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New HHS civil rights division charged with protecting health-care workers with moral objections

January 19, 2018

New HHS civil rights division charged with protecting health-care workers with moral objections, Washington Post, Ariana Eunjung Cha and Juliet Eilperin, January 18, 2018

(It strikes me that there are ample medical service providers who have no moral objections to performing the mentioned procedures, and that those who have such objections should not be compelled to perform them. — DM)

(Video at the link, — DM)

“Governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming, and it begins here and now,” Severino said.

And Montse Alvarado, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm, faulted Obama-era officials for “forcing Americans to choose between their beliefs and their livelihood.”

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A new civil rights division within the Department of Health and Human Services will protect health-care workers who refuse to provide services that run counter to their moral or religious convictions, the Trump administration announced Thursday.

This office will consider complaints from doctors, nurses and others who feel they have been pressured by employers to “perform, accommodate or assist with” procedures that violate their beliefs. If a complaint about coercion or retribution is found to be valid, an entity receiving federal dollars could have that funding revoked.

The administration’s move marks the resurgence of religious liberty advocates within the federal government and represents its latest effort to elevate “conscience protections” within the health care realm. Conservative groups welcomed the action while critics warned it could lead to discrimination on the basis of sex as well as gender identity and sexual orientation.

In announcing the new division, at an event featuring Republican lawmakers and religious leaders, HHS Acting Secretary Eric Hargan noted that many of the nation’s hospitals, clinics and hospices are run by faith-based groups that oppose procedures like abortion and sterilization.

“For too long, too many of these health-care practitioners have been bullied and discriminated against,” he said.

According to the director of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, the division will not only consider complaints that might have previously languished but will also engage in public education and, possibly, policymaking. Training and research activities also will be covered.

Roger Severino said in an interview that OCR has seen a “pretty dramatic uptick” in health-care workers’ complaints related to moral and religious beliefs — from 10 during the entire Obama administration to 34 since Trump’s election. He said a “career senior executive” will be appointed to investigate those types of issues.

“We are trying to signal to the world that we are open for business, and we hope to have an effect,” he said.

Numerous existing laws prohibit institutions with federal funding from compelling health-care workers to perform services with which they object on moral or religious grounds. Some of the existing federal statutes “are quite broad,” Severino said.

On the HHS website Thursday, a Conscience and Religious Freedom section outlined the types of procedures likely to come under intensified federal scrutiny — accompanied by a photo of a female health-care worker in a Muslim headscarf. The description of the division’s mandate cites abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide as examples of the types of procedures covered. But legal experts said the language appears likely to also cover a host of other scenarios, such as treating transgender patients or those seeking to transition to the opposite sex.

It is unclear whether HHS will issue new regulations to clarify its approach to such conflicts, but conservatives said they now have a chance to challenge state reproductive policies as well as other mandates. In June 2016, HHS officials rejected a religious coalition’s complaint against a California requirement that state insurers provide abortion coverage on the grounds that the complainants did not “meet the definition of a ‘health care entity.’”

Louise Melling, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview that the broad grounds for a complaint that HHS laid out, coupled with the administration’s past record on issues such as gender identity protections and contraception coverage, suggest officials will curtail services for certain groups if health-care workers lodge moral objections. Decades-old statutes that refer to sterilization services could potentially be invoked when referring to gender transition therapies, she noted.

“There’s every reason to think that this administration is going to place religious objections over the health and lives and rights of individuals,” Melling said.

Asked if the administration considers gender identity or sexual orientation to be a protected class, Severino said the department was barred from doing so because of a 2016 federal court injunction out of Texas.

The announcement, made one day before abortion opponents’ annual March for Life, builds on two rules HHS issued in October that allowed employers, including for-profit businesses, to claim moral or religious exemption from providing no-cost contraceptive coverage through their health insurance plans.

And it comes as the Supreme Court considers a First Amendment case regarding a Colorado baker who declined to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Speakers at Thursday’s launch event repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for narrowing such exemptions. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), for one, said the previous administration expected health-care workers “to conform” rather than follow their religious beliefs. “What a difference a year makes,” he added.

Severino echoed that theme, saying that “HHS has not always been the best keeper of this liberty.”

“Governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming, and it begins here and now,” Severino said.

And Montse Alvarado, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm, faulted Obama-era officials for “forcing Americans to choose between their beliefs and their livelihood.”

(Video at the link — DM)

Yet medical organizations and women’s and LGBT rights groups expressed concern that the policy will hurt vulnerable populations and create an unequal system of health care. The Obama administration had bolstered civil rights protections in health care, including barring medical providers and insurers from discriminating in services or access to coverage based on gender as well as gender identity.

Kelli Garcia, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said “the wording on the rule creating the office appears to open the door for discrimination against patients because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or a whole host of other reasons.”

Garcia said she worries that cases of denied or delayed care could multiply, describing controversies like one in Michigan in 2015, when a pediatrician refused to see an infant because the parents are lesbians. Catholic Hospitals have been sued for delaying care to women in the midst of miscarriages, putting their health at risk, because there was still a fetal heartbeat.

“The issue is this emboldens people who want to be able to deny this care,” she said.

The National LGBTQ Task Force minced no words in its response to the administration’s action. “We are not fooled: The new office announced this morning is meant to make it easier for people to discriminate, not to protect people of faith,” it said. “Health professionals have a duty to care for all their patients regardless of one’s gender identity, sexual orientation, faith, creed, race, political views, gender, or disability, and no one should be denied care for being who they are.”

Most of the country’s large physician and nursing groups have their own ethics policies regarding conscience objections. The American Medical Association, for example, gives physicians the latitude to act on their moral views to refuse to participate in torture, interrogation or forced treatment. Yet its ethics code also says doctors should not refuse to care for patients based on “race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other criteria that would constitute invidious discrimination.”

 

 

Categories: Freedom of religion, Medical procedures, Medical service providers
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For Real ‘Collusion,’ Look At Obama’s Dirty Dealings With Iran

January 19, 2018


Obama’s scheming with the Mullahs reveals a troubling pattern.

January 19, 2018 Ari Lieberman Front Page Mag

Source: For Real ‘Collusion,’ Look At Obama’s Dirty Dealings With Iran

{A little karma at this point could go a long way. We may see some coming out in the form of FISA. – LS}

  By now it should be readily apparent to all, even those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative is a spent force or as leftist political commentator Van Jones put it, “a big nothingburger.” Nearly a year has passed since the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and not a scintilla of evidence demonstrating collusion has been forthcoming. Moreover, the investigation itself has been plagued by scandal and partisanship placing a cloud of taint over the entire inquiry. Nevertheless, Mueller’s Russia probe will continue to putter along and after wasting millions of taxpayer dollars (as of December 2017, the cost has reportedly reached a staggering $7 million) the former G-Man will get a trickle of indictments and plea bargains on peripheral figures for matters wholly unrelated to the original investigation. Democrats will then pat themselves on the back and Mueller will go back to obscurity.

Democrats and their allies in the establishment media have cleverly succeeded in temporarily deflecting America’s attention away from the real collusion story, one with real substance and far greater ramifications. A persuasive case can be made that former president Barack Obama colluded with a sworn enemy of the United States, the Islamic Republic of Iran. With each passing day, another disquieting facet of the Obama administration’s dealings with the Islamic Republic is revealed and when taken in totality, paints a disturbing picture of the administration’s underhanded efforts to placate and appease the mullahs and their proxies, including Hezbollah.

The Obama administration’s current dealings with Iran began with an outright fabrication to the American people. On August 5, 2015 Obama asserted that negotiations with the Iranians commenced in 2013. Obama argued that the ascent of the “moderate” Hassan Rouhani offered the United States an opportunity to engage with the Iranians. This was in fact, a bald-faced lie. Circumventing the State Department and using Sen. John Kerry (whose Iran connections are a matter of public record) as its point man, the administration began engaging with Iran in 2011 when the toxic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president. For the record, Ahmadinejad is a rabid Holocaust denier. Four years later, Obama sealed his infamous Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, alternatively known as the Iran deal, which gave the Iranians $150 billion worth sanctions relief while simultaneously providing them with a legal pathway toward acquiring nuclear weapons.

The flow of lies and deceit continued from there. The JCPOA was, to put it mildly, a flawed agreement, one in which the benefits flowed one way. Charles Krauthammer aptly described it as the worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history. But there were alarming elements of the agreement, chiefly secretive side arrangements between Iran and the IAEA, which were so patently egregious and absurd that even Obama understood that it would render the agreement a hard sell. Under these side arrangements, Iran’s highly opaque Parchin military facility was off limits to international inspectors undermining Obama’s claim that the agreement provided for anytime, anywhere intrusive inspections. Consequently, Obama tried and failed to keep this information from Congress.

Even more disturbing than the administration’s attempt to obfuscate elements of the Iran deal was the manner in which it illegally weaponized the NSA and other domestic intelligence services to spy on members of Congress and leaders of Jewish groups and then leak their identities. You read that correctly. The Obama administration adopted tactics employed by two-bit, paranoid dictators and exploited loopholes in surveillance laws to keep one step ahead of the opposition. Meetings with Israeli officials opposed to the Iran deal were monitored and the contents of those meetings as well as the identities of those who attended were scandalously leaked to sympathetic journalists, who proceeded to mouth administration talking points. The administration also employed subtle use of anti-Semitic stereotypes implying that those opposed to the Iran deal maintained dual loyalties or were agents for Israel. In a grotesque display of anti-Semitic stereotyping, the New York Times, one of the media outlets shilling for Obama, actually implied that congressional members who voted against the deal were motivated by their Jewish ethnicity or high proportion of Jews residing within their districts. Obama’s talking points, which seemed to mimic Tehran’s, were trickling down to his echo chamber in a well-orchestrated scheme.

Bad deals are one thing and can always be attributed to amateurish negotiating skills (found in abundance in Obama’s negotiating team) but Obama’s dealings with Iran went far beyond ineptitude. In May 2016 it was revealed that Secretary of State John Kerry appealed to European banks to do business with Iran. Kerry instantly transformed himself from secretary of state to Iran lobbyist. Knowing that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps controls much of Iran’s economy, the bank heads wanted no part of what Kerry had to offer and curtly showed him the door.

Another even more startling revelation soon followed. It has long been America’s policy not to pay ransom to tyrants and terrorists in exchange for captive hostages but that policy was shattered when Obama agreed to give the mullahs $400 million in exchange for American hostages held without cause by Iran. A further $1.3 billion was transferred later.

The administration alleged that the money was transferred in settlement of Iranian legal claims stemming from a pre-revolution, aborted arms deal, and had no nexus to the hostages. But that argument is unconvincing. The initial $400 million transfer was initiated contemporaneous with the hostages’ release. Moreover, the transaction was an all-cash deal – untraceable the way the mullahs like it – conducted in the dead of night away from prying eyes, the way the Obama administration liked it. As I previously noted, if it walks like a ransom payment and talks like a ransom payment, it’s likely a ransom payment despite the administration’s contrary protestations. The administration did grudgingly acknowledge that the money could have ended up in the hands of the IRGC. Anyone possessing an ounce of common sense knows that the $1.7 billion almost certainly lined the coffers of the IRGC, and was probably also parsed out to Iranian proxy terror groups like Hezbollah, which receives between $700 million and $1 billion annually from Tehran.

What the administration also failed to note was that the United States maintained an $817 million counterclaim against the Islamic Republic stemming from breaches of Iranian contractual obligations. The United States also maintained subrogated claims against Iran to the tune of $3.9 billion. With the stroke of a pen, Obama relinquished these valid legal claims and allowed Iran to get off scot-free. In addition, as part of the ransom deal, Obama authorized the release of seven convicted Iranian felons and expunged warrants on 14 others. Unlike Iran’s American detainees, these individuals actually committed crimes and were afforded due process.

Obama promised the American people that the JCPOA’s had strict mechanisms for enforcement and that these would ensure Iranian compliance but that too was untrue. Twice since the signing of the JCPOA, Iran exceeded its prescribed 130 metric ton limit for heavy water, which is used as a moderator in reactors fueled by natural uranium, and is critical for the production of plutonium. But incredibly, instead of punishing the Iranians for their transgressions, the Obama administration rewarded the mullahs by issuing its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia. According to experts, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production of at least 10 nuclear bombs.

Ironically, in light of the Obama-era, Uranium One scandal, and Russia’s concomitant acquisition of 20 percent of America’s mining capacity, there’s a fair likelihood that at least some of the Russian uranium came from American uranium mines. This is because at least some uranium from Uranium One’s mining operations in America was exported abroad, despite assurances by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the company lacked an export license and therefore, could not export uranium produced at their American facilities; yet another fabrication.

It goes from bad to worse. In his zeal to curry favor with the Islamic Republic, Obama shut down a highly successful and lengthy DEA operation – codenamed Project Cassandra – aimed at thwarting Hezbollah drug trafficking, arms trafficking and money laundering schemes. As a result, Hezbollah and their IRGC patrons continued their nefarious operations virtually unmolested. That means that Hezbollah drugs continued to pour into the U.S., Hezbollah Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFP) continued to make their way into the hands of anti-American insurgents and drug money, stained with the blood of Americans, continued to be laundered to the tune of billions of dollars.

We’re not done just yet. There is bipartisan agreement that the IRGC is a group that actively supports international terrorism. The overseas arm of the IRGC is the so-called Quds Force. Quds Force operatives have been fomenting unrest in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Gaza and Afghanistan. They’ve also been active in India, Africa, Southeast Asia, Central & South America, and Europe. In fact, a cell of Quds Force operatives was recently exposed executing surveillance operations against Israeli and Jewish targets in Germany. A kindergarten was on the list of surveilled targets demonstrating just how deeply depraved the IRGC truly is. The Quds Force is led by a nasty sort named Qassem Soleimani, whose activities have earned him a spot on the U.S. sanctions list.

According to recently surfaced reports, three years ago, Israel decided to rid the world of this menace and was on the verge of accomplishing this objective through a targeted liquidation in Damascus. Soleimani’s removal from the scene would have severely disrupted Quds Force operations. The operation however, never materialized because the Obama administration tipped off Tehran to Israel’s plans. Soleimani dodged a bullet and has since been working tirelessly to foment unrest and undermine America’s interests.

It’s not the first time that the Obama administration betrayed covert Israeli activities to a sworn enemy. In 2012, the Obama administration leaked damaging information that inexplicably sought to sabotage a burgeoning strategic alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan. Such an alliance would have enabled Israel to seek alternate bases in close proximity to Iran from which it could conduct military operations including surveillance and rescue missions, refueling and maintenance and even direct military strikes. The damaging disclosure severely undermined Israel’s strategic position. Some have suggested that Obama leaked the information in an effort to derail an Israeli preventative strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities while others have noted that he was motivated by pure malevolence.

So what is it called when a president …

* Initiates secret negotiations with a Holocaust denier and then lies about it;
* Signs an agreement with Iran that allows Iran’s most opaque nuke facility to avoid inspection and then attempts to hide this fact from Congress;
* Weaponizes intelligence services to illegally spy on Americans to secure passage of the JCPOA;
* Gives the Iranian government, and by extension, the IRGC, $1.7 billion in cash;
* Relinquishes all valid legal claims against the Islamic Republic, including judgements against the regime for acts of terrorism;
* Releases convicted Iranian felons without cause or justification and removes others from INTERPOL list;
* Fails to call out Iran when it materially breaches the terms of the JCPOA;
* Rewards Iran’s bad behavior by giving consent for the transfer of natural uranium to Iran;
* Informs Iran about an ally’s intention to knock off a sworn enemy of the United States;
* Informs Iran about an ally’s covert operations.

At best, it’s called being a mullah lackey but an equally persuasive argument can be made for collusion. The depth and breadth of Obama’s scheming with Tehran is something that cannot be ignored. The prevailing view is that in his zeal to secure a deal with Iran, Obama lost all sense of reality to the point of compromising U.S. national security interests. Others have suggested that Obama harbored a genuine soft spot for the IRGC and its overseas Quds Force component. Either way, for the sake of transparency and national security the DOJ or Congress must fully investigate this matter forthwith, and do so in expeditious fashion.

Categories: Character of President Obama
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Holocaust-denying NYT offers ‘A Modest Immigration Proposal: Ban Jews’

January 19, 2018

Holocaust-denying NYT offers ‘A Modest Immigration Proposal: Ban Jews’, American Thinker, Ed Straker, January 19, 2018

The biggest falsehood in Stephens’s piece is that Jews were welcomed to the United States in earlier times, but Muslims are blocked now.  In fact, Jews were prevented from coming into the country during the Holocaust, and many of them died because of it.  Muslims, by contrast, have several dozen Muslim countries to choose from if they want to get out of their own…holes of origin.

It’s sad to watch Stephens trying to use the suffering of the Jews as a passport to import more Muslims into this country.

********************************

You would think that a newspaper that helped cover up the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jewish people, would show a little hesitancy before publishing an op-ed entitled “A Modest Immigration Proposal: Ban Jews.”

This insidious piece is authored by the New York Times’ pet “conservative,” Bret Stephens.  Stephens claims he is merely conducting a “thought experiment.”  He says that Jewish immigrants from the early 20th century had much the same characteristics as Muslim and third-world immigrants of today, so banning Muslims today is like banning Jews in the past.

Stephens claims that some Jews who came to America harbored communist views.  True.  He implies we are meant to compare that to Muslims who believe in sharia law.  But there is a difference.

Jews who came to America, even communist Jews, did not blow up the Empire State Building or drive cars into crowds.  They did not murder people screaming, “Moses is great!” or “Abraham is great!”  Some of them had awful views, and they probably had equally awful voting records, but that’s as far as it went, for most of them (except, admittedly, for the awful Rosenbergs).

Stephens also claims that Jews who came to America did not assimilate in succeeding generations.  He must not have been paying attention.  Does Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin look unassimilated?  How about former attorney general Michael Mukasey?  William Shatner?  Jerry Seinfeld?

Stephens also claims that Jews who came to America were uneducated.  Some were, but many weren’t.  Furthermore, Jews valued education and quickly became among the most educated segment of the country, despite rampant discrimination.

Nor can you go around the country and find Jewish “barrios” where all signs are in Yiddish.  When you call a business on the phone, you never have to “press 1 for English” in order to avoid a voice menu in Hebrew.  The Jews, clearly, have assimilated.

So Stephens’s comparison is entirely false.  Many Muslims who come here don’t assimilate, and many not only have radical views, but even act on them, murdering Americans.  As for other “third-world” immigrants, many of them are not only illiterate in English, but illiterate in their own languages as well.

Stephens calls Attorney General Jeff Sessions a “bigot” for having legitimate security concerns about immigrants from Muslim countries.  Stephens, a recent arrival at the New York Times, was formerly a mouthpiece at the Wall Street Journal and was quite at home with the open-borders corporatist crowd that wants cheap imported labor.

The biggest falsehood in Stephens’s piece is that Jews were welcomed to the United States in earlier times, but Muslims are blocked now.  In fact, Jews were prevented from coming into the country during the Holocaust, and many of them died because of it.  Muslims, by contrast, have several dozen Muslim countries to choose from if they want to get out of their own…holes of origin.

It’s sad to watch Stephens trying to use the suffering of the Jews as a passport to import more Muslims into this country.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.

 

Categories: Antisemitism, New York Times
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Israel and Jordan to reopen their embassies, ending 7-month dispute

January 18, 2018

Israel and Jordan to reopen their embassies, ending 7-month dispute, DEBKAfile, January 18, 2018

The Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem announced Thursday that the Israeli embassy in Jordan would be reopened immediately, seven months after its staff were forced to flee Amman, when an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanian citizens. The incident occurred during raging Palestinian riots on Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al Momani said the Israeli Foreign Ministry had sent a memorandum of “deep regrets and apologies” and Jordan had received word that the Israeli guard went through the “necessary legal proceedings.”. The families of the two Jordanians had received compensation for their loss from the Israeli government. The PMO in Jerusalem stated: “Israel attaches great importance to the strategic relations with Jordan and the states will act to promote cooperation between them and to strengthen the peace agreement.”

Categories: Israel and Jordan, Israeli embassy in Jordan
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Joshua Boyle: The Taliban-Admiring Freed Hostage’s Case Keeps Getting Stranger

January 18, 2018

Joshua Boyle: The Taliban-Admiring Freed Hostage’s Case Keeps Getting Stranger, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Scott Newark, January 18, 2018

In late December, Canadians learned that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had met with the Boyle family in his official office at Boyle’s request. Strangely, this fact was not revealed by the PM but rather through a tweet from Boyle’s account that included photos and the comment:

“Incidentally, not our first meeting with @JustinTrudeau, that was ’06 in Toronto over other common interests, haha.”

*************************************

The bizarre case of Joshua Boyle and his family is back in the news in Canada as a result of two strange recent developments.

Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman made headlines in October 2012 when they were apparently taken hostage by the Haqqani network in a region of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban. According to Boyle, he and his seven-month pregnant wife were backpacking when they were kidnapped. His story shifted several times since then, saying they were mistakenly in Afghanistan, that they were there as ‘pilgrims’ to help the local Afghans, and that they were kidnapped because the terrorists thought his wife’s pregnancy could be leveraged for ransom from the U.S.

Most intriguing is Boyle’s apparent continuing support for the Taliban, a legally designated terrorist entity under Canadian law. Boyle continues to refer to the Taliban by their preferred title of ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,’ and has even gone so far as to explain that the Taliban refused to cooperate with the Haqqani network in the hostage taking and that the Haqqani thugs tried to recruit him to join with them. Boyle’s seeming support of the Taliban remains unchallenged.

As strange as this sounds, Boyle has an activist history in Canada that suggests this may have been his real motivation. Boyle was born into a well-to-do, devout Christian family, and his father was a Canadian Federal Tax Court judge.

Boyle first came to public attention in Canada during 2008 protests at Parliament Hill demanding suspected terrorist Omar Khadr’s release from Guantanamo Bay. The Khadr family organized the protests, including Omar’s niqab-wearing sister, Zaynab. She infamously stated in an interview that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks and dismissed her brother Omar’s killing of a U.S. soldier by snorting “big deal.”

“Canada’s first family of terror” is supported by their close connections to al-Qaida (AQ) in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the fact that Osama bin Laden and current AQ leader Ayman al Zawahiri actually attended Zaynab Khadr’s previous wedding in Afghanistan.

Boyle became the Khadr family’s spokesman and, in 2009, he married Zaynab Khadr. The marriage only lasted 18 months. He reconnected with Caitlan Coleman after his 2011 divorce. The bizarre trip to Afghanistan and abduction took place the following year. The couple had three children while in captivity, claiming that one other died following a forced miscarriage.

This connection to Zaynab Khadr is revealing because an Alberta judge refused to allow Omar Khadr – now back on the streets in Canada – unsupervised visits with her because of her continuing Islamist extremist views and connections.

Meanwhile, new information from Khadr family associates indicates that, contrary to what Boyle has said, he had actually met Zaynab and her family in 2006 when he joined them at court appearances in support of the just arrested Toronto 18 terrorists. Remember that 2006 date.

We now know that the Boyle’s rescue occurred in October after U.S. Special Forces located the family and told the Pakistanis to secure their release or the U.S. forces would do it themselves. Canada was advised of the operation once it had commenced. Boyle’s oddity started immediately when he refused to allow his family to board a U.S. plane, apparently because he feared his Khadr links would send him to Gitmo. After a short delay, the family took commercial flights and returned to understandably huge media attention.

Since his return, Boyle has given multiple interviews which can be summed up in this revealing comment: “In the final analysis, it is the intentions of our actions, not their consequences, on which we all shall eventually be judged.”

In late December, Canadians learned that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had met with the Boyle family in his official office at Boyle’s request. Strangely, this fact was not revealed by the PM but rather through a tweet from Boyle’s account that included photos and the comment:

“Incidentally, not our first meeting with @JustinTrudeau, that was ’06 in Toronto over other common interests, haha.”

Why would the Canadian PM meet with a supporter of a legally designated terrorist entity that has killed Canadian soldiers? What does that say to Canadians, including family members of other Canadian hostages murdered by Islamists, with whom he has refused to meet? And what is the ‘common interest’ from 2006 that Boyle is referencing? Did Trudeau meet with members of the Khadr family, including Zaynab, during the protests that year? If so, is another $10.5 million payoff coming for the Boyles?

Less than two weeks later another bombshell dropped. Ottawa Police announced that they had arrested Joshua Boyle and charged him with 15 criminal offenses committed since he was freed. Charges include eight counts of assault, two counts of sexual assault and two counts of unlawful confinement, and single counts of uttering threats, administering a noxious substance, and obstruction of a peace officer.

The alleged crimes began a day after the family returned to Canada and lived with his parents, and continued through the end of December, when Ottawa police responded to a complaint. Reportedly, 14 of the charges involve an adult woman, while a child also is an alleged victim. Interestingly, Boyle’s wife’s parents were in Ottawa visiting with their daughter and grandchildren when the complaint that led to the charges was made. Boyle has had four court appearances but has yet to enter a plea as his lawyers are apparently trying to arrange an acceptable bail release. He’ll be back in court Jan. 26. Is this case going to be resolved by a plea bargain?

This strange case has understandably attracted significant attention. Hopefully, elected officials will learn to exercise greater caution in grabbing photo ops with sketchy people, and our secular court system will now deal appropriately with Joshua Boyle, including protecting his own children from harmful influence. One thing is certain: there will be more to come. Stay tuned.

Scott Newark is a former Alberta Crown Prosecutor who has also served as Executive Officer of the Canadian Police Association, Vice Chair of the Ontario Office for Victims of Crime, Director of Operations for Investigative Project on Terrorism and as a Security Policy Advisor to the governments of Ontario and Canada. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the TRSS Program in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.

Categories: Canada and Islamists, Joshua Boyle, Taliban, Trudeau
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Report: ‘Thousands of Christians, Ahmadis, and Hindus’ Fleeing Pakistan to Survive

January 18, 2018

by Edwin Mora 17 Jan 2018 Breitbart

Source: Report: Thousands of Christians, Ahmadis, and Hindus Fleeing Pakistan to Survive

{And then there’s this little matter concerning a Pakistani nuclear arsenal. – LS}

Christians and other minorities in Pakistan are bolting away from the predominantly Muslim nation by the “thousands” as Islamabad ignores harassment at the hands of Islamic extremists, reports Asia Times.

“Thousands of Christians, Ahmadis, and Hindus are fleeing as the government turns a blind eye to Islamic groups’ harassment of other faiths and beliefs; even atheists have now gone quiet,” notes the news outlet, adding “A closer look at the situation reveals that religious minorities and atheists are at a higher risk than ever.”

The report comes soon after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration placed Pakistan on a U.S. watchlist for countries of “particular concern” over “severe violations of religious freedom” after the commander-in-chief blasted Islamabad for harboring jihadists.

“This is only going to get worse,” Ibn Abdur Rehman, secretary-general of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told Asia Times, referring to the persecution of religious minorities. “The state has surrendered to the radical Islamists and plans on gradually taking away every last bit of freedom from its citizens.”

Pakistan reportedly uses its controversial anti-blasphemy law, which carries a harsh sentence of life in prison or death, to target religious minorities, namely Christians.

In 2017, a judge in the Islamabad High Court decreed that “blasphemers are terrorists,” reports Asia Times.

“Islamabad’s capitulation to the radical Islamist mob has endangered the Ahmadiyya [Muslim] community, which has been the target of death threats made openly since the party besieged the capital a few months ago,” it adds.

Asia Times learned from Pakistani Senator Ramesh Kumar that “around 5,000 Hindus leave Pakistan every year” because of religious persecution.

“This includes forced marriages and kidnapping for ransom, as well as attacks on Hindu temples,” notes the news outlet.

Pakistan and the Open Doors group also accuse “Hindu extremists” in India of persecution against Muslims and Christians. Indian and Pakistan are regional rivals.

Despite adding Pakistan to the U.S. “Special Watch List,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) argues that the Trump administration’s move “does not go nearly far enough,” reports Newsmax.

“While the Trump administration earlier this year put Pakistan on its ‘Special Watch List’ for countries that ‘engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom, it stopped short of slapping Pakistan with the much more serious Country of Particular Concern designation (CPC),” it reports, citing USCIRF.

As mandated by law, the U.S. Secretary of State deems a nation as a Country of Particular Concern when it is guilty of “particularly severe violations of religious freedom, including torture or inhuman treatment.”

“USCIRF, an independent U.S. federal government commission dedicated to defending global religious freedom, has been pushing the State Department to designate Pakistan a Country of Particular Concern for 15 years,” notes Newsmax.

“Given the strong stance that President Trump has taken on Pakistan recently,” USCIRF chairman Daniel Mark reportedly said, “the failure to designate Pakistan as a CPC this year comes as a surprise and disappointment.”

Pakistan has also begun to target atheists in the country. An unnamed atheist who organizes underground meetings for local skeptics and appeared in the BBC documentary Pakistan’s Secret Atheists told Asia Times:

After the social media crackdown, many of us deactivated our profiles fearing abduction, especially after secular bloggers were abducted in January last year. But there’s also a reluctance among atheists about meeting up at homes. Our homes and the internet used to be our safe spaces to share ideas, but even those have been taken away from us.

Nevertheless, the news outlet acknowledges, “While local atheists can pass off as Muslims – if that is their birth religion in Pakistan, Hindus and Christians are more visible targets [for jihadists].”

Categories: Christian persecution
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Nikki Haley to UN on North Korea Jan 18, 2018 UN Security Council meeting on non proliferation of Mass Destruction

January 18, 2018

Nikki Haley to UN on North Korea Jan 18, 2018 UN Security Council meeting on non proliferation of Mass Destruction via YouTube, January 18, 2018

Categories: Assad, Iran - human rights, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Nikki Haley, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Russia, Syria - mass murder, UN Security Council, Weapons of mass destruction - proliferation
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PM Netanyahu’s remarks at an event with Bollywood film industry leaders

January 18, 2018

PM Netanyahu’s remarks at an event with Bollywood film industry leaders, IsraeliPM, January 18, 2018

(Displaying my ignorance, I did not know what Bollywood is. Here’s a brief description:

Bollywood, formally known as Hindi cinema, is the Indian Hindi language film industry, based in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Maharashtra, India. Bollywood is part of the larger cinema of India (also known as Indywood),[4] which includes other production centers producing films in other Indian languages.[5][6] Linguistically, Bollywood films tend to use a colloquial dialect of Hindi-Urdu, or Hindustani, mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers,[7][8][9] while modern Bollywood films also increasingly incorporate elements of Hinglish.[7]

— DM)

Categories: Netanyahu on Israel - India relationship
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The Soviet-Style Push to Paint Trump as Mentally Ill

January 18, 2018

The Soviet-Style Push to Paint Trump as Mentally Ill, FrontPage Magazine, Matthew Vadum, January 18, 2018

(Please see also, Satire | After Physical, Media Crushed That Trump Not on Deathbed. — DM)

Powerless to dislodge the duly elected 45th president from office, desperate left-wingers and their media allies are borrowing a page from Soviet Communism by dishonestly portraying President Trump as mentally unfit.

This is a coup attempt in progress and there is no indication it will go away anytime soon. In an earlier age, it might have been called high treason. The difference is that in the Soviet Union it was the government doing the smearing in order to maintain power. In America today, it is the opposition that is doing the smearing in the hope of removing its enemy from power and becoming the government.

Decades ago Moscow set the example that Trump-haters are now following. (Former Soviet propagandist Oleg Atbashian wrote an excellent piece at FrontPage last week on Soviet-style psychiatry.)

“The Soviets devised a system that allowed for political figures — especially those who posed a threat to party leaders — to be declared mentally unfit for office,” Jordan Schachtel writes at Conservative Review.

To combat unsavory political opinions, Soviet leaders from Nikita Khrushchev to Yuri Andropov called on friendly psychiatrists to diagnose dissidents as mentally incapacitated. Some dissidents were then sent to a psikhushka (mental hospital), where they were imprisoned and removed from political life. The pseudo-psychiatry establishment — which in effect acted as an ideological policing agency — continued until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Pseudo-psychiatrists, along with some actual psychiatrists and psychologists, now smear President Trump daily. “Without evidence that there is anything [in] particular wrong, CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC’s Chuck Todd, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, and other media figures are now regularly asking about the president’s mental health,” Schachtel writes.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who wants the 25th Amendment invoked and Trump impeached, tweeted Jan. 9: “We have a president who is intellectually ill-equipped for the job. … He is the antithesis of what we should have as a moral leader in our country.”

Left-wing bloviator Keith Olbermann tweeted Jan. 11:

This man has to go. Now. I don’t care if it’s the 25th Amendment, Impeachment, Arrest, Resignation, something “coming up” at his physical tomorrow, General Strike, or we all crash the stock market by selling off. We must Make America AMERICA Again. #MAAA

It’s not that Trump is actually mentally ill. His true failing is that he doesn’t see things the way they do and they cannot handle it.

Leftists are psychiatrizing, stigmatizing, and gaslighting to make sure the Trump presidency is never, in their words, “normalized.” When Trump does things that presidents normally do, like firing the U.S. attorneys appointed by his predecessor, he is treated as a threat to the republic.

Democrats have done the same thing to all modern Republican presidents to varying degrees, labeling, for example, both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as dimwitted or sociopathic depending on their propaganda needs, but they have never attacked any Chief Executive with the ferociousness they reserve for President Trump. To them, Trump is a singular evil devoid of any political legitimacy whatsoever. The 63 million Americans who voted for him were deceived, they claim, so their votes don’t count.

Casual character-assassination is easy for the Left. They have to lie to others and themselves in order to remain left-wing. Reality is not kind to so-called idealists who deny human nature. The leftist worldview is a funhouse mirror view of reality, or as the recently popular saying goes, facts don’t care about your feelings, and feelings are the glue that holds their twisted belief structure together.

Those on the Left seem to be realizing that the ridiculous Trump-Russia electoral collusion conspiracy theory manufactured and paid for by Democrats isn’t going anywhere. The Obama-orchestrated Deep State attacks on Trump that began even before he was inaugurated, and which overlap to an extent with the conspiracy theory, can only move the ball forward so much. All-too-convenient allegations of sexual impropriety, many of which have been underwritten by left-wingers, bounce off Trump thanks in part to the Left’s long-running defense of sexual predator Bill Clinton which set a precedent of sorts. This is hardly an exhaustive list of the deceitful, malicious campaigns the Left has waged thus far against Trump.

Those on the Left watched the hour-long live televised briefing Tuesday on Trump’s health in horror as it failed to culminate in a finding that he was mentally or physically unfit to be president of the United States.

Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, personal physician to both Presidents Trump and Obama, gave Trump a clean bill of health that reporters present and leftists online could not accept. Reporters at the White House asked 22 questions about his mental state and repeatedly pressed Jackson to just come out with it and say Trump was nuts, a “fact” reporters know already.

As Schachtel writes:

It’s unclear why these questions are warranted in the first place. Sure, the president has a unique personality and has a flair for drama, but he has shown no signs of any type of mental illness that would stop the duly elected president from carrying out his executive duties. Time and again, Dr. Jackson had to repeat himself in declaring that President Trump was fully fit for office, both cognitively and physically.

But Jackson patiently indulged the media at length.

He told the world that Trump’s brain, eyes, lungs, muscles, arteries, bones, genitals, and intestines were healthy and functioning normally. The briefing was exhaustive and exhausting, as Schachtel notes, especially because an exasperated Jackson had to keep telling reporters the same facts over and over again. On the positive side, with all the personal information released, Trump, whose “overall health is excellent” Jackson said, continues his streak as the most transparent U.S. president in modern times.

That Trump is mentally well was hotly disputed. It was as if Jackson’s statement that Trump scored 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which screens for Alzheimer’s and dementia, fell on deaf ears.

That Trump is 75 inches, or 6 feet and 3 inches tall, was disputed. That Trump weighs 239 pounds was disputed, leading to a fun neologism – girthers – to describe doubters like logorrheic leftist Matthew Yglesias of Vox. That Trump, who is 71 years old, has a healthy heart was disputed. That Trump only sleeps a few hours each night was disputed.

But how could a man who eats fast food and “never exercises” be “in as good as shape as you say he’s in?” asked one shocked-sounding reporter.

“It’s called genetics,” said Jackson, who added that lifelong abstinence from tobacco and alcohol have also contributed to Trump’s well-being.

I don’t know. Some people have just great genes. I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old. I don’t know. He has incredible genes, I just assume. I mean, if I didn’t watch what I ate, I wouldn’t have the cardiac and overall health that he has.

Meanwhile, returning to the topic of Soviet Communism, retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) delivered his much-hyped speech absurdly comparing Trump to a mass-murdering dictator Wednesday to a near-empty Senate chamber.

It is a fact that Trump has referred to the media as the “enemy of the American People.” Except for the descriptor American, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin used the same phrase in his time. The Romans used it about 2,000 years before that.

But only Stalin’s use of the expression counts, according to Flake, and Trump is therefore similar to one of history’s most prolific homicidal maniacs even though he hasn’t sent anyone to a gulag or had secret police liquidate his opponents.

“It’s a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Joseph Stalin to describe his enemies,” the senator said.

Flake, who spoke nary a nasty word about Obama during his presidency, didn’t bother to acknowledge that the 44th president came close to the same phrasing, calling Republicans “enemies.”

When you’re a Trump-hater, you don’t have to make sense.

Categories: Media and Trump, Trump's mental health, Trump's physical health
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Bringing it All Back Home

January 18, 2018

Bringing it All Back Home, Power Line,  Scott Johnson, January 18, 2018

Has there ever been a quicker boost to the economy than the one we have experienced under President Trump over the past year? As Joel Kotkin puts it in this City Journal column: “New job numbers are robust, GDP and wages continue to rise, stocks are soaring, unemployment continues to decline, and overall growth is at its highest in 13 years. And this salutary picture is not exclusive to big business; the index of small business optimism, as measured by the National Federation of Independent Business, has reached its highest level in the 45-year history of the survey.”

As the Trump administration has done its best to remove the foot placed on the neck of various sectors of the American economy by the Obama administration, we have had something like a controlled experiment in two economic theories. One economic theory (Obama’s) held that we were to reconcile ourselves to historically low GDP growth of 2 percent at best and one of which (Trump’s) held that normal growth was possible again with policies intended to foster it.

The immediate effects of the tax reform enacted last year are at least as striking. Indeed, they are almost shocking. Even before the effective date of the law, companies started announcing that they would pay $1,000 bonuses to employees as a result of the new law. AT&T led the parade with its December 20 press release specifying that the bonus would be paid to “all union-represented, non-management and front-line managers.” That is more than 200,000 employees. The company also announced that it would invest an additional $1 billion in the United States in 2018. Many companies have followed suit, attributing their actions to the new law.

Some large companies — Well Fargo and USBank, to take two examples — have also announced wage increases at the bottom of their wage scales. I should think that these increases will have ripple effects benefiting other hourly workers. In the first news story I have seen on the new law’s possible impact on wages, however, CNBC has thrown a dash of cold water. Taking the CNBC story at face value, I think it’s fair to say that the early returns are promising (see the listing of “those with detailed announcements” at the bottom of the CNBC story), but that it’s too soon to tell on this important point.

Yesterday’s announcement by Apple puts an exclamation point on these developments. Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker puts it this way in his 10-point guide to the day’s news (from which I have borrowed the heading of this post):

Apple announced it would pay a one-time tax of $38 billion on its overseas cash holdings and ramp up spending in the U.S. to emphasize its contributions to the American economy and counter criticism it outsourced manufacturing to China. The tech giant said it would invest $30 billion in the country over five years. It plans to build a new campus and create more than 20,000 jobs, as well as expand investment in advanced manufacturing in the country. The tax-code overhaul signed into law late last year by President Trump included an incentive for U.S. companies to bring home offshore holdings, with companies required to pay a one-time tax of 15.5% on overseas profits held in cash and other liquid assets. Apple didn’t say how much of its $252.3 billion offshore cash pile it plans to bring home. The tax payment by the world’s most valuable company may signal a tipping point for U.S. corporate offshore cash hoards and set off a trend.

CNBC’s headline derives this notable point from Apple’s announcement: “It looks like Apple is bringing back home nearly all of its $250 billion in foreign cash.”

If only President Trump could maintain a discreet silence for a day or two word might — I say might — get out.

Categories: U.S. economy
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