Displaying posts published in

November 2015

The Washington Post’s Castro-Connection When journalists fail to disclose their family ties to the Castro regime. Humberto Fontova

Imagine a major story in one of America’s top newspapers on an island in San Francisco Bay named Alcatraz.

Now imagine that this story omits mentioning a prison.

What could conceivably account for such an “oversight?” Might the writer have an agenda? Might a “full-disclosure” of the writers’ background and family connections reveal such an agenda?

For tens of thousands of Americans an equivalent story was published in the Washington Post last week by its chief Latin American reporter Nick Miroff. The “in-depth” article featured an islet of the southwestern coast of Cuba called the Isle of Pines, which hosted the biggest prison/torture and forced-labor complex for political prisoners in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Tens of thousands of American citizens of Cuban heritage had family members tortured there by Castro’s Stalinist regime. Some had their family members murdered there. Dozens of the surviving torture victims are U.S. citizens and live in the U.S. today. These heroes qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s (8 years). Several of these prisoners are black Cubans who suffered longer in Castro’s prisons than Nelson Mandela spent in South Africa’s (27 years).

‘Islamophobia’ in America vs. Murderous Christophobia in the Islamic World A look at true religious persecution. Jack Kerwick

As organizations like CAIR and their allies wax indignant over “Islamophobia” in America, Muslims around the globe are visiting the worst sort of cruelty upon the Christian minorities in their midst.

For instance, over a span of four days, from October 19-23, the Indonesian government succumbed to the demand of Islamic “extremists” and demolished nine churches. Six days earlier, on October 13, Muslims unleashed a torrent of violence that left a church burned to the ground and a person dead.

And in the course of this single day, 8,000 Christians found themselves displaced from their homes.

The government has deported them.

According to a local church activist, someone who self-identified only as “Rudy,” Islamic militants issued an ultimatum to the Indonesian government: Either raze these Christian churches to the ground or “the radicals will deploy around 7,000 people” to besiege this Christian community.

The organization Open Doors, a group dedicated to “serving persecuted Christians worldwide,” reports: “Church members wept as they watched in despair [as] civil police officers [began] hammering down their worship houses.” As of this juncture, over 1,000 “churchless believers are prohibited from raising temporary tents to hold Sunday worship services.”

Reports: A Bomb Destroyed Russian Airliner Intelligence agencies say Islamic State may be telling the truth by claiming responsibility for the attack. Matthew Vadum

U.S. and European intelligence agencies now believe that the Russian airliner downed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on the weekend was probably taken out by a bomb planted onboard by an Islamic State-affiliated terrorist group, according to media reports.

The Russian airplane may have been attacked by Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) because Russia is waging war against it.

British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond said yesterday it appears a bomb ripped apart the Airbus A321M on Saturday, Oct. 31, killing all 224 souls onboard. It is reportedly Russia’s worst air disaster on record. The Russian-operated plane that was registered in Ireland had taken off earlier from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for St. Petersburg, Russia.

“We have concluded that there is a significant possibility that the crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft,” Hammond said as his government gears up for a British visit today by Egypt’s anti-Islamist president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

13 Hours: The Non-Political Benghazi Movie that Hillary Can’t Avoid By Stephen L. Miller —

Two long weeks ago, Hillary Clinton was declared the undisputed winner in her face-off with Republicans on the House subcommittee over the part she played during the Benghazi attacks of September 11, 2012. But that was before an Optimus Prime–sized hole was blown right through her campaign’s and the media’s narrative that Benghazi has finally been put to rest.

The bomb was the release of two new trailers for 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, director Michael Bay’s action-heavy portrayal of events (already labeled “Bayghazi” by the Internet), which hits theaters January 15. Its pop-culture treatment of events that night will have people talking and debating in a way that all the Fox News specials and C-SPAN hearings in the world couldn’t. The recently released trailer has shown that no matter how scarce the names “Hillary Clinton” and “Barack Obama” are in the film, their involvement in what’s depicted is unmistakable. The film is based on the Mitchell Zuckoff bestseller of the same name, which deals primarily with events on the ground that night, and the efforts of a small group of operators and security forces to extract their fellow Americans from the attacks.

The Lesson of Kentucky and Houston: Social-Justice Bullies Lose By David French ****

This was not supposed to happen. In Kentucky, Matt Bevin, “tea-party extremist,” embraced Kim Davis — the notorious county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses — and he won. In Houston, all the right celebrities and corporations endorsed the “HERO act” — an expansive city ordinance that among other things would have granted transgender men access to women’s restrooms — but the celeb/corporate alliance failed. Voters decisively rejected dangerous sexual radicalism.

In response, the Left is already cementing its reaction: The forces of hate won, bigots prevailed, and Texas and Kentucky showed their true colors. The Left is calling for boycotts, with LGBT groups asking the NFL to yank the 2017 Super Bowl from Houston, and Salon is running its hysterical headlines (sample: “Kim Davis is my governor now: I awoke to an idiot Tea Party takeover”).

But that’s exactly wrong. There was hate in Houston and Kentucky, but it was peddled by the Left. Bevin’s win in Kentucky and the victory over sexual revolutionaries in Houston were both preceded by breathtaking acts of leftist bullying, where the social-justice Left ran amok in its zeal to destroy its opponents.

Violating the Muslim Status Quo : Daniel Greenfield

The Secretary of State of the United States traveled to the Muslim country of Jordan to assure its Foreign Minister that Jews would not be praying any more at the holiest site in Judaism.

As Kerry put it, “It is Muslims who pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and non-Muslims who visit.”

Israel is often accused of apartheid and segregation, but here was the Secretary of State championing both, as long as it was Muslim segregation aimed at Jews. The Temple Mount “Status Quo” worriedly talked about by Kerry and the media as the answer to the recent Muslim stabbing spree is no different than the Muslim ban on Jews entering the Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried, past the seventh step. It rewards Muslim violence by upholding Muslim segregationist racism.

There’s no word on whether segregated drinking fountains will be put in for Muslims and non-Muslims. Jews visiting the former site of their Temple have been attacked for drinking from an “Islamic” water fountain.

Why the Conventional Wisdom Has Been All Wrong This Election Season By Victor Davis Hanson —

The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths.

For years, the conventional lament was that the “wrong” Bush had run for president in 2000. George W. Bush was supposedly tongue-tied. He was said to be polarizing. He was derided as too much the twangy, conservative Texas Christian.

If only his younger, softer-spoken brother, then–Florida governor Jeb Bush, had run instead!

So the myth went.

Jeb was said to be far more bipartisan and judicious. Jeb, not W., was deemed by many to be the more likable and more competent descendent of their father, former president George H. W. Bush.

The 2015 debates now remind us how false that comparison was. W. may have been more controversial, but he was decisive, unshakeable, charismatic, and connected with crowds in a way the bookish, distracted, and “low-energy” Jeb has not been so far.

India-born Sikh is Canada’s new defense minister

Indian-born Harjit Singh Sajjan, 44, a former police officer and veteran of three military deployments to Afghanistan, was named Canada’s new minister of defense Wednesday, bringing first-hand expertise to one of the country’s top cabinet positions, agencies report.

Sajjan will oversee an anticipated change in Canada’s military involvement in the battle against militants in Syria and Iraq.

“He has a taste for the reality of war and that’s very, very important,” David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, told National Post.

“He will have seen the aftermath of the effect of war on some of our men and women, which is a major issue with veteran’s affairs,” said Bercuson.

Newly sworn-in Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already said he wants to end Canada’s air strikes in the region in favour of providing humanitarian help.

Elected to Parliament for the first time in last month’s election, Sajjan is illustrative of the younger, more diverse cabinet Trudeau had aimed to create.

Outgoing Conservative defence minister Jason Kenney had taken a hardline stance on security, saying Canada needed to be fighting against Islamic State militants to prevent them from becoming a threat to Canada.

DAVID GOLDMAN: CHALABI- SNOW WHITE AND PINOCCHIO ****see note please

Thank you David Goldman for puncturing the love affair with a huckster by the same folks who thought the “Arab Spring” was the birth of democracy…..rsk
Meredith Wilson’s sappy 1962 Broadway show “The Music Man” illuminates an inscrutable side of American foreign policy: Why do Americans persist in believing that they can remake the world in their own image, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? We Ameicans love crooks and swindlers who appeal to our national narcissism, even when we know that they are crooks and swindlers. Wilson’s hero is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century rogue who styles himself a professor of music, and sells marching band equipment to midwestern towns with the promise that he will teach the local kids to play–but disappears before keeping his end of the bargain. In one Iowa town, the “music man” is caught red-handed, but pardoned by the townsfolk who bask in the warmth of his flattery. He has a long list of antecedents, such as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry.

The Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose death last week revived the controversy about the 2003 Iraq war, lives on in the hearts of the neoconservatives for the same reason that the burghers of River City, Iowa embraced Wilson’s swindler. It reveals the better side of the American character: We’re too dumb to lie about other countries’ politics, which we understand about as well as Sanskrit, and we have no natural defense against sociopaths who lie whenever their lips are moving. There are very few uniquely American jokes: one queries what Snow White said to Pinocchio (“Lie to me, Baby”). We Americans love it when the Pinocchios of foreign policy lie to us. Those who view American democracy as an export industry still haven’t managed to fall out of love with Chalabi.

The Rundown: Democrats Take It on the Chin in Tuesday’s Elections Posted By Debra Heine

Voters roundly rejected Democrats and “progressive” ballot initiatives favored by President Obama in local and statewide elections Tuesday. In many cases it wasn’t close, and in many cases the left failed despite a heavily Democratic local population:

– The transgender “bathroom ordinance” was flushed by voters in liberal Houston, 61 percent to 39 percent, thus “staining the city’s reputation” for tolerance, according to the mayor.

– Anti-ObamaCare and Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin easily defeated Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) to become governor. Bevin is only the state’s second Republican governor in more than 40 years. The race was expected to be close, but Bevin triumphed by nearly nine points.

– In Virginia, where Democrats fought hard to turn some districts blue, the Republican Party retained control of the state Senate. With both of the state’s chambers still controlled by Republicans, Governor Terry McAuliffe will struggle to enact his left-wing agenda, which includes a push for more gun control laws, before his term is up in 2017.

– In Pennsylvania, the GOP will have a 31-19 edge in the Senate. This is the largest majority since 1954.