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Senate defeats effort to derail Trump’s Saudi arms deal

June 13, 2017

Senate defeats effort to derail Trump’s Saudi arms deal, Washington Examiner, Susan Ferrechio, June 13, 2017

A group of Republican and Democrat senators teamed up on Tuesday to block the United States from completing part of a major arms deal with Saudi Arabia, but fell short of the votes they needed on the Senate floor.

Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced a resolution disapproving of President Trump’s plan to sell Saudi Arabia $510 million of precision-guided munitions, which make up a portion of the $110 billion deal Trump announced during his visit there.

The Senate failed to advance the resolution in a 47-53 vote, although supporters of the measure picked up new support since they last tried to block a similar deal last year. Last September, the Senate voted 26-71 to defeat similar language that opposed a $1.15 billion deal Saudi Arabia reached with the Obama administration.

This time around, however, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Paul and Murphy to vote for the measure, along with many other Democrats.

Tuesday’s vote followed a string of floor speeches from lawmakers criticizing Saudi Arabia over a broad range of human rights issues, in particular the nation’s treatment of Yemen, where a humanitarian crisis is raging and where its weapons are likely to be aimed.

Paul displayed a large poster depicting a starving Yemeni child while he called on fellow lawmakers to back his resolution.

“We will force this vote for these children in Yemen because we have a chance today to stop the carnage,” Paul said. “We have a chance to tell Saudi Arabia, we’ve had enough.”

Paul also cited evidence of Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and called it “the number one exporter of jihadist philosophy the number one exporter of ‘let’s hate America.”’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was among the few supporting the sale publicly on the floor. He argued the United States should provide weapons support to the Saudis because they are a key U.S. ally and are fighting against Iranian expansion.

“It is absolutely essential that the Saudi air force get these weapons to win the fight against the aggressive nature of Iran and Yemen and other places,” Graham said.

Graham chastised Democrats who supported the resolution, and noted that many of them backed a different arms deal when it was proposed in September by Obama.

“What’s changed between Sept. 21 and today?” Graham asked in his floor speech. “Nothing other than the election of Donald Trump. Everything Trump you seem to be against. That is disappointing and frankly despicable.”

Murphy denied the motives were political and said the weapons deal proposed by Obama was different.

Murphy said there is evidence that the Saudis have been targeting water treatment facilities in their bombing campaign of Yemen. He said the attacks on Yemen are “not going well” and are also “hurting the United States,” which is being blamed for the bombing campaign.

Murphy said the Senate should hold off on the sale, “until we get clear assurances from the Saudis that they are going to use the weapons only for military purposes,” and will begin to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

Categories: Saudi Arabia arms deal, U.S. Senate
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DHS Shuts Down Anti-Deportation Office

June 13, 2017

DHS Shuts Down Anti-Deportation Office, Breitbart, Neil Munri, June 13, 2017

Analysts estimate that roughly 11 million illegal aliens are living in the United States. Roughly 8 million of the illegals hold jobs, which adds up to one job for each of the four million young Americans who turn 18 each year.

The illegals’ inclusion in the nation’s labor pool makes it harder for young Americans to get well-paid jobs, and annually transfers roughly $500 billion from employees to employers, according to George Borjas, a Harvard professor.

In addition, illegal immigrants inflict a huge number of crimes on Americans.  For example, almost one-quarter of a million aliens were registered at Texas jails from June 2011 to May 2017. Their convictions included 496 murders, 26,000 assaults, 8,400 burglaries, 246 kidnappings and 2,900 sexual assaults.

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President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has deep-sixed an Obama-era program to have 21 taxpayer-funded agency officials cooperate with anti-deportation, pro-amnesty groups.

“The [21 officials’] job was to go meet politicians, Congress people, advocate groups, and local law enforcement,” complained Sarah Saldaña, a top DHS official from 2014 to early 2017.  “Let them see you as a person, as opposed to big, bad ICE,” said Saldana, who created the cooperation program when she ran DHS’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division from 2014 to 2017.

Trump’s DHS executives “really are taking away the [21 officials’] ability to go out in the community and do what it is that we were hoping they would get done,” Saldaña told Foreign Policy magazine. The “we” in her comment refers to the Democratic Party, which replaced by the pro-American Trump administration on January 20.

The 21 employees assigned to the program have now been assigned to Trump’s new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, which helps Americans recover from the huge number of crimes inflicted by the illegal aliens who were allowed into the country during President Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure.

VOICE is just a “report your local illegal” program, Saldana responded. “From what I understand is being reported, it’s: ‘Oh, I see my next-door neighbor’s landscaper. He looks Mexican. I want to report him. Maybe someone ought to pick him up,’” said Saldana, who told a Capitol Hill panel in 2015 that ICE’s job was “public safety,” not actual enforcement of the nation’s popular immigration laws.

According to Foreign Policy:

Saldaña maintains that before Trump’s election ICE was poised to greatly expand the outreach program and “remove the curtain” from immigration enforcement activities. Community relations officers were being trained to assuage fear in immigrant communities with facts about the agency’s priorities and activities.

Since 2014, ICE’s focus has changed [from deporting illegals] to deporting violent criminals, gang members, and recent arrivals. Saldaña said this policy opened the door to building trust with a variety of community groups, encouraging them to report serious criminal activity …

“I was trying to go out to the communities and explain: ‘We are interested in criminals, not in the family of four who has been here 40 years and has not broken any other laws,’” Saldaña said.

Under Obama, federal officials slashed efforts to repatriate illegals and even foreign criminals.

DHS Secretary John Kelly directed the new policy change in a February 25, 2017 memo, where he said:

 I direct the Director of ICE to immediately reallocate any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens (except as necessary to comply with a judicial order) to the new VOICE Office, and to immediately terminate the provision of such outreach or advocacy services to illegal aliens.

Analysts estimate that roughly 11 million illegal aliens are living in the United States. Roughly 8 million of the illegals hold jobs, which adds up to one job for each of the four million young Americans who turn 18 each year.

The illegals’ inclusion in the nation’s labor pool makes it harder for young Americans to get well-paid jobs, and annually transfers roughly $500 billion from employees to employers, according to George Borjas, a Harvard professor.

In addition, illegal immigrants inflict a huge number of crimes on Americans.  For example, almost one-quarter of a million aliens were registered at Texas jails from June 2011 to May 2017. Their convictions included 496 murders, 26,000 assaults, 8,400 burglaries, 246 kidnappings and 2,900 sexual assaults.

Categories: Department of Homeland Security, Economy, Employment, Illegal alliens, Law enforcement, Trump and illegal immigration
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Congressional Hearings and Witch-Hunts

June 13, 2017

Congressional Hearings and Witch-Hunts, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, June 13, 2017

America’s longest running soap opera is not General Hospital. It’s the Congressional Hearing, usually a venue for pontificating, show-boating, histrionics, preening for the cameras, insulting political enemies, and accomplishing little of value. Meanwhile the real work of the Republic either gets neglected or proceeds in silence at a glacial pace.

James Comey was the star of last week’s latest episode of the eternal DC soap. The one-time FBI director stayed true to his character, preening morally, striking Boy Scout poses, indulging faux-folksy interjections like “Lordy,” pretending to be sober and judicious, but all the while revealing the instincts of a bureaucratic cartel sicaria. He was obviously thirsting for revenge against the hated DC outsider and “liar” who unceremoniously fired him, so much so that he admitted to cowardice on multiple occasions, from failing to immediately confront Trump over his supposed sinister “direction” (Comey’s translation of Trump’s “hope”) that Mike Flynn get let off the hook; to his groveling obedience to AG Loretta Lynch’s politicized, justice-obstructing order to call the investigation into Hillary Clinton a “matter.” He displayed a brazen arrogance in admitting to leaking a memo, written in his professional capacity, to the New York Times through a cut-out, perhaps one of numerous other leaks emanating from this self-proclaimed pillar of professional rectitude even before he was fired.

So we got a few more details about a man we already knew was a publicity hound and power -hungry operator. But that portrait was painted back in July of last year, when Comey publicly laid out the predicates for an indictment of Hillary Clinton, then usurped the authority of the AG to let Hillary (and Loretta “Tarmac” Lynch) off the hook based on a legally irrelevant consideration of “intent.” The only thing interesting last week was watching how far Comey would debase himself to square the many duplicitous circles he had spun over the last few years.

Great fun for political junkies, but what useful purpose will be served by that spectacle? The media are happy, since they get free programming and more chum for their talking heads. They’re celebrating the 19 million viewers who supposedly tuned in, though that sum represents a little more than 10% of registered voters. Normal citizens were working their jobs and tending to their lives. From their perspective, the drama inside the Beltway cocoon is bureaucratic white noise. If they think about it at all, it’s to wonder whether the guilty leakers will be hunted down and punished, or just be “investigated” for months and months and then, like Hillary, given a pass. And Hillary is just one of numerous miscreants that need exposing and punishing for their corruption of the public trust in order to serve their political preferences or careerist ambitions.

Don’t hold your breath. More likely we’ll see a repeat of the 2003 Valery Plame inquisition, that ginned-up crisis about the illegal “exposure” of an alleged “covert” CIA agent. By the time it was all finished, Comey’s buddy Patrick Fitzgerald who, despite knowing the true identity of the leaker, like some low-rent Javert for three years hounded White House staffers until Lewis “Scooter” Libby was questionably convicted of four crimes. So fat chance the biggest offender of all, Hillary Clinton, will ever answer for putting national security at risk and treating the State Department like an ATM. Some small-fry staffers might get caught in the net, but the whales will just swim right through.

What’s really maddening, though, is that we’re into the second year of Trump’s critics still being infuriated by his style, even as they ignore or downplay the much grosser offenses of numerous Democrats. Much of the whole “Russia collusion” fantasy has been generated by Trump’s refusal to abide by the media and establishment-created protocols presidents are supposed to follow. Republican Trump critics are just as bad, still not figuring out that their fealty to exalted “protocols” and good taste are just what energized ordinary citizens, those folks grown sick of bipartisan elites who seemed to have more in common with each other than with the people they’re supposed to represent.

So, for example, we hear once again from the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan––who seems bent on spending the rest of her career playing Margaret Dumont to Trump’s Groucho Marx––whining about Trump’s asking Comey for “loyalty.” “Presidents don’t lean on FBI chiefs in this way,” Noonan sniffed. “It is at odds with traditional boundaries, understandings and protocols.” Really? Sez who? LBJ probably applied worse pressure than that before lunch every day. And few presidents “leaned on” J. Edgar Hoover only because the G-man had some pretty thick files on them.

As for “traditional boundaries, understandings and protocols,” where do they come from? Andrew Jackson? Political decorum and comity are good things, but in democratic politics they usually serve as gate-keepers separating the elites from their clients. They also are camouflage for disguising collusion or incompetence or inaction. They’re just the air-freshener for the political sausage factory. What matters is getting the sausage made.

But the only rule-book that matters is the Constitution. And it says a president can fire any executive employee, including the head of the FBI, any way he wants and for any reason he sees fit. The FBI is a federal agency, not a separate arm of the government, answerable to the Chief Executive, who, unlike Comey or Lynch, is directly answerable to the sovereign people. If they’re unhappy with the president’s tweets or brashness or actions, they’ll let him and his party know at the ballot box.

And that’s what’s objectionable about these opera-buffa “hearings.” The media and politicians are obsessing over superficial issues of presidential style, progressive fake news, and he-said-he-said squabbles, while the real work that needs to get done is being neglected. And Obama left behind some huge messes that Trump promised to clean up. We don’t need “hearings” about Russian interference in the election. That’s a dog-bites-man story. Just shoot the dog by increasing cyber-security, and stop talking about it. We don’t need hearings about alleged “Russian collusion” with the Trump campaign. Just shut up, investigate, and if necessary charge, prosecute, and convict the guilty. Ditto with the federal agencies leaking like a colander, the only substantive story in the Trump-and-Comey puppet show.

All of us need to get focused and hold the politicians’ feet to the fire and to make them deliver the changes necessary for restoring economic growth, reforming our broken health-care system, and straightening out our Kafkaesque tax code. These are hard problems with harder solutions, but they won’t get fixed if Congress is off mugging for television cameras or taking the whole month of August off.

Many Congressmen assure us that they are hard at work below the media’s radar. I hope that’s true, because if the Republicans and Trump fail to deliver on his promises with substantial change, we might see in our country a reprise of what just happened in England’s snap election, where a hard-left buffoon perhaps fatally wounded the Tories’ government. Trump promised to win so much the people will get sick of winning. He’d better make it happen, or else the people who put him in office will get sick of him. And our own country has plenty of hard-left buffoons itching to take his place.

Categories: Comey and Trump, Comey memos, Comey testifies, Comeygate, Congressional hearings, Democrat agenda, Democrats and Trump, FBI, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Media and Trump, Never Trumpers, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution
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What are Venezuela’s huge protests really about?

June 13, 2017

What are Venezuela’s huge protests really about? American Thinker, Javier Caceres, June 13, 2017

CARACAS — With 65 dead in the last 60 days of marching in the streets, it’s worth looking at what these protests are really about: a constitutional crisis that strikes at the heart of rule of law in Venezuela. This is more important than the food shortages, the dissident harassment, the crime and corruption or any of the other factors that also fuel the protests. Basically, freedom itself is at stake.

Venezuela’s constitution, which is the basis of its rule of law, is under fire as never before.

To take one example, Venezuela’s attorney general declared a Constitutional Court sentence unconstitutional, and thus ruptured the country’s long constitutional tradition. After that usurpation of power, the constitution was effectively rewritten on President Nicolas Maduro’s intervention, putting an end to the separation of powers that has always been integral to rule of law in Venezuela.

For that alone, Venezuelans are protesting, and Maduro finds himself rejected by 80% of Venezuelans according to polls.

But the constitutional crisis has more than one dimension. Despite the judicial meddling described above, Maduro also proposed drafting an entirely new constitution even though a simple reading of three of the articles of the present one do not let him do it unauthorized. But, Venezuela’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court confirmed he can do it on the grounds that “he is the people.”

It shows that Venezuela’s constitutional crisis has come a long way from its orgins as an apparently normal document. How did it come to this?

It happened when the late President Hugo Chávez in 1999 first asked Venezuelans if they wanted a new constitution and held a referendum about it. In that vote, the people said ‘yes’ and after it was drafted there was an Approval Referendum. Because the people said ‘yes’ again, that is how the current constitution came to be.  Then in 2007, when Chávez submitted changes to the 1999 Constitution, in another approval referendum, the people said ‘no’ to his proposal. Whatever its merits, it worked tolerably well institutionally.

There are three constitutional articles at stake in this current crisis:  Article 5 that says the power belongs to the people by their votes and it’s not transferable.   Article 348 says the president has the initiative to ask people if they want a new constitution accompanied by basic considerations such as how many people are going to be elected to the Constitutional Assembly, or the time they are going to be deliberating among other matters.  Then a third article, number 347, says the people are the ones who decide if they want a new constitution. Only after people say ‘yes’ to a Consultation Referendum, can the process continue.

The president changed all of these norms when he said he did not need to ask people if they wanted a new constitution. After the Electoral Board’s silence, the seven Magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, the judges who interpret the constitution, sided with the president, ruling that the president represents the people so there is no need to ask.  After this decision, the attorney general asked the magistrates to clarify and explain how they interpret the constitution so as to transfer the power of the people’s voting rights to decide to draft a new constitution to the president. There is little chance the magistrates are going to respond because they are not obligated.

The two constitutional breaches described are so ridiculous that even fifth-grade elementary textbooks, which currently say that to have a new constitution there must be two referenda, one to ask the people if they want a new one and another to get their approval with the draft, will need to be rewritten.

Maduro’s route was to go directly to the Electoral Board, which is in theory an independent branch although it has significant ties to the government, asking them to go ahead with his proposal.  The board said ‘yes, Mr. President let’s do it,’ failing to use their criteria and powers to block the president’s wish because he wasn’t asking the people first, just as any fifth grader would have been taught.

Making things worse, Maduro said that after he got the changes he wanted, there would be a Consultation Referendum instead of an Approval Referendum, the difference being that the first is not binding in case people say ‘no.’

People are not dumb. They know Maduro is backed by a bought-and-paid-for military directed by Cubans and another army of seven magistrates of whom nobody knows how they got their law diplomas, their masters’ degrees, and their doctorates.

This is why at least 50% of the 80% of the people that are against Maduro have gone out at least one day during the last two months to protest in the streets and many have gone out much more. What’s at stake now is the last chance to keep Venezuelans’ freedom and not be another Cuba or communist-style country. Venezuela’s protestors don’t want a country whose contitutions can be manipulated and changed at will, and where the only solid reality is that the country’s rulers are chosen by Cubanized party elite inside the government. That is a privilege that belongs to the people alone, and by their marching, the Venezuelans are showing that they know it.

Javier Caceres is the editor of notiven.com, a leading opposition Internet site located in Caracas, Venezuela.

Categories: Maduro, Rule of Law, Venezuelan constitution, Venezuelan dictatorship, Venezuelan Supreme Court
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To bigotry no sanction

June 13, 2017

To bigotry no sanction, Israel National News, Larry Domnitch, June 13, 2017

Linda Sarsour’s agenda is the abolition of the rights of others. She opposes the very existence of Israel. Among her statements and tweets, she has praised a terrorist who was involved in the murder of two college students, made the baseless claim that Muslim kids are being executed in the United States. Her statement that Zionists can’t be feminists obviously reflects the height of arrogance as she is a latecomer in a movement which had the participation of many Zionists for decades.

It would be a pleasant surprise if those Jewish leaders who defended Sarsour would feel so compelled to defend Israel when its reputation is so often defamed. Also, to all the Jews who rushed to her defense, a word to the wise: People like Sarsour may smile and express appreciation for your gestures, but are simply showing that they know how to play you. 

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The words of George Washington in a letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, resonate today as much as they did in August 1790. A small congregation of refugees and the sons of refugees who had escaped inquisitional rule in lands under Spanish and Portuguese rule, Washington assured them in these immortal words that the United States will assure freedom for all as it: “Gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.Just months later, the Bill of Rights, whose first amendment granted freedom of speech, was ratified .

Just months later, the Bill of Rights, whose first amendment granted freedom of speech, was ratified .

They are, however, very different statements.

Not giving sanction to bigotry means that while bigots have the right to openly spew their views as protected by the first amendment, they should never be given prominence or legitimacy. It is a moral imperative to refrain from giving bigots a podium, since doing so validates their hateful message.

For example, after a long legal battle, the American Nazi Party was permitted to march in Chicago in 1978 under the (questionable) pretext of free speech, but the city should never allow them to lead a memorial day Parade. Doing so would be akin to sanctioning their hateful ideology.

Sadly in American history, there were eras when the hate of the Ku Klux Klan was given significance in disregard of the admonitions of the first president. The damage they inflicted upon rights of others, the terror they sent into the hearts of fellow Americans is infamous in the annals of American history.

Linda Sarsour’s agenda is the abolition of the rights of others. She opposes the very existence of Israel. Among her statements and tweets, she has praised a terrorist who was involved in the murder of two college students, made the baseless claim that Muslim kids are being executed in the United States. Her statement that Zionists can’t be feminists obviously reflects the height of arrogance as she is a latecomer in a movement which had the participation of many Zionists for decades.

The real question: How can any adherent to Sharia law, which demands the submissiveness of women, be a feminist?

And there should never have been a forum for her as the keynote speaker at any graduation ceremony.

What is abhorrent, however, is not just the perception that she is merely exercising her rights of free speech, but the acceptance – and even support – by so many, of her invective.

CUNY President James B Milliken stated that he stood by the school’s decision to have Sarsour as the keynote speaker at the graduation for the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. He offered the familiar argument that it’s a matter of free speech!

Several professors at CUNY who penned a letter defending Sansour wrote that she represented “new activism of young people, women, immigrants, and others speaking out against discrimination and intolerance.”

They are clearly expressing support for the keynote speaker. A letter from Jewish leaders representing leftwing congregations and organizations in defense of Sarsour, stated that they “do not offer our stamp of approval to every tweet or message she has ever posted.” Indeed, they might not completely approve of her views but they are sufficiently acceptable to come to her defense.

It would be a pleasant surprise if those Jewish leaders who defended Sarsour would feel so compelled to defend Israel when its reputation is so often defamed. Also, to all the Jews who rushed to her defense, a word to the wise: People like Sarsour may smile and express appreciation for your gestures, but are simply showing that they know how to play you.

Then there is the silence: The Jewish organizations that have not spoken out against Sarsour, will only encourage more bigotry.

The local politicians of New York with a few exceptions have also failed to address the matter. But it is more than silence, there are politicians in New York who have supported Sarsour.

The events in New York City this spring should put up a warning flag to those who prize the values of freedom and mutual respect. Freedom is not a given. It must be safeguarded by people of good will who can discern between right and wrong without the numbing influence of political correctness.

If manipulation and enmity is given a pass by the silence of the majority, then the freedoms which the American forefathers endeavored to safeguard might someday be in jeopardy.

Categories: Anti-Zionism in America, Antisemitism in America, Jewish left, Linda Sarsour
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Crossing the line to flirt with an assassination fantasy

June 13, 2017

Crossing the line to flirt with an assassination fantasy, Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, June 12, 2017

(Here’s a video of the assassination scene:

If a similar production featuring the assassination of President Obama had been presented, what would have been the reaction? — DM)

Julius Caesar

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The liberals and the left have been flirting with the fantasy of an assassination of Donald Trump since the early hours of last Nov. 9. If all the rants and diatribes, which make up the conversation where snowflakes, “intellectuals” and the morally elite gather to chat and chew, can’t accomplish the elimination of the president by peaceable means, then why not by “any means necessary?”

Such fantasies are all over the internet, dismissed as the raves of the ignorant, the crazy and the foolish, but beginning to seep into respectable conversation, so called. The idea of terminating the president with extreme prejudice is the stuff of theatrics now, as in comedienne Kathie Griffin’s severed bloody head of the president. That was widely and roundly denounced, eloquently by Chelsea Clinton, once a first daughter with knowledge of what it’s like to deal with threats to the family. She rightly remarked that jokes about assassinating a president, any president, “are not funny.”

But that’s only the first public joke about killing this president. The second time, as this week in a presentation of the killing of a not-at-all disguised Donald Trump cast as Julius Caesar in a play in New York City’s Central Park, the “joke” was treated respectfully with all the caveats accorded by the educated and the respectable: “It’s art, don’t you know?” So shut up and applaud.

When Delta Air Lines and the Bank of America (both based in the South) withdrew their sponsorship of the play, part of Manhattan’s “Shakespeare in the Park,” The New York Times made a point of quickly endorsing the play as worthy of its continued corporate sponsorship, good citizenship be damned. Art must be served, whether art in behalf of mocking those clinging to guns and religion or art as a fantasy of killing a sitting president loathed by “people like us.”

A spokesman for Delta, which has sponsored Shakespeare in the park for four years, said that “no matter what your political stance may be, the graphic image of ‘Julius Caesar’ at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park, does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values. Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste.”

Bank of America, a spokesman told Deadline magazine, “supports arts programs worldwide, including an 11-year partnership with the Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater chose to present ‘Julius Caesar’ in a way that was intended to provoke and offend. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production.”

Whether the director, Oskar Eustis, intended to stir up the mob or not, even someone of the artsy-craftsy persuasion should know that in the present atmosphere, not just in Gotham but everywhere else, fruitcakes and even more or less respectable “activists” need no encouragement to do great and fatal harm to America’s institutions.

In their fury to assuage their anger and feed righteous hysteria, many liberals and “progressives” cannot restrain their rage that Donald Trump, crude and all-around lout, has through lawful and constitutional means become the leader of the government. A fruitcake with a gun, bomb or long-bladed scimitar rightly imagines that these millions of Never-Trumpers would applaud whatever dirty deed fulfills their dreams and fantasies.

Eustis’ updating of Shakespeare’s play allows nothing subtle to get in the way of making his point. Julius Caesar is depicted as a petulant, blond tyrant in a blue suit, bathing in a gold bathtub, with a pouty Slavic wife standing by with wifely promise.

The drama critic of The New York Times observes that the play adds “immeasurably to the feeling that the story is not unspooling in some dim past but in Central Park tonight. In that sense this ‘Julius Caesar’ is a deeply democratic offering befitting … the public, and the times. If in achieving that goal it flirts a little with the violent impulses it otherwise hopes to contain, and risks arousing pro-Trump backlash, that’s unfortunate but forgivable. [The director] seems to have taken Cassius’s admonition to Brutus when Brutus is still on the fence about taking action. ‘Think of the world,’ he begs.”

But this is only a play, and the arteests and other retailers of Trump hatred insist that art is only art, and it’s up to the audience to keep art and reality straight. At least when it’s art in behalf of a righteous cause.

What could be more righteous to the millions suffering Trump Derangement Disease than someone eliminating the president? Like all of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the critic of The New York Times observes, “Julius Caesar” begins “with astonishing rhetoric and ends as an abattoir.”

Categories: Assassination of Trump as Julius Caesar, Media and Trump
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Terrorist attack in Tehran: Don’t be fooled

June 13, 2017

Terrorist attack in Tehran: Don’t be fooled, American Thinker, Hamid Bahrami, June 13, 2017

After the failure of the IRGC’s favorite candidate in the recent presidential election in Iran, the entire theocracy is at an impasse, fearing upcoming uprisings and anti-regime protests by the Iranian people.  Therefore, the IRGC, “the protector of the Islamic revolution and the theocratic system,” needs to create a security atmosphere to suppress popular protests in order to crush the domestic dissent and manage the internal feuding among different factions of the regime.

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Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the Iranian regime’s parliament and the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, in Tehran on Wednesday morning, June 7.  The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Despite ISIS claiming responsibility for the attacks, when the dust settles, they serve the interests of the theocratic regime.  

Several questions remain unanswered in the aftermath of the attacks, which the Iranian regime must answer.  For example, how could the attackers just walk into the parliament protected by the IRGC and plainclothes agents, when even journalists and visitors are not allowed to bring a pen or mobile phone?  Why does the suicide bomber attacking the mausoleum detonate the suicide vest in an empty park?

The Iranian regime needs to pretend to be a victim of terrorism.

Considering the fact that the U.S. has increased pressure on the theocratic regime through a looming designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, the regime in Tehran needs to deceive the international community – e.g., by diverting attention from Tehran’s own terrorist activities in the region.

Senior regime officials and IRGC commanders are already citing the attacks to increase Tehran’s malign and destabilizing intervention in the Middle East by dispatching more forces to Syria and Iraq.

It is worth pointing out that on the same day that the attacks happened, the U.S. Senate had planned to vote for new sanctions over the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile program, human rights record, and funding of terrorist organizations involved in the Middle East.  Not surprisingly, the proponents of appeasing the regime in Tehran and its lobbyists in the U.S. pointed to the attacks and demanded that the senators abandon the debate and cancel the vote that would put more pressure on Tehran to alter Iran’s unacceptable behavior at home and abroad.  However, the senators saw through this deceptive claim and voted 72 to 7 to move forward on the sanctions bill.

President Trump in a tweet rightly distinguished between the Iranian people and their theocratic oppressors, highlighting that the regime is the main sponsor of terrorism and that the real victims of these attacks are the innocent people of Iran.

The Iranian regime was furious and tried to deflect this reality by blaming the U.S. and its Gulf ally Saudi Arabia for the ISIS attacks.  It is interesting to note that immediately after the attacks, one of the Iranian regime’s staunchest lobby organizations in the U.S., officially known as the NIAC, begun to justify this line.  “And you’ll have a context that makes it possible for IRGC to seemingly connect Trump to Saudi, and Saudi to the #Tehran terror attack,” Trita Parsi, NIAC president, said on Twitter.

After the failure of the IRGC’s favorite candidate in the recent presidential election in Iran, the entire theocracy is at an impasse, fearing upcoming uprisings and anti-regime protests by the Iranian people.  Therefore, the IRGC, “the protector of the Islamic revolution and the theocratic system,” needs to create a security atmosphere to suppress popular protests in order to crush the domestic dissent and manage the internal feuding among different factions of the regime.

The ISIS attacks provide a timely pretext to do just that, especially at a time that has seen growing popular protests in various Iranian cities, in particular in front of the parliament in Tehran, against poor living conditions, the abysmal economic situation, and bankruptcy of Caspian, an IRGC-affiliated credit and financial institution that saw hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians losing their life savings.  Now the Intelligence Ministry has banned any protests or gatherings in front of the parliament, citing the attacks.

It is a known fact that during the civil war in Syria, only the Iranian regime has profited from ISIS’s existence.  Similarly, it is now a result of the claimed ISIS attacks in Tehran to intensify domestic repression and step up malign intervention in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, the Iranian people are as usual the real victims of the theocracy’s Machiavellian policy.  The West should not fall for this deception and allow the regime to depict itself as a victim of terrorism.  In the aftermath of the attacks, the international community must stand with the Iranian people and not their theocratic oppressors by supporting the former’s democratic aspirations and holding the regime accountable for its support for terrorism.

Freelance journalist Hamid Bahrami is a former political prisoner in Iran.  He is a human rights and political activist.

Categories: Terrorist attack in Iran
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ISIS Burns 19 Yazidi Girls to Death in Cages for Refusing Sex Slavery

June 13, 2017

ISIS Burns 19 Yazidi Girls to Death in Cages for Refusing Sex Slavery, Front Page Magazine,  Joseph Klein, June 13, 2017

(But as any fool knows, The Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. — DM)

Don’t count on an American feminist march.

ISIS is Sharia-compliant in the most literal sense. Its fighters are following the example of Muhammad himself, the warrior prophet of Islam who captured slaves in battle and had sex with them. As the prophet was entitled to take advantage of such fruits of battle according to the Koran, so ISIS believes its fighters are entitled as well. Thus, these savages thought nothing of burning 19 Yazidi girls to death in iron cages after the girls had the temerity to resist having sex with their captors. This atrocity was said by local activists to have taken place recently in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which has currently become a battlefield between ISIS fighters and anti-ISIS coalition forces. An eyewitness reported that the burnings took place in front of hundreds of people.

“O Prophet!” the Koran (33:50) instructs Muhammad, in the “words” of Allah, “Verily, We have made lawful to you your wives, to whom you have paid their Mahr (bridal money given by the husband to his wife at the time of marriage), and those whom your right hand possesses – whom Allah has given to you.” The latter bounty from Allah refers to the females taken captive in battle and enslaved.

In an article entitled “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape,” the New York Times reported on the religious sources ISIS fighters have used to justify their rapes of their female slaves. They believe that having sex with their infidel slaves, including with young girls, actually brings them closer to Allah. Indeed, they would pray before and after they raped their victims.

Islamist apologists and so-called “scholars” have sought to refute any interpretation of the Koran that could possibly lend support today for slavery and sexual exploitation of female captives. However, Prophet Muhammad’s own actions and words, which are called “Sunnah” and are part of Sharia law along with the Koran itself, belie such revisionist readings.

Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, is cited in the New York Times article for offering his counterpoint to the revisionists. He appears to believe that ISIS is simply scraping away all the layers of modernist interpretations to return to Islam in its purest original form: “There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery. You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance. ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did.”

While not manifesting itself yet in the United States in overt support of sexual enslavement of women, Sharia law is creeping into the United States.  Islamic prayers are being held in some public schools, in clear violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause that has been used to bar Judeo-Christian prayers in the public schools. And in a shocking preview of what may lie ahead for the influence of Sharia law in U.S. courts, a trial court judge in New Jersey refused to issue a restraining order against a Muslim husband who allegedly raped his wife. The trial judge accepted the plaintiff’s claim that the defendant had engaged in sexual relations with the plaintiff against her expressed wishes. However, the judge concluded that the husband lacked criminal intent in this case because “he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.” Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed in the case on appeal and the plaintiff was ultimately granted a restraining order, while the defendant husband was convicted of rape. However, the fact that a judge in the United States could for one moment even consider, let alone rule, that a defendant should be exempted from the operation of a statute intended to protect women against sexual abuse because of his Muslim beliefs is disturbing, to say the least. The tendency of some judges, including some Supreme Court justices, to look at foreign law for guidance in rendering their decisions adds to the concern.

Too many self-proclaimed feminists in the United States have failed to express outrage at the oppression of women that is sanctioned under Sharia law. Instead, they have embraced an ardent defender of Sharia law, Linda Sarsour, who was chosen to serve as a national co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington last January protesting President Trump. She tweeted several years ago that “shariah law is reasonable and once u read into the details it makes a lot of sense. People just know the basics.” As someone wisely asked rhetorically, in reminding Sarsour of her Sharia tweet the day after the Women’s March on Washington, “basics like mutilating people…beating wives… killing apostates…killing rape victims…did i miss anything?”

The Yazidi sex slaves have learned the grisly details of Sharia law in operation the hard way. They have suffered the most barbaric forms of sexual violence at the hands of their masters, who have credibly argued that they are simply following in the footsteps of Prophet Mohammad and complying with Sharia law in its purest, most literal form.

Categories: Islam and females, Islamic State, Mohammad and females, Sharia law and females
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White House: Middle East Crisis Sparked By Trump’s Demand to End Support for Extremists Groups

June 13, 2017

White House: Middle East Crisis Sparked By Trump’s Demand to End Support for Extremists Groups, Washington Free Beacon, , June 13, 2017

(Please see also, Military crisis in Qatar may spark Gaza outbreak — DM)

US President Donald Trump (R) and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani take part in a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Riyadh on May 21, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

A percolating crisis in the Middle East over a top U.S. military ally’s support for extremist terror groups was ignited by President Donald Trump’s demand that U.S. allies in the Arab world end their support for Islamic extremism, according to senior U.S. officials familiar with the situation.

Trump is seeking a more active role in mediating a growing dispute between leading Arab nations and Qatar, a U.S. counterterrorism ally that has long provided financial support to the very terror groups it has vowed to fight.

Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East—where he publicly and privately urged top Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia to crackdown on Islamic extremism—is said to have sparked a regional dispute with Qatar, thrusting the country’s issues with terrorism financing into the spotlight, sources told the Washington Free Beacon.

U.S. officials, both inside and outside the White House, have long avoided the thorny issue of Qatar’s support for terrorism in an effort to preserve military relations with the country, which hosts a major U.S. air base that is a central front in the war against terror.

Trump’s focus on Qatar is said to be part of a larger regional strategy that focuses on strangling financial support for terror organizations that long benefited from Arab governments turning a blind eye to the issue.

Trump’s push to crackdown on this type of behavior—not just in Qatar—is said to have fueled the diplomatic break with Qatar earlier this month, which saw several leading Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia ceasing all diplomatic ties with the energy-rich nation.

U.S. officials and administration insiders who spoke with the Free Beacon about the situation said that Trump is seeking to play an active role in helping to mediate the crisis and shutdown Qatar’s financing of terror groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS.

“Look, last month President Trump visited Riyadh and gave a historic speech challenging America’s Arab friends and partners to do more to combat the violent radicalization that is growing within Islam,” one senior administration official told the Free Beacon.

“And the fact of the matter is that even though Qatar has been an important partner in some areas, they’ve also been a significant source of terrorist financing,” said the official, who would only speak on background when discussing the sensitive diplomatic issue. “What you’re seeing now is a regional response to the president’s challenge, and Qatar is going to have to respond as well.”

Trump’s stance against Islamic extremism and willingness to call out state backers of the movement has forced U.S. officials, particularly those in the Department of Defense, to address an issue that has been downplayed in pursuit of preserving diplomatic relations with Qatar and other Arab nations, sources said.

The hope is this will result in concrete change, which has been elusive in recent years as nations such as Qatar play both sides of the terror issue.

“American policy in the Gulf has been a bipartisan failure for over a decade. For different reasons, both parties found reasons to ignore terror financing coming out of the Gulf,” said one veteran foreign policy official who has been briefed by White House officials on Trump’s Gulf region strategy.

“Even when Obama officials did talk about terror financing, they used it as an excuse to pressure the Saudis and others to cut off legitimate anti-Assad forces,” the source said. “President Trump has been clear to our allies and adversaries that the incoherence has to end. He called on the Arab world to clean house, and what you’re seeing is the beginning of that.”

Trump discussed the issue in Monday remarks at a White House cabinet meeting, where he emphasized that terror-financing issues have became a central focus for the United States.

“One of the big things we did, and your seeing it now with Qatar and all of the things that are actually going on in a very positive fashion, we are stopping the funding of terrorism,” Trump said. “They’re going to stop the funding of terrorism. And it’s not an easy fight, but it’s a fight we’re going to win. You have to starve the beast, and we’re going to starve the beast.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has walked a more diplomatic line of the issue, in a move sources characterized as a “good-cop-bad-cop” ploy.

State Department officials would not comment on Trump’s latest remarks about Qatar, referring a reporter to Tillerson’s public remarks last week.

“Qatar has a history of supporting groups that have spanned the spectrum of political expression, from activism to violence,” Tillerson said. “The emir of Qatar has made progress in halting financial support and expelling terrorist elements from his country, but he must do more and he must do it more quickly.”

Categories: Qatar, Qatar and Israel's enemies, Qatar and terrorism funding, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism, Terrorism funding, Trump and Middle East, Trump and Qatar
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Military crisis in Qatar may spark Gaza outbreak

June 13, 2017

Military crisis in Qatar may spark Gaza outbreak, DEBKAfile, June 13, 2017

A military crisis centering on Qatar would be a catalyst for an outbreak of violence from the Gaza Strip. And indeed, after the failed Sanwar mission to Cairo and the reduction of electric power to the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesmen warned that an “explosion” was imminent.

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The electricity cutback in the Gaza Strip, engineered by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to flex muscle against Hamas rule, was just one piece on the checkerboard created by the crackdown Egypt, Saudi Arabia Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have imposed on Qatar for supporting terrorist groups like the Palestinian extremist Hamas. Therefore, Hamas leader Yahya Sanwar had little to expect from his mission to Cairo last weekend to persuade the El-Sisi government to ease its restrictions on the Gaza Strip.

He arrived at the head of a large mission, in which the group’s military arm, Ezz e-Din El-Qassam was heavily represented. Their appeals to Maj.-Gen Khaled Fawzy, director of Egyptian General Intelligence, met with a list of tough conditions. When the Palestinian delegation balked, Cairo acted to tighten its blockade on the Palestinian enclave.

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip found themselves in the same boat as their old friend, Qatar, in the week that their internal rival, Mahmoud Abba, docked payment for the electricity Israeli supplies the Gaza Strip. The power supply was cut by 40 percent.

From 2015, the emir of Qatar remained the only Arab ruler backing the Palestinian extremist Hamas with occasional cash donations to Gaza City and permission for its top officials to set up shop in Doha.

This flow of aid was abruptly cut off by the land, sea and air blockade Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt clamped down on Qatar last week over its support for terrorist groups and ties with Tehran. Sheikh Tamim bin-Hamad Al-Khalifa defied the ultimatum they presented him, and so Qatar’s banks and international assets have been losing dollars, its currency has plummeted and there is no money to spare for the Gaza Strip.

Qatar and Hamas are being pushed into the same corner.

The small Gulf island, which is the world’s largest supplier of natural gas, was been told by the four leading Arab governments to expel Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas officials from its soil, after years of providing them with hospitality plus pensions generous enough for them to live a life of ease and plenty, while also running their terrorist networks across the region and beyond.

Qatar was also told to discontinue its propaganda campaigns against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and shut down its main platform, the Al Jazeera TV channel; and hundreds of Egyptian and Saudi dissidents granted political asylum deported forthwith.

With nowhere else to go, these dissidents could potentially head for sanctuary in the Gaza Strip, making it a “little Qatar,” which is why Cairo further tightened the Palestinian enclave’s isolation by blocking all routes of access.

The Hamas delegation was likewise confronted in Cairo with tough demands by the Egyptian intelligence chief:

1. To turn in the Muslim Brotherhood fugitives they were sheltering in the Gaza Strip.

2.  Not just to sever cooperation between the Hamas military arm and the Islamic State networks in the Sinai Peninsula, but to surrender to Egypt all the intelligence they possessed about the jihadists and their activities.

3.  To discontinue weapons smuggling operations through Sinai.

After balking at the Egyptian demands, Yahya Sanwar was forced to leave Cairo empty-handed with regard to eased restrictions and humanitarian aid – only to find on his return home that the Egyptians had raised their biggest gun against the Gaza Strip: They had cut off power.

A humanitarian catastrophe now hangs over the two million inhabitants of the tiny Mediterranean enclave. Hospitals are cutting back operations, refrigerators are switched off, clean water supplies are dwindling because desalination plants are without power, raw sewage is dumped into the sea and sanitary conditions deteriorating.

Cairo asked the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Israeli government not to relent, but to keep the pressure on the Hamas regime high. Ramallah must continue to hold back payment to cover Israel’s electricity bills, which suits Mahmoud Abbas’ campaign for bringing Hamas to heel.

But for Israel, there is a dilemma. Nonetheless, the Netanyahu government is extremely wary of breaking away from the anti-terror line taken by Arab governments, because this could put paid to the delicate ties established with them – especially in the military domain – through long and laborious effort.

In Jerusalem, it is therefore ardently hoped that the Qatar crisis is quickly resolved and Hamas and Cairo can reach terms exponentially for easing the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

For the time being, there is no sign of this happening. On the contrary, there are indications of the crisis moving onto a military plane. Sources in the Middle East are not ruling out possible military action by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE against Qatar.

Read more about this looming potential in the coming DEBKA Weekly issue (for subscribers) out next Friday, June 16. 

A military crisis centering on Qatar would be a catalyst for an outbreak of violence from the Gaza Strip. And indeed, after the failed Sanwar mission to Cairo and the reduction of electric power to the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesmen warned that an “explosion” was imminent.

Categories: Arab nations, Gaza, Hamas, Israel and Hamas, Israel and lelectricity for Gaza, PA and Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Qatar and Hamas, Qatar and Iran, Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood
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