Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms

Posted December 21, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: "Liberals", 2016 elections, Democrat Party, Democrat Party and media, Hypocrisy, Leftists

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Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms, Washington Examiner, December 21, 2016

(Will we ever stop calling them “liberals?” They are leftists or Democrats, not liberals. The term “liberal” has been perverted into what it is not. — DM)

liberalspowerA crop of liberal writers are aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

“Democrats had a knife, and the GOP had a gun,” writes New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, remarking in particular on what he views as disgraceful Republican abuses of power in North Carolina. Having lost the governorship, the GOP used the lame-duck period to pass laws taking power and patronage away from the victorious Democratic governor-elect.

Leonhardt’s broad point about general Republican excess is being made by many a liberal writer. It is a revisionist history put succinctly by Greg Sargent, a liberal blogger at the Washington Post, that the “GOP shreds our norms in [the] quest for power and Dems don’t.”

This is a deeply ignorant or mendacious view of political history.

We do not defend the Republicans’ North Carolina caper; we already criticized it in this space. But it is stomach-turning to see liberal horror that Republicans should resort to the same tactics Democrats used with gusto. If anything is more irritating than hearing partisans justify their behavior with “tu quoque” arguments, it is seeing a crop of liberal writers aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades.

The last two times North Carolina’s legislature moved to strip powers from its governor, it was Democrats doing the partisan stripping and Republicans being stripped. It was also an abuse then, and North Carolina Republicans cried foul, not that anyone seems to remember their protests now. Gov. Pat McCrory and legislative Republicans were thoroughly and mercilessly schooled in the art of political warfare by their Democratic adversaries, and finally brought a gun to the gunfight.

Republicans win a few elections and suddenly it is shocking — shocking, we tell you! — that they deploy gerrymandering just as Democrats did for decades. Trump wins an election, and suddenly liberals worry that presidents might govern with pens and phones, and change national immigration policy by fiat.

Suddenly, “obstructionism” is no longer considered a legitimate excuse for a president to announce that his agenda is too important to wait for democratic constitutional processes. Suddenly, liberal writers fear rather than cheer the possibility that a president might start a ruinous and illegal war on his own personal say-so.

When you’re told everything in the political landscape is unprecedented and horrible, you are not hearing a good faith argument. You are hearing the symptoms of defeat. Beginning next month, Democrats will have less power at national and state levels than they’ve had since the Great Depression. They’re losing influence over policy across the map, and it’ll take a lot of political rehab for them to get over it.

If we live in “a new normal in which the America we knew and loved is gone,” perhaps it’s because these people were enjoying liberal abuse of power too much to apply the constitutional brakes when they had the levers in their hands.

Lies and Hypocrisy over Aleppo

Posted December 21, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Aleppo Syria, Islam and Christians, Islam and Jews, Media and Islam, Obama administration, Obama and Islam, Obama's foreign failures, Shiite vs Sunni

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Lies and Hypocrisy over Aleppo, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, December 21, 2016

aleppo4

There are no good guys in an Islamic civil war. Both sides operate by Mohammed’s ancient Islamic rules that treat the property and women of conquered populations as the rightful loot of the attackers. The atrocities of Shiites and Sunnis, Iranians and Alawites, ISIS, Al-Nusra and the countless Sunni bands are not aberrations from civilized norms, they are the entire horrid purpose of this Islamic conflict.

There are no innocent victims in an Islamic civil war because neither side believes in anything except demonstrating the Allahu Akbaring supremacy of their religious doctrine by subjugating the other.

Aleppo was once a great center of civilization. Under Islam, it became a sad remnant of its former past. Whoever wins in Aleppo, it is a victory for Islamist triumphalism and a defeat for human civilization.

The bigger question is not who wins in Aleppo, but who will win in Paris, Brussels and Rome.

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

250,000 Christians lived in Aleppo before the Sunni-Shiite Islamic civil war began. Today their numbers have fallen to 40,000.

There were no worldwide protests over this ethnic cleansing of Christians from Aleppo as there are over the fall of the Sunni Islamic state whose Jihadis are euphemistically described as rebels. There were no photos of crying Christian children blanketing every media outlet. But today you can hardly open a newspaper without seeing a teary Sunni Muslim kid allegedly being evacuated from Aleppo.

Given a chance, the weeping Sunni Muslims did to their Christian neighbors in Aleppo what they had done to them back during the Aleppo Massacre a hundred years ago when they were upset that the decline of Islamic Sharia power led to Christians gaining some civil rights. The Jewish population of Aleppo, which had once made up 5% of the city, had already been wiped out in the 1947 Muslim riots.

The last Jewish family was evacuated from Aleppo to escape the Sunni Jihadis two years ago.

The destruction of the Jewish and Christian communities of Aleppo happened without a fraction of the hysterical tumult over the defeat of the Sunni Jihadis and their fellow Muslim religious dependents.

“Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later,” Samantha Power declared at the United Nations.

Why doesn’t the ethnic cleansing of 210,000 Christians stain Power’s conscience? Or the church bombings by Islamists in Egypt, the stabbings of Jewish women in Israel and the Boko Haram genocide of Christians in Nigeria? True modern evil is the righteous conviction of liberals that only Muslim lives matter and that their Christian, Jewish and other non-Muslim victims somehow have it coming.

The fall of the Sunni theocracy is denounced as an outrage that will stain the conscience of the world. Journalists have taken a break from their ski vacations to lecture us on how we should have done something. That “something” being the thing they didn’t want us to do in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein had butchered hundreds of thousands, but that is somehow now a moral imperative in Syria.

Why do the Sunni Muslims of Aleppo matter while the ethnically cleansed Christians of Aleppo don’t? And why was removing Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, a crime that liberals still howl about while removing Assad, an Alawite Shiite, is a moral imperative? Because the “righteousness” axis of our foreign policy is controlled by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni Saudis and the rest of their Sunni Gulfie ilk.

The Muslim Brotherhood set our agenda for the Arab Spring. It’s why our government and our human rights organization backed the popular overthrow of Mubarak, but fought the popular overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi. Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, an organization which despite its name has solicited money from the Saudis, the sugar daddies of the Sunni Jihad, sneers at Copts for supporting the “persecution” of the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s not just Orwellian. It’s evil.

The outrage over Aleppo is a surreal partnership between Islamist butchers and their left-wing enablers.

“Are you truly incapable of shame?” Samantha Power demanded of Syria, Russia and Iran at the UN.

It goes without saying that three brutal dictatorships whose crimes run the gamut from raping teenage girls so that they won’t die as virgins and be allowed into Islamic paradise to radioactive poisonings of its political opponents have nothing that resembles shame or conscience.

But where is Samantha Power’s shame? The Iranian advance in Aleppo is funded by illegal cash shipments that Obama put on unmarked cargo planes and delivered to Iran’s Shiite Jihadists. Iran’s military budget increased 39% thanks to Obama’s cargo pallets full of Swiss Francs and Euros.

The barrel bombs that Power so angrily condemns were bought and paid for by her own boss. They were enabled by every American liberal who switched from defending the proposed Iranian nuclear genocide of millions of Jews to bewailing the Iranian attack on the Muslim Brotherhood in Aleppo.

Where is their shame? Is the American leftist even capable of shame anymore?

Obama’s inaction in Syria wasn’t caused by any philosophical struggle over the limits of intervention, as his media lackeys would have us to believe. The truth is uglier, simpler and more outrageous.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to back the Sunni or Shiite Islamists. Russia, which went all in on the Shiites, won. Obama tried to play both Islamist sides, funneling arms to the Sunni Jihadists in Syria and cash pallets to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. He backed the Shiite regime in Baghdad over the Sunnis in Iraq. But he aided the Sunni Jihadis in Syria over the Shiite government in Damascus. Yet he was afraid to go all in for fear of trashing the Iran nuke sellout that even he admits will create a Shiite bomb in a little over a decade.

All the noise over Aleppo doesn’t testify to an atrocity, but to the enormous power of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi lobby to control not only our politicians, but our national narratives.

There is no doubt that the Shiite Jihadist gangs will extract their blood price from Sunnis in Aleppo, that money and gems will disappear, women will be raped and bodies will wind up in mass graves. But the death toll will fall far short of the hysterical rhetoric about Rwanda. And what will happen to Sunnis in Aleppo is the same thing that happened to Shiites when Sunni Jihadists seized a town or village.

There are no good guys in an Islamic civil war. Both sides operate by Mohammed’s ancient Islamic rules that treat the property and women of conquered populations as the rightful loot of the attackers. The atrocities of Shiites and Sunnis, Iranians and Alawites, ISIS, Al-Nusra and the countless Sunni bands are not aberrations from civilized norms, they are the entire horrid purpose of this Islamic conflict.

There are no innocent victims in an Islamic civil war because neither side believes in anything except demonstrating the Allahu Akbaring supremacy of their religious doctrine by subjugating the other.

Beheading captives, raping their wives and looting their belongings was how Islamic Jihadis, dating back to Mohammed, knew that Allah was on their side and favored their murderous cause.

The Jewish population of the Middle East now exists almost entirely in Israel, protected by guns wielded, as often as not, by the descendants of Jewish refugees from Islamic oppression in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Iran. The Christian population, lacking an independent state of its own, continues to dwindle, dependent on the shaky goodwill of dictators like Mubarak or Assad who find them temporarily useful.

There is no future for non-Muslims in the Muslim world. Christians and Jews in the Middle East first achieved civil rights when European powers gained sway over the region. As Muslim migrants swarm into Europe, Jews and Christians now face Muslim persecution in France, Sweden and Germany.

But the media is far less interested in the tears on the face of 8-year-old Miriam Monsonego in Toulouse when a Muslim terrorist grabbed her by the hair, put a gun to her head in the schoolyard where she had been playing moments ago and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. He switched guns and shot her. Then, as she lay bleeding, he lifted up her little head and shot the dying Jewish girl two more times.

Muslims in France consider the Muslim terrorist who did this a hero. A child was even named after him.

The Sunni Muslim Jihadis fleeing Aleppo like rats are the same breed of Allah’s killers as the murderer of a little girl in Toulouse, as the hijackers of September 11, as the San Bernardino shooters, the Boston Marathon bombers, the Benghazi militias, the rapists of Yazidi girls and the bombers of Coptic churches.

They are human predators that have nothing that resembles a conscience as we understand it. Their religious doctrine has taught them that preying on non-Muslims and the wrong kind of Muslims is their duty. They believe that their rapes and murders are proof that they love Allah and Allah loves them.

It is as impossible for us to coexist with Islamic supremacists as it was for the Christians and Jews of Aleppo. You can share a room with a tiger, but eventually the tiger will try to eat you.

Aleppo is a tragedy, but not because of the hypocritical theater of lies that the media has put on for us. The tragedy of Aleppo isn’t that of the Sunni Jihadis who failed to conquer the city and complete their ethnic cleansing of the last Christians living there, but of the endless war of Islam against non-Muslims.

And of the collaboration of those who call themselves liberals in that war against human civilization.

Aleppo was once a great center of civilization. Under Islam, it became a sad remnant of its former past. Whoever wins in Aleppo, it is a victory for Islamist triumphalism and a defeat for human civilization.

The bigger question is not who wins in Aleppo, but who will win in Paris, Brussels and Rome.

Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What?

Posted December 21, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat National Committee, Democrats, DNC and cyber security, Media and DNC, Russian hacking, WikiLeaks

Tags: , , , ,

Even if the Russians Did Hack the Emails, So What? American Thinker, Selwyn Duke, December 21, 2016

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message.

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

“The Russians hacked the election!” say Democrats trying to discredit Donald Trump’s presidency. Of course, their statement is deceptive, referring only to the theory that the Russians provided Wikileaks with the campaign season’s revelatory Democrat emails.

Not surprisingly, the Fake (establishment) Media has embraced the theory, which is probably the best argument for its falsity. In addition, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange denies Russian involvement. So does Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who said “I’ve met the person who leaked them [the emails]” and that the individual is an “insider” representing Democrats angry over “the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Senator Bernie Sanders.” Moreover, both FBI director James Comey and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said there’s “no credible evidence” Russia influenced Nov. 8’s outcome, according to reporter Ed Klein. Yet whatever the truth, the more important matter is that the issue is being used as a distraction and a tool for disruption.

What was actually revealed by Wikileaks and what effect it had are being conflated with the matter of who revealed it, as if the messenger somehow changes the message. Consider an analogy: Imagine it came to light that a Capitol Hill restaurant’s kitchen was filthy and vermin-infested. Would the health department’s course of action be dictated by whether the information came from a disgruntled employee or an investigative reporter who illegally gained access to the kitchen? If the latter, would Washington Democrats still eat there?

As a reminder, the Wikileaks emails contained damning information showing direct collusion between the mainstream media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, including evidence that a CNN figure gave Clinton debate questions ahead of time, thus disadvantaging primary-season opponent Sanders. They contained other dirt on the Democrats as well. Is anyone but Clinton and her apologists upset these truths came to light?

Of course, our systems must be made safe from intrusion by foreign actors, but this gets at an important point: it will reflect better on the Democrats if the Wikileaks source is a leaker. After all, whose systems were supposedly hacked and under whose watch would it have occurred?

Answers: the Democrats’ systems and the Obama administration.

The New York Times recently ran a painfully long article about how “how Russian cyberpower invaded the U.S.,” calling it “The Perfect weapon.” But the piece mainly illustrates how Democrat and administration entities exhibited the perfect storm of incompetence. The Times writes of how its examination “based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.”

In contrast, there reportedly was also a hacking attempt by Russia on the Republicans. It apparently didn’t work, however, because they actually secured their systems.

So here’s the Democrat complaint, translated: “We were too incompetent to secure our systems — or react promptly to a perceived threat by a hostile foreign actor — and as a result damning truths about us were revealed. We’re such victims!”

Taking the above together with Hillary Clinton’s use of a “home brew” server to send classified emails, and that the FBI stated there appeared to be hacking attempts on it, a question is raised:

Were these people ever qualified to be at the nation’s helm, in charge of national security?

In the 1997 film Liar Liar, Jim Carrey plays a shyster lawyer who, after a birthday wish made by his son comes true, is suddenly incapable of telling a lie. Objecting to the opposing counsel’s argument in court but robbed of his verbal legerdemain, he responds to the judge’s question as to why he objected by saying, with the only argument he could honestly muster, “Because it’s devastating to my case!”

 


That is essentially the Democrats’ gripe regarding the quite true Wikileaks revelations. Objection overruled.

Are Europe’s ‘Extreme Right’ Parties Really So Extreme?

Posted December 21, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: "Far right", Europe, European establishment, Geert Wilders, Islamic invasion, Islamic refugees, Islamic terror groups, Islamisation, Merkel

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Are Europe’s ‘Extreme Right’ Parties Really So Extreme? PJ Media, Roger L Simon, December 20, 2016

(Please see also, CNN Uses Germany Attack To Bash The Right. –DM)

Not more than an hour — or was it ten minutes — after news broke of Monday night’s truck terror attack in Berlin, reports began to appear from the usual suspects (CNN, Reuters, AP, BBC, etc.) with the requisite sentences and paragraphs expressing concern that the horrific event would play into the hands of the “extreme right-wing” parties of Europe.

Buried not so deep was the implication that, bad as these attacks were, something even worse loomed, the return of Nazism or Nazi-like fascism.

I have always wondered how accurate this characterization of parties like Germany’s relatively new Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as “far right”  (as the BBC did Monday) really was.  I have been to Germany several times, though not recently, so my knowledge is not first hand, but I am skeptical.

I was in England around the Brexit vote and got to speak with people who were members of or sympathetic to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and didn’t find any of them particularly fascistic. On the contrary, they wanted independence from the EU so they could have local democratic rule and determine the fate of their own country apart from the undemocratic Brussels bureaucracy. But perhaps I missed something.

Perhaps I missed something too when I traveled the country covering the Trump campaign and didn’t find any fascistic leanings to speak of among his supporters — no racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. — just an over-weening disgust with Washington and a feeling they had been substantially overlooked by a morally narcissistic liberal elite busy enriching themselves. (They had.)

Of course there are Nazis in the world. How could there not be in populations, American and European, that together approach a billion? Just about anything could be found. In the USA we have this white-supremacist character Richard Spencer, whose group consists of fewer people than are normally in line for pizza at Ray’s, yet the press persists on making a big deal out of him for reasons that are laughably obvious.  (If Spencer would agree to wear a “Make America Great Again” hat, they’d put him on the cover of TIME.)

But these tiny groups, domestic and foreign, do not constitute the remotest proof that parties seeking to limit Islamic immigration in European countries are extreme or far right. This is what one might call  “guilt by the most minute association.”

What is really going on is an ideological fracturing with extreme — in the real sense — violent implications.  The European left — lost for so many years in a blind, virtue-signaling multiculturalism — now has to come to grips with the fact that maybe all cultures are NOT equal, that some cultures truly are racist, sexist, and homophobic and are governed by a religious ideology that seeks to rule the world with no separation of mosque and state and human rights virtually non-existent, the very things the left claims it abhors. And those same leftists don’t know how to handle this contradiction.  So they blame those who do and call them neo-Nazis.

Ironically, those called neo-Nazis and the like are often the most open-minded people, seeking to preserve Europe’s gift to humanity, the Enlightenment.

Such a person is the extraordinary Geert Wilders, recently found guilty of “discrimination” by a Dutch court and now the odds-on favorite to be the next prime minister of that country. The Dutch are in many ways the most honest people in Europe.  Wilders — no shrinking violet — has already tweeted out in no uncertain terms that Angela Merkel has blood on her hands for what transpired in Berlin.  She does.

The irony of ironies may be that the true heirs to the Nazis are the Merkels of the world, not the AfD, etc. While not Hitler-like in mass murder and megalomania, not to mention all the master-race insanity, they do share a background with the genocidal dictator — socialism.  The Nazis were the National Socialist Party.  That Merkel is East German is not accidental.  Leading (and controlling) from the top is what she is used to. (The AfP, paradoxically, originated in the same area of Germany as Merkel, still an economically disadvantaged region.)

Now these guilty, pseudo-pacifist heirs of their crazy Fuhrer have to confront Hitler’s old ally in irredentist Islam, invading their country under cover of “political asylum” from a situation created, at least in part, by Barack Obama’s Middle Eastern fecklessness.  Aleppo belongs to Barack, but Berlin is Angela’s (and “progressive” Germany’s).

As the madman who drove through the Christmas market disappears into the European night, we wonder where Islam will strike next. France again? Belgium? Sweden? Things look pretty bad there.  Or perhaps Spain — the original home of La Reconquista? Land once claimed by Islam is theirs forever, according to their holy book that even the more peaceful and supposedly moderate of their faith believe. Why then do we expect them to intervene when their more bloodthirsty brethren act out? And indeed they don’t.

The complex knot that Europe needs to cut through is Gordian indeed and the continent is barely in shape to do it.  It may be too late.  Should America help?  Despite Trump’s “America Firstism,” I think we have to, to the extent we can, and I suspect he knows it. Without Old Europe, we’re basically friendless in the world.

Well…. there’s  always Australia. And now Taiwan. And maybe, once in a while, India. (And of course that place the French like to call the “petit pays merdique.”)

ISIS strikes in Berlin, Jordan – and Mosul too

Posted December 21, 2016 by Joseph Wouk
Categories: Uncategorized

Source: ISIS strikes in Berlin, Jordan – and Mosul too

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis December 21, 2016, 8:38 AM (IDT)

 The city of Berlin and the Jordanian Crusader town of Karaka are 3,000km apart, but the distance did not stop Islamic State killers from taking 26 lives, inuring 18 others, some very seriously,in the two countries, and causing the Israeli Dalia Elkayam to disappear.

In Berlin, German security is out in force to hunt the terrorist who rammed a hijacked Polish truck into a throng of Christmas gift seekers. They are trying to find a needle in a haystack with no clue as whether he operated alone or was part of a gang ready to strike again, a method of operation that recalls the multiple Paris atrocity which claimed 132 lives before it was over.

In Jordan, the terrorists followed up on their first shooting attack on police and the taking of tourists hostage by three days of gun battles with security forces in the alleys of Karak. Four soldiers were killed by ISIS terrorists barricaded in a building.

These episodes are not over and done with in Germany and the war against ISIS in southern Jordan has only just begun.

In both countries, they are seriously shaking the ruling establishments, however diverse their systems and geography: Chancellor Angela Merkel is standing for a fourth term in the coming election in the face of an outcry against her open-door immigration policy, while the throne of King Abdullah II is at risk if he fails to crush the Islamists.
Merkel’s policy has brought a million refugees to Germany, whereas Abdullah has given refuge to 650,000 distressed Syrians. Unlike the chancellor, the king has finally sealed his kingdom’s borders to further entry, with American and Israeli military and intelligence assistance.

The European and Middle East rulers find themselves in the same boat. They are exposed to an organized Islamic terror offensive with no notion of when and how the deadly strike will come.

This is nothing but a colossal failure of the global war on ISIS.

With no bars on its momentum, the Islamic State on Tuesday, Dec. 12, the same day as its outrages in Germany and Jordan, also hit two fronts in the Mosul region of Iraq – one to punish the pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia near Tal Afar and the other, Iraqi army forces holding some of the southern and eastern outskirts of Mosul.

The US-backed army offered little or no resistance.

Nonetheless, they Obama administration stuck to its standard refrain, refusing to credit ISIS with the attack in Berlin without corroboration, even after its claim of responsibility – meaning that US intelligence’s failure to identity the perpetrators exculpates ISIS. So Washington can continue to bury its head in the sand.

In Jerusalem, too, the government ignored the fighting against rampant Islamic terrorists raging for three days in southern Jordan, just 20km away from the Israeli border – as though it happened on another planet..

Indeed, Israel suddenly finds itself with a new strategic dilemma. Threatened with ISIS and other terrorist groups from its Golan border in the north and its Sinai border in the southwest, Israel is now beset from its southeastern border in Jordan.

Germany Mulls Heavy Fines for Facebook Over ‘Fake News’ Posts

Posted December 21, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: "Fake news", "Far right", Censorship, Facebook, German elections, Germany

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Germany Mulls Heavy Fines for Facebook Over ‘Fake News’ Posts, Washington Free Beacon, , December 20, 2016

The German government is considering making Facebook pay hefty fines for “fake news” posts due to worries they could impact the country’s elections.

The possible fines come from lawmakers in the country who are worried Russia may try to interfere with elections in 2017. Politicians are mulling legislation that would compel the social media giant to create a “legal protection unit” and pay individuals affected by “fake news” stories that are not swiftly dealt with, Forbes reported.

“If after the relevant checks Facebook does not immediately, within 24 hours, delete the offending post then [it] must reckon with severe penalties of up to 500,000 euros ($522,000 in U.S. dollars),” said Thomas Oppermann, the chairman of Germany’s Social Democratic Party.

 The Social Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Union, the party led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both support the “fake news” crackdown.

Merkel warned in November that the country would deal with such stories.

“Something has changed—as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment,” Merkel said. “Opinions aren’t formed the way they were 25 years ago. Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls—things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them.”

Patrick Sensburg, a member of Merkel’s party, added, “targeting disinformation to destabilize a state should be a criminal offence.”

Facebook says it is in communication with politicians in the country over their concerns.

“We take the issues raised very seriously. And we are engaging with key politicians and digital experts from all parties and relevant ministries in Germany interested in this matter,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon in an email statement.

This is not the first time this month that Germany has singled out Facebook and threatened penalties.

Volker Kauder, an ally of Merkel’s, said at a Christian Democrats conference in early December that large companies could face fines for online hate speech.

“I expect from big companies like Facebook that they adhere to laws. If they are not respected than we must think about new possibilities, fines for example,” Kauder said.

Facebook has said it is difficult to track such speech given the number of users on the social media platform. Kauder disputed this notion.

“They say there is too much. But a big auto manufacturer that produces millions of cars can’t say: ‘I produce so many cars that I can’t guarantee they are all secure.’ No, that is not on,” Kauder said. “I expect and demand from Facebook that laws are upheld.”

Other German politicians have warned they may introduce legislation if social media outlets fail to remove 70 percent of hate speech by March 2017, Yahoo News reported.

Merkel will stand for reelection next year. German far-right politicians have gained traction by hitting the chancellor for her “open-door” immigration policy.

Marcus Pretzell, a member of the Alternative for Germany party, took to social media to blame Merkel’s policies for the loss of life following Berlin’s Christmas market truck attack. That attack killed 12 and injured nearly 50.

“These are Merkel’s dead,” Pretzell posted on Twitter.

German police, believing they arrested the wrong man, released a Pakistani migrant on Tuesday who was the initial suspect for the attacks. Authorities launched a new manhunt following his release.

BREAKING : Nigel Farage Comments on Berlin Terror Attack & Russan Ambassador Killed in Ankara

Posted December 20, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: BREXIT, BREXIT and Trump, Islamic invasion, Islamic terrorism, Merkel

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BREAKING : Nigel Farage Comments on Berlin Terror Attack & Russan Ambassador Killed in Ankara, TNTV Total News T.V via YouTube

(And more, including the future of BREXIT and relations with America. –DM)

Cartoons and Video of the Day

Posted December 20, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Bitter clingers, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Israeli settlements, Obama's leadership, Russian hacking

Tags: , , , ,

LATMA-TV via Youtube

 

H/t Power Line

hillary-excuses

 

hiollarys-cro9wds

 

hack-axe

 

obama-cut-it-out

 

lib-bitter-cloingers

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

santahacked

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

last

 

wall

 

worthless

Why the UK’s Sharia Courts Should Be Banned

Posted December 20, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Britain and Sharia law, Sharia courts, Sharia law, Sharia law and females, Sharia law and German law

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Why the UK’s Sharia Courts Should Be Banned, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, December 20, 2016

(Please see also, Sharia Councils: Taking Liberties. – DM)

1920

They are married off at 15 to men they’ve never met, men who may beat and rape them, or who do not permit them to leave the house. Or they marry out of love, only to learn their new husband has another wife, or plans to take one.  And so they seek counsel – and escape – not through lawyers and the traditional courts, but through sharia councils, and not in Kabul or Islamabad, but in Manchester and London.

Now officials in the United Kingdom are questioning whether such councils violate secular laws and discriminate against the women who come to them for help.  While still Home Secretary last March, before she became Prime Minister, Theresa May initiated the first of an ongoing series of investigations into Britain’s so-called “sharia courts.”

Subsequent hearings have brought the issues into the public eye, but so far they have failed to provide any real resolution. Some sharia court opponents contend that they force women to remain in abusive marriages, or deprive them of their legal rights regarding division of property and other matters. In contrast, some proponents insist that too many Muslim women would be forced to stay in abusive relationships if these tribunals were shut down.

“If I went to an English court, [my ex-husband] would say ‘where is their right to decide about my life?'” one Muslim woman told the BBC. “Now he can’t say anything because the decision has been made using sharia law, and we all believe in that.”

Moreover, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of British Muslim marriages are religious, not civil – a fact which in itself deprives these wives of many of their legal marital rights. Such marriages can be dissolved only through the tribunals.

But opponents, such as Iranian-born activist Maryam Namazie, argue that the tribunals, “are linked to the rise of the Islamist movement.” Others echo her views, such as Women and Sharia Law author and Zurich University Professor Elham Manea, who claims that the first such councils were established by Islamist groups.

There is some validity to this claim: the first British sharia council was established in 1982 by the Islamic Sharia Council, a Luton-based organization currently led by controversial imam Suhaib Hasan. Among Hasan’s many claims to fame are his lectures, available on YouTube, which he says “expose” the Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christians.

Moreover, while the official count of the councils in the UK is set at 32, think tank Civitas has estimated the real number at 85, suggesting that many operate in the shadows. How conservative or how westernized they may be in their mediations is impossible to know. Of the councils that are officially recognized, most are affiliated with mosques. Others hold connections to the Islamic Sharia Council, which also offers counseling “in accordance with the Holy Qur’an and authentic sunnah,” and “anger management” sessions that teach clients to “deal with the situation in a way that is most pleasing to Allah.”

According to France 24, 90 percent of the cases before Britain’s sharia tribunals involve divorce. But Algerian activist Marieme Hellie Lucas told Namazie in an interview, “The ‘laws’ used by so called ‘sharia courts’ are not [even] religiously inspired. They are just the choice that fundamentalists implement between contradictory (even antagonistic) customs, mores, and conservative religious interpretations.”

In fact, Lucas says, “”fundamentalists are the ones who create, sometimes ex-nihilo [from nothing], the dilemma ‘faith vs. women’s rights,’ while many progressive theologians state that they see no contradiction.” Hence, Lucas maintains, allowing such tribunals comes down to favoring “the Muslim fundamentalist extreme-right agenda to the detriment of universal rights.”

Additionally, UK sharia expert Denis MacEoin has found many of the tribunals’ rulings “advise illegal actions and others that transgress human rights standards as they are applied by British courts.”

Women who have had experience with UK sharia tribunals echo concerns raised by MacEoin and Lucas.

For example, one widow told the Independent that subsequent to her husband’s death, her sons had insisted she sell her home and give the money to them. A sharia tribunal had evidently told them that “in English law, I own the house I live in, but this is not the way in Islam.” Despairing, she added, “what is this new Islam that can threaten to take the roof from the head of an old woman like me?”

And in a four-year investigation of British sharia councils, human rights activist Elham Manea “found clerics that ignored marital rape, condoned wife beating, and believed girls of 12 or 13 were old enough to marry,” the Independent reports.  No wonder, then, that MEP Baroness Sheela Flather, in written testimony to a Parliamentary panel investigating the tribunals, argued that laws that apply “to white people [should] apply to everyone. “It is racism,” she declared, if they do not.

Despite these facts, many continue to maintain that banning these tribunals could do as much harm as good. Rather, they advocate oversight and reform of the existing councils to ensure that they reflect and administer equal rights under secular laws. “Though some scholars argue that a civil divorce should count as an Islamic one, this hasn’t been widely accepted yet within the Muslim communities,” Muslim Women’s Network UK director Shaista Gohir told VICE news recently.

But herein lies the core of the problem. Indulging those who do not accept the authority of civil over religious law does nothing to help integrate those who espouse such beliefs. Instead, this approach extends a kind of exceptionalism to Muslims, especially fundamentalist Muslims, permitting them to exist outside of civil law, while lending support to radical beliefs that the laws of the land do not apply to them: only sharia does.

True, as Namazie has observed, “Abolishing Sharia courts and parallel legal systems will not solve all the problems at hand; criminalising FGM or domestic violence has not ended them either. It will however make very clear what is acceptable and what is not and will underline a commitment to gender equality.”

Which is why allowing the oppression of Muslim women in our communities to continue is not protecting Muslim rights, or even Muslim identity. Therefore, banning these sharia “courts” is necessary. If we do not demand equality for women and the respect for one secular, civil law in our society for all, who will?

Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes

Posted December 20, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Nixon and Obama compared, President Reject Obama, Richard Nixon

Tags: ,

Martin Karo: Obama Agonistes, Power Line, Scott Johnson, December 20, 2016

Reader Martin Karo is a Philadelphia attorney. As President Obama prepares to depart office, Mr. Karo offers optimistic thoughts on what he believes to be Obama’s ultimate failure:

Watching Hillary Clinton’s sad soiree, and the shrinking Obama persona displayed in his latest PBS interview, make the Democratic titans seem enmeshed in a sort of Greek tragedy. Hillary’s self-destruction is all too obvious; but Obama’s strikes me as equally tragic, and equally apparent on reflection. And it reminded me of parallels from another tragic self-defeating President. But his is over; Hillary’s is almost over; Obama’s is just beginning its third act. One could title the play:

Obama Agonistes

Barack Obama will be the first President ever to not literally depart the scene after his successor is sworn in. It is a powerful image and metaphor, the act of the former President boarding the helicopter (think Nixon and his defiant “V”s) or the Presidential jet to leave Washington, to literally leave the scene to his successor. Even the perennial gadfly, Jimmy Carter, took that one last ride on the Presidential jet to return to Georgia. Washington belongs to the elected President, not the retired one.

But Obama will not do that. He will drive (well, be driven) a few scant miles to a house in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, where he can watch at close range as his legacy is revealed not to be one. From his front-row seat, he will watch his eponymous healthcare plan be gutted, watch his foreign policy be repudiated, watch his bureaucratic overreaches be reeled in (please God!), watch conservative judges take the bench, watch his immigration policy melt, watch the military cheer his successor as they never cheered him, watch infrastructure funds build highways and bridges (that will not be named after him) instead of disappearing into the pockets of government union members, watch the American energy revival kick into high gear.

As he watches all this, one wonders whether Obama will appreciate the curious posture he has imposed on the Democratic Party. It is too much to expect Obama to blame himself for the decline in the Party’s presence, at every level of government; but unless he is delusional, he must at least see it. He probably does, given his remarks in his Friday NPR interview that his organizing work “didn’t translate to” Congressional candidates. In the same interview he noted the future of the Democratic Party is the unnamed mass of young people who helped his campaign, omitting reference to any current politician.

Indeed, there are very few Democrats in power at any level who have any plausible claim to be up-and-coming party leaders. The current crop are septuagenarians, and uninspiring ones at that (who would follow Nancy Pelosi into a foxhole? who would fall on a grenade to save Elizabeth Warren? who would be pushed to a microphone by Chuck Schumer?).

With the dismantling of Obama’s signature initiatives, what does the Democratic Party stand for, other than to pine for Obamaism? Numerous Republicans plausibly champion the GOP position on any issue that matters; there are dozens of party leaders on immigration, energy, foreign affairs, national defense, sane budgeting, tax reform, education reform, who are not named Trump. Other than Warren’s identification with big bank harassment, the Democrats have no counterparts. Après moi, le vacuum.

The other curious thing about Obama’s remaining on the scene is that he has no visible friends on it, despite his dominance of his party. He has many toadies. He has his entourage. He even has many sincere admirers. But friends? Name three. Name one.

And in that characteristic, he is very much like the Democratic Antichrist, Richard Nixon. The quintessential Nixon photograph is of him walking on the beach in San Clemente, in a full suit and tie and wingtip shoes, alone except for his dog. Nixon’s post-presidential isolation derived mainly from the political disgrace that led to his resignation; no doubt Obama will have acolytes inviting him to events and interviewing him and basking in his presence. But who will come just to have a drink and talk about the old days or the White Sox? Every visit will be business, every caller seeking something rather than bringing something.

Obama is like Nixon in other ways as well, probably in more ways than the Democrats would ever admit. Both Nixon and Obama were self-made men. Nixon started as an obscure Congressman, Obama was an obscure community organizer (whatever THAT is). Both thrust themselves into the spotlight and into power, and ironically both by allegedly playing dirty (Nixon dubbed “Tricky Dick” by “the Pink Lady,” Helen Gahagan Douglas; Obama escaping criticism altogether despite having his state senate opponents disqualified and having his Republican opponent Jack Ryan’s divorce records mysteriously unsealed in his US Senate race).

Both relied far more on their ability to operate the levers of power than their ability to persuade others to follow them. Both were heavily criticized during their first terms, yet easily won re-election. Both depended far more on the personal loyalty of their staff, less on their experience or counsel. Both reveled in the trappings of the office. Both were very expensive to send on vacation, though to be fair Nixon barely knew the meaning of the word.

Ultimately Obama suffers from the Nixon comparison, for the reasons he will see at close range. Nixon was sought out post-retirement for his counsel; Obama will be asked for his presence, not his wisdom. Nixon’s electoral success was a general one, regionally and culturally, and very much set the scene for the Age of Reagan; Obama’s politics of division manifestly fail for anyone not named Obama. Nixon´s policies, domestic (e.g., creation of OSHA and the EPA, ending gold-backing of Dollars, the Endangered Species Act) and foreign (e.g., the SALT treaty, rapprochement with China, backing Israel) are still with us forty years later. Obama´s will be gone forty weeks later.

And that is where the Agonist tragedy lies. Obama is staying in Washington for two reasons: because he doesn’t truly have friends elsewhere, or any other place he considers home; and because if he doesn’t stay in DC he descends into obscurity. The latter is a struggle he is likely to lose anyway; if ever there were a personality suited to dominate the stage and put his predecessor in the shade, it is Trump.

But Obama will continue the struggle. He will help raise funds, in a social environment where funding matters less. He has no appointment power, so he will have few toadies. Any emerging Democratic leader will be wary of him, as he will only draw attention to himself. He still considers himself the smartest man in any room, despite abundant proof to the contrary. He will never improve in his ability to persuade people to his viewpoint, because he lacks introspection; a man who suffers as many failures as he has in eight years, yet still can’t think of any serious errors he has made, is by definition not learning from his mistakes. And absent holding the levers of power himself, persuasion is the only tool Obama has.

So Obama will soldier on, speaking to any reporter or power player who seeks (or will accept) an audience, pressing his increasingly chimerical policies in a political and legal landscape increasingly tilted against them, sucking the air and vitality away from any of his successors who actually have a chance of implementing them. Due to his own ego, Obama’s struggles will ultimately be self-defeating.