifests in health care settings is just one of many ways in which the West is slowly and steadily being taken down by those who embrace an ideology that mandates nothing less than world domination.

Hat tips: Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch, Islam in Europe, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, Fox News, Boston Herald, Front Page Magazine, Discover the Networks, BBC, Daily Mail, Metro UK, Telegraph, The Guardian, Nursing Times, Modern Health Care, Middle East Forum, Islam in Europe, Islamist Watch, The Whig, The Age, Religion News, Europe1, Lancet, Society for Human Resource Management, Wikipedia, and Daniel Pipes whose 2007 comprehensive overview of the subject matter provided a wealth of material.

 

Merkel At Emergency Press Conference: Germany Stands By Mass Migration Policy Despite Terror Attacks

July 28, 2016

Merkel At Emergency Press Conference: Germany Stands By Mass Migration Policy Despite Terror Attacks, BreitbartLiam Deacon, July 28, 2016

(Please see also, Juncker: No Matter How Bad Migrant Crisis, Terrorism Gets, We’ll Never Give Up On Open Borders. — DM)

merkel no matter whatTobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty

After a week of Islamist attacks by migrants and ‘refugees’, the German Chancellor has admitted terrorists used her open door policy to bring in people to commit violence, but refused to reverse her approach.

Defending her decision to tear up EU asylum rules for Syrian migrants, she said she had “acted in line with my knowledge and conscience” and said Germany would “stick to our principles” and “give shelter to those who deserve it”.

The German Chancellor had rushed back from a holiday and was speaking at a press conference that had been hastily brought forward to address the carnage in her country.

She repeated her “We can do this!” catchphrase, which she first uttered at the same conference last year before welcoming 1.5 million mainly young, male, Middle Eastern migrants to Germany.

(Video at the link. — DM)

“As chancellor, I am responsible for, by far, most decisions. I always have to weigh up if a decision meets our values — which does not mean that there are no risks,” she said.

Adding: “The basic principle that Germany stands by [is that] its humanitarian responsibility is the right thing.”

She did, however, say that “we will have to redouble efforts to deport people” who commit crimes and pledged that weapons laws across Europe would be sharpened.

She also claimed that terrorists wanted Germany to take in fewer migrants, and said she would not bow to their wishes.

“The terrorists want to make us lose sight of what is important to us, break down our cohesion and sense of community as well as inhibiting our way of life, our openness and our willingness take in people who are in need,” she said.

Adding: “They see hatred and fear between cultures and they see hatred and fear between religions. We stand decisively against that.”

In the past ten days, Germany has been rocked by four violent attacks – three of which were committed by migrants, and two had links to Islamic State.

One Syrian “refugee” hacked a pregnant woman to death on the street. Another Syrian, who came from Bulgaria, blew himself up outside a music festival injuring 15, and a “refugee” attacked multiple people on a train just over a week ago.

(Audio at the link. — DM)

Taken To Saudi Arabia And Locked in a Cage

July 28, 2016

Taken To Saudi Arabia And Locked in a Cage, Clarion Project, July 28, 2016

saudi cageIllustrative picture. (Photo: © Reuters)

[A] judge in the High Court, Justice Holman, has asserted, “We have to be careful about asserting the supremacy our cultural standards.”

Saudi Arabia does not recognize al-Jeffrey’s British citizenship. They are also paying for her father’s legal fees.

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Amina al-Jeffrey was born in Swansea, UK, and taken at age 16 to Saudi Arabia by her father, who disapproved of her Western lifestyle.

Now 21, she is fighting a court battle in the High Court in London against her father to be allowed to return to the UK.

She alleges that her father, Mohammed al-Jeffrey, put “metal bars” on her bedroom and described being a “locked-up girl with a shaved head.”

Still a judge in the High Court, Justice Holman, has asserted, “We have to be careful about asserting the supremacy our cultural standards.”

Holman also said that it is unclear whether or not Britain had jurisdiction in the matter since al-Jeffrey was an adult with dual Saudi and UK citizenship.

Al-Jeffrey said her father hit her, deprived her of water and forced her to urinate in a cup.

Although “metal bars are no longer in her room” according to her lawyers, “she is still locked up in the house” and “not allowed to use the phone or internet.”

“Steps need to be taken to ensure Ms. Jeffery is returned to the UK where her safety can be guaranteed,” the Foreign Office Forced Marriage Unit said in a statement.

“Her treatment has extended to depriving her of food and water, depriving her of toilet facilities, physical assault and control of her ability to marry who she wishes and creating a situation in which she feels compelled to marry as a means of escape,” Henry Setright, a lawyer acting on behalf of al-Jeffrey said in a statement.

He described the situation as a “fundamental breach of human rights.”

Saudi Arabia does not recognize al-Jeffrey’s British citizenship. They are also paying for her father’s legal fees.

“Regarding returning Amina back to the UK, I am unwilling to do this as I fear she will go back to her old destructive lifestyle,” her father said in a letter submitted to the court.

“As her father, I fear for her health and safety and only want what is best for Amina, so she may focus on her education.”

“She is a normal Welsh girl and still has her Welsh accent,” said Anne-Marie Hutchinson, from the Academy of Family Lawyers who is representing al-Jeffrey.

“She wants to return home so she can have control of her own life and make her own choices.”

Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC

July 28, 2016

Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC, Vice NewsDalia Hatuqa, July 28, 2016

pal rightsA delegate holds a sign reading ‘I support Palestinian Human Rights’ at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia [Tannen Maury/EPA]

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Eva Putzova held a banner with a simple message just outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) floor on Tuesday: “I support Palestinian rights.”

“I think it’s time that Democratic candidates – Hillary, Bernie or anybody else – start taking the issue seriously and start a real national conversation and get behind all human rights, including Palestinian rights,” said Putzova, a city council member from Flagstaff, Arizona.

She was among many pro-Palestine activists at the DNC this week who came out in a show of force unprecedented at other political conventions. They marched and rallied, held talks and town halls, carried signs and, at one point, raised a Palestinian flag on the convention floor.

“The issue is getting more media exposure, more people are aware,” Putzova said. “I think we are on the brink of changing the policy stands of the US, but it will take all of us to push the political elite. I think [Palestinians are] a community that has been marginalised for so long.”

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

In a debate last April, he pushed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to call the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza “disproportionate”. He said the US and Israel need “to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity” and that the US “has to play an even-handed role”. Sanders, however, was also criticised for not denouncing Israel more forcefully, and for the ousting of his campaign’s Jewish outreach director, who slammed Israel’s prime minister in a Facebook post.

A month later, Sanders assigned James Zogby, an advocate for Palestinian rights, and four others, including one of two Muslim congressmen, to the platform-writing committee, signalling his attempt to revise the party’s long-standing policy that favoured Israel.

“It took the work of a mass movement and a courageous person like Bernie Sanders, because if Bernie hadn’t elevated it, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Zogby, also President of the Arab American Institute, in a talk attended by pro-Palestine supporters in Philadelphia. “He gave us a qualitative boost forward.”

What’s on the platform?

On the DNC sidelines, pro-Palestine supporters discussed how the conflict with the Israelis was playing out on the domestic policy platform.

But in stark contrast to public support and activism, the party’s platform, which now supports a $15 minimum wage and Wall Street reform, did not include references to the Israeli occupation and its settlements.

Zogby said Clinton supporters cut out these references, fearing retribution from billionaire mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.  On an official level, Clinton’s backers said the call for negotiations for a two-state solution in the party’s platform was sufficient.

Going into the platform-writing committee, Zogby said he and other Sanders delegates were expecting to discuss removing a reference to Jerusalem being the “undivided capital” of Israel, and opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“We wanted to strike the BDS line, we wanted to strike out a line on Jerusalem,” said Zogby, who is also on the DNC’s executive committee. “I thought that would be the fight. I had no idea the fight would end up being over occupation and settlements.”

They lost on all counts, and pro-Clinton supporters said they couldn’t change the language. “Here’s what they told me: ‘We can’t do it because Adelson will come out against us,'” Zogby said. “He will come after you no matter what you do. The people who like [Adelson] won’t vote for you.”

The platform committee discussions leading up to the DNC also spurred controversy, as civil rights activist and scholar Cornel West made an impassioned appeal to change the language to include “an end to occupation and illegal settlements”.

He called Palestine a “Vietnam War” issue for young Americans, and likened the party’s indifference to the conflict to the same apathy to “these Negroes” in the Jim Crow era.

Despite the fact that the resolution was voted down, some believe that the discourse on Palestine has shifted.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

A changing conversation

“The conversation has improved a lot … it is broader and more inclusive,” said Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, another Sanders pick on the DNC platform committee. “Over the past few years, members of Congress have gone to the Holy Land, not only to Israel, but also to Palestine. The perspective is changing, and it’s a good time to continue the work that you’re doing.”

Palestine supporters are banking on the presence of many activists and progressives in the city, in part because of Sanders’ candidacy, to expand and change the debate on the conflict.

They are also aware that the share of younger Americans sympathising with the Palestinian cause has risen significantly in recent years – from 9 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in July 2014, and finally to 27 percent today.

“We have seen some fairly remarkable changes in the landscape of how the issue of Palestine and Israel is being addressed – both in the news media and particularly within progressive circles,” said Mike Merryman Lotze, the American Friends Service Committee’s (also known as the Quakers) Palestine-Israel programme director.

“If we look back where the conversation was 15 years ago today, even really five years ago, we have to recognise that we are now in a fundamentally different place,” he said.

“That marks a shift … and that conversation has been pushed by the grassroots progressive movement.”

READ MORE: US Democratic Party – Closer to justice on Palestine?

Juncker: No Matter How Bad Migrant Crisis, Terrorism Gets, We’ll Never Give Up On Open Borders

July 28, 2016

Juncker: No Matter How Bad Migrant Crisis, Terrorism Gets, We’ll Never Give Up On Open Borders

Source: Juncker: No Matter How Bad Migrant Crisis, Terrorism Gets, We’ll Never Give Up On Open Borders

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP/Getty Images

Jean-Claude Juncker has vowed that no matter how bad terrorism or the migrant crisis gets, the European Union (EU) will never give up on open borders. The European Commission president said terrorism could be countered with better intelligence-sharing between member states.

On France 2’s Four Truths programme this morning, Mr. Juncker said “a lot of initiatives” will be required to strengthen security in the EU. After a bloody month for Europe in which the continent has seen multiple Islamic terror attacks — four in the last week in Germany alone — the EU president insisted better communication between member states would solve the problem.

Mr. Juncker told presenter Gilles Bornstein that he “expected a better response from member states regarding the exchange of information between police and intelligence services”.

The EU chief said he believes member states “are not yet used to the obvious need there is to better share information”.

Mr. Juncker insisted that however bad the “migrant crisis” and terrorism in Europe gets, the EU will never call into question the free movement of people within the bloc.

“This is one of the four fundamental freedoms of the founding Treaty of Rome. It is an inviolable principle,” he said.

In the interview on the publicly owned broadcaster, Mr. Juncker also mused on a number of other issues such as this year’s U.S. presidential race, and Turkish accession to the EU. The unelected European People’s Party figure told Mr. Bornstein that “Turkey is not in a position to join the EU in the short and medium term”.

“If Turkey reintroduced the death penalty, negotiations would stop immediately,” he added.

Mr. Juncker said he considers it illegitimate for him to “interfere in the Democratic [party] Republican [party] debate”, but the EU chief admitted he would prefer Hillary Clinton in the White House to Donald Trump.

The President of the European Commission is not just committed to open borders within Europe. Under his presidency, the European Commission lists migration as one of its priorities. As well as offering residency to the world’s “refugees”, the Commission seeks to make it much easier and more desirable for Africans and their families to move to EU countries.

Speaking after Islamic terror attacks left 130 dead in Paris last November, Mr. Juncker rejected calls to rethink the EU’s open doors policy on migration from Africa and the Middle East. Dismissing suggestions that open borders led to the attacks, Mr. Juncker said he believed “exactly the opposite” – that the attacks should be met with a stronger display of liberal values including open borders.

Turkey: Good News, Bad News

July 28, 2016

Turkey: Good News, Bad News, Gatestone InstituteBurak Bekdil, July 28, 2016

♦ Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax.

♦ In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested and there are serious allegations of torture.

♦ Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, some detainees were denied food and water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason.

♦ The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

In 1853, John Russell quoted Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as saying that the Ottoman Empire was “a sick man — a very sick man,” in reference to the ailing empire’s fall into a state of decrepitude. Some 163 years after that, the modern Turkish state follows in the Ottoman steps.

Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, was staggering between a hybrid democracy and bitter authoritarianism. After the failed putsch of July 15, it is being dragged into worse darkness. The silly attempt gives Erdogan what he wanted: a pretext to go after every dissident Turk. A witch-hunt is badly shattering the democratic foundations of the country.

Taking advantage of the putsch attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that will run for a period of three months, with an option to extend it for another quarter of a year. Erdogan, declaring the state of emergency, promised to “clean out the cancer viruses like metastasis” in the body called Turkey. With the move for a state of emergency, Turkey also suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, citing Article 15 of the Convention, which stipulates:

“In time of war or other public emergencies threatening the life of the nation, any High Contracting Party may take measures derogating from its obligations under this Convention to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with its other obligations under international law.”

Before July 15, civil liberties in Turkey were de facto in the deep freeze. Now they are de jure in the deep freeze.

On July 27, the Turkish military purged 1,684 officers, including 149 generals, on suspicion that they had links with Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who once was Erdogan’s staunchest political ally but is now his biggest nemesis and the suspected mastermind of the coup attempt. On the same day, the government closed down three news agencies, 16 television stations, 23 radio stations, 45 newspapers, 15 magazines and 29 publishers on the same charges. Two days before those actions, warrants were issued for 42 journalists, as a part of an investigation against members of the “Fethullah [Gulen] terrorist organization.”

1726Turkish police escort dozens of handcuffed soldiers, who are accused of participating in the failed July 15 coup d’état. (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)

Under the state of emergency, it is dangerous in Turkey even to question whether July 15 was a fake coup orchestrated or tolerated by Erdogan for longer-term political gains. Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that: “Anyone who suggests the coup attempt was staged ‘likely had a role’ in the insurrection.” But there is more.

In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested, and there are serious allegations of torture. Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, and some detainees were denied food, water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason. The youngsters, aged 14 to 17, were from Kuleli Military School in Istanbul. The students have reportedly been thrown in jail and are not allowed to speak to their parents.

The witch-hunt is not in the governmental sector only. Several Turkish companies have fired hundreds of personnel suspected of having links with Gulen. Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s national airline, fired 211 employees, including a vice-general manager and a number of cabin crew members.

Sadly, Turks had to choose between two unpleasant options: military dictatorship and elected dictatorship. The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third-world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

Free Michelle Obama’s Slaves

July 28, 2016

Free Michelle Obama’s Slaves, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 28, 2016

michelle

At the DNC, Michelle Obama put on her victimhood hat one more time and declared, “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” It’s not a new line, but an ongoing mantra. Back in 2009, Michelle whined that, “Many slaves who couldn’t enter the building worked to create the building.”

But that’s too past tense. Michelle’s house continues to be built and maintained by slaves. Her lavish lifestyle of endless vacations, parties and public appearances is funded by millions and millions of slaves.

Michelle Obama lives a life that is more lavish and luxurious than that of the average plantation owner. She has 26 staffers that are part of a White House staff of thousands. That’s more than many crowned heads of state. Compare that to 12 servants for Thomas Jefferson.

Michelle has more directors than some corporations. And working for her is a Marie Antoinette experience. “The First Lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a f___ up as someone speaking on the record when they didn’t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,” one former staffer said.

Of course that’s their business. Michelle’s staffers chose their jobs and they get paid. It’s the taxpayers who have to pay for it all who are forced to be her unwilling slaves.

Michelle’s house, her luxurious lifestyle, is built by taxpaying slaves who are forced to turn over their money to fund her pleasures. She spent more money on one night in Morocco than the average American family will see in five years.

In Dublin, Michelle Obama and her entourage took a sightseeing trip that cost over $250,000. Michelle’s people bought up 30 rooms at the five-star Shelbourne Hotel while she stayed in the Princess Grace Suite which has more living space than most American homes. The Shelbourne Hotel wasn’t built by slaves. But it was funded by them. So are all of her jaunts, excursions and parties.

When she shops around Paris and then flies over to London in a 757 to see the sights in London, her slaves pick up the tab. When she and her husband decide to fly out for a “date” to New York while the city is shut down, it’s her slaves in the big city watching the motorcade pass who have to pay for it. Their Africa trip cost millions. American slaves paid for it with their blood, sweat and toil.

Maintaining the Obama lifestyle cost $1.4 billion a few years ago. It’s unknown what it costs today.

Obama’s White House parties cost anywhere from $200,000 at the cheap end to over $500,000. Americans have no more freedom to decide whether to pay for another Obama vacation or event than slaves did in deciding how to serve their masters and mistresses.

All they can do is watch from a distance while their masters stuff their faces, gallivant cheerfully on tours through foreign countries while staying at posh hotels and then make them work to pay for it.

In the last election, Obama told Americans that they weren’t responsible for their accomplishments. “You didn’t build that,” was his message to his slaves. They didn’t build that. He did.

But they did build that.

Slaves built the Obama lifestyle.  Slaves who struggle to get by. Who scrimp and save to have a few hundred dollars on hand in case of an emergency. That’s the cost of a single dish at a dinner to their masters in the White House. Slaves who fear losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families watch their hard-earned money being squandered on another vacation and another party.

America’s slaves have watched the nation’s wealth become concentrated around the Washington Versailles. At the peak of Obama’s misrule, the Beltway area boasted 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country. Obama won 8 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country in the last election.

It’s not hard to guess why.

The Obama lifestyle is just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of more modest government plantation owners cling to their skirts living off the stolen toil of the government’s slaves.

Government, like slavery, is an institution. Like slavery, it claims to civilize its dependents. In reality it exploits them. It promises them security in exchange for freedom. It takes away the products of their toil and then tells them that they didn’t build that. It claims a false moral authority to exploit them.

Michelle Obama is a slave-owner lecturing her slaves about slavery. Her moral authority to enslave Americans is based on a slavery that took place 150 years ago. And Michelle and Barack are the tip of a very large institution which is built on depriving Americans of their political and economic freedoms.

Slavery was based on the notion that some people are superior to others. That same idea runs through Obama’s speeches. It is the lifeblood of the twisted thing that the left has turned liberalism into.

The Obamas have the right to enslave us because they are on “the right side of history”. They can exploit us because they know what is better for us. They can take the work of our hands from us because we didn’t build that, they and all the rest of our government masters did the real building.

As the Democrats continue their circus of hate in Philly, it ought to be remembered that this was where Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” were inalienable rights and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Governments do not gain their authority from any innate superiority, but from consent. The Obama theory that government gains power in proportion to its historical moral superiority is slavery wrapped in hypocrisy. The attempt to perpetuate a new slavery by invoking 19th century slavery, as Michelle Obama did, is a moral obscenity.

It is time to end slavery all over again. It is time to free Michelle Obama’s taxpaying slaves.

The first step to ending slavery is to recognize its fundamental injustice. It is unjust that a working family ought to work its fingers to the bone so that Michelle Obama can enjoy yet another sightseeing tour. It is unjust that a class of parasites claiming to be public servants can draw unlimited amounts of money on the credit of people trying to make ends meet. It is unjust that Michelle Obama can own hundreds of millions of people as slaves.

And it is an injustice that must end.

Nineteenth century slavery ceased to be an issue in the nineteenth century. Twenty-first century slavery is the issue that we must tackle today. Scarlett O’Hara’s slaves have been freed. It’s time to let Michelle’s slaves go free.

Giuliani: This Is the Most Anti-Police, Anti-Law Enforcement Convention I’ve Ever Seen

July 28, 2016

Giuliani: This Is the Most Anti-Police, Anti-Law Enforcement Convention I’ve Ever Seen, PJ Media, July 28, 2016

(Please see also, When do the Mothers of ISIS Speak? –DM)

giul

Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to provide commentary on the Democratic National Convention. Rudy pointed out that not a single Philadelphia police officer was allowed on the convention floor. He said four high-ranking Philadelphia police officers told him Hillary Clinton did not want uniformed police officers wandering around the delegates.

Giuliani said that if he were the mayor of Philadelphia, he would not allow the convention in his city. “Suppose somebody got shot?” Rudy asked.

“There’s no uniformed police officers because it might annoy some people?” Giuliani queried.

He went on to say: “This is the most anti-police, anti-law enforcement convention I have ever seen in my whole life.”

 

Syrian-Russian Provocations Could Spark Golan Clash

July 28, 2016

Syrian-Russian Provocations Could Spark Golan Clash, DEBKAfile, July 28, 2016

EinZivan2

For four days since July 25, the Syrian army has been continuously firing artillery batteries – moved close to Israel’s defense lines on the Golan border – in a manner that comes dangerously close to provoking an Israeli response. This carefully orchestrated Syrian campaign goes on around the clock.

It is the first time in the six years of the Syrian war that Bashar Assad has ventured to come near to provoking Israel. But now he appears to be emboldened by his Russian ally.

The IDF is holding its fire for the moment. But Israeli military and government leaders know that the time is near for the IDF to be forced to hit back, especially since it is becoming evident that the Syrian army’s steps ae backed by Russia.

DEBKAfile’s military sources provide details of the Syrian steps:

  • The Syrian army’s 90th and 121nd battalions have been firing their artillery batteries non-stop across a 10km band along the Golan border from Hamadia, north of Quneitra, up to a point facing the Israeli village of Eyn Zivan. (See attacked map).
    This means that the Syrian army has seized the center of buffer zone between Israel and Syria and made it a firing zone.
  • This artillery fire fans out across a radius that comes a few meters short of the Israeli border and the IDF troops stationed there. It then recedes to a distance of 500 to 600 meters and sweeps across the outposts and bases of the Syrian rebel forces believed to be in touch with Israel or in receipt of Israeli medical aid.
  • The new Syrian attack appears to hold a message for Jerusalem: For six years, you supported the rebels against the Assad regime in southern Syria. That’s now over. If you continue, you will come face to face with Syrian fire.
  • Damascus is also cautioning those rebels:  For years, you fought us with Israel at your backs. But no longer. Watch us bring you under direct artillery fire, while the IDF sits on its hands.
  • On July 26, Russian media published an article revealing that Russia had delivered to the Syrian Air Force, advanced SU-24M2 front-line bombers, which is designed for attack on frontlines of battle. Israeli officials were unpleasantly taken aback by the news. Up until now, the Russians and Syrians refrained from deploying air strength in South Syria near the Israeli border. Now the Syrian air force has the means to do so.
  • DEBKAfile military sources report that the SU-24M2, following recent upgrades and modifications in Russian factories, is now capable of dropping smart bombs – ballistic bombs with a guidance system on their tails that enable them to hit targets with precision.This guidance system does not rely on US GPS satellites but rather the equivalent Russian GLONASS system which is linked to a network of 21 Russian satellites and partially encrypted for military usages.
    In addition, the SU-24M2 is equipped with a system that projects the information the pilot needs (flight details and battle details) on the plane’s windshield (head-up display) and on the pilot’s visor.
  • The Russians delivered to the Syrians two of these sophisticated airplanes this week, out of 10 that they will supply soon.

The IDF has concluded that it is only a matter of time before these planes appear in Southern Syria and so generate a new and highly combustible situation on Israel’s northern and northeastern borders.

The Russians are colluding with Damascus to inform Israel that it will no longer be allowed by either to continue backing the rebel forces in southern Syria or sustain the buffer zone which they man.

Israel may pay dear if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot decide to continue to abstain from hitting back at the Syrian fire which is aimed every few hours at the vicinity of IDF posts or the impending arrival of Russian bombers. The price in store would be the weakening of the IDF’s hold on the Golan border.