Archive for April 2017

Sisi as key to Arab anti-ISIS pact with Israel

April 3, 2017

Sisi as key to Arab anti-ISIS pact with Israel, DEBKAfile, April 3, 2017

(Please see also, Restore the U.S.-Egyptian Strategic Alliance, Designate the Muslim Brothers as Terrorists. — DM)

Our Washington sources report that President Trump aims to complete his plan for bringing together Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel on a new footing by September.

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US President Donald Trump’s first face to face with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi at the White House Monday, April 3, focuses on four main topics, DEBKAfile reports: The fight against Islamist State terror rampant in Egyptian Sinai and neighboring Libya; topping up US military assistance to Cairo, aid for easing Egypt’s dire economic straits and, finally, the effort to bolster normal relations between the Arab world (including the Palestinians) and Israel.

From the moment he assumed the Egyptian presidency in June 2014, El-Sisi has waged a never-ending war on Islamist terror against Ansar Beit-al Maqdis, which later pledged alliance to the Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. The Egyptian army has so far been worsted.  The Egyptian president is not deaf to the criticism of the Second and Third Armies’ failure to overcome a few thousand armed men, even though they can at a moment’s notice raise several thousand more fighters from the Bedouin tribes of Sinai. US intelligence has rated the Egyptian forces as slow-moving and unwieldy; but for limited forays, its contingents preferring to sit safely in their barracks rather than risk going out and pursuing the enemy across the Peninsula.

Shortly before President El-Sisi’s trip to Washington, the Egyptian air force conducted intense bombardments of ISIS concentrations around the northern town of El Arish, killing at least 14 terrorists, nabbing 22 and seizing large caches of roadside bombs. But they too long delayed bearding the Islamists in their main stronghold atop Mount Jabal Hala in central Sinai. ISIS is therefore free to move around the territory and strike at will, the while expanding its operations into Egypt proper.

The weekend air strikes came after months in which ISIS overran sections of El Arish, Sinai’s biggest town (pop: 100,000). Their grip is such that Egyptian forces no longer dared venture into those lawless neighborhoods, especially at night. Earlier this year, terrible persecution including executions forced the few thousand indigenous Christians, most of them Copts, to flee their homes in El Arish. Egyptian forces proved unequal to safeguarding the US-led international observer force (MFO) monitoring the 1972 Egyptian-Israel peace treaty at a nearby station.

American military aid to Egypt stands today at $1.3bn a year. Even though the US president means to slash foreign aid programs, he may make an exception in this case and expand military assistance -, possibly in the coin of advanced military hardware, given the country’s unending frontline battle against Islamist terror.

Its presence in El Arish, 130km from the Egyptian-Israeli border, plants the peril on the doorsteps of Egypt’s neighbors as well: Northern Sinai borders on Israel, its northwestern district shares a border with the Gaza Strip, abutting in the east on Jordan and in the southwest on Libya. The cities of western Sinai sit on the banks of the Suez Canal.

The Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate is closely allied with Salafi organizations in the Gaza Strip and works hand in glove with its Palestinian Hamas rulers, especially in the lucrative arms-smuggling business.

Al-Baghdadi last year posted a group of Iraqi officers in his service to the Sinai contingent. They travelled through southern Jordan to reach the peninsula. The Islamist cells in Libya have moreover made ISIS-held turf in Sinai their safe highway for traveling undetected to their other strongholds across the Middle East.

To stamp out this sprawling, multi-branched menace, the Trump administration needs to bring Egypt, Jordan and Israel into a coalition for a sustained, common campaign.

The Obama administration, which boycotted President El-Sisi for persecuting Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, tried unsuccessfully to build Turkey, Egypt and Israel into a counterterrorism pact. The Trump administration, for which the Brotherhood is anathema, has a better chance. But first, relations between the Arab world and Israel need to be placed on a regular footing. Some groundwork already exists in the informal bilateral military ties Egypt and Jordan maintain with Israel. DEBKAfile’s military sources have revealed in past reports the limited give-and-take relations for fighting terror Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi maintain with Israel.

The US President’s advisers recognize that before a broad, effective front against ISIS and Al Qaeda can be put together from these partial, often covert ties, progress is necessary towards normalizing relations between the Arab governments and the Jewish state, including the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Trump will certainly want to hear what role his Egyptian guest is willing to take for bringing this process forward. He will ask his next Middle East visitor, Jordan’s Abdullah II, the same question, when he arrives in Washington Tuesday. As for the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, he was promised an invitation to the White House this month, but not yet been given a date. He is clearly being left to wait until the senior players in the region have had their say. Our Washington sources report that President Trump aims to complete his plan for bringing together Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel on a new footing by September.

Unmasking Susan Rice and her NSC dead-enders

April 3, 2017

Unmasking Susan Rice and her NSC dead-enders, American ThinkerMonica Showalter, April 3, 2017

It’s time to start investigating this arrogant abuse of power now. Comey has not stated whether he is investigating these people or not, and this is proper. But with these dead-enders clearly threatening the Trump presidency, it’s time to see a hard hand come out against these deep-staters who don’t know when to leave office, and who subscribe to the leftist situational ethics of ‘by any means necessary.’ They are poison for our republic and if they are not removed, they will destroy the Trump presidency

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Journalist/activist Mike Cernovich reports that former White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice obtained intelligence reports showing the identities of innocent Americans who incidentally spoke to foreign officials under security sweeps for spying or intelligence activities. Under U.S. law, U.S. persons are protected from such disclosure, which could be dry-cleaners asking envoys to pick up their laundry or wrong number phone messages spilling their guts about their mothers-in-law. If such U.S. persons get swept up in surveillance, they are protected. But only if they remain ‘masked,’ which is the law of the land.

Cernovich says the White House Counsel’s office has confirmed that Rice was one of the few officials with the authority to make the requests to unmask the innocent Americans caught up in surveillance dragnets. There was no national security reason to do so, but she did. It makes a lot of sense if the aim is political, however, and White House spokesman Sean Spicer has pointed out that their goal was ‘to leak stuff.’ Based on White House logs, she did, during the transition back when angry miserable Obama White House officials frowned in a group photo for the cameras.

The White House counsel’s office disclosed these logs to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who has been as responsible a steward of America’s secrets as anyone (and said nothing). But it would mean that Rice had to have been responsible for the illegal leaking to the press of the legitimate activities of people like her NSC successor Mike Flynn, for political rather than national security purposes. This would be true whether she did it herself or dispatched a flunky like fellow NSC official Ben Rhodes or Joe Biden’s NSC man Colin Kahl to execute the dirty-tricks skullduggery.

It’s par for the course. Rice was the speaker of the infamous phony White House talking points on why four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were slaughtered in Benghazi on 9/11/12, repeatedly stating for the press that the attack on the U.S. compound was the act of a spontaneous crowd that got out of control over a video, and not the pre-planned, lethally executed al-Qaida terrorist attack it was. After that, she went onto support the admittedly phony narratives about the Iran Deal, which her buddy Ben Rhodes, a creative writing major, cooked up out of thin air, just as he did the Benghazi talking points.

Cernovich reports that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman (caught on Wikileaks for being in the tank with Obama) had the information, and chose to sit on it to protect the former president.

But based on the White House counsel act, the news nevertheless got out. The story meshes well with what FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee, in response to Nunes’ request for information on leaks last March 20. Comey told the committee that only 20 people would have had access to the names of innocent Americans caught up in the spy dragnet during the transition. Rice was one of them.

Rice, like Rhodes, has the farthest of far-left backgrounds, and the highest of malice against the incoming president. Rhodes never was able to pass a background check to obtain a security clearance and continues to mock and berate Trump & Co, as if he thinks he owned the job and now they took it. Another coeval at NSC, Colin Kahl, who was attached to Joe Biden, seems to have laid out the diabolical plans for picking off Trump’s lieutenants one by one. The tweets he issues are unbelievable, here is one:

Colin Kahl‏ @ColinKahl

The 2nd essential step is purging or marginalizing the “Axis of Ideologues” in the West Wing: Bannon, Miller, Anton, Gorka, KT McFarland.14/

6:21 AM – 11 Mar 2017

With a pattern of malice and mishandled security information centered around NSC dead-enders, the one thing we can see is that there is a coterie of illegal leakers who will compromise national security to enact their political aims.

Devin Nunes pointedly asked Comey whether he knew that illegally leaking national security secrets was a jailtime offense. The FBI director said yes.

It’s time to start investigating this arrogant abuse of power now. Comey has not stated whether he is investigating these people or not, and this is proper. But with these dead-enders clearly threatening the Trump presidency, it’s time to see a hard hand come out against these deep-staters who don’t know when to leave office, and who subscribe to the leftist situational ethics of ‘by any means necessary.’ They are poison for our republic and if they are not removed, they will destroy the Trump presidency.

 

Explosion in St. Petersburg Metro, fatalities confirmed (GRAPHIC IMAGES)

April 3, 2017

A suspected bomb blast inside a car of the St. Petersburg Metro system has resulted in casualties among passengers. The entire transit system is shut down as bomb squads and rescuers respond to the emergency.

Source: Explosion in St. Petersburg Metro, fatalities confirmed (GRAPHIC IMAGES) — RT News

A suspected bomb blast inside a car of the St. Petersburg Metro system has resulted in casualties among passengers. The entire transit system is shut down as bomb squads and rescuers respond to the emergency.

The explosion happened as the train was travelling between the stations Tekhnologichesky Institut and Sennaya Ploshchad of the St. Petersburg Metro, the National Antiterrorism Committee (NAC) confirmed.

Images posted on social media show bodies lying next to the damaged car, with blood apparently spilt on a bench.

https://twitter.com/cnn_russian/status/848869198558363650?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fnews%2F383202-st-petersburg-blast-metro%2F

The St. Petersburg governor’s office said there were as many as 50 victims in the incident, including 10 fatalities. Two of the injured have been taken for surgery while two others are being prepared for operation.

The city healthcare committee said 25 people have been brought to hospital in the wake of the blast, including one child.

Russian President Vladimir Putin commented that “The causes of this event have not been determined yet, so it’s too early to talk about [possible causes]. The investigation will show. Certainly, we will consider all possibilities: common, criminal, but first of all of a terrorist nature.

All Metro stations are closed to passengers. Commuters were evacuated from the subway within about an hour of the first reports of the blast coming in.

Security has been increased in St. Petersburg over concerns of a potential follow-up attack, the NAC said. It also rejected media reports, which claimed that more than one explosion occurred, saying no evidence supporting this was found.

Facebook has activated its Safety Check feature for users in St Petersburg. It allows people to let friends and family know that they are OK during a disaster or dangerous situation.

Off Topic ? | Attkisson v. Eric Holder, Department of Justice, et al

April 3, 2017

Attkisson v. Eric Holder, Department of Justice, et al, sharylattkisson.com, April 2, 2017

(Spying on Ms. Attkisson, an investigative journalist, by the Obama administration. This seems relevant to more recent efforts to spy on Trump, et al. — DM)

As an investigative reporter for CBS News, Ms. Attkisson was responsible for investigating and reporting on national news stories. Between 2011 and 2013, she investigated and prepared various high-profile news reports, including ones related to the “Fast and Furious” “gunwalking” operation and the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

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Many of you have asked for the status of my computer intrusion lawsuit against the federal government.

On March 19, 2017, a federal judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss my computer intrusion lawsuit, and transferred the case from Washington D.C. to the Eastern District of Virginia.

Below are excerpts from the judge’s opinion, which provides a good summary.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

MEMORANDUM OPINION, by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan

As an investigative reporter for CBS News, Ms. Attkisson was responsible for investigating and reporting on national news stories. Between 2011 and 2013, she investigated and prepared various high-profile news reports, including ones related to the “Fast and Furious” “gunwalking” operation and the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya…

In 2011——at the same time that Ms. Attkisson was conducting investigations and issuing certain of her high-profile news reports——the Attkissons “began to notice anomalies in numerous electronic devices at their home in Virginia.” These anomalies included Ms. Attkisson’s work-issued laptop computer and a family desktop computer “turning on and off at night without input from anyone in the household,” “the house alarm chirping daily at different times,” and “television problems, including interference.” All of these electronic devices used “the Verizon FiOS line installed in [the Attkissons’] home,” but Verizon was unable to stanch the anomalous activity despite multiple attempts. In January 2012, the Attkissons’ residential internet service “began constantly dropping off.”

In February 2012, “sophisticated surveillance spyware” was installed on Ms. Attkisson’s work-issued laptop computer. A later forensic computer analysis revealed that Ms. Attkisson’s laptop and the family’s desktop computer had been the “targets of unauthorized surveillance efforts.” That same forensic analysis revealed that Ms. Attkisson’s mobile phone was also targeted for surveillance when it was connected to the family’s desktop computer. The infiltration of that computer and the extraction of information from it was “executed via an IP address owned, controlled, and operated by the United States Postal service.” Additionally, based on the sophisticated nature of the software used to carry out the infiltration and software fingerprints indicating the use of the federal government’s proprietary software, the infiltration and surveillance appeared to be perpetrated by persons in the federal government.

An independent forensic computer analyst hired by CBS subsequently reported finding evidence on both Ms. Attkisson’s work-issued laptop computer and her family’s desktop computer of “a coordinated, highly-skilled series of actions and attacks directed at the operation of the computers.” Computer forensic analysis also indicated that remote actions were taken in December 2012 to remove the evidence of the electronic infiltration and surveillance from Ms. Attkisson’s computers and other home electronic equipment.

As Ms. Attkisson’s investigations and reporting continued, in October 2012 the Attkissons noticed “an escalation of electronic problems at their personal residence, including interference in home and mobile phone lines, computer interference, and television interference.” In November of that year, Ms. Attkisson’s mobile phones “experienced regular interruptions and interference, making telephone communications unreliable, and, at times, virtually impossible.”

Additionally, in December 2012, a person with government intelligence experience conducted an inspection of the exterior of the Attkissons’ Virginia home. That investigator discovered an extra Verizon FiOS fiber optics line. Soon thereafter, after a Verizon technician was instructed by Ms. Attkisson to leave the extra cable at the home, the cable disappeared, and the Attkissons were unable to determine what happened to it. In March 2013, the Attkissons’ desktop computer malfunctioned, and in September of that year, while Ms. Attkisson was working on a story at her home, she observed that her personal laptop computer was remotely accessed and controlled, resulting in data being deleted from it. On April 3, 2013, Ms. Attkisson filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. The Inspector General’s investigation was limited to an analysis of the compromised desktop computer, and the partially-released report that emerged from that investigation reported “no evidence of intrusion,” although it did note “a great deal of advanced mode computer activity not attributable to Ms. Attkisson or anybody in her household.”

The Attkissons allege that the “cyber-attacks” they “suffered in [their] home” were perpetrated by “personnel working on behalf of the United States.” Accordingly, they have asserted various claims against the United States and against former Attorney General Eric Holder, former Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, and unknown agents of the Department of Justice, the United States Postal Service, and the United States, all in their individual capacities. Those claims include claims against the United States under the FTCA and claims against the individual federal officers for violations of constitutional rights under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971)…

Having determined that venue is improper as to the Attkissons’ FTCA claims and that the pendent venue doctrine is inapplicable, the Court may either “dismiss, or if it be in the interest of justice, transfer [this] case to any district or division in which it could have been brought.” “The decision whether a transfer or a dismissal is in the interest of justice . . . rests within the sound discretion of the district court,” Naartex Consulting Corp. v. Watt, 722 F.2d 779, 789 (D.C. Cir. 1983), but the “standard remedy for improper venue is to transfer the case to the proper court rather than dismissing it——thus preserving a [plaintiff’s] ability to obtain review.” Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n v. Browner, 237 F.3d 670, 674 (D.C. Cir. 2001). The Court will use that standard remedy here and find that

the interest of justice warrants transfer rather than dismissal so that the Attkissons’ claims can be adjudicated on the merits.

Conclusion

For the reasons stated above, defendants’ amended motion to dismiss is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART WITHOUT PREJUDICE. As to their assertion that the Attkissons’ FTCA claims are improperly venued, defendants’ motion is granted. Accordingly, this consolidated case shall be transferred in its entirety to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The remainder of defendants’ amended motion to dismiss is denied without prejudice so that defendants may refile it, if appropriate, upon transfer to the Eastern District of Virginia. Likewise, the Attkissons’ motion for reconsideration of the Order denying various motions related to third-party discovery is DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE so that it may be refiled in and more appropriately resolved by the transferee court. An appropriate Order accompanies this Memorandum Opinion.

SO ORDERED.

Signed: Emmet G. Sullivan
United States District Judge
March 19, 2017

Restore the U.S.-Egyptian Strategic Alliance, Designate the Muslim Brothers as Terrorists

April 3, 2017

Restore the U.S.-Egyptian Strategic Alliance, Designate the Muslim Brothers as Terrorists, Center for Security Policy

(Please see also, Leftist Media Narrative Surfaces in Advance of al-Sisi’s White House Visit…  It’s a very long, and excellent, article on President al-Sisi’s impact on Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and efforts to reform Islam.– DM)

Donald Trump will do something today that his predecessor refused to do. He will meet with the elected leader of Egypt, Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi.

President Obama made no secret of his enmity for his Egyptian counterpart. After all, as his country’s senior military officer in 2013, then-General el-Sisi fulfilled the demands of many millions of Egyptians by ending the misrule of the Muslim Brotherhood government – a regime Mr. Obama helped bring to power.

The Brothers were banished in part because they sought to impose their totalitarian Sharia code on Egypt, a goal they seek world-wide. President Obama embraced the Muslim Brothers. Donald Trump came to office rejecting their agenda and the “radical Islamic terrorism” it spawns.

President Trump can prove the vital U.S.-Egyptian alliance is restored by joining President el-Sisi in designating the Muslim Brotherhood what it is: a terrorist organization.

Please do not ask why !

April 3, 2017

Londonistan: 423 New Mosques; 500 Closed Churches

April 2, 2017

Londonistan: 423 New Mosques; 500 Closed Churches, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, March 2, 2017

(BREXIT seems to have come a few years too late. — DM)

British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place.

British personalities keep opening the door to introducing Islamic sharia law. One of the leading British judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural, which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips, also suggested that the English law should “incorporate” elements of sharia law.

British universities are also advancing Islamic law. The academic guidelines, “External speakers in higher education institutions”, provide that “orthodox religious groups” may separate men and women during events. At the Queen Mary University of London, women have had to use a separate entrance and were forced to sit in a room without being able to ask questions or raise their hands, just as in Riyadh or Tehran.

“London is more Islamic than many Muslim countries put together”, according to Maulana Syed Raza Rizvi, one of the Islamic preachers who now lead “Londonistan“, as the journalist Melanie Phillips has called the English capital. No, Rizvi is not a right-wing extremist. Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate for Literature, was less generous; he called the UK “a cesspit for Islamists”.

“Terrorists can not stand London multiculturalism”, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan said after the recent deadly terror attack at Westminster. The opposite is true: British multiculturalists are feeding Islamic fundamentalism. Above all, Londonistan, with its new 423 mosques, is built on the sad ruins of English Christianity.

The Hyatt United Church was bought by the Egyptian community to be converted to a mosque. St Peter’s Church has been converted into the Madina Mosque. The Brick Lane Mosque was built on a former Methodist church. Not only buildings are converted, but also people. The number of converts to Islam has doubled; often they embrace radical Islam, as with Khalid Masood, the terrorist who struck Westminster.

The Daily Mail published photographs of a church and a mosque a few meters from each other in the heart of London. At the Church of San Giorgio, designed to accommodate 1,230 worshipers, only 12 people gathered to celebrate Mass. At the Church of Santa Maria, there were 20.

The nearby Brune Street Estate mosque has a different problem: overcrowding. Its small room and can contain only 100. On Friday, the faithful must pour into the street to pray. Given the current trends, Christianity in England is becoming a relic, while Islam will be the religion of the future.

In Birmingham, the second-largest British city, where many jihadists live and orchestrate their attacks, an Islamic minaret dominates the sky. There are petitions to allow British mosques to call the Islamic faithful to prayer on loudspeakers three times a day.

By 2020, estimates are that the number of Muslims attending prayers will reach at least 683,000, while the number of Christians attending weekly Mass will drop to 679,000. “The new cultural landscape of English cities has arrived; the homogenised, Christian landscape of state religion is in retreat”, said Ceri Peach of Oxford University. While nearly half of British Muslims are under the age of 25, a quarter of Christians are over 65. “In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” said Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society.

Since 2001, 500 London churches of all denominations have been turned into private homes. During the same period, British mosques have been proliferating. Between 2012 and 2014, the proportion of Britons who identify themselves as Anglicans fell from 21% to 17%, a decrease of 1.7 million people, while, according to a survey conducted by the respected NatCen Social Research Institute, the number of Muslims has grown by almost a million. Churchgoers are declining at a rate that within a generation, their number will be three times lower than that of Muslims who go regularly to mosque on Friday.

Demographically, Britain has been acquiring an increasingly an Islamic face, in places such as Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, Waltham Forest and Tower Hamlets. In 2015, an analysis of the most common name in England showed it was Mohammed, including spelling variations such as Muhammad and Mohammad.

Most important cities have huge Muslim populations: Manchester (15.8%), Birmingham (21.8%) and Bradford (24.7%). In Birmingham, the police just dismantled a terrorist cell; there is also a greater probability that a child will be born into a Muslim family than into a Christian one. In Bradford and Leicester, half the children are Muslim. Muslims do not need to become the majority in the UK; they just need gradually to Islamize the most important cities. The change is already taking place. “Londonistan” is not a Muslim majority nightmare; it is a cultural, demographic and religious hybrid in which Christianity declines and Islam advances.

Thousands of Muslims participate in a public outdoor prayer service in Birmingham, England, on July 6, 2016. (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)

According to Innes Bowen, writing in The Spectator, only two of the 1,700 mosques in Britain today follow the modernist interpretation of Islam, compared with 56% in the United States. The Wahhabis control six percent of mosques in the UK, while the fundamentalist Deobandi control up to 45%. According to a survey from the Knowledge Center, a third of UK Muslims do not feel “part of British culture.”

London is also full of sharia courts. There are officially 100. The advent of this parallel judicial system has been made possible thanks to the British Arbitration Act and the system of Alternative Dispute Resolution. These new courts are based on the rejection of the inviolability of human rights: the values of freedom and equality that are the basis of English Common Law.

British personalities keep opening the door to introduce sharia. One of Britain’s leading judges, Sir James Munby, said that Christianity no longer influences the courts and these must be multicultural — which means more Islamic. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Chief Justice Lord Phillips also suggested that British law should “incorporate” elements of sharia law. The British cultural establishment is rapidly capitulating to Islamic fundamentalists in accepting their demands.

British universities are also advancing Islamic law. The official guidelines of the university, “External speakers in higher education institutions“, published by Universities UK, provide that “orthodox religious groups” may separate men and women during events. At Queen Mary University of London, women had to use a separate entrance and were forced to sit in a room without being able to ask questions or raise their hands — as in Riyadh or Tehran. The Islamic Society at the London School of Economics held a gala, in which women and men were separated by a seven-meter panel.

After the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, recommended self-censorship and “some restraint” in discussing Islam. The British ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Simon Collis, converted to Islam and completed the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. He now calls himself Haji Collis.

What will be next?

European Union – EU boss threatens to break up US in retaliation for Trump Brexit support

April 2, 2017

EUROPEAN Union boss Jean-Claude Juncker issued a jaw-dropping threat to the United States, saying he could campaign to break up the country in revenge for Donald Trump’s supportive comments about Brexit.

PUBLISHED: 02:14, Fri, Mar 31, 2017 | UPDATED: 12:47, Fri, Mar 31, 2017

Source: European Union – EU boss threatens to break up US in retaliation for Trump Brexit support | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

EbS

EU boss Jean-Claude Juncker

 

GETTY

Donald Trump has previously voiced support for Brexit

In an extraordinary speech the EU Commission president said he would push for Ohio and Texas to split from the rest of America if the Republican president does not change his tune and become more supportive of the EU.The remarks are diplomatic dynamite at a time when relations between Washington and Brussels are already strained over Europe’s meagre contributions to NATO and the US leader’s open preference for dealing with national governments.A spokesman for the bloc later said that the remarks were not meant to be taken literally, but also tellingly did not try to pass them off as humorous and insisted the EU chief was making a serious comparison.

They are by far the most outspoken intervention any senior EU figure has made about Mr Trump and are likely to dismay some European leaders who were hoping to seek a policy of rapprochement with their most important ally.Speaking at the centre-right European People Party’s (EPP) annual conference in Malta yesterday afternoon, the EU Commission boss did not hold back in his disdain for the White House chief’s eurosceptic views.

He said: “Brexit isn’t the end. A lot of people would like it that way, even people on another continent where the newly elected US President was happy that the Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same.“If he goes on like that I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas in the US.”Mr Juncker’s comments did not appear to be made in jest and were delivered in a serious tone, although one journalist did report some “chuckles” in the audience and hinted the EU boss may have been joking. The remarks came in the middle of an angry speech in which the top eurocrat railed widely against critics of the EU Commission.

And reacting to the furore which followed them, EU Commission deputy chief spokesman Alexander Winterstein explained: “You will have seen that this is not the first time the President draws this analogy and I think he’s making a point that is as simple as it is valid.

“He does not suggest that certain states should secede from the United States and at the same time I think he considers it also not terribly appropriate for other heads of states to suggest that member states of the EU leave the EU. So I think that’s the comparison that he’s drawing.”

The outburst will be seen as totally inexplicable at a time when EU-US relations appeared to be on the mend, with Vice-President Mike Pence having completed a largely successful trip to Brussels and the commander-in-chief himself significantly softening his tone towards the EU project.

Mr Juncker did not criticise Britain at all during his speech, and only made reference to Brexit in relation to Mr Trump and the opportunities it presents for Europe to reform itself.

He told the audience in Malta: “Brexit isn’t the end of everything. We must consider it to be a new beginning, something that is stronger, something that is better.”

Speaking before him, EU Council president Donald Tusk was less reserved in his remarks about the UK vote as he tore into the populist politics which led to Brexit.The Polish eurocrat said the argument over sovereignty – epitomised by the Vote Leave slogan ‘take back control’ – was “a view that is both foolish and dangerous” and that the EU guaranteed countries’ strength of the world stage.He also accused populist politicians, such as the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen, of promoting “organised hatred” with their views on immigration.

The Muslim Brotherhood Swoops into Sweden

April 2, 2017

The Muslim Brotherhood Swoops into Sweden, Gatestone InstituteJudith Bergman, April 2, 2017

“Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees… It is time to realize that the new Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force… Something new — The New Country”. — Video advertisement; last sentence spoken by a young woman in a hijab.

Formal membership with a card and yearly subscription would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia — and to bring about that state — if necessary, by jihad.

It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘peaceful’. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.

A recent report has revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is well established in Sweden. The report — written at the behest of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and commissioned precisely because of a lack of research on the MB in Sweden — caused an outcry against the authors. Twenty Swedish academics, who specialize in Islam and Muslims, protested the report[1]. They called it “substandard work”, which did not take account of “the extensive research available about Islam and Muslims in Sweden”.

According to the report, the MB has been operating in Sweden since the late 1970s in the guise of a number of Muslim-Swedish organizations, all centered around the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFIS), which itself was established in the mid-1990s as an organizational front for the MB.

IFIS has founded other organizations in Sweden, among which are Islamic Relief, Ibn Rush, and Sweden Young Muslims (SUM). These have not only given the MB a dominant position within so-called ‘Muslim civil society’ in Sweden, but also enabled it to amass considerable Swedish taxpayer funds that have helped consolidate its position.

The authors of the report conclude that the MB’s activists are “building a parallel social structure, which poses a long-term challenge in terms of Sweden’s future social cohesion”. The authors are being most diplomatic.

According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden promotes:

“…a system of ‘cultural pluralism’, where every minority group is on the same level as the majority group… The ideal is… that Sweden should be organized in different ‘groups’, each group having the right to practice its particular values. The Swedish population should, even though it is in the majority, be a group among other groups: all groups should have the same status”.

The prevalent idea of multiculturalism, and the accompanying identity politics, thus play directly into the hands of the MB. A video ad from a charity backed by the Swedish government constitutes a particularly blunt example of this kind of thinking. In it, Swedes are told,

“Sweden will never be what it once was. Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees… It is time to realize that the New Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force… It is time to create a country together that is proud, inclusive and sustainable. Something new — The New Country”.

The last sentence is spoken by a young woman in a hijab.

There seems no reason for the hysterics among Swedish academics that the report appears to have provoked. In fact, they could easily fact-check the report simply by checking the website of the primary group mentioned in the report, the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFSI), which clearly states (at the bottom of the linked page) that it is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), generally acknowledged as an umbrella organization for local Muslim Brotherhood organizations from all over Europe.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2005, then-president of FIOE, Ahmet al-Rawi, said, when asked about ties with the MB, “We are interlinked with them with a common point of view. We have a good close relationship.”

If Swedish academics purporting to study Islam actually followed news from the Middle East, they would also know that Egypt’s former president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, when he became president of Egypt in 2012, included secretary general of the FIOE, Ayman Ali, on his presidential advisory board.

Not even Swedish academics should need further ’empirical’ proof to see that the Islamic Association in Sweden’s membership of FIOE constitutes de facto allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood. What Swedish academics are evidently ignorant of, however, is that the MB deliberately operates in a secretive manner. The UK government’s experts, in their own review of the MB, published in December 2015, wrote that “from its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organised itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure…This clandestine, centralised and hierarchical structure persists to this day”.

That deliberately opaque and secretive way of operating appears intended to create precisely the confusion and ignorance on the topic, evidently enfolding those academics who ought to know most about this topic. The obfuscation also makes it hard for authorities to crack down on the MB. As Mohammed Akif, the former General Guide and supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a former head of its Islamic Center of Munich, explained about the MB in an interview in 2005:

“We do not have an international organization; we have an organization through our perception of things. We are present in every country. Everywhere there are people who believe in the message of the Muslim Brothers. In France, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) does not belong to the organization of the Brothers. They follow their own laws and rules. There are many organizations that do not belong to the Muslim Brothers. For example, Shaykh al-Qaradawi. He is not a Muslim Brother, but he was formed according to the doctrine of the Brothers”.

Formal membership with a card and a yearly subscription, Swedish-style, would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam — as tidy as that would ’empirically’ make matters for Swedish academics.

The Swedish mainstream society would be wise to take this preliminary report extremely seriously, and not discard it. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia — and to bring about that state — if necessary, by jihad. It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘peaceful’. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.

Historically, the Muslim Brotherhood has spawned other terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda — which, in turn, has spawned ISIS.

The Swedish headlines in March have been filled with news about the return of 150 ISIS fighters to Sweden. A Swedish minister has already said that they should be “integrated back into society”.

The Swedes would do well to pay attention to the influence of extremist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, or the long-term result might not be what many Swedes would like.

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[1] The report was commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, a state authority, as a preliminary feasibility study, gauging the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Sweden before engaging in further study and research.

Panelists Prove Jewish Voice for Peace is Neither

April 2, 2017

Panelists Prove Jewish Voice for Peace is Neither, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, April 1, 2017

There’s a simple way to end global oppression, racism and immediately create a world overflowing with “equality, dignity and human rights,” panelists agreed Saturday morning during a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Conference in Chicago.

Simply eliminate Zionism from the planet.

“Arguing for a softer, less harsh, nicer version of capitalism, colonialism and racism won’t do it,” said Black Lives Matter leader Rachel Gilmer. “Many liberal Zionists believe that the problem with Israeli apartheid is simply a few bad policies, or Netanyahu, or the wall, but the problem is with the ideological foundation of the state itself: Zionism. Zionism at its core is white supremacy.”

While JVP claims its mission is to “end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians,” the conference so far has failed to mention any plan that keeps Israel intact. That’s not a surprise. JVP prides itself for playing a key role in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that pressures corporations, churches, and colleges and to drop investments in Israel.

“A world without Zionism is a world without oppression” and create “equality, dignity and human rights,” said panelist Lubnah Shomali of the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights. It also would mean Shomali’s claim ignores human rights violations by Palestinian leaders against inside the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority use intimidation to silence journalists who dare to engage in peaceful criticism, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2016. Journalists face arrest and detention for exposing corruption. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas flout international law by issuing death penalties, using torture and extrajudicial killings.

While speakers during Saturday’s “Let’s Talk About Zionism” panel tossed around “apartheid” accusations, they ignored the rights enjoyed by Israeli Arabs, including representation in Knesset and prominently in Israel’s judiciary.

No one on the JVP panel mentioned this. Neither did anyone advocate a peaceful resolution to the conflict that leaves Israel intact.

Jewish Voice for Peace, therefore, let an entire panel push the message that Zionism, the belief in a national homeland and refuge for Jews, should not exist.

Ethiopian Jewish activist Efrat Yerday, an Israeli citizen, also claimed that Israel engaged in racism by forcing Ethiopian Jews to convert to rabbinical Judaism.

Ethiopian Judaism contains numerous elements that predate modern rabbinical Judaism and has similarities with Ethiopian Christianity. This caused Israel’s rabbinate to mandate that the Ethiopians convert first.

“Zionism does not only dispossess Palestinians, but it also dispossesses in a very sophisticated way, non-white Jews. Being Jewish is highly identified with being white because of Zionism,” Yerday said. “This early fantasy that was shaped by the visionaries was to be a small Europe in the heart of the barbarian Middle East.”

Ironically, Yerday noted that Ethiopian Jews were able to peacefully demonstrate and protest against what they perceive as injustices against them. Such a display would not be allowed in neighboring Arab countries or in areas ruled by Palestinians.

And she didn’t try to reconcile the “Israel is racist” line with the history of how thousands of black Ethiopians became citizens. In 1984, Israel rescued 16,000 Ethiopian Jews in a secret airlift. That was followed by “Operation Solomon” in 1991, in which 14,000 Ethiopians were flown out in just 36 hours. And the country named an Ethiopian immigrant, Yityish “Titi” Aynaw, as Miss Israel in 2013. Like any other country, there is racism in Israel, she said. But “it’s something that Israel is trying to fix and it’s actually improving,” she said.

Israel’s enemies have tried connecting Zionism with racism for decades in an effort to delegitimize Israel.

During her remarks, Shomali lamented the fact that a 1975 United Nations resolution condemning Zionism as a form of racism was repealed in 1991. Her case for labeling Zionism as a form of racism relies on a cherry picked one-sided history dating back to Israel’s 1948 independence. Zionism developed as a purely secular movement that hijacked Judaism, she said. The two were not intertwined.

“There had to be a link made between secular colonialism, secular Zionism and religious Judaism,” Shomali said. “Members of the Zionist movement went to religious Jews around the world and told them that … God is telling you to come to Palestine. You are the chosen people. This is the promised land. A land without people for a people without a land, knowing full well that Palestine was not a land without people.”

Zionists used the forcible transfer of populations to cleanse Palestine of Arab natives, she said.

The role Arab governments and militias played in creating the so-called Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe, appears nowhere in her analysis. She never mentioned the rejected 1947 U.N. resolution offering the Arabs a state. Nor does she mention that Arabs started the 1947-1948 war in Palestine.

Not only that, the Zionists called on Arab inhabitants of the then proposed state of Israel to remain and work for “peace and progress as sovereign equals” in October 1947. The day after the U.N. partition vote, the Jewish agency called for “fruitful cooperation” with the Arabs. In August 1948, John Bagot Glubb, commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, told the London Daily Mail, “Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.”

JVP’s rabid hatred of Israel comes into even clearer focus Sunday, when it gives the stage to Rasmieh Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group convicted for leading two 1969 bombing attacks in Jerusalem. One of those bombings targeted a grocery store and killed two college students.

This conference and the choice of speakers is just another reminder that Jewish Voice for Peace opposes the Jewish State and its prescriptions will lead to anything but peace.