BREAKING : Nigel Farage Comments on Berlin Terror Attack & Russan Ambassador Killed in Ankara, TNTV Total News T.V via YouTube
(And more, including the future of BREXIT and relations with America. –DM)
Archive for December 20, 2016
BREAKING : Nigel Farage Comments on Berlin Terror Attack & Russan Ambassador Killed in Ankara
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December 20, 2016
Why the UK’s Sharia Courts Should Be Banned
December 20, 2016Why the UK’s Sharia Courts Should Be Banned, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, December 20, 2016
(Please see also, Sharia Councils: Taking Liberties. – DM)
They are married off at 15 to men they’ve never met, men who may beat and rape them, or who do not permit them to leave the house. Or they marry out of love, only to learn their new husband has another wife, or plans to take one. And so they seek counsel – and escape – not through lawyers and the traditional courts, but through sharia councils, and not in Kabul or Islamabad, but in Manchester and London.
Now officials in the United Kingdom are questioning whether such councils violate secular laws and discriminate against the women who come to them for help. While still Home Secretary last March, before she became Prime Minister, Theresa May initiated the first of an ongoing series of investigations into Britain’s so-called “sharia courts.”
Subsequent hearings have brought the issues into the public eye, but so far they have failed to provide any real resolution. Some sharia court opponents contend that they force women to remain in abusive marriages, or deprive them of their legal rights regarding division of property and other matters. In contrast, some proponents insist that too many Muslim women would be forced to stay in abusive relationships if these tribunals were shut down.
“If I went to an English court, [my ex-husband] would say ‘where is their right to decide about my life?'” one Muslim woman told the BBC. “Now he can’t say anything because the decision has been made using sharia law, and we all believe in that.”
Moreover, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of British Muslim marriages are religious, not civil – a fact which in itself deprives these wives of many of their legal marital rights. Such marriages can be dissolved only through the tribunals.
But opponents, such as Iranian-born activist Maryam Namazie, argue that the tribunals, “are linked to the rise of the Islamist movement.” Others echo her views, such as Women and Sharia Law author and Zurich University Professor Elham Manea, who claims that the first such councils were established by Islamist groups.
There is some validity to this claim: the first British sharia council was established in 1982 by the Islamic Sharia Council, a Luton-based organization currently led by controversial imam Suhaib Hasan. Among Hasan’s many claims to fame are his lectures, available on YouTube, which he says “expose” the Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christians.
Moreover, while the official count of the councils in the UK is set at 32, think tank Civitas has estimated the real number at 85, suggesting that many operate in the shadows. How conservative or how westernized they may be in their mediations is impossible to know. Of the councils that are officially recognized, most are affiliated with mosques. Others hold connections to the Islamic Sharia Council, which also offers counseling “in accordance with the Holy Qur’an and authentic sunnah,” and “anger management” sessions that teach clients to “deal with the situation in a way that is most pleasing to Allah.”
According to France 24, 90 percent of the cases before Britain’s sharia tribunals involve divorce. But Algerian activist Marieme Hellie Lucas told Namazie in an interview, “The ‘laws’ used by so called ‘sharia courts’ are not [even] religiously inspired. They are just the choice that fundamentalists implement between contradictory (even antagonistic) customs, mores, and conservative religious interpretations.”
In fact, Lucas says, “”fundamentalists are the ones who create, sometimes ex-nihilo [from nothing], the dilemma ‘faith vs. women’s rights,’ while many progressive theologians state that they see no contradiction.” Hence, Lucas maintains, allowing such tribunals comes down to favoring “the Muslim fundamentalist extreme-right agenda to the detriment of universal rights.”
Additionally, UK sharia expert Denis MacEoin has found many of the tribunals’ rulings “advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as they are applied by British courts.”
Women who have had experience with UK sharia tribunals echo concerns raised by MacEoin and Lucas.
For example, one widow told the Independent that subsequent to her husband’s death, her sons had insisted she sell her home and give the money to them. A sharia tribunal had evidently told them that “in English law, I own the house I live in, but this is not the way in Islam.” Despairing, she added, “what is this new Islam that can threaten to take the roof from the head of an old woman like me?”
And in a four-year investigation of British sharia councils, human rights activist Elham Manea “found clerics that ignored marital rape, condoned wife beating, and believed girls of 12 or 13 were old enough to marry,” the Independent reports. No wonder, then, that MEP Baroness Sheela Flather, in written testimony to a Parliamentary panel investigating the tribunals, argued that laws that apply “to white people [should] apply to everyone. “It is racism,” she declared, if they do not.
Despite these facts, many continue to maintain that banning these tribunals could do as much harm as good. Rather, they advocate oversight and reform of the existing councils to ensure that they reflect and administer equal rights under secular laws. “Though some scholars argue that a civil divorce should count as an Islamic one, this hasn’t been widely accepted yet within the Muslim communities,” Muslim Women’s Network UK director Shaista Gohir told VICE news recently.
But herein lies the core of the problem. Indulging those who do not accept the authority of civil over religious law does nothing to help integrate those who espouse such beliefs. Instead, this approach extends a kind of exceptionalism to Muslims, especially fundamentalist Muslims, permitting them to exist outside of civil law, while lending support to radical beliefs that the laws of the land do not apply to them: only sharia does.
True, as Namazie has observed, “Abolishing Sharia courts and parallel legal systems will not solve all the problems at hand; criminalising FGM or domestic violence has not ended them either. It will however make very clear what is acceptable and what is not and will underline a commitment to gender equality.”
Which is why allowing the oppression of Muslim women in our communities to continue is not protecting Muslim rights, or even Muslim identity. Therefore, banning these sharia “courts” is necessary. If we do not demand equality for women and the respect for one secular, civil law in our society for all, who will?
Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes
December 20, 2016Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes, Power Line,
Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. As President Obama prepares to depart office, Mr. Karo offers optimistic thoughts on what he believes to be Obama’s ultimate failure:
Watching Hillary Clinton’s sad soiree, and the shrinking Obama persona displayed in his latest PBS interview, make the Democratic titans seem enmeshed in a sort of Greek tragedy. Hillary’s self-destruction is all too obvious; but Obama’s strikes me as equally tragic, and equally apparent on reflection. And it reminded me of parallels from another tragic self-defeating President. But his is over; Hillary’s is almost over; Obama’s is just beginning its third act. One could title the play:
Obama Agonistes
Barack Obama will be the first President ever to not literally depart the scene after his successor is sworn in. It is a powerful image and metaphor, the act of the former President boarding the helicopter (think Nixon and his defiant “V”s) or the Presidential jet to leave Washington, to literally leave the scene to his successor. Even the perennial gadfly, Jimmy Carter, took that one last ride on the Presidential jet to return to Georgia. Washington belongs to the elected President, not the retired one.
But Obama will not do that. He will drive (well, be driven) a few scant miles to a house in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, where he can watch at close range as his legacy is revealed not to be one. From his front-row seat, he will watch his eponymous healthcare plan be gutted, watch his foreign policy be repudiated, watch his bureaucratic overreaches be reeled in (please God!), watch conservative judges take the bench, watch his immigration policy melt, watch the military cheer his successor as they never cheered him, watch infrastructure funds build highways and bridges (that will not be named after him) instead of disappearing into the pockets of government union members, watch the American energy revival kick into high gear.
As he watches all this, one wonders whether Obama will appreciate the curious posture he has imposed on the Democratic Party. It is too much to expect Obama to blame himself for the decline in the Party’s presence, at every level of government; but unless he is delusional, he must at least see it. He probably does, given his remarks in his Friday NPR interview that his organizing work “didn’t translate to” Congressional candidates. In the same interview he noted the future of the Democratic Party is the unnamed mass of young people who helped his campaign, omitting reference to any current politician.
Indeed, there are very few Democrats in power at any level who have any plausible claim to be up-and-coming party leaders. The current crop are septuagenarians, and uninspiring ones at that (who would follow Nancy Pelosi into a foxhole? who would fall on a grenade to save Elizabeth Warren? who would be pushed to a microphone by Chuck Schumer?).
With the dismantling of Obama’s signature initiatives, what does the Democratic Party stand for, other than to pine for Obamaism? Numerous Republicans plausibly champion the GOP position on any issue that matters; there are dozens of party leaders on immigration, energy, foreign affairs, national defense, sane budgeting, tax reform, education reform, who are not named Trump. Other than Warren’s identification with big bank harassment, the Democrats have no counterparts. Après moi, le vacuum.
The other curious thing about Obama’s remaining on the scene is that he has no visible friends on it, despite his dominance of his party. He has many toadies. He has his entourage. He even has many sincere admirers. But friends? Name three. Name one.
And in that characteristic, he is very much like the Democratic Antichrist, Richard Nixon. The quintessential Nixon photograph is of him walking on the beach in San Clemente, in a full suit and tie and wingtip shoes, alone except for his dog. Nixon’s post-presidential isolation derived mainly from the political disgrace that led to his resignation; no doubt Obama will have acolytes inviting him to events and interviewing him and basking in his presence. But who will come just to have a drink and talk about the old days or the White Sox? Every visit will be business, every caller seeking something rather than bringing something.
Obama is like Nixon in other ways as well, probably in more ways than the Democrats would ever admit. Both Nixon and Obama were self-made men. Nixon started as an obscure Congressman, Obama was an obscure community organizer (whatever THAT is). Both thrust themselves into the spotlight and into power, and ironically both by allegedly playing dirty (Nixon dubbed “Tricky Dick” by “the Pink Lady,” Helen Gahagan Douglas; Obama escaping criticism altogether despite having his state senate opponents disqualified and having his Republican opponent Jack Ryan’s divorce records mysteriously unsealed in his US Senate race).
Both relied far more on their ability to operate the levers of power than their ability to persuade others to follow them. Both were heavily criticized during their first terms, yet easily won re-election. Both depended far more on the personal loyalty of their staff, less on their experience or counsel. Both reveled in the trappings of the office. Both were very expensive to send on vacation, though to be fair Nixon barely knew the meaning of the word.
Ultimately Obama suffers from the Nixon comparison, for the reasons he will see at close range. Nixon was sought out post-retirement for his counsel; Obama will be asked for his presence, not his wisdom. Nixon’s electoral success was a general one, regionally and culturally, and very much set the scene for the Age of Reagan; Obama’s politics of division manifestly fail for anyone not named Obama. Nixon´s policies, domestic (e.g., creation of OSHA and the EPA, ending gold-backing of Dollars, the Endangered Species Act) and foreign (e.g., the SALT treaty, rapprochement with China, backing Israel) are still with us forty years later. Obama´s will be gone forty weeks later.
And that is where the Agonist tragedy lies. Obama is staying in Washington for two reasons: because he doesn’t truly have friends elsewhere, or any other place he considers home; and because if he doesn’t stay in DC he descends into obscurity. The latter is a struggle he is likely to lose anyway; if ever there were a personality suited to dominate the stage and put his predecessor in the shade, it is Trump.
But Obama will continue the struggle. He will help raise funds, in a social environment where funding matters less. He has no appointment power, so he will have few toadies. Any emerging Democratic leader will be wary of him, as he will only draw attention to himself. He still considers himself the smartest man in any room, despite abundant proof to the contrary. He will never improve in his ability to persuade people to his viewpoint, because he lacks introspection; a man who suffers as many failures as he has in eight years, yet still can’t think of any serious errors he has made, is by definition not learning from his mistakes. And absent holding the levers of power himself, persuasion is the only tool Obama has.
So Obama will soldier on, speaking to any reporter or power player who seeks (or will accept) an audience, pressing his increasingly chimerical policies in a political and legal landscape increasingly tilted against them, sucking the air and vitality away from any of his successors who actually have a chance of implementing them. Due to his own ego, Obama’s struggles will ultimately be self-defeating.
Western culture, as it is now, deserves its fate
December 20, 2016Western culture, as it is now, deserves its fate, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, December 19, 2016
(Sometimes I am glad that I am seventy-five and probably won’t be around to see the forecast outcome. Can we cure the idiocy of academia in Obama’s America, or will it persist via the students? — DM)
Islamists will have no trouble taking over a culture that deems Shakespeare too white, Greek yoghurt the subject of academic studies, and turns theaters into safe spaces.
Which is the fate of a theater if it becomes a “safe space,” the most grotesque academic neologism that serves to protect minorities from potentially “offensive arguments”? This is what happened at the famous Chicago theater, Second City, the school of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. That theater, since the election of Donald Trump, has become a “safe space,” this by installing a panel at the entrance announcing that it will sanction “homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic and racist comments”.
And how to complete this iconoclastic rage if not with the removal of William Shakespeare’s portrait from the entrance of Literature departments, such as that of the University of Pennsylvania? Students and professors have replaced a painting of the British poet in the Fisher-Bennett Hall with that of a lesbian and African American poet, Audre Lorde. The gentle smile of the great poet, as it was immortalized by Martin Droeshout in 1623, disturbed the students.
First was Georgetown University, which publicly distanced itself from the poet. “The Shakespeare File”, a dossier compiled by a committee of academics including the poet Anthony Hecht and the critic John Hollander, gave an overview of the courses offered by seventy prestigious American universities. “The abandonment of Shakespeare is not just a trend. It is the norm,” they concluded.
Now there are even feminists who interpret Shakespeare’s dramas as the battle of sexes. So the blood that flows from Julius Caesar’s wounds is the feminization of the male at the time of death. Nothing less! Coppelia Kahn of Brown University argues that Shakespeare in “Romeo and Juliet” wanted to describe the cruelty of a patriarchal society that encourages young people to commit acts of “phallic violence”.
At Yale, the students recently promoted a purge of Shakespeare and Milton – too male too white. The Literature Department of Pennsylvania therefore voted to remove the portrait of Shakespeare “to affirm the commitment to a greater inclusion” said the head of the English department, Jed Est.
The famous liberal inclusion through prohibitions.
So forget “Macbeth” and “The Merchant of Venice”. Now the students can read “the influence of lesbianism in literature”. The question is not what a theatre has become if it is turned into a safe space. But can a civilization and culture survive if it replaces Shakespeare with an Afro-American-Lesbian poetess? The answer is that it cannot.
Take the miserable condition of the “studies” published in journals. Perin Gurel, professor at the University of Notre Dame, has just published an essay in the Journal of Critical Studies on Food in which she analyses the success of greek yogurt. Simple, that success is because it is “white” and thus a form of unconscious racial supremacism. The feminist Carol J. Adams coined the term “feminized protein” to attack the breeding of female animals. In the journal called Progress in Human Geography, Mark Carey just published an essay entitled “Glaciers, gender and science”, in which calls for the creation of a “feminist glaceology”. California University, for example, brings out a magazine entitled “Race and Yoga”, while the Journal on Dance, published at Cambridge, discovered that pilates is really “racist”.
The European Journal of Cultural Studies did researched on “Finnish rap”. The Journal on Gender Studies is not ashamed to publish articles on the “improvement of the erection as a projection of masculinity”. The University of Leeds, UK, has published a research about “the phenomenology of the gay genitals”.
It is an inescapable conclusion: Western culture, if judged on the basis of how it is now, deserves to be destroyed by the Islamists.
Merkel Government Still in Denial
December 20, 2016Merkel Government Still in Denial, Gatestone Institute, Vijeta Uniyal, December 20, 2016
Islamic State took responsibility for the December 19 Berlin truck-ramming attack that killed 12 people, similar to the July 14 attack in the French city of Nice, and countless car-rammings in Israel. Now Europeans feel what Israelis live with every day.
This month, the police union in the German state of Thuringia issued an open letter to the state’s Interior Minister, describing the crumbling law-and-order situation amid the rising migrant crime: “[You] are abandoning us completely helpless to a superior force… But what changes? Nothing. One instead gets a sense of uninterest.”
Meanwhile, representatives of Arab community were reported telling the police in Ruhr, “The police will not win a war with us because we are too many.”
Chancellor Merkel, Germany’s ruling elites and the media can continue putting a happy face on uncontrolled mass-migration from Arab and Muslim lands, or suppress news reporting on rising migrant crime, but they cannot wish away the country’s deteriorating law and order situation.
It should be evident to even a casual observer that her government still does not care about the victims of its own failed “refugee” policy.
Monday’s terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market killed at least 12 people and injured 50 others. Islamic State took responsibility for the truck-ramming attack, as recommend by the al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, and similar to the July 14 attack in the French city of Nice, and countless car-rammings in Israel. Now Europeans feel what Israelis live with every day.
Police confer at the site of the December 19 car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in Berlin. (Image source: RT video screenshot)
Earlier this year, Germany was hit by a series of ISIS-inspired attacks and failed terror plots. Despite that almost all the perpetrators were recent Syrian or Afghan migrants, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the middle of a re-election bid, has stuck to her claim that there is “no connection” between terror attacks in the country and uncontrolled mass migration from Arab and Muslim lands.
Ahead of an election year, Merkel and her coalition partners also want to avoid another mass sexual attack — in Cologne.
Adding insult to injury, the Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, is planning to put on a big show this coming New Year’s Eve in the city’s main square. After an elaborate year-long cover up, the city will be lighting up the crime scene as part of a multi-media show. “The City of Cologne has announced plans for a spectacular multi-media show in the area immediately surrounding the famous Gothic cathedral, close to the main train station,” state-run broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.
“Cologne will send good images to the world,” says the city’s mayor. The taxpayer-funded spectacle has been named “Time Drifts Cologne.” The “light artist” running the show, Philipp Geist, considers last year’s crime scene “a fantastic place for an art installation.”
Of an estimated two thousand exclusively Muslim men who raped, assaulted and robbed more than 1200 women, almost all the attackers have managed to walk free. Ralf Jäger, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, admitted recently that “most of the cases will remain unsolved.”
An estimated 1,800 police officers will be on duty in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, compared to just 140 last year. Barricades have been erected in the city center to check the flow of the crowd. The city’s historic cathedral and adjoining area have been placed under a crush barrier. Police will man observation posts and fly helicopters to monitor the crowd, and deploy mounted police and six armoured vehicles for riot-control. “No expense will be spared,” assured the mayor. In an important election year, the government wants to defend the city to the last taxpayer dime.
Even before it can face any real onslaught, however, Merkel’s fortification is showing some serious cracks.
Just days ahead of the News Year’s Eve, the police union in the eastern German state of Thuringia has issued an open letter describing the crumbling law-and-order situation amid the rising migrant crime. “[You] are abandoning us completely helpless to a superior force,” says the desperate note addressed to the Interior Minister of Thuringia. The union claims that politicians have been repeatedly briefed on the deteriorating conditions under which police have been working. “But what changes? Nothing. One instead gets a sense of uninterest.”
Unwilling to acknowledge the breakdown of law and order in face of the rising migrant crime wave, the German media and politicians are going after the messenger.
Their latest target is the head of German Police Union, Rainer Wendt. Wendt’s crime, after a series of rape crimes this December, was to speak the obvious truth. “The criminals are using open borders,” he said.
Ralf Stegner, deputy leader of Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a fervent supporter of Merkel’s “Refugees Welcome” policy, denounced Wendt’s statement as “politically disgusting and stupid as one can get.”
Wendt has also been attacked for questioning the customary kid-glove treatment given to violent and criminal “refugees” by German courts. Sven Rebehn, Chairman of the German Association of Judges, called Wendt, “the Donald Trump of domestic politics” — apparently the biggest insult a German liberal can come up with these days.
The Merkel government can turn the center of Cologne into an impenetrable fortress for a day or two, but the threat is not going away. The problem lies in the Ruhr region that encircles Cologne. “Have foreign clans turned Ruhr region into a No-Go-Area?” asks the leading German newspaper, Die Welt, just days ahead of News Year’s Eve.
Meanwhile, representatives of Arab community were reported telling the police in Ruhr, “The police will not win a war with us because we are too many.”
Chancellor Merkel, Germany’s ruling elites and the media can continue putting a happy face on uncontrolled mass-migration from Arab and Muslim lands, or suppress news reporting on rising migrant crime, as much as they want, but they cannot wish away the country’s deteriorating law-and-order situation.
As the desperate plea of the police union shows, the Merkel government has decided to ignore the plight of law enforcement, at least for now. It should be evident to even a casual observer that her government still does not care about the victims of its own failed “refugee” policy: Germany appears to be heading toward another rough year.
Not Satire | California Secessionists Open Embassy in Moscow
December 20, 2016California Secessionists Open Embassy in Moscow, Truth Revolt,Mark Tapson, December 19, 2016
The leftwing state whose voters blame Russia for Hillary Clinton’s election loss and want to secede from the Union in order to free themselves from the yoke of less enlightened voters in the flyover states has now opened an “embassy” in Moscow.
Louis Marinelli, leader of a Brexit-style movement called Yes California, made the announcement Sunday at a press conference, according to Russian Times. He wishes to “lay the groundwork” for bilateral relations between an independent California and Russia. The embassy is not for dealing with diplomatic issues, however; it is intended more as a cultural center to educate Russians about California’s history, boost trade ties, and promote tourism.
“We’re opening up a conversation in Russia and it’s [to] a much smaller degree to the Americans when they wanted their independence from the British empire,” Marinelli explained. “They went and pursued military assistance and so on and so forth. We’re not doing anything like that.
“We’re not requesting military assistance from Russia,” he continued. “We’re certainly going to request recognition of our independence and recognition of our [2019] independence referendum result, as we’re going to request that the entire international community recognizes the results.” Yeah, good luck with that.
The Yes California independence movement describes itself as a “nonviolent campaign to establish the country of California using any and all legal and constitutional means to do so.” The campaign plans to hold a referendum on independence in the spring of 2019 if it manages to gather the 500,000 signatures required for it to be put on the public ballot.
Marinelli has previously filed several unsuccessful ballot initiative proposals related to California’s secession.
Berlin Christmas Attack – Part of a Larger Plan
December 20, 2016Berlin Christmas Attack – Part of a Larger Plan, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, December 20, 2016
The aftermath of the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin (Photo: © TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images)
The attack in Berlin last night, in which a Pakistani immigrant truck driver plowed into a crowded Christmas market killing 12 and injuring at least 48, was a point in a trajectory of incitement by Islamist extremists against anything and anyone not Muslim.
Consider the following recent incidents across the world of late:
In Indonesia, considered to be a “moderate” Islamic country, a fatwawas just issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council prohibiting Muslims from wearing or using Christmas-themed clothing or decorations, saying, “Religious images and accessories are used intentionally to show the identity of a certain religion, and represent its tradition and rituals…[it is] a foreign culture with which we must not mingle.”
News reports explained the fatwa was primarily directed toward employees in shopping malls who often wear Santa hats, appealing to the nine percent of Indonesia’s population (21.2 million people) who are Christian.
Since the fatwa was issued, members of the extremist Islam Defenders Front escorted by police raided malls in East Java to check whether employees were abiding by the decree.
The fatwa prompted a warning by International Christian Concern, a human rights group, that the ruling could give license to extremists to attack non-Muslims and foster an “increasingly emboldened radical Islamic sub-group that is applying public pressure to adhere to conservative Islamic law.”
That not only has already happened, it is sanctioned and supported by the country’s police.
The raids follow protests last month in which more than one hundred thousand Muslims marched in the capital calling for the death penalty of the capital’s governor, a Christian accused of blasphemy.
In Greece, a Christian church in Crete was set on fire, before which the perpetrators wrote on the building’s wall “Allah is great.” The church is a major pilgrimage site for the region and attracts many to its annual feast. The burning came on the heels of a vote by the Greek parliament to build the first state-funded mosque in Athens since the country gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832. The vote passed by a wide margin and it was agreed to speed up construction of the $1 million project stymied since 2006.
In Egypt, just one week before the bombing of St. Peter’s Cathedral which killed 25 Christian worshippers, a meeting – sponsored by the top Sunni authority in the world, Al Azhar — was held in the village of Naghameesh, where an Islamist mob attacked property owned by Coptic Christians after rumors that a church was being opened spread through the area.
The community used their community center, which houses a pre-school and a home for the elderly, for prayer services.
After the niceties of acknowledging the “brotherhood of all Egyptians” were dispensed with, Muslim authorities present refused to allow the Christians to continue to use the building which they ruled must remain shut.
Just last August, the Egyptian legislature passed a new law codifying the rights of Christians to build and renovate churches. Yet, even though all the necessary paperwork was submitted according to a local member of the Christian community, a permit has not been received by the community to build a church.
“We don’t understand what is so dangerous about the Copts praying and exercising their legal rights in this matter,” the Christian said.
These incidents highlight the supremacist ideology of Islamism – the end point of which is the total genocide of non-Muslim communities as reflected in territory held by Islamic State.
The attack in Berlin is part of the trajectory of extremist ideology that begins with intolerance of anything non-Muslim (as witnessed in Indonesia) to the destruction of churches to, finally, attacks on the life of non-Muslims themselves – both as a way to cow them into submission and to assert the supremacy of sharia law.
The Western world needs to awaken from its politically-induced slumber and stand up for the rights of all peoples.
CNN Uses Germany Attack To Bash The Right
December 20, 2016CNN Uses Germany Attack To Bash The Right, Daily Caller, Blake Neff, December 19, 2016
CNN’s online coverage of Monday’s deadly terror attack on a German Christmas market focused on the attack’s potential to stoke far-right anger, rather than the threats of Islamic radicalism.
The attack in Berlin killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more, but on CNN’s website, the network’s top story warned about “the fallout of fear” and said that “attacks fuel [the] far right’s assault on democracy.”
CNN’s frontpage after the Berlin attack. [Screen shot]
The headline leads to an article by columnist David Andelman, in which he warns not to let repeated Islamic terror attacks undermine the West’s commitment to mass immigration.
“Across Europe, right-wing candidates are positioning themselves against immigration and Islam, defending an ever-tougher stance with every new terrorist assault.” Andelman says, presenting this as a threat to “traditional democratic values” even though all the candidates he names are participants in electoral democracies.
In fact, the only proof Andelman offers that electing right-wing parties will destroy democracy is that many of those parties want to withdraw from the European Union, even though such a withdrawal, by itself, does nothing to make a country less of a democracy.
“This is the ultimate danger of terror attacks. Reasonable men and women must recognize them for what they are — an effort to drain what is left of democracy from our nations,” Andelman warns.
CNN’s front page also invited doubt over whether the attack was terrorism by using a “Was it terrorism?” headline, even though German news has already reported the attacker was a refugee, making terrorism the overwhelmingly likely cause of the attack.
Trump Wins Electoral College After Clinton Loses The Most Defections Of “Faithless Elector”
December 20, 2016Trump Wins Electoral College After Clinton Loses The Most Defections Of “Faithless Elector”, Jonathan Turley’s Blog, Jonathan Turley, December 20, 2016
(A good wrap-up of the Electoral College results and Democrat machinations. — DM)
The Clinton supporters have been campaigning hard to convince electors to switch their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. It was a remarkably hypocritical stance for Clinton who repeatedly called Trump failure to promise to abide by the election results as “horrifying” and unAmerican. Clinton maintained that shocked demeanor all the way up to election night when she found herself the loser. She then broke from tradition and refused to concede that night before her supporters. Her campaign then supported challenges in various states and actively sought to convince electors to switch their votes. Well the results are in and it is rather surprising: Of the 10 electors who did not vote for their designated candidate, eight were actually Clinton electors who refused to vote for her. Only two Trump electors switched and neither voted for Clinton.
Four of the electors who were set to vote for Clinton were in Washington state. Of those, three voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the fourth voted for Native American tribal leader Faith Spotted Eagle. They each will face $1,000 fines.
The two electors who did not cast their votes voted for Kentucky Sen. Ron Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
In the meantime, Bill Clinton went public with an interview to continue the spin that his wife lost because of FBI Director James Comey and “fake news.” Once again, he did not point to the fake news that was so decisive in the election since the Wikileaks emails were not fake but real news. However, Clinton added that Trump won because “he does know is how to get angry white men to vote for him.” The problem is that white males could not and did not secure the election for Trump. According to the New York Times, Clinton carried only 54 percent of the female vote against Donald Trump. However, nearly twice as many white women without college degrees voted for Trump than for Hillary and she basically broke almost even on college-educated white women (with Hillary taking 51 percent). Trump won the majority of white women at 53 percent.
Other Clinton supporters have explained the results by denouncing women as slaves to their “internalized misogyny. So it is either “angry white males” or self-hating women that toppled Hillary Clinton. Of course, there could be a more obvious answer: people really did not like Hillary as a leader regardless of her gender. It may be that the large numbers of women refused to vote for Hillary simply because she was a woman. Clinton and Trump were the most unpopular politicians ever to be nominated for president and over 60 percent of voters viewed Clinton as fundamentally dishonest. None of that stopped the DNC from engineering her victory over Bernie Sanders who presented precisely the populist campaign that many voters were looking for. Clinton had the Democratic establishment and many allies in the media — everyone agreed except the public. That was enough . . . until the voters had their say on November 8th.
What is striking about this story is how leading Democrats still refuse to acknowledge that the party was seriously out of touch with the electorate. Indeed, after securing her own reelection as minority leader, Nancy Pelosi promptly announced that voters really do not “want a new direction.” Yet, after a huge effort to get electors to move against Trump, most moved against Clinton. The sentiments are not likely to pass despite the coordinated effort to blame Comey or white males or self-loathing women. Few people outside of the Clinton core supporters are buying the spin. The question is how steep this learning curve will be for a party that has continued the same leaders on the same course after the electoral defeat.
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Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
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