Archive for August 1, 2016

Huge Increase in Girls Victimized by Genital Mutilation in U.S.

August 1, 2016

Huge Increase in Girls Victimized by Genital Mutilation in U.S., Washington Free Beacon, , August 1, 2016

MADRID, SPAIN - FEBRUARY 6, 2016 - Women protesting during the International Day against female genital mutilation . (Photo by Marcos del Mazo / Pacific Press) *** Please Use Credit from Credit Field ***

MADRID, SPAIN – FEBRUARY 6, 2016 – Women protesting during the International Day against female genital mutilation . (Photo by Marcos del Mazo / Pacific Press)

An estimated 513,000 women and girls are at risk or have already been subjected to female genital mutilation in the United States, with the number skyrocketing due to increased immigration from countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where the practice is common.

The State Department considers female genital mutilation—the partial or total removal of female genitalia for no medical reason—to be a form of gender-based violence. The practice is illegal in the United States.

The number of girls suffering from female genital mutilation has tripled in the U.S. since 1990, according to a reportreleased by the Government Accountability Office on Monday.

The government places the blame on increased immigration from majority Muslim nations, where female genital mutilation is a common practice.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 513,000 women and girls in the United States were at risk of or had been subjected to female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in 2012, a threefold increase from its 1990 estimate,” the Government Accountability Office said. “CDC attributes this change primarily to increased immigration from countries where FGM/C is practiced, rather than an increase in the occurrence of FGM/C. Agency estimates were not able to distinguish between those who have already been subjected to FGM/C and those who are at risk.”

The report also noted that there have been exceedingly few investigations into female genital mutilation in the United States, because it generally goes unreported.

“While [female genital mutilation/cutting] FGM/C is a crime under federal and many state laws, law enforcement officials identified few investigations and prosecutions related to FGM/C,” the report said. “Officials said that this may be due, in part, to underreporting.”

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials have had no criminal investigation into the practice, despite identifying “at least 25 individuals in immigration court proceedings who were suspected of assistance in the perpetration of” female genital mutilation.

“Of the 25 suspected perpetrators, officials were aware of 1 individual who was removed from the country in July 2005,” the report said. “The remaining 24 were granted relief or protection from removal, were still in immigration proceedings, or were not issued a travel document by their home country to implement the immigration court’s final order of removal.”

Over 200 million women and girls alive today have suffered from female genital mutilation around the world. The numbers are especially prevalent in North Africa, as women and girls have reported being subjected to female genital mutilation at alarming rates.

Ninety-eight percent of women and girls in Somalia said they have undergone female genital mutilation. Other countries with high rates of the practice included Guinea (97 percent), Mali (89 percent), Egypt (87 percent), and Sudan (87 percent).

The State Department has done little to invest in fighting the practice abroad despite its recognition of female genital mutilation as “gender-based violence.” A previous Government Accountability Office report revealed that the agency spent more trying to invent the “origami condom” than it did fighting female genital mutilation abroad.

The State Department has only one stand-alone effort specifically targeting female genital mutilation, spending just $1.5 million over two years.

The latest report echoed the findings, noting that the State Department does not provide information on the dangers of the practice to many immigrants. The Government Accountability Office said the State Department does not provide a fact sheet on female genital mutilation to nonimmigrant visa recipients, which includes tourists, foreign students, diplomats, and temporary workers entering the country.

“[Female genital mutilation/cutting] FGM/C has both immediate and long-term health and social consequences,” the report said. “While federal agencies have made efforts to provide assistance to women and girls in the United States at risk of or who have been subjected to FGM/C, and increase awareness of the issue, certain efforts to educate immigrant communities and plan agency activities on FGM/C are lacking.”

‘Defeating Jihad’ author: EU’s time is done

August 1, 2016

‘Defeating Jihad’ author: EU’s time is done, Fox Business News via YouTube, August 1, 2016

(Preposterous! Frau Merkel is a woman, just like Hillary! — DM)

Cartoons of the Day

August 1, 2016

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

criminal

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

hil media

 

vagina

 

The Marketing of the Democratic Candidate

August 1, 2016

The Marketing of the Democratic Candidate, Front Page MagazineBruce Thornton, August 1, 2016

happy face

The Democrats’ convention ended after striving mightily to persuade most of America that Hillary Clinton is somehow more human, likable, caring, and accomplished than the public record of her scandals and behavior would suggest. Unfortunately for the Dems, not Bill, not Obama, not Hillary herself can transform Hillary. There is no political alchemy that can turn that base metal into gold.

For years, armies of political consultants, publicists, and marketing geniuses have not been able to make people like Hillary. We’re on at least the fifth version of Hillary, and all the oxymoronic advice like “act naturally” or “be likable” has not been effective. She’s still inauthentic and unlikable, and 56% of voters disapprove of her. She’s like New Coke or Betamax, a bad product no amount of advertising could sell in the real world of market accountability. Yet the mainstream media have labored like Trojans on this project, downplaying her crimes and failures, believing her lies, and rationalizing her faults.

We had a representative example recently in Scott Pelley’s interview with Hillary on 60 Minutes. After she whined and whined about the invidious “Hillary Standard” –– the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy version 2.0––Pelley gently asked in therapeutic Oprah tones, “Why do you put yourself through it?” In other words, he accepted the ridiculous premise that her negative image is the consequence not of her actions, but of “Unfounded, inaccurate, mean-spirited attacks with no basis in truth, reality,” as she put it. A real journalist would have challenged her by asking about the long catalogue of financial improprieties from the Whitewater scandal to the Clinton Foundation, or the self-serving lies from “landing under sniper fire” in Bosnia to telling the grieving parents of the four Americans murdered in Benghazi that an obscure Internet video was responsible. But skilled courtiers know that royalty can’t stand too much reality.

This year’s Democratic Convention speakers didn’t do much better, when they could be heard above the Berniacs’ booing and jeering. Their catalogue of lies about Hillary’s résumé––her alleged achievements on Middle East peace, “climate change,” getting Iran to negotiate over its nuclear weapons program––smacks of desperation, given how many light-years from the truth they are. The Middle East has descended into a Darwinian jungle in which ISIS, Russia, and Iran are the alpha predators. Even if Anthropogenic Global Warming is true, all the much touted international agreements from Kyoto to Paris have done and will do nothing to cool the planet. As for Iran, it takes remarkable shamelessness to tout this disaster, given the mounting evidence that the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism has been serially cheating and is likely to obtain nuclear armaments within a couple of decades.

Bill Clinton, the fading Big Dog of the party, gave a tedious convention speech that spent a lot of time trying to “humanize” Hillary by talking about their courtship and marriage and other random acts of compassion and caring. Apart from the preposterous premise that they have had a happy and loving marriage (see Crisis of Character), humanizing Hillary is a fruitless task. She obviously lacks her husband’s political brilliance and powers of empathy. Of course, his empathy is phony, but like Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly, Bill is a real phony. He believes all this crap he believes. Hillary has been in the public eye for 25 years, and in all that time she has consistently appeared mean, entitled, insincere, vindictive, petty, elitist, money-grubbing, and insatiable for power.

Then came the big gun, Barack Obama, who in between mentioning himself 119 times said the following with a straight face: “I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman––not me, not Bill, nobody––more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.” And just what are those qualifications? In her eight years in the Senate, the only successful legislation she sponsored was renaming a courthouse for Thurgood Marshall. Eleven other bills were passed in the Senate, most of them small beer. Four of them proposed renaming post offices, one proposed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Purple Heart, and another the 275th anniversary of the American Revolution. The rest weren’t much better, and none were passed by the House.

How about her tenure as Secretary of State? Let’s see, there’s the groveling “reset” with Russia, which for all its appeasement of Putin failed miserably. There’s the ill-conceived overthrow of Muamar Ghaddafi, which left Libya a playground for ISIS and other jihadist outfits, and swamped the region with weaponry looted from Ghaddafi’s arsenals. There’s the debacle of Benghazi, when repeated requests for security by the consular outpost were ignored, four Americans were left to die, and Hillary responded with blatant lies and political spin about the cause of the terror attack. Don’t forget the private server, through which classified material was passed and likely ended up being read by hackers. And the biggest failure was already mentioned, the deal with Iran that will spark nuclear proliferation in a region already riven with violence and disorder.

Obama was correct about one thing, though––she is more qualified than he was in 2008, an embarrassingly low bar. But more qualified than George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln? Only if you define “qualified” as possession of a résumé filled with the occupation of government offices she never used to accomplish anything meaningful.

Finally came the Grande Dame herself to tell us that only she can fix the problems that Obama says don’t exist in the sunny uplands of America, and that only she can be an agent of change who will govern exactly like Obama.

There were Mr. Rogers bromides about “we will fix it together” and “it takes a village.” Oprah bumper stickers like “love trumps hate.” Smug references to her years of “public service,” a euphemism for holding offices without really doing anything. Maudlin family history and anecdotes about sick children. A revisionist history of the Obama era that leaves out the inconvenient truths that his tenure has seen the worst recovery from a recession since World War II, and a retreat of America that has left a vacuum filled by our rivals, enemies, and terrorists.

Then came the chum for progressives. Evil corporations and income inequality. Attacks on the same Wall Street that has given her foundation and campaign millions and millions of dollars. “Comprehensive immigration reform,” the code word for amnesty and minting new Democrat voters. Job-killing minimum wage increases. The same “investment in new, good-paying jobs” that Obama spent nearly a trillion dollars on, only to discover that “shovel-ready jobs were not so shovel ready,” as the president laughed. Gun control, though it’s been repeatedly proven to have little impact on crime or terrorism. The threat that “Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich are going to start paying their fair share of taxes,” even though the top 1% already pay 38% of income taxes, and those making at least $250,000 pay more than half. As for corporations, their tax rate is already one of the highest among advanced economies. And of course, “the precise and strategic application of power” in order to deal with ISIS––which in practice means continuing Obama’s habit of doing the least possible tactically in order to avoid the political blow-back from risky strategic action.

So after a three-day advertisement of her achievements, policy chops, qualifications, compassion, and experience, her speech was a catalogue of sentimental blather and stale progressive clichés, delivered to a crowd as easy to please as drunks at a comedy show.

In the end, after these mendacious speeches, all that’s left to justify a Hillary presidency is the specious argument that nominating a rich, white, Ivy-League-credentialed woman from an affluent family will correct a cosmic injustice akin to slavery, a “milestone in the fight for equity in postwar America,” as the Wall Street Journal wrote. Given the huge gains made by women over the last several decades, it was inevitable that a woman would be nominated for president. But as theJournal continued, women’s “progress has become so widespread that some women voters appear indifferent to another glass ceiling shattered. More women graduate from college than men. They are the main breadwinners in four of 10 U.S. households. They run General Motors, Co., PepsiCo Inc. and IBM Corp.”  Nearly half the enrollees in law and medical schools are women, and they are projected to surpass males in a decade. Women are Senators, members of the House, and Cabinet members in historically unprecedented numbers.

Moreover, it would be a more believable ground-breaking achievement if it were a woman whose climb to prominence hadn’t depended on marrying the right man and then publicly sacrificing her feminist dignity when he serially humiliated her with his sordid philandering, a scenario straight out of Mad Men. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump gets more support than Hillary among white women between the ages of 35 and 64. “I think we have gotten away from the historic nature of this campaign because Hillary Clinton has become an exceptionally polarizing candidate,” admitted Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

Nor can Clinton count on progressive millennials who flocked to Bernie to get excited about her supposed historic achievement. Writing for The Weekly Standard, Alice B. Lloyd surveys an anti-Clinton collection of essays by leftist feminists who see her as a “token” of the rigged establishment rather than a ground-breaker for leftist change. They resent her reliance on “corrupting corporate intervention” and her habit of “favoring the politically and diplomatically expedient ‘imperial feminism.’”  According to one contributor, “What we need is not a woman for president; what we need is a movement.” As Lloyd writes, “Progressive feminists say they see right through this manipulative messaging, and aren’t falling for it.”

Many women, in short, don’t buy her “outsider” rhetoric and claims to victim status based merely on the accident of her double x chromosomes. And for all her pandering to Black Lives Matter, Hispanics, and the party’s loony left, Hillary’s choice of a bland, middle-aged, straight white male with a record of political opportunism merely confirms that she is an entrenched insider comfortable with Wall Street and the party establishment. Playing the “woman card” cannot compensate for her personal flaws and slight record of achievement. Perhaps that’s why only a fifth of voters are enthusiastic about the possibility of electing the first woman president.

So what has Hillary got instead of charisma, character, achievements, and even the thrill of first woman president? Voters who favor big government, increased entitlement spending, higher taxes on the “rich,” and continuing American retreat abroad. Voters who belong to public employee unions and are confident Hillary will bail out their states when publicly funded pension plans bankrupt state treasuries. Rent-seekers who benefit from green energy boondoggles based on global warming hysteria. Diversicrats who leverage identity politics into social and political capital. Battalions of economic ignoramuses who think you really can get something for nothing and socialism is cool. Bicoastal elites who compensate for their privilege by espousing federal policies and programs the cost of which they never, ever have to pay.

In other words, all those factions that want their “passions and interests” served rather than the security and interests of the country. The only question is, are there 65 million of them?

Clinton Cash: Khizr Khan’s Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillary’s Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together

August 1, 2016

Clinton Cash: Khizr Khan’s Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillary’s Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together, BreitbartMatthew Boyle, August 1, 2016

Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan waves as he stands near the podium before speaking during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Thursday, July 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan waves as he stands near the podium before speaking during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Thursday, July 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that the mainstream media and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been using to criticize Donald J. Trump, has deep ties to the government of Saudi Arabia—and to international Islamist investors through his own law firm. In addition to those ties to the wealthy Islamist nation, Khan also has ties to controversial immigration programs that wealthy foreigners can use to essentially buy their way into the United States—and has deep ties to the “Clinton Cash” narrative through the Clinton Foundation.

Khan and his wife Ghazala Khan both appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention to attack, on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s behalf, Donald Trump—the Republican nominee for president. Their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, in his speech to the DNC, lambasted Donald Trump for wanting to temporarily halt Islamic migration to America from countries with a proven history of exporting terrorists.

Since then, Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos—who served as a senior adviser to the president in Bill Clinton’s White House and is a Clinton Foundation donor as well as a host on the ABC network—pushed Trump on the matter in an interview. Trump’s comments in that interview have sparked the same mini-rebellion inside his party, in the media and across the aisle that has happened many times before. The usual suspects inside the GOP, from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have condemned Trump in one way or another. The media condemnation has been swift and Democrats, as well their friends throughout media, are driving the train as fast as they can.

But until now, it looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration–and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves.

Khan, according to Intelius as also reported by Walid Shoebat, used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years. Citing federal government disclosure forms, the Washington Free Beacon reported the connection between Saudi Arabia and Hogan Lovells a couple weeks ago.

“Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show,” Joe Schoffstall of the Free Beacon reported.

The federal form filed with the Department of Justice is a requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which makes lobbyists and lawyers working on behalf of foreign governments and other agents from abroad with interests in the United States register with the federal government.

The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, has donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given between $10 and $25 million to the foundation while Friends of Saudi Arabia has contributed between $1 and $5 million,” Schoffstall wrote.

Trump, of course, has called on Hillary Clinton to have the Clinton Foundation return the money.

“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post back in June, according to Politico. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted in a separate Facebook posting at the time. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

Of course, to this day, Hillary Clinton and her Clinton Foundation has kept the money from the Saudi Arabian government.

Schoffstall’s piece in the Washington Free Beacon also notes how Hogan Lovells lobbyist Robert Kyle, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, has bundled more than $50,000 in donations for Clinton’s campaign this year.

Khan’s connections with the Hogan Lovells firm run deep, according to a report from Law.com written by Katelyn Polantz.

“Many lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber,” Polantz wrote. “Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues.”

Polantz wrote that Khan worked at the mega-D.C. law firm for years.

“Khan spent seven years, from 2000 to 2007, in the Washington, D.C., office of then-Hogan & Hartson,” Polantz wrote. “He served as the firm’s manager of litigation technology. Although he did not practice law while at Hogan, Khan was well versed in understanding the American courts system. On Thursday night, he described his late son dreaming of becoming a military lawyer.”

But representing the Clinton Foundation backing Saudi Arabian government and having one of its lobbyists bundle $50,000-plus for Clinton’s campaign are hardly the only places where the Khan-connected Hogan Lovells D.C. mega-firm brush elbows with Clinton Cash. 

The firm also handles Hillary Clinton’s taxes and is deeply connected with the email scandal whereby when she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up a home-brew email server system that jeopardized classified information handling and was “extremely careless” according to FBI director James Comey.

“A lawyer at Hogan & Hartson [Howard Topaz] has been Bill and Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy for tax advice since 2004, according to documents released Friday by Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” The American Lawyer’s Nate Raymond wrote in 2008, as Hillary Clinton ran for president that year. “The Clintons’ tax returns for 2000-07 show combined earnings of $109 million, on which they paid $33 million in taxes. New York-based tax partner Howard Topaz has a broad tax practice, and also regularly advises corporations on M&A and executive compensation.”

Breitbart News’ Patrick Howley, in a deep investigative piece on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, late last year uncovered how Topaz’s firm—which employed Khan while Topaz did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—is also connected to the email scandal.

“Topaz was a partner at Hogan & Hartson, which later merged to become known as Hogan Lovells, where Topaz continues to practice. The firm’s lawyers were major donors to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign,” Howley wrote.

For her private email system, Clinton used a spam filtering program MX Logic.

“Hogan & Hartson handled the patent for MX Logic’s email-filtering program, which McAfee bought the small company for $140 million in 2009 in order to acquire,” Howley wrote. “The MX Logic company’s application for a trademark for its SPAMTRAQ program was filed in 2004 on Hogan & Hartson stationery and signed by a Hogan & Hartson attorney. Hogan & Hartson has been responsible for MX Logic annual reports. The email company’s Clinton links present more evidence that Clinton’s political and legal establishment was monitoring her private email use.”

If that all isn’t enough, that same Hogan & Hartson law firm—now Hogan Lovells—employed Loretta Lynch, the current Attorney General of the United States. Lynch infamously just a few weeks ago met with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband and the former president, on her private jet in Phoenix just before clearing Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing when it came to her illicit private email server system.

Khan’s own website for his own personal law firm KM Khan Law Office shows he represents clients in the business of buying visas to enter the United States. One of his specific areas of practice, according to the website, is “E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, has detailed how the EB5 immigration program is “riddled with flaws and corruption.”

“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”

From there, Sen. Grassley listed out several of the “flaws” with the EB5 immigration program that Khan works in:

– Investments can be spent before business plans are approved. 

– Regional Center operators can charge exorbitant fees of foreign nationals in addition to their required investments.  

– Jobs created are not “direct” or verifiable jobs but rather are “indirect” and based on estimates and economic modeling.

– Jobs created by U.S. investors are counted by the foreign national when obtaining a green card, even if EB-5 money is only a fraction of the total invested.

– Investment funds are not adequately vetted. 

– Gifts and loans are acceptable sources of funds from foreign nationals.

– The investment level has been stagnant for nearly 25 years.

– There’s no prohibition against foreign governments owning or operating regional centers or projects.

– Regional centers can be rented or sold without government oversight or approval.

– Regional centers don’t have to certify that they comply with securities laws.  

– There’s no oversight of promoters who work overseas for the regional centers.

– There’s no set of sanctions for violations, no recourse for bad actors.

– There are no required background checks on anyone associated with a regional center.

– Regional centers draw Targeted Employment Area boundaries around poor areas in order to come in at a lower investment level, yet the jobs created are not actually created in those areas.

– Every Targeted Employment Area designation is rubberstamped by the agency.

– Adjudicators are pressured to get to a yes, especially for those politically connected. 

– Visas are not properly scrutinized. 

– Visas are pushed through despite security warnings.

– Files and applications lack basic and necessary information to monitor compliance.

– The agency does not do site visits for each and every project.

– There’s no transparency on how funds are spent, who is paid, and what investors are told about the projects they invest in.

That’s not to mention the fact that, according to Sen. Grassley, there have been serious national security violations in connection with the EB5 program that Khan works in and around already. In fact, the program—according to Grassley—was used by Middle Eastern operatives from Iran to attempt to illicitly enter the United States.

“There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. “The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”

Maybe all of this is why–as Breitbart News has previously noted–the Democratic National Convention made absolutely no mention of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative. Hillary Clinton’s coronation ceremony spent exactly zero minutes of the four nights of official DNC programming talking about anything to do with perhaps one of the biggest parts of her biography. 

Report: Recruitment of Child Terrorists by Palestinians Ignored by U.N.

August 1, 2016

Report: Recruitment of Child Terrorists by Palestinians Ignored by U.N., Washington Free Beacon, August 1, 2016

At least 42 Palestinian child terrorists have attempted 36 attacks from the second half of 2015 until May 2016, according to a new report obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon that criticizes the United Nations for omitting these statistics from its official records on the use of child soldiers.

The U.N. is slated to discuss its annual report on Children and Armed Conflict this week. Its section on Palestinian children states, “Limited information is available about the recruitment or use of children.”

However, a counter-report issued by a leading human rights organization calls this finding into question by detailing at least 36 instances in which Palestinian children have attempted to carry out terrorist attacks.

Insiders apprised of the findings say the U.N.’s omission of these statistics calls into question the integrity of its report and provides further evidence of a deep anti-Israel bias at the organization.

“The preferred method of murder and attempted murder by Palestinian child terrorists are stabbings or knifings, the modus operandi in 34 of the 36 attacks,” according to the report, authored by Human Rights Voices, an anti-discrimination group that monitors the U.N.

Male and female children ages 11 to 17 have perpetrated terrorist attacks over the past year, according to the report.

Boys carried out at least 14 of the attacks while girls committed 11, according to the report. The terrorist’s gender was not identified in 17 cases.

Anne Bayefsky, a lawyer who heads Human Rights Voices and directs the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, said the U.N. is covering up Palestinian crimes and skewing official records on child terrorists.

“Obviously, information on these incidents is readily accessible,” Bayefsky wrote in the report. “And the Palestinian U.N. Ambassador publicly supported child terrorism at the U.N. itself. Moreover, videos, photographs, television programs, and social media outlets—from Palestinian and Israeli sources—provide a multitude of evidence both of Palestinian children engaged in armed conflict and Palestinian adults (from the political sphere to the education system to the family unit) promoting such behavior.”

“Shockingly, however, the U.N. Secretary-General’s most recent annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, released in May 2016, contains the following statement specifically about Palestinian children: ‘Limited information is available about the recruitment or use of children,’” she added, noting that “the Secretary-General’s claim is manifestly untrue.”

The omission of these statistics raises questions about the U.N.’s integrity and ability to objectively record the number of Palestinian child terrorists, according to Bayefsky.

“The United Nations is not merely engaged in a feeble cover-up,” she wrote “The U.N. is now an active enabler of the violation of the rights of Israelis and Palestinians: the basic rights to life and security of the person of the Israeli victims of Palestinian children engaged in terrorism, and the rights of Palestinian children not to be recruited or engaged in terrorism in the first place.”

The report further disclosed that senior Palestinian officials have encouraged and praised the recent wave of terrorism against Israel.

During a speech at Turtle Bay, the Palestinian representative to the U.N. publicly celebrated a string of 16 attacks in 2015 in which “Palestinian child terrorists had murdered two and injured nine.”

“We are so proud that in this popular uprising that has started almost two months ago, that the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine,” Riyad Mansour said at the U.N. headquarters on Nov. 23, 2015.

“Since that time, Palestinian child terrorists have attacked Israelis at least another 20 times,” according to Bayefsky’s report.

Hillary ‘Really Proud’ of Clinton Foundation — but Hid It Completely from DNC

August 1, 2016

Hillary ‘Really Proud’ of Clinton Foundation — but Hid It Completely from DNC, BreitbartEzra Dulis, July 31, 2016

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that she is “really proud” of her family’s charity the Clinton Foundation — after spending the past week hiding its existence from viewers of the Democratic National Convention.

The glaring contradiction prompted a video comparison, which you can watch above.

Wallace, in an exclusive sit-down interview, asked Clinton about allegations first made in Clinton Cash, the book and now film/graphic novel, that Clinton used the multi-billion-dollar charity for international “pay-to-play” deals while she served as Secretary of State. Author and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer says that Clinton Foundation donors were on the receiving end of corrupt deals approved by Hillary’s State Department — including the sale of U.S. uranium to Russia and a rare, lucrative mining permit in Haiti.

Clinton retorted that she is “really proud of the Clinton Foundation,” yet not a single speaker at the DNC last week — not even Bill or Chelsea Clinton — mentioned the Foundation or its spinoffs such as the Clinton Global Initiative. A dramatic documentary clip on Hillary’s record of service, narrated by acclaimed actor Morgan Freeman, failed to mention the Clinton Foundation or its work around the world. The omission left the clip feeling oddly scant, as only two non-politicians appeared on camera with stories to praise Clinton’s record from over 40 years in political life.

This week, news broke that the IRS is investigating the Clinton Foundation. Earlier this month, FBI Director James Comey would not confirm or deny whether the bureau is investigating the Foundation during congressional testimony. Just days later, The Globe and Mail reported that “The Canadian affiliate of the Clinton Foundation is spending an astounding 78 percent of the money it raises on administrative costs.”

Read the transcript of Wallace and Clinton’s exchange:

WALLACE:  Let’s talk about the Clinton Foundation and allegations of pay-to-play, the argument, the allegation that foreign companies and foreign countries either donated big money to the foundation, or paid your husband for big money for speeches in order to influence your work as secretary of state.  In the first 12 years after he left the White House, President Clinton made 13 speeches for which he got $500,000 or more.  Eleven of those 13 were while you were secretary of state, and they were all paid for by foreign interests.

Are we to believe that’s just a coincidence?

CLINTON:  Well, there’s no truth to any of these allegations.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE:  Well, I mean, it is true that they gave — that they did make these speeches.  They are all (ph) by foreign interests, and he was getting much bigger speaking fees.

CLINTON:  He got — he gave speeches as soon as he left the White House all the way up until the last year, and he spoke all over the world, as well as throughout America, to all kinds of groups.

But let’s get to the nut of your question.  I’m really proud of the Clinton Foundation.  I am proud of the work that it does.  Thanks to the Clinton Foundation, 9 million more people in our world have access to HIV/AIDS drugs because they negotiated contracts that made them affordable.

And there is absolutely no connection between anything that I did as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation.  So, people can say that, but I’m proud of our philanthropic work, our personal/family philanthropic work, the work of the Clinton Foundation.

I’d like to see Donald Trump’s tax returns to find out how much philanthropy he’s ever done.

Pope Francis: “It’s not fair to identify Islam with violence. It’s not fair and it’s not true.”

August 1, 2016

Pope Francis: “It’s not fair to identify Islam with violence. It’s not fair and it’s not true.” Jihad Watch

The Pope is once again ignoring a simple distinction: while people of all faiths and backgrounds commit acts of violence, Islam is unique among world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system mandating warfare against unbelievers. Unless and until that is confronted, Muslims will continue to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims, including Christians. The Pope is betraying the Christians of the Middle East and the world, and all the victims of jihad violence, by repeating palpable falsehoods about the motivating ideology of attacks upon them, instead of confronting that ideology and calling upon Muslims to renounce and reform Islam’s doctrines of violence.

“The pope said that when he reads the newspaper, he reads about an Italian who kills his fiancé or his mother in law. ‘They are baptized Catholics. They are violent Catholics.’” Does Catholicism teach the murder of fiancés or mothers in law? No. Does Islam teach jihad warfare against unbelievers? Yes.

“The pope said that in every religion there are violent people, ‘a small group of fundamentalists,’ including in Catholicism.” There have been 28,923 violent jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11. How many violent attacks have there been in that span by violent Catholic “fundamentalists” doing violence in the name of Catholicism?

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a man during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees center, some 30km (18, 6 miles) from Rome, Thursday, March 24, 2016. The pontiff washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Orthodox, Hindu and Catholic refugees Thursday, declaring them children of the same God, in a gesture of welcome and brotherhood at a time when anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment has spiked following the Brussels attacks. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a man during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees center, some 30km (18, 6 miles) from Rome, Thursday, March 24, 2016. The pontiff washed and kissed the feet of Muslim, Orthodox, Hindu and Catholic refugees Thursday, declaring them children of the same God, in a gesture of welcome and brotherhood at a time when anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment has spiked following the Brussels attacks. (L’Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)
The kiss didn’t help.

“Pope Francis denies that Islam is violent,” by Inés San Martín, Crux, July 31, 2016 (thanks to Matt):

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE – Pope Francis on Sunday defended his avoidance of the term “Islamic violence” by suggesting the potential for violence lies in every religion, including Catholicism.

“I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence, because every day, when I read the newspaper, I see violence,” Francis said, when asked about why he never speaks of Islamic terrorism or fundamentalism when condemning attacks such as the murder of a French priest last week, who had his throat slit by an Islamic terrorist as he was celebrating Mass.

The pope said that when he reads the newspaper, he reads about an Italian who kills his fiancé or his mother in law.

“They are baptized Catholics. They are violent Catholics,” Francis said, adding that if he speaks of “Islamic violence,” then he has to speak of “Catholic violence” too.

The pope made his remarks in a wide-ranging news conference with journalists travelling with him back to Rome after a five-day visit to Poland in which Francis presided over World Youth Day, a gathering of Catholic youth from all around the world in Krakow, Poland.

The pope said that in every religion there are violent people, “a small group of fundamentalists,” including in Catholicism.

“When fundamentalism goes as far as murdering … you can murder with your tongue and also with the knife,” he said.

“I believe that it’s not fair to identify Islam with violence. It’s not fair and it’s not true,” he continued, adding that he’s had a long conversation with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the Cairo-based Islamic university often described as the Vatican of the Sunni world.

“I know how they think. They look for peace, encounter,” he said.

Francis added that in the case of European youth, many have been left “with no ideals, no work, that end in the hands of drugs and alcohol, and then go over there [didn’t specify] and enlist.”

He did acknowledge that ISIS is an “Islamic state that presents itself as violent.”

“It’s a fundamentalist group that calls itself ISIS, but it can’t be said, it’s not true, and it’s not fair, that Islam is terrorist,” Francis said.

Although clarifying that he didn’t know if he should say it because “it’s dangerous,” the pope then admitted that terrorism grows when “there’s no other option.”

“As long as the god of money is at the center of the global economy and not the human person, man and woman, this is the first terrorism,” he said, defining it as a “terrorism at the bases,” against the whole of humanity….

What the Arab League Meeting Reveals

August 1, 2016

What the Arab League Meeting Reveals, Gatestone InstituteLawrence A. Franklin, August 1, 2016

♦ The most significant aspect of this year’s Arab League conference was the downgrading in significance of Palestinian issues on the agenda.

♦ The community of Arab states is bereft of the confidence to act collectively in its own interests, and has a fearful inability to meet the challenge of either Iran or radical Islamic terrorism, which threaten the very existence of their regimes.

The Arab League concluded its 27th annual summit on July 28 in Nouakchott, Mauritania. The sessions exposed the deep divisions in the Arab world, the bloc’s decreased influence in regional affairs, and the declining importance of Palestinian issues in the Middle East.

The annual affair apparently failed to make progress on last year’s Saudi proposal to establish an all-Arab, multinational force in response to Iran’s aggressive policies in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. The Nouakchott-hosted sessions also seem to have made no progress toward developing a unified anti-terrorist agenda. The growth of the Islamic State presence in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa was evidently a prime motivator for the perceived need for an anti-terrorism policy.

1739The Arab League concluded its annual summit on July 28, which was held this year in a tent in Nouakchott, Mauritania. (Image source: CCTV News video screenshot)

The Arab League’s precipitous decline in political clout was symbolically exposed by the failure of many key national leaders to attend the conference. The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Tunisia did not attend. Only eight national leaders from the 22-member organization attended the conference.

However, the most significant aspect of this year’s conference was the downgrading in significance of Palestinian issues on the agenda. Perhaps aware of this development, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas also decided not to attend. However, PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki explained that Abbas could not attend due to the recent death of his brother. Later, Maliki, somewhat quixotically, called upon the Arab League to help sponsor a UN Resolution to initiate a lawsuit against the United Kingdom for having embraced the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which made it official London policy to support the creation of a national home for the Jewish People.

Nevertheless, when the representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hectored delegates that they no longer seem to treat the depressed state of the Palestinian people as the overriding issue that should unite all Arabs, his pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. The PFLP gave public evidence of the Palestinian issue’s fall from priority, stating on their website that “this year’s resolutions are no more than a carbon copy of the resolutions of the Arab Summits made in previous years. It reflects the situation too of the Arab League which long ago lost the Arab peoples’ confidence.”

Hamas also ruefully expressed similar frustration with the Arab League delegates, saying the summit “reflects the status of decline which the Arabs are suffering, even at the official level.”

Ironically, the only commentator who assessed that the Palestinian issue remains paramount in Arab minds was the French Consul General in Jerusalem, Herv Magro, who commented that “the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is the central issue in the Middle East.”

Arab and Islamic states traditionally give lip service to the Palestine issue and Israel’s “occupation” of Arab lands. However, from the substance discussed at the Arab Summit, it seems apparent that Palestinian affairs and the so-called Arab-Israeli peace process are not currently the primary concerns of Arab states. Certainly, there was little evidence at this year’s annual meeting that Palestine was any representative’s principal concern, except that of the PFLP delegate.

The tenor of this year’s conference demonstrates the politically reality of a divided Arab world, a community of Arab states that is bereft of the confidence to act collectively in its own interests, and its fearful inability to meet the challenge of either Iran or radical Islamic terrorism, which threaten the very existence of their regimes.

How Hillary Helped U.S. Investors Fund Russian Research for Military Uses

August 1, 2016

How Hillary Helped U.S. Investors Fund Russian Research for Military Uses, Power LinePaul Mirengoff, August 1, 2016

Clinton is responsible for helping create a Russian “Silicon Valley” that has enabled the Kremlin to boost its military and surveillance capacity. And let’s not forget her role in enabling Russia to gain control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.

Russia has been well-served by Hillary Clinton’s cluelessness and greed.

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Clinton is responsible for helping create a Russian “Silicon Valley” that has enabled the Kremlin to boost its military and surveillance capacity. And let’s not forget her role in enabling Russia to gain control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.

Russia has been well-served by Hillary Clinton’s cluelessness and greed.

Russia has become a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign. It should have been a major issue in the last one, but President Obama countered Mitt Romney’s attempt to inject Russia into the debate with his sophomoric quip that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” Whether it’s ISIS (aka “the jayvee”) or Russia, Obama sure knows how to spot trouble.

This year, both parties agree that Russia poses a serious threat. In this respect, and perhaps only this respect, the 2016 campaign is an improvement over last time.

With attention now being paid, Peter Schweizer’s latest piece on the Clinton Foundation will perhaps make a mark. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Schweizer shows that under Hillary Clinton’s leadership, “the State Department recruited and facilitated the commitment of billions of American dollars in the creation of a Russian ‘Silicon Valley’ whose technological innovations include Russian hypersonic cruise-missile engines, radar surveillance equipment, and vehicles capable of delivering airborne Russian troops.”

Here’s how it happened. As part of Hillary’s Russian reset, the Kremlin committed $5 billion over three years to fund Skolkovo, an “innovation city” on the outskirts of Moscow billed as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley. Clinton’s State Department worked aggressively to attract U.S. investment partners and helped the Russian State Investment Fund identify American tech companies worthy of Russian investment.

Dozens of U.S. tech firms, including top Clinton Foundation donors like Google, Intel, and Cisco, then made major financial contributions to Skolkovo. According to Schweizer, by 2012 Skolkovo had 28 Russian, American and European “Key Partners.” Of the 28 key partners, 17 have made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation, totaling tens of millions of dollars, or sponsored speeches by Bill Clinton.

Russian money also flowed to the Clinton Foundation. Schweizer reports that Andrey Vavilov, the chairman of SuperOx, part of Skolkovo’s nuclear-research cluster, donated between $10,000 and $25,000. Skolkovo Foundation chief and billionaire Putin confidant Viktor Vekselberg also donated through his company.

As the Slolkovo project gained momentum, U.S. defense experts became alarmed. The U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth warned:

The Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine. . . . Not all of the center’s efforts are civilian in nature.

Similarly, Lucia Ziobro, an assistant special agent at the FBI’s Boston office, stated that “the FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology. . .” Ziobro added, “The [Skolkovo] foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.”

Hillary Clinton knew about the dual-use problem while she was Secretary of State. Schweizer notes that a State Department cable sent to then-Secretary Clinton (and obtained via WikiLeaks) mentioned possible “dual use and export control concerns” related to research and development technology ventures with Moscow.

Clinton ignored the problem. Was this due to the millions of dollars in Clinton Foundation donations by Skolkovo’s key partners?

Only Hillary knows for sure. But the burden should be on her to provide a more convincing explanation.

In any event, Clinton is responsible for helping create a Russian “Silicon Valley” that has enabled the Kremlin to boost its military and surveillance capacity. And let’s not forget her role in enabling Russia to gain control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.

Russia has been well-served by Hillary Clinton’s cluelessness and greed.