Fears of Being Branded ‘Racist’ Make Public Services Ignore Female Genital Mutilation

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Female genital mutilation., Islam and females, Sweden
Tags: , ,

Fears of Being Branded ‘Racist’ Make Public Services Ignore Female Genital Mutilation, Gatestone EU, David Frankenhuis, February 7, 2017

According to Swedish public health authorities, some 38,000 women and girls in Sweden have fallen victim to FGM. Even though the practice became part of criminal law in 1982, only two cases led to convictions.

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

During a recent conference in the Swedish city of Gothenburg on the topic of female genital mutilation (FGM), experts dealing with the issue in Europe revealed some alarming facts and trends. Not only is the number of girls falling victim to the cultural tradition increasing, but they are getting younger as well. To make matters worse, many professionals working in health and social services in European countries do not report cases of sexual disfigurement fearing that, if they were to do so, they might be singled out as ‘racists’.

Angie Marriott, a former British nurse and independent consultant with over thirty years professional experience in issues such as honour-based violence, forced marriage, and FGM, was one of the speakers at the congress. More than 300 employees from Sweden’s social services, police, schools, and medical institutions attended the meeting which took place yesterday and had been organised by the County Council and the Västra Götaland Region, Göteborgs Posten reports.

Marriott told the attendants that:

“There exists a great fear among people in authority to be branded ‘racist’. That fear, coupled with the fact that we cannot talk to each other because of language deficiencies, are the biggest obstacles in the fight against FGM.”

In the United Kingdom alone, Marriott claims, some 65,000 girls under the age of 13 are at risk of falling victim to FGM. Less than two months ago, a British charity warned of so-called ‘female genital mutilation parties’ where girls are being cut in cities across England. Researchers working at the City University of London in 2015 estimated there were some 137,000 women who have been subjected to FGM in England and Wales alone, the BBC reports.

‘Midwives flown in for mutilation-parties’

In order to counter the problem, the British government, in 2015, made it mandatory for health workers to report FGM. Since then, some 5700 FGM cases have been registered in the UK. Marriott claims:

“The figures should be much higher,” Many people think that genital mutilation is only happening abroad. Today, we know that this is not the situation. We know that midwives are flown in and cut the girls during ‘mutilation-parties.”

FGM in Sweden

Since the Swedes have witnessed an influx of migrants from countries such as Somalia, Egypt, and Eritrea, where FGM is part of culture and religion, the Scandinavian country is no stranger to the phenomenon.

Johannes Leidinger, head of a hospital in Stockholm, pointed at a worrying trend:

“The number of genital mutilation cases is increasing globally. We also see that female genital mutilation is carried out on increasingly younger children. Therefore, we must intensify the fight against female genital mutilation even more.”

According to Swedish public health authorities, some 38,000 women and girls in Sweden have fallen victim to FGM. Even though the practice became part of criminal law in 1982, only two cases led to convictions.

Comments: Be the first to comment

In trouble, Iran tries to discredit the MEK – dissidents

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Iran - human rights, Iran - political prisoners, Iran - world power, Iran lies, Iran lobby, Iran scam, Iranian dissidents, Iranian Islam, Iranian media, Iranian prisoners, Iranian resistance, MEK, Obama and Iran, Trump and Iran, Trump and Iran scam
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In trouble, Iran tries to discredit the MEK – dissidents, Iran Focus, February 6, 2017

mek-rally-750

London, 7 Feb – As President Donald Trump’s new US administration steps up pressure on Iran over its belligerent activities, Iranian opponents are arguing that Tehran is now targeting its main organised opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI or MEK), with disinformation in order to discredit its role as a potential alternative to the theocratic regime.

The MEK, established over 51 years ago, as an opposition movement to the Shah’s regime, soon fell out with the clerical government that took over with the 1979 revolution. Since 1981, the MEK has been considered as the ruling theocracy’s main nemesis. The MEK is also the leading force in the main opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Following the publication of articles by the Iranian ‘lobby’ targeting the MEK with ‘misinformation’, Farzin Hashemi, a Member of the NCRI Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote on Monday:

“Over the past week, once again policy on Iran was widely discussed in the media. Simultaneously, in recent weeks there has been more growing call for a new approach toward Iranian opposition, the MEK. The announcement by the US National Security Advisor that ‘Iran is officially on notice’ drew much attention. This position was followed by more Tweets from President Trump and a new round of sanctions, raising the prospect of a change of policy in the US approach towards Iran”.

Hashemi pointed out that both the NCRI and the MEK support sanctions against Iranian officials over their role in ballistic missile proliferation, a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231:

“As far as the Iranian Resistance, and its components including the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI), is concerned imposing sanctions against a number of individuals and companies affiliated to the clerical regime for their role in missile proliferation is a positive step in confronting the illegitimate and terrorist dictatorship whose record includes 120,000 political executions”.

Last week the Trump administration sanctioned 25 Iranian officials and entities for a recent ballistic missile test launch by Tehran. Hashemi argued, however, that in order to deal with the threats emanating from Tehran – which it described as the Godfather of state-sponsored terrorism – the world community ought to impose comprehensive sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), the Ministry of Intelligence, and “other entities involved in suppression of the Iranian people and export of terrorism”.

“The IRGC and its affiliated militias and their commanders must be expelled from the countries of the region, in particular from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Otherwise, the region would not witness peace and tranquillity”.

“The prospect of a shift of US policy, has already shaken not only the Iranian regime and its lobbies but also apologists and advocates of the old and failed policy of appeasement. In order to maintain the ‘golden era,’ a term used by the mullahs’ officials internally and sometimes publicly to describe the last few years of US policy on Iran, they have resorted to a two-pronged strategy”, Hashemi argued.

Through their “propaganda in the media”, under various covers, they are trying to create an “echo chamber” with which any suggestion of the need for a firm policy on Iran and its rogue behaviour, both at home and abroad, is described as “war mongering”, he said. “They are desperately trying to intimidate those calling for a change of policy to side with the people of Iran, through such false labels”.

“Simultaneously, they are engaged in a massive disinformation campaign to discredit the democratic opposition, the MEK and the coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), led by its President-elect Maryam Rajavi. By spreading fake news about the MEK/PMOI, originated from the Ministry of Intelligence of the mullahs’ regime and the intelligence section of the IRGC, their objective is to convey this false message that there is no viable opposition and the world must accept and deal with the religious dictatorship ruling Iran. Thus, the core of the issue is not their debunked allegations but their hidden agenda to maintain the policy of appeasement”.

“So, the choice is simply to opt between supporting the central banker of international terrorism with the record of having executed 120,000 dissidents for political reasons –ironically, the majority of them members and sympathizers of the PMOI/MEK – or to side with the Iranian people in their quest for a free and democratic Iran in which there would be no more executions, no more gender discrimination, no more supporting terrorist groups and destabilizing the entire region and no more nuclear weapons program”.

Iranian dissidents have also taken to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to denounce Tehran’s ‘media propaganda ploy’ against the MEK.

On 9 January this year, 23 US prominent dignitaries, many of them with years of public service, urged the Trump administration “to adopt and pursue an Iran policy that recognizes the interests and inalienable rights of the Iranian people, and not just the clerical regime ruling over them.”

Highlighting the failure of the past policy that the nuclear deal might lead to a change of behavior from Tehran, the signatories stressed that the regime’s aggressive policy is part of their efforts on “preserving the vulnerable system of dictatorship”.

They also called for the voice of the Iranian people to be listened to through the NCRI and the MEK.

The former US officials also spoke out against Iran’s misinformation campaign against the MEK.

Pointing out that some “media and policy community continue to recycle defamatory allegations from decades past,” they wrote “We now know that these designations of the resistance as a terrorist group by Western governments were not made in response to confirmed terrorism; all were diplomatic gestures taken at the request of Tehran. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security has for many years impaired the exiled opposition by covertly spreading false and distorted claims through third parties in the West. Other governments like Germany and the Netherlands closely monitor Iran’s influence operations on their soil; a thorough counter‐intelligence investigation by the US is clearly needed and long overdue”.

They concluded by recommending to Trump: “With a more enlightened grasp of the Iranian regime’s priorities and vulnerabilities, your Administration will be equipped to exert leverage enabling the US to oppose Tehran’s repression and adventurism while standing for the fundamental values both our peoples share”.

Hashemi added: “While, Tehran’s lobby and advocates of appeasement will desperately continue to allocate all their resource to discredit the resistance, and in particular the MEK (PMOI) and to preserve the failed old policy, their time is over”.

 

More about the People’s Mojahdin Organization of Iran (PMOI/ MEK) —– Source

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (Also known as MEK, or Mujahedin-e-Khalq / Mujahedeen-e-Khalq), was founded on September 6, 1965, by Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saeed Mohsen, and Ali-Asghar Badizadgan. All engineers, they had earlier been members of the Freedom Movement (also known as the Liberation Movement), created by Medhi Bazargan in May 1961.1

The MEK’s quest culminated in a true interpretation of Islam, which is inherently tolerant and democratic, and fully compatible with the values of modern-day civilization. It took six years for the MEK to formulate its view of Islam and develop a strategy to replace Iran’s dictatorial monarchy with a democratic government.

MEK’s interpretation of Islam

The theocratic mullah regime in Iran believe interpreting Islam is their exclusive domain. The MEK reject this view and the cleric’s reactionary vision of Islam. The MEK’s comprehensive interpretation of Islam proved to be more persuasive and appealing to the Iranian youth.
MEK’s founders and new members studied the various schools of thought, the Iranian history and those of other countries, enabling them to analyze other philosophies and ideologies with considerable knowledge and to present their own ideology, based on Islam, as the answer to Iran’s problems.

MEK’s leadership’s arrest during the 70s.

The Shah’s notorious secret police, SAVAK, arrested all MEK leaders and most of its member’s in1971. On May 1972, the founders of the MEK, Mohammad Hanifnejad , Saeed Mohsen and Ali Asghar Badizadegan, along with two members of the MEK leadership, Mahmoud Askarizadeh and Rasoul Meshkinfam, were put before death squads and were executed after long months of imprisonment and torture. They were the true vanguards, who stood against the dictatorial regime of Shah. However, they are also recognized for their opposition to what is today known as Islamic fundamentalism.

The death sentence of Massoud Rajavi, a member of MEK’s central committee, was commuted to life imprisonment as a result of an international campaign by his Geneva based brother, Dr. Kazem Rajavi (assassinated in April 1990 in Geneva by mullahs’ agents) and the personal intervention of the French President Georges Pompidou and Francois Mitterrand. He was the only survivor of the MEK original leadership.
Massoud Rajavi’s critical role in characterizing religious extremism

From 1975 to 1979, while incarcerated in different prisons, Massoud Rajavi led the MEK’s struggle while constantly under torture for his leading position.

Massoud Rajavi stressed the need to continue the struggle against the shah’s dictatorship. At the same time, he characterized religious fanaticism as the primary internal threat to the popular opposition, and warned against the emergence and growth of religious fanaticism and autocracy. He also played a crucial role when some splinter used the vacuum in the MEK leadership who were all executed or imprisoned at the time, to claim a change of ideology and policy. Massoud Rajavi as the MEK leader condemn these individual’s misuse of MEK’s name while continuing to stress the struggle against dictatorship. His efforts while still in prison forced these individuals to no longer operating under the name of MEK and adopting a different name for their group. These positions remained the MEK’s manifesto until the overthrow of the shah’s regime.

Release of Political Prisoners on the last days of the Shah

A month before the 1979 revolution in Iran, the Shah was forced to flee Iran, never to return. All democratic opposition leaders had by then either been executed by the Shah’s SAVAK or imprisoned, and could exert little influence on the trend of events. Khomeini and his network of mullahs across the country, who had by and large been spared the wrath of SAVAK, were the only force that remained unharmed and could take advantage of the political vacuum. In France, Khomeini received maximum exposure to the world media. With the aid of his clerical followers, he hijacked a revolution that began with calls for democracy and freedom and diverted it towards his fundamentalist goals. Through an exceptional combination of historical events, Shiite clerics assumed power in Iran.

Khomeini’s gradual crackdown on MEK in fear of their popular support

In internal discourses, Rajavi the remaining leader of the MEK, argued that Khomeini represented the reactionary sector of society and preached religious fascism. Later, in the early days after the 1979 revolution, the mullahs, specifically Rafsanjani, pointed to these statements in inciting the hezbollahi club-wielders to attack the MEK.

Following the revolution, the MEK became Iran’s largest organized political party. It had hundreds of thousands of members who operated from MEK offices all over the country. MEK publication, ‘Mojahed’ was circulated in 500,000 copies.

Khomeini set up an Assembly of Experts comprised of sixty of his closest mullahs and loyalists to ratify the principle of velayat-e faqih (absolute supremacy of clerical rule) as a pillar of the Constitution. The MEK launched a nationwide campaign in opposition to this move, which enjoyed enormous popular support. Subsequently, the MEK refused to approve the new constitution based on the concept of velayat-e faqih, while stressing its observance of the law of the country to deny the mullahs any excuse for further suppression of MEK supporters who were regularly targeted by the regime’s official and unofficial thugs.

Khomeini sanctioned the occupation of the United States embassy in 1979 in order to create an anti-American frenzy, which facilitated the holding of a referendum to approve his Constitution, which the MEK rejected.

MEK’s endeavors to participate in the political process avoiding an unwanted conflict with government repressive forces
The MEK actively participated in the political process, fielding candidates for the parliamentary and presidential elections. The MEK also entered avidly into the national debate on the structure of the new Islamic regime, though was unsuccessful in seeking an elected constituent assembly to draft a constitution.

The MEK similarly made an attempt at political participation when [then] Massoud Rajavi ran for the presidency in January 1980. MEK’s leader was forced to withdraw when Khomeini ruled that only candidates who had supported the constitution in the December referendum – which the MEK had boycotted- were eligible. Rajavi’s withdrawal statement emphasized the MEK’s efforts to conform to election regulations and reiterated the MEK’s intention to advance its political aims within the new legal system”. (Unclassified report on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran(PMOI/ MEK) by the Department of State to the United States House of Representatives, December 1984.)

However, the MEK soon found itself in a direct struggle against the forces of the regime’s Supreme leader. The MEK’s differences with Khomeini dated back to the 1970s, and stem from its opposition to what is known today as Islamic extremism. Angry at the position taken by the MEK against his regime and worried about the MEK’s growing popularity, Khomeini ordered a brutal crackdown against the MEK and its supporters. Between 1979 and 1981, some 70 MEK members and sympathizers were killed and several thousand more were imprisoned by the Iranian regime.

June 20, 1981- Khomeini’s order to open fire on peaceful demonstration of half-a-million supporters of MEK

The turning point came on 20th June 1981, when the MEK called a demonstration to protest at the regime’s crackdown, and to call for political freedom which half-a-million supporters participated at. Khomeini ordered the Revolutionary Guards to open fire on the swelling crowd, fearing that without absolute repression the democratic opposition (MEK) would force him to engage in serious reforms – an anathema as far as he was concerned; he ordered the mass and summary executions of those arrested.

Since then, MEK activists have been the prime victims of human rights violations in Iran. Over 120,000 of its members and supporters have been executed by the Iranian regime, 30,000 of which, were executed in a few months in the summer of 1988, on a direct fatwa by Khomeini, which stated any prisoners who remain loyal to the MEK must be executed.

Having been denied its fundamental rights and having come under extensive attack at the time that millions of its members, supporters and sympathizers had no protection against the brutal onslaught of the Iranian regime, the MEK had no choice but to resist against the mullahs’ reign of terror.

“Towards the end of 1981, many of the members of the MEK and supporters went into exile. Their principal refuge was in France. But in 1986, after negotiations between the French and the Iranian authorities, the French government effectively treated them as undesirable aliens, and the leadership of the MEK with several thousand followers relocated to Iraq.” (Judgment of the Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission, November 30, 2007.)

MEK Today

The MEK today is the oldest and largest anti-fundamentalist Muslim group in the Middle East. It has been active for more than a half century, battling two dictatorships and a wide range of issues. The MEK supports:

• Universal suffrage as the sole criterion for legitimacy
• Pluralistic system of governance
• Respect for individual freedoms
• Ban on the death penalty
• Separation of religion and state
• Full gender equality
• Equal participation of women in political leadership. MEK is actually led by its central committee consist of 1000 women.
• Modern judicial system that emphasizes the principle of innocence, a right to a defense, and due process
• Free markets
• Relations with all countries in the world
• Commitment to a non-nuclear Iran

The MEK remains a strong and cohesive organization, with a broad reach both worldwide and deep within Iran. MEK is the leading voice for democracy in Iran, supported by its interpretation of Islam that discredits the fundamentalist mullahs’ regime.

Comments: Be the first to comment

FULL MEASURE: February 5, 2017 – Sanctuary Showdown

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Federal funding, Sanctuary cities
Tags: ,

FULL MEASURE: February 5, 2017 – Sanctuary Showdown via YouTube, February 6, 2017

 

Comments: Be the first to comment

On Watch: Episode 6 – Attorney General Sessions

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Department of Justice, Judicial Watch, Trump administration, Trump agenda
Tags: , , , ,

On Watch: Episode 6 – Attorney General Sessions, Judicial Watch via YouTube, February 7, 2017

 

Comments: Be the first to comment

The Mainstream Media’s Pointless Fixation on Trump and Putin

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: FDR and Stalin, History, Obama and Putin, Russia and Iran, Trump and Iran, Trump and Putin
Tags: , , , , ,

The Mainstream Media’s Pointless Fixation on Trump and Putin, PJ Media, Roger L Simon, February 6, 2017

(According to several recent DEBKAfile articles, Trump and Putin are already working to restrain Iran in Syria. See, e.g., Russia freezes Syrian, Iranian military movements. — DM)

allies

Meanwhile, in the real world, America and the rest of the West have two serious problems. You could even call them crucial — Iran and ISIS.  Putin can help with both.

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

You would think the mainstream media had had a collective lobotomy or is suffering from some mass version of premature Alzheimer’s disease, considering how quickly they have forgotten the red reset button with Russia, the chummy open-mic whisper from Obama to Medvedev, and the even chummier backslapping between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov in their zeal to poleax Donald Trump for his lax attitude toward Vladimir Putin.

Was Putin less an ex-KGB agent in those not so distant Obama days, less a killer? Surely those same media geniuses are not such historical illiterates they have never heard of the KGB’s bloodthirsty antecedents — the GRU, the NKVD, and the Cheka?  As we all know,  or should, Russians, Soviet and otherwise, have been offing each other for a long time — well before Donald Trump came on the scene, although you wouldn’t believe that, considering the swill currently being written by our residents of digital Grub Street.

Have they actually forgotten that FDR dealt regularly with Stalin (indeed was his ally), a dictator whose despotism dwarfed Putin’s and who ended up murdering more people than Hitler? Estimates range from 30 to 60 million.  Nevertheless, Franklin complimented Uncle Joe on more than one occasion over a number of years to get what the American president wanted.  (Attn.: youthful New York Times reporters — in case this surprises you, you can read about it in “Caught between Roosevelt and Stalin: American Ambassadors to Moscow” by Dennis J. Dunn or, more simply, in the columns of your own monstrous Walter Duranty.)

Roosevelt and Churchill sat with Stalin at Yalta, where they cozied up to the general secretary in manners the MSM, or even the fevered swamps of the alt-left, would not dare contemplate about our current president in their most extreme moments of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Yet now even the likes of Charles Krauthammer are all in a dither about Trump’s too friendly attitude toward Bad Vlad — Donald’s supposed (actually cherry-picked and virtually non-existent) declaration of moral equivalency between us and them — as are such Republican stalwarts as Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio. How virtuous of them to remind us ignorant folk of what we have all known for years — Putin’s ugly character and behavior. How astoundingly insightful.  Perhaps they will get a good mention on CNN.

Meanwhile, in the real world, America and the rest of the West have two serious problems. You could even call them crucial — Iran and ISIS.  Putin can help with both. And, as both Vlad and Donald undoubtedly know, Trump has considerable leverage to get that accomplished by muscling Putin economically, if and when Donald chooses to do so.

Horrifying as ISIS is, Iran in particular is becoming increasingly dangerous every day, firing off long-range test missiles right and left that soon will be capable of hitting Europe or even, in one report, Boston. They are also undoubtedly quietly continuing their nuclear research, waiting to mate their spanking new weapons of mass destruction with a 21st century delivery system and become the hegemon of the Middle East.  Obviously Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states are alarmed.  Israel always has been.  The rest of us should be too.

Anyone who believes or trusts in Obama’s Iran deal — clearly the biggest American foreign policy blunder in recent memory — to save us from this situation is, to be blunt, a fool. That deal is our Munich.

Iran must be reined in — and quickly.  Winnowing Russia away from the Islamic Republic is a key part of the solution, though not simple. First the Revolutionary Guards have to be extricated from Syria.  Putin is thought to be nervous about Iranian ambitions himself.  There is opportunity here for Trump.  Instead of blathering on endlessly about how he rates Putin on a scale of ten (Trump has already  stated several times he doesn’t know if he can get along with him), the media should start investigating what’s really happening here geopolitically  and not endlessly parse Trump’s language, looking for an opportunity to pounce.  I can’t imagine anything more useless and self-destructive.

Comments: Be the first to comment

The evolving threat of jihad in the West

Posted February 7, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Our World: The evolving threat of jihad in the West – Opinion – Jerusalem Post

By
06 February 2017 21:25

The very act of mentioning bad behavior carried out by members of a specific group seems inherently bigoted.
islamic state isis

A still image taken from an Islamic State (ISIS) video . (photo credit:REUTERS)

One of the most important stories related to the September 11 attacks was the one that was deliberately left largely untold. That story is the response of some Muslims in America to the massacre of nearly 3,000 people by Islamic supremacists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

According to a Washington Post article published on September 18, 2001, in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from the destroyed World Trade Center, “Within hours of the two jetliners plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”

The New York Post reported on September 15, 2001, that Muslim Americans in Patterson, NJ were also seen celebrating the attacks. Word-of-mouth reports abounded in the weeks and months following September 11 of spontaneous celebrations carried out that day in Dearborn, Michigan, in Virginia and other Muslim American communities.

The most notable aspect of the published reports of the celebrations was that there were so few of them.

After all, the notion that any Muslim Americans would celebrate the jihadist attack was certainly newsworthy.

The stories were suppressed at the time by political leaders. Then New York mayor Rudy Guiliani for instance said the celebrations shouldn’t be reported lest they lead to violent attacks against peaceful Muslims.

Then president George W. Bush rushed to defend and uphold Islam as a “religion of peace,” almost immediately after the attacks. Bush insisted that al-Qaida was a fringe movement and ideology in the world of Islam. Its Islamic supremacism did not reflect either the Islamic faith or the ideology of the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

In 2007, then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice banned US officials from using the terms “jihad,” “Islamic” and “Islamism” in describing Islamic jihad and the ideology of Islamism or in conjunction with discussions of Islamic jihad and terrorism.

Under former president Barack Obama, the war on language went into high gear. Not only were all terms relating to Islam banned from use in the federal government, the term “terrorism” was even purged from the official discourse. Obama dumped the Bush-era term, “War on Terror,” for the even more meaningless phrase, “Overseas Contingency Operations.”

Obama barred the FBI from investigating radical Islamic breeding grounds and replaced surveillance operations with a program called, “Countering Violent Extremism.” Under that program, Islamists were given federal support. The notion was that once they were empowered, they would convince their communities to reject violence.

The US federal government’s actions were far from unique in the Western world. Indeed, when compared to the efforts taken by Europeans to sanitize public discourse of all discussion of Islamic jihadism, America’s efforts look downright moderate. In Europe, almost every mention of Islamism has been barred. Those that have criticized it have been subjected to criminal prosecutions and convictions.

In most cases, the rationales for these efforts to block discussion of the threat of radical Islam have been admirable.

Western nations have long histories of racism and intolerance. On the surface at least, placing a spotlight on the actions of one community, or adherents of one specific religion flies in the face of everything that the nations of the West have come to understand about how racism and bigotry takes root in a society. The very act of mentioning bad behavior carried out by members of a specific group seems inherently bigoted.

The problem with this well-intentioned position was self-evident from the start. It is not bigoted to point out the bigotry of others and to confront and challenge it.

It is bigoted not to do so. Even worse, it is dangerous.

It is impossible to solve a problem like Islamic radicalism by ignoring it. To the contrary, by ignoring it, you ensure that it will grow.

One of the strategically significant aspects of the September 11 attacks is that they showed that Islamic terrorists do not require control of territory to cause massive harm to their enemies and to their enemies’ societies.

On September 11, the 19 hijackers did not occupy downtown Manhattan. They did not drive tanks down 5th Avenue.

Armed with box cutters and informed by a bigoted, supremacist ideology, 19 Islamic terrorists viewed themselves as heroes as they used crude weapons to commit murder on a scale never seen before on American soil.

And after they did so, far from being condemned across the board in the Islamic world, they were celebrated as heroes by a very large number of Muslims not only in the Middle East but in the US and throughout the Western world.

The devastating implications of the US government’s decision to ignore the fact that at least some American Muslims celebrated the attacks were revealed over the weekend in an extraordinary report by Ruchmini Callimacci in the New York Times.

Titled, “Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots from Afar,” Callimacci reported how Islamic State (ISIS) locates and recruits Muslims in countries around the world over the Internet. Once they recruit these adherents, ISIS terror masters in Syria and elsewhere direct them in plotting and carrying out terrorist attacks. These remote commanders dictate the actions of their distant adherents from the moment they make contact with them until just moments before they commit their attacks or are arrested by law enforcement bodies.

ISIS handlers, or commanders, are able to control the actions of their recruits as a platoon commander controls the actions of his soldiers, without ever meeting them. In many cases, the recruits do not even know their handlers’ identities, have never heard their voices and do not know where they are from.

The one thing that joins them to those directing them from thousands of kilometers away is their shared belief in the supremacy of radical Islam over all other ways of life. Their common faith in the justice of acts of mass murder against non-believers is so strong that it bridges the gap between the real and virtual worlds.

ISIS’s mode of operation is a natural progression from the September 11 attacks. Along the way, Anwar al-Awlaki, the commander of al-Qaida forces in Yemen killed in a US drone strike in 2011, was the pioneer of moving the direction of Western jihadists from the physical world to the virtual one. For more than a decade, Awlaki indoctrinated and directed numerous jihadists in the US and the UK. In the beginning Awlaki directed their actions by meeting with them and preaching to them in shared physical space. Later, he decamped to Yemen where he continued his efforts. He preached to them through cassette tapes, through satellite broadcasts and Internet chat rooms. He indoctrinated them through online essays. And he directed their terrorist attacks by email.

An interesting incident in Awlaki’s career came in 1996. At that time, Awlaki was working as a preacher at the Denver Islamic Society. According to a New York Times report from 2010, Awlaki left the mosque, and moved to San Diego shortly after an elder of the mosque upbraided him for telling a mosque member to travel to Chechnya to join the jihad against Russia.

The most revealing aspect of the story is that the elder who criticized Awlaki asked the New York Times not to publish his identity. By 2010, Awlaki had already been publicly implicated in directing scores of Western jihadists to commit attacks in the US and the UK. He was considered the commander of al-Qaida forces in Yemen. And yet, the mosque elder in Denver didn’t feel comfortable openly condemning him.

His aversion indicated where the balance of power in the American Muslim community lies.

Whether or not President Donald Trump is able to reinstitute his executive order mandating a 90-day ban on entry of nationals from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, the fact is that such a move will be insufficient to diminish the terrorist threat in America. As Callimacci’s article made brutally clear, so long as the intellectual shackles of political correctness block the US and other Western governments from taking concerted action against the creed of Islamic supremacism and its adherents inside their own borders, the virtual terrorism command ISIS now controls will last until it morphs into an even more deadly threat in the months and years to come.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Israel Foils Another Hamas Kidnapping and Murder Plot

Posted February 7, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Hamas, Israeli security, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinian unity government, West Bank
Tags: , , , , ,

Israel Foils Another Hamas Kidnapping and Murder Plot, Investigative Project on Terrorism, February 6, 2017

Hamas actively seeks to recruit and mobilize terrorists in the West Bank to form cells dedicated to killing Israelis in an effort to spark chaos and eventually take over the Palestinian Authority.

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

Israeli security forces indicted three Palestinians Monday, saying they were part of a Hamas terrorist cell planning to kidnap and kill Israelis in the West Bank and within Israel.

According to the indictment, Hamas officials in Gaza sent instructions to the terrorists via Facebook, explaining how to carry out shooting attacks, detonate explosives, and coordinate kidnappings around Hebron. The cell also scouted several locations within Israel for future attacks, including a bus station in Afula, a military base, the Binyamina Train Station, and a synagogue. The terrorists gained important information about the targets while working in Israel illegally.

To facilitate the attacks, the terrorists saved about $270 per month to buy weapons, build bombs and recruit other Palestinians.

“The uncovering of the infrastructure and activities it planned demonstrates the high threat level posed by Hamas militants, especially those who enter Israel and remain their [sic] illegally,” according to the Shin Bet.

Israeli authorities have foiled several Hamas terrorist plots since the latest wave of Palestinian violence, which peaked in October 2015. While most attacks were largely individual terrorist initiatives, groups like Hamas and even Hizballah sought to hijack the popular uprising by planning and coordinating terrorist attacks. Both organizations failed to execute a sophisticated attack thus far due to vigilant Israeli intelligence practices.

In January 2016, Shin Bet foiled a Hamas terror cell seeking to kidnap and kill Israelis in hopes of using their victims’ bodies to negotiate the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. A similar motivation encouraged Hamas affiliated terrorists behind the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, which eventually led to a full-fledged war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Palestinian terrorists continue to provoke Israel, launching a rocket Monday from Gaza into southern Israel and firing at Israeli soldiers working on the Gaza border fence. In response, the Israeli military targeted several Hamas positions in Gaza with airstrikes and artillery shells.

Last week, a senior Israeli military official told Israel’s Channel 2 that Hamas has regained its military capabilities since the 2014 Gaza war. Hamas continues to invest considerable resources to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure at the expense of civilian reconstruction efforts.

In the meantime, Hamas actively seeks to recruit and mobilize terrorists in the West Bank to form cells dedicated to killing Israelis in an effort to spark chaos and eventually take over the Palestinian Authority.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Anti-Trump “assassination porn” on magazine covers

Posted February 6, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Media and Donald Trump, President Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome
Tags: , ,

Anti-Trump “assassination porn” on magazine covers, Rebel Media via YouTube, February 6, 2017

 

Comments: Be the first to comment

Raymond Ibrahim: How Trump Can Help Persecuted Christians and Protect Americans with One Move

Posted February 6, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Christian refugees, Islam and Christians, Islamic integration, Islamic refugees, Obama and Christians, Obama and refugees, Obama's affinity for Islam, President Trump, Trump agenda, Trump and Christian refugees, Trump and refugees
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Raymond Ibrahim: How Trump Can Help Persecuted Christians and Protect Americans with One Move, Jihad Watch, , February 6, 2017

copts-in-ruined-church

During a recent interview on CBN, President Trump was asked if he thinks America should prioritize persecuted Christians as refugees. He responded:

Yes.  Yes, they’ve been horribly treated.  If you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, or at least very, very tough, to get into the United States.  If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair — everybody was persecuted, in all fairness — but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.

 Trump’s response is far different from that given by Barrack Hussein Obama back in November 2015. Then, as president, he described the idea of giving preference to Christian refugees as “shameful”: “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” he had added.

While Obama was making such lofty admonishments, his administration was quietly discriminating against Mideast Christians in a myriad of ways — including, as Trump pointed out above, by very obviously favoring Muslim refugees over Christian ones. Indeed, despite the U.S. government’s own acknowledgement that ISIS was committing genocide against Syrian Christians — and not against fellow Sunni Muslims — the Obama administration took in 5,435 Muslims, almost all of whom were Sunni, but only 28 Christians. Considering that Christians are 10 percent of Syria’s population, to be merely on an equal ratio with Muslims entering America, at least 500 Christians should’ve been granted asylum, not 28.

But questions of equal numbers aside, the idea of prioritizing Christian refugees over Muslims (which I argued for back in 2015) is not only more humane; it brings benefits to America as well.

Consider:

Unlike Muslims, Christian minorities are being singled out and persecuted simply because of their despised religious identity. From a humanitarian point of view — and humanitarianism is the reason being cited for accepting millions of refugees — Christians should receive top priority simply because they are the most persecuted group in the Middle East. Even before the Islamic State was formed, Christians were, and continue to be, targeted by Muslims in general — Muslim individuals, Muslim mobs, and Muslim regimes, from Muslim countries of all races (Arab, African, Asian) — and for the same reason: Christians are infidel number one. (See Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians for hundreds of anecdotes before the rise of ISIS as well as the Muslim doctrines that create such hate for Christians.)

Conversely, Muslim refugees — as opposed to the many ISIS and other jihadi sympathizers posing as “refugees” — are not fleeing religious persecution (as mentioned, 99% of Muslim refugees accepted into the U.S. are, like ISIS, Sunnis), but chaos created by the violent and supremacist teachings of their own religion. Hence why when large numbers of Muslims enter Western nations — in Germany, Sweden, France, the UK — tension, crimes, rapes, and terrorism soar.

Indeed, what more proof is needed than the fact that so-called Muslim “refugees” are throwing Christians overboard during their boat voyages across the Mediterranean to Europe? Or that Muslim majority refugee centers in Europe are essentially microcosms of Muslim majority nations: there, Christian minorities continue to be persecuted. One report found that 88% of the 231 Christian refugees interviewed in Germany have suffered religiously motivated persecution in the form of insults, death threats, and sexual assaults. Some were pressured to convert to Islam. “I really didn’t know that after coming to Germany I would be harassed because of my faith in the very same way as back in Iran,” one Christian refugee said.

Is persecuting religious minorities the behavior of people who are in need of refugee status in America? Or is this behavior yet another reminder that it is non-Muslims from the Middle East who are truly in need of sanctuary?

The U.S. should further prioritize Christian refugees because U.S. foreign policies are directly responsible for exacerbating their persecution. Christians did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution—to the point of genocide — began only after the U.S. interfered in those nations under the pretext of “democracy.” All that these policies did is unleash the jihadi forces that the dictators had long kept suppressed. Now the Islamic State is deeply embedded in precisely all three nations, enslaving, raping, and slaughtering Christians and other minorities.

Surely if U.S. policies were responsible for unleashing the full-blown jihad on Christians, the least humanitarian America can do is prioritize Christians as refugees? In fact, and as Trump pointed out during his CBN interview, it’s the opposite: according to one report, from May 1 to May 23 alone, 499 Syrian refugees were received into the U.S, 99% of them Sunnis. Zero Christians were admitted.

Questions of fairness and humanitarianism aside, there are also benefits in absorbing Mideast Christians refugees instead of Muslims. Christians are easily assimilated in Western societies, due to the shared Christian heritage and outlook, and regularly become productive members of society. Muslims follow a completely different blueprint, Islamic law, or Sharia — which calls for constant hostility (jihad) against all non-Muslims, and advocates any number of distinctly anti-Western practices (misogyny, sex slavery, death for “blasphemers” and “apostates,” etc.). Hence it’s no surprise that many Muslim asylum seekers are anti-Western at heart — or, as a German police union chief once said, Muslim migrants “despise our country and laugh at our justice.”

Mideast Christians also bring trustworthy language and cultural skills. They understand the Middle Eastern — including Islamic — mindset and can help the U.S. understand it. And unlike Muslims, Christians have no “conflicting loyalty” issues: Islamic law forbids Muslims from befriending or aiding “infidels” against fellow Muslims (click here to see some of the treachery this leads to in the U.S. and here to see the treachery Christians have suffered from their longtime Muslim neighbors and “friends”). No such threat exists among Mideast Christians. They, too, render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — not to mention they have no loyalty to the Islamic ideologies that made their lives a living hell in the Middle East, the Islamic ideologies that are also responsible for jihadi terror in America. Thus a win-win: the U.S. and Mideast Christians complement each other, if only in that they share the same foe.

All the above reasons — from those that offer humanitarian relief to the true victims of persecution and genocide, to those that offer stability and benefits to the United States — are unassailable in their logic.

President Trump understands this — even if most liberals and lying media don’t.

Comments: Be the first to comment

Leading German Philosopher: ‘If you Oppose mass Immigration You’re Extremely Backwards’

Posted February 6, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: European values, German values, Islamic invasion, Universal values
Tags: , , ,

Leading German Philosopher: ‘If you Oppose mass Immigration You’re Extremely Backwards’ Gatestone EU, Willem Cornax, February 6, 2017

Markus Gabriel is a German philosopher, recently dubbed the “young god of philosophy“. He starts his interview with the Dutch website Brainwash.nl by saying:

 “The problem of the refugee crisis is not the refugees. It’s us. (…) The idea of a million Muslims coming to Europe sounds terrible for someone with the mindframe from the 16th century.”

The mass influx of refugees should not be questioned because it “is based on Enlightenment.” Government documented refugees are not a threat to someone with a 21st Century mind frame. Why? Let Gabriel tell you:

“…this shouldn’t be threatening for a very simple reason. These people have rights. These rights are laid down in various constitutions (treaties) and if you deny these people the rights that they have you are thereby undermining European values.”

As for Merkel inviting refugees to come in:

“It is not that Angela Merkel is so nice and moral and lets all the refugees in to help poor people because the Germans were evil in the past and now we should be nicer. (…) She is just doing her job.”

That is the Nuremberg Defense. Nazi officials used it at the Nuremberg trials to deflect (personal) moral responsibility for committed atrocities.

Surely there are better arguments to comfort victims of terrorism, rape, sexual assault, abuse, murder, harassment, theft, burglary by people documented as refugees. Luckily, Gabriel himself provides an argument to soften the pain:

“The fear of the other is the fear of ourselves. The fear that we Europeans do not trust our European values. Our European values are universal and that is the biggest achievement of modernity, Universalism. And that Universalism is threatened, or so we think. But the threat to universalism comes from within. It doesn’t come from the outside.”

Comments: 2 Comments

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »