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ISIS Selling Yazidi Women and Children in Turkey

December 20, 2015

ISIS Selling Yazidi Women and Children in Turkey, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, December 20, 2015

♦ “Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day.” — Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yazidi Human Rights Organization-International.

♦ “An office has been established by ISIS members in Antep [Turkey]; and at that office, women and children kidnapped by ISIS are sold for high amounts of money. Where are the ministers and law enforcement officers of this county who are talking about stability?” — Reyhan Yalcindag, prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer.

♦ “Five thousand people have been taken as captives. Women and children are raped, and then sold. These must be considered crimes.” — Leyla Ferman, Co-President of the Yazidi Federation of Europe.

♦ “Turkey has signed several international treaties, but it is the number one country when it comes to professional non-compliance with human rights treaties.” — Reyhan Yalcindag.

This month, the German television station, ARD (Consortium of Public Broadcasters in Germany), produced footage documenting the slave trade being conducted by the Islamic State (ISIS) through a liaison office in the province of Gaziantep (also known as Antep) in Turkey, near the border with Syria.

In August 2014, Islamic State jihadists attacked Sinjar, home to over 400,000 Yazidis. The United Nations confirmed that 5,000 men were executed, and as many as 7,000 women and girls made sex slaves.

While some have escaped or been ransomed back, thousands of Yazidis remain missing.

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A news report from German broadcaster ARD shows photos of Yazidi slaves distributed by ISIS (left), as well as undercover footage of ISIS operatives in Turkey taking payment for buying the slaves (right).

Last month, after Kurdish forces recaptured the area from ISIS jihadists, mass graves, believed to contain the remains of Yazidi women, were discovered east of Sinjar.

The German TV channels NDR and SWR declared on their website:

“IS [Islamic State] offers women and underage children in a kind of virtual slave market with for-sale photos. … The transfer of money, as the reporter discovered, takes place through a liaison office in Turkey. …

“For weeks, NDR and SWR accompanied a Yazidi negotiator, who, on behalf of the families, negotiates with the IS for the release of the slaves and their children. … the women are sold in a digital slave market to the highest bidder. 15,000 to 20,000 US dollars are a typical price. Similar sums for ransom are also required to free Yazidis. The money is then transferred via IS-liaison offices and middlemen to the terrorist group.

“NDR and SWR were present at the liberation of a woman and her three small children, aged between two and four years old, and followed the negotiations. How many Yazidi slaves are still ‘owned’ by IS is unclear. Experts estimate that there still could be hundreds.”

The negotiator told NDR and SWR that in the course of a year, he transferred more than USD $2.5 million to ISIS from the families of 250 Yazidi women and children, in order to free them.

He also said that to advertise the slaves, ISIS assigns numbers to the female and child slaves, and posts their photographs on the WhatsApp Messenger smartphone app.[1]

In response to these reports, the Gaziantep Bar Association filed a criminal complaint against “Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and law-enforcement officers that have committed neglect of duty and misconduct by not taking required measures, and not carrying out preventive and required intelligence activities before the media covered the said incidents.”

The bar association also demanded that the prosecutors start prosecuting and punishing perpetrators engaged in crimes of “human trafficking, prostitution, genocide, deprivation of liberty, crimes against humanity, and migrant smuggling,” according to the Turkish penal code.

“The tragic reality,” said lawyer Bektas Sarkli, the head of Gaziantep Bar Association, “is that Gaziantep is a crowded city; the suicide bombers easily cross [to Syria and Iraq]. Unfortunately, Gaziantep exports terrorism.”

Sarkli added: “When you see the ammunition captured and especially take into account the money transferred here [it is clear that] ISIS easily shelters in this city. Gaziantep is the logistic site of ISIS.”

Mahmut Togrul, an MP of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a motion to Efkan Ala, Turkey’s Interior Minister, asked about the alleged office where ISIS members engage in slavery and the sex trade. His questions included: “How many liaison offices affiliated with ISIS terror organization are there in Gaziantep? If there are, do those liaison offices have any legal basis? Under what names do these offices operate? Are those offices affiliated with any institution?”

Interior Minister Ala has not yet provided any answers.

“According to the local press of Gaziantep, as well as the national press,” Togrul said, “Gaziantep has been turned into a city with sleeper cell houses for the ISIS terror group; ISIS members abound and travel freely.” [2]

The “Struggle Platform for Women Forcefully Seized,” the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and the Kurdish Congress of Free Women (KJA) in Diyarbakir also filed a criminal complaint, calling for the prosecutors to investigate allegations and bring the perpetrators to account.

Reyhan Yalcindag, a prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer, said, “An office has been established by ISIS members in Antep; and at that office, women and children kidnapped by ISIS are sold for high amounts of money. Where are the ministers and law enforcement officers of this county who are talking about stability?”

“Turkey,” she said, “has signed several international treaties, but it is the number one country when it comes to professional non-compliance with human rights treaties.”

The Co-President of the Yazidi Federation of Europe, Leyla Ferman, referred to the number of the genocides to which the Yazidis say they have been exposed throughout history. “The Yazidis have been given 73 death warrants,” she said, “The people are massacred under the Islamic State. Thousands of Yazidi women are missing. Five thousand people have been taken as captives. Women and children are raped, and then sold. Today, due to the war, women have been scattered all around. These must be considered crimes.”

This is not the first time the presence of ISIS in Antep appeared in the news.

In November 2015, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, a group waving black ISIS flags appeared, honking the horns of their cars and celebrating in the streets of Antep. The footage was shared widely on social media. One user wrote, “This is Turkey supposedly struggling against ISIS. This is the ISIS convoy in Antep celebrating the Paris massacre.”

The Yazidis, a historically persecuted community, are ethnically Kurdish, but not Muslim; their native religion of Yazidism is linked to ancient Mesopotamian religions. The Yazidis are indigenous to northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia; part of the Yazidi homeland is located in what is modern Turkey; other parts are in Syria and Iraq.

Yazidis have been exposed to campaigns of forced Islamization and assimilation, according to the Turkish sociologist Ismail Besikci, a prominent expert on Kurdistan:

“During the 1912-13 Pontic Greek deportations and the 1915 Armenian genocide, Yazidis were also driven out from their lands. Throughout the history of republican Turkey, all methods have been tried to Islamize the Yazidis. Before 1915, for instance, Suruc was an entirely Yazidi town. So was the town of Viransehir. Today, there is not a single Yazidi left in Suruc. Furthermore, the Islamized Yazidis can be seen exhibit insulting behavior towards those who remain Yazidis.”

Because they are Kurds, the state has not recognized their Kurdishness; and because they are Yazidis, the state has not recognized their religion. The section of ‘religion’ in Yazidis’ identity cards has been left empty; or the religion of some has been registered as ‘x’ or ‘-‘ .

“Research states that in 2007, there were only 377 Yazidis left in Turkey,” an Assyrian MP of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Erol Dora, said.

“Yazidis, just like other minorities in Turkey, have also been exposed to discrimination and hate speech; that is why they have had to leave their lands. … Their villages and lands have been seized; their agricultural areas have been appropriated, their holy sites have been attacked. All these racist attitudes continue today; the language, religion and culture of Yazidis face extinction.”

Yazidis say they have been subjected to 72 attempts at extermination, or attempted genocide. Today, they are the victims of yet another attempted genocide in Iraq — at the hands of ISIS jihadists.

“According to many escaped women and girls to whom I spoke in Northern Iraq, the abducted Yazidis, mostly women and children, number over 7,000,” said Mirza Ismail, founder and chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International, in his speech at the U.S. Congress.

“Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day.

“I met mothers, whose children were torn from them by ISIS. These same mothers came to plead for the return of their children, only to be informed, that they, the mothers, had been fed the flesh of their own children by ISIS. Children murdered, then fed to their own mothers.

“ISIS militias have burned many Yezidi girls alive for refusing to convert and marry ISIS men. Young Yezidi boys are being trained to be jihadists and suicide bombers. All of our temples in the ISIS controlled area are exploded and destroyed. Why? Because we are not Muslims, and because our path is the path of peace. For this, we are being burned alive: for living as men and women of peace.”

The Yazidis, one of the most peaceful people on earth, are struggling to survive yet another Muslim genocide, before the eyes of the entire world.

While much of the world has been silent, a NATO member, Turkey has been openly complicit — the enabler of jihadist terrorism. Reports and eyewitnesses testify that Turkey has contributed to the rise of the Islamic State by letting fighters and arms over the border. Some of the fighters go on to join the jihadist terrorist group.

The latest reports reveal that in Turkey, a country that fancies itself as a candidate for EU membership, Yazidi women and children are enslaved and forced into sexual slavery. Meanwhile, the Turkish government has not even bothered to make a single statement about these reports.

That is what happens when a regime is never held responsible.

Categories: Foreign policy, Human rights, Islam and women, Islamic State, Kurds, Turkey, Yazidis
Tags: Foreign Policy, human rights, Islam and women, Islamic State, Kurds, Turkey, Yazidis

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Column One: Rubio, Cruz and US global leadership

December 18, 2015

Column One: Rubio, Cruz and US global leadership, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, December 17, 2015

For the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy; But are they too late?

At some point between 2006 and 2008, the American people decided to turn their backs on the world. Between the seeming futility of the war in Iraq and the financial collapse of 2008, Americans decided they’d had enough.

In Barack Obama, they found a leader who could channel their frustration. Obama’s foreign policy, based on denying the existence of radical Islam and projecting the responsibility for Islamic aggression on the US and its allies, suited their mood just fine. If America is responsible, then America can walk away. Once it is gone, so the thinking has gone, the Muslims will forget their anger and leave America alone.

Sadly, Obama’s foreign policy assumptions are utter nonsense. America’s abandonment of global leadership has not made things better. Over the past seven years, the legions of radical Islam have expanded and grown more powerful than ever before. And now in the aftermath of the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernadino, the threats have grown so abundant that even Obama cannot pretend them away.

As a consequence, for the first time in a decade, Americans are beginning to think seriously about foreign policy. But are they too late? Can the next president repair the damage Obama has caused? The Democrats give no cause for optimism. Led by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential hopefuls stubbornly insist that there is nothing wrong with Obama’s foreign policy. If they are elected to succeed him, they pledge to follow in his footsteps.

On the Republican side, things are more encouraging, but also more complicated.

Republican presidential hopefuls are united in their rejection of Obama’s policy of ignoring the Islamic supremacist nature of the enemy. All reject the failed assumptions of Obama’s foreign policy.

All have pledged to abandon them on their first day in office. Yet for all their unity in rejecting Obama’s positions, Republicans are deeply divided over what alternative foreign policy they would adopt.

This divide has been seething under the surface throughout the Obama presidency. It burst into the open at the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night.

The importance of the dispute cannot be overstated.

Given the Democrats’ allegiance to Obama’s disastrous policies, the only hope for a restoration of American leadership is that a Republican wins the next election. But if Republicans nominate a candidate who fails to reconcile with the realities of the world as it is, then the chance for a reassertion of American leadership will diminish significantly.

To understand just how high the stakes are, you need to look no further than two events that occurred just before the Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate.

On Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to close its investigation of Iran’s nuclear program. As far as the UN’s nuclear watchdog is concerned, Iran is good to go.

The move is a scandal. Its consequences will be disastrous.

The IAEA acknowledges that Iran continued to advance its illicit military nuclear program at least until 2009. Tehran refuses to divulge its nuclear activities to IAEA investigators as it is required to do under binding UN Security Council resolutions.

Iran refuses to allow IAEA inspectors access to its illicit nuclear sites. As a consequence, the IAEA lacks a clear understanding of what Iran’s nuclear status is today and therefore has no capacity to prevent it from maintaining or expanding its nuclear capabilities. This means that the inspection regime Iran supposedly accepted under Obama’s nuclear deal is worthless.

The IAEA also accepts that since Iran concluded its nuclear accord with the world powers, it has conducted two tests of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, despite the fact that it is barred from doing so under binding Security Council resolutions.

But really, who cares? Certainly the Obama administration doesn’t. The sighs of relief emanating from the White House and the State Department after the IAEA decision were audible from Jerusalem to Tehran.

The IAEA’s decision has two direct consequences.

First, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, it paves the way for the cancellation of the UN’s economic sanctions against Iran within the month.

Second, with the IAEA’s decision, the last obstacle impeding Iran’s completion of its nuclear weapons program has been removed. Inspections are a thing of the past. Iran is in the clear.

As Iran struts across the nuclear finish line, the Sunni jihadists are closing their ranks.

Hours after the IAEA vote, Turkey and Qatar announced that Turkey is setting up a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf emirate for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Their announcement indicates that the informal partnership between Turkey and Qatar on the one side, and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State on the other hand, which first came to the fore last year during Operation Protective Edge, is now becoming a more formal alliance.

Just as the Obama administration has no problem with Iran going nuclear, so it has no problem with this new jihadist alliance.

During Operation Protective Edge, the administration supported this jihadist alliance against the Israeli-Egyptian partnership. Throughout Hamas’s war against Israel, Obama demanded that Israel and Egypt accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms, as they were presented by Turkey and Qatar.

Since Operation Protective Edge, the Americans have continued to insist that Israel and Egypt bow to Hamas’s demands and open Gaza’s international borders. The Americans have kept up their pressure on Israel and Egypt despite Hamas’s open alliance with ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula.

So, too, the Americans have kept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at arm’s length, and continue to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate political force despite Sisi’s war against ISIS. Washington continues to embrace Qatar as a “moderate” force despite the emirate’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and ISIS.

As for Turkey, it appears there is nothing Ankara can do that will dispel the US notion that it is a credible partner in the war on terror. Since 2011, Turkey has served as Hamas’s chief state sponsor, and as ISIS’s chief sponsor. It is waging war against the Kurds – the US’s strongest ally in its campaign against ISIS.

In other words, with the US’s blessing, the forces of both Shi’ite and Sunni jihad are on the march.

And the next president will have no grace period for repairing the damage.

Although the Republican debate Wednesday night was focused mainly on the war in Syria, its significance is far greater than one specific battlefield.

And while there were nine candidates on the stage, there were only two participants in this critical discussion.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz faced off after weeks of rising contention between their campaigns.

In so doing, they brought the dispute that has been seething through their party since the Bush presidency into the open.

Rubio argued that in Syria, the US needs to both defeat ISIS and overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Cruz countered that the US should ignore Assad and concentrate on utterly destroying ISIS. America’s national interest, he said, is not advanced by overthrowing Assad, because in all likelihood, Assad will be replaced by ISIS.

Cruz added that America’s experience in overthrowing Middle Eastern leaders has shown that it is a mistake to overthrow dictators. Things only got worse after America overthrew Saddam Hussein and supported the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak.

For his part, Rubio explained that since Assad is Iran’s puppet, leaving him in power empowers Iran. The longer he remains in power, the more control Iran will wield over Syria and Lebanon.

The two candidates’ dispute is far greater than the question of who rules Syria. Their disagreement on Syria isn’t a tactical argument. It goes to the core question of what is the proper role of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s commitment to overthrowing Assad is one component of a wider strategic commitment to fostering democratic governance in Syria. By embracing the cause of democratization through regime change, Rubio has become the standard bearer of George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

Bush’s foreign policy had two seemingly contradictory anchors – a belief that liberal values are universal, and cultural meekness.

Bush’s belief that open elections would serve as a panacea for the pathologies of the Islamic world was not supported by empirical data. Survey after survey showed that if left to their own devices, the people of Muslim world would choose to be led by Islamic supremacists. But Bush rejected the data and embraced the fantasy that free elections lead a society to embrace liberal norms of peace and human rights.

As to cultural meekness, since the end of the Cold War and with the rise of political correctness, the notion that America could call for other people to adopt American values fell into disrepute. For American foreign policy practitioners, the idea that American values and norms are superior to Islamic supremacist values smacked of cultural chauvinism.

Consequently, rather than urge the Islamic world to abandon Islamic supremacism in favor of liberal democracy, in their public diplomacy efforts, Americans sufficed with vapid pronouncements of love and respect for Islam.

Islamic supremacists, for their part stepped into the ideological void without hesitation. In Iraq, the Iranian regime spent hundreds of millions of dollars training Iranian-controlled militias, building Iranian-controlled political parties and publishing pro-Iranian newspapers as the US did nothing to support pro-American Iraqis.

Although many Republicans opposed Bush’s policies, few dared make their disagreement with the head of their party public. As a result, for many, Wednesday’s debate was the first time the foundations of Bush’s foreign policy were coherently and forcefully rejected before a national audience.

If Rubio is the heir to Bush, Cruz is the spokesman for Bush’s until now silent opposition. In their longheld view, democratization is not a proper aim of American foreign policy. Defeating America’s enemies is the proper aim of American foreign policy.

Rubio’s people claim that carpet bombing ISIS is not a strategy. They are right. There are parts missing from in Cruz’s position on Syria.

But then again, although still not comprehensive, Cruz’s foreign policy trajectory has much to recommend it. First and foremost, it is based on the world as it is, rather than a vision of how the world should be. It makes a clear distinction between America’s allies and America’s enemies and calls for the US to side with the former and fight the latter.

It is far from clear which side will win this fight for the heart of the Republican Party. And it is impossible to know who the next US president will be.

But whatever happens, the fact that after their seven-year vacation, the Americans are returning the real world is a cause for cautious celebration.

Categories: Democrats, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamism, Middle East, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Republicans, U.S. 2016 elections
Tags: Democrats, Foreign Policy, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Islamism, Middle East, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Republicans, U.S. 2016 elections

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Center Field: Palestinian terrorism plus Western appeasement equals today’s Islamist

December 9, 2015

Center Field: Palestinian terrorism plus Western appeasement equals today’s Islamist, Jerusalem Post, Gil Troy, December 8, 2015

ShowImage (18)

A Palestinian stone-thrower looks on as he stands in front of a fire during clashes with IDF troops in the West Bank village of Duma. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Most academics today are too politically correct to admit it – and too busy boycotting democratic Israel. But when future historians connect the dots to explain the origins of al-Qaida, Islamic State and today’s scourge of Islamist terrorism, the pattern will be undeniable. Yasser Arafat was the grandfather of Osama bin Laden and all modern terrorists. Moreover, Western appeasement of Palestinian terrorism – cravenly displayed at Munich – proved that claiming “terrorism doesn’t pay” is delusional: terrorism works thanks to Western weakness. Violence put the Palestinians on the international agenda and cast them as the ultimate oppressed Third Worlders to many totalitarian leftists – who today exaggerate Palestinians’ suffering, importance and impotence.

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Last Tuesday, two widows of the Israeli Olympians murdered at Munich in 1972 revealed that the eight Palestinian terrorists beat the hostages who survived their initial assault. The attackers also shot Yossef Romano when he resisted, then castrated him. These horrifying details, sandwiched between the Paris massacre and the San Bernadino bloodbath, amid the latest wave of Palestinian violence, reinforced a fact that terrorist- deniers and Palestinian apologists deny: The world’s tolerance for Palestinian terrorism, starting in the 1970s, made it the gateway crime to Islamist terrorism – understanding a gateway crime as both evil and trailblazing, normalizing. As one friend cleverly noted: “ The suicide vest found in the garbage bin in Paris might as well have had ‘Made in Palestine’ stitched on it. Guess that’s a label the European Union lets into the continent.”

Most academics today are too politically correct to admit it – and too busy boycotting democratic Israel. But when future historians connect the dots to explain the origins of al-Qaida, Islamic State and today’s scourge of Islamist terrorism, the pattern will be undeniable. Yasser Arafat was the grandfather of Osama bin Laden and all modern terrorists. Moreover, Western appeasement of Palestinian terrorism – cravenly displayed at Munich – proved that claiming “terrorism doesn’t pay” is delusional: terrorism works thanks to Western weakness. Violence put the Palestinians on the international agenda and cast them as the ultimate oppressed Third Worlders to many totalitarian leftists – who today exaggerate Palestinians’ suffering, importance and impotence.

In September 1972, the International Olympic Committee president, Avery Brundage, became the sniveling symbol of Western appeasement. More protective of his games than the kidnapped athletes, he allowed the Olympics to continue for 10 hours as the Palestinians tortured the Israelis. Then, after the terrorists murdered the hostages and one German policeman during Germany’s botched rescue attempt, Brundage insisted the games continue after a short 24-hour pause. One Los Angeles Times columnist wrote: “It’s almost like having a dance at Dachau.”

The Olympic Committee has never commemorated the murdered Israelis with a moment of silence (although one is planned for 2016), hoping not to “politicize” the games, meaning anger Arabs and Muslims.

Barely two months after this debacle, West Germany used a false hijacking ruse to free the three surviving terrorists. In return, the PLO promised not to attack Germany. In 1999, one terrorist, Jamal al-Gashey, boasted: “I am proud of what I did at Munich because it helped the Palestinian cause enormously. Before Munich the world had no idea about our struggle, but on that day the name of Palestine was repeated all over the world.” In September 1970, Palestinian terrorists hijacked planes and destroyed them in Jordan, but Munich became their big international premier.

Six months after Munich, on March 1, 1973, America – under a supposedly tough Republican Richard Nixon – caved despite losing two diplomats in a Palestinian raid against the Saudi embassy in Khartoum. The two Americans, Cleo Noel and George Curtis Moore, along with a Belgian diplomat Guy Eid, were the only hostages murdered – after Yasser Arafat sent the terrorists a coded radio message, asking: “Why are you waiting? The people’s blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance.” “Cold River” was the pre-arranged code for “kill them.”

The Sudanese soon freed all eight terrorists and the Americans never hunted down these killers. Less than two years later, in November, 1974, Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. Two decades after that, this unrepentant murderer of Americans would win the Nobel Peace, be the most frequent foreign guest Bill Clinton hosted at the White House and bring his people to the brink of a peace treaty and their own state, only to lead them back to terrorism, delegitimization and cries to exterminate the Jewish state.

The Palestinians chose well in targeting Israel, especially during the 1970s. Directing terrorism against the Jewish state triggered decades of blaming the victims and excusing the perpetrators. The anti-Semitic hostility so many Westerners have toward Israel, the Jew among the nations, reinforced the growing post-Sixties culture of Western guilt, self-abnegation, appeasement and enabling of violent enemies – as long as they could define themselves as people of color. Radicals cast democratic Israel, forced to defend itself, as an imperial force not an embattled state, while casting Palestinian terrorists as freedom fighters not pathological killers.

Rather than noting how few peoples suffering far more turn terrorist, rather than wondering why Palestinians targeted innocent women, children, elders, Blame Israel Firsters assumed that Palestinians’ cruelty somehow reflected Israeli cruelty. Israel must be very guilty of intense oppression to merit such hatred, the politically correct assumed, rather than scrutinizing the Palestinian death cult that fed off anti-Semitism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Arafat’s success and the West’s limp response helped weaponize an exclusivist, bigoted, triumphalist Islamist ideology, inspiring al-Qaida, Islamic State and others.

Even today, President Barack Obama hesitates to label terrorism terrorism and dodges the phrase “radical Islamism” – even when a jihadist major shot up Fort Hood in 2009 or a San Bernardino shooter posted an IS manifesto. True, Obama has hunted some terrorists aggressively, but his ideological confusion has emboldened terrorists – and reflects this broader international muddle in facing evil.

If I were Palestinian or Muslim, I would be ashamed. So far, the great Palestinian contribution to civilization has been terrorism; “Palestinian” as a modifier most frequently appears before the word “terrorism” – 32 million times, a Google search shows. The phrase “Islamic terrorism” appears 201 million times. Don’t they want to be known for constructive contributions? Without a robust internal critique, among Palestinians, among Muslims, terrorism will continue. Golda Meir’s aphorism needs updating. Yes, Palestinians must love their children more than they hate our own before peace comes. And Palestinians must also become terrified of being considered terrorists.

Categories: Arafat, Foreign policy, Islam and Jews, Islamic culture, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Israel, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Progressives
Tags: Arafat, Foreign Policy, Islam and Jews, Islamic culture, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Israel, Obama and Islam, Obama and Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Progressives

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The Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ troubling transformation

December 8, 2015

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ troubling transformation, Front Page Magazine, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, December 8, 2015

Despite the guidelines of the nuclear deal and contrary to President Obama’s claim that Iran will temper its foreign policy, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is actively transforming the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ operation. This will have significant impact on regional geopolitics and US national security.

The Islamic Republic used to deploy the Quds Force, which has been designated as a supporter of terrorism by the State Department and is a paramilitary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Its purpose is to engage in irregular warfare operations, extraterritorial interventions, foreign policy missions, and interference in the affairs of other countries. The Quds Force has an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 personnel.

Recent developments clearly indicate that Iranian leaders are transforming the whole Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into an organization that operates like the Quds Force in order to achieve Iran’s Islamist, ideological, geopolitical and strategic goals, as well as its expansionist objectives.

Unlike the Quds Force, the IRGC has an estimated 100,000-200,000 military personnel. IRGC also funds, arms, trains, and controls other domestic and foreign militia groups such as Iran’s paramilitary Basij militia, which has approximately 90,000 personnel, Hezbollah, with an estimated 20,000-30,000 fighters, as well as several other Shiite militia groups in Iraq, Yemen, and throughout the region.

Iranian news media outlets used to downplay the IRGC’s role in other nations. But recently, Iran’s official news agency, Fars news, reported that several members of the Revolutionary Guard — including Mostafa Sadrzadeh, Milad Mostafavi, and Brigadier General Reza Khavari, the senior commander of IRGC’s Fatemiyoun Division — were among other fighters who were killed in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. So far more than 100 IRGC fighters have been killed in Syria.

Iranian media and officials once characterized IRGC involvement in Syria as limited to advisory roles, providing tactical assistance, engaging in strategic planning, and providing intelligence.

But in the last few weeks, reports of public funerals have risen, putting the Quds Force in the public eye. Even the Supreme Leader has become more public. He tweeted about one of the Iranian fighters who died in Syria, posted a picture of him with the “martyred” family, and pointed out that “Gen. Hamedani devoted the final years of his fruitful life to fighting against anti-Islam Takfiris and fulfilled his martyrdom wish in the same front.”

Iran is increasing the amount of its IRGC fighters in Syria, with a concentration of forces in the critical cities of Allepo, Latakia, and Damascus, to prevent the fall of these strategic locations to the opposition.

While Iranian leaders project the image that they are fighting the Islamic State, Iranian forces are not positioned close to any IS stranglehold. Instead, they appear to be battling Syrian rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army, in an attempt to force them to retreat, preventing them from capturing more territories in Allepo, Latakia and Damascus.

There are several reasons behind this tactical and IRGC organizational shift. First of all, the policy of the Obama administration is to appease Iran. This is made clear by its weak stance toward Iran. This allows Iran’s interventionist operations to be strengthened, and has empowered and transformed Tehran’s military organizations.

Secondly, The Islamic Republic pushed for Russia’s military assistance and involvement in Syria. The setbacks that Assad’s army and the Quds Force encountered in early 2015, mainly due to rise of the Islamic State and rebel groups advancements, propelled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Qassem Soleimani to visit Putin and ask for military help.

Nevertheless, Russia’s military superiority and interventions in Latakia did overshadow and bring into question Iran’s influence in Syria. By resorting to the IRGC and public acknowledgments of Iranian fighters operating on the ground in Syria, the Islamic Republic strives to reassert its presence in Syria.

In addition, the increasing Russian airstrikes are coordinated with the rising deployment of IRGC fighters on the ground. This inevitably will lead to a rise in Iranian casualties. Throughout these shifts, Assad has become increasingly dependent on Iran’s IRGC and Russia.

Furthermore, before the rise of the Islamic State, Iran played down its military role in the region because Tehran did not have a legitimate excuse to justify its presence in Syria. Iranian leaders were also worried about a direct confrontation with the West and other regional powers. They attempted to prevent the scuttling of nuclear negotiations. But after the nuclear deal was reached, and after the Islamic State grabbed global headlines, the Islamic Republic’s policy shifted in order to transform the IRGC’s function.

In the pursuit of hegemonic ambitions, Iran seizes any opportunity to reassert its regional supremacy, power and preeminence. By transforming the IRGC into a foreign offensive and interventionist force in other countries, by essentially making IRGC a regional military empire, and by announcing publicly that IRGC troops are present in Syria, Iran is demonstrating its hegemonic, Islamist, and powerful role in the region.

Although some policy analysts and scholars argue that the increasing death toll of Iranian fighters might change the IRGC’s decision to support the Syrian dictator, it is not likely that there will be any change in Iran’s policy of backing Assad. Tehran’s stakes in keeping Assad’s regime in power are high. Iran can afford several more years of assistance for the Syrian army and will continue to provide military, financial, advisory and intelligence support.

In closing, it is clear that the Islamic Republic is transforming the whole ideological and militaristic empire of the IRGC into an interventionist force which will operate in foreign countries for the purpose of fulfilling expansionist and Islamists objectives.

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran - Middle East, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Khamenei, Obama - Middle East, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's foreign failures, P5+1, Quds Force
Tags: Foreign Policy, Iran - Middle East, Iran military, Iran proxies, Iran Scam, Khamenei, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's foreign failures, P5+1, Quds Force

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Wave of the eighth century

December 8, 2015

Wave of the eighth century, Power Line, Scott Johnson, December 8, 2015

President Obama fancies himself a progressive in the Progressive tradition. He wants not only to ride the wave of the future but to sense where it is going and give it a nudge. As with all good progressives, it is history by which Obama takes his bearings, not the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. Thus in his Oval Office speech this past Sunday, he declared that “we are on the right side of history.” Steve Hayward deals with the thought underlying this claim here.

The argument from history is a weak argument to begin with, but Obama does no honor to it. Recall that Obama came out in favor of preserving the democratic “process” in Egypt in order to support Mohammed Morsi. Obama sought to preserve Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt. The damage Morsi’s authoritarian governance had done to rule of law and the other fundamentals of a free society were left unspoken.

Morsi was the man from the Muslim Brotherhood and it had been the project of Obama’s “smart diplomacy,” as he views it, to place the United States on the crest of the rising wave of Islamism in the Middle East. Obama is fine with the Muslim Brotherhood. He wants to help us overcome our inordinate fear of Islamism. Thus we had the spectacle of his Director of National Intelligence promoting the self-refuting assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “very heterogeneous group, largely secular.”

Obama has a tropism for leaders in the troglodyte mold. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is of course anathema to Obama, but Obama’s best friend in the Middle East is Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The contrast is striking and not in Erdogan’s favor.

Obama would love to find a way to get the United States aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas branch in Gaza and Iran’s Hezbollah subsidiary in Syria and Lebanon. They are the logical destination of his Middle Eastern fantasies. Coincidentally, Obama has just named a fan of Hamas as his Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL Campaign in Iraq and Syria. In the Middle East, anyway, Obama is riding the wave of the eighth century.

In 1940 Anne Morrow Lindbergh sought to make Americans comfortable with what she saw as “the wave of the future” in Europe. Her book of the same name had become an overnight sensation. “Few books in the history of publishing have encountered a reception like the one accorded” it, Scott Berg writes in his biography of Charles Lindbergh.

To return to Obama for a moment, let us recall that he helped preserve the rule of the mullahs in Iran at a key moment of peril presented by the popular uprising against them in 2009. Now Obama has sought to align the United States with Iran under the JCPOA preserving Iran’s nuclear program. The regime has reciprocated with continuing expressions of contempt for Obama and the United States. Obama’s main mullah — Ayatollah Khameni — well, he’s the kind of guy who inspired Mrs. Lindbergh’s raptures in 1940.

Mrs. Lindbergh’s book elicited E.B. White’s devastating dissent in the pages of the New Yorker, collected in White’s One Man’s Meat. Mrs. Lindbergh’s book is of historical interest only, but White’s essay is still worth reading today.

Perhaps most notably, Mrs. Lindbergh’s book also prompted a response from President Roosevelt once he was safely reelected to his third term on a non-interventionist platform. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt invoked Mrs. Lindbergh’s book, “chiseling her metaphor into the public consciousness,” in Berg’s words. “There are men who believe that…tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future — and that freedom is an ebbing tide,” Roosevelt asserted. “But we Americans know that this is not true.”

Obama can mouth the words, but he lacks conviction. Freedom just doesn’t ring his chimes. It’s not the wave of the future he envisions. Given his record and his proclivities, Obama’s muffled echo of the progressive faith in history sounds like an uncertain kazoo.

Categories: Foreign policy, Obama and history, Obama and Islam
Tags: Foreign Policy, Obama and history, Obama and Islam

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Oh by the way, Turkey is trying to get into a war w/Iraq

December 6, 2015

Oh by the way, Turkey is trying to get into a war w/Iraq, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, December 6, 2015

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Open question: What does Turkey’s deranged Islamist leader have to do to be disavowed by NATO, Europe and the US?

Erdogan armed terrorists in Syria, but pretty much everyone is doing that. He nearly began a war with Russia. Now Iraq keeps ordering Turkish troops off its soil. But they’re there at the supposed request of Sunnis militias around Mosul. Possibly to fight ISIS. But considering Turkey’s track record and Baghdad’s protests, probably not.

It’s a given that Baghdad, which has become a puppet regime for Iran, would oppose arming Sunni militias. Its preferred means of operation is through Iranian trained Shiite militias.

Since Turkey is really in Syria to overthrow Assad, it looks like its version of the Sunni-Shiite conflict is spreading to Iraq. Essentially Turkey is advancing into a war with the Shiite axis of Iran-Syria and its Russian patron, not to mention all the various Shiite terror militias.

I won’t object if Sunni and Shiite terrorists and their state sponsors shoot and bomb each other. Especially if it’s Turkey and Iran, but as long as Turkey is in NATO, its lunatic tyrant trying to revive the Ottoman Empire has the ability to drag us into his wars.

And that’s an obvious problem.

Turkey should not be in NATO. And only a madman would consider it for EU membership.

But Erdogan’s migrant games have forced Germany to come crawling to him offering cash and EU membership acceleration.

Obama, who was once closest to Erdogan, is obviously not about to cut him off no matter what he does. But the United States is now in the strange position of having a ridiculously confused presence in a Muslim civil war.

Obama is backing Sunni Jihadists in Syria and Shiite Jihadists in Iraq. He refuses to arm Sunni militias in Iraq, but stands by while Turkey carries out what is effectively an illegal invasion of Iraq. (Remember that one the next time Kerry squeals about Jews living in Jerusalem.) He backs Kurdish militias that Turkey is bombing. He’s trying to appease Iran and Turkey at the same time and it can’t work.

The only thing Obama has managed to do is shove the United States in the middle of a Muslim civil war while making occasional noises about un-Islamic ISIS.

Categories: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islam - the religion of war, Obama - Middle East, Russia - Middle East, Turkey
Tags: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Iran - Middle East, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islam - the religion of war, Russia - Middle East, Turkey

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Benghazi Commission: Obama Admin Gun-Running Scheme Armed Islamic State

December 1, 2015

Benghazi Commission: Obama Admin Gun-Running Scheme Armed Islamic State, Breitbart, Edwin Mora, November 30, 2015

To avoid having the funds tracked back to the Obama administration, the arms flow to Libya was financed thru the United Arab Emirates, while Qatar served as the logistical and shipping hub, she noted.

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The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria, according to a former CIA officer who co-authored a report on behalf of the Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi (CCB), detailing the gun running scheme.

In Congress, the then-bipartisan group known as the “Gang of Eight,” at a minimum, knew of the operation to aid and abet America’s jihadist enemies by providing them with material support. So says Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer and the primary author of CCB’s interim report, titled How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror, speaking with Breitbart News.

The ripple effects of the illegal policy to arm America’s enemies continue to be felt as the U.S. military is currently leading a war against ISIS and AQ terrorists in Iraq and Syria, according to Lopez.

In late October, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that the U.S. would begin “direct action on the ground” against ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria who may have reaped the benefits from the gun-running scheme that started in Libya.

“The Obama administration effectively switched sides in what used to be called the Global War on Terror [GWOT] when it decided to overthrow the sovereign government of our Libyan ally, Muammar Qaddafi, who’d been helping in the fight against al-Qaeda, by actually teaming up with and facilitating gun-running to Libyan al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood [MB] elements there in 2011,” explained Lopez. “This U.S. gun-running policy in 2011 during the Libyan revolution was directed by [then] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and [the late Libya Ambassador] Christopher Stevens, who was her official envoy to the Libyan AQ rebels.”

To avoid having the funds tracked back to the Obama administration, the arms flow to Libya was financed thru the United Arab Emirates, while Qatar served as the logistical and shipping hub, she noted.

“In 2012, the gun-running into Libya turned around and began to flow outward, from Benghazi to the AQ-and-MB-dominated rebels in Syria,” Lopez added. “This time, it was the CIA Base of Operations that was in charge of collecting up and shipping out [surface-to-air missiles] SAMs from Libya on Libyan ships to Turkey for overland delivery to a variety of jihadist militias, some of whose members later coalesced into groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS [also known as IS].”

Jabhat al-Nusra is al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

“The downstream consequences of Obama White House decisions in the Syrian conflict are still playing out, but certainly the U.S. – and particularly CIA – support of identifiable jihadist groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, the Islamic State and other [jihadists] has only exacerbated what was already a devastating situation,” declared Lopez.

Some of the other weapons that eventually ended up in Syria included thousands of MAN-Portable-Air-Defense-System (MANPADS) missile units, such as shoulder-launched SAMs, from late dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s extensive arms stockpiles that pose a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters.

“It’s been reported that President Obama signed an Executive Order on Syria in early 2012 [just as he had done for Libya in early 2011], that legally covered the CIA and other U.S. agencies that otherwise would have been in violation of aiding and abetting the enemy in time of war and providing material support to terrorism,” notes Lopez. “Still, such blatant disregard for U.S. national security can only be described as deeply corrosive of core American principles.”

Libya Amb. Stevens was killed by jihadists in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, along with three other Americans.

Echoing a Benghazi resident who provided a first-hand account of the incident, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Dennis Haney, a CCB member, suggested to Breitbart News that Hillary Clinton’s State Department armed some of the al-Qaeda linked jihadists who may have killed the four Americans in Benghazi.

“The reason the U.S. government was operating in Libya is absolutely critical to this debacle because it reflects where America went off the tracks and literally switched sides in the GWOT,” points out Lopez. “This is about who we are as a country, as a people — where we are going with this Republic of ours.”

“There can be no greater treason than aiding and abetting the jihadist enemy in time of war – or providing material – weapons, funding, intel, NATO bombing – support to terrorism,” she continued. “The reason Benghazi is not the burning issue it ought to be is because so many at top levels of U.S. government were implicated in wrong-doing: White House, Pentagon, Intel Community-CIA, Gang of Eight, at a minimum, in Congress, the Department of State, etc.”

The State Department and the CIA did not respond to Breitbart News’ requests for comment.

Clinton was asked about the gun running operation when testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner claimed she was not aware of any U.S. government efforts to arm jihadists in Libya and Syria.

Clinton did admit to being open to the idea of using private security experts to arm the Qaddafi opposition, which included al-Qaeda elements, but added that it was “not considered seriously.”

Members of the 2011 “Gang of Eight” mentioned in this report included: then-House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), then-Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), (R-MI), Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), then-Sen. Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), then-Sen. Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).

Categories: Benghazi, Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Islamic State, Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, Obama administration, U.S. Congress
Tags: Benhazi, Foreign Policy, Islamic State, Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, Obama Administration, U.S. Congress

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The Ukraine-ISIS Alliance

November 30, 2015

The Ukraine-ISIS Alliance, American Thinker, Sierra Rayne, November 30, 2015

In July, the New York Times was reporting that three full Islamic battalions were fighting in eastern Ukraine.

What a mess. The question for the West now is who they would rather having controlling Ukraine’s territory in the near future — ISIS or Russia — and the answer is clearly the latter. If the West wants to build a common coalition against the Islamic State, the best approach may be to remove the Islamic State of Turkey from NATO, allow Russia to take Ukraine, and then invite Russia into NATO (or whatever new alliance seems appropriate) in our common cause against the global jihad.

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Back in February, The Intercept was the first media outlet to reveal clear linkages between ISIS and Ukraine. The article by Marcin Mamon begins by recounting how the leader of the Islamic State’s underground branch in Istanbul was headed to Ukraine to join other members of ISIS in fighting those from Eastern Ukraine that want further autonomy from Kiev and a likely political alliance with Moscow.

Immediately we have a problem. It is unlikely that many average citizens in the West are aware that ISIS is fighting on the side of the Ukraine nationalists. If they were, public opinion might drastically shift towards support for Russia — as it should. Better to have Ukraine be a proxy state of Russia than yet another budding member of the global Islamic Caliphate taking shape.

Any arguments that ISIS is helping Ukrainian nationalists fight the Russian backed separatists out of the goodness of its heart, and that ISIS will just pack up and leave Ukraine if a victory is won, strain all measures of credulity. If the Russian separatists lose in eastern Ukraine, Ukraine may very well be on the path to falling under control — at least partially — of ISIS, placing ISIS with a state under its control on the borders of several NATO members. Did the West possibly back the wrong horse in Ukraine? Should we instead have supported Russia?

Kiev has become an important access point for ISIS terrorists into Western Europe:

Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Ruslan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Remarkably, Justin Raimondo at the website Antiwar.com predicted the problems this would cause back in early March of this year:

We are told that ISIS is planning terrorist attacks in Europe, and security forces are busy rounding up suspects all across the continent – and yet here is this gaping hole in the West’s defenses, where “the brothers” are quietly infiltrating without much notice in the Western media. In cooperation with ultra-nationalist groups like Right Sector, which have also formed their semiautonomous battalions, the Islamists of Ukraine, brandishing Ukrainian passports, have opened a gateway to the West …

As US aid flows into Ukraine, how much of it will trickle down to these allies of ISIS — and to what future use will it be put? If John McCain and Lindsey Graham have their way, US arms will soon find their way into the hands of these terrorists, whose jihad against the Russians is bound to turn westward and strike at the capitals of Europe.

This is blowback with a vengeance: we are creating our own enemies, and giving them the weapons to harm us, even as we claim the need for universal surveillance in order to fight them. The mad scientists formulating US foreign policy are raising an army of Frankenstein monsters — who are sure to come after their deluded creators.

Like clockwork, eight months later we have the Paris attacks.

In July, the New York Times was reporting that three full Islamic battalions were fighting in eastern Ukraine. At about the same time, Elliot Friedland in The Jewish Voice was warning against the problems arising from this Islamic incursion in Ukraine:

Yet there are Islamist paramilitary battalions fighting alongside Ukrainian forces, which are aligned with the Islamic State and Chechen Islamist factions. If the U.S. steps up military aid to Ukraine, whose army is notoriously corrupt it may fall into the hands of Islamist battalions currently funded by a mixture of Ukrainian oligarchs, Gulf patrons, violent crime and extortion. The Ruskayya Blatina website said that a few militias belonging to the terrorist group ISIS began to fight against the Russian soldiers in Ukraine with support from the American authorities who gave recommendations to the Ukrainian government regarding the Islamic State … Islamic State-aligned fighters also use Ukraine as a cheap and easy place to buy weapons, which can then be smuggled to Iraq and Syria and Chechenya.

During the past two months, connections between Ukraine and ISIS have moved up the chain of command, as evidenced by a top Ukrainian official giving his public support for ISIS. Just last week, weapons — including a FN-6 antiaircraft missile system — from the Ukrainian military “magically” ended up in the hands of ISIS which “were meant to be delivered to the militant group in Syria via smuggling routes in Turkey.”

Soon after, the Russian hacking group CyberBerkut claimed it is “in possession of documents indicating that employees of the Ukrainian state-owned defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom had discussions with Qatari government officials over the possible sale of surface-to-air missiles [the S-125-2D Pechora-2D (NATO reporting name SA-3 Goa)] in September,” weapons that were almost undoubtedly destined for ISIS. According to the leaked documents, the U.S. embassy in Doha also approved the deal.

What a mess. The question for the West now is who they would rather having controlling Ukraine’s territory in the near future — ISIS or Russia — and the answer is clearly the latter. If the West wants to build a common coalition against the Islamic State, the best approach may be to remove the Islamic State of Turkey from NATO, allow Russia to take Ukraine, and then invite Russia into NATO (or whatever new alliance seems appropriate) in our common cause against the global jihad.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!” — Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17

Categories: Chechens, Foreign policy, Islamic State, Obama and Russia, Putin, Russia, Ukraine
Tags: Chechens, Foreign Policy, Islamic State, Obama and Russia, Putin, Russia, Ukraine

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Europe cuts refugee deal

November 29, 2015

Europe cuts refugee deal, Washington Examiner, Paige Winfield Cunningham, November 29, 2015

(Please see also, Does ISIS Owe Its Success to Turkey? — DM)

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The agreement is expected to significantly stem the tide of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan seeking asylum in other countries who are hesitant to let them in their borders. (AP Photo)

Turkey will contain more Middle Eastern refugees within its owns borders so fewer of them flee to other European countries, under a deal it reached Sunday with the European Union.

In return for tightening its border control, Turkey will get several billion dollars from the EU and assistance in its efforts to join the coalition of 28 countries. The agreement is expected to significantly stem the tide of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan seeking asylum in other countries who are hesitant to let them in their borders.

The U.S. has admitted fewer than 2,000 Syrian refugees since 2012, yet the flood of migrants in Europe has incited a fierce political debate over whether they are sufficiently screened before entering the country.

President Obama wants to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees next year, saying that a robust vetting process will be in place. Refugees currently have to wait an average of 18-24 months before entering the U.S., as they’re screened by several different government agencies.

But many Republicans running for president have said they should be blocked until stricter screening measures are put in place and some GOP governors have tried to prohibit them from entering their own states. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has suggested only refugees who prove they are Christian should be admitted to the U.S., reiterated that position on Sunday, saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” that refugees should be screened for their religion.

And Ben Carson, who is currently polling second in the GOP primary battle, said Middle Eastern countries that are closer geographically to refugees’ home countries should get more financial assistance to help them. Carson spoke with CNN from Jordan, where he has visited Syrian refugee camps.

Carson said instead of focusing on how to let more refugees into the U.S., which is much more difficult for them to travel to, policymakers should figure out how to allow more to settle in countries at closer proximity where they wouldn’t have to experience as big a change in culture. Jordan, for example, should get more money to admit more refugees, Carson said.

“It seems like everybody in the international community is spending more time saying how can we bring refugees here rather than support a facility that is already in place that the refugees are finding perfectly fine — when it’s fully funded,” Carson said.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Erdogan, Europe, European Union, Foreign policy, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, NATO, Turkey
Tags: Asylum seekers, Erdogan, Europe, European Union, Foreign Policy, Islamic invasion, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Nato, Turkey

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CAUTION – includes satire |Diversity training will bring peace through submission, Insha’Obama

November 29, 2015

Diversity training will bring peace through submission, Insha’Obama, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 28, 2015

(The views expressed in this article may, or may not, be mine. They do not necessarily reflect those of any sane person or entity. — DM)

Our most prestigious universities now require diversity training for everyone coddled by un-Islamic aberrations based on Christian, Jewish, sexist and white privilege. Obama, bravely leading as always from the front, will follow them to combat Islamophobic speech and thought which He recently decreed to be felonies.

During His Thanksgiving address this year, Obama likened the current crop of Syrian and other Islamic refugees to the Pilgrims who came to America many years ago.

This Thanksgiving, President Obama is calling for Americans to lend a helping hand to another group of pilgrims fleeing persecution.

“Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims – men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families,” Obama said in his weekly address Thursday. “What makes America America is that we offer that chance.”

Note: Although much of the following is true, parts are not. For example, even in Obama’s America Islamophobic thought is not yet a felony and the tale about Sally Snookums related toward the end remains the stuff of fantasy. In Muslim and incipient Muslim countries reality is different, so we need to emulate them. That will be change that we Obama can believe in.

Academia

According to an article at The Amerian Interest,

With their campuses rocked by social justice protests, anxious Ivy League presidents are trying to appease campus radicals with huge payouts to left-wing identity programs. Peter Salovey, the president of Yale, apologized to protesters (“we failed you”) and wrote a campus-wide letter promising to create a new “university center” for the study of “race ethnicity, and other aspects of social identity.” He also pledged to double the budget for the African American, Native American, Asian American, and Hispanic cultural centers, and to devote new resources to “educating our community about race, ethnicity, diversity, and inclusion.”

Not to be outdone, Brown University President Christina Paxson has answered protests by unveiling a $100 million program for creating “a just and inclusive campus community.” Among the budget items: “expand mentoring resources for students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and first generation college students”; create “workshops” to “foster greater awareness and sensitivity on issues of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression”; and “promote university-wide research and academic programming on Power, Privilege, Identity and Structural Racism.”

The rest of Obama’s America

Since academia is only part of the problem, the wise humanitarian outreach programs undertaken there (with the exception of those to comfort LGBTQ+ students which Muslims consider offensive) must be expanded to reach all problem people and areas. Doing so is Obama’s principal duty as America’s Commander in Chief and Supreme Leader. I have altered the excerpt from the article at The American Interest quoted above to reflect what Obama and His friends would probably try to do if they thought they could get away with it:

With many states rocked by Islamophobia and demands that widows and three year old orphans be banned, President Obama is increasing payouts to such anti-discrimination groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Muslim-identity programs. Allegedly “radical” mosques such as those shown below will also be given badly needed infusions of Federal funds.

Obama has (again) apologized to Islamists (“we failed you”) and promised to create new state centers for the study of religious ethnicity and other aspects of social identity. He has also pledged to at least double the budgets for Islamic cultural centers, including those at the mosques indicated above, and to devote new resources to educating our community about religious and racial ethnicity, diversity, and inclusion.

He has also unveiled state-wide programs for creating just and inclusive communities.Among the budget items: expand mosques to provide increased mentoring resources for Muslim youth; create diversity workshops with mandatory attendance by all deemed to be on paths to becoming Islamophobic felons, to foster greater awareness and sensitivity on issues of religion, peace, ethnicity and expression; and to promote state-wide research and academic programming on Power, Privilege, Religious Identity and other types of Structural Racism.

These (along with His historic nuke deal with The Islamic ~~State~~ Republic of Iran) will be His most enduring legacies.

There is also hope in Obama’s America for the few refugees who may be neither widows nor three year old orphans.

Others can be adopted. Here are some adorable Syrian refugees:

Adorable, cuddly Syrian refugees to a good home. Attention liberal millionaires. Do you want your very own gang of Syrian Refugees (TM) to loiter around your home, throw things at you and beat you up?

Here are a whole bunch for you to take home. Yes, I’m looking at you, J.K. Rowling. Or Isaac Herzog. There’s so many that every passionately outraged leftist bigwig can have his own bunch. You just better be ready to cook for them and bring them everything while they throw it in your face.

You’ll notice the shortage of actual women and kids. The media makes a point of focusing on those, but the majority are young men. Just like Obama’s “unaccompanied children” border rush. But those are facts and we don’t need facts. Just outrage and lots of love.

So take them in. Step up for the cause. The Hungarian police will happily ship a dozen angry Syrian refugees to your home. What you do with them or what they do with you, is up to you.

Don’t be shy; there are plenty for everyone.

What could possibly go wrong?

Eurabia is doing very well

Although Germany has health problems, they have nothing to do with Islam.

The influx of more than one million asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East is placing unprecedented strain on Germany’s healthcare system.

Hospitals, clinics and emergency rooms across Germany are being filled to capacity with migrants suffering maladies of all kinds, and medical personnel, including thousands of volunteers, are increasingly complaining of burnout.

Diseases are also reappearing that have not been seen in Germany for years. German public health officials are now on the lookout for Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever, diphtheria, Ebola, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, meningitis, mumps, polio, scabies, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhus and whooping cough. As refugee shelters fill to overflowing, doctors are also on high alert for mass outbreaks of influenza and Norovirus. [Emphasis added.]

Compounding the challenge, tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Germany — particularly migrant children — have not been immunized, and German doctors are finding that needed vaccines are not readily available due to a lack of supply. Some German parents are panicking that there are not enough vaccines to immunize their own children.

. . . .

German hospitals are also being forced to hire a virtual army of interpreters so that doctors can communicate with asylum seekers, who speak dozens of languages, dialects and variants.

At the same time, German hospitals are increasing security to protect doctors and nurses from violent attacks by migrants who are unhappy with the medical treatment they are receiving.

Sweeden, also a haven of happiness for Muslim refugees, has the right idea. Sadly, some object. The Public Service Director of Sweeden’s public television has responded to their Islamophobic nastiness:

The Public Service director, Safa Safiyari, who recently introduced Dirawi to a large press gathering, came to Sweden at the age of 14. In newspaper articles, he has spoken about how he does not feel “fancy” enough for the Swedish archipelago; and how, in 2001, when he got to do current affairs shows for young people about “all the injustices in Sweden,” it felt as if it were revenge for all the injustices he said he has experienced in Sweden and that still characterize his life.

The announcement that a person such as Dirawi, who professes to be of the Islamic faith and who according to Islamic scholars must believe that the celebration of the birth of Christ is a heathen tradition, will be Christmas Host, sparked widespread expressions of anger and disappointment on social media. Comments were posted on Twitter, such as: “Public Television has declared war on Christian Sweden by choosing Muslim Gina Dirawi as Christmas Host! It is shameful!” And, “If things continue down this road, by next Christmas, Christmas ham will be banned.”

Safa Safiyari told the daily Göteborgs-Posten, that Swedish Public Television had been prepared for all kinds of reactions: “We have chosen Gina Dirawi as Christmas Host based on her competence, her comedic talents and experience in large television broadcasts. When we hire our Christmas Hosts, religious belief is not something we inquire about.” [Emphasis added.]

In order to take full advantage of the great opportunities coming to our shores, we need to help Islamophobes by jailing and reeducating them to make them understand that Islam is the true religion of peace; all others just pretend to be and are therefore fake.

Progress is already being made

In Obama’s America, Yes We Can and We Can’t Wait! Here’s just one small but hopeful example of what we have already done and will do again: a young Islamophobe named Sally Snookums was successfully reeducated and learned to apologize for her Islamophobic expressions of displeasure at having been raped by a Muslim. Here are pictures of Sally before and after her reeducation:

Before

Before

After

After

Just as Sally has been cured of Islamophobia and no longer goes about demanding to be raped, there is hope for all who wish to be true feminists. Don’t forget: Muslims are kind and generous, asking nothing for themselves. They only want to guide and help us to reclaim and restore the best of what has sadly become a decadent civilization.

The future of Obama’s America is bright

Once Obama’s sacred mission has been accomplished, there will be no more talk of “Islamic invasions” and “riots.” We are completely safe and have nothing to fear but fear itself and the Islamophobic FBI.

The FBI has roughly 1,000 active Islamic State probes inside the U.S. and new reports have revealed that at least 48 of those suspects are considered so high-risk that the bureau has deployed elite surveillance teams to track them.

The squads, known as mobile surveillance teams or MST are following the men and women, who are believed to be radicalized, 24 hours a day in case they plan to commit any acts of terrorism, Fox News reported.

With the help of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — “whose founding charter seeks to propagate ‘legitimate jihad’ and ‘the norms of Islamic Shari’ah,'” our vetting process will prove to be just as successful and unnecessary as it has been in Europe; all peaceful Muslim widows, their three year old orphans and everyone else will be greeted, not spurned.

Conclusions

Since in Obama’s America the security threats posed by Islamophobia are also well on their way to resolution, we will soon succeed in our quest for the happiness of Eurabia. What a blessing it will be!

Nevertheless, much still remains for Obama’s America to accomplish. We must continue to devote our undivided attention to the perils of climate change — what a powerful rebuke that will be to such perpetrators of senseless, random workplace violence as the Non Islamic State!

We must also continue our ~~putsch~~ push for common sense gun control, while focusing on women’s health as required by Sharia Law and the Holy Quran upon which it is divinely based. Then, and only then, can we be truly proud of our country.

Finally, here is Grandpa Jones’ well deserved tribute to Obama:

Categories: Academia, Asylum seekers, Domestic policy, Foreign policy, Humor, Islam, Islamic invasion, Islamic perversions, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamophobia, Obama - rogue president, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama's America
Tags: Academia, Asylum seekers, Domestic policy, Foreign Policy, Humor, Islam, Islamic invasion, Islamic perversions, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamophobia, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic State, Obama's America

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