Egypt’s parliament responds to UK Commons’ ‘defence of political Islam’

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Britain, Britain and Islam, British Parliament, Egypt, Egypt's Parliament, Muslim Brotherhood, Political Islam
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Egypt’s parliament responds to UK Commons’ ‘defence of political Islam’, Ahram on Line, Gamal Essam El-Din, November 21, 2016

The Egyptian parliament’s foreign affairs committee said its report aims to expose Europe and the UK’s false views on “political Islam”

egyptparliament

“The UK parliament report ignores – either on purpose or due to a lack of knowledge about historical facts – that since it was established in the first third of the previous century the Muslim Brotherhood has been responsible for spreading the radical Islamic ideology upon which all terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, Ezzeddin Al-Qassam, Al-Nusra Front and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis were based,” said the report, adding that “most of the leaders of these terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaida’s current leader Ayman Al-Zawahri were once members of Muslim Brotherhood.”

“This group is the godfather of all jihadist and Salafist ideologies which dream of resurrecting the state of the caliphate against the infidel West,” said the report.

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A 10-page report issued by the Egyptian parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Sunday launched a scathing attack on EU and UK politicians and MPs who defend “political Islam.”

The report, issued in response to a 7 November UK House of Commons’ foreign affairs committee’s report on the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam, said it does not aim to defend the Egyptian government’s security and legal measures against the Brotherhood group and its affiliated militant and terrorist organizations.

“Our report reflects our responsibility as elected MPs to stand against a group which seized its one year in power to turn Egypt into a religious state and show the world the true meaning of “political Islam,” said the report.

It added that the “Muslim Brotherhood tried to steal history and turn the Arab world’s first civilian state into a theocratic state that is hostile to human civilization and the values of freedom, equality and citizenship.”

The report said “if Europe and the West are really keen to stem the tide of religious terrorism and the political hijacking of Islam, they should correct their understanding of all political Islam movements which claim they have a licence from God to implement his laws on earth and impose the state of the caliphate on the world .”

Ahmed Said, head of the Egyptian foreign affairs committee, told reporters Sunday that Egypt’s parliament deplores the UK report’s inclusion of a number of horrible lies.

“Our committee’s report aims to expose these lies. We intend to send it to the Egyptian ambassadors in England and Germany to stand against  the attempts of several politicians and MPs in these two countries to polish the image of political Islam ,” the report said.

Said said “we know from history that Europe was able to move ahead and achieve progress only after it made a separation between religion and politics.”

“So we are surprised by the new generation of European radical liberals and progressives who defend political Islam and thereby give cover for Islamist movements which claim victimhood to spread across Europe and create a fertile ground for Islamist radicals there,” said Said.

The report said the UK parliament’s report offered a very artificial interpretation of “political Islam.”

“We wonder how a parliament that was based on separating religion from politics  approves that a country like Egypt be governed by a theocratic state,” said the report, adding that “this is a setback from all the democratic and liberal ideals which formed the foundation of European civilization.”

The report said that “the UK parliament made a very artificial and marginal differentiation between Islamist movements that exploit democracy to reach power on the one hand, and Islamist movements that seek the path of violence and armed jihad to impose their radical ideology on societies, on the other.”

“All studies that have been conducted on political Islam movements show that there are no essential differences among them and that they all seek one objective – that is trying to impose a strict code of Islam and Islamic Sharia law on the world, and to launch an armed Jihad against ‘infidel rulers’ everywhere,” argued the report.

“In other words,” the report added, “these groups want to Islamise the entire world and they only differ on when and how these objectives should be implemented,” said the report.

“While a group like the Muslim Brotherhood shows the face of artificial Islamic moderation to gain ground in the West and infiltrate societies there, other groups seek the road of violence. Each complements the other,” said the report.

The report described the Muslim Brotherhood “as the mother of all jihadist and Salafist movements.”

“The UK parliament report ignores – either on purpose or due to a lack of knowledge about historical facts – that since it was established in the first third of the previous century the Muslim Brotherhood has been responsible for spreading the radical Islamic ideology upon which all terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, Ezzeddin Al-Qassam, Al-Nusra Front and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis were based,” said the report, adding that “most of the leaders of these terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaida’s current leader Ayman Al-Zawahri were once members of Muslim Brotherhood.”

“This group is the godfather of all jihadist and Salafist ideologies which dream of resurrecting the state of the caliphate against the infidel West,” said the report.

“We doubt that UK politicians or MPs have any books about the ideological basis of this group, which is highly hostile to the West and what they describe as its “liberal and infidel culture,” said the report.

To press its case, the report reviews a number of political assassinations which the Muslim Brotherhood has carried out since it was established by its leader Hassan Al-Banna in 1928.

The second part of the response accuses the UK report of making “a big mistake” by drawing a comparison between the experience of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia.

“The Media and politicians in the West always like to portray Tunisia as the democratic, inclusive model in the Middle East,” said the report, adding that “this is a big mistake because facts show that Tunisia has become a fertile ground for Islamist jihadists who spread extremism and terrorism in France and Europe and that more than 1,000 Tunisians — the greatest number from any Arab country — a have joined the IS group.”

“Doesn’t this show that the Muslim Brotherhood ideology was behind the transformation of Tunisia into a breeding ground for jihadists,” wondered the report, adding that “not to mention that Tunisia is a small country – with 11 million people – but Egypt is a country with 90 million and the birthplace of the Muslim Brotherhood, which exploited political tolerance over eight decades to create a wide network of businesses and secret armed militias.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt owns banks, charity organizations and receives huge donations from wealthy sympathisers in the Arabian Gulf and throughout the Islamic world,” said the report.

The report also argued that the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia accepted democracy only for tactical reasons. “After they saw how millions in Egypt revolted against their mother group, they decided to backtrack only for tactical reasons,” said the report.

The report’s third section is devoted to explaining the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and internal structure “which is highly hostile to all democratic values.”

“Their ideology is based on strict obedience to the group’s supreme guide, not to mention that its main ideologues, such as Sayyid Qutb, were the ones who invented the jihadist ideology which states that “democracy goes against the rule of God and Islamic Sharia,” said the report.

The report also reviews in detail “the one year of the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt.”

“They exploited the collapse of (former president) Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party to exclude all civilian political forces from power and impose their rule on the country. When millions revolted against them and expelled them from power on 30 June, 2013, they resorted to claims of victimhood again, only to find an ear in the UK and its parliament,” said the report, insisting that “Egyptians stand firm against the rule of ‘the supreme guide’ and will not allow their country to become a religious state.”

“Egyptians are in a battle of life and death against this group, which is the mother of all radical Islam movements,” said the report.

The report also said that many of those who implemented terrorist attacks against the US on 11 September, 2001 received training at the hands of old and veteran Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The report spotlights what it calls the Muslim Brotherhood’s “empowerment ideology” which seeks to Islamise the entire world in a gradual way.

The report urges the UK parliament and politicians to review “the dark history of the Muslim Brotherhood” and to verify their information about it “instead of issuing distorted reports about political Islam.”

“While the world has become increasingly aware of the dangers of all radical Islam movements, we are surprised that the UK MPs and politicians still live in a coma, insistent not only on polishing the image of these movements, but also propagating the biggest lie: that it is a peaceful and moderate movement,” the report concludes.

The report includes a great number of details about the yearlong rule of former president Mohamed Morsi and how the Brotherhood exploited this year to isolate all political forces.

“For all those who believe in the West that Islamist movements can be integrated into the political process of Arab countries, we offer this bitter experience to put an end to this lie,” said the report.

The UK House of Commons’ foreign affairs committee released its report on 7 November, commenting on the findings and conclusions of a December 2015 review by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on the Muslim Brotherhood.

The 2015 FCO report concluded that the group has long maintained a dubious position vis-à-vis the use of violence and terrorism to achieve political change.

The UK parliament committee said that the FCO review “undermined confidence in the impartiality of the FCO’s work” due to the “misguided appointment” of Sir John Jenkins, the UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to head the review effort.

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The Progressive Disintegration

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Democrats, Media, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Progressives, Trump Hater's Club
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The Progressive Disintegration, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, November 23, 2016

loosers

A month ago, progressives were having a conniption fit over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election. So of course, now that Trump has won, they are rioting, vandalizing, staging “cry-ins,” ditching class, group-hugging, tweeting threats, calling names, seeking counseling, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their party declines even further. If this behavior continues, and if––a big “if” –– Trump governs the way he promised, we may be witnessing the start of the progressive disintegration.

Start with the melting snowflake millennials, all those “cocksure women and hensure men,” as D.H. Lawrence once described feminists of both sexes. These layabouts have become used to throwing tantrums whenever they don’t like something or they feel “unsafe.” Most of them are spoiled brats, the pampered detritus of the middle class. But don’t forget the Alinskyite activists who manipulate these juveniles and bus them in on George Soros’ dime. These two-bit Leninists are adept at using “useful idiots” in order to further their aim of destroying America’s political and social order. They’re skilled at manipulating empty slogans like “income inequality,” “fair share,” “social justice,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and all the other bumper-sticker bromides in order to consolidate and increase their power and influence.

If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would start with the Democrat party. No true leftist would have sat still for the nomination of a candidate so obviously part of the fat-cat ruling class as Hillary Clinton. (And no, he wouldn’t be happy with Bernie Sanders either, a bumbling blowhard who thinks imitating Sweden’s “social democracy” ––which means an overregulated capitalism leavened with over-generous social welfare benefits––is somehow an epochal revolutionary change.) It was electoral malfeasance to choose a geriatric insider and establishment plutocrat with no charisma and a long record of abusing her privilege and power. So, kiddies, go protest against the DNC and Barack Obama. They’re the reason the Republican party is the strongest it’s been since 1928.

Next, look at yourselves. As Piers Morgan––no conservative he––said recently, “The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.” It follows that your politics are merely symbolic, expressions of your inflated self-regard, privileged life-style, and arrogant pretensions to sophistication and intelligence. Unsurprisingly, as Morgan points out, according to the National Institutes of Health, 40% of you think you should be promoted every two years despite performance, 77% of you can’t name a senator from your home state, and 80% of you think you’ll be richer than your parents, even as you pile up student debt earning junk “studies” degrees utterly useless for employment in the real world.

In contrast to symbolic politics, real politics is grubby hard work: knocking on doors, registering voters, and not just preaching to the choir, but converting new voters. Follow Obama’s advice to Republicans three years ago: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election” (HT Cal Thomas). By the way, you won’t win many elections by demonizing nearly half of voters as ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and cisgendered “irredeemable deplorables.”

More important, you need to vote. Only half of your 24-million-strong cohort voted in this election. You also need to understand that not everybody between the ages of 18-29 thinks exactly like you. Thirty-seven percent of millennials voted for Donald Trump. Instead of crying and vandalizing and screaming question-begging epithets, you should figure out how to talk to your fellow millennials and make persuasive, fact-based arguments based on coherent principles. But of course, if you could do that, you wouldn’t be progressives.

Then there are the Dems. They long ago embraced a balkanizing identity politics based mainly on demonizing those white voters who pulled the lever for Trump. They pander incessantly to race hucksters and rich women and sleek “Hispanics,” most of whom never cut grapes or even speak Spanish. They embrace counter-factual nonsense like “white privilege,” when they of all people should know that the color of privilege in America is the currency shade of green. They and their wholly owned subsidiaries, the mainstream media and the educational industry, enforce a preposterous political correctness that is intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt. They trade in group-identities often based on stereotypes and generalizations that old-school Jim Crow segregationists relied on. The blatant hypocrisy of a political correctness that never protects Christians, poor whites, or conservatives finally angered enough voters to set aside their distaste for Trump and put him in office.

Yet despite that rebuke, after the election the Democrat elite indulged the same old nonsense. The tried to play the “sexist” card to explain Hillary’s defeat, posited a preposterous “whitelash” of racists, tarred the careerist James Comey as a Republican mole, whined about the Electoral College while trying to suborn Electors, conjured up sinister Klansmen and alt-right storm-troopers, insulted 49 million Americans as haters, and prophesized an imminent fascist coup engineered by Trump’s goose-stepping Goebbels, Steve Bannon. Rather than come up with new ideas, they’re doubling-down on the stale paradigm that demography guarantees them a permanent coalition comprising various identity-groups united by the promise of more set-asides and wealth redistribution, and bicoastal plutocrats who compensate for their privilege by catering to the minority masses they make sure never enter their gated compounds except to make the beds and mow the lawn. They don’t consider that Trump’s victory could make that plan obsolete if he follows through on his promise to tighten up on immigration.

Finally, instead of rethinking their exploded economic myths and abandoning a divisive identity politics, many Dems want to keep steaming full speed ahead toward the next electoral iceberg. Look at the two candidates touted as replacements for the tarnished DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Howard “Screaming” Dean, erstwhile presidential candidate and governor of a state with fewer people than Fresno County, is a tax-and-spend, “fair share,” regulation-happy, identity politics tribune and radical egalitarian redistributionist of the kind whose policies have given us sluggish growth, job-killing regulations, and astronomical debt. The other choice is Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, a zealous Muslim convert by way of the ultra-racist Nation of Islam. He is tainted with anti-Semitism, apologetics for Iran and terrorists like Hamas, virulent hatred of Israel, wacky 9-11 conspiracy theories, and the usual progressive blame-America-first foreign policy and magical-thinking economics. No surprise that he has been endorsed by the Jacobin Cherokee Elizabeth Warren, and ex-Senator Harry Reid, Obama’s legislative Luca Brasi.

The few sane Democrats counseling a change of course are unlikely to halt the self-destruction of so many failed progressive gods. Only Trump can prevent that “consummation devoutly to be wished” by failing to keep his campaign promises.

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The golden double standard

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump and Israel, Israel, Israel and human rights, Leftist perspectives, Media, Media and Israel, Netanyahu, Never Trumpers, Obama, President Elect Trump
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The golden double standard, Israel Hayom, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, November 23, 2016

Benjamin Netanyahu, red-faced and happy, sits next to Donald Trump in a gold Roman-style litter. The ancient vehicle is being carried by big-nosed Orthodox Jews, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a voluptuous woman and a few Israeli soldiers — marked with large Israeli flags on their chests. A speech bubble comes out of Netanyahu’s mouth, saying “Finally!”

The image I just described was published in Sweden’s largest-circulation daily paper, Dagens Nyheter, as a political cartoon, commenting on Trump’s victory in the American presidential election. It’s a bizarre mishmash of people and symbols, where IDF soldiers and a robed clansman are celebrating Trump side by side, and wildly stereotypical Orthodox Jews are hanging out with a pinup girl next to Israel’s security barrier. But the logical fail not withstanding, it reeks of anti-Semitic imagery and messaging, and it is the next step in normalizing something that has been underground for quite some time. One would assume the paper would realize this and issue a thorough apology. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the paper doubled down and defended the cartoon, saying that it was merited by the fact that Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s victory, despite Trump being supported by anti-democratic forces and white power movements. No mention of the fact that Netanyahu’s support of Trump extended only to the courtesy shown to a president-elect by any and every national leader or that Jews rarely stand shoulder to shoulder with the Klan, but just that Netanyahu “celebrated” Trump — as if the Israeli prime minister had thrown Trump an opulent party.

Dagens Nyheter calls itself an independent, liberal publication, and in the past year, it has taken a clear stand against Trump, saying he has made the world more extreme and xenophobic. Editor-in-Chief Peter Wolodarski has used his editorials to ride a very high moral horse, and his decision to run that particular cartoon is a fascinating portrait of the division between the right and wrong kinds of racism and bigotry.

What the cartoonist, known as “Bard,” is saying by this crude drawing is not only that the Jews and Israel orchestrated and celebrated the Trump win but also that the evil hook-noses side with anyone to get their way, including organizations known for wanting their annihilation.

Now, for the sake of entertainment and folly, let’s imagine another drawing: a cartoonish Barack Obama sitting in a golden carriage with a sweaty Mahmoud Abbas, being carried by big-nosed ISIS terrorists, voluptuous virgin brides and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Imagine that it was published by a country’s most popular publication and that the editor-in-chief defended it by saying that Obama had been supportive of Abbas and therefore, the imagery was fair game.

Do any of you, dear readers, think this would happen? Does anyone think that if it did, it would be go largely unnoticed and accepted? No, me neither, and I know this because we have an example of this very thing. When Charlie Hebdo was attacked and journalists were murdered in cold blood over their criticism of Islam, people still said that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was inexcusable and unacceptable, and remained on the fence after the very heart of freedom had been ripped to bits. Famous writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Junot Díaz and Michael Ondaatje protested Charlie Hebdo receiving the PEN award, and were supported by a wide array of liberals all across the globe who called the French satirical magazine racist.

So what is really fair game — what racism is allowed and celebrated in today’s society? We know that portraying Israel as the leader of a Zionist conspiracy that elects presidents is fine, as is literally painting anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews side by side with white supremacists in a dog whistle loud enough to give you tinnitus. That elicits a few angry and summarily ignored letters from Jews, whereas similar imagery and messaging about any other group might close down the publication, if it were to survive the inevitable terrorist attacks.

Some of my friends filed a complaint against Dagens Nyheter, but I didn’t bother, as it is the activist equivalent of drawing a picture of a sandwich to feed the starving. Our voices mean little when others stay silent, and it is because of this silence that the largest paper in the land can go full Der Sturmer and no one even bats an eye.

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A Word To The Criminal Migrant

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Donald Trump and immigration, Europe, Islamic invasion, Islamic perversions, Islamic refugees, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation
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A Word To The Criminal Migrant, Pat Condell via YouTube, November 23, 2016

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Hassan Rouhani: Iran’s Executioner

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Iran - executions, Iran - human rights, Iran - political prisoners, Iranian "moderates", Iranian dissidents, Obama and Iran, Trump and Iran
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Hassan Rouhani: Iran’s Executioner, American Thinker, Heshmat Alavi, November 23, 2016

As we begin to wind down to the end of Hassan Rouhani’s term as president of the regime in Iran, it is time to take a look back at the past four years. We all remember how the West joyfully welcomed his election — read selection — as a change of gear in Iran aimed at moderation. However, what the world witnessed ever since has been anything but. An atrocious rise in executions, continued public punishments and an escalating trend of oppression has been Rouhani’s report card during his tenure. With a new administration coming into town, Washington must make it crystal clear to Tehran that human rights violations will no longer be tolerated.

Unprecedented executions

Despite pledging to hold the “key” to Iran’s problems, Rouhani has failed to provide even an iota of the freedoms the Iranian people crave and deserve. His record has revealed an unrelenting loyalty to the regime establishment in regards to social oppression and continued crackdowns. Iran sent 18 to the gallows last week alone, according to official reports.

As the international community continued its policy of appeasement, Rouhani and the entire regime used this opportunity to launch an execution rampage. Over 2,500 people have been sent to the gallows ever since Rouhani came to power, shattering all records held by this regime itself in over two decades.

In 2015 alone, Iran was executing an individual every eight hours, as reported by Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.

Vast social crackdown

Rouhani’s commitment to regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the ruling elite has rendered a wide-ranging, escalating crackdown. In addition to the executions mentioned above, state-sponsored social oppression has resulted in horrific scenes of public hangings, floggings, and even limb amputations.

The prisons are overwhelmed with inmates, leading to intolerable and inhumane conditions. Political prisoners, specifically, are subject to horrendous treatment by the authorities. Renowned human rights organization Amnesty International has recently issued an Urgent Action call expressing major concerns over the case of Maryam Akbari Monfared, a Green Movement organizer still in prison two years after her family put up her bail.

And this is merely a single example of the dreadful results of Rouhani’s domestic policies. The regime, with the West unfortunately falling in line, had claimed that the Iranian nation welcomed Rouhani’s presidency with open arms. While such assertions were politically motivated from the very beginning, the ordinary Iranian has been the first to pay the price of such a failed engagement policy.

A call for justice

The Iranian population is extremely fond of the Internet and millions are actively using social media. Despite its vast censorship efforts, the regime has failed to completely firewall the entire globe from the clever and highly motivated Iranian netizen. Various clips, images, and stories from inside Iran are leaking to the outside world as we speak, revealing ever more the regime’s atrocities.

rouhanifinger

One significant case involves the exposure of a controversial sound file shedding light on a private meeting between the late Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri and the main officials involved in the horrendous 1988 summer massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners across Iran. Montazeri was the successor to Iranian regime founder, mullah Ruhollah Khomeini, set aside by Khomeini himself considering his opposing perspectives.

This disclosure sent shockwaves amongst the Iranian people from all walks of life, and throughout the globe. As a result a global movement is demanding accountability from those responsible for the horrific massacre of thousands of innocent political prisoners. The victims of this carnage included members and supporters of the main Iranian opposition entity, People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, and other dissident groups and minorities. The PMOI, more commonly known as the MEK in the West, has also been the focus of a lobbying campaign launched by Iran. Tehran’s mullahs are terrified of MEK supporters such as former New York City mayor and ambassador John Bolton being considered for senior cabinet posts in a Donald Trump White House.

Conclusion

The entire regime in Iran, including the so-called “hardliners” and “moderates,” are shifting gear for the upcoming presidential elections in June 2017. Members of the Rouhani faction have described U.S. President Barack Obama’s tenure as a “golden era.” This signals how Tehran took full advantage of Obama’s rapprochement as a green light to escalate executions and further implement social crackdown.

With a new administration set to take the reins in Washington, the opportunity has arrived for America to raise the issue of Iran’s human rights violations. Such outrageous crimes have no place in the 21st century, and all eyes are on U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. Supporting the call to hold all senior Iranian regime officials involved in the 1988 massacre accountable for their crimes is a good start.

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Gulag, Western Style

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Academia, Censorship, Control of the people, Democracy, Dissent, Freedom, Gulags, Media, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Serfdom, social media
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Gulag, Western Style, PJ Media, David Solway, November 22, 2016

newspeak

In the last analysis, this system of subjugation looks to be even more effective than the cruder techniques of its tyrannical counterparts. In the absence of public awareness and concerted pushback, we will have sold our birthright for a mess of political potage.

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There are various ways of quashing social and political dissent, some more effective than others. The “Soviet method” practiced in stringently repressive regimes—torture, imprisonment, the ever-expanding Gulag, summary execution—works extremely well in the shorter historical timeframe, until a people rise up in revolt or such demonic societies collapse from their own internal contradictions. Of course, the truly Stygian regimes, closed to the world, indifferent to economic pressures, and under the heavy boot of unbroken military control, such as North Korea, may persist indefinitely or until defeated in war. But generally speaking, the tried-and-true methods of political oppression are sufficient to the task of keeping a population in a state of enslavement for a prolonged historical period.

In the sphere of the liberal West, however, there are other means of subjection to the will of increasingly centralized governments. Because they tend to function gradually and under the radar, these tactics are enormously efficient in their deadening effects, going unrecognized until it is often too late to mount significant resistance. They operate through a process of curricular distortions, social pressure and incremental legislation targeting speech habits, facets of normal behavior, assumptions of what counts as morally legitimate, and financial and job security.

A useful technique for anaesthetizing the individual citizen and rendering him compliant is the erasure of authentic historical knowledge. We’ve remarked the success of this approach in the U.S. with the “history from below” or “people’s history” movement, associated with Howard Zinn, and the foregrounding of a bowdlerized version of Islamic history in American schools. Canada is no different. Eric McGeer, author of Words of Valediction and Remembrance: Canadian Epitaphs of the Second World War, writes: “In my last years of high school teaching I was increasingly infuriated and disgusted at the portrayal of Canada in the history textbooks assigned for use in our courses. There was no sense of gratitude in the textbooks, no empathy with the people of the past or an attempt to see them in their own terms, no sense of the effort people made to create one of the few truly liveable societies on earth. You would have thought that this country was nothing more than a racist, bigoted, this or that-phobic hotbed. My first lesson involved taking the book and dropping it into the waste paper basket and advising the students to do the same.” (personal communication). The study of history, McGeer concludes, is nothing now but a progressive morality tale and a mechanism of social engineering. Sounds a lot like Title IX. Pride in one’s nation, its accomplishments and sacrifices, is contra-indicated. There is more than one way of burning the flag.

The center-right consensus that has characterized Western nations has been under attack for some considerable time as nation after nation in the once liberal West gravitates progressively leftward. Robert Conquest’s Second of his Three Laws of Politics states that “any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” The consequence of Conquest’s Law is, inevitably, what Robert Michels in Political Parties called “The Iron Law of Oligarchy,” which formulates how democratic institutions tend to succumb to the rule of an elite—in our day, a progressivist camarilla that controls government policy and media outlets, and harnesses the energies of dissenting associations and cabals. In many countries, the democratic process has become or is on the road to becoming a mere formality.

The oligarchic agenda can be detected in the disastrous nationalization of the health care system; the decadence of an academy which indoctrinates rather than educates; the rise of destructive feminism and the feminization of the culture; the transgendering of everyday life—in Canada, for example, Bill C-16 has been tabled, making “gender expression” a prohibited ground of discrimination and potentially mandating non-binary pronouns such as zhi or hir, as is already the case in New York City where astronomical fines are levied for contravention; the special status ascribed to the incursions of anti-democratic Islam; the “abolition of the family,” as Marx and Engels urged in The Communist Manifesto; and the regulatory strangling of the free market economy and the conjoint attrition of the middle class. Additionally, the leftist project is materially facilitated by the growing prevalence of kangaroo courts run by committed activists of every conceivable stripe and in which no provision whatsoever is made to assist those too often falsely accused of discrimination or being in violation of some obscure code or policy of sanctioned conduct. The judgments handed down against those who have offended the sensibilities of favored identity groups will often involve harshly punitive forms of retribution that may cost a defendant his employment and his livelihood.

A Romanian friend who suffered through Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in his home country tells me that in many ways the situation in the “freedom loving” West is actually worse. In Romania, as in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc, most people knew that the regime was founded on lies and that the media were corrupt, time-serving institutions. Here, on the contrary, people tend to believe that the government is relatively, if not entirely, trustworthy, that the judiciary is impartial, and that the media actually report the news. Citizens are therefore susceptible to mission creep and are piecemeal deceived into a condition of indenture to socialist governance, an activist judiciary, a disinformative, hireling press corps, and left-wing institutions. People will vote massively for the Liberal Party in Canada and the Democrats in the U.S., not realizing they are voting themselves into bondage, penury and stagnation. The process operates insensibly and takes longer to embed itself into the cultural mainstream, but the result is alarmingly effective and durable. My friend has never read F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom or George Orwell’s 1984, but his layman’s insights and practical experience bear out Hayek’s scholarly analysis and Orwell’s dire warnings.

A totalitarian regime will control its citizens through propaganda, censorship, and outright violence, modes of oppression that are at least publicly demonstrable, evident to most. But knowing that the enchainment of the spirit is ultimately more reliable than the enchainment of the flesh, a democratic polity veering towards oligarchy will focus on propaganda and censorship as well, but in a far more subtle form. It will function mainly through public shaming rituals, social ostracism, rigid speech codes, Orwellian disinformation, and legal or quasi-legal assault. It does not need to depend on physical violence.

Fear of social rejection, the lure of groupthink, the pestilence of political correctness controlling what one may say and think, public apathy, historical ignorance, and especially the Damoclean sword of selective hiring, job dismissal, and financial reprisal go a long way to subdue a people to the will of its masters and consign them to a Gulag that may be less observable a such, but one that is nonetheless socially and economically crippling to individuals, families and businesses.

In the last analysis, this system of subjugation looks to be even more effective than the cruder techniques of its tyrannical counterparts. In the absence of public awareness and concerted pushback, we will have sold our birthright for a mess of political potage.

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Iran warns of retaliation if U.S. breaches nuclear deal

Posted November 23, 2016 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Iran warns of retaliation if U.S. breaches nuclear deal

By Bozorgmehr SharafedinNovember 23, 2016
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves as he gives a speech on Iran's late leader Khomeini's death anniversary, in Tehran
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves as he gives a speech on Iran’s late leader Khomeini’s death anniversary, in Tehran, Iran June 3, 2016. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS/Files

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Extending U.S. sanctions on Iran for 10 years would breach the Iranian nuclear agreement, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said on Wednesday, warning that Tehran would retaliate if the sanctions are approved.

The U.S. House of Representatives re-authorized last week the Iran Sanctions Act, or ISA, for 10 years. The law was first adopted in 1996 to punish investments in Iran’s energy industry and deter Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The Iran measure will expire at the end of 2016 if it is not renewed. The House bill must still be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama to become law.

Iran and world powers concluded the nuclear agreement, also known as JCPOA, last year. It imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in return for easing sanctions that have badly hurt its economy.

“The current U.S. government has breached the nuclear deal in many occasions,” Khamenei said, addressing a gathering of members of the Revolutionary Guards, according to his website.

“The latest is extension of sanctions for 10 years, that if it happens, would surely be against JCPOA, and the Islamic Republic would definitely react to it.”

The U.S. lawmakers passed the bill one week after Republican Donald Trump was elected U.S. president. Republicans in Congress unanimously opposed the agreement, along with about two dozen Democrats, and Trump has also criticized it.

Lawmakers from both parties said they hoped bipartisan support for a tough line against Iran would continue under the new president.

President-elect Trump once said during his campaign that he would “rip up” the agreement, drawing a harsh reaction from Khamenei, who said if that happens, Iran would “set fire” to the deal.

The House of Representatives also passed a bill last week that would block the sale of commercial aircraft by Boeing and Airbus to Iran.

The White House believes that the legislation would be a violation of the nuclear pact and has said Obama would veto the measure even if it did pass the Senate.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, editing by Larry King)

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Sporadic Attacks Reveal Fragility of Israel-PA Security Cooperation

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Fatah, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian incitement, Palestinian terrorists, West Bank
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Sporadic Attacks Reveal Fragility of Israel-PA Security Cooperation, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Yaakov Lappin, November 22, 2016

1890IDF photo

A spate of terrorist attacks involving Palestinian Authority (PA) security personnel turning their firearms on Israelis is placing a strain on the discreet security cooperation place between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the PA’s armed forces in the West Bank.

Guided by a common interest to repress Hamas and maintain stability, Israel’s defense establishment and the PA’s security forces cooperated on security affairs throughout a wave of largely unorganized Palestinian violence over the past year and a half.

The PA’s raids against Hamas and Islamic Jihad cells in the West Bank represent around 20 percent of all counter-terrorism raids there, according to official Israeli figures.

Yet a series of shootings by armed PA personnel, targeting Israeli soldiers and civilians, is a warning signal that provides clues to the fragility of this cooperation.

In the most recent attack, PA police officer Muhammad Turkaman, 25, fired his automatic weapon at a group of Israeli soldiers on Oct. 31, wounding three. He was shot and killed in the return fire at a checkpoint near Ramallah.

Turkman was from the northern West Bank town of Kabatiya, which produced several terrorists recently.

After the attack, the PA security forces spokesman Adnan Damiri denied that the shooting indicated a trend, and dismissed the idea that the PA security forces were becoming a threat to Israel, according to an Israel Radio report.

Turkaman’s attack was a response to a home search conducted by members of his own security organization, during which illegal firearms were seized, Damiri claimed.

Security sources in Israel told the Investigative Project on Terrorism that since October 2015, five Palestinian Authority security personnel carried out terrorist attacks against Israel.

Nevertheless, throughout recent years, security cooperation has continued.

The sources declined to discuss the ultra-sensitive question of whether these incidents challenge future cooperation.

The ability by Israel and the PA’s 30,000-strong security forces to work together on the ground is a litmus test of regional stability. So far, the cooperation has weathered the challenges, but each new attack by a member of the PA security forces represents a new crack. .

The ruling Fatah movement glorified Turkman’s shooting on its official Facebook page, Palestinian Media Watch reported. Separate Facebook posts described Turkman as a “heroic martyr,” and the “the Martyr police officer.”

Fatah claimed Turkman was a special forces member, and included photos of him posing with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Away from such rhetoric, the cooperation quietly goes on. On Nov. 5, the PA foiled a bombing plotted against the IDF near Hebron, arresting a terrorist from the West Bank city of Kalkilya who planted a large explosive device. The PA alerted the IDF to the danger, which diffused the bomb.

The PA periodically conducts such operations, often drawing fierce condemnation and outrage from its arch-rival, Hamas in Gaza.

The big picture can appear contradictory; official PA ruling entities often promote and enable incitement to violence, while Palestinian security forces are under orders to continue cooperating with the IDF.

That’s because preventing Hamas and Islamic Jihad from taking over the West Bank is as much a PA interest as it is an Israeli one.

And yet, the orders to cooperate with Israel have not prevented a growing number of Palestinian personnel from breaching their directives. The question of when – and if – these attacks might no longer be seen as rogue is critical.

On Jan. 31, an armed PA employee fired on a group of IDF solders near Ramallah, wounding three, before being shot dead in return fire.

In a statement following the attack, the Palestinian police force did not bother to condemn the shooting, announcing that “with great pride, the members of the Palestinian police eulogize the brave martyrdom of their colleague, Master Sergeant Amjad Sukkari… who committed the operation at V.I.P checkpoint in Beit El.”

Similarly, last December, a PA intelligence officer opened fire near Hizma, northeast of Jerusalem, wounding an IDF soldier and an Israeli Arab civilian. He was killed in return fire.

A month earlier, a PA security officer used a Kalashnikov to fire on an IDF patrol. The gunman was later turned over to PA custody by his father, and is serving a 10-year prison sentence in a Palestinian prison.

In June 2015, a member of a terror cell that shot dead an Israeli civilian in the West Bank was a PA intelligence agency member.

PA employees and police officers also carried out attacks during the Intifada that broke out in 2002, though on a much larger scale. During that period, they were acting under official policy set by then-PA President Yasser Arafat to pursue armed conflict and terrorism. Although Mahmoud Abbas is not known to have enacted similar policies, the PA continues to pay the families of dead terrorists and provide support for those imprisoned by Israel, records show. It is unclear whether that policy will apply to those PA employees carrying out the recent attacks.

A big difference between the bloody days of the Second Intifada, which raged 15 years ago, and today is that the PA’s armed forces and the IDF are, for the majority of the time, not shooting at one another. Instead they remain in communication and coordinate some of their activities.

Only a complete halt of the succession of terror attacks by PA security personnel can rule out the return of a wider clash.

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Europe Begins to Take Immigration Seriously

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Europe, Europe and BREXIT, Europe and President Elect Trump, European "democracy", European establishment, European Union - disintegration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation
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Europe Begins to Take Immigration Seriously, Counter Jihad, November 22, 2016

seriously

The victory of Donald Trump cements the fear among European elites that was first stoked by Brexit. Can they change quickly enough for their voters?

The Prime Minister of France says that both his nation and Germany are in danger, and the European Union may fall apart.  The hazard?  Governments refusing to listen to their people’s concerns about immigration and Islamist terror.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Britons’ vote to leave the EU, and Valls said the bloc, which more than a million migrants entered last year, had to regain control of its borders.

He said the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election victory showed how important it was to listen to angry citizens, and that politicians scared of making decisions were opening the door to populists and demagogues.

Valls is worried chiefly about France’s National Front party, which has a number of similarities to the forces that recently won stunning come-from-behind victories in the United Kingdom and the United States.  In the United States, the election of Donald Trump came in large part because of his frequently repeated promises to get tough on immigration.  In the United Kingdom, the so-called “Brexit” campaign struck a blow for Merry England.  Though there are significant security challenges associated with Brexit, in all the results have so far been reassuring to those who backed the Leave campaign.  Voters in that nation reasserted control over their national destiny and character, with the result that in the wake of this election concerns about immigration fell to a recent low among English citizens.  Though immigration concerns remain the single largest issue for Britons, it has in the wake of Brexit fallen to the level of an ordinary political concern — only a few more citizens are very worried about it than are very worried about poverty, for example.

In Germany, however, concerns about immigration are still sky high.

On the other side of the scale are nations like Germany, where a grand total of 15 per cent of residents are immigrants and 38 per cent express concern, and Sweden where 14 per cent are immigrants and 36 per cent are worried.

Also high among German concerns is worries about crime and extremism. Thirty-five per cent of Germans told interviewers they were worried about terror, 28 per cent about extremism, and 36 per cent about crime and violence.

The result has been the repeated success of political movements in Germany at the local levels.  Even Angela Merkel has begun to take notice.  During her recent trip to Niger, the German leader cautioned refugees not to come to Germany.  Ostensibly she is worried about the rate of drownings associated with refugee ships crossing the Mediterranean sea.  However, like Valls, she has to be feeling the pressure of the electoral wave.

Merkel’s shift puts her in good company.  Self-described “liberal” politicians in Germany are also now demanding a new crackdown on immigrants, especially those who — as these politicians phrase it — “reject our state and act against our social order.”  It is pretty clear to what that coded language intends to refer.  However, if anyone doubts that the issue is radical Islam, they need only look to the proposed policy solution:  “an expansion of faith-led Islamic classes, which they say should be taught under state supervision in German, by teachers with full training.”  (Emphasis added.)

That move to take direct government control of how Islam is taught represents a solution far too radical for Americans, whose First Amendment protects the church from any such government intervention.  Nevertheless, that such solutions are even under discussion should go a long way to demonstrating that the public’s patience with governing elites is largely gone.  A political community is not just a market, as Aristotle said, but a group bound by shared values and common beliefs.  That basic idea, as old as ancient Greece, is being restored to its central role in public life by another Greek idea:  democracy.

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Woolworths in German Town Cancels Christmas

Posted November 23, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Christmas, Germany, Islamic invasion, Islamisation
Tags: , , ,

Woolworths in German Town Cancels Christmas, Clarion Project, November 23, 2016

woolworths-paul-townsend-flickr-hp

A local Woolworths store in North Dortmund, Germany has decided to skip Christmas this year. After receiving their entire Christmas sections – which included decorations, gifts and special holiday treats – the store, which is located in a predominately Muslim area, removed the entire display.

As reported by the UK’s Express, a staff member reportedly told inquiring customers, “We are a Muslim business now. We do not want to sell Christmas articles.”

Diana Presisert, a spokesperson for the company said although Woolworths was not a Muslim company, “In this branch …, however, demand was too low. Therefore the goods were distributed to other branches.”

Since the store was in a mainly Muslim area, “local conditions” justified the move, she said.

Christians currently make up only one-third of the population of North Dortmund after thousands of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were settled in the industrial town in the Ruhr Valley since 2015 when Germany began accepting immigrants en masse.

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