Obama administration scraps National Security Entry-Exit Registration System for migrants from Muslim countries

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Muslim countries, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamists, Obama and uncontrolled immigration, Obama's America

Tags: , , , ,

Obama administration scraps National Security Entry-Exit Registration System for migrants from Muslim countries, Jihad Watch, 

Good. What would we possibly need to track them for? What could possibly wrong? What could they conceivably do in a country for which they must feel nothing but gratitude? Ask Merkel.

obama-finger

“Obama Administration Scraps Entry-Exit Tracking System for Migrants from Muslim Countries,” AP, December 22, 2016:

WASHINGTON (AP)—The Obama administration is officially ending a post-9/11 era registration system for immigrant men from mostly Muslim countries.

The decision to scrap the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System comes amid growing international terror fears and President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestions that he could ban Muslim immigrants from the United States….

The NSEERS program was widely derided by civil libertarians as an effort to profile people based on race and religion.

The administration hasn’t been using the program since 2011.

Hezbollah using US weaponry in Syria: senior Israeli military officer

Posted December 22, 2016 by Peter Hofman
Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: , , , , , ,

Hezbollah is using US weaponry in Syria, according to a senior Israeli military officer

Reuters

(By Ori Lewis; editing by Jeffrey Heller)

Source: Hezbollah using US weaponry in Syria: senior Israeli military officer – Business Insider

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel has informed the United States that Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in Syria are using U.S. armored personnel carriers originally supplied to the Lebanese Army, a senior Israeli military officer said on Wednesday.

The U.S. State Department said last month that the American embassy in Beirut was working to investigate images on social media purporting to show Hezbollah, which supports President Bashar al-Assad, displaying U.S. military equipment in Syria.

Those images were widely reported to have been of U.S.-made M113 armored personnel carriers, which the State Department said were extremely common in the region.

In an intelligence briefing to foreign reporters in Tel Aviv, the senior officer showed a photograph of military vehicles, which he said included U.S.-made armored personnel carriers (APCs), along a road.

“These APCs are of the Hezbollah, while fighting in Syria, that they took from the Lebanese armed forces,” he said in English, describing the guerrilla group as dominant in Lebanon.

shia militia M113 APC

An M113 armored personnel carrier in the possession of Iraqi Shia militias.

“We shared this information with other countries, including the U.S. of course, and I can even say that we recognized these specific APCs with some specific parameters that we know … these were given to the Lebanese armed forces. It’s not an assumption,” said the officer, who under the rules of the briefing could not be identified by name, rank or position.

Western diplomatic sources have said the APCs were delivered to the Lebanese Army by the United States as part of a program to equip that force.

The officer made no comment about when the APCs would have been supplied to the Lebanese Army.

The officer said Hezbollah has 8,000 fighters in Syria where more than 1,700 of the group’s combatants have been killed since 2011.

Israel and Hezbollah, which the officer said has 30,000 members, half of them combatants, last fought a war in 2006.

 

Europe’s Compassionate Hatred of Israel

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: History of Jews in Israel, Islam and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic supremacy, Islamists vs Israel, Israel and Europe, Israel and UN, UNESCO, UNESCO Jerusalem Declaration

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Europe’s Compassionate Hatred of Israel, Gatestone Institute, Bat Ye’or, December 22, 2016

(Please see also, Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel. — DM)

The Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

But what does this declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists? Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

Where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

European countries recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”.

This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions. We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.

The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 — and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid.

The Venice Declaration of 1980 was a gift from the European Community to the Arab League, aimed at reestablishing good economic relations with Arab countries, which had been angered by the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, a peace Europe had not been able to prevent. Jewish holy sites and the survival of the Jewish State were sacrificed by the European Community in exchange for petrodollars.

Since that time, the European Union has expressed remorse for the Holocaust and love and compassion for Israel, but has continued to support, fund and encourage a population whose mission is the destruction of Israel, as proclaimed in its doctrine, and with which Europe is quite familiar. European countries zealously spend billions to promote a worldwide Palestinian campaign of hatred against the State of Israel. They recognize terrorism everywhere except in Israel, where they themselves are allies of these terrorists, whom they call “freedom fighters” or “militants”, against “occupation”. The so-called “Jewish occupation” of Judea and Samaria refers to land that was conquered by war and occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967, and from where Palestinian Jews were killed, or dispossessed and expelled.

Does not this policy, championed by France, remind you of something? During WW II, the Pétain-Hitler and the fascists’ alliance with the Mufti of Jerusalem, head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel, to them, is the cause of the wars in the Middle East and must be wiped out. Men from the 1940s have passed away, but their heirs kept their policy, disguising it under compassion and love, driving Israel to suicide “for its own good”. Of course!

2146During WW II, the alliance of Pétain and Hitler with the Mufti of Jerusalem sought the extermination of the Jewish people, whom they accused of being the cause of evil. Today, this same policy, this same alliance, has set itself the same objective with the same motivation: Israel must be wiped out.

Now, with the declaration of UNESCO, we are witnessing the suppression of the history of the Israeli people – the “Holocaust of Memory”, as defined by Giulio Meotti — with the EU joining in.

But what does UNESCO’s declaration mean for Europe and Christianity? Wasn’t Christianity born out of Israel? Don’t churches tell the history of the people of Israel in their paintings, sculptures and stained glass windows? And isn’t the Bible, this historical shrine of the people of Israel for more than two millennia, left open on every pulpit of these churches? Hasn’t it been read? Commented on for twenty centuries? Wasn’t Jesus a Judean Jew, as were the apostles and evangelists?

Or was it Islam that Jesus was preaching, in Arabic and in the mosques?

If Israel never had a history in Judea, then Christianity and the Bible are lies. Are the ancient texts attesting to the existence of Israel from the time of the Pharaohs, Assyria, the Greeks, the Romans all lies? And the Arch of Titus in Rome, did that Menorah on there come from the mosque? There were not even any mosques around at that time — not even in Arabia.

What the UNESCO’s declaration is forcing us to accept is not just the destruction of our identity and culture, and the replacement of Christianity — a graft of Israel — with the Muslim faith, but also the destruction of the principle underlying Western civilization itself: reason, the very thing that lifts man above the beasts. We see that Israel, in its defense of the historical principle of its legitimacy, is also theologically protecting the legitimacy of Christianity, also linked to the Bible.

But if this declaration is not true, then the Jewish State’s sovereignty over Jerusalem is legal. And if it is legal, why has no one heard the protests of human rights defenders? How many Christians are there in the world? Two and a half billion? How many of these protested? A million? A hundred thousand? Ten thousand? Fifty, if that? And where are the great Catholic or Protestant voices to protest against this Islamization of Christianity? This passivity, this indifference, makes you think that Europe will soon look more like Lebanon.

This UNESCO declaration, to which Europe raised no objections — with the exception of four countries, whose abstention was not a protest, but an act of cowardice — is the very charter of the Islamization of Europe and of Christianity. It details a policy that dovetails with what we see unfolding with mass-immigration and its consequences starting in 1973, the date when the European Community allied itself with the enemy of Israel, the PLO. It is this policy of alliance with the enemies of Israel that led to the abandonment of the Lebanese Christians when they were attacked by the Europe-supported Palestinians. It was this policy that led to the denial of the history of jihad, of dhimmitude and of the tragedy of Christians, hostages in the Arab world — because Palestinians embody jihadist and dhimmitude values against Jews, Christians and Europe.

Europe’s alliance with the enemies of Israel, for the purpose of delegitimizing and destroying it, has simply continued the policies of Hitler and Pétain; but how can you destroy Israel without destroying Christianity? What would Christianity be without the Bible, the prophets, a Jewish Jesus, the universal values that these teach? This alliance has ruined Europe — because the enemies of Israel are also enemies of Christianity and of Europe. How can you ally yourself with those who want to destroy you, without in fact dying yourself?

The same obsessive hatred Hitler had for Israel, which led to the ruin of Europe, has persisted today in the European Union against the Jewish State. The great irony is that in trying to destroy Israel, Europe has destroyed itself.

The people of Europe will regain their freedom and identity by extricating themselves from this Euro-Arab alliance that joins them in a genocidal scheme against Israel and the West, in which they themselves are both protagonists and victims. Then and only then will they be able to help those Muslims who are bravely struggling to release their brethren from the hatred disfiguring the human face — jihadi hatred — and persuade them to accept human diversity. We have neglected these Muslims. They have been fighting alone for both them and us. It is imperative to help them.

UK: Heavily-armed police guard Canterbury Cathedral nativity scene

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Britain and Islamists, Canterbury Cathederal, Nativity scene

Tags: , ,

UK: Heavily-armed police guard Canterbury Cathedral nativity scene, Jihad Watch,

(Islamophobia alert! Nothing to do with the Religion of Peace! Most likely the threat is from those violent Amish nuts again. — DM)

So much for peace on earth and goodwill to all. Who would have thought only two decades ago that a nativity scene would need heavily armed guards? The guards at Canterbury Cathedral situation demonstrates an inherent clash of values.

Christianity is already virtually wiped out in the middle east by jihadist thugs and its well on its way on Western soil, unless Westerners have a change in attitude and wake up.

nativity-scene-guarded

“So much for peace and goodwill to all men: Machine gun police guard Canterbury cathedral and its nativity scene as security is stepped up across the UK in the wake of attack on Berlin”, by Rebecca Camber, Liz Hull and Andy Dolan, Daily Mail, December 20, 2016:

Within the hallowed grounds of one of the most famous Christian buildings in England, the traditional Christmas nativity scene should have been a place of peace and tranquillity.

But yesterday crowds who gathered to appreciate the sacred scene at Canterbury Cathedral were confronted by the fearful sight of armed police bearing assault rifles patrolling the manger where the figure of Baby Jesus lay.

The extraordinary image offers a chilling glimpse of Britain braced for a possible terrorist attack just days before Christmas in the wake of atrocities in Berlin and Turkey.

Security was stepped up dramatically around the UK yesterday after a total of 12 people were killed and 58 injured when a truck was driven into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin, hours after a Russian Ambassador was assassinated in Turkey on Monday night.

Within hours of the carnage which Islamic State claimed responsibility for, police in Britain responded by throwing a ring of steel around potential major targets including the Changing of the Guard.

In an unprecedented move, Scotland Yard announced that roads around Buckingham Palace would be closed to vehicles from today and additional barriers placed around the guard movements over the next three months.

The measure was described as a ‘necessary precaution’ to protect the substantial number of military personnel and huge crowds drawn to the spectacle which takes place daily between 10.45am and 12.30pm.

Elsewhere in the country, other forces dispatched scores of officers to Christmas markets in towns and cities to prevent a copycat attack….

Police say there is no intelligence to suggest an attack in Britain is imminent.But there are fears that the call from ISIS could lead to a lone wolf attack from any of the 400 militants who have returned here from fighting in Syria or Iraq……

About That “Vote Trump” Church Burning

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: "Fake news", "Far right" terrorism, 2016 elections, Church burning, Deplorables, Media and Donald Trump

Tags: , ,

About That “Vote Trump” Church Burning, Hot Air, Jazz Shaw, December 22, 2016

churchburning

You probably recall the shocking story which headlined every major paper in the country and ran in a loop on all the cable news stations during the final week of the election. Some horrible, racist Trump supporter burned down a church in Mississippi, scrawling the words, “Vote Trump” across the side of the gutted building. It was clearly yet another example of the Basket of Deplorables who were supporting Trump’s bid for the presidency and one more reason for Americans to turn their backs on such hatred and intolerance. This was the picture which was literally burned into everyone’s retinas.

Well, yesterday they made an arrest in this tragic case of hatred but the story seems to be changing. (WREG)

Mississippi authorities have made an arrest in the burning of an African-American church spray-painted with the words, “Vote Trump.”

Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain says Andrew McClinton of Leland, Mississippi, who is African-American, is charged with first-degree arson of a place of worship.

McClinton was arrested Wednesday. Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, was burned and vandalized Nov. 1, a week before the presidential election.

That’s certainly awkward. If you read the Washington Post’s coverage of the story (which was nowhere near the front page, by the way) you’ll need to scroll down five paragraphs to discover that Mr. McClinton is African-American. He’s also got a rather impressive rap sheet and more than a decade of cumulative time in prison.

Here’s the interesting part: the local authorities who had initially been checking into this as a hate crime are now describing it somewhat differently. (Emphasis added)

“We do not believe it was politically motivated. There may have been some efforts to make it appear politically motivated,” Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, who is also the fire marshal, told AP.

Absent some sort of statement from McClinton himself it’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s not too hard to read between the lines here. You can’t simply say that it’s “not politically motivated” just because it turns out to be a different political motivation than the one you originally suspected. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Now, I’m never going to deny that there is still some residual racism left in the country and it can even bubble up into politics. But what sort of room temperature IQ moron would think that the best way to get out the vote for Trump would be to burn down a black church? What sort of result was the arsonist expecting?

“Oh, well… I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but if the other side is willing to take the time to burn down our church, maybe I should give this Trump fellow a second look!”

Compare that against the second possibility. If you really want to drive out the black vote against Trump, what better way to incite them to action on election day than torching the church and making it look like it was related to Trump? As I said, that’s unproven at that point but you can apply Occam’s Razor to the question for yourselves.

This would be less remarkable if it was happening in a vacuum, but as our friend Mickey White pointed out last night at Red State, this is turning into something of a pattern.

Remember that spike in hate crimes the media keeps reporting? They may need to begin a feature dedicated to corrections after this week. We’ve been following the story of Yasmin Seweid, a young Muslim woman arrested for lying to the police, after her story of a Trump inspired hate crime went viral. Adam Saleh a serial hoaxer claimed Delta airline discriminated against him for “speaking in Arabic, already other passengers are coming forward to discredit his version of events.

Just something to ponder going forward. When you see a story of some sort of racially motivated incident of violence which looks too incredibly overt and stupid to be true… maybe it’s not.

Humor | Florida VA hospital left IG inspector in shower for 9 hours

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Humor, Veterans Administration

Tags: ,

Florida VA hospital left IG inspector in shower for 9 hours, Duffel Blog, December 22, 2016

vetadmin

BAY PINES, Fla. — During a visit to review waiting times at the Bay Pines Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, inspector Floyd Rungen was left in a shower with a dead veteran for nine hours, sources confirmed today.

“In 35 years of service at the VA, I’ve never seen anything so outrageous as this,” said a perfectly-clean Rungen, displaying the shriveled skin on his fingertips. “They wanted me to inspect plumbing renovations at Bay Pines, and I agreed. Maybe there was a shift change or something but I was forgotten all day.”

“I mean, I can’t even use the fingerprint scanner back at the Department,” he complained. “I guess I’ll have to be let in on personal recognizance.” Wiping soap from his extremely-clean left ear, Rungren said, “When I get back to my office, I’ll file a strongly-worded report to my supervisor about having to kill time with that body lying there. Jesus.”

Rungren appeared to be referring to a veteran who allegedly died in a facility shower and whose remains were not removed for over nine hours.

“This outrage must never again happen to our distinguished veterans,” declared Rungren, who is also a veteran. “When a senior Department official is ignored like this, there must be changes.”

However, Bay Pines administrator Merle Johnson disagreed. “I’m sorry about the body we ignored but our health care system rightly prioritizes its limited resources on the soon-to-be left-for-dead, not the dead.”

Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who has made improving veterans’ care a priority, was outraged.

“I am tired of learning about the poor treatment of our heroic veteran inspectors, who are a national treasure,” he said. “They work hard to ensure that we in Congress receive accurate information about the quality of health care that the government doesn’t provide to vets,” O’Rourke said.

“God bless this shriveled inspector and his family during this difficult holiday season, what with his skin rehabilitation coming up at an exclusive D.C. doctor’s office.”

O’Rourke added that he would introduce a bill to fund new fingerprint scanners for the VA.

Hungarian PM Orbán: “2017 will be a year of rebellion…America, what is your message? Let’s make Hungary great again!”

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Europe, Hungary, President Elect Trump, Viktor Orbán

Tags: , , ,

Hungarian PM Orbán: “2017 will be a year of rebellion…America, what is your message? Let’s make Hungary great again!” Jihad Watch,

(Please see also, Political Revolution Is Brewing in Europe. — DM)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has praised the victories of the populist Five Star Movement in the Italian referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, claiming these developments are just the beginning of the “rebellion”.

Orbán is referring to the taking back of Western countries from Leftist globalists who have flooded Europe with Muslim migrants who are responsible for an unprecedented wave of crime throughout Europe, including widespread sex assaults. In July, Orban stated that migrants were “poison” and “not needed”:

Orban said the migration and foreign policy plans of the US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump were “vital” for Hungary…. the US Democrats supported migration as well as what he described as “democracy export”, while Hungary – like Trump – opposed both, “making it clear where Hungary’s interests lie”….The Democrats’ foreign policy is bad for Europe, and deadly for Hungary,” he said. “The migration and foreign policy advocated by the Republican candidate, Mr Trump, is good for Europe and vital for Hungary.”

orban-1

“Orbán Declares 2017 the ‘Year of Rebellion’”, by Chris Tomlinson, Breitbart, December 21, 2016:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has praised the victories of the populist Five Star Movement in the Italian referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, claiming these developments are just the beginning of the “rebellion”.

The Hungarian leader, who is known to be outspoken in expressing his opinions on mass migration and the migrant crisis claims a kinship with rising populist leaders and movements across Europe and the United States.

Mr. Orbán said his party Fidesz was a “self-made story … about ten to twenty, or thirty guys coming from somewhere, rising up, fed up with the world that surrounds them” who wanted to change it.

He claimed to see the same attitude in President-Elect Donald J. Trump, saying in an interview with Hungarian news site 888.hu that Trump had what he called a “self-made man mentality.” He went on to add, “Self-made figures are people who themselves are successful, who do not begin a sentence with ‘I know people,’ but say, ‘I’ve done that.’ ”

For the Hungarian prime minister, 2016 isn’t the end of the populist rebellion against globalism and the elites. Asked if he thought the anti-globalist sentiment would spread he said, “I am convinced that 2017 will be a year of rebellion. Whether they [the globalists] put down the rebellion or not, that’s another story.”

Orbán cited the victory of the Italian opposition in the recent referendum and said that despite the defeat for anti-mass migration candidate Norbert Hofer in the Austrian presidential elections, the rebellion was growing.

“Next year will be elections in Germany, the Netherlands, France. A lot of things can happen,” he said. Mr. Orbán said there were two rebellions going on, one was a revolt of the working and middle class which led to Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump and the other “…is a kind of national rebellion.

“The ‘United States of Europe’ advocates, by being stealthy, encroachments on the sovereignty of individual nations using the issue of asylum.

“All of this is surrounded by political correctness, containment, intellectual rebellion against stigma. The rebellion started in 2016, will be even more enhanced in the future. Therefore, I say that 2017 will be a year of rebellion,” he said.

When asked if he thought it was contradictory for a ruling government to declare themselves rebels, he said, “The real freedom fighters are the people.”

He went on to add, “If we believe in Hungary, the Hungarian people, one inside the other, then we are facing a bright future,” adding that children should be taught “not to seek the easy way, but go their own way even when it seems difficult, then the country can be great again.

“America, what is your message? Let’s make Hungary great again!”

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Media and Democrats, Media and DNC, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Media melt-down

Tags: , , , ,

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin, Town Hall, Victor Davis Hanson, December 22, 2016

trumpandmedia1

News outlets such as The New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer.

Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?

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

President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field many questions from New York/Washington journalists.

What we know as “the media” never imagined a Trump victory. It has become unhinged at the reality of a Trump presidency.

No wonder the fading establishment media is now distrusted by a majority of the public, according to Gallup — and becoming irrelevant even among progressives.

Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal. But they at least hid their inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback.

When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory.

The mainstream-media narrative in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald, the Castroite, communist assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was a product of right-wing Texas hatred was completely crazy — but largely unquestioned.

That old monopoly over the news, despite the advent of cable television and the internet, still lingered until 2016. Even in recent years, Ivy League journalism degrees and well-known media brand names seemed to suggest better reporting than what was offered by bloggers and websites.

Soft-spoken liberal hosts on public TV and radio superficially sounded more news-like than their gravelly-voiced populist counterparts on commercial radio and cable news.

Yet the thinning veneer of circumspection that had supposedly characterized the elite liberal successors to Cronkite and Brinkley was finally ripped off completely by a media meltdown over Trump.

Journalists such as Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times and Christiane Amanpour of CNN said that they could not — and should not — be neutral reporters, given their low opinion of Trump.

When the press is unashamedly slanted, even its benefactors want even more partiality — media heartthrob Barack Obama included.

In his last press conference as president, Obama attacked pet journalists for reporting on WikiLeaks’ release of John Podesta’s emails, supposedly at the expense of his own legacy and Hillary Clinton’s accomplishments.

The WikiLeaks trove certainly proved another disaster to the media — but only because it revealed that mainstream journalists conspired with the Clinton campaign.

CNN’s Donna Brazile leaked possible debate questions to Clinton. One op-ed columnist, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, even asked Clintonites for research to help him attack Trump.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush sent a story to the Clinton campaign team to be audited before publication. He begged to keep his collusion quiet and admitted that he had become a “hack” for such journalistic impropriety. Thrush may have been rewarded for his predictable left-wing bias, recently being hired by the New York Times as a White House correspondent.

Last week, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman grotesquely suggested via Twitter that Trump might welcome another 9/11-like attack, given that such a human catastrophe supposedly helped win support for George W. Bush.

Recently, another Politico reporter, Julia Ioffe, used Twitter to relay a news story about the possibility that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, would get an office at the White House. In her tweet, Joffe suggested that Trump was either having incestuous relations with his daughter or skirting nepotism laws.

Politico fired Ioffe — sort of. She had already announced that she was moving from Politico to the Atlantic.

Yet the Atlantic announced that it would not rescind her hire — suggesting that her political bias, despite the accompanying unprofessionalism and uncouthness, could almost be interpreted as a plus.

In today’s media, all of this progressive distortion serves as an insurance policy for lapses of personal integrity like those of Thrush and Joffe.

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams sermonized about the so-called “fake news” epidemic. Williams failed to remind us that he was removed as NBC’s evening news anchor for serving up all sorts of fake details about his supposedly brave trips abroad in search of edgy news stories.

After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the co-hosts of the show “CNN Newsroom” collectively put up their hands in “hands up, don’t shoot” solidarity — echoing a narrative of police murder later proved to be completely false by a lengthy federal investigation.

Decades-long journalistic one-sidedness was apparently tolerable when there were no other news alternatives. Mainstream-media monopolies once were also highly profitable, and long-ago liberal news people were at least well-mannered.

All of those assumptions are no longer true. News outlets such as The New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer.

Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?

PM Netanyahu’s Greeting for Christmas and the New Year – YouTube

Posted December 22, 2016 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

To all of our Christian friends around the world, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I send you these greetings from Jerusalem. I’m standing in the courtyard of this magnificent International Christian Embassy. I’m so proud of our relations with our Christian brothers and sisters. I wonder for many of you if you remember the experience you had when you first visited Israel, when you saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Via Dolorosa or the Sea of Galilee or Nazareth. I’m sure it moved you deeply.

And it moves us deeply to have this bond with you because we all know that this land of Israel is the land of our common heritage. It changed the story of humanity, it changed civilization. What a magnificent heritage it is. Yet, we also know that it is under attack these days, that the forces of intolerance, of barbarism that attack all religions attack Christians with particular vehemence. We stand with you and I’m proud of the fact that in Israel, this is the one place in the Middle East that the Christian community not only survives but thrives and it’s no accident. It’s because of our commitment to religious freedom; it’s because of our embrace of our heritage; it’s because of our embrace of our common future.

Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel

Posted December 22, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: BDS, Obama and Israel, UN BDS funding, UN Human RIghts Council, United Nations, United Nations and Israel

Tags: , , , , ,

Obama sits while the UN moves toward a boycott of Israel, Washington Examiner, Anne Bayefsky, December 21, 2016

obamasitsonhandsWith Obama’s U.N. diplomats sitting on their hands while the funding scheme is being hotly debated, American taxpayers can expect to find themselves funding BDS in the very near future, with American businesses caught in the crosshairs. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

[Obama] prefers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with human rights authorities on the Human Rights Council like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Cuba. He is prepared to spend American taxpayer dollars to create a blacklist of companies doing business with the democratic state of Israel instead of the world’s most horrific regimes. A presidency spent courting moral relativism, forsaking U.S. allies, and indulging U.S. adversaries is about to reach its lowest point yet.

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

U.S. companies are in for a shock as President Obama takes aim once again at Israel in the final month of his presidency. In the coming days, he is expected to direct his team at the United Nations to vote for U.S. funding of “BDS,” the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign aimed at financially ruining Israel and smearing the companies with which it does business.

The vote concerns the U.N. budget that is currently being negotiated and scheduled to be finalized this week. One of the line items provides funding for the implementation of a Human Rights Council resolution adopted in March. The resolution calls for the creation of a blacklist of companies around the world doing any business, directly or indirectly, connected to Israeli settlements. In effect, it launches a U.N.-sponsored BDS movement. Since the General Assembly holds the purse strings for the Human Rights Council’s operations, the time has come to allocate the money to pay for it.

With Obama’s U.N. diplomats sitting on their hands while the funding scheme is being hotly debated, American taxpayers can expect to find themselves funding BDS in the very near future, with American businesses caught in the crosshairs.

Israeli settlements consist of Jews living peaceful, productive lives on disputed territory whose ownership, by existing agreement, is to be determined through negotiations. This Jewish presence on Arab-claimed territory is offensive to a deeply anti-Semitic enemy that seeks to guarantee that land swapped in an eventual deal to create a Palestinian state will be Jew-free.

In the context of a Palestinian policy of ethnic cleansing, these Jewish farms, enterprises and schools are an “obstacle to peace,” to use the preferred verbiage of the United Nations and the Obama administration. The fact that Jews have repeatedly been moved in advance of a negotiated end to hostilities by their own government for the sake of peace, only to have those hopes dashed time and again, is simply dismissed.

The real obstacle to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict should be obvious after seven decades of non-stop war and terror since the minute of Israel’s creation. Arab rejectionists, on both the battlefield and diplomatic turf, consider all of Israel to be occupied territory and an illegal settlement from 1948 on. Rolling back the clock to the 1967 war is one stop on the way.

Those facts, however, will not intrude on Obama’s BDS calculus. He is an avid supporter of the Human Rights Council, one of the most extreme anti-Israel bodies at the United Nations. Joining the council was one of his first foreign policy initiatives. After serving two consecutive three-year terms starting in 2009, the rules required a one-year hiatus. Hence, the U.S. has not been a council member in 2016.

But attempting to rule from the grave, a week before the U.S. elections, Obama sought and obtained another three-year term to commence Jan. 1, 2017. As a council fan, he has no intention of objecting to funding it.

On the contrary, U.N. budget documents published Dec. 13 indicate that “new requirements” to implement council resolutions and decisions taken over the past year almost double the original $23 million it was allowed to spend for this purpose in the 2016-2017 biennium. Evidently, council devotees took for granted an Obama administration carte blanche.

On Dec. 15, the General Assembly budget committee (the “Fifth Committee”) met to approve the funds for the Human Rights Council, including the funds to create the Council’s blacklist — aka BDS “database.” U.N. documentation indicates that the cost is $138,700 “to pay for one staff member to create the database over a period of 8 months and present a report” to the Human Rights Council in March 2017. In other words, authorization is being backdated to pay for an operation already underway.

To put this in perspective, the council resolution on “Realizing the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl” needs $82,800. “Effects of terrorism on the enjoyment of all human rights” needs $74,700. And a blacklist of companies with ties to Israel needs $138,700.

At the Dec. 15 meeting, the Israeli U.N. representative on the Fifth Committee pleaded with “member states to reject the funding request.” But Obama’s U.N. diplomat — who was present and spoke on an unrelated issue — said nothing. The Palestinian representative floated procedural objections, claiming it was a done deal. Precedent, though, is not on his side.

In 2007, when the U.N. allotted money to fund a second iteration of the racist “anti-racism” Durban conference, the Bush administration stood rock solid on a matter of principle. The U.S. called for the vote in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee and unequivocally voted against. When it lost, it voted against the entire U.N. biennial budget.

Obama is not that man. He prefers to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with human rights authorities on the Human Rights Council like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Cuba. He is prepared to spend American taxpayer dollars to create a blacklist of companies doing business with the democratic state of Israel instead of the world’s most horrific regimes. A presidency spent courting moral relativism, forsaking U.S. allies, and indulging U.S. adversaries is about to reach its lowest point yet.