WarSclerotic – Page 977 – The Iran – Israel |War

Tunisian president fingers Israel in Hamas engineer’s killing

Posted January 2, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Tunisian president fingers Israel in Hamas engineer’s killing | The Times of Israel

Beji Caid Essebsi says ‘foreign hands carried out the assassination’ and ‘there is a suspicion’ the Jewish state was involved

By Times of Israel staff January 2, 2017, 1:57 pm

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi delivering a speech during an electoral meeting in Tunis, Tunisia, Saturday, November 15, 2014 (AP/Aimen Zine)

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi delivering a speech during an electoral meeting in Tunis, Tunisia, Saturday, November 15, 2014 (AP/Aimen Zine)

Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said Sunday night that “there is a suspicion that Israel was involved” in December’s fatal shooting of a Tunisian engineer said to have led Hamas’s drone program.

During a speech to mark the new year, Essebsi said that based on information “from the investigation of the killing, it appears that foreign hands carried out the assassination” of Mohammed al-Zoari.

Essebsi also added during his speech that “the authorities know how to deal with Israel” and are not powerless.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah have accused the Mossad — Israel’s foreign intelligence agency — of killing Zoari, 49, who was shot to death at the wheel of his car outside his house in the Tunisian port city of Sfax in December.

Slain Tunisian drone engineer Mohammed Alzoari (screen capture: Aljazeera/YouTube)

Slain Tunisian drone engineer Mohammed Al-Zoari (screen capture: Aljazeera/YouTube)

Zoari, an aviation engineer and Tunisian national, was confirmed by Hamas to be a central figure in its weapons development. The group called him a pioneer in developing its unmanned drones.

Israel has not responded to the accusation by Hamas that it was behind the Tunisian engineer’s death.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman played coy last week when speaking about the killing of Zoari.

“If someone was killed in Tunisia, he’s not likely to be a peace activist or a Nobel Prize candidate,” Liberman said at an event at the Zionist Organization of America House in Tel Aviv.

Tunisian Interior Minister Hedi Mejdoub has said that journalists hired by individuals posing as a media company were entangled in the killing.

Mejdoub told reporters that “at least two foreigners” were involved in the shooting. The killing, he said, had the hallmarks of a foreign espionage agency’s handiwork.

According to Mejdoub, a Tunisian journalist told local investigators that she was hired by foreigners posing as a media company planning to make documentaries in Tunisia for a Malaysian TV channel, including one about the aerospace industry in Arab states, and asked her to contact Zoari as one of the interviewees for the movie.

Paid 100 euros per day plus expenses, the woman traveled to Tunis, filmed Zoari, and gave the footage to the company. In all, she received 2,000 euros for her work. Besides filming Zoari, she also rented a number of cars used in his assassination, Mejdoub said, adding that planning for the killing took place over months, since at least June.

Three days before Saturday’s hit, the interior minister said, a foreign man working for the media company contacted her and asked her to rent two cars, and told her to then leave the country the next day.

The journalist was in Budapest during the hit, and only returned to Tunis after it was carried out.

The prosecution has said that 10 suspects, all Tunisians, have been detained for questioning, including a female journalist, and that authorities have seized four vehicles and two weapons.

Mejdoub said two Tunisian nationals living in Sweden were also involved in the operation. The two rented an apartment in Sfax to tail Zoari and rented four cell phones.

Members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, hold a banner bearing a portrait of one of their leaders, Mohamed al-Zoari, who was killed in Tunisia, during a ceremony in his memory on December 18, 2016, in Gaza City. (AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS)

Members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, hold a banner bearing a portrait of one of their leaders, Mohamed al-Zoari, who was killed in Tunisia, during a ceremony in his memory on December 18, 2016, in Gaza City. (AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS)

“The organizers prepared two plans for two teams, in case one failed or was caught. The hit was planned meticulously and thoroughly,” he said.

On Saturday, the Hebew-language Ynet news website reported that Hamas had issued new safety guidelines to its operatives around the world following the shooting, intended to decrease the likelihood of their exposure and in turn their potential to be killed.

Agencies contributed to this report

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Vladimir Putin’s lesson in score-settling

Posted January 2, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Vladimir Putin’s lesson in score-settling – Washington Times

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES – – Sunday, January 1, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Settling scores is always petty, whether by pouty teenagers, embittered ex-spouses or soon-to-be former presidents. Barack Obama is making himself look small and insignificant when he could be looking like a big man making a graceful exit.

His disgraceful performance last week at the United Nations, getting even with Israel for shunning suicide and his scheme to make permanent “peace” in the Middle East, will be the legacy he is remembered by.

This was followed by a challenge to Vladimir Putin, inviting a high-stakes duel, if not a duel to the death at least a duel to humiliation by diplomacy. The inevitable impression left by the exchange was that the American president was playing out of his league.

His expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the closure of two diplomatic facilities in the United States was meant to be bold punishment for suspected Russian hacking into the Democratic presidential campaign, but it was widely mocked as a president getting to the game after all bets were down.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a defense hawk, applauded the expulsions as a needed rebuke of bad Russian behavior, but dismissed its effectiveness as “just more of the same failed foreign policy of the last eight years, a series of too little too late, half measures designed to appear tough, with minimal practical impact. Sanctioning Russian entities associated with the intrusion of the Democratic National Committee sounds bold, but it’s unclear what the practical impact will be on organizations that likely don’t have holdings in the United States.”

Timing, in love as in war, is everything, and Mr. Obama long ago made it clear that he has little appetite for foreign statecraft. He might have acted when boldness would have made a positive impact, but he let opportunity after opportunity slip past.

The Russians looked at first to be playing Mr. Obama’s game, to answer the expulsion of the Russian diplomats with an order expelling 35 Americans from Russia. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, early on said “we cannot leave such acts unanswered. Reciprocity is part of diplomatic law.”

But Vlad the Imparter was playing the subtle game, and when Mr. Obama was expecting tit for tat, the Russian president struck. Russia has the right to do that, Mr. Putin said, “but it will not engage in irresponsible diplomacy.” He pushed the needle in a little deeper. “It’s a pity that the current U.S. administration is finishing their work in such a manner, and Russia refuses to sink to the level of this irresponsible ‘kitchen diplomacy.’”

Taking note of the difficulty Russian diplomats in the United States are having with travel arrangements in the busy holiday season, trying to meet Mr. Obama’s 72-hour deadline for leaving the country on short notice, he dispatched a government plane to take them home.

Then he wished the president-elect “and the American people” a happy new year, and invited the children of American diplomats in Moscow to the Kremlin for a holiday party. The score was settled.

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UN-Democratic, UN-Just, UN-Worthy

Posted January 2, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: History of the UN
Tags: History of the UN

UN-Democratic, UN-Just, UN-Worthy, Front Page Magazine, Lloyd Billingsley, January 2, 2017

(The last decent UN action I can remember was back in June of 1950, when North Korea, with Russian arms, training and other help, invaded South Korea. Trygve Halvdan Lie, a Norwegian, was the Secretary General. He is said to have telephoned President Truman when he learned of the invasion, called it an attack on the UN and offered assistance. Russia was then boycotting the UN over its failure to accept Communist China as a member to displace Taiwan. A massive us military build-up was needed and UN nations helped. The nascent US Forces in Korea became the US-UN Forces in Korea. Secretary General Lie also “supported the foundations of Israel and Indonesia. His passionate support for Israel included passing secret military and diplomatic information to Israeli officials”. — DM)

unitednations

The United Nations was a bust from the beginning.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry explained that American abstention from a vote to condemn Israel was “about preserving the two-state solution.” On the other hand, as Carol Morello of the Washington Post noted, “the United Nations has a history of considering resolutions critical of Israel, even more than have been applied to rogue states like North Korea.” Indeed, any international body concerned with democracy and human rights would be all over North Korea around the clock.

As Washington Post writer Blaine Harden explained in Escape from Camp 14, North Korea’s forced labor camps “have now existed twice as long as the Soviet Gulag and about twelve times longer than the Nazi concentration camps.” In the view of Kim Il Sung, who with Stalin’s blessing invaded South Korea in 1950, those designated class enemies must be eliminated through three generations. The policy continued under Kim Jong Il, who deployed the camps to eliminate the evil seed.

Little if anything has changed under Kim Jong-un, whose regime deploys nuclear weapons and has recently threatened to turn South Korea, a key U.S. ally, into “ashes.” The regime also aids terrorist groups and kidnaps foreign nationals. Even so, the UN appears unable to distinguish between free but imperfect democracies and a Communist regime of fathomless depravity. On that score, North Korea is hardly alone.

One of the first orders of business for China’s Communist regime was the invasion of Tibet in 1949. Chinese totalitarian rule led to an uprising in 1959 and the Dalai Lama fled to India. By 1965, the UN General Assembly had passed three resolutions condemning Communist China for human rights violations and calling for China to recognize Tibet’s right to self-determination. The Chinese Communists ignored the UN and their occupation of Tibet has outlasted the dictatorship of Fidel Castro, another UN favorite. The liberation of Tibet has not been a priority for the President of the United States or for the UN, which also goes easy on Russia.

Communist Russia contributed nothing to the war in the Pacific but after Japan surrendered in 1945 Stalin invaded and occupied the Kuril Islands, including Shikotan, the most southerly island in the chain. The invading Soviets seized all the land and property of the Japanese residents and in 1947 evicted all Japanese from Shikotan. Since 1992, the Japanese may visit the islands without a visa, but Russia still rules the roost. Japan is a US ally but Russian occupation of the Kuriles has not been a priority of the President of the United States or the UN. That body was also slow in its response to genocide.

As John Barron and Anthony Paul documented in Murder of a Gentle Land: The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia, from 1975-1979 the Khmer Rouge murdered nearly two million people, approximately one-fourth of the population. The Khmer Rouge murdered thousands of babies by smashing their heads against a tree and forced prisoners to dig their own graves before killing them with clubs to save bullets. The UN dithered until 1988 before condemning the Khmer Rouge and failed utterly at establishing any kind of tribunal for genocide. In 1999 when Kofi Annan was UN boss, most of the perpetrators still enjoyed complete impunity. Many are still out there but that is of little concerned to the United Nations and the outgoing President of the United States.

As Barry Rubin noted in Silent Revolution, the president has been uncritical of Communist governments and Marxist revolutionary movements. The outgoing president has also been a strong supporter of the United Nations, slanted to the Soviets from the start.

One of UN’s key architects was Alger Hiss, a key Stalinist spy in the U.S. State Department. After Yalta, Hiss’ primary mission was establishing the United Nations, and Hiss was duly appointed acting Secretary General at the founding UN conference in 1945. So from the start the Soviets had their man and Hiss was also involved in selecting some 250 UN employees. Those realities seldom surface, even on “United Nations Day,” October 24. It has also been largely forgotten that that from 1972 to 1982 the Secretary General of the United Nations was a Nazi war criminal.

As the New York Times noted, at age 19 Kurt Waldheim joined the National Socialist German Students League. This was after the Anschluss and in November 1938 Waldheim enrolled in the SA, the Nazi storm trooper organization. During World War II Waldheim served in units “that executed thousands of Yugoslav partisans and civilians and deported thousands of Greek Jews to death camps from 1942 to 1944.” Waldheim lied about his record and the UN looked the other way.

In similar style, few today recall that from 1974 to 1987 the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was Amabou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal, a Muslim and co-author of Islam and Muslims in the American Continent. One of M’Bow’s major causes was preserving the “Islamic heritage” of Jerusalem but he also had a taste for the good life. M’Bow spent 80 percent of the UNESCO budget at the organization’s Paris headquarters and ran the organization in lavish and authoritarian style.

On M’Bow’s watch UNESCO funded the PLO and violent Marxist movements around the world. UNESCO served as cover for a dozen of the 47 KGB spies expelled by France in 1983. True to form, UNESCO promoted the “New World Information and Communication Order,” a Soviet-style effort to quash free expression and repress journalists. When the French L’Express described M’Bow as a “megalomaniac despot,” the UNESCO boss sued the publication. All told, M’Bow’s excesses prompted U.S. President Ronald Reagan to pull the United States out of UNESCO in 1984.

Nothing like that has ever occurred to the outgoing President of the United States, who doesn’t care that the UN is tougher on Israel than genocidal Communist dictatorships such as North Korea. The outgoing president has always been harder on America’s friends than its enemies and he finds the UN a convenient forum for that purpose.

Incoming president Donald Trump, on the other hand, does not suffer from Waldheimer’s Disease.

This widespread affliction makes people forget the United Nations was once headed by a Nazi war criminal and harbored megalomaniac despots like Amabou-Mahtar M’Bow. The incoming president also seems to recognize that the UN is wasteful, unaccountable, and hostile to the United States, which pays the lion’s share of the bills.

As the current tangle confirms, the UN also remains hostile to America’s democratic friends and allies such as Israel. So if the new president wants to take the United States out of the UN, he certainly has good grounds to do so.

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Why Did Obama Pander to the UN’s Stunning Anti-Israel Bias? – The Daily Beast

Posted January 2, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Why Did Obama Pander to the UN’s Stunning Anti-Israel Bias? – The Daily Beast

161229-Nawaz-The-UN-bizarre-anti-Israel-bias-tease

( Even the leftists can’t swallow it… JW )

UN-FAIR

There are horrific injustices all over the world, including and especially in the Muslim world, but those are ignored by an institution obsessed with Israel.

Maajid Nawaz

12.30.16 8:00 AM ET

LONDON—Just before Christmas the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank. By allowing the motion to pass, President Barack Obama crowned his miserable track record in the Middle East with one last high school debating gesture. This was then embellished by Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning shot delivered to Israel Wednesday.

Israel is not the biggest problem in the Middle East, by a long shot. But you wouldn’t know that from the disproportionate way in which the UN has treated the country. Despite abstaining from the vote, America’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power herself noted that for as long as Israel has been a member of the UN it has been “treated differently” from other nations. And commenting only a week before this latest resolution, even outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-moon agreed that “decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports, and committees against Israel… In many cases, instead of helping the Palestinian issue, this reality has foiled the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively.”

You would think that the head of the UN knows when his own organization is displaying an institutional bias. Resolution 465 already existed, rightly condemning settlements. To this day, 47 resolutions concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict have been adopted by the UNSC.

From 2016 alone one need only look at the 18 resolutions against Israel adopted during the UN General Assembly in September, or the 12 resolutions adopted in the Human Rights Council. These were more than those focused on Syria, North Korea, Iran, and South Sudan combined.

Arabs, Muslims, Islamists, liberals, leftists, and our international organizations share this institutional bias.

Opposing Israel is The One Ring that binds us all. It is the sacred god that must not be questioned. So deep runs this bias against Israeli transgressions, that to call it out is to arouse immediately incredulity and ad hominem abuse.

So entrenched is it, that few noticed how on the very morning of Resolution 2334 a motion seeking to stem the flow of weapons going to what the UN itself fears are genocidal killers in South Sudan failed.

The Security Council could not even bring itself to adopt the simplest of resolutions calling for a seven-day ceasefire to halt the tragedy of Aleppo. Yet when it came to pushing through a final year-end condemnation of Israel, the Security Council suddenly mustered the will to act.

Secretary Kerry noted that Israel’s current government is its most right wing in history. Without a hint of irony he failed to mention that’s exactly what happens when a country faces repeated jihadist terrorist attacks. Just look to Europe and the U.S., magically made “Great Again.” He also left out the nature of Israel’s proportionate electoral system, which allows fringe elements to hold more mainstream parties hostage, drifting them to the right.

No, Resolution 2334 will not help peace. It can only hinder it. For the UN’s posturing will not go unnoticed inside Israel, and can only encourage further intransigence by facilitating the rise of Israel’s religious right under Naftali Bennet. It will also undermine the legitimacy of the UN itself.

The assumption behind America’s abstention from Resolution 2334 and Secretary Kerry’s latest remarks highlight the lazy thinking that has beset us.

Speaking during the vote, America’s ambassador to the UN said, “one cannot simultaneously champion expanding Israeli settlements and champion a viable two-state solution.”

On Wednesday, Secretary Kerry reinforced the view that the two-state solution “is now in jeopardy… The result is that policies of this [Israeli] government… are leading towards one state.”

This is simply false. The fact that this sentiment is even expressed betrays the deep bigotry of low expectations held in the West toward Arabs and Palestinians.

Settlements are illegal. But why is it that Israel is expected to integrate—and does a reasonable job of including—the 20 percent of its population that is Arab, yet a Jewish presence of 500,000 settlers in any future Palestinian state is deemed “an obstacle” to the two state solution? Are Palestinians assumed to be ethno-fascists? Are they not capable of building a multiethnic state just like Israelis? Is this how low the standard is to which Western leftists hold Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims?

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Any Jewish settlers who remain in Palestine after a peace deal is struck should be expected to adopt Palestinian citizenship and become Jewish-Palestinians, like the many Christian and Muslim Palestinians. If this prospect is too much for them to accept, they will always have the option of aliyah, to voluntarily repatriate back to Israel. Add land swaps to the mix, and the two-state solution is not dead. It remains very much possible, except in minds that are clouded by the UN’s obsession with condemning Israel and that harbor the bigotry of low expectations towards Palestinians.

To cite UN disproportionality against Israel inevitably leads to accusations by the left that one’s fallen into the fallacy of “whatabouttery.” That is, trying to distract from one’s own transgressions by shouting “what about” someone else’s. In this case, supposedly trying to downplay Israel’s abuses or failings by making it look like the victim of what the Americans call “piling on” by the UN.

But I am not engaging in this fallacy I am calling it out.

In reality Israel has been the perennial “what about” excuse used by Arab despots seeking to silence their domestic opponents or the foreign critics of their ferocious repression of dissent. To call for greater freedoms in these countries where there was little or none was to be accused of “Zionist collusion.” And as often as not, the UN played along. Note that this is the same institution that chose to elect Saudi Arabia—yes, elect an absolute monarchy—as chair of its human rights committee, and then decided to pass a motion condemning Israel’s human rights abuses.

Sneering from the comfort of their keyboards, Western leftists have grown complacent with the luxury of free speech. They have never had to suffer the wrath of an Arab dictator’s torture cells. But anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to have spoken out against an Arab dictator from within knows the reality of their whatabouttery all too well.

An expectation of proportionality is distinct from the whatabouttery fallacy. When Israel was bombing Gaza in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, reacting to Hamas terror attacks, our demand was for Israel to respond proportionately. Back then, we didn’t allow Israel to dismiss our concerns for proportionality by claiming we were engaged in a whatabouttery distraction from Hamas terror attacks.

If proportionality can work against Israel, it must be allowed to work for it too. Yes, we can condemn two things at once, hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time, but those two thoughts must be in proportion to each other.

With that said, there is not a single crime that Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stand accused of that an Arab totalitarian despot or absolute monarch has not committed manifold times and on a daily basis. From torture and occupation, to proxy wars in foreign countries, to treating non-citizens—including Palestinians—as second class, to a lack of democracy, Arab despots top it all.

Look at Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and his coup in Egypt, the chaos in Libya, even the Taliban, Lashkar al-Tayyiba, al-Shabab, Boko Haram and ISIS, sexual enslavement, beheadings, child soldiers, and the use of chemical weapons—the reality of the greater Middle East lies bare for us all to see. Yet as America’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power noted, this year the UN passed more resolutions against Israel than these other problems combined.

For the better part of 23 years I have been deeply engaged in this debate. Like most left-leaning teenage politics enthusiasts, my starting point was hostile to Israel. Like too many Muslims and all Islamists, I once rejected Israel’s right to exist. I am familiar with all sides of the argument, and have written from both perspectives on this debate. I eventually realized just how ossified my thoughts had become.

Our unwillingness to hear outside our own echo chambers has severely limited our ability to innovate solutions. A critical mass of Arabs, Muslims, and leftists still struggle with Israel’s historic legitimacy, leading us to constantly overplay our hand at such venues as the UN. Like a broken record, we are guilty of repetitive sloganeering, lazy thinking, emotional decision-making, and a dogmatic approach to what should be the art of politics. We have allowed our political, religious, and ideological tribalism to shape our emotional response to the point of developing an unhealthy obsession with Israel. It is post-truth.

We who have been pro-Palestine have become our own worst enemies. When new thinking on any issue is instantly labeled treacherous, only inward looking violently inbred and dogmatic ideologies such as jihadism can thrive. All the more reason why creative thinking on this issue among Arabs, Muslims, and the left is so important.

I know that in writing these words I will inevitably be charged with being pro-settlements and much more. This tends to be the default reaction of those who love to deal only in absolutes—a right wing trait, no?

In truth, I believe Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, built on occupied land, and that Netanyahu has been uncooperative while in office, and that a two-state solution is not only still possible, but is the only viable option for solving this conflict. Yet still I maintain that Resolution 2334 was an amateur, emotional move by liberal dogmatists that will only aid the Israeli right.

There is nothing unique about the Israel conflict deserving such disproportionate attention. Baluchistan, Kurdistan, Cyprus, Kashmir, and Taiwan are but a few other disputed territories not fetishized like Palestine is at the UN and in our media. All of these disputes involve deep religious, historic, and political meaning for their respective parties.

Only the overwhelming narcissism of our Abrahamic faiths – including those among us who define themselves against them—would deem the religious and historic significance of the “Holy Lands” to mean anything more than other lost holy lands for Buddhists in Tibet, or Sikhs in Khalistan, which was lost to Pakistan a year before Israel’s creation. Only by releasing the “exceptional status” pressure from this conflict, by stripping it of its religious hyperbole, by removing it from the spotlight, by simply placing it on a par with every and any other conflict in the world—tragic but not unique—do we stand a better chance of solving it, because the stakes are lowered and the frothing prophets of doom, with their Armageddon pathology, are taken out of the equation. Let us call this “Israeli unexceptionalism.”

I remain unaware of a single Middle East pundit not tied to Obama’s State department who holds that the outgoing president has done a good job in the Middle East. Obama cut a deal with Iran and conditionally lifted sanctions, while the Iranians, Hezbollah and Russian President Vladimir Putin aided Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he used crude chemical bombs and massively destructive weapons against his own people. And just as Obama’s inaction allowed others to act in Syria, his inaction at the UN set the tone once again, this time reaffirming the notion that Israel is the region’s biggest problem. That is despicable. It is inexcusable. And I could remain silent no more.

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Senate Moves To Denounce UN For Anti-Settlement Resolution

Posted January 2, 2017 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: Senate Moves To Denounce UN For Anti-Settlement Resolution

The Associated Press

by Deborah Danan2 Jan 2017137

TEL AVIV – Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to denounce the United Nations for its recent Security Council resolution deeming all Israeli settlements “flagrant violation[s] of international law.”

More than 100 members of Congress have formally condemned the resolution, the Times of Israel reported.

GOP lawmakers in both chambers have decided to introduce resolutions targeted at the UN once Congress reconvenes. Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran and Florida Rep. Dennis Ross are both slated to introduce disapproval resolutions against the international body.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) indicated that he did not know whether the chamber would vote on Moran’s resolution or a similar one.

However, despite the Republican lead on the resolution, several aides have said anti-UN action will receive bipartisan support.

The House will vote as early as next week on a resolution, though the exact details have not been decided, Politico reported.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also announced his intention to advance an initiative aimed at defunding the United Nations, but it would be unlikely to earn bipartisan support in the Senate, the report said.

The push for anti-UN action comes on the heels of pro-Israel lobby AIPAC’s call to pressure Washington representatives to condemn the UN for “hinder[ing] the peace process” as a result of the Security Council’s anti-settlement resolution.

The Security Council resolution, which passed 14-0, was not vetoed by the U.S. as has been a decades-long policy of previous administrations. The resolution determines that all Israeli settlements, including the Old City of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, are “occupied Palestinian territory.”

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Radical Islam and New Year’s Resolutions

Posted January 1, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Civilization jihad, Islamism, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist vetting, Islamists in America
Tags: Civilization jihad, Islamism, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamist vetting, Islamists in America

Radical Islam and New Year’s Resolutions, Clarion Project, David Harris, January 1, 2017

(New Year’s resolutions tend to be trite and to have a short shelf-life. The resolution suggested here is not trite and should last longer than the current year. — DM)

NEW YORK - DECEMBER 31: People congregate in the lead-up to New Year's eve celebrations in Times Square in New York City on December 31, 2016. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

NEW YORK – DECEMBER 31: People congregate in the lead-up to New Year’s eve celebrations in Times Square in New York City on December 31, 2016. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)

The West must act now against radical Islam – not only dealin with terrorists but also seemingly more innocuous forms of Islamist extremism.

So what’s your New Year’s resolution? A little less carb intake? Being nicer to your mother-in-law? Or if you are the leader of a Western democracy – making your citizens a little bit safer?

As if we needed another reminder, the Santa Claus terror attack in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve told us just how dangerous our enemy is.

Islamist extremism, radical Islam – call it what you will – has outstripped earthquakes, plagues and famines as the 21^st Century’s number-one threat.

Whether it’s the drip-drip Islamism of organization like CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), the political power-grabbing of the Muslim Brotherhood or the outright terror of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the like, radical Islam is gaining in strength.

Don’t be fooled by the victories over Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The organization’s tentacles reach far, wide and deep.

The idea of New Year’s resolutions is nothing new. Medieval knights, the Romans and Babylonians all made them. But have you ever stopped to think about the meaning of the word?

A resolution is defined as a firm decision to do or not do something or the action of solving a problem, dispute or contentious matter.

Think of other words from the same root: resolve – to decide firmly on a course of action; and resolute – admirably purposeful, determined and unwavering.

That is exactly what is required of Western leaders.

Clearly the migrant crisis is just that – a crisis — but that does not mean newcomers to your country mustn’t be vetted thoroughly.

Why are there more than 50 no-go zones in Sweden?

If we know Molenbeek in Belgium is a breeding ground for Islamists, why isn’t Brussels doing more about it?

If CAIR is designated as a terror organization by the United Arb Emirates, why does the outgoing U.S. administration insist on meeting with its members?

From the drip-drip to the outrageous acts of terror, governments must act. It must start in the White House but must take in all those who speak out against radicals. The time is not nigh, because we are truly late in tackling this scourge.

Leaders, please be resolute and show resolve when you make your New Year’s resolutions.

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“Now Is Time to Behead Unbelievers”

Posted January 1, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Islam and Christianity
Tags: Islam and Christianity

“Now Is Time to Behead Unbelievers”, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, January 1, 2016

“[W]e heard that the [ISIS] militants grabbed six strong men working at the bakery and burned them inside the oven. After that, they caught some 250 kids and kneaded them like dough in the bakery dough machine…. Members of 200 different families were killed right before our eyes.” — Syria.

Some Christian and Yazidi women captured by ISIS militants were sold at auctions in Saudi Arabia, America’s close friend, which is supposedly part of the coalition fighting ISIS. — Saudi Arabia.

“[T]he Christians who converted to Islam did so under threats, coercion, compulsion, and force.” — Bishop Alexios, Gaza.

“We have our sights set on you, and by Allah we will kill every single infidel student at this school.” — Social media message targeting McAuley Catholic School, United Kingdom.

Authorities ordered the closure of house churches… after Muslims complained that they were being disturbed by the Christian prayers. Christian worship services in private homes has become more common. The closure of these house churches is seen as the government’s way of cracking down on them. — Pakistan.

In compliance with Islamic law, the island nation banned the construction of churches. — Brunei.

As Turkey’s government continues to build nearly 9,000 mosques in the last decade, it banned Orthodox Christian liturgy in a monastery inaugurated in 386 AD, roughly 1,000 years before Muslim Turks conquered Asia Minor. — Turkey.

“To all Muslims: now is the time to behead the unbelievers.” A female Iranian refugee said one night a group of men shouted: “Whoever finds an Iranian woman today may rape and kill her. Kill them all. You may kill and rape them. You can do it, everywhere. Wherever you find them, you may do that.” — Report from a refugee center, Germany.

Reports of Muslims torturing, raping, and forcing Christians to embrace Islam continued to mount throughout the month of October. Alice Assaf, a Christian woman recounted the experiences of Christians—including her son’s execution for refusing to deny his faith—in a village near Damascus at the hands of the Islamic State. She also told how the Islamic State massacres children in cruel and unusual ways—including by throwing them into an industrial sized dough mixer:

“[W]e heard that the militants grabbed six strong men working at the bakery and burned them inside the oven. After that, they caught some 250 kids and kneaded them like dough in the bakery dough machine…. Members of 200 different families were killed right before our eyes.”

Some Christian and Yazidi women captured by ISIS militants were sold at auctions in Saudi Arabia, America’s close friend, which is supposedly part of the coalition fighting ISIS.

In Pakistan, a group of armed Muslims kidnapped and took turns raping a teenage girl after her Christian family refused to convert to Islam. According to the report, after they broke into the Christian home in the middle of the night while everyone slept:

Six men and a woman known locally by the family who were armed with guns, sticks and metal poles began to beat the family asking them to convert to Islam or die. Despite the pain and threats to their lives the family stayed resolute to their Christian faith and refused to convert. This incensed the Muslim attackers even more. All the family members were tied up and blindfolded and two of them, 20-year-old Arif [male] and 17-year-old Jameela [female], were kidnapped and dragged into a van outside. The two of them were taken to an unknown building and tortured but Arif refused to convert to Islam. He could hear her screaming and was told by his captors that they were taking turns raping his sister and that all he had to do to save her was to convert to Islam, but still he refused though in great anguish for her.

Arif eventually managed to escape though the fate of his sister was unknown.

In Gaza, recent years have “witnessed a critical upsurge against the Christians,” said an Arabic language report published in October. Local authorities have reportedly abandoned the tiny Christian minority—2,500 people surrounded by approximately 1.5 million Muslims—to their fate. “At times we hear of the bombing of a Christian bookshop and assaults on churches and other Christian institutions; other times we hear of the kidnapping of Christians and the coercion of them to embrace the religion of Muhammad,” notes the report.

Christians in Gaza led a protest, calling for the return of their kidnapped children and loved ones. Bishop Alexios of the region “confirmed that the Christians who converted to Islam did so under threats, coercion, compulsion, and force.” His church also submitted a formal petition to the governor of the region, Ismail Haniyeh, calling on him to investigate matters, but received no response. The report adds that Gaza’s Christians are calling on the Christian world to intervene. The bishop said that he is trying to communicate all of this to the Vatican, the United Nations, and the United States.

Statistics concerning the global jihad on Christians also emerged in October. Between 2003 and June 9, 2014, ISIS killed at least 1,131 Christians and destroyed or damaged at least 125 Christian churches. “Murder of Christians is commonplace” in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, states the report. “Many have been killed in front of their own families.”

Between January 2013 and May 2016 and in one Nigerian region alone—the Middle Belt, Nasarawa—Muslims, often connected to the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, killed 826 Christians, injured 878 injured, destroyed 102 churches and 787 Christian houses, and displaced 21,000 people.

The rest of the month of October’s worldwide Muslim persecution of Christians includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Ethiopia: Three separate attacks on one church took place over the course of a month revealed an October report. One Christian was killed. On August 30, a Muslim mob assaulted the church during service. They broke doors, windows, and chairs; they beat men, women and children with their fists and sticks—seriously wounding 30—and they hacked with machetes a 55-year-old founding member. The father of eight died from his wounds. The day after the slaughtered Christian’s funeral, a group of Muslim men strangled a female member of the congregation and left her for dead. On September 27, a Muslim mob attacked more church members as they returned home after church.

United States: Wendell Buchanan, a recent convert to Islam, shot up three rural churches in Shelbyville, Tennessee. One, the Horse Mountain Church of Christ, was targeted three times and the bullets caused thousands of dollars in damages. Before Facebook deleted it, Buchanan had written on his account, “I’m just doing my job as a messenger for my Lord, I owe absolutely everything to Allah because he has set me free from my spiritual cage.” The Muslim convert is facing four counts of destruction of utility equipment, five counts of desecration of a venerated object, and nine counts of felony vandalism.

Separately in San Antonio, unknown vandals defaced two churches—the Gethsemane Lutheran Church and Saint Gregory Catholic Church—by spray painting “No to wall” and “Islam or die” next to the entrance of the church. Islamic terror cells are known to be operating across the border in Mexico.

Italy: A Muslim refugee from Ghana severely vandalized four churches in Rome (video of rampage here). He first invaded the Church of San Martino ai Monti and broke a statue. Next, he went to the ancient Basilica of Santa Prassede, where he demolished several more statues of saints, purposefully smashing them to the ground and stamping on them. He then ripped a large crucifix from the wall and was preparing to destroy it when he was stopped by a priest who grabbed him by the leg. The refugee continued his rampage and vandalized two other churches, San Vitale and the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Piazza d’Oro, where he destroyed several other precious statues. He was finally arrested by police in Rome’s historic district and charged with vandalism and religious hatred.

United Kingdom: A Catholic school was threatened by a social media message saying, “We have our sights set on you, and by Allah we will kill every single infidel student at this school #McAuleySchoolMassacre.” The post, which targeted McAuley Catholic High School, Doncaster, appeared on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, and prompted widespread fear. The school apparently downplayed the incident and said authorities and police were alerted and investigating. But not all were reassured. Parent Shanie Varley took her 15-year-old daughter out of school and argued that, although many knew of the message, “parents weren’t told.” When the mother contacted the school, she was told that police were there and that it was “nothing to worry about.”

Kosovo: Muslims turned a Christian chapel and cemetery into a public toilet and garbage dump. Earlier, a local Christian clergyman repaired and cleaned the chapel, only to return and see it being used again as a toilet. The only action taken by the local Muslim mayor has been to prevent Christians from accessing the chapel and cemetery in order to clean it for visits from family members of those buried there; but he has done nothing to prevent the site from being desecrated, despite Christian petitions. Similarly, on September 10, Muslims in Pristina set fire to Christ the Savior Cathedral. “Immediately after the fire,” noted the report, they “started using it [the church] as a toilet…. Since the Albanian Muslims took possession of this Orthodox land, hundreds of churches and monasteries have been burnt to the ground.”

Pakistan: Authorities ordered the closure of house churches in the city of Bahawalpur after Muslims complained that they were being disturbed by Christian prayers. Christians were ordered to hold worship and prayer services in only one of four official churches in the city. Because the construction of new churches in Pakistan is highly regulated with countless hurdles to overcome—as in most Muslim nations—meeting and holding Christian worship services in private homes has become more common. The closure of these house churches is seen as the government’s way of cracking down on them.

Indonesia: Following local Muslim protests, the mayor of South Jakarta closed a Protestant church by claiming it lacked a permit. When pressed about the claim, he said the congregation did have a permit, but only to build a “home-office and not to the elevation of a church.” The report adds that “The process for the construction of a church in Indonesia—Catholic or Protestant—is complicated and may take five to ten years to get all the permissions required.”

Brunei: In compliance with Islamic law, the island nation banned the construction of churches. There are currently three churches there; no more can be added. Although the nation is Muslim-majority, approximately 10% of the population is Christian. According to the report, “Christians living in Brunei feel the brunt of the divisive law.”

Turkey: As the government continues building mosques—nearly 9,000 were constructed between 2005 and 2015—it banned Orthodox Christian liturgy in the Sumela Monastery, a historic site inaugurated in 386 AD, roughly 1,000 years before Muslim Turks conquered Asia Minor. According to the report:

“The ban has caused great disappointment to thousands of Pontian people worldwide, and people from Greece who had planned to travel to the region these days to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. Sources within the Patriarchate of Constantinople … fear that Christian mass will never be allowed in the historic monastery again. This arbitrary ban seems to be yet another demonstration of the ‘unofficial’ second-class status of Christians in Turkey…. What secular, democratic republic builds thousands of mosques with state funds — taxpayer money — while closing the Halki Seminary of the Eastern Orthodox Church and confiscating countless Christian properties?”

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The Turkish government recently banned Orthodox Christian liturgy in the Sumela Monastery, a historic site inaugurated in 386 AD, roughly 1,000 years before Muslim Turks conquered Asia Minor. (Image source: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia Commons)

Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Australia: A 42-year-old Muslim man in Sydney stabbed to death his 35-year-old wife for converting to Christianity. The Iranian couple had been living on visas for four years. Prior to the woman’s apostasy, there was no known history of domestic violence between the couple. The report adds that “Christianity has been spreading rapidly among Iranians in recent years. This has caused many of them being forced to leave Iran as the government doesn’t tolerate conversion from Islam.”

Pakistan: A 24-year-old Muslim man from Lahore murdered his 18-year-old sister for marrying a Christian, an act banned under Islamic law. He shot her in the head with a gun. The arrested man later said, “I told her I would have no face to show at the mill [where he worked], to show to my neighbors, so don’t do it. Don’t do it. But she wouldn’t listen. I could not let it go. It was all I could think about. I had to kill her. There was no choice.”

Kenya: Islamic militants raided a village in the Christian majority nation at 2 am while everyone was asleep and slaughtered six people. The Islamic terror group Al Shabaab—”the youth”—headquartered in neighboring Somalia, claimed the attack on “Christianity’s power in the region.” It released a statement: “We are behind the Mandera attack in which we killed six Christians.” One witness said that the slain, “were gunned down mercilessly and their heads chopped off and smashed by grenades. I do not know how to say it better. I am psychologically bullied.”

Nigeria: Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed more than 40 people during a massacre in a Christian village. The Fulanis have been responsible for several other brutal attacks which targeted Christians. They are portrayed as “infidels” who should be driven off the farming land.

Muslim Contempt for and Abuse of Christians

Germany: A human rights group issued a report in October shedding more light on the ongoing violence and discrimination Christian minorities face in refugee camps. Almost 750 Christians reported that they have experienced religiously motivated violence, including death threats and “sentencing” from unofficial Sharia courts. In one instance, Christian refugees returned from a church meeting to find a notice in one of the rooms that said: “To all Muslims: now is the time to behead the unbelievers.” A female Iranian refugee said one night a group of men shouted: “Whoever finds an Iranian woman today may rape and kill her. Kill them all. You may kill and rape them. You can do it, everywhere. Wherever you find them, you may do that.” Iranians are being targeted for being Shia and/or converting to Christianity. The woman added:

“We came here to live a free life, but now we are being oppressed heavily. It is just like the Daesh [ISIS]: we feel very oppressed… I am living her under constant pressure and cannot take it any more. Nobody is allowed to know that I am a Christian, for I am afraid that they might find out about it in Iran. I am living under constant fear and oppression.”

Nigeria: A 40-year-old Muslim cleric, Saheed Gbadamosi, was arrested after he threatened to bathe a local Christian pastor with acid and destroy his church. The prosecutor said that the “accused conspired with others still at large and stormed the defendant’s church armed with different types of dangerous weapons as they beat up the pastor identified as Emmanuel Ugbo, destroying church property and threatening to pour acid on him.”

Ethiopia: Hours after releasing an 18-year-old Christian known only as Deborah on bail, police re-arrested her. She and three younger teenage girls (two aged 14, one 15) were initially arrested for handing out a booklet entitled, “Let’s speak the truth in love: Answers to questions by Ahmed Deedat,” which rebutted accusations against the Christian faith by the named and prominent Muslim cleric. This enraged some local Muslims, who said the book was an insult to Islam. They proceeded to riot and attack a church, damaging its windows and doors; this onslaught led to the arrest of the four teenage Christian girls. “It is not yet clear why Deborah was re-arrested. A police investigation failed to bring formal charges against her and the three other girls. Their bail application was approved by a judge, and the four teenagers were released after paying Birr 3,000 (about US$135),” said the report.

Sudan: Six more Christians, three of whom are pastors, were jailed for refusing to hand over a school run by their evangelical church to the government. They were later released on bail. According to the report, “The arrests follow a number of other arrests of Christians in the country, where Christians face persecution…. Five other churches – three belonging to the Sudan Church of Christ, one to the Presbyterian Church and the other to the Episcopal Church – have been told their buildings will be demolished.”

Kyrgyzstan: A family of mixed religious background was forced to bury and exhume its 76-year-old mother three times due to religious restrictions. The family—the daughter is Christian, the father is Muslim—were told they could not bury their mother because she “had been a practicing Christian in a village that was overwhelmingly Muslim, and local religious leaders restricted the cemetery to Muslims,” said the report. Authorities were said to be investigating the case. One of the charges was “desecration of the dead.”

Pakistan: A Muslim mob beat Michael Robert, pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Farooqabad, and his family, before forcibly evicting them from their home. According to the Muslim assailants, the house, which the Christian purchased two years ago, is Muslim property. Robert’s family filed a suit for fraud and the judge issued a restraining order barring anyone from forcibly evicting them until ownership was settled. Undeterred, 50 armed Muslim men stormed the house and, according to a lawyer, “left Pastor Robert, his father Robert Masih and his wife seriously injured. The assailants arrived in the dark of night and started firing in the air with their weapons to terrorize the locals. They then forced open Pastor Robert’s gate and attacked the family, thrashing them violently as they threw household items out in the open.”

Separately, authorities shut down 11 Christian television stations which they described as “illegal broadcasts.” In response, Father Mushtaq Anjum, a Pakistani priest involved with the media, said, “The proclamation of the good news is now illegal. Christians have no place in public television channels.”

In Khanewal district, local authorities have allowed the only Christian graveyard to deteriorate over the past thirty years and have taken no restorative measures despite Christian pleas. One man said that local authority, Muhammad Khan Daha, was contacted repeatedly but has overlooked the matter, despite having pledged to allocate funds to restore the boundary wall, and provide electricity and water connections. He also said the graveyard was so full that in two years’ time there would be no more room to bury their dead.

Niger: Jeff Woodke, a 55-year-old American Christian missionary who had been living and serving his community for 24 years, was abducted from his home by Islamic militants after they killed two security guards. The mayor of the region said it was a “terrible tragedy” and that locals “wept with sorrow, lamenting the loss of a friend” the day after his abduction: “This man has lived among us for years, even in when it has been difficult to accompany vulnerable populations… Everyone knows his goodness.”

Egypt: Armed Muslim men ambushed and abducted three Christian men and one of the men’s 9-year-old son as they were driving their car near Assyut. After the family could not meet the initial ransom demand of 500,000 Egyptian pounds, a ransom of 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($8,000 USD) was agreed upon and the kidnapped victims were freed.

Germany: A kindergarten in Kassel canceled all Christmas celebrations and banned Christmas songs, trees, and any mention of the Nativity to accommodate the “diverse cultures” of their students. Approximately 12% of the 200,000 population are “foreign or have foreign roots.” The report adds that “Because of the high percentage of Muslim children at the Sara-Nussbaum-Haus Kindergarten, teachers at the school must pay special attention to make sure the children don’t swap food at lunch. This will make sure the Muslim children do not eat pork. Pork is not offered on the school’s menu.”

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing.

The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.

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15,479 Syrian refugees admitted to US in 2016, 606% increase over 2015; 98.8% Muslims

Posted January 1, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Islamic refugees, Non-Muslim refugees, Obama and Islamic refugees, Obama's legacy, Syria war
Tags: Islamic refugees, Non-Muslim refugees, Obama and Islamic refugees, Obama's legacy, Syria war

15,479 Syrian refugees admitted to US in 2016, 606% increase over 2015; 98.8% Muslims, Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, January 1, 2016

(Obama’s legacy will endure — until soon after January 20th. — DM)

All of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees? Is it racism and xenophobia to recall that in February 2015, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees? Or that the Lebanese Education Minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country?

Meanwhile, 80% of migrants who have come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all. So why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and now the U.S. as well? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September 2015, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.” These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.”

On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.

sign-refugees-welcome-photo-cijnews

“15,479 Syrian Refugees Have Been Admitted This Year – 606% More Than 2015; 98.8% Are Muslims,” by Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, December 29, 2016:

(CNSNews.com) – In its last full month in office, the Obama administration has admitted 1,307 more Syrian refugees – pushing the 2016 calendar year total to 15,479, a 606.1 percent increase from the numbers resettled in the U.S. in 2015.

Of the 15,479 Syrian refugees admitted by the end of Thursday:

–15,302 (98.8 percent) are Muslims – 15,134 Sunnis, 29 Shi’a, and 139 other Muslims

–125 (0.8 percent) are Christians – 32 Catholics, 32 Orthodox, five Protestants, four Jehovah’s Witnesses, and 52 refugees described only as “Christian” in State Department Refugee Processing Center data

–43(0.27 percent) are Yazidis

–eight are “other” religion and one is described as having “no religion”

–3,904 (25.2 percent) are males between the ages of 14 and 50

–3,521 (22.7 percent) are females aged 14-50

–7,428 (47.9 percent) are children under 14, of whom 3,824 are boys and 3,604 are girls.

Last year’s intake of Syrian refugees was considerably smaller – 2,192 in total – although the religious ratio was similarly skewed: 2,149 Muslims (98 percent) and 31 Christians (1.4 percent).

The last month of 2016 has seen 1,307 Syrian refugees arrive, of whom 1,278 (97.7 percent) were Muslims, 24 (1.8 percent) were Christians, and five (0.3 percent) were Yazidis.

The administration has determined that atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) in areas under its control amount to genocide.

At the same time, however, it has rejected calls by Republican lawmakers and others to prioritize vulnerable religious minorities among refugee applicants. President Obama said that would amount to a “religious test.”

Sunni Muslims do account for a majority of Syria’s population – an estimated 74 percent when the civil war began in early 2011.

Even so, the proportion of Sunnis among the refugees admitted into the U.S. has been much larger than that: 97.7 percent of those resettled in 2016, and 97.15 of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted since the conflict began (17,513 out of 18,026)….

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Avoiding the fatal mistake of disregarding the record of the past

Posted January 1, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: History, The past is prologue, Thomas Sowell
Tags: History, The past is prologue, Thomas Sowell

Avoiding the fatal mistake of disregarding the record of the past, National Review, Thomas Sowell, December 27, 2016

Thomas Sowell is retiring from writing his weekly syndicated column. This is his final column.

If you want to understand the fatal dangers facing America today, read The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill. The book is not about America, the Middle East, or nuclear missiles. But it shows Europe’s attitudes and delusions — aimed at peace in the years before the Second World War — which instead ended up bringing on that most terrible war in all of human history.

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Any honest man, looking back on a very long life, must admit — even if only to himself — being a relic of a bygone era. Having lived long enough to have seen both “the greatest generation” that fought World War II and the gratingest generation that we see all around us today makes being a relic of the past more of a boast than an admission.

Not everything in the past was admirable. Poet W. H. Auden called the 1930s “a low dishonest decade.” So were the 1960s, which launched many of the trends we are experiencing so painfully today. Some of the fashionable notions of the 1930s reappeared in the 1960s, often using the very same discredited words and producing the same disastrous consequences.

The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past.

If you want to understand the fatal dangers facing America today, read The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill. The book is not about America, the Middle East, or nuclear missiles. But it shows Europe’s attitudes and delusions — aimed at peace in the years before the Second World War — which instead ended up bringing on that most terrible war in all of human history.

Black adults, during the years when I was growing up in Harlem, had far less education than black adults today — but far more common sense. In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity, among both blacks and whites.

The first time I traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, as the plane flew into the skies over London I was struck by the thought that, in these skies, a thousand British fighter pilots fought off Hitler’s air force and saved both Britain and Western civilization. But how many students today will have any idea of such things, with history being neglected in favor of politically correct rhetoric?

You cannot live a long life without having been forced to change your mind many times about people and things — including, in some cases, your whole view of the world. Those who glorify the young today do them a great disservice, when this sends inexperienced young people out into the world cocksure about things on which they have barely scratched the surface.

In my first overseas trip, I was struck by blatantly obvious differences in behavior among different groups, such as the Malays and the Chinese in Malaysia — and wondered why scholars who were far more well-traveled than I was seemed not to have noticed such things, and to have resorted to all sorts of esoteric theories to explain why some groups earned higher incomes than others.

There are words that were once common but that are seldom heard any more. The phrase “none of your business” is one of these. Today, everything seems to be the government’s business or the media’s business. And the word “risqué” would be almost impossible to explain to young people, in a world where gross vulgarity is widespread and widely accepted.

Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: “What were you doing for the last twelve years before you got here?”

Reading about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and the widespread retrogressions of Western civilization that followed, was an experience that was sobering, if not crushing. Ancient history in general lets us know how long human beings have been the way they are, and dampens giddy zeal for the latest panaceas, despite how politically correct those panaceas may be.

When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce, and demand.

The first column I ever wrote, 39 years ago, was titled “The Profits of Doom.” This was long before Al Gore made millions of dollars promoting global-warming hysteria. Back in 1970, the prevailing hysteria was the threat of a new ice age — promoted by some of the same environmentalists who are promoting global-warming hysteria today.

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Cartoons and Video of the Day

Posted January 1, 2017 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Humor
Tags: Humor

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

idiots2

raise

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

dictater

legacy-saver

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