They may simply be seizing the opportunity not to return to Afghanistan. Or they may be jihadis. No way to tell. But to question these training programs on the grounds that they may constitute a threat to national security would have been “Islamophobic.”
“Missing Afghans Raise Terrorism Fears,” by Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon, September 27, 2016 (thanks to Cecilia):
Several Afghan nationals undergoing military training in the United States disappeared from U.S. military bases this month, according to Pentagon and Homeland Security officials.
“During the month of September, seven Afghan students were considered absent without leave (AWOL) during international military student programs,” Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Patrick L. Evans said.
Three of the Afghan military trainees fled from a Pentagon training program two weekends ago during the bombing spree in New York and New Jersey by Afghan-born bombing suspect Ahmad Rahami, raising concerns among security officials that the missing Afghan students may be linked to terrorism or plans for attacks in the United States.
The disappearance of the Afghans comes amid heightened fears of increasing Islamist terror attacks around the country. The attacks have included the New York area bombings and attempted bombings, a knife attack at a Minnesota mall by a Somali jihadist, and other regional shootings.
Two of the missing Afghans had been training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and one was training at Fort Gordon, Georgia.
An Army source said the Afghans who left the weekend of the New York area bombings appeared to be part of a coordinated effort. The three men are being probed for possible connections to Rahami. “Initial assessment is that there is not relation and the timing is coincidental,” the source said.
Evans declined to comment on whether the Pentagon has security concerns about the missing Afghans.
Sarah Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, said authorities are pursuing the Afghans.
“ICE Homeland Security Investigations is aware of the situation, and is actively working to locate these individuals in coordination with the State Department and the Department of Defense,” she said, declining specifics because of the ongoing investigation.
However, the service, which tracks illegal aliens, was notified of the missing Afghans.
Four other Afghan military trainees fled over the Labor Day weekend, two from Fort Benning, Georgia, one from Fort Lee, Virginia, and one from an Army facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.
A defense official said two of the Afghans were accounted for and suggested the two men may have fled the United States.
It is not the first time Afghan military students have disappeared. Two maintenance airmen from the Afghan Air Force disappeared from Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in December. One was later found in Virginia….
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to overturn President Obama’s veto of a bill letting families of Sept. 11 victims sue the Saudi Arabian government, bringing Congress within reach of completing the first successful veto override of Obama’s presidency.
The Senate voted 97-1 to reject the veto. The measure heads next to the House, where lawmakers will need to muster a two-thirds majority, as in the Senate, to override.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking on the Senate floor moments before Wednesday’s vote, pushed back hard on Saudi government objections to the legislation, which has broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
“It’s very simple. If the Saudis were culpable, they should be held accountable. If they had nothing to do with 9/11, they have nothing to fear,” Schumer said.
An override now appears all but certain and would mark a blow to the president in the final months of his term.
A group of senators pledged to find ways to improve the measure during a postelection, lame-duck session of Congress. With elections just over a month away, many lawmakers are reluctant to oppose a measure backed by 9/11 families who say they are still seeking justice 15 years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The White House was still fighting the override attempt in the final stages.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Obama warned the bill could cause chaos in U.S. foreign affairs, as other countries would use the measure to justify the creation of ways to target “U.S. policies and activities that they oppose.”
“As a result, our nation and its armed forces, State Department, intelligence officials and others may find themselves subject to lawsuits in foreign courts.” Obama wrote in a letter delivered Tuesday.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in a letter Monday to a senior member of Congress, said he’s sympathetic to the intent of the measure. But the legislation could lead to the public disclosure of American secrets and even undercut counterterrorism efforts by sowing mistrust among U.S. partners and allies, according to Carter.
If the House also overrides, the bill would become law. During his nearly two full terms in office, Obama has never had a veto overridden by Congress.
The legislation gives victims’ families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
Courts would be permitted to waive a claim of foreign sovereign immunity when an act of terrorism occurs inside U.S. borders, according to the terms of the bill. Saudi Arabia has objected vehemently to the legislation.
Obama vetoed the measure last week, telling lawmakers the bill would make the U.S. vulnerable to retaliatory litigation in foreign courts that could put U.S. troops in legal jeopardy.
But the bill’s proponents have disputed Obama’s rationale as “unconvincing and unsupportable,” saying the measure is narrowly tailored and applies only to acts of terrorism that occur on U.S. soil.
Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow and co-chair of September 11th Advocates, criticized Carter’s assessment, saying that the defense secretary had testified before Congress last week that he wasn’t an expert on the bill.
(Update and a tip of the hat to Conservative Tree House: Here’s a 1997 video of Mr. Trump and Ms. Machado discussing her weight problem. — DM)
(Here’s an interesting video in which “fat shamed” Ms. Machado admits that she was the getaway driver in the attempted murder referenced in the article.
Oh well. That was long ago and she is not “perfect.” Currently, Ms. Machado is presented in some pretty raunchy porn videos. There’s more here about the lovely Ms. Machado. What a marvelous role model for Hillary’s anti-misogynist “feminist” fans.– DM)
MIAMI, FL – AUGUST 20: Actress and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado campaigns for Hillary Clinton on August 20, 2016 in Miami, Florida. Credit: MPI10 / MediaPunch/IPX
The Venezuelan beauty queen Hillary Clinton mentioned during the debate with Donald Trump Tuesday night has a dark history with the law, it has emerged. While she was still living in Venezuela, Alicia Machado was accused of driving the getaway car after an attempted murder but “got off” due to lack of evidence. She also stands accused of threatening a judge.
Clinton cited Machado — the first woman to win the Miss Universe beauty contest after Donald Trump took over the reins in 1996 — as an example of Trump’s boorish misogyny.
“One of the worst things he’s said was about a woman in a beauty contest — he loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them,” Clinton said with a smug smile while Trump grimaced in the background. “And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado!”
What Clinton left out of this harrowing sob story is the fact that Machado had broken her contract with the Miss Universe pageant by allowing herself to gain nearly 60 pounds — ballooning from 118 to 178 pounds — since she won Miss Universe. And when the media started fat-shaming her, Trump defended her.
In January of 1997, CNN reported that “as her universe expanded, so did she, putting on nearly 60 pounds.”
“Some people when they have pressure eat too much. Like me. Like Alicia,” said Donald Trump, the executive producer of the Miss Universe Pageant.Since winning the crown, the former Miss Venezuela went from 118 pounds to — well — a number that kept growing like the size of the fish that got away.
Rumors also surfaced that she might be forced to give up her Miss Universe crown.
But Trump, as co-owner of rights to the pageant, said he would never let that happen. “We had a choice of: termination or do this,” he said. “We wanted to do this.”
The pageant’s meaning of “do this” was for Machado to get her weight down to about 130 pounds. At a recent photo op, Machado — hardly a blimp at 5-foot-7 — pedaled a stationary bicycle and jumped rope in front of a pack of photographers and reporters who could themselves use a little training.
“A lot of you folks have weight problems. I hate to tell you,” Trump told the rowdy pool of reporters.
In private, Trump admits to “fat-shaming” Machado in order to inspire her to lose the weight. As Jeff Dunetz put it: “Trump’s reaction was no different than any coach or manger faced with an athlete who let themselves go.” Arguably, this episode was not one of his finest moments — but it’s still light years better than the time Hillary gleefully defended a child rapist (since we’re bringing up stories from decades past).
Machado has complained that the humiliation she suffered because of Trump was unbearable: “After that episode, I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said. “Over the past 20 years, I’ve gone to a lot of psychologists to combat this.”
This brought to mind the story of Kathy Shelton, who was just 12 years old when a 41-year-old drifter brutally raped her on the side of an Arkansas road in 1975. Hillary Clinton defended the animal and got his sentence reduced from first-degree rape to “unlawful fondling of a minor.”
Shelton said she was physically beaten during the attack.’I can’t cuss, but [Taylor] was calling me the ‘b’ word, and [saying] ‘You like it, you know it’,’ said Shelton. ‘Slapping me and hitting me with his fist.’
A witness to the assault told the prosecutor that ‘he overheard Thomas Taylor having had sexual relations with the victim’.
Medical examinations ‘reflected that the victim herein had, in fact, had sexual relations consistent with the time stated by her wherein she was attacked,’ according to court filings.
Shelton said she managed to escape her attackers to a nearby house that had a light on, and later woke up in the hospital.
Shelton recounted the brutal assault that she said left her with severe internal and external injuries. She said she was knocked into a coma, and later required stitches in her genital area.
‘When I came out of the coma, I had several stitches down there. They tore me up bad,’ she said. ‘The doctors said there was a 99 percent chance I couldn’t have kids. I have been with a couple men after that, it took me a long time to grow there. But I never had any kids.’
As a result of the attack, Shelton said doctors told her it was unlikely she would ever be able to have children. She said she was devastated by the prognosis.
‘When I was younger I really wanted a kid so bad,’ said Shelton, who has never had children. ‘I love kids.’
Shelton told the Daily Beast in an emotional interview in the summer of 2014 that she was afraid of men for many years after that, and dealt with anger issues well into her adulthood.
At one point, she turned to drugs, a path that ultimately led her to prison. Now 52, she has never married or had children. She said she has been sober for several years and has achieved a level of stability, although she remains unemployed and living on disability assistance.
“Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” Shelton said.
“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing,” Clinton, then named Hillary D. Rodham, wrote in the affidavit. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”Clinton also wrote that a child psychologist told her that children in early adolescence “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences,” especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”
The victim vigorously denied Clinton’s accusations and said there has never been any explanation of what Clinton was referring to in that affidavit. She claims she never accused anyone of attacking her before her rape.
“I’ve never said that about anyone. I don’t know why she said that. I have never made false allegations. I know she was lying,” she said. “I definitely didn’t see older men. I don’t know why Hillary put that in there and it makes me plumb mad.”
Later on, Clinton would laugh about the case with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed, who was researching an article on the Clintons that was ultimately never published.
In the reporter’s audio recordings (uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon), Clinton “appears to acknowledge that she was aware of her client’s guilt, brags about successfully getting the only piece of physical evidence thrown out of court, and laughs about it all whimsically.”
“He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” Clinton says on the recording, failing to hold back some chuckles.
This from a woman who bills herself as a leading advocate for women and children. Apparently, as far as Clinton is concerned, Trump’s “fat-shaming” was far, far worse than her blaming the child victim of a brutal rape.
In February of 1998, the Associated Press reported that Machado threatened the judge handling the above investigation:
A Venezuela judge said Thursday a former Miss Universe threatened to kill him after he indicted her boyfriend for attempted murder. Venezuelan beauty queen Alicia Machado threatened “to ruin my career as a judge and … kill me,” Judge Maximiliano Fuenmayor said on national television.___
The victim’s family accused Machado of driving the getaway car, but Fuenmayor has not indicted her, citing insufficient evidence. The judge said there were no witnesses to place Machado at the scene _ or to back up her claim she was home sick at the time.
Machado could not be reached for comment Thursday. She was in the city of Maracay filming a soap opera Thursday, according to Mariela Castro of Venevision TV network. Machado’s lawyer was also unavailable for comment.
Fuenmayor said he planned to open a new case against Machado for Wednesday’s threatening phone call.
Machado told Inside Edition she’s voting for Clinton in November and she hopes her story will urge others to do the same.
Kathy Shelton — for one — will not be heeding her call.
(Even if Hillarys’ top aide Huma Abedin, like the Islamic State, has “nothing to do with Islam,” the article provides insights into the thinking of those who do. — DM)
Syed Abedin, the father of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma, outlined his view of Sharia law and how the Western world has turned Muslims “hostile” during a wide-ranging video interview that shines newfound light on the reclusive thinker’s world views, according to footage exclusively obtained by theWashington Free Beacon.
Abedin, a Muslim scholar who was tied to the Saudi Arabian government until his death in 1993, has remained somewhat of a mystery as the media turns its eye to his daughter Huma, a top Clinton campaign aide who recently announced her separation from husband Anthony Weiner following his multiple sex scandals.
Syed Abedin explained his views on the Muslim world and spread of Islam during a 1971 interview titled The World of Islam, which was first broadcast on Western Michigan University television.
Abedin said that Arab states must police the upholding of Sharia, or Islamic law, and explained why the majority of Muslims view Israel and the Western world in primarily “hostile” terms.
The video provides a window into the Abedin family’s ideology, which has been marred by accusations it is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abedin, who was then a professor in the university’s college of general studies, said that Western intervention in the Arab world has sparked a backlash among many faithful Muslims.
“The response to the West has been of two kinds,” Abedin said. “By and large the response has taken more of a hostile form.”
“The first impulse of the average Muslim in the Islamic world is that this kind of borrowing [culturally] would be somehow an alien factor into our social fabric and thereby destroying the integrity of our ethos … the integrity of our culture,” he added.
In a separate discussion on the state’s role in a person’s life, Abedin said it is necessary to police the application of Sharia law.
“The state has to take over” as Muslim countries evolve, he argued. “The state is stepping in in many countries … where the state is now overseeing that human relationships are carried on on the basis of Islam. The state also under Islam has a right to interfere in some of these rights given to the individual by the Sharia.”
“Suspicion” runs rampant in the Muslim world, Abedin said, citing it as a reason why Western governing values have not been quickly adopted in the region.
“In the contemporary Islamic world, religious leadership is of very crucial significance because any change that will be abiding, that will make any positive contribution to the development of Muslim life, must come from that source, and that is one reason why ideologies like socialism or communism that have been introduced into the Muslim world have never really taken root,” Abedin said. “They have always been considered as foreign importations. … It’s a kind of suspicion.”
Abedin also discussed the clash between modernity and the Islamic world.
“When you talk of an Islamic state … does it have to have a caliph?” he asked. “What does it mean? What is the Islamic concept of good in the present day world?”
Any cultural change, Abedin concluded, will have to be validated by the tenets of Islam.
“The main dynamics of life in the Islamic world are still supplied by Islam,” he said. “Any institution, as I said before, any concept, any idea, in order to be accepted and become a viable thing in the Islamic world has to come through … Islam.”
Abedin’s views on religion have become a central topic among those who have questioned Clinton’s choice to elevate Human Abedin into such a prominent role.
The Abedins helped create the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, a publication accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and of promoting a hardline Islamic ideology.
Huma Abedin served as an assistant editor of the journal for 12 years and also played a role in its offshoot, the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a think-tank established in Saudi Arabia by an accused financier of the al Qaeda terror group, according to the Jerusalem Post.
♦ Why has the philosopher, Michel Onfray, become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that “Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites.”
♦ Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He “forgets” that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that “ISIS kills innocent people”, Onfray will reply: “We have also killed innocent people.” It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
♦ The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at “inequality” as the root of ISIS’s success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just “small incidents”.
♦ Famous representatives of European culture also embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for Western freedoms and democracy.
After September 11, 2001, the cream of European intellectuals immediately started to find justifications for jihad. They evidently were fascinated by the Kalashnikov assault rifle, “the weapon of the poor”. For them, what we had seen in New York was a chimera, an illusion. The mass killings were supposedly the suicide of the capitalist democracy, and terrorism was the wrath of the unemployed, the desperate weapon of a lumpenproletariat offended by the arrogance of Western globalization.
These intellectuals have sown seeds of despair in a large Western echo-chamber. From 9/11 to the recent massacres on European soil, the murdered Westerners are portrayed as just collateral victims in a war between “the system” and the damned of the earth, who are only claiming a place at the table.
One of these intellectuals is Michel Onfray. It has been a while since we heard the expression: “Useful idiot.” The cynical expression is often attributed to Lenin, and was used to designate Western sympathizers who justified the horrors of Communism. The French magazine L’Expressused it for Onfray: “the useful idiot of Islamism“.
When his “Atheist Manifesto” was published in 2005, Onfray could never have imagined that ten years later, he would become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State (ISIS). Yet, on November 21, 2015, a week after the massacres in Paris, Onfray appeared in a propaganda video of the Islamic State. A few days later, Onfray, this idol of the reflexive European middle class, said that a “truce could be signed between ISIS and France“.
Onfray just gave another interview to the magazine Famille Chrétienne, where he explained that there is no moral difference between “killing innocent lives of women, children and elderly” and “state terrorism” — between ISIS and the Western war on terror.
Onfray is the most widely read French philosopher in the world and has dethroned Michel Serres, Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. This philosopher, drunk with the Enlightenment, has written 80 books, translated into nearly 30 languages. He is not a Marxist, but a libertarian hedonist. According to Onfray, the entire Judeo-Christian heritage prevents free, loving enjoyment. Hence his insistence, ultimately, that the Western civilization is “dead.”
How did this great hedonist, the theorist of materialism and atheism, become the darling of Islamist cutthroats? Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused him of having “lost his bearings.”
When Onfray calls for a truce with the Islamic State, it is because he believes that France is responsible for what happened to itself. In his recent book Penser l’islam (“Thinking Islam“), Onfray wrote: “If we look at the historical facts and not at the emotions, the West attacked first.” France is supposedly reaping what it has sown. Of course Islamists kill and massacre, but it is not their fault, as the West, in his view, previously attacked them.
Onfray also gave the impression of finding more excuses for ISIS by speaking a French “Islamophobia.” Why has Onfray has become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that “Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites.” Talking to Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2013, Onfray even defended the right of Islamists to apply Islamic sharia law in Mali.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (left) was one of many European intellectuals and artists who embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Today, French philosopher Michel Onfray (right) has become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State, with his view that, while Islamists kill and massacre, it is not their fault; he blames the victims, because “the West attacked first.”
Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He “forgets” that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that “ISIS kills innocent people”, Onfray will reply: “We have also killed innocent people.” It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! The 130 French people killed on November 13, 2015 are just puppets of the West. With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
Onfray belongs to a long list of charlatans who abound among Europe’s intellectuals. Writing forLe Monde, the most famous living German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, claimed that “jihadism is a modern form of reaction to the living conditions characterized by uprooting.” Someone should have explained to him that all the terrorists were well integrated into the French and Belgian democracies, and living with welfare subsidies.
Another celebrity-philosopher, the Slovenian neo-Marxist guru Slavoj Zizek, argued that Islamism may seem reactionary, but “in a curious inversion religion is one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today’s society. It has become one of the sites of resistance.” Zizek also claimed that “Islamo-Fascists” and “European anti-immigrant racists” are “the two sides of the same coin.”
The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at “inequality” as the root of ISIS’s success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just “small incidents“.
José Saramago, a Nobel laureate for literature, claimed that flying two planes into the Twin Towers was “revenge against the humiliation”.
There were also those, like the French thinker Jean Baudrillard, who said that the attacks on the Twin Towers were actually desired by the United States. In short, Islamic terrorists did it, but we had really wanted it. Or to quote from the famous German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the attack on the World Trade Center was “the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos.”
The peak of cynicism was reached by Dario Fo, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, who said after 9/11:
“The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre [of 9-11], this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation”.
It has happened before. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, writers such as Knut Hamsun and Louis Ferdinand Céline, musicians such as Wilhelm Furtwangler and Ernst von Karajan, are just some of the most famous representatives of European culture who embraced Adolf Hitler’s dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for the Western freedoms and democracy.
The Canadian Red Cross has funded a teachers’ guide depicting Canadian society as practicing a “terrorist ideology of hate” against Muslims.
The guide, written ostensibly to coach teachers on how to help Syrian refugee children adapt, suggests that “hate,” “discrimination” and “Islamophobia” amount to a terrorist ideology, and that non-Muslim Canadians are its perpetrators. The solution is Islam, the guide says.
“The core values and central tenants of Islam are immutable,” it says, “and are the best counter-narrative to the terrorist ideology of hate.”
The Red Cross is expressing vague misgivings about the publication.
“The original intention… was to provide educators with a resource to help children deal with cultural transition and possible trauma due to war and significant cultural change,” the charity’s spokesperson said in an interview. “In our view, the majority of the publication achieves its intended purpose, but there are specific areas that we don’t feel fit with its original intention.”
To produce the booklet, the Red Cross gave $3,000 from its “Syrian refugee resettlement fund” to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), formerly CAIR-Canada. The group changed its name three years ago after its parent organization, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was repeatedly shown to have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Canada has accepted 31,000 Syrian refugees in the past year, but the guide shows less concern for refugee children than for “Canadian Muslim youth.” The word “refugees” does not even appear in the title, “A Guide for Educators: Helping Students Deal with Trauma Related to Geopolitical Violence & Islamophobia.”
The 16-page booklet portrays Muslim youth as under attack not from Islamic State terrorists or President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian forces, but from non-Muslim Canadians.
“To constantly feel under attack, to have to defend one’s faith, and to be continuously called upon to condemn the actions of criminals and terrorists is emotionally traumatic,” the booklet says.
The word “trauma” appears often, mostly referring to Muslim life in Canada. “Trauma can be related to historical events such as the history of colonization,” the guide says. And: “Being marginalized and categorized as ‘the other’… can be traumatic.”
The guide includes specific tips for teachers. One is to examine oneself for anti-Muslim bias — “recognize your own judgments and biases.” Another is to let Muslims proselytize in schools — “provide space for Muslim students to speak to their peers about their faith.”
In italics, the tip sheet says: “Care should be taken by teachers on the language and tone they take when discussing world events and the Islamic faith.”
TV commentator Ezra Levant put the last point in plainer language. “This is an instruction to anybody working in the school system to shut-up about Islam — it is a favored religion,” he said last week on his online news channel, The Rebel.
The self-described conservative channel sent the Red Cross more than $25,000 this summer to help with forest-fire relief in Fort McMurray, Alberta, but will never donate to the Red Cross again, Levant told viewers of The Ezra Levant Show.
“I think the Red Cross should withdraw its support [for the booklet] and apologize to Canadians,” he said.
Two years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police abruptly cut its collaboration with the NCCM on a “United Against Terrorism” guide. The police force “could not support the adversarial tone” of the booklet, they said.
The Red Cross said its specific objections to the teachers’ booklet include three reprinted op-ed pieces. One is by the head of the Winnipeg-based Islamic Social Services Association, a partner on the booklet, comparing the circumstances of Canadian Muslims to that of Japanese-Canadians interned during World War Two.
“We are in discussions with the organization that produced the publication,” the Red Cross spokesperson said. “I’m not sure what the end result will be.”
Another collaborator on the guidebook was the Canadian Human Rights Commission, an ostensibly neutral federal government body, which “translated the booklet into French to reach a broader audience,” a spokesperson said.
Two years ago, the NCCM sued then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his press secretary for libel when the press secretary referred to NCCM as “an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas.” The case is still before the courts.
Hillary Clinton’s position on the email scandal has repeatedly changed from its first emergence in the presidential campaign from denial of bad judgment to the denial of the use of the private server for any classified information to the denial of any material “marked” as classified to the denial of seeing or understanding classified markings. However, one claim has remained unchanged. Clinton has maintained that she and her staff have “cooperated fully” with investigators. That claim was previously shown to be untrue when it was revealed that neither Clinton nor her staff would agree to speak with State Department investigators even though they said that such interviews were needed to determine the scope any damage to national security or security breaches. Now, however, the lack of cooperation has been put into sharper relief with the testimony of FBI Director James B. Comey this week. My column this week raised serious misgivings over the handling of the investigation with the disclosure of five immunity grants by the Justice Department, including one given to Cheryl Mills. Those misgivings were raised with Comey before the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where Comey revealed the extent to which Clinton aides refused to cooperate, including an assertion of the privilege against self-incrimination raised before answering questions about a key telephone conference conversation before the infamous “bitbleaching” over email records being sought by Congress. Comey testifies today before the House Oversight Committee. I am currently scheduled to discuss these issues tonight on the O’Reilly Factor.
Comey insisted that there was nothing “irregular” about the deal given Mills despite the countervailing concerns detailed in my column. His defense of the immunity deals was that the Clinton staff would not cooperate without being protected from criminal prosecution based on their answers or cooperation. The lack of cooperation was captured in the fact that Mills refused to turn over her laptop without such an immunity grant. This was government information needed in a criminal investigation and Mills refused until they gave her immunity. So here is a laptop with potential criminal information and classified information, but Mills withheld it as leverage for immunity under an “active production immunity” deal.
Corey’s defense of the deal was highly dubious: “The FBI judgment was we need to get to that laptop. We need to see what it is. This investigation’s been going on for a year. And this was, in the negotiation, a tool that her lawyer asked for, that the Department of Justice granted so we could get the laptop.” So the Justice Department gave immunity to one of the highest ranking individuals and the figure most often cited as at risk for criminal charges . . . to get a laptop that the FBI could have secured through a order of production. The assumption of a long drawn out fight also assumed that the public disclosure of the Clinton staff withholding key information would not have forced the hand of Mills. Comey also did not address the bizarre role of Mills who, despite being a key and immunized witness, was allowed to sit in on Clinton’s questioning.
As for Paul Combetta, an employee at Platte River Networks, who deleted information that he reportedly knew was being sought by Congress, Comey insisted that “The department granted immunity to the one fellow who erased the stuff so that we could figure out, did anybody tell you to do this, did anybody ask you do this, to see if we could make an obstruction case — we couldn’t.” So you gave immunity to a witness who was facing a real threat of criminal charge and would be likely eager for a plea bargain? Immunity was not needed to get that individual to cooperate but it is also a questionable defense when you also gave immunity to the very high-ranking officials who was involved in the key decisions over the deletion of the emails.
Magnifying these concerns further is a recent disclosure of FBI material from the investigation, including “302 forms” from FBI interviews. There is a telling passage included in one such report from the end of page 18. The paragraph is assumed to refer to the interview of Combetta or another Platte River employee. When the FBI turned to that key telephone conference with Kendall and Mills. The witness immediately stops cooperating and invokes his privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. It was a telling invocation over a conversation with Clinton’s lawyers. Yet, the Justice Department gave both Combetta and the key Clinton aide in the conversation, Mills, immunity.
Putting aside the questionable judgment behind such immunity grants, one thing is clear: as with the total refusal to cooperate with the State Department investigation, there was a refusal to cooperate with the FBI investigation by key Clinton figures until they received grants of immunity — even without public records.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking September 22 2016 at the Hudson Institute gala in New York City. (Rick Gilbert via JTA)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that outreach between Israel and Russia made sense because of shared concerns about militant Islam, a desire to avoid clashes in Syria, and Russia’s interest in Israeli technology.
Netanyahu appeared in New York on September 22 to receive the Herman Kahn award from the conservative Hudson Institute, named for one of the think tank’s founders.
He was pressed by his interviewer, Roger Hertog, a philanthropist who is one of Hudson’s benefactors, to explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking closer relations with Israel, given Russia’s military backing for the Assad regime in Syria and its sale of an anti-missile system to Iran.
The “first interest is to make sure that militant Islam doesn’t penetrate and destabilize Russia,” Netanyahu replied. “There are many, many millions of Muslims in Russia, including in greater Moscow, I think it’s up to two million. And the concern that Russia has, which many other countries have, is that these populations would be radicalized.”
Another reason is to avoid a clash in airspace bridging Israel and Syria, where Russian combat aircraft are bombing enemies of the regime of Bashar Assad. “We can coordinate in order not to crash and clash with each other,” Netanyahu said.
Given Russia’s influence in Syria, Netanyahu said, Russia was also a useful conduit to keep Israel’s enemies from being empowered. Notably, another Assad ally is Hezbollah, the Iran-allied Shi’ite Lebanese militia that has warred frequently with Israel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) welcomes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on June 7, 2016. (AFP Photo/Pool/Maxim Shipenkov)
“We don’t want to see in the aftermath in Syria, whether with an agreement or without an agreement, we don’t want to see an Iranian military presence, we don’t want to see Shi’ite militias which Iran is organizing from Afghanistan, from Pakistan, and we certainly don’t want to see Iranian game-changing weapons being transferred through Syrian territory to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” the Israeli prime minister said.
Another factor was Russian interest in Israeli technology. Putin is “interested in technology and Israel is a global source of technology in many areas that are of interest to Russia — agriculture, dairy production, you name it, the standard fare.”
Finally, Netanyahu said, Israel has a substantial Russian-speaking minority.
“There’s a cultural, a human bridge,” he said. “We have a million Russian speakers in Israel. These and other reasons, I think, inform Russia’s policies. And I think it’s very important that we have this relationship.”
To applause, Netanyahu reasserted that Israel’s premiere alliance is with the United States.
“With the United States, we certainly have shared interests, but it’s the one alliance we have, and there may be one or two others, but nothing like this, that is based on shared values,” he said.
Posted September 28, 2016 by Joseph Wouk Categories: Uncategorized
German, Canadian, French and Australian heads of state, along with Britain’s Prince Charles, also set to fly to Israel for Friday event; late president’s body to lie in state at the Knesset Thursday
US President Barack Obama meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres in the Oval Office of the White House on June 25, 2014, in Washington, DC (AFP/Mandel Ngan)
Israeli authorities were gearing up for the funeral of the country’s ninth president, Shimon Peres, who died early Wednesday morning at the age of 93.
US President Barack Obama would attend the Friday event, the Foreign Ministry said, along with Secretary of State John Kerry. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will also take a break from campaigning to attend the funeral with her husband, former president Bill Clinton, the ministry said. However, Clinton’s campaign reportedly later clarified that she would not be attending.
In addition, Britain’s Prince Charles, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto confirmed their attendance.
A spokesperson for the Catholic Church in Israel dispelled rumors that Pope Francis would attend.
Also named as attendees were the president of Togo, Faure Gnassingbé; the president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis; and Her Royal Highness Beatrix of the Netherlands.
A former aide to Peres said his body would lie in state at the Knesset from Thursday morning before the state funeral, at Mount Herzl, the country’s national cemetery, in Jerusalem.
Yona Bartal, his former aide, told Channel 10 that the plans were in line with Peres’s wishes.
Ben Gurion Airport was gearing up to receive the many world leaders, guests and journalists who are expected to arrive for the funeral. Workers are preparing additional parking areas for the increased number of airplanes that will arrive.
Meanwhile, the Education Ministry instructed schools throughout the country to dedicate an hour Wednesday morning to talk about Peres’s life and deeds.
Peres died in his sleep at around 3 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Rafi Walden, his personal physician who is also his son-in-law, told AFP.
News of Peres’s stroke earlier this month sent shockwaves through the country, which feared the imminent loss of the last surviving link to its founding fathers.
Over a seven-decade career, the elder statesman of Israeli politics and one of the country’s most admired symbols has held virtually every senior political office, including two stints as prime minister and extended terms as foreign, defense and finance minister. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Long a divisive personality in politics, Peres finally became one of Israel’s most popular public figures in his later years.
Times of Israel staff and news agencies contributed to this report.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters, September 22, 2016 in New York City.(Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)
A Saudi daily newspaper mildly chided the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for “automatically” rejecting an invitation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the Israeli Knesset.
Netanyahu issued the invitation to Abbas on Thursday during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Calling for a return to direct negotiations and a stop to Palestinian incitement, the Israeli leader said he would in turn speak to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah.
In its editorial published Sunday, the Saudi Gazette wrote that the Palestinians “should not be too quick to dismiss the invitation,” arguing that it was “reminiscent of the one issued by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to visit Israel — and the rest is history.”
The paper said the invite led to the Camp David Accords — and the signing of a peace treaty — which “demonstrated that negotiations with Israel were possible and that progress could be made through sustained efforts at communication and cooperation.”
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat addresses the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, November 20, 1977 (photo credit: Flash90)
The editorial also cited then-president Bill Clinton’s 1998 trip to Ramallah to address the Palestine National Council, which the paper argues led to the Palestinian leadership recognizing the right of Israel to exist and approving the removal of clauses from the PLO charter that called for its destruction.
“Despite these two examples of how official visits can bend the arc of history, the Palestinians automatically rejected Netanyahu’s invite to Abbas,” the paper wrote, adding that “it is possible that the aim of the invitation was an attempt by Netanyahu to isolate UN attempts to restart and impose a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.”
While acknowledging that Netanyahu “rejects a settlement freeze, will not uproot settlements, rejects the 1967 borders as the basis for talks and rejects any division of Jerusalem,” the editorial argued that before Begin’s invitation to Sadat, Israel and Egypt were “mortal enemies, having fought three wars” and that Camp David called for “a five-year transitional period of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza” which would include “the introduction of Palestinian self-government and an end to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”
“Much of the Arab world derided it as a weak deal. But in hindsight, if the provisions had been carried out, Israel and the Palestinians might not be in the impasse they are in at present,” the Saudi paper argued.
In 2002, Saudi Arabia initiated the Arab Peace Initiative which calls for Israel to cede the territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War in return for full ties with the Arab world.
Israel has rejected the initiative, though in his address on Thursday Netanyahu said Israel welcomed its “spirit.”
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 71st session of United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 22, 2016. (AFP/Jewel Samad)
In his speech, Netanyahu also praised developing relations with regional Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia, saying that they “recognize that Israel is not their enemy but their ally,” and that the “common enemy is Iran and ISIS,” referring to the Islamic State jihadist group based in Iraq and Syria.
“In coming years, we will work together openly,” Netanyahu said Thursday, adding that Israeli relations with these countries were “undergoing nothing less than revolution.”
“The change taking place in the Arab world offers a unique opportunity to advance peace,” he added.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
Recent Comments