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February 2016

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Where Obama Fails on Iran Sanctions, the Gulf States Can Step In Saudi Arabia and its allies have potent financial weapons to deploy. Some are already kicking in. By David Andrew Weinberg and Mark Dubowitz

By on February 22nd, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/where-obama-fails-on-iran-sanctions-the-gulf-states-can-step-in-1456096639

Meaningful new U.S. sanctions on Iran will have to wait for the next administration. President Obama continues to oppose congressional efforts to inflict financial pain on Tehran for its malign activities. In January the Treasury Department finally did react to Iran’s unlawful ballistic-missile tests, but those sanctions will cause no economic damage. Instead they targeted individuals and companies—procurement networks that Tehran can easily reconstitute.

The Gulf States might not be so timid: Saudi Arabia and its allies have potent financial weapons they can deploy against Iran. The sectarian war between the Sunni and Shiite states is intensifying militarily, with proxies fighting from Syria to Yemen, and economically. On Jan. 4 Riyadh announced an end to all commercial relations with Iran and said it would cut off travel, with an exception for pilgrims visiting holy sites. In response Tehran banned imports of all Saudi products.

Last week the Saudis teamed up with Russia to propose capping oil production at January levels, putting pressure on Tehran to do the same as it tries to rescue its battered economy. Riyadh has deployed oil as a weapon before. In 2012 and 2013, after sanctions halved Iranian oil exports, Saudi Arabia raised production to prevent global price shocks. As the Iran nuclear deal was being negotiated in 2014-15, the Saudis increased oil production again. That helped to push prices below $35 a barrel. Now as Iran re-enters energy markets, desperate for economic relief, it will get only about half the price for its oil on which it based its budget last year. READ MORE ATE SITE

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America’s Moment of Trump

By on February 22nd, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-moment-of-trump-1456076806

Donald Trump’s convincing victory in South Carolina Saturday marks a moment of truth in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The businessman is now the clear favorite for the Republican nomination, yet he is also the candidate most disliked by GOP voters and according to the polls the least likely to win in November. Are Republicans really going to jump off the cliff into the great Trump unknown?

Perhaps so. About a third of GOP voters seem to be confirmed cliff-divers, as Mr. Trump won handily by rolling up a similar share of the vote he won in New Hampshire. He won again across most demographic and ideological groups, especially with those most fed up with Washington and GOP leaders. Mr. Trump should also send a thank-you note to the pope for attacking him, since he won 34% of evangelical Protestant voters who may have resented the Catholic pontiff’s ill-conceived intervention.

Mr. Trump now heads into Nevada and the March 1 southern primaries with momentum that would typically carry him to the nomination. The difference is that Mr. Trump engenders passionate support and also passionate opposition. His unfavorable ratings are the highest in the GOP field, with a net negative in the most recent WSJ/NBC poll of minus-31. Hillary Clinton is only minus-13.

The blustery businessman also doesn’t seem all that eager to expand his support. In his victory speech Saturday night, he offered a passing grace note to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for doing well but he was mostly self-referential and didn’t mention Jeb Bush, who had earlier announced he is leaving the race. Mr. Trump declared that he is leading “a movement,” but for that to be true he will have to unify the Republican Party. It still isn’t clear what his movement represents other than Mr. Trump’s blunt persona, his family and ultimatums to various countries. READ MORE AT SITE

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ISIS’s Islamic Inspirations — on The Glazov Gang

By on February 22nd, 2016

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/02/21/isiss-islamic-inspirations-on-the-glazov-gang/

As the dire threat of ISIS to the West continues to escalate, with recent reports now indicating that 5 thousand ISIS jihadists are at large in the EU, we continue to witness mass denial within the West’s leadership, media and culture about the Islamic nature of the Islamic State.

Nonetheless, the Islamic nature of the Islamic State is clear for all to see. Just recently, for instance, a Syrian Christian, John, testified about life for Christians in the Islamic State’s controlled city of Raqqa, where he revealed that Christians are paying the jizya, the “tax” that conquered non-Muslims must pay to their Islamic rulers to spare their lives — and that is mandated by the Qur’an (9:29).

In response to John’s testimony, and to shed light on the Islamic nature of the Islamic State and the huge price the West is paying in denying it, we are running The Glazov Gang’s feature interview with Shillman Fellow Raymond Ibrahim on ISIS’s Islamic Inspirations, in which Raymond unveils the Islamic roots of ISIS and the hazardous danger of the West deceiving itself about it.

Don’t miss it!

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Pal-Arab Human Rts Activist Slammed at U Chicago for Insufficient Criticism of Israel Palestinian Arab human rights activist had to be escorted by police from U Chicago due to enraged pro-Pal-Arab students. By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

By on February 22nd, 2016

It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Yet again a campus speaker is slammed and silenced by a crowd of students and alumni for failing to understand the “horrors” of “the Occupation,” and for failing to hold Israel sufficiently accountable.

But this time, at this campus, with this speaker, it is hard to imagine a more absurd scenario.

Bassem Eid, a Palestinian Arab who is a human rights activist and who not only worked for the United Nations and the far leftist NGO Btselem, he also founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, was the speaker at the University of Chicago on Thursday, Feb. 18.

The topic of Eid’s speech was “A Palestinian Point of View.” His talk was sponsored by the University of Chicago Hillel, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, J Street U Chicago (which later apologized for the sponsorship) and several international groups, plus the Israel Education Center.

But although Eid spoke about his own first hand experiences, having lived in and around Jerusalem all of his life, several of the students were outraged that he dared to criticize the Arabs, and was insufficiently harsh – in their view – on the Israelis.

One speaker after the next, during the Question and Answer session following Eid’s talk, demanded to know how dare Eid not speak about the horrors of “the Occupation,” and why he spent any time at all criticizing the Palestinian Arabs for their violence.

The questioners all made demands of Eid, all were livid that he failed them by not attacking the true and primary wrongdoer – in their opinion – Israel. It did not matter whether it was someone who identified himself as a “Palestinian,” “someone from Gaza,” or a “Jewish alumna of the University of Chicago,” all were infuriated by Eid’s talk.

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Xi takes nuclear option in bid to rule for life Michael Sheridan

By on February 22nd, 2016

Xi Jinping appears to be building a personality cult around him as Mao did (Li Tao)

CHINA is moving towards one-man rule as the state media step up demands for personal loyalty to President Xi Jinping, a departure from the Communist party’s collective leadership of recent decades.

Last week the party’s flagship newspaper issued a call for Xi to have the power to “remake the political landscape of China”. The article, supposedly written by one of a literary group, was put out on a social media account run by the People’s Daily. It said all communists must be loyal to Xi and “line up with the leadership”.

The campaign to enshrine Xi as the infallible “core” of authority is worrying many inside the political elite and coincides with China exerting its military muscle and possibly preparing to change its nuclear weapons strategy.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has just stationed surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea. The Chinese expansion comes as Barack Obama rallies Asian nations to support free navigation in the strategic waterway. The prospect of one man dominating the party, the state and the army in China could be the most challenging test in the next American president’s in-tray.

Xi’s grand plans include a total reorganisation of the Chinese military command structure that has included an internal debate about its nuclear weapons. Xi recently formed a dedicated PLA rocket force to control the nuclear ballistic missile arsenal. A report for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based group, says China may be considering placing its nuclear forces on alert, which means that, like America and Britain, its weapons would be ready to fire on command.

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MY SAY: TURNING AGAINST TRUMP SEE NOTE PLEASE

By on February 21st, 2016

This is a column posted by someone named “bookworm”….my sentiments expressed perfectly….rsk
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/turning_against_trump.html
Dear Trump supporters: There was no shame in your offering him your support in 2015 when he appeared as a brave, fun, and energetic conservative. Now, though, there’s no shame in your backing away from that support in the face of new information showing he’s not the man you thought he was.

People who pride themselves on rational thinking know there are few feelings worse than being wrong about something, especially something that they made a big noise about at the time. What helps lessen this intellectual humiliation is understanding that, given the information available at the time, the decision was a rational one at the time. The remedy for the initial error is to use the newly available information to reach a more reasoned decision.

As the campaign season goes forward, we’re learning more about Donald Trump’s politics and seeing his initial ebullient puckishness too often give way to self-referential arrogance and venomous hubris. Now is a good time for Trump supporters to use this new information to revisit their original conclusion about him and to realize, with no shame attached, that he’s not the candidate they thought he was.

When Trump first appeared on the 2015 political scene, he was a breath of fresh air. Most conservatives enjoyed his irreverence in tweaking the media rules favoring Progressives and demonizing conservatives — rules before which Republicans had long bowed down. It was galvanizing to hear Trump state in plain English that we need to address the holes in immigration that allow Islamic terrorists easy entry, even if doing so meant temporarily stopping all Muslim immigration until we figure out how to separate the moderate wheat from the murderous chaff.

Likewise, Hillary’s opponents enjoyed his refusal to allow Hillary’s double-X chromosomes to stifle the fact that the only woman Hillary supports is Hillary. To that end, she enabled her husband’s predatory, misogynistic sexual misbehavior for more than thirty years. Trump was the first Republican to remind everyone how appalling and hypocritical Hillary’s behavior has been.

Early on, Trump was loud about conservative positions: Securing our borders; supporting Israel; ending the abortion culture, and protecting Second Amendment rights. It therefore seemed as if the dream conservative candidate was presenting himself. Here was a man who bulldozed the political correctness that stifles conservative thought and who openly, and in simple language, embraced conservative positions. Based upon that information, it was eminently reasonable to support Donald Trump.

The media also encouraged Trump’s candidacy. He was good for ratings and they considered him un-electable. Given the media’s overwhelming progressive bias, they wanted to advance a Republican candidate they were sure would lose. They therefore gave him 25 times more coverage than the rest of the GOP field combined. That’s a lot of free advertising in a nation that appreciates colorful characters.

For months, then, for someone bewildered by the exceptionally crowded Republican field, Trump seemed like the answer to seven years of Obama’s efforts to turn America into another saggy, flabby semi-socialist country; to hand the Middle East over to Putin; and to tear down our national security by destroying America’s borders and having our military focus obsessively on climate change and social re-engineering.

That was then. This is now. Now the opposition research is finally coming to light, and it seems that Trump (shame on him, not shame on you) has been lying to America’s conservatives. Up until he threw himself into this election cycle, Trump was the very model of a modern elite Progressive. Moreover, as the campaign progresses, his current statements give the lie to his past promises.

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Rubio Can Be a Winning Voice for the GOP By Celina Durgin —

By on February 21st, 2016

Senator Marco Rubio’s performance in CNN’s GOP town hall Wednesday was a 45-minute lesson on how to articulate conservative Republican ideas.

Some conservative voters might prefer, for example, Senator Ted Cruz’s approach to Syria policy or his push to abolish the IRS. But in terms of being able to attractively and convincingly communicate the value of conservative ideas to everyone, regardless of race or class, Rubio may be unmatched among the Republican candidates. His rhetorical ability and political talent alone make him an asset to the Republican party.

Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), who has endorsed Rubio, cut an ad Tuesday in South Carolina that concluded, “Democrats fear Marco the most.” A New York Times headline from May declared that “A Hillary Clinton Match-Up With Marco Rubio Is a Scary Thought for Democrats” — as it should be if polling indicates anything. Rubio is the only Republican candidate since August who has consistently beaten Clinton in head-to-head poll matchups, such as those conducted by NBC/WSJ, Quinnipiac, and USA Today/Suffolk University.

The roots of his appeal are manifold. His relatability and charm contrast starkly with Mitt Romney’s wealth, John McCain’s woodenness, and Donald Trump’s loud-mouthed egotism (to say nothing of Hillary Clinton, overall). Rubio had student loans; he postdated checks; and he smiles about the future while others yell and warn of America’s demise. His humor is self-deprecating without being pathetic — he has joked about his colorblindness, his high-heeled boots, and about having a football-addled head.

A president like Rubio could help transform the perception of how Republicans handle race and class issues. During the CNN town hall, he demonstrated sincerity and empathy by employing personal narrative when asked how, in light of such events as the Charleston church shooting of nine African Americans, he would address racism without being divisive.

With his response, Rubio appeared to take seriously the lived experiences of minorities, recounting that an African-American friend of his, who is a police officer, was pulled over about eight times over several years for no reason. He had earlier recounted the story on Fox News, when discussing legitimate reasons for the anger of Black Lives Matter. Criminal-justice reform might be a truly bipartisan concern, and Rubio has been the most prominent Republican candidate to spotlight it.

It has been said that Rubio’s Cuban heritage will not be enough to win more minority votes for the Republican party. And it shouldn’t be. Republicans should not exploit a candidate’s minority status as a tool to gain power, as Democrats often do. Rather, Republicans can reach minority voters by offering alternative ideas and policies to the Democratic ones that have failed them, as in Baltimore and Detroit. Nonetheless, Rubio’s life story has been an undeniable rhetorical advantage.

He speaks to the unique problems facing minorities, including those he faced, while stressing that his parents didn’t raise him to feel like a victim. This is how conservative Republicans should discuss issues of race: They can and should acknowledge minorities’ setbacks while emphasizing the role of family and personal virtue in overcoming them. At the town hall, Rubio described a childhood experience when kids taunted him and his immigrant family, telling them to return to Cuba. He said he “saw it as a reflection on those kids, not a reflection on America.” Again he recognizes the reality of prejudice, but he condemns the individuals who are to blame, rather than condemning all of America as profoundly racist.

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However Clumsily, Apple Is Affirming a Constitutional Principle By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on February 21st, 2016

Imagine that a group of us invents our own new language. Let’s say we’re eleven in all, the size of a football team that relies on hand signals and barks of “Omaha!” code to deceive the opponent and move the ball down the field. Could the government ban us from speaking our new language to each other or from using it until some FBI linguists mastered it? And all on the off chance that we might use our new language to carry out a terrorist attack, execute a massive fraud, conduct a child-porn enterprise, or commit some other heinous offense.

Could the government tell us that literature, poetry, and innovation in our new language could evolve only as ploddingly as government agents could keep up? Our collective creativity would be stifled. We’d be presumed innocent in court if we ever actually committed a crime. Could the government nevertheless decide that it must — for our own good, of course — presume us guilty in our daily lives?

Put another way: Has there been a tectonic shift in our conception of civil rights? In constitutional theory, individual rights come from our Creator. They pre-exist the Bill of Rights. Constitutional guarantees merely safeguard our rights; they do not grant our rights in the first place.

Do we still believe that? Do we have freedom of speech, or freedom to speak only what law-enforcement can monitor? Does the Fourth Amendment guarantee freedom from unreasonable searches, or afford only whatever expectation of privacy the government, not the society, decides is reasonable — and cabined by what the government is technologically capable of searching?

Let me back up for a moment, because this was supposed to be a column upbraiding Apple. The tech giant is resisting a court directive that it help the FBI gain access to the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, the deceased San Bernardino jihadist who, with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in San Bernardino on December 2.

Within the four corners of the case, there are many good reasons to rip Apple. The government has overwhelming probable cause to search the phone after the mass-murder attack. There is a compelling public interest in identifying other jihadists and terror plots about which the phone data may provide evidence. And in the narrow confines of this case, Apple is protecting nobody’s privacy. Farook is dead, and the phone wasn’t even his: It belongs to the municipal agency that employed him, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, which assigned the phone to him for work purposes. Farook waived any conceivable privacy interest by signing an acknowledgment that the SBCDPH could search the phone at any time. And the SBCDPH, which is cooperating with the FBI, consents to the search of its phone.

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What Is Canada Doing Celebrating Hijab Day? by Shabnam Assadollahi

By on February 21st, 2016

The outrage is that Hijab Solidarity Day will be taking place under the auspices of the City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. It is not the role of a democratic government to celebrate religious symbols or to help religions proselytize.

The government’s acceptance of an Ottawa Hijab Solidarity Day amounts to accepting a radical legal system that is completely contrary to Canada’s democratic values, and crosses the line that separates Church and State. Endorsing the hijab is endorsing the first step of an extremist ideology that leads to and condones honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM) and the oppression of women.

In 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim living in Toronto, was strangled to death by her father. Her crime was that, as a free woman in Canada, she chose not to wear a hijab. In another case in Canada, in 2012, four Muslim women were murdered by their own family for refusing to wear a hijab and preferring Western clothing.

This Thursday, February 25, 2016, the city of Ottawa will be holding a public event celebrating the hijab, Islam’s physical repression of women.

The City for All Women Initiative (CAWI) organization, backed by the City Council of Ottawa, is hosting the Ottawa Hijab Solidarity Day celebration, also called “Walking with Our Muslims Sisters,” at City Hall. According to CAWI, the main purpose of this event is to encourage non-Muslim women to wear a hijab to understand life as a Muslim woman.

The outrage is that such an event will be taking place under the auspices of the City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Under Islamic Shari’a law, the hijab is an expression of the suppression of women and is used as a tool to persecute women by their male counterparts.

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Germany: Migrant Crime Skyrockets by Soeren Kern

By on February 21st, 2016

The actual number of crimes in Germany committed by migrants in 2015 may exceed 400,000.

The report does not include crime data from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany and also the state with the largest number of migrants. North Rhine-Westphalia’s biggest city is Cologne, where, on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of German women were sexually assaulted by migrants.

“For years the policy has been to leave the [German] population in the dark about the actual crime situation… The citizens are being played for fools. Rather than tell the truth, they [government officials] are evading responsibility and passing blame onto the citizens and the police.” — André Schulz, director, Association of Criminal Police, Germany.

10% of the migrants from the chaos in Iraq and Syria have reached Europe so far: “Eight to ten million migrants are still on the way.” — Gerd Müller, Development Minister.

Migrants committed 208,344 crimes in 2015, according to a confidential police report that was leaked to the German newspaper, Bild. This figure represents an 80% increase over 2014 and works out to around 570 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 23 crimes each hour, between January and December 2015.

The actual number of migrant crimes is far higher, however, because the report, produced by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA), includes only crimes that have been solved (aufgeklärten Straftaten). According to Statista, the German statistics agency, on average only around half of all crimes committed in Germany in any given year are solved (Aufklärungsquote). This implies that the actual number of crimes committed by migrants in 2015 may exceed 400,000.

Moreover, the report — “Crime in the Context of Immigration” (Kriminalität im Kontext von Zuwanderung) — includes data from only 13 of Germany’s 16 federal states.

The report does not include crime data from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany and also the state with the largest number of migrants. North Rhine-Westphalia’s biggest city is Cologne, where, on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of German women were sexually assaulted by migrants. It is not yet clear why those crimes were not included in the report.

The report also lacks crime data from Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, and Bremen, the second most populous city in Northern Germany.

Further, many crimes are simply not reported or are deliberately overlooked: political leaders across Germany have ordered police to turn a blind eye to crimes perpetrated by migrants, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

According to the report, most of the crimes were committed by migrants from: Syria (24%), Albania (17%), Kosovo (14%), Serbia (11%), Afghanistan (11%), Iraq (9%), Eritrea (4%), Macedonia (4%), Pakistan (4%) and Nigeria (2%).

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