danmillerinpanama | WarSclerotic | Page 2

Author Archive

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.”

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

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
Tags: Freedom of religion, Medical procedures, Medical service providers

Comments: Be the first to comment

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
Tags: Antisemitism, New York Times

Comments: Be the first to comment

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
Tags: Israei embassy in Jordan, Israel and Jordan

Comments: Be the first to comment

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
Tags: Canada and Islamists, Joshua Boyle, Taliban, Trudeau

Comments: Be the first to comment

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
Tags: 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

Comments: Be the first to comment

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
Tags: Netanyahu on Israel - India relationship

Comments: Be the first to comment

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 45^th 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 44^th 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
Tags: Media and Trump, Trump's mental health, Trump's physical health

Comments: 2 Comments

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
Tags: U.S. economy

Comments: Be the first to comment

Persecution of Alevis in Turkey: Threats, Arbitrary Arrests

January 18, 2018

Persecution of Alevis in Turkey: Threats, Arbitrary Arrests, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, January 18, 2018

Alevis are a religious minority Turkey with a distinct faith, philosophy, and culture that largely upholds secularism and humanism. Turkey’s Alevi community is estimated in the tens of millions — up to 25% of the population, making up the country’s largest minority. But the number is only an approximation, because legally, Alevis in Turkey are “non-existent”. The Turkish government does not officially recognize them, so it does not include them in a census and counts them as “Muslims.

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

Just like the Christian, Jewish, and Yazidi communities in Turkey, Alevis have also been victims of Islamic supremacism for centuries — both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey.

In Istanbul, the door of an Alevi family was vandalized with a red symbol. “Get out, heathen” and “Islam” were written on the door.

Turkey’s membership in the NATO since 1952, its negotiations for full membership to the EU since 2005, and its countless military, economic, and diplomatic agreements with the West, have done nothing to reduce the persecution against religious minorities in the country.

Pressures against the Alevi community in Turkey are becoming alarmingly commonplace.

Just like the Christian, Jewish, and Yazidi communities in Turkey, Alevis have also been victims of Islamic supremacism for centuries — both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey.

Alevis are a religious minority Turkey with a distinct faith, philosophy, and culture that largely upholds secularism and humanism. Turkey’s Alevi community is estimated in the tens of millions — up to 25% of the population, making up the country’s largest minority. But the number is only an approximation, because legally, Alevis in Turkey are “non-existent”. The Turkish government does not officially recognize them, so it does not include them in a census and counts them as “Muslims.”

Recently, officials at the Istanbul airport seized the passport of Fatma Tunç, the wife of a dissident author, Aziz Tunç. Mrs. Tunç was preparing to board a plane to Germany when she was told by officials that her passport has been cancelled because “there are dangerous people in her family” and that for her to travel outside of Turkey, her husband and son would have to return. Aziz Tunç’s passport has also been cancelled due to his being prosecuted at a political trial in Turkey.

Mr. Tunç, a columnist and the author of two books about the 1978 Alevi massacre in the city of Maraş in southeastern Turkey, and his son, have been living in exile in Germany for the past two years, as a result of government persecution. “This is downright hostage-taking,” he said.

“It is illegal, immoral, and inhumane. This has not only been done to me. This has been done to many people in Turkey… As can be seen, there is… unrestrained tyranny [in Turkey]. And we are forced to live in exile because we express these things. And we are punished like this.”

Pressures against the Alevi community in Turkey take several forms — such as mass murders, the lack of official recognition of their places of worship, and arbitrary arrests. Particularly since the failed coup d’état against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016, many Alevis have been arrested for allegedly having ties with something the Turkish government calls the “Fethullah Terrorist Organization” (FETO), naming it after Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, who has for years been living in exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. The Turkish government after accuses Gülen of organizing the attempted coup.

Other examples of the persecution of Alevis include:

Erkan Topçu, a high school teacher and the head of the Mürteza Alevi Bektashi Education and Culture Association in the city of Isparta, for example, was arrested within the investigation of the coup for “being a member of FETO” in October 2016.

Also in October, 2016, Hasan Ateş, an Alevi dede (faith leader) in the city of Izmir, was also arrested for being a member of FETO and for “using Bylock”, an encrypted messaging app, which has been linked to FETO by the government.

Unfortunately, the government’s crackdown on Alevis has been escalating; now, Alevi journalists are also targeted. TV10, the television channel known as “the voice of Alevis”, was closed down in September 2016 after the failed coup, allegedly “for threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

Two officials of the Alevi-run TV10, Veli Büyükşahin and Veli Haydar Güleç were arrested on January 10. Recently, Kemal Demir, an employee of TV10, was also arrested.

“These detentions and the government’s intentional harassment of the Alevi media have no meaning other than attempting to shape the Alevi media,” said Şükrü Yıldız, former chairman of TV10, and called the arrests “an attack against the Alevi faith and resistance.”

Alevi citizens are also threatened inside their homes: red crosses and threatening graffiti are drawn on their doors and walls.

Last November, unknown perpetrators painted red crosses on the front doors of 13 Alevi homes.

A week later, in Bahçelievler district of Istanbul, the door of another Alevi family was marked with a similar red symbol. “Get out, heathen” and “Islam” were also written on the door.

The vandalism of Alevi homes concern the Alevi community, to say the least; they have been exposed to many massacres and pogroms in Turkey. These include but are not limited to the 1921 Kocgiri Massacre, 1937-1938 Dersim (Tunceli) Massacres, 1938 Erzincan Zini Gedigi Massacre, 1978 Malatya Massacre, 1978 Sivas Massacre, 1978 Maras Massacre, 1980 Corum Massacre, 1993 Sivas Massacre and 1995 Istanbul, Gazi Quarter Massacre.

The faces of many of the victims who were murdered in the 1993 Sivas massacre are featured on this poster, used in a 2012 commemoration in Germany. (Image source: Bernd Schwabe, Wikimedia Commons)

Alevis were victims of other physical attacks in Ortaca, Mugla in 1966, in Elbistan, Maras in 1967, in Hekimhan, Malatya in 1968, and in Kirikhan, Hatay in 1971, among others. During these massacres or pogroms, many Alevi residents were murdered or had to flee their cities.

“If you go to the Kizilay city center in Ankara today and ask people if they are Alevis, the majority will deny it,” said Kemal Bulbul, an Alevi author and rights activist, explaining that Alevis hide their identity due to the systematic persecution and discrimination Alevis they have suffered.

“For what has been experienced cannot be erased from memories. Alevis were not only massacred in Yozgat, Tokat, Amasya, but also in Thrace and the Mediterranean. The Alevi dargahs (shrines built over the graves of revered religious figures) have been raided, plundered, burnt down, and destroyed.”

Alevism: A faith outside Islam

The founding government of the Republic of Turkey, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, banned Alevism and its places of worship in 1925, while institutionalizing Sunni Islam through the establishment of Diyanet (Directorate of Religious Affairs) in 1924. The Diyanet was, and still is, a major violation of secularism. Since that ban, Alevism has not been officially recognized; Alevis have been deprived of religious liberty and freedom of expression regarding their faith.

Alevism is a distinct religion, philosophy and culture, the existence of which predates Islam. Alevism upholds secularism and humanism. A common misconception about Alevism is that it is a sect or an interpretation of Islam.

A group of Alevi dedes and pirs (faith leaders) carried out a workshop on Alevism in the city of Dersim (Tunceli) in 2015; there, they agreed that Alevism is a faith outside Islam.

Mustafa Genç, an Alevi dede (faith leader), one of the Alevi representatives who attended the workshop, said that Alevism and Sunni Islam “are never on the same line”:

“In Sunnism, they pray five times a day and fast for a month. These things do not exist in the Alevi faith. According to our faith, God is in the human and not in the sky. In the Alevi faith, women are sacred and to divorce a woman is the most difficult thing. This is not the case in Sunnism. Sunni Muslims think a man can marry four women.”

The prominent Alevi scholar Mehmet Bayrak also emphasizes that Alevism is a distinct religion, separate from Islam.

“As our people [in Turkey] only think of divine religions when religion is discussed, they cannot comprehend that Alevism is a distinct religion. They immediately ask ‘Who is the Allah and prophet of Alevism?’. However, there is a category called natural religions and they still exist. And Alevism is one of them.”

Bayrak explains that Alevism took certain things from other religions and gave certain things to them and is much closer to Christianity than to Islam.

“For example, one cannot see one tenth of the similarity between Alevism and Christianity in the similarity between Alevism and Islam…. Islam has a history of at least 1400-1500 years and they [Alevis and Muslims] have lived side by side or with one another in this area. So, Alevism took some motifs from Islam and melted them within itself. For example, there is a massive difference between the culture of Ali in Alevism and the Ali in Islam. Alevism created a new, distinctive cult of Ali.”

Bayrak lists some of the differences between Alevism and Islam:

“Islam has five pillars. Alevism do not practice any of them. For example, Alevis fast but it is completely different from the fasting in Islam. Alevis do not do pilgrimage [to Mecca], they do not say shahada[the Islamic declaration of faith]. And Alevis do not do salah [five daily prayers] … For someone to be a Muslim, they should also accept the requirements of faith (iman). Muslims say, ‘I believe in the God of Islam and its prophet; I believe in the book of Islam; I believe in the afterlife; I believe benevolence and evil come from Allah.’ Alevis do not believe any of these things. They carry out neither the pillars nor the requirements of faith of Islam. So, Alevism is a distinct faith. And it is completely wrong to see Alevism as an entity, version, denomination or sect of Islam.”

According to Bayrak, one of the reasons why some Alevis say they are Muslim is their misconceptions about their own religion. “Due to the centuries-long propaganda they have been exposed to, some of them think that they are true Muslims,” says Bayrak, and adds that a more alarming reason for their denial is fear of persecution.

“As Alevis are still under political, social, and cultural pressures, they are still scared of saying that Alevism is outside of Islam. It is impossible for them to express themselves freely.”

Turkey’s membership in the NATO since 1952, its negotiations for full membership to the EU since 2005, and its countless military, economic, and diplomatic agreements with the West, have done nothing to reduce the persecution against religious minorities in the country.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist born and raised in Turkey. She is presently based in Washington D.C.

Categories: Alevis, Islamic supremacy, Muslem persecution of Alevis
Tags: Alevis, Islamic supremacy, Muslim persecution of Alevis

Comments: Be the first to comment

Donald Trump Corrects John Kelly: ‘The Wall Is the Wall, It Has Never Changed or Evolved’

January 18, 2018

Donald Trump Corrects John Kelly: ‘The Wall Is the Wall, It Has Never Changed or Evolved’, Breitbart, Charlie Spiering, January 18, 2018

(Please see also, FULL MEASURE: January 14th 2018- The Other Wall. — DM)

AP/Evan Vucci

President Donald Trump corrected his Chief of Staff John Kelly after he said that the president had “evolved” on the wall.

“There’s been an evolutionary process that this president has gone through,” Kelly said in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, pointing out that Trump had “very definitely changed his attitude” towards DACA recipients and the wall.

But Trump pushed back on Twitter against the suggestion that he had evolved on the wall.

“The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it,” Trump said.

He explained that parts of the wall would be “see-through” and that it was never meant to stretch across the whole 2,000-mile border where there were already natural barriers.

Kelly said that he and border experts told Trump that 800 miles of wall would “suffice” which included 600 miles of existing fencing.

“He has evolved in the way he’s looked at things,” Kelly said. “Campaign to governing are two different things and this president has been very, very flexible in terms of what is within the realm of the possible.”

Kelly also suggested that the wall would not be paid “directly” by Mexico, something that Trump also corrected.

“The Wall will be paid for, directly or indirectly, or through longer term reimbursement, by Mexico, which has a ridiculous $71 billion dollar trade surplus with the U.S.,” he wrote. “The $20 billion dollar Wall is ‘peanuts’ compared to what Mexico makes from the U.S. NAFTA is a bad joke!”

Trump added that without wall funding there would be no DACA deal.

“We need the Wall for the safety and security of our country,” he wrote. “We need the Wall to help stop the massive inflow of drugs from Mexico, now rated the number one most dangerous country in the world. If there is no Wall, there is no Deal!”

Categories: John F. Kelly, Trump's wall
Tags: John F. Kelly, Trump's wall

Comments: Be the first to comment

Archives