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Orlando Shooting: Pickled in Hatred

June 13, 2016

Orlando Shooting: Pickled in Hatred, Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, June 13, 2016

♦ The terrorists are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view.

♦ The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

♦ America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember, we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.”

♦ But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

It is a lot to process. Omar Mateen, the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub Sunday. The first surprise is that it was not a surprise, especially to the FBI. Mateen was the subject of investigations in 2013 and 2014. “He was a known quantity,” a source said. “He has been on the radar before.” But Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper told reporters, “Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going.”

Omar Mateen’s father probably wasn’t terribly surprised. He told NBC News “that his son became angry after seeing two men kissing a few months ago in Miami.” He speculated that could have triggered his decision to kill. “This has nothing to do with religion,” his father added.

President Obama was not exactly surprised, given, he said, the number of guns in America. He called again for gun control and said there was, “no definitive judgment on the precise motivations” of the terrorist.

Oh really?

President Obama’s response might have been a surprise to local police, who, according to CNN, received a 911 call from Mateen pledging his allegiance to ISIS just before the attack. Whether he was actually with ISIS or not, the Islamic State wasted no time blessing him as one of their own.

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Omar Mateen (left), the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on May 12, 2016. Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State just before the attack.

So where do Americans go with this?

First, pray for the victims and their families, and thank the first responders.

Second, do not bother trying to “explain” terrorists, or figure out their “motivation.” They are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view. There is no other way to explain Shalhevet Pass, a six-month old baby shot in her stroller by a sniper, or Malki Roth murdered while eating pizza, or the Fogel children murdered in their beds. There is also no other way to explain shootings at Max Brenner in Tel Aviv or stabbings in Jerusalem; Hamas rockets fired indiscriminately into Israeli towns; gay men thrown off buildings by ISIS in Iraq or dragged behind motorcycles in Gaza; barrel bombs and chlorine gas dropped on civilians by Assad’s Syrian forces; the kidnapping and forcible conversion to Islam of girls by Boko Haram; the sale of Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves by ISIS; and the skinning alive of prisoners by the Taliban. They are all of a piece.

Third, recognize that the same hatreds exist in our country. We imported them — already pickled — and we pickled some of them here. What Mateen’s father said was that seeing what he found unacceptable — men kissing — was enough to make his son kill. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, what do we need to do about people willing to kill us under those circumstances?

The Heritage Foundation maintains an extremely useful timeline of terrorist plots in the US. It includes the “shoe bomber” (2002), the “underwear bomber” (2010), the Times Square bomber (2010), the Boston Marathon bombers (2013), and the San Bernardino shooters (2015). But there’s more. Here is sampling from a Jewish Policy Center analysis:

[T]here were also plots against U.S. landmarks and institutions including the NY Subway system (2005 & 09), Sears Tower (2006), the Brooklyn Bridge (2003), the Long Island Railroad (2009), DC Metro (2010), the Federal Reserve in Manhattan (2012), the Capitol (2011, 12 & 15), World Bank Headquarters (2005), JFK airport (2009), the NY Stock Exchange (2004), and the GOP convention (2004).There were plots against American service personnel, including military hit lists (2010 & 15); Ft. Hood (2009); Ft. Riley (2015); Ft. Dix (2007) and Ft. Myers (2011); recruiting stations in Arkansas (2009), Maryland (2011) and Washington (2011); the Pentagon (2011); Quantico Marine Base (2009); National Guard facilities (2005, 08 & 09); U.S. Marshals (2013); and the NYPD (2015). There were plots against the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia (2011) and Pakistan (2004), and the Israeli Embassy (2011).

There were assassination plots against Presidents Bush (2003) and Obama (2011).

There were regional attacks planned for a Chicago Bar (2012), NY and Chicago-area synagogues (2009 & 10), an Oregon Christmas tree ceremony (2010), the Wichita Airport (2014), a Canada-NY train (2013), a Dallas skyscraper (2009), a Wyoming refinery (2006), the Florida Keys (2015), shopping centers in Ohio (2003) and Illinois (2007), and the University of North Carolina (2006). The Lackawanna (PA) Six (2002), the Lodi (CA) jihad training camp (2005), and the VA Jihad Network (2003) operated along with smaller-scale plots in support of al Qaeda (2002, 09 & 10).

The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember that we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.” America’s glory is men and women who run into danger while everyone else is running out — without regard for the particulars of who they are saving. It was true on 9-11 and it was true this weekend in Orlando. But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Islam and Christianity, Islam and homosexuals, Islam and Jews, Islam and sex, Islam and women, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic radicalization, Islamic refugees, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Orlando massacre, Political Islam
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Islam and Christianity, Islam and homosexuals, Islam and Jews, Islam and sex, Islam and women, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic radicalization, Islamic refugees, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Orlando massacre, Political Islam

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No Canada

June 12, 2016

No Canada, PJ Media, David Solway, June 11, 2016

(Europe? Obama’s America? Leading or following into the abyss? –DM)

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Toronto police car torched during the G20 protest on June 26, 2010. Photo by arindambanerjee / Shutterstock.com.

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber may have been tactless when he spoke of the “stupidity of the American voter,” but I suspect he might have trotted out the same insult had he surveyed the West in general or the Canadian electoral scene in particular. After all, Canada, a comparatively peaceable country that regards itself as an “honest broker” in international affairs and a beacon of cultural—and multicultural—enlightenment, is fundamentally no different from other Western countries marching down the Hayek Highway. I have written before of the collective foolishness of a presumably educated nation installing a majority Liberal government to manage its affairs despite the readily available evidence of the social and economic malaise that left/liberal politics have inflicted on Western democracies. A cursory reconnaissance of the U.S., the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and others should have sounded a clear warning to Canadians, or at any rate to anyone still capable of cerebral functioning.

But no. We fell for the media hatefest against the Conservative party and its leader Stephen Harper, while subscribing to our own version of “hope and change” as represented by the jejune and deceptive Justin Trudeau and his troupe of trendy mediocrities strutting on the national stage. How could we have travelled this route? As David Mamet points out in The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, we “reject any request for information about the actual mechanics of this ‘Change,’ by referring to ‘Hope’.” Unfortunately, hope is not a policy or a platform, and it is certainly not an expression of a practicable future. It should come as no surprise, then, that electoral promises have been duly and rapidly broken in favor of vanity projects and that a host of destructive policies have been legislated, or are about to be legislated. To take a number of examples:

By introducing Bill C-14, the Liberals have reified their advocacy for physician-assisted dying, depriving doctors and health professionals of moral choice on the issue. Claiming a “deep respect” for Parliament, they have nevertheless imposed substantial limits on debating time.

Trudeau is eager to engineer a change to our “first past the post” electoral system, replacing it with one of a wide variety of possible reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation and online voting. The proposed reforms, based on vote transferability and leftist coalitions, would both introduce an element of needless complexity into the electoral process and, in Canada’s multiparty system, which leans collectively to the left, virtually ensure a permanent Liberal majority. A transformation this vast should require a national referendum, but Trudeau’s minister of Democratic Institutions—a label straight out of Orwell—cites a Twitter hashtag #electoralreform as sufficient reason to sidestep a plebiscite. The 30-year-old, out-of-her-depth, Afghan-born, newly created Minister Maryam Monsef is hostile to referenda because they supposedly exclude the “marginalized.” As National Postcolumnist Rex Murphy comments, “Evidently, women, people of color, the disabled—build your own list—are allergic to voting in a referendum.” But she is merely doing the bidding of her leader, who intends to strike a committee, in which Canada’s one conservative party will be outnumbered 9 to 3 by left-oriented parties, to determine the best way to implement what is nothing less than a political coup. The Liberals have recently shown signs of relenting on the referendum issue, but the situation reveals their arrogant disregard of the people they presumably answer to.

The Liberals deny that they inherited a balanced budget from the previous Conservative government and have now projected a $30 billion debt, sure to increase in the future, that will serve not only as a fiscal drain on the present but as an economic drogue on generations to come.

Trudeau eliminated selective income splitting for families, a measure ostensibly intended to deprivilege the “wealthy” and thus burnish the party’s popular image, but obviously designed to work against the traditional family structure by making it more costly to sustain the stay-at-home wife/mother arrangement. Cost, however, is not a personal consideration for Trudeau, as it happens, heir to a multi-million dollar trust fund. The nannies looking after his children will soak the Canadian taxpayer $100,000 per annum. Indeed, when he visited Washington to confer with Obama, he was accompanied by a 44-member entourage consisting of celebrities, fundraisers, in-laws and, of course, the nannies, at taxpayers’ expense.

Trudeau has enthusiastically endorsed the feminist agenda and established a gender-balanced cabinet, irrespective of merit or competence. The embarrassing spectacle that Chrystia Freeland, minister of International Trade, made of herself o Bill Maher’s show is no accident. We can expect more of such sophomoric ineptitude in the years ahead. A government that eschews proven or demonstrable talent in favor of gender parity, much like our current universities, and hires or appoints on the basis of sex is monstrously irresponsible.

To strengthen their “social justice” credentials as the party for the times, the Liberals, who long ago jumped on the same-sex marriage bandwagon, have, additionally, projected Bill C-16 providing for an up to two-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of fomenting “hate propaganda” against transgenders. The word “hate” clearly furnishes enormous latitude for interpretation and renders critical discourse problematic and even dangerous, now that the Criminal Code is about to be amended. It seems that freedom of expression contracts with every new piece of social legislation, by no means astonishing in a country whose left/liberal Supreme Court has already pronounced that truth is no defense in cases where offense is given to marginalized groups or individuals.

No less damaging, Trudeau’s well-documented sympathy for Islam has resulted in the importation of many thousands of so-called “Syrian” refugees, all improperly vetted, who will swell the welfare rolls, glut an already grossly dysfunctional single-payer medical network, further disrupt a progressively concessionary educational system, and create more social havoc in the form of Sharia ghettoes and eruptions of Muslim-inspired violence. Bet on it. As Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah reports in the Toronto Sun, Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell accused him of lying and of Islamophobia (!) when Fatah testified to the Senate about Canadian mosques that feature seditious preaching against secular democracy, about Israel as “useless garbage,” and about the necessity of spilling blood. “While this was unfolding,” he continues, the Trudeau government “had authorized a $200,000 grant to a southern Ontario mosque with links to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In moving decisively to the left and bringing in programs that will inevitably fray the economic fabric of the country while diluting its traditional substance, Trudeau boasts that “Canada is back”—a slogan, Murphy writes, “that’s saccharine and weirdly jingoistic at the same time,” as if his election were “a victory, not for [the] party—which it was—but for the country itself.” Such hubris is both typical and unforgivable.

Perhaps what is no less troubling is that the cultural sycophancy practiced by the Liberals has now infected the Conservative party, which, despite its objection to Liberal spending and dubious policy initiatives, has, under interim leader Rona Ambrose, slotted the same-sex marriage plank into its party platform. “I think our party got a little more Canadian today,’ Calgary MP Michelle Rempel said after the convention vote. Indeed it did, and that’s a real shame. The Conservatives didn’t stop there. Ambrose has suddenly discovered that she too is a fan of legislation to prohibit criticism of transgenderism; “who you love, how you identify,” she pontificates, “should never be cause for fear or anxiety.” Interestingly, when the Daily Caller asked if she would then support or approve of pedophilia, no reply was forthcoming. By striving to emulate the Liberals as a matter of crass and misguided expedience—as if the Liberal base comprising the general run of leftists, Muslims, aboriginals, journalists, talking heads, environmentalists and global warmists, colonies of indoctrinated students and the entitlement crowd will gratefully change their voting habits—the Conservative party has betrayed its principles and its core constituency.

The real problem, however, is not the political party or the leader in question, but the intellectual laxity of the electorate. Canadians, who have always preened themselves on their moral and intellectual superiority to Americans, in reality merely ape the customs and usages of their neighbors to the south, generally a decade or so later. Mutatis mutandis, we would have flocked to the polling stations to vote for an Obama, a Hillary or a Bernie. The Donald would have been anathema.

Admittedly, there is a rather more modest Trump-like figure on the conservative scene who seems interested in running for the leadership of the party with a view to the 2019 federal election, namely, successful businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary. (See CBC’s Dragons’ Den and ABC’s Shark Tank.) Responding to questions about a potential leadership bid, O’Leary said he was not prepared to sit in perpetual Opposition, preferring to wait until he sees whether the party is willing to jettison the political hacks who led it to defeat. “I’m proud of the country,” he continued, but “I’m depressed that it’s not competitive and I see so much incompetence, mediocrity and stupidity when it comes to managing it and I’m just tired of it.” Like Trump, O’Leary is nothing if not confident. “One way or another,” he says, “I’m going to figure out how to fix it.” But in the present narcoleptic milieu his prospects are probably slight.

Ten years hence the country may wake up, as innumerable U.S. citizens appear to be doing today. This is assuming we still have a country that is anything like the country we used to have. Given an oppressive direct and indirect tax structure, the proliferation of “hate speech” laws, the discursive ravages of political correctness, the faux “social justice” agenda, the malignant influence of feminism on business, government, the courts and the academy, the ongoing inroads of Islam into the body politic and the culture at large, the faddish convictions of the intellectual and artistic communities swimming with the brackish tides, and the flaccid surrender of the public to these toxic developments—including the reluctance to seek out and process reliable information, as Mamet intimated—the issue is alarmingly moot.

To arrive at reasonably dependable insights for one’s political thinking, one needs to distrust any single media outlet and take the time to review multiple sources in order to factor out feasible assumptions in making political choices. It takes work, civic dedication and the willingness to pay attention. Laziness is not an option. A rudimentary knowledge of history is also essential. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in a January 6, 1816 letter to Colonel Charles Yancey: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.” This is true not only of the American republic but of any democratic nation, and Canada is no exception. Lacking a vigilant and enlightened citizenry, there can only be worse to come.

Decree by government decree, the ship of state is listing ever further portside, abetted by the shifting weight to the left of a lumpen public. This is how a once-proud nation must eventually founder. Captivated by a liberal/socialist media consortium and unwilling to do our homework, we have become increasingly sanctimonious and uninformed, denizens of Gruberland. Even hockey may not save us.

Categories: Canada, Canadian politics, Clash of civilizations, Cultural correctness, Democracy, Fantasy, Islamic immigration, Leftists, Socialism
Tags: Canada, Canadian politics, Clash of civilizations, Cultural correctness, Democracy, Fantasy, Islamic immigration, Leftists, Socialism

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The West’s Most Important Ally: Islam’s Dissidents

June 12, 2016

The West’s Most Important Ally: Islam’s Dissidents, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, June 12, 2016

♦ Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the rebels, the non-believers and the heretics.

♦ This rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents is the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics.

♦ They are alone against all. Against Islamism which uses Kalashnikovs and against an intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as “traitors” by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of “stigmatizing.”

♦ We should support them — all of them. Some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

Islam, warned the best-selling Algerian novelist, Boualem Sansal, is going to split European society. In an interview with German media, this brave Arab writer painted a vision of Europe subjugated by radical Islam. According to Sansal, the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels are directed at the Western way of life: “You can not even defeat the weak Arab states, so they have brought in fifth columns to bring the West to destroy itself. If they succeed society will fall.”

Mr. Sansal, who has been threatened with death, belongs to a rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents. They are the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics. These Muslim dissidents pursue freedom of conscience, interreligious coexistence, pluralism in the public sphere, criticism of Islam, and respect for the rule of common law. For the Islamic world, their message could be devastating. That is why the Islamists are hunting them down.

It is always individuals, such as Lech Walesa, who make all the difference. The Soviet Union was defeated by only three beings: Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II — and the dissidents. When Professor Robert Havemann died in East Germany, few people noticed it. This intrepid critic of the regime was confined under house arrest in Grünheide, guarded by the Stasi. But the old professor never allowed himself to be intimidated. He continued to fight for his ideas.

A hero of Czechoslovak anti-Communism, Jan Patočka, died under grueling police interrogation. Patočka paid the highest price of silencing. His brilliant lectures were reduced to a clandestine seminar. Although unable to publish, he continued to work in a tiny underground apartment.

Hunted by the KGB, Alexander Solzhenitsyn set down the chapters of his Gulag Archipelago and hid them with different trusted friends, so no one possessed the entire manuscript. In 1973 only three copies existed. When the Soviet political police managed to extort the typist, Elizaveta Voronyanskya, to one of the hideouts, thinking the masterpiece was lost forever she hanged herself.

Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the heretics, the rebels, and the non-believers. It is no coincidence that the first victim of a fatwa was Salman Rushdie, an Indian-British writer from a Muslim family.

Pascal Bruckner called them “the free thinkers of the Muslim world.” We should support them — all of them. Because if the enemies of freedom come from free societies, those who kneel before Allah’s enforcers, some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

One, an Algerian author, Kamel Daoud, who called Saudi Arabia “an Isis that had made it,” recently sparked an “Islamophobia” row for having directed his own anger at the naïve people, who he says ignore the cultural gulf separating the Arab-Muslim world from Europe.

Another, an Iranian exile, now in the Netherlands, the jurist Afshin Ellian, works at Utrecht University, where after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, he is protected by bodyguards. After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, while Europe’s media were busy in blaming the “stupid” cartoonists, Ellian promoted an appeal: “Don’t let terrorists determine the limits of free speech.”

Another brave dissident and author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, had to flee from the Netherlands to the U.S., where she rapidly became one of most prominent public intellectuals.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a brave Muslim dissident and author, had to flee from the Netherlands to the U.S., where she rapidly became one of most prominent public intellectuals. (Image source: Gage Skidmore)

The Moroccan mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, is also guarded by police. He recently told fellow Muslims who protested against freedoms they found while living in the West to “pack your bags and f… off.” A heroic Christian defender of these freedoms in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, is now on trial accused of “discrimination.” “I am in jail,” he has said, referring to his safehouses, “and they are walking around free.”

Many of these dissidents are women. Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan politician and journalist, declared war on Islamic fundamentalists after the Taliban’s religious police beat her for daring to walk without a male escort. A suicide bomber blew himself up near her car, killing three. Kadra Yusuf, a Somali journalist, infiltrated Oslo’s mosques to denounce the imams, especially regarding female genital mutilation, not even required in the Koran or the Hadith (reports about Mohammad). In Pakistan, Sherry Rehman called for “a reform of Pakistani blasphemy’s laws.” She risks her life every day. She is branded by Islamists “fit to be killed” for being a woman, a Muslim and a secular activist. The Syrian-American author and psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, was also branded an “infidel” deserving of death.

Le Figaro recently published a long report about Muslim French personalities threatened with “execution”. “Placed under permanent police protection, regarded as traitors by Muslim fundamentalists, they live in a hell. In the eyes of Islamists, their freedom is an act of betrayal of the ummah [community].” They are writers and journalists of Arab-Muslim culture who denounce the Islamist threat and the inherent violence of the Koran. They stand alone against Islamism which uses the physical terrorism of Kalashnikovs, and against the intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as “traitors” by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of “stigmatizing.”

The French journalist Zineb El Rhazoui has more bodyguards than many ministers in the government of Manuel Valls, and for security, has to change houses in Paris often in recent months. For this young scholar, born in Casablanca and who works at the French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, walking down the street in Paris has become unthinkable. A fatwa put out after January 7, 2015 reads: “Kill Zineb El Rhazoui to avenge the Prophet.”

Threats against another dissident, Nadia Remadna, do not come from Raqqa, Syria, but her own city: Sevran, in Seine-Saint-Denis. They reflect the growing influence of Islamists in the lost territories of the French Republic. What “crime” was she found guilty of? She created the “Brigade of Mothers” to combat the Islamist influence on young Muslims.

A philosophy teacher, Sofiane Zitouni, has also quit his job at a Muslim French school over “insidious Islamism.”

The French-Algerian journalist, essayist and author of several investigations into Islamist circles,Mohamed Sifaoui, is the victim of a double threat. He is a prime target for both fundamentalists and the “tolerant” grand inquisitors. Sentenced to two years in prison by the Algerian regime for “press offenses,” then harassed by Islamists, Sifaoui requested asylum in France in 1999 and has never set foot in Algeria again. Since then, Sifaoui has seen his picture and name next to the words “le mourtad,” the apostate, on Islamist websites, meaning that he is targeted for death. French police protection around him has been total since 2006, when he defended freedom of expression for the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

About fifteen witnesses made a deposition in favor of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Among them were the late Muslim Tunisian essayist, Abdelwahab Meddeb, who had the courage to challenge the entire French Muslim establishment which tried to stop Charlie Hebdo. Meddeb wanted to show “this is not about anyone against Islam, but enlightened Islam against obscurantist Islam.”

Also in France, Hassen Chalghoumi, the courageous imam of Drancy, preaches while wearing a bullet-proof vest. When he goes out on the street, he is accompanied by five police officers with semiautomatic weapons. This is not outside Baghdad’s Green Zone; this is in the heart of Paris. Chalghoumi backed the ban on burkas; made an unprecedented visit at Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial; paid tribute to the victims of Charlie Hebdo and favored a dialogue with French Jews.

Naser Khader, a Muslim liberal with Danish citizenship, who called for “a Muslim reformation,” and authored “Honour and Shame,” is threatened by Islamic groups with death.

In Italy, an Egyptian-born writer, Magdi Cristiano Allam, is protected by bodyguards for having criticized political Islam. As the deputy editor of Italy’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Mr. Allam published a book whose title alone was enough to endanger his life: “Viva Israele.”

Ibn Warraq lives protected behind a pseudonym since writing a seminal book, “Why I am Not a Muslim.”

The Palestinian blogger Walid Husayin is also a rarity. Jailed for “satirizing the Koran, he recently published a book in France about his experience in the Palestinian territories, where his “atheism” nearly cost him his life.

In Tunisia there are a handful of filmmakers and intellectuals who fight for freedom of expression, especially after a secular opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, was assassinated. Also Nadia El Fani, the director of “Ni Allah ni maître” [“Neither Allah nor Master”], and Nabil Karoui, the manager of Nessma TV, are threatened with death and are being taken to court to answer charges of “blasphemy.” If Tunisia’s “Arab spring” did not turn into an Islamist winter, as elsewhere, it is largely thanks to these dissidents.

Those heroes know what happened to their predecessors in “the war on Arab intellectuals.” Writers such as Tahar Djaout were killed in 1993 by the Islamists in Algiers, as was the journalist, Farag Foda, famous for his sharp satires on Islamic fundamentalism. Prior to his murder, Foda had been accused of “blasphemy” by the great mosque of al-Azhar. A dozen Bangladeshi bloggers have also been murdered in cold blood by Islamists for the “crime” of “secularism.”

Last year, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al- Sisi called for reforming Islam and the way it is taught as did Sunni Islam’s leading cleric, Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, head of Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the center of Sunni Islam. And he said it in Mecca, no less. Egypt’s conservatives however did their best to tamp that down – at least for the moment.

There are, however, more and more dissidents successfully speaking out and leading bold, farsighted movements. In the U.S., M. Zuhdi Jasser, author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam,” and a practising physician, founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Last year, more than two dozen Muslim personalities promoted an appeal “to embrace a pluralistic interpretation of Islam, rejecting all forms of oppression and abuses committed in the name of religion.”

In Canada, Raheel and Sohail Raza founded “Muslims Facing Tomorrow,” and there is the outspoken Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Salim Mansur.

In the U.K., Maajid Nawaz heads the influential Quilliam Foundation, and Shiraz Maher, who defected from the Islamist organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, now serves as a Senior Fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London.

These are just a few of today’s heroes. Some had to be left out; there were too many to list.

The proud and painful resistance of these “Allah’s rebels” is one of the most beautiful testaments of our times. These “Allah’s rebels” are also the only real hope of reform for the Islamic world — and of preserving freedom for all of us.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Freedom of speech, Human rights, Islam and human rights, Islam in America, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Islamophobia, Political Islam
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, freedom of speech, human rights, Islam and human rights, Islam in America, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic reformation, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Islamophobia, Political Islam

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European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech

June 3, 2016

European Union Declares War on Internet Free Speech, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, June 3, 2016

♦ Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the European Union’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

♦ Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours — as “Orwellian.”

♦ “By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people… into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.'” — Douglas Murray.

♦ In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation.

The European Union (EU), in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, has unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe.

Proponents of the initiative argue that in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on “hate speech” is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

Opponents counter that the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe. They say that the EU’s definition of “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

Some Members of the European Parliament have characterized the EU’s code of online conduct — which requires “offensive” material to be removed from the Internet within 24 hours, and replaced with “counter-narratives” — as “Orwellian.”

The “code of conduct” was announced on May 31 in a statement by the European Commission, the unelected administrative arm of the European Union. A summary of the initiative follows:

“By signing this code of conduct, the IT companies commit to continuing their efforts to tackle illegal hate speech online. This will include the continued development of internal procedures and staff training to guarantee that they review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

“The IT companies will also endeavor to strengthen their ongoing partnerships with civil society organisations who will help flag content that promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct. The IT companies and the European Commission also aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives [emphasis added], new ideas and initiatives, and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

Excerpts of the “code of conduct” include:

“The IT Companies share the European Commission’s and EU Member States’ commitment to tackle illegal hate speech online. Illegal hate speech, as defined by the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of 28 November 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law and national laws transposing it, means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin….

“The IT Companies support the European Commission and EU Member States in the effort to respond to the challenge of ensuring that online platforms do not offer opportunities for illegal online hate speech to spread virally. The spread of illegal hate speech online not only negatively affects the groups or individuals that it targets, it also negatively impacts those who speak out for freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination in our open societies and has a chilling effect on the democratic discourse on online platforms.

“While the effective application of provisions criminalizing hate speech is dependent on a robust system of enforcement of criminal law sanctions against the individual perpetrators of hate speech, this work must be complemented with actions geared at ensuring that illegal hate speech online is expeditiously acted upon by online intermediaries and social media platforms, upon receipt of a valid notification, in an appropriate time-frame. To be considered valid in this respect, a notification should not be insufficiently precise or inadequately substantiated.

“The IT Companies, taking the lead on countering the spread of illegal hate speech online, have agreed with the European Commission on a code of conduct setting the following public commitments:

“The IT Companies to have in place clear and effective processes to review notifications regarding illegal hate speech on their services so they can remove or disable access to such content. The IT companies to have in place Rules or Community Guidelines clarifying that they prohibit the promotion of incitement to violence and hateful conduct.

“The IT Companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.

“The IT Companies and the European Commission, recognising the value of independent counter speech against hateful rhetoric and prejudice, aim to continue their work in identifying and promoting independent counter-narratives, new ideas and initiatives and supporting educational programs that encourage critical thinking.”

The agreement also requires Internet companies to establish a network of “trusted reporters” in all 28 EU member states to flag online content that “promotes incitement to violence and hateful conduct.”

The EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Vĕra Jourová, has defended the initiative:

“The recent terror attacks have reminded us of the urgent need to address illegal online hate speech. Social media is unfortunately one of the tools that terrorist groups use to radicalize young people and racists use to spread violence and hatred. This agreement is an important step forward to ensure that the internet remains a place of free and democratic expression, where European values and laws are respected. I welcome the commitment of worldwide IT companies to review the majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech in less than 24 hours and remove or disable access to such content, if necessary.”

Others disagree. The National Secular Society (NSS) of the UK warned that the EU’s plans “rest on a vague definition of ‘hate speech’ and risk threatening online discussions which criticize religion.” It added:

“The agreement comes amid repeated accusations from ex-Muslims that social media organizations are censoring them online. The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has now begun collecting examples from its followers of Facebook censoring ‘atheist, secular and ex-Muslim content’ after false ‘mass reporting’ by ‘cyber Jihadists.’ They have asked their supporters to report details and evidence of any instances of pages and groups being ‘banned [or] suspended from Facebook for criticizing Islam and Islamism.'”

NSS communications officer Benjamin Jones said:

“Far from tackling online ‘cyber jihad,’ the agreement risks having the exact opposite effect and entrapping any critical discussion of religion under vague ‘hate speech’ rules. Poorly-trained Facebook or Twitter staff, perhaps with their own ideological bias, could easily see heated criticism of Islam and think it is ‘hate speech,’ particularly if pages or users are targeted and mass reported by Islamists.”

In an interview with Breitbart London, the CEO of Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsburg, said:

“Hate speech laws are already too broad and ambiguous in much of Europe. This agreement fails to properly define what ‘illegal hate speech’ is and does not provide sufficient safeguards for freedom of expression.

“It devolves power once again to unelected corporations to determine what amounts to hate speech and police it — a move that is guaranteed to stifle free speech in the mistaken belief this will make us all safer. It won’t. It will simply drive unpalatable ideas and opinions underground where they are harder to police — or to challenge.

“There have been precedents of content removal for unpopular or offensive viewpoints and this agreement risks amplifying the phenomenon of deleting controversial — yet legal — content via misuse or abuse of the notification processes.”

A coalition of free speech organizations, European Digital Rights and Access Now, announced their decision not to take part in future discussions with the European Commission, saying that “we do not have confidence in the ill-considered ‘code of conduct’ that was agreed.” A statement warned:

“In short, the ‘code of conduct’ downgrades the law to a second-class status, behind the ‘leading role’ of private companies that are being asked to arbitrarily implement their terms of service. This process, established outside an accountable democratic framework, exploits unclear liability rules for online companies. It also creates serious risks for freedom of expression, as legal — but controversial — content may well be deleted as a result of this voluntary and unaccountable take-down mechanism.

“This means that this ‘agreement’ between only a handful of companies and the European Commission is likely in breach of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (under which restrictions on fundamental rights should be provided for by law), and will, in practical terms, overturn case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the defense of legal speech.”

Janice Atkinson, an independent MEP for the South East England region, summed it up this way: “It’s Orwellian. Anyone who has read 1984 sees its very re-enactment live.”

Even before signing on to the EU’s code of conduct, social media sites have been cracking down on free speech, often at the behest of foreign governments.

In September 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard on a live microphone confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on what he was doing to prevent criticism of her open-door immigration policies.

In January 2016, Facebook launched an “Online Civil Courage Initiative” aimed at Facebook users in Germany and geared toward “fighting hate speech and extremism on the Internet.”

Writing for Gatestone Institute, British commentator Douglas Murray noted that Facebook’s assault on “racist” speech “appears to include anything critical of the EU’s current catastrophic immigration policy.” He wrote:

“By deciding that ‘xenophobic’ comment in reaction to the crisis is also ‘racist,’ Facebook has made the view of the majority of the European people (who, it must be stressed, are opposed to Chancellor Merkel’s policies) into ‘racist’ views, and so is condemning the majority of Europeans as ‘racist.’ This is a policy that will do its part in pushing Europe into a disastrous future.

Facebook has also set its sights on Gatestone Institute affiliated writers. In January 2013, Facebook suspended the account of Khaled Abu Toameh after he wrote about corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The account was reopened 24 hours later, but with the two posts deleted and no explanation. Abu Toameh wrote:

“It’s still a matter of censorship. They decide what’s acceptable. Now we have to be careful about what we post and what we share. Does this mean we can’t criticize Arab governments anymore?”

In June 2016, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” In an editorial, Gatestone wrote:

“After enormous grassroots pressure from Gatestone’s readers, the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid’s account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid’s video more attention.

“Facebook and the EU have backed down — for now. But they’re deadly serious about stopping ideas they don’t like. They’ll be back.”

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This week, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online in Europe. The next day, Facebook suspended the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert, after she posted a Gatestone video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.”

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, European Union, Freedom of speech, Hate speech, Human rights, Islam - submission, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamophobia, social media
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, European Union, freedom of speech, Hate speech, human rights, Islam - submission, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamophobia, social media

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Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam?

May 26, 2016

Has the Pope Abandoned Europe to Islam? Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, May 26, 2016

♦ In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.”

♦ Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. He seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, in Brazil and in Africa. Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time and effort in denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East.

♦ “Multiculturalism” in Europe is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by Pope Francis. It is the road to becoming extinct.

♦ Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it experiences a dramatic de-Christianization is extremely risky. In Germany, a new report found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion.

To scroll the list of Pope Francis’s apostolic trips — Brazil, South Korea, Albania, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Cuba, United States, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda, Philippines — one could say that Europe is not exactly at the top of his agenda.

The two previous pontiffs both fought for the cradle of Christendom. Pope John Paul II took on Communism by toppling the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Benedict XVI took on “the dictatorship of relativism” (the belief that truth is in the eye of the beholder) and bet everything on re-evangelizing the continent by traveling through it (he visited Spain three times) and in speeches such as the magnificent ones at Regensburg, where he spoke bluntly about the threat of Islam, and the German Bundestag, where he warned the gathered politicians against declining religiosity and “sacrificing their own ideals for the sake of power.”

Pope Francis, on the contrary, simply ignores Europe, as if he already considers it lost. This former Argentinian Cardinal, a representative of the “global South” Christianity, made spectacular trips to the migrants’ islands of Lampedusa (Italy) and Lesbos (Greece), but never to the heart of the old continent. Pope Francis has also made it difficult for Anglicans to enter into the Catholic Church, by downplaying the dialogue with them.

Most importantly, however, in his important May 6 speech for the Charlemagne Prize, the Pope, in front of European leaders, castigated Europe on migrants and asked its leaders to be more generous with them. He next introduced something revolutionary into the debate: “The identity of Europe is, and always has been, a multicultural identity,” he said. This idea is questionable.

Multiculturalism is a specific policy formulated in the 1970s. and it was absent from the political vocabulary of Schuman and Adenauer, two of Europe’s founding fathers. Now it has been invoked by the Pope, who spoke of the need for a new synthesis. What is this all about?

Today, Christianity appears marginal and irrelevant in Europe. The religion faces an Islamic demographic and ideological challenge, while the post-Auschwitz remnants of Jewish communities are fleeing from the new anti-Semitism. Under these conditions, a synthesis between the old continent and Islam would be a surrender of Europe’s claim to the future.

“Multiculturalism” is the mosque standing on the ruins of the church. It is not the synthesis requested by the Pope. It is the road to becoming extinct.

Asking Europe to be “multicultural” while it is experiencing a dramatic de-Christianization is also extremely risky. In Germany, a new report just found that “Germany has become demographically a multi-religious country.” In the UK, a major inquiry recently declared that “Britain is no longer a Christian country.” In France, Islam is also overtaking Christianity as the dominant religion. You find the same trend everywhere, from Protestant Scandinavia to Catholic Belgium. That is why Pope Benedict was convinced that Europe needed to “re-evangelized.” Pope Francis does not even try to re-evangelize or reconquer Europe. Instead, he seems deeply to believe that the future of Christianity is in the Philippines, Brazil and Africa.

Probably for the same reason, the Pope is spending less time denouncing the terrible fate of Christians in the Middle East. Sandro Magister, Italy’s most important Vatican observer, sheds light on the Pope’s silences:

“He remained silent on the hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram. He remained silent on the young Sudanese mother Meriam, sentenced to death solely for being Christian and finally liberated by the intervention of others. He remains silent on the Pakistani mother Asia Bibi, who has been on death row for five years, because she too is an ‘infidel’, and [He] does not even reply to the two heartrending letters she has written to him this year, before and after the reconfirmation of the sentence.”

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture, said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name, and never mentions the word “Islam.” Pope Francis also recently recognized the “State of Palestine,” before it even exists — a symbolic and unprecedented first. The Pope also might abandon the Church’s long tradition of a “just war,” one regarded as morally or theologically justifiable. Pope Francis always speaks of the “Europe of peoples,” but never of the “Europe of Nations.” He advocates welcoming migrants and washes their feet, while he ignores that these uncontrolled demographic waves are transforming Europe, bit by bit, into an Islamic state.

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In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI (left) said what no Pope had ever dared to say — that there is a link between violence and Islam. Ten years later, Pope Francis (right) never calls those responsible for anti-Christian violence by name and never mentions the word “Islam.” (Image source: Benedict: Flickr/Catholic Church of England | Francis: Wikimedia Commons/korea.net)

That is the meaning of Pope Francis’ trips to the islands of Lampedusa, Italy, and Lesbos, Greece — both symbols of a dramatic geographical and civilizational boundary. That is also the meaning of the Pope’s speech for the Charlemagne Prize.

Has the head of Christianity given up on Europe as a Christian place?

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Europe, Free world, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Pope Francis
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Europe, Free world, Islam and Christianity, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Pope Francis

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Islamic Words and Concepts that Americans Must Understand. Now.

May 22, 2016

Islamic Words and Concepts that Americans Must Understand. Now, Dan Miller’s Blog, May 22, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Ten Islamic words and concepts — well understood by Islamic jihadists and others who strive to impose Sharia law on us — define and articulate the Islamic quest for world domination. However, few charged with “countering violent extremism” understand their meanings and none are permitted to consider such “islamophobic” Islamic concepts when doing their jobs. Thank you, Obama, CAIR and related Muslim Brotherhood – linked Quislings.

Imagine that while learning to “counter violent extremism” on behalf of the Obama-CAIR collective, you encounter a ravenous lion intent upon eating you for dinner. You have been assured, repeatedly, that it, like adherents to “the religion of peace and tolerance,” is only a falsely-maligned, tame and starving kitten in need of food and that you must act accordingly. Don’t succumb to catophobia! What would you do? Become dinner? Run away? Shoot the lion?

A non-fiction article by Matthew Bracken, author of three novels about traitors, foreign and domestic, was recently published by Gates of Viena. The article focuses on these Islamic words and the concepts they embody: dawah, dhimmi, hijra, jizya, kafir, shaheed, shariah, takfir, taqiyya and ummah.

Bracken wrote,

[I]f you are a national security professional, senior military officer or political leader involved in any aspect of the “Global War On Terror,” AKA “Countering Violent Extremism,” these are ten words that should already be a part of your working vocabulary. If you can’t readily discuss their meaning, significance, and relationships, then you are worse than a fool, you are a disgrace to your office and a danger to your country.

He’s right. Obama, Kerry and their many followers are, indeed, dangers to our country as well as to Western Civilization in general. Rather than learn about Islam, they pretend that it is what they have been told, falsely, that it is. Those who understand Islam and want to prevent what it seeks for America from happening are disparaged as “Islamophobes.” Parallels could perhaps be drawn to “idealists” drawn to Communism as a peaceful and tolerant ideology, without bothering to learn about “Uncle Joe” Stalin and what he was doing. Uncle Joe knew what he was doing and thought it was good. Representatives of the fifty-seven Islamist Member nations of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) know the meanings of the words highlighted by Bracken and the purpose of Islam: to make Islam dominant throughout the world. They consider that good and act accordingly.

Mr. Bracken’s important Arabic words are used in context in the following quotations from his article.

[I]f you are an Army general or Navy admiral who, right here and now, without looking at your smart phone, cannot discuss how a kafir becomes a dhimmi, and what a dhimmi’s rights and options (if any) are under shariah, then you are as ignorant of your job as an European-theater Army general circa 1942 who did not know a panzer from a pancake, or a schutzstaffel from a schnitzel. A person as ignorant as you should be kept away from any responsibility for protecting our nation. You are incompetent, and you are a fool.

If you don’t know how to determine when a Muslim suicide bomber is a shaheed and when he is a terrorist according to the shariah, then you are as dangerous to our national safety as a North Atlantic ship captain who believes that icebergs are a fairy tale concocted by conspiracy theorists. Full speed ahead, Captain Smith!

If you don’t know takfir from taqiyya, and can’t discuss the meaning and importance of both, you are as useless as a WW2 intelligence officer who didn’t know the Kriegsmarine from the Luftwaffe, (but who thought that one of them was a private flying club, based on conversations that he overheard among his ever-helpful German cleaning staff).

If you cannot, right now, intelligently discuss the global ummah and its relationship to the OIC in the context of the GWOT, then you should be working for the Department of Parks and Recreation, and not the Department of Homeland Security. If you don’t know what the OIC refers to in this context, put on a dunce cap, and go stand in the corner. And if you don’t know whether your office is in the Dar al Islam or the Dar al Harb, please jump out of an upper-story window, and when you hit the sidewalk, ask any immigrant who is engaged in hijra. He’ll know the answer, even if you do not.

If you don’t know how dawah relates to jihad when faithful Muslims are engaged in long-term hijra, you should turn in your official credentials and take early retirement. You are as oblivious as a WW2 U.S. Army general who thought that the Geheime Staatspolizei were German motorcycle policemen much like our American state troopers, because a helpful German passer-by told him so.

If you don’t know what the three options are for a kafir who violates the shariah when living in the dar al Islam, then please get out of the national security business. If you don’t know why a dhimmi would care about jizya, please retire, and hand your duties over to someone who has the natural curiosity and personal integrity to conduct his own study of our actual enemies and their actual strategies. But in the meantime, you must immediately stop lapping up the false narrative being spoon-fed to you by hostile foreign agents, domestic traitors, useful idiots, and cowards who know better—but who won’t make waves while their pensions are beckoning.

If your job is national security, and you didn’t score at least an eighty on the ten-word quiz, then you have obviously swallowed the big lie that we can safely delegate the understanding of our Islamist enemies to the WW2 equivalent of “moderate Nazis.” Sounds insane, doesn’t it? But under President Obama, this is indeed our national policy for fighting the GWOT: allow a range of Muslim Brotherhood front groups to conduct America’s narrowly limited analysis of so-called “radicalized Islam,” and thereafter guide our policies toward Islam and Muslims in general.

Here is an important example straight from current events. Please tell us, oh national security professional, whom has the United Nations delegated the critical task of selecting and “screening” the Muslim “refugees” who are currently arriving in the USA at the rate of thousands per month? Any guesses? It is the same organization that the Obama administration has also optimistically granted the authority to choose our new Muslim “refugee” immigrants. If you don’t know the answer, please get out of the national security business.

So who is it? It’s the fifty-seven-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, which I referenced above. The mission of the OIC is to promote the spread of Islam across the globe until there is no more dar al harb, and all of the kafirs have either been converted to Islam, killed, or forced into submission as dhimmis. If you didn’t know, dhimmis are formally and legally subjugated second-class citizens who must pay the special jizya tax as the price of their being allowed to live under shariah in the ummah.

But this special offer is only extended to Christians and Jews: all others must choose between conversion to Islam, and the sword. That is, if their Muslim conquerors grant them the option of conversion. According to the Shariah, the defeated kafirs may also be killed or enslaved, if either of these two outcomes would be considered more beneficial to the ummah, based on local conditions and needs. (Of course, the captured women and girls may be taken as sex-slaves.) Mohammed did all of the above, and he commanded that these practices be continued in perpetuity, and they are.

The charter of the OIC puts Islamic shariah law ahead of secular law. This means, for example, that the official position of the OIC is that Muslims who leave the faith should be killed, and that any faithful Muslim who kills an apostate ex-Muslim has done no sin, but instead should be thanked and congratulated for the deed. It’s the same with adulterers: they should die, and killing an adulterer is no crime.

Yes, that really is their position, and they really do believe it, and much more than that. The OIC is made up of fifty-seven Muslim nations, united by a common belief in the supremacy of Islam, and their mutual obligation to conduct both dawah and jihad until the Dar al Islam covers the globe, and Allah’s eternal and immutable shariah has supplanted godless democracy and all manmade laws. This dawah includes the practice of using taqiyya when making arrangements or having negotiations with as-yet unsubmitted kafirs in the dar al harb.

So it’s no wonder that ninety-nine percent of the “refugees” being “screened” by the OIC and transported into the USA are Muslim, even though the Christians and other non-Muslims (who until recently made up over ten percent of the populations of Syria and Iraq) are suffering a brutal genocide and holocaust at the hands of Islamic State kidnappers, mass-rapists and mass-executioners.

. . . .

Let me offer you another simple test that you may apply to your own national security work space and mission. If you have been ordered to purge the ten listed Arabic words (and others) from your official GWOT lexicon, and instead to hand over the task of analyzing “Islamic radicalism” to alleged “moderate Muslims,” then you are being played for a fool by our nation’s most implacable and devious enemies, both foreign and domestic.

. . . .

Today, we are literally outsourcing our intelligence analysis in the GWOT to the OIC and various Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Simply do a search for “Holy Land Foundation, Hamas, CAIR, and FBI” to begin your overdue education. Is it any wonder that the official “Countering Violent Extremism” narrative holds that there is utterly no connection between Islamic terrorism and Islam? That the Islamic State, which quotes chapter and verse of the Koran as justification for its every decision, is not Islamic? That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph of ISIS, who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad, knows less about Islam than President Obama and his American-trained national security staff? [Emphasis added.]

In 2016, ignorance of the reality of the Islamist threat is no longer an excuse. Many resources are readily available if you are willing to look unblinkingly at the light of truth. I would suggest the online video lectures given by Stephen Coughlin and Dr. Bill Warner as starting points. Those who need or desire to read an exhaustively researched (over a thousand footnotes) academic treatise on the present Islamist threat should carefully study Coughlin’s “Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.”

After 9-11, Mr. Coughlin was an acclaimed subject matter expert and frequent high-level lecturer at the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, until 2008 when he was made persona-non-grata on federal property as an unwelcome “Islamophobe.” And who made the determination of Mr. Coughlin’s “Islamophobia?” The same Muslim Brotherhood front groups that our intelligence agencies now rely upon for their understanding of “violent extremism,” which, of course, we are assured has absolutely nothing to do with Islam.

We know this must be true, because President Obama has told us so. Unless, of course, he is practicing taqiyya on behalf of the ummah. Taqiyya is a bedrock principle of Islamic shariah, a ready tool for Muslims to use when they are dealing with kafirs. And not only radical Muslims, but ordinary, everyday, “moderate” Muslims. According to the shariah, it’s not a sin when a Muslim lies to a kafir in order to promote Islam. In that case, taqiyya is just a very clever form of dawah, helping to prepare the kafirs for the final Islamic jihad victory.

Conclusions

Obama, et al, complicit with CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups, require “our” Countering Violent Terrorism forces to assist, rather than fight against, Islamic terrorism. That’s perverse and some (I am one of them) consider it treason.

As I observed here, Islamic terrorists torture and murder — quite legitimately under Islamic doctrine — thousands of people. That’s deplorable. What Islamists and their modern-day Quislings have done even without chopping off heads, and continue to do to European nations, is even worse. They have moved in and have done a great job of Islamising entire nations. With the help of Allah, Obama and His band of Quislings, that’s what they are doing and hope to do more of to America.

“Our betters” lie to us, repeatedly.

Hillary Clinton lies even when it’s inevitable that her lies will be discovered. Many of her supporters are attracted, or at best not repelled, by her lying. At least she is consistent: the truth simply is not in her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALYwbYDVhBA

Islamists and their fellow travelers who are taking over Europe must be prevented from doing the same to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”

Obama and His followers seek to have us forget all about that as well as those who fought and died to create and then to preserve America. Shall we, must we, become dhimmis and yield to the OIC, Iran, CAIR and Obama’s other Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood friends by electing Obama’s soul mate, Hillary Clinton, as our next Commander in Chief?

Not on my watch, not on Trump’s watch and, I hope, not on your watch. Isn’t it time to make up your mind? The Muslims in the following video have already decided to support Hillary and have contributed funds accordingly.

According to this source, Ms. Clinton managed to collect “half-a-million dollars, making it one of the top five private fundraisers Clinton has had in this country.” She did not get Muslim money because of her charming personality.

Many of the Pakistanis at the event were pleased with Clinton’s vocal support of the Muslim religion.

Aisha Zahid said, “Talking about Muslims and favoring Muslims, so I really appreciate her whatever effort she is making against Islamaphobia, so I really think she needs to be the next President of the United States.”

If you haven’t already watched the following video, please do so. If you have, please watch it again. It makes more sense about “Republican principles” and why we need to honor them today than any other video I have watched.

If we want to continue to affirm these Republican principles, we need to keep a country in which to do it. America still is, and must remain, our country.

Although America remains our country, she is slipping away. How long do we have to stop and reverse the process of Islamisation which is, thus far slowly but inexorably, leading to America becoming part of the ummah? We the people must save her from Islamists, dhimmis and their fellow travelers.

Categories: 2016 elections, CAIR, Clash of civilizations, Donald Trump, Europe, Free world, Hillary Clinton, Islam - submission, Islam and colonialism, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic jihad, Islamic nations, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, OIC
Tags: CAIR, Clash of civilizations, Donald Trump, Europe, Free world, Islam - submission, Islam and colonialism, Islamic immigration, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic Jihad, Islamic nations, Islamic supremacy, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, OIC

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Perception as deterrence – Israel’s new Defense Minister

May 20, 2016

Perception as deterrence – Israel’s new Defense Minister, American Thinker, Ron Jager, May 20, 2016

The recent news that Avigdor Liberman, a former Israeli Foreign Minister and head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, a small right-wing party, will replace Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon as the new Israeli defense minister and has been portrayed by the Israeli media and their elitist opinion makers with dismay and stupefaction. In Tel-Aviv, a city known for its progressive and leftist inclination, many muttered that the municipality should start opening up the air raid shelters as Lieberman’s appointment hit the airwaves. Lieberman, a politician feared and despised by the Israeli left, is being demonized and delitigitimized even before his appointed has gone into effect. Yet the potential appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as Defense Minister has thrown the whole Palestinian leadership and Israeli Arab politicians into a frenzy, making the reaction by Israel’s leftist elite seem mild. Claiming that Israel is adopting characteristics of a fascist regime and calling for the boycott of Israel; stating that “the Israeli government is sending a message to the world that Israel prefers extremism, dedication to the occupation and settlements over peace,” and encouraging blatant racism, are only a fraction of the derogatory and slanderous accusations against a veteran politician who has been democratically elected.

The potential appointment of Avigdor Lieberman to the position of Defense Minister may very well herald a new and more effective deterrence against the Palestinians’ desire to get up in the morning and murder a Jew. The Palestinian Arab perception of Lieberman as a person who believes in the sanctification of power, ruthlessness, violence, and ignorance with murderous potential can very well be exactly what will cause the Palestinians to adopt a more realistic assessment of what a negotiated settlement will look like.

This is their dilemma, and this is their choice. Either continue and deny reality, taking their chances with a Defense Minister who is perceived as having no problems with employing a strict crackdown wherever Palestinian terror erupts, who has no qualms about enforcing strict rules of engagement, making it crystal clear that Israel’s strategy is based on the adage of our Sages, “If someone rises to kill you, kill him first,” or begin to negotiate seriously and honestly to achieve a sustainable peace agreement with Israel. The perception of Avigdor Lieberman by the Palestinian Arabs could very well facilitate this change.

As Israel’s strategic deterrence and capabilities have been proven to be highly effective in recent years with land, sea, and air strategic capabilities becoming literally impenetrable, the main task facing Israel’s Defense Minister will be primarily in the Palestinian theatre. The Middle East, being a region highly susceptible to a cultural disposition to base one’s reaction on who how one perceives one’s enemy, may very well bring the Palestinian Arab leadership to fold their cards and start the arduous and unavoidable process of negotiating with Israel.

For the majority of the past eight years, President Obama and State Department “experts” have been treating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the central generator of political upheaval ravaging the Middle East. They do not realize just how marginal the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs has become or understand that as far as the Sunni Arab nations of the Middle East, the future Palestinian State, should it be established, will be just another failed Arab nation in perpetual conflict with its own people and with her neighbors.

As far as the Palestinian Authority (PA) that resides in Ramallah is concerned, the lack of legitimacy in the eyes of their own people is only exceeded by the widespread and institutionalized corruption by its leaders, sustained by international funding from the United States and the European Union. Having rejected over the years any possibility of a negotiated settlement, the PA leadership have proven without a doubt that they have no intention of reaching any agreement.. The only goal of the Palestinian Arab leadership has been to gain territories and use them for the next attack aimed at minimizing and weakening Israel. Apart from that, there is nothing: No democracy, no economy, no law and no future for the Palestinian Arabs other than being in a perpetual cycle of meaningless and unsuccessful conflict with Israel. Israel will continue to move ahead and forge alliances with Sunni Arab neighbors and the Palestinian Arabs will wallow in their misery as they continue to deny reality and believe in their own made-up propaganda narrative.

The unprecedented political changes having taken place in the Middle East in recent years mainly due to Obama’s irresponsible and failed strategic policy decisions have resulted in new emerging alliances between Israel and her neighbors. Despite the challenges that Iran continues to pose to Israel and the potential of her leaders who might use the conflict with Israel as a means of rallying political support in her war with the Sunni Arab nations, the threat of renewed conventional conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors has been downgraded, while more realistic scenarios envision a greater focus on economic cooperation and regional stability. Although it is far too early to predict the success of the new political alliances and strategic order that will eventually emerge from the changes in the Arab world, the inherent asymmetry of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs will maintain this conflict on low burner for the foreseeable future with sporadic eruptions of terror and limited missile attacks similar to what that the Israeli population has had to endure in recent years.

Categories: Abbas, Arab nations, Clash of civilizations, Israel, Israeli government, Israeli security, Leftist perspectives, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, Rules of engagement, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Arab nations, Clash of civilizations, Israel, Israeli government, Israeli security, Leftist perspectives, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians and Jews, rules of engagement, Two state solution

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The Failure of the Swedish Establishment

May 6, 2016

The Failure of the Swedish Establishment, Gatestone Institute, Nima Gholam Ali Pour, May 6, 2016

♦ In Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, the children of illegal migrants receive income support payments from the government, and the unemployment rate among foreign-born men aged 18-24 years is at 41%. In Sweden, those who do not have jobs receive generous welfare payments from the local authorities, and families in the country illegally have their rent paid by the taxpayers. It is an open invitation to more migrants to come to Sweden.

♦ The Swedish establishment tells Swedes that the more immigrants come to Sweden, the richer Sweden will become — no matter which country these immigrants come from.

♦ The Swedish establishment is characterized by incompetence combined with an extreme left-wing ideology and a hillbilly-like mentality that refuses to see the rest of the world and the risks involved in it. The Swedish establishment has not dealt with Sweden as if it were a country, but as if it were a village.

♦ By gross miscalculations, the Swedish establishment has eroded its own legitimacy. Today, fewer than one in four Swedes have confidence in their government. Meanwhile, the Swedish media is a major threat to Sweden’s security today: it downplays the migration crisis with ridiculous arguments.

A major threat to Sweden’s security today is the Swedish journalistic establishment: it downplays the migration crisis with ridiculous arguments.

As migrants flooded into Sweden in December 2015, Fredrik Virtanen, a writer for Sweden’s largest newspaper, Aftonbladet, wrote an article entitled, “Have refugees forced you to buy worse red wine?” It is not really dangerous, Virtanen argues, that that Sweden was accepting 160,000 migrants; such migratory movements, he wrote, do not really impact anyone’s life.

Today, however, we know that many people’s lives have been affected by the influx of migrants and that the problems are about more than wine. They are, for example, about sexual assault, the murder of staff in asylum accommodations and chaos in the Swedish school system. But Virtanen was right: red wine is still here.

Another of Aftonbladet’s editorial writers, Linnea Swedenmark, writes about a village in the Swedish province of Jämtland. The village she writes, is an example of how migrants are ensuring that the consumption of goods is increasing in the rural areas of Sweden.

What she did not write is that in Jämtland’s largest city, Östersund, many women have been assaulted by men who speak “Swedish with an accent.” The police have warned women not to go out alone. Swedenmark is right when she writes that “the grocery store sells three times as many eggs” — but the women of Jämtland feel less secure in the public domain.

In the magazine, Café, the journalist Andrev Walden wrote in December 2015, that “no nation has perished from too much goodness.” The pictures for his article compared Sweden’s new restrictive immigration laws with the Holocaust.

When the migration crisis started last year in Sweden, the Swedish comedian Henrik Schyffert calculated and wrote on Facebook that it costs each Swede “two Quattro Stagionis (a popular local pizza), a large Fanta soda and a Netflix subscription to save the lives of 80,000 people this year.”

His Facebook post was praised by all major media outlets in Sweden. They were apparently looking to a comedian who counted the counted the cost of immigration in pizza and soda currencies for the solution to Sweden’s migration crisis.

Since Schyffert made his statement, those amazing pizzas that would finance the mass influx of migrants are nowhere to be found, and Sweden has to borrow more money for the migration crisis on its hands.

These quotes are from the mainstream media in Sweden, and it is how large parts of the Swedish establishment sound every day. This is the level at which the debate on immigration in Sweden is being conducted.

While 800,000 migrants in Libya are waiting to invade Europe, Sweden has a refugee policy whereby only by obtaining livelihoods will those migrants with a refugee status and a temporary residence permit get permanent residence permits. So if you get a job, you get to stay in Sweden permanently. It is a strange refugee policy, because those who actually are refugees and not economic migrants are often traumatized and have difficulties finding a job. So Sweden’s refugee policy is tailored to economic migrants.

In Sweden’s third largest city, Malmö, the children of illegal migrants receive income support payments from the government, and families that are in Sweden illegally have their rent paid by the taxpayers. For some reason, the Swedish authorities want to pay people who should not even be in Sweden. It is an open invitation to more migrants to come to Sweden.

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Tens of thousands of migrants have passed through Denmark to enter Sweden during 2015 and 2016, attracted by Sweden’s generous welfare payments and free housing.

What the established Swedish media does not tell people about are the threats and risks that come with increased migration. When the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, recognized that it could not control the migrants coming to Europe, and that many Europeans who had joined terrorist organizations outside Europe were coming back to Europe among the migrants, this was not major news in the Swedish media. This is strange, since Sweden is one of the countries in Europe from where many citizens have traveled from to the Middle East to fight in jihadi terrorist organizations.

Such news does not fit in the narrative that the Swedish media is trying to tell the Swedish people. The narrative that the Swedish establishment wants to tell the Swedes is that the more immigrants come to Sweden, the richer Sweden will become. It does not matter which country these immigrants come from. If they just come to Sweden, then Sweden will become a richer country.

A month before the migration crisis started making waves in the media, the think tank Arena Idé — which has close ties to the Social Democrats, the governing party — published a report that was mentioned in all the major Swedish media outlets.

According to the report, Sweden, between 1950 and 2014, had made a “profit” of $110 billion on immigration. The report also said that without immigration, an $8 billion tax increase would be needed to sustain Sweden’s defense, infrastructure and research. That there could be a conflict between a welfare state and immigration was called a “myth.” As expected, the established Swedish media rejoiced over these “facts.”

When the report went public in June 2015, the Swedish media celebrated it. Today, when the Swedish welfare state is under severe pressure because of immigration, the authors refuse to answer any questions about it. Last June, it was treated as a confirmation of the pro-immigration ideology of the Swedish establishment. With 9.5 million people in Sweden and its many universities, only a few economists protested the report. The loudest criticism came from the economist Tino Sanandaji. Needless to say, Sanandaji, despite being an immigrant from Iran with a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Chicago, was depicted by some in the established Swedish media as a right-wing extremist.

No, Sweden is not the Soviet Union, but the way large parts of the Swedish establishment turn ideology into “facts” through “reports,” and smear those who have different opinions, undermines debates that are of such critical importance in a democracy.

Not only the media and think tanks connected to the government advocate a liberal immigration policy. There is also loud support for it in academic circles. “Immigrants are a profit for Sweden,” Dick Harrison, professor of history at Lund University, wrote in a December 2014 article for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. In the article, he states:

“Sweden is not in any way unique. The same logic — that immigration strengthens the country politically, economically and culturally – can be said of all peacetime immigrations through the ages, whether it has been about refugees or labor immigration. The more immigrants, the stronger [the] state. The prime example is the United States. There is not a single historical example of immigration in the long term being negative for the host country. At this point, our historical experience is crystal clear — the only form of immigration that has been, and is, directly harmful is comprised of warlike invasions.”

While Harrison gives the United States as an example, he forgets to mention that while immigrants to the U.S. often come from countries such as Mexico, China and India, the three countries from which Sweden received the highest number of asylum seekers in 2015 were Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. They have also delivered most asylum seekers to Sweden during the first four months of 2016. As most people know, these three countries house large numbers of jihadi terrorists.

In Sweden, moreover, it is difficult for people without a high level of education to get a job. In Malmö, the unemployment rate among foreign-born men aged 18-24 years is at 41%. In Sweden, those who do not have jobs receive generous welfare payments from the local authorities.

Sweden also has a welfare system in which municipalities are obligated to ensure that everyone has housing. Sweden’s homeless people live in hostels or hotels paid for by taxpayers. These immigration policies have therefore have therefore saddled Swedish taxpayers with huge expenses.

Without the establishment’s campaign to convince the Swedish people that immigration will make Sweden rich, Sweden would not have the liberal immigration policies they do, eroding the country’s safety and welfare. Even though the Swedish establishment campaigns in every way possible for a liberal immigration policy, and despite the fact that a few months ago anyone advocating for a restrictive immigration policy was called a “racist,” resistance among Swedes against immigration has increased.

The Swedish people have defied their establishment and recently forced liberal politicians to support a more restrictive immigration policy. The Swedish people, despite having an ideologically blind establishment, have been smart enough to use their common sense.

As for the Swedish establishment, there is no word to describe them other than dangerous.

The Swedish establishment is characterized by incompetence combined with an extreme left-wing ideology and a hillbilly-like mentality that refuses to see the rest of the world and the risks involved in it. The Swedish establishment has not dealt with Sweden as if it were a country, but as if it were a village.

What is happening in Sweden right now is a cultural and political revolution. The Swedes have trusted their establishment for a long time. This trust has been a part of the political culture in Sweden. But now that culture is changing — to be anti-establishment in Sweden today is not marginalized anymore. Sweden is developing a powerful anti-establishment movement, dominating the political debate.

By gross miscalculations, the Swedish establishment has eroded its own legitimacy. Today, fewer than one in four Swedes have confidence in their government. The damage that the Swedish establishment’s liberal immigration policies inflicted on Sweden during the migration crisis of 2015 — and is about to inflict during the coming migration crisis of 2016 — is likely to cause a tectonic political shift in Sweden.

The Swedish media has failed in its journalistic obligation to report objectively about the problem, and Swedish politicians have not acted in the best interest of Sweden. While Sweden faces its biggest crisis since World War II, the Swedish establishment has clearly failed to lead.

The average Swede needs to be tougher to cope with the challenges facing Sweden today and in the years to come. The problems that will face Sweden after it has received 160,000 asylum seekers in 2015 and the 150,000 asylum seekers expected in 2016 will create a political, cultural and social environment in which there is no place for political naivety and ideological blindness. To survive as a stable and civilized country where the rule of law and democracy will prevail, Sweden will be forced to recognize the threats and risks that come with massive immigration — and to respond.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Ideology, Islam - submission, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Sweden
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Ideology, Islam - submission, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Sweden

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The Real Flag Issue

May 6, 2016

The Real Flag Issue, Front Page Magazine, Lloyd Billingsley, May 6, 2016

Mex flag

Last year, South Carolina’s Republican Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia. The June 17 massacre of nine African Americans in a Charleston church launched efforts to take down the banner, which evoked racism, segregation and the 1861-1864 war between the states. Last July, when South Carolina lowered the Confederate banner for the last time, the crowd responded with chants of “USA! USA!” During the 2016 presidential campaign, a different flag issue is coming to the fore.

Violent anti-Trump protesters have been waving the flag of Mexico. The Mexican flag was on display in southern California last week, where one protest featured a child holding a sign reading “Make America Mexico Again.” Such fervor prompted a column from Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee. He argues that, aside from one public ceremony in Sacramento, “the Mexican flag has no place in American politics, and it’s disturbing to see it popping up with increasing regularity.” This is hardly a new development.

When Californians vote on issues such as English as the state’s official language (Proposition 63, 1986); benefits for undocumented immigrants (Proposition 187, 1994); racial preferences in college admissions (Proposition 209, 1996) and bilingual education (Proposition 227, 1998) Mexican flags suddenly appeared by the thousands. This reflects the tenaciously held belief that California somehow remains part of Mexico, and that Mexicans are only coming to what amounts to their own country. They are therefore entitled to education, medical care, drivers’ licenses, welfare, and in-state college tuition. Politicians give tacit assent to this package.

Vice President Joe Biden explains that illegal immigrants are “already Americans.” In her recent book Hard Choices, Democratic presidential frontrunner and former First Lady Hillary Clinton helpfully explains, “after all, much of the southwestern part of the United States was part of Mexico.” So little wonder that Mexicans stream across the border, with additional encouragement from “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco. There Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi welcomed even violent felons such as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and five-time deportee accused of gunning down Kathryn Steinle. In similar style, in 2014 two Sacramento County police officers fell victim to Mexican national and repeat deportee Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamontes, who said in court, “I killed them cops.”

Instead of restricting sanctuary cities, California politicians are more concerned with driving old Dixie down. A bill by Orinda Democrat Steve Glazer removes the names of Confederates such as Robert E. Lee from schools, public buildings and such. If politicians are in the mood for purges, they can find more fertile ground in Spanish colonialism.

Spanish colonialism was built on the enslavement of the native peoples they conquered. Under the encomienda system, native peoples were part of the land grants the conquistadores gave to Spanish settlers. The native peoples were required to work for the encomenderos, who considered them property. The white Spanish imperialists were also unabashed racists who exploited slaves from western Africa for mining and agriculture.

California’s chain of religious missions is the direct legacy of Spanish colonialism, as are city names such as San Diego, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara and many others. By the standards of the historical purge crew, these are due for some fundamental change. Los Angeles could become Mickey Mouse City and San Diego the Navy Base City. San Francisco could opt for “The City,” as residents call it now, or “Sanctuary City.” In all this fervor, the politically correct have lost sight of some historical realities.

The Confederate States of America lost the war of 1861-1865 to the United States of America, so it seems entirely fitting to take down the Confederate battle flag. On the other hand, 168 years ago, a full 15 years before the Civil War, when the Ottoman Empire, Austrian Empire, and Prussia were major players, the United States of America fought a war with Mexico. Whatever the causes of that 1846-1848 conflict, the USA won and Mexico lost. Mexico duly signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Mexican flag no longer flew over California and much of the southwestern United States. The rest should be history, but it isn’t.

“Donald Trump isn’t running for president of Mexico,” cautions Marcos Breton, but that’s how a violent faction of the Left sees it. The Mexican flag is their battle flag, and we will be seeing it more and more as November approaches.

Meanwhile, nobody is waving Prussian flags and yelling for “Prussian Power.” Nobody is posing children with banners reading “Make Italy the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies Again.” But the Left wants America to be Mexico Again.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Illegal immigration, Mexican flag in America, Mexico, Obama and uncontrolled immigration, Sanctuary cities, U.S. borders
Tags: Clash of civilizations, Donald Trump, Illegal immigration, Mexican flag in America, Mexico, Obama and uncontrolled immigration, Sanctuary cities, U.S. borders

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Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump

May 6, 2016

Op-Ed: Read Peter Beinart and you’ll vote Donald Trump, Israel National News, David Friedman, May 6, 2016

Several weeks ago, I was “outed” as one of Donald Trump’s two advisors on the relationship between the United States of America and the State of Israel. It is an honor and a privilege to advise Mr. Trump on a critical issue that is near and dear to my heart, and I fervently hope that I have the opportunity to assist him in developing and implementing policies that strengthen both countries and the unbreakable bond between them.

Right now, however, the bloodsport of American presidential politics is in full bloom, and within that scented garden emerges a recent Op-Ed piece by CNN panelist, Peter Beinart, published in Israel’s left-wing paper Haaretz. Beinart, a well-known supporter of J Street, New Israel Fund and the BDS movement, decries Trump’s selection of Israel advisors as a cynical charade by which Trump leverages Jews in his employ to go “all in” on Israel solely to garner political capital. According to Beinart, these token Jews, myself included, are just willing pawns in a modern day Game of Thrones, all willing to fall on their proverbial swords for Trump the King.

I have never met Mr. Beinart nor do I care to, and he knows absolutely nothing about me. Had he made the slightest inquiry (apparently no longer necessary for modern journalists), he would have known that I am not in Mr. Trump’s employ, have hundreds of other clients, and hold views on Israel that are entirely independent of any political movement or candidate. Those views have been developed over more than thirty years of study of historical accounts and scholarly works, interaction with Israeli political, military and business leaders, and probably 100 trips or more to the Holy Land. I didn’t just come out of “central casting,” as Beinart implies, to facilitate some political theatre, and my beliefs are not for sale to the highest bidder. The same holds true for Jason Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s other advisor, whom I have known for years.

But I do want to thank Mr. Beinart for getting this issue out on the table, albeit clumsily and disingenuously. Because his reflexive reaction to my involvement in the Trump candidacy lays bare how dangerous the Jewish left is to the State of Israel.

Let’s look at the criticisms offered by Mr. Beinart of views that I have previously expressed. He thinks I’m no good because (1) I have accused President Obama of “blatant anti-Semitism,” (2) I have questioned the wisdom of Israel bestowing the benefits of citizenship, including free tuition at some of its best universities, upon those who advocate the overthrow of the State, and (3) I have likened J Street supporters to “kapos during the Nazi era.” Let’s unpack each of those a bit.

First, Obama’s anti-Semitism. Here’s the context – Hamas puts on school plays in which 10 year olds dressed as terrorists plunge fake knives into 10 year olds dressed as Jews to the delight of the audience, and Palestinian Authority leaders (they’re supposed to be the “moderate ones”) bestow praise upon all participating in the “knife intifada.” Asked to comment on the unspeakable tragedy of innocent Jewish civilians being murdered by knife-wielding Islamic radicals, Obama and Kerry do little more than condemn the proverbial “cycle of violence.” I’m sorry, but this is pure and outright murder and any public figure who finds it difficult to condemn it as such without diluting the message with geo-political drivel is engaging in “blatant anti-Semitism.”

Second, the wisdom of free stuff for those engaged in advocating the overthrow of the State of Israel. Every civilized country other than Israel punishes treason. In the United States, advocating to overthrow the government by force or violence can get you life in prison. In Israel, Islamic radical citizens speak this way all the time, often on the way back and forth from world class institutions of higher learning which they attend for free. Is this a good idea? Is there no minimal allegiance required for Israeli citizenship? Sure seems like a fair question to me.

Finally, are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps. The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.

Mr. Beinart, therefore, has done us a service, albeit unintentionally. He has shown us the danger of the Jewish left – the lost souls who blame Israel for not making a suicidal “peace” with hateful radical Islamists hell bent on Israel’s destruction. This is Hillary Clinton’s crowd, and they are no friends of Israel.

Donald Trump’s view of Israel isn’t quite as nuanced as that of Mr. Beinart nor as academic as that of President Obama. He thinks that when radical Islamic terrorists are trying to kill you, the right thing to do is kill them first. Don’t negotiate, reason or cajole. Just defeat them. Or as Mr. Trump would say, “win.”

So please read Peter Beinart’s latest column. It will leave you convinced to vote for Donald Trump.

Categories: 2016 elections, Abbas, Antisemitism, BDS, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Donald Trump, Foreign policy, Gaza, Haaretz, Hypocrisy, Islam and Jews, Israel, J Street, Leftists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama's anti-semitism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian incitement, Republicans
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, BDS, Clash of civilizations, Defense of Israel, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Haaretz, Hypocrisy, Islam and Jews, Israel, J Street, Leftists, Obama and Israel, Obama and Palestinians, Obama's antisemitism, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian incitement, Republicans

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