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2016

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trial of Teenager ‘Safia S’ Starts Behind Closed Doors in Germany Case casts light on radicalization among teens and the challenge it presents for authorities By Ruth Bender

By on October 21st, 2016

CELLE, Germany—The trial of a teenage girl accused of stabbing a policeman, in what officials allege was the first attack ordered by Islamic State on German soil, began on Thursday behind closed doors.

The case casts light on the growing phenomenon of radicalization among teens and the new challenge it presents for authorities, given the extensive legal protections juveniles enjoy in most Western countries.

This special status was on evidence on Thursday when the court in this small northern German town ordered reporters and the public out of the courtroom. The minor’s right to a closed-door trial, the judges argued, trumped even the “great public interest given the growing threat of Islamist terrorism.”

The 16-year-old, identified only as Safia S., is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and support of a foreign terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors say Islamic State operatives ordered her to commit an “act of martyrdom” and helped plan her knife attack on a policeman in Hannover in late February.

“We believe she was motivated and steered in her act by supporters of IS,” said Simon Henrichs, senior federal prosecutor, after the first day of the trial.

The defendant’s lawyer, Mutlu Günal, denied a terrorist motive, however. “That the attack happened is a fact and she apologized for it,” Mr. Günal said. “But there is no terrorist background.”

The accused faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The case marks the first terror plot linked directly to the terror militia in Germany, a country that has seen a spate of attacks by Islamist extremist in recent months. Several of these followed a pattern observed around Europe of Islamic State operatives in the Middle East steering supporters remotely.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary’s New Constitution- Clinton explains how she’ll gut the First and Second Amendments.

By on October 21st, 2016

Donald Trump is no legal scholar, but at Wednesday’s presidential debate he showed a superior grasp of the U.S. Constitution than did Hillary Clinton. Amid the overwrought liberal fainting about Mr. Trump’s bluster over accepting the election result (see below), Mrs. Clinton revealed a view of the Supreme Court that is far more threatening to American liberty.

Start with her answer to moderator Chris Wallace’s question about the role of the courts. “The Supreme Court should represent all of us. That’s how I see the Court,” she said. “And the kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing up on our behalf of our rights as Americans.”

Where to begin with that one? The Supreme Court doesn’t—or shouldn’t—“represent” anyone. In the U.S. system that’s the job of the elected branches. The courts are appointed, not elected, so they can be nonpartisan adjudicators of competing legal claims.

Mrs. Clinton is suggesting that the Court should be a super-legislature that vindicates the will of what she calls “the American people,” which apparently excludes “the powerful.” But last we checked, the Constitution protects everyone, even the powerful. The law is supposed to protect individual rights, not an abstraction called “the people.”

The Democrat went downhill from there, promising to appoint judges who would essentially rewrite the First and Second Amendments. Asked about the 2008 Heller decision that upheld an individual right to bear arms, Mrs. Clinton claimed to support “reasonable regulation.” She said she criticized Heller because it overturned a District of Columbia law intended merely “to protect toddlers from guns and so they wanted people with guns to safely store them.”

Toddlers had nothing to do with it. What Mrs. Clinton calls “reasonable” was an outright ban on handguns. The D.C. law allowed the city’s police chief to award some temporary licenses—but not even the police officer plaintiff in the case could persuade the District to let him register a handgun to be kept at his home.

Anyone who did lawfully possess a gun had to keep it unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock at all times, ensuring it would be inoperable and perhaps useless for self-defense. As Antonin Scalia wrote for the Heller majority, “Few laws in the history of our Nation have come close to the severe restriction of the District’s handgun ban.”

If Mrs. Clinton supports such gun restrictions, then she thinks an individual’s right to bear arms is meaningless. If the Justices she appoints agree with her, then they can gradually turn Heller into a shell of a right, restriction by restriction, even without overturning the precedent.

Then there’s the First Amendment, which Mrs. Clinton wants to rewrite by appointing Justices she said would “stand up and say no to Citizens United, a decision that has undermined the election system in our country because of the way it permits dark, unaccountable money to come into our electoral system.”

Citizens United is the 2010 Supreme Court decision that found that unions and corporations can spend money on political speech—in that specific case for a movie that was critical of Mrs. Clinton. The Democrat seems to take the different view that while atomized individuals might have the right to criticize politicians, heaven forbid if they want to band together to do it as a political interest group.

As for “dark” money, she certainly knows that territory. Does money get any darker than undisclosed Clinton Foundation donations from foreign business magnates tied to uranium concessions in Kazakhstan?

There is at least one right that Mrs. Clinton did suggest she believes to be absolute—to an abortion, at any time during pregnancy right up until birth. She claimed merely to oppose the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which allows some regulation of late-term abortions. But she somehow overlooked Gonzales v. Carhart , the 2007 decision that upheld a legislative ban on so-called partial-birth abortion. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Anti-Semitism was required, Anti-Islamism is verboten :Janet Levy

By on October 21st, 2016

Reminiscent of the Third Reich, Jew hatred and agitating against Jews are in full bloom in Germany. And it is not guilt over Nazism that has Germany protecting parasitic Muslim refugees, most of whom are anti-Semitic.

In their recent documentary, Germans and Jews, filmmakers Tal Recanati and Junina Quint, portray Germany as having reached a nuanced reconciliation with its Nazi past by breaking the silence about it and facing it head-on. Yet, several recent surveys of German attitudes toward Jews and the Jewish homeland reveal the persistence of strong, anti-Semitic attitudes that belie the filmmakers’ conclusions.

Indeed, Germany may actually be stoking anti-Semitism with its official policy of acceptance and open-mindedness toward Muslim immigrants, even to the point of allowing them expression of hatred toward Jews. One of Germany’s major trade partners is Iran, hostile to Israel since the first Gulf War, and Germany continues to blame Israeli settlements for Middle East unrest. Thus, Germany’s policy of acceptance and tolerance toward Muslims may actually mask an underlying anti-Semitism that stubbornly remains despite the passage of time.

The Surveys and Anti-Semitism Revealed

In 2011, a survey by the Freidrich Ebert Foundation, Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination, found that 49% of German respondents agreed with the statement that Jews were trying to take advantage of their people’s suffering during the Holocaust. Another 20% of Germans agreed that Jews have too much influence in their country, 30% agreed, “Jews don’t care about anything or anyone but their own kind.”

A 2015 study by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence from the University of Bielefeld found that 49% of Germans don’t want to hear anything about the Holocaust, 55% are angry that Germans are still accused of crimes against Jews, 28% responded that they can understand why people don’t like Jews considering Israel’s policies, and 27% say that Israeli policy toward Arab-Palestinians is not different from what the Nazis did to the Jews during the Third Reich.

The deep resentment and demonization of Jews revealed in surveys are not indicative of a guilt-wracked…people anxious to rise above the atrocities of the Nazi generation. Clearly, large percentages of Germans still harbor harsh, anti-Jewish sentiments.
In 2012, an Anti-Defamation League survey of Attitudes Toward Jews in 10 European Countries discovered the following about German respondents: 24% felt that Jews have too much power in international financial markets, 43% agreed that Jews talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust, 14% believe that Jews are responsible for the death of Christ, and 77% believed the government was doing enough to ensure the safety and security of its Jewish citizens.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

8 Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged

By on October 20th, 2016

Everyone has taken to dismissing Donald Trump’s claims that the election is rigged. Here are eight times liberals claimed an election had been or would be stolen.

Over the past couple of weeks, Donald Trump has ramped up complaints that the election process is rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. Many have been quick to dismiss his claims and have been acting like he’s crazy for saying as much.

On Tuesday, President Obama lashed out at the GOP nominee during a press conference at the White House, saying that Trump’s gripes are historically unprecedented and that he should stop “whining.”

“I have never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history any presidential candidate trying to discredit the election process before votes have even taken place,” he said.

Obama’s memory must be pretty short, so I’ve compiled this list to remind him — and everyone else — of eight times liberals claimed an election was or would be stolen.
1. Labor Union Leader Roseann Demoro

The national vice president of the AFL-CIO wrote an article for Salon in which she explained how the Democratic Party primary was “rigged from the start.”

She explained the debate times, media bias, and vote rigging were what kept Bernie Sanders from clinching the Democratic nomination for president. Demoro also claimed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid met with casino owners where many caucuses were being held, in order to tamper with the election process.

“The Nevada caucuses were then rigged with massive voting irregularities such as casino owners orchestrating which workers would be allowed to vote and, in clear intimidation, openly monitoring how they voted,” she wrote.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Prime Minister May Calls Out Labour Leader Corbyn: We Must Have Zero Tolerance for Antisemitism by Barney Breen-Portnoy

By on October 20th, 2016

The leader of Britain’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn must “think very carefully” about antisemitism within his party, British Prime Minister Theresa May declared on Wednesday.https://www.algemeiner.com/2016/10/19/british-prime-minister-may-calls-out-labour-leader-corbyn-we-must-have-zero-tolerance-for-antisemitism/

May — the head of Britian’s governing Conservative Party who succeeded David Cameron at 10 Downing Street in July — made the statement during a Prime Minister’s Questions session, just days after the publication of a House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee report which found Labour had shown “demonstrable incompetence” in dealing with antisemitism within its ranks.

In response to a question posed by Conservative MP Oliver Dowden, May said: “I absolutely agree with my honorable friend that this house should send a very clear message that we will not tolerate antisemitism. I have been concerned about the rise in the number of incidents of antisemitism in this country.

“We should very clearly ensure that those incidents of antisemitism are properly investigated and dealt with, and that we give the clear message that we will not tolerate it. But that does have to be done by every single political party in this chamber, and I say to the leader of the opposition that given the report of the Home Affairs Committee about antisemitism and the approach to antisemitism in the Labour Party, he needs to think very carefully about the environment that has been created in the Labour Party in relation to antisemitism.”

Recently, as reported by The Algemeiner, Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth was assigned police protection, following an antisemitic death threat made against her on a social-media platform.

At the time, Smeeth told the UK’s Sun newspaper she held Corbyn “personally responsible” for the threats she had received. Earlier this summer, as reported in The Algemeiner, Smeeth said she was “verbally attacked” by an activist linked to the left-wing organization Momentum — which supports Corbyn — during the conference revealing the results of Labour’s own controversial investigation into antisemitism allegations within the party.

As reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitic incidents in the UK jumped in the first half of 2016, with the Jewish community being targeted on an average of three times per day.

In August, the head of a UK charity and antisemitism watchdog group told The Algemeiner that British Jews were “being denied justice” by their country’s main criminal prosecution agency, as it failed to crack down on antisemitic crimes.

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FOREIGN POLICY, POLITICS Comments turned off

Make America Victorious Again By: Angelo M. Codevilla

By on October 20th, 2016

At the 2016 elections our bipartisan foreign policy class is near-unanimous, not so much behind Hillary Clinton nor even against Donald Trump. Rather, it circles its wagons around its own identities, ideas, practices, and, yes, livelihoods. Clinton represents the ruling class’s people and priorities in foreign affairs as in domestic ones, though she seems to care even less about the former’s substance. Trump, a stranger to most of the foreign policy class (though not to its current epitome, Henry Kissinger) has voiced views on foreign affairs that are within the establishment’s variances in substance if not in tone. Chastise and threaten NATO for its lack of contributions? Senate majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) offered an amendment to that effect in 1970. Cozy up to Putin? Hillary Clinton brought him a bright red “reset” button in 2009.

Nevertheless, the foreign policy class does not merely reject Trump; it detests him. Why? Because Trump, in tone even more than substance, expresses the subversive thought that U.S. foreign policy has failed to “put America first,” causing the nation to suffer defeat after defeat. Hence, the entire foreign policy class—in the bureaucracies, think tanks, academe, and the media—are a bunch of losers. Millions of Americans consider these two thoughts to be common sense. But the above-mentioned class takes the first as the root of heresies, and the second as a demagogic insult. Consequently, the 2016 election is not so much about any particular plank in any foreign policy platform. It is about who defines and what constitutes common sense.

Who and what

Why the fuss? Obviously, foreign policy’s formulators and executors are their country’s fiduciaries. Though it follows logically that they should mind no interest before their country’s, nevertheless our foreign policy class’s defining characteristic for a hundred years has been to subsume America’s interest into considerations they deem worthier. The following is our foreign policy class’s common sense, which it hopes the 2016 elections will affirm.

Since Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Democratic and Republican statesmen have confused America’s interest with mankind’s. In practice, they have taken upon themselves the role of mankind’s stewards (or sheriffs, leaders, pillars of order, or whatever) and acted as if, in Wilson’s words, America has “no reason for being” except to “stand for the right of men,” to be “champions of humanity.” Accordingly, a series of statesmen has forsaken war and diplomacy for strictly American ends and with means adequate to achieve them, and adopted foredoomed schemes pursued halfheartedly—Charles Evans Hughes (commitment to China’s integrity and renunciation of the means to uphold it), Franklin Roosevelt (seeking world co-domination with Stalin and the U.N. to banish “ancient evils, ancient ills”), Harry Truman (pursuing peace through no-win war in Korea), Nixon/Kissinger (scuttling Vietnam to help entice the Soviets into a grand detente), George W. Bush (democratizing the Middle East because America can’t be free unless and until the whole world is free).

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POLITICS Comments turned off

On “Accepting Election Results” : John Hideraker

By on October 20th, 2016

I said I wouldn’t comment on tonight’s debate until tomorrow, when I host the third hour of Laura Ingraham’s radio show. But I can’t resist, having seen how the liberal press is trying to spin what, by any objective standard, was a pretty good night for Donald Trump. It’s all about Trump’s refusal to commit to “accepting the result of the election” should he lose:http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/10/on-accepting-election-results.php

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Horrifying! Trump “upends a basic pillar of American democracy” by saying he will wait and see what happens on election day, because of his concern about voter fraud.

But wait! Who was the last candidate who refused to accept the result on election day, as certified by election authorities? Al Gore. Did Gore “upend a basic pillar of American democracy” when he tried to overturn the result of the 2000 election? I don’t remember the Associated Press saying so at the time. In fact, I would bet that the authors of this piece of AP hysteria were rooting for Gore, at the time. Unbelievable.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

MY SAY: BIG DEAL…AL GORE CHALLENGED THE RESULTS OF AN ELECTION

By on October 20th, 2016

Ooh the media is on overdrive! It is another “gotcha” moment for them …….

Roger Simon sums it up: ”

Put briefly: If Donald Trump believes—as many of us do—that the FBI is corrupt, the Justice Department is corrupt, the other party is hiring violent paid thugs to disrupt his campaign rallies, that no one knows who is really registered to vote, that the press is stratospherically biased, and that his opponent, backed up by all those corrupt entities, should have been indicted, why would a patriot, or for that matter someone who is even routinely honest, necessarily accept the results of the election of that opponent?

Ben Franklin wouldn’t. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t. James Madison wouldn’t. Sam Adams wouldn’t. Of course, those guys were revolutionaries. These days we’re just, you know, “good citizens” who obey the rules and move on. With that kind of behavior in the past, our country wouldn’t even be here. But never mind.

Not convinced? Think of the reverse. Suppose Trump had meekly said he would accept the outcome with the smirking Hillary—the woman he has called a crook and who, for all intents and purposes, is one—standing only a few feet away? Wouldn’t that, in the true sense, have invalidated everything he has been saying? ”

Outrage or Genius? Trump Refuses to Accept Results of Election in Third Debatehttps://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/10/19/trump-refuses-to-accept-results-of-election/

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Election Year Features More Than One Presidential Race Scandals, civil wars, media, money, and time are just as important as the candidates themselves. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 20th, 2016

A presidential campaign is figuratively called a “race.” Two runners sprint toward the Election Day finish line for the prize of the presidency.

But the 2016 presidential campaign has spawned lots of weird races.

The first sprint is one between embarrassments and scandals.

Will another WikiLeaks disclosure confirm that Hillary Clinton is a dishonest and conniving hypocrite? Or will yet another open-mic tape, disgruntled beauty queen, or old Howard Stern interview remind us that Donald Trump’s private life was — and perhaps still is — uncouth?

The winner will be the candidate leaked about the least by Election Day.

Here, Trump might have an odd edge. Even the most lurid disclosures will only confirm what we already knew about his vulgarity. But any more leaks about Clinton could shatter the crumbling facade depicting her as a highly respected and ethical establishmentarian.

Another race is between the relative health of the two candidates.

At 68, Clinton seems too frail. At 70, Trump seems too frenetic. This race is nearing the home stretch to see whether Clinton stumbles, nearly faints, or goes into a coughing fit. Or will the sleepless Trump stay on his Twitter feed at 3 a.m. to self-destruct in feuds with another former beauty queen or Republican kingpin?

Democrats want to pep up Clinton. Republicans want to calm down Trump. For now, worries over Clinton’s poor health seem to be outracing Trump’s nocturnal mania.

A third race is one of defections within the candidates’ respective parties.

Leaked e-mails revealed that in the primaries, the Clinton campaign colluded with the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee. The leaks also confirmed that Clinton’s team derided Bernie Sanders’s youthful mob of supporters as a conglomeration of snotty perpetual adolescents stuck in their parents’ basements. During his campaign, Sanders charged that Clinton was a Wall Street toady. Clinton denied it. Leaks substantiated Sanders’s claim.

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Germans Leaving Germany ‘In Droves’ by Soeren Kern

By on October 20th, 2016

More than 1.5 million Germans, many of them highly educated, left Germany during the past decade. — Die Welt.

Germany is facing a spike in migrant crime, including an epidemic of rapes and sexual assaults. Mass migration is also accelerating the Islamization of Germany. Many Germans appear to be losing hope about the future direction of their country.

“We refugees… do not want to live in the same country with you. You can, and I think you should, leave Germany. And please take Saxony and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with you…. Why do you not go to another country? We are sick of you!” — Aras Bacho an 18-year-old Syrian migrant, in Der Freitag, October 2016.

A real estate agent in a town near Lake Balaton, a popular tourist destination in western Hungary, said that 80% of the Germans relocating there cite the migration crisis as the main reason for their desire to leave Germany.

“I believe that Islam does not belong to Germany. I regard it as a foreign entity which has brought the West more problems than benefits. In my opinion, many followers of this religion are rude, demanding and despise Germany.” — A German citizen who emigrated from Germany, in an “Open Letter to the German Government.”

“I believe that immigration is producing major and irreversible changes in German society. I am angry that this is happening without the direct approval of German citizens. … I believe that it is a shame that in Germany Jews must again be afraid to be Jews.” — A German citizen who emigrated from Germany, in an “Open Letter to the German Government.”

“My husband sometimes says he has the feeling that we are now the largest minority with no lobby. For each group there is an institution, a location, a public interest, but for us, a heterosexual married couple with two children, not unemployed, neither handicapped nor Islamic, for people like us there is no longer any interest.” — “Anna,” in a letter to the Mayor of Munich about her decision to move her family out of the city because migrants were making her life there impossible.

A growing number of Germans are abandoning neighborhoods in which they have lived all their lives, and others are leaving Germany for good, as mass immigration transforms parts of the country beyond recognition.

Data from the German statistics agency, Destatis, shows that 138,000 Germans left Germany in 2015. More are expected to emigrate in 2016. In a story on brain drain titled, “German talent is leaving the country in droves,” Die Welt reported that more than 1.5 million Germans, many of them highly educated, left Germany during the past decade.

The statistics do not give a reason why Germans are emigrating, but anecdotal evidence indicates that many are waking up to the true cost — financial, social and cultural — of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than one million mostly Muslim migrants to enter the country in 2015. At least 300,000 more migrants are expected to arrive in Germany in 2016, according to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of the country’s migration office, BAMF.

Mass migration has — among many other problems — contributed to a growing sense of insecurity in Germany, which is facing a spike in migrant crime, including an epidemic of rapes and sexual assaults. Mass migration is also accelerating the Islamization of Germany. Many Germans appear to be losing hope about the future direction of their country.

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