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2016

Clarence Thomas: Disappeared by the Smithsonian The curious case of The Smithsonian v. Clarence Thomas By Kevin D. Williamson

What is the Smithsonian Institution?

It is a depository of national treasures and a national treasure in and of itself. It is the world’s largest system of museums — 19 museums, nine research centers, 138 million items in the archive, etc. — and it is a trust established by Congress, the original bequest from the British scientist James Smithson having been squandered through — one suspects this history will repeat itself — a bum investment in Arkansas bonds, which the state defaulted on.

It is also corrupt.

The Smithsonian has opened a new National Museum of African American History and Culture, a long overdue addition to its offerings. And in this version of African-American history and culture, black conservatives do not exist.

Specifically, the life and career of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas have been — forgive the term — whitewashed from the record. Anita Hill, an obscure functionary who achieved for herself a moment of fleeting fame when she advanced the interests of the Democratic party by smearing Clarence Thomas with lurid, flimsily documented allegations of sexual harassment, is presented as a major figure of the 20th century.

The scholar and jurist who actually sits on the Supreme Court? Clarence Thomas is an invisible man, so far as the Smithsonian is concerned.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is the Hanlon’s-razor (never attribute to malice what may be adequately accounted for by stupidity) explanation: The dons of American history simply goofed and overlooked Justice Thomas, as though the new museum were a picnic and each of its curators thought the other guy was bringing the potato salad. Because we tend to have warm feelings toward the Smithsonian, we may extend maximum charity in our analysis here. But even at the limit of that charity, we could conclude at best that the Smithsonian is managed by incompetents, that its management should be decimated or more than decimated, and that Congress should use its purse-string powers to effect this.

The second and more likely explanation is that the Smithsonian is corrupt.

This would not be surprising. The Left is committed to its Long March through the Institutions, with a special emphasis on cultural and educational institutions, the commanding heights of public discourse. The Left corrupts everything it touches, and it subordinates everything it touches to politics. That is true of everything from the public schools to labor unions to Catholic seminaries. If you are a high-school sophomore in Lubbock, Texas, that might mean receiving an account of American history which consists almost exclusively of the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, as I did. If you are a family of modest means that has saved its pennies for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to our nation’s capital with the intent of exposing your children, however briefly, to the best that has been thought and written in the American context, that means a museum of African-American history in which a major figure in African-American history has been airbrushed away like a Soviet apparatchik fallen into disfavor.

Hillary Clinton’s Scandals Begin to Undermine Libya Prosecutions The lies continue to unravel. By Andrew C. McCarthy

Well, you heard it here first: As I warned back in August 2015, Hillary Clinton’s recklessly irresponsible mishandling of classified intelligence and destruction of thousands of government records was certain to undermine any government attempt to prosecute cases related to the Benghazi massacre and the Obama-administration policies — spearheaded by then-Secretary Clinton – that led up to it.

It has now happened. And there is still another shoe to drop – one the Obama Justice Department has conveniently managed to push beyond Election Day.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Justice Department had quietly dropped a criminal case against Marc Turi. He had been indicted by federal prosecutors in Phoenix for supplying arms to Libyan “rebels” during the 2010–11 civil war.

In that conflict, pursuant to Obama-administration policy that was spearheaded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and backed by senior Republicans on Capitol Hill, the United States switched sides: turning against the regime of Moammar Qaddafi (notwithstanding that he had been supported by the U.S. government as a key anti-terrorism ally), and backing Islamists championed by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose ranks were threaded with al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists (i.e., the terrorists about whom Qaddafi had been providing our government with intelligence).

The administration dropped the criminal case on Tuesday, one day before a court-ordered deadline to disclose information about its efforts to arm Islamist rebels.

Turi’s lawyers had explained his defense to the court: His arms shipments, destined for the Libyan rebels and channeled through Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, were part of a U.S.-authorized effort. Turi further asserts that the Obama administration was subsequently complicit in the shipment of weapons from Libya to “rebels” in Syria, who are fighting the Assad regime.

This defense is consistent with public reporting that the administration has tried to downplay for years. The murder of four American officials, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, by al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, was the culmination of a series of terrorist attacks on Western targets. Islamists had been empowered by Qaddafi’s overthrow and armed with the Obama administration’s encouragement. The New York Times, for example, reported less than a month after the Benghazi massacre that “the Obama administration gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants.”

Moreover, as I have previously recounted, Mr. Stevens, prior to becoming ambassador, was the administration’s liaison with the Libyan “rebels,” including their jihadist factions. One of his contacts, Abdelhakim Belhadj, had been a leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group before taking control of the Tripoli Military Council after Qaddafi was overthrown.

Obama’s Hostile Eulogy Obama was not merely wrong when he accused Peres’s detractors of support for slavery — he was maliciously wrong. Caroline Glick

US President Barack Obama’s eulogy of Shimon Peres at Mount Herzl last Friday was a thinly disguised assault on Israel. And he barely bothered to hide it.
Throughout his remarks, Obama wielded Peres’s record like a baseball bat. He used it to club the Israeli public and its elected leaders over and over again.
Peres, Obama intimated, was a prophet. But the suspicious, tribal people of Israel were too stiff necked to follow him.

In what was perhaps the low point of a low performance, Obama used Peres’s words to slander his domestic critics as racist oppressors.

“Shimon,” he began harmlessly enough, “believed that Israel’s exceptionalism was rooted not only in fidelity to the Jewish people, but to the moral and ethical vision, the precepts of his Jewish faith.”

You could say that about every Israeli leader since the dawn of modern Zionism.

But then Obama went for the jugular.

In a startling non sequitur he continued, “‘The Jewish people weren’t born to rule another people,’ he [Peres] would say. ‘From the very first day we were against slaves and masters.’” We don’t know the context in which Peres made that statement. But what is clear enough is that Obama used his words to accuse the majority of Israelis who do not share Peres’s vision for peace – including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who was sitting in the front row listening to him – of supporting slavery.

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Debating Hillary, Part 4: Cyber Security There’s a word for people who sell out their nation’s security for money.

Surely there was no greater missed opportunity in the first debate than listening to HILLARY CLINTON talk about how “concerned” she is about the security of classified government information.Bill Whittle rushes in where CNN fears to tread.

Transcript below:

CLINTON: Well, I think cyber security, cyber warfare will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next president, because clearly we’re facing at this point two different kinds of adversaries. There’s no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this.

Mrs. Clinton, if you are deeply concerned about spying, cyber warfare and information leaks, then you would not have posted Secret, Top Secret and Above Top Secret information, and put it on an unsecure server in your basement, where anyone – and I mean anyone and everyone, even individual hackers let alone agents with the resources of China and Russia – have obtained the most sensitive, detailed information about America’s diplomatic stance, our military assets and their state of readiness, our global strategic plans, not to mention the names of intelligence assets who will now or soon be killed because you wanted a private email server that was not subject to Freedom of Information Act scrutiny.

You utterly, criminally disregarded Federal Law so that you could sell State Department influence to the tune of about a billion dollars of criminal activity in the Clinton Foundation and a personal fortune of at least 100 million dollars for a life in “public service.” If you cared about our nations security you would not have “misplaced” at least THIRTEEN personal devices containing classified information, and you most certainly would not have lied directly to the American people, time and time and time and time and time again about just how badly you have damaged this nation’s security for personal monetary gain.

There’s a word for people who sell out their nation’s security for money. And you, and I, and the American people know what that word is. Don’t we?

Muslim Scholar Visits Australia to Promote Peace, Breaking Cross, Killing All Jews #RefugeesWelcome is #NazisWelcome Daniel Greenfield

The Islamic notion of peace is somewhat different than the one we are generally familiar with. We think of peace as the end of violence. Islam thinks of peace as the triumph of violence.

This tragic misunderstanding has sabotaged the peaceful visit of a Muslim cleric to Australia.

A Pakistani scholar visiting Australia for a speaking tour has been ordered home after a video sermon surfaced of him saying the world will be purified when every Jew is wiped out.

Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai, who has a Facebook fan base of almost a million people, spoke at the Ghausia Masjid in Blacktown and the Al-Madinah Masjid in Liverpool over the long weekend.

Ghausia Masjid’s imam Hafiz Raza, who organised the tour, didn’t respond to questions about the visit or the 2012 video titled “Jews are the enemies of Islam and the real peace”.

What does the “real peace” consist of? Killing all the Jews. Also destroying Christianity.

“And a time is about to come when Allah would bestow such a success on Islam that there would not be a single Jew left on the face of the earth… and the symbol of cross would be broken.”

“And when the last Jew will be killed from this world, then peace would be established in the world… As long as there are Jews in this world, peace cannot be established in the whole world… Muslims are being called terrorists… Muslims are not terrorists; they are the lovers of peace and preachers of peace.”

And this is what Muslim peace looks like.

But remember the real problem is Islamophobia. And it’s all a misunderstanding.

“Association president Abbas Khan said Pakistani Australians are deeply committed to harmony in Australia and he was shocked by the video.

He said he met Mr Mustafai on Wednesday and the scholar said the video didn’t reflect his opinions and was a quote from a book.

PAUL SPERRY: MUSLIM TERRORISTS INFILTRATING LAW ENFORCEMENT

In an alarming trend, more and more Muslim terrorists are infiltrating the ranks of security firms and police departments, where they have acquired official IDs and uniforms to help gain access to secure areas, as well as firearms and tactical training to help carry out attacks.

Some jihadists posing as law enforcement officers have also gained access to classified federal databases to tip off other terrorist suspects under surveillance.

On Sept. 17, Somali-American Dahi Adan wore a security guard uniform as he stabbed or slashed 10 people at a St. Cloud, Minn., mall with a knife before he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. Adan made at least one reference to Allah during the stabbings and asked victims if they were Muslim before attacking. An ISIS affiliate claimed Adan was a “soldier of the Islamic State.”

Stockholm-based Securitas AB, a security firm that provides security services to companies in more than 200 cities worldwide, confirmed that Adan worked through June as a guard for its US division.

On the same day, Afghan-American Ahmad Rahami allegedly detonated a pressure-cooker bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York that left 31 injured. A blood-soaked journal found on Rahami after he was shot by police indicated he was carrying out “jihad” against “nonbelievers” in their “backyard.”

Though Rahami was working for his family restaurant at the time, he aspired to be a police officer, according to friends and neighbors. He majored in criminal justice at Middlesex County College in Edison, N.J. Rahami was enrolled there from 2010-2012 but did not graduate.

Another Afghan-American terrorist, Omar Mateen, was employed as a security guard for a major federal security contractor this June, when he opened fire at an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 people. He had been dismissed from training as a prison guard after making threatening remarks, and ended up as a private security guard for G4S Secure Solutions USA Inc., which maintains a $234 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

Georgetown University Presents Index Islamophobicus: Andrew Harrod

The “link the report makes between Catholic media, Catholic book publishers, and Islamophobia needs to be severed,” stated ethics professor can Catholic priest Drew Christiansen at a September 12 Georgetown University presentation. He referenced a new report by Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) that presents new censorship dangers to Catholic “Islamophobes” who speak critically of Islam.

The report by ACMCU’s Bridge Initiative, Danger & Dialogue: What American Catholics Think and Write about Islam, found that “Catholic media outlets discuss Islam negatively overall” despite Islam’s supposedly benign nature. A Pope Francis quotation asserted “it’s not fair to identify Islam with violence” and hackneyed apologetics for Islamic law stated that sharia, rather than uniformly endangering human rights, “has been interpreted in diverse ways.” By contrast, “[t]hose surveyed who consume content from Catholic media outlets have more unfavorable views of Muslims than those who don’t.”

Surveyed Catholic views on Islam in Danger & Dialogue were correspondingly negative. In all, “[n]early half of Catholics (45%) believe Islam ‘encourages violence more than other religions around the world.'” “Catholics more often identified Muslims’ potential shortcomings or faults as major obstacles to good relations, than they mentioned Catholics’ faults,” the report stated in an accusatory tone without specifying such Catholic faults. Yet brutal realism justified that “[t]hree-quarters (75%) of Catholics felt that violence and terrorism committed by Muslims was ‘very much’ or ‘somewhat’ of an obstacle to better relations.”

As a contributing cause to these findings, Danger & Dialogue focused on how the “Islamophobia industry sometimes influences the production of Catholic content on Islam.” The report reiterated well-worn accusations from leftwing, George Soros-funded organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) concerning “Islamophobes” in Catholic media. Muslim reformer Zuhdi Jasser, Donald Trump’s Catholic presidential campaign adviser Walid Phares, and Catholic academic William Kilpatrick all received critical citations. The report noted that books by the best-selling Catholic writer on Islam, Robert Spencer, a supposed “anti-Muslim hate group” leader and “misinformation expert,” are available in Washington, DC, area Catholic bookstores.

Such individuals were anathema to the panelists who presented Danger & Dialogue in Georgetown’s Riggs Library. The university’s well-known Islam apologist, Professor John Esposito, echoed the report by stating that “Islamophobia is growing exponentially in the US and Europe….Many would say it is at an all-time high.” ACMCU board member and Catholic Theological Union professor Scott Alexander in turn contrasted that Esposito, “one of my most faithful and treasured mentors,” belongs among Islam scholars to the “Islamophilic category, a category to which I unapologetically place myself.”

Are Tennessee Church Shootings Jihad? Evidence points to alleged shooter being a Muslim convert. Matthew Vadum

The suspect arrested on suspicion of shooting up three Christian churches in Shelbyville, Tennessee appears to be a convert to Islam, a critically important detail that the incurious mainstream media has not been reporting.

Wendell Tobias Buchanan, who turned 36 in August, is being held in the local county jail on $500,000 bond.

Buchanan was taken into custody last Saturday (October 1), Pamela Geller reports,

…shortly after he was seen driving by Horse Mountain Church of Christ on Horse Mountain Road, which was hit on at least three separate occasions by gunfire. Buchanan allegedly fired into two other churches — Philippi Methodist Church and Singleton United Methodist Church — the University of Tennessee Extension office and shot out several Charter Communications cable boxes during overnight hours Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

As part of its ongoing terrorist protection program, Facebook has scrubbed Buchanan’s page of all information except his name. Geller managed to take screen shots while the information on the page was available.

A Facebook post from September 8 indicates Buchanan professed belief in the Islamic deity and seems to radiate the zeal of a convert. “Friends and family of Facebook I’ve been granted knowledge of the unseen world as a mercy from my Lord Allah.”

The social media entry contains several other references to Allah. Buchanan writes that Allah’s “will and word are the ultimate truth,” and “I owe absolutely everything to Allah because he has set me free from my spiritual cage and I feel so much better physically and mentally than I have in months.”

He ended the post with, “Read the Qu’ran because it is the true word of God and seek guidance for a better understanding. Shalom.”

In the comments section underneath the post a Facebook friend wrote “I didn’t know you believed in Islamic book?” Buchanan replied, “I do because I was compelled to do so.”

According to the Times-Gazette of Shelbyville, Buchanan was charged with desecration of a venerated object, vandalism under $10,000, vandalism under $500, 18 counts of vandalism under $1,000, and four counts of destroying/interference with utility lines.

Additional charges may be laid against Buchanan, Bedford County Sheriff Austin Swing (D) has said.

Buchanan doesn’t have much of a criminal record. He entered a conditional plea to a marijuana possession charge in 2000, pled guilty in 2004 to driving with a suspended license, and was convicted of two driving-related misdemeanors, according to publicly available court records.

Turkey Builds 9,000 Mosques, Bans Orthodox Christian Liturgy By Robert Jones

A total of 8,985 mosques were built between 2005 and 2015 by the Turkish government over the last decade in Turkey, according to statistics released by Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).

The Central Anatolian province of Konya contained the highest number of mosques, Dogan News Agency reported on Sept. 16. Ankara, the southern province of Antalya, the Black Sea provinces of Ordu and Trabzon, and the southeastern province of Diyarbakır were among the other provinces with over 2,000 mosques.

While the Turkish government has built so many mosques across the country with state funds, it has banned Orthodox Christian liturgy in the Sumela Monastery, a historic site in Trabzon.

Sumela Monastery, located in the district of Macka — or Matsuka in Greek — in Trabzon province is one of the oldest monasteries in the Christian world. According to records, it was built by two Athenian monks, St. Barnabas and his nephew St. Sophronios, and was inaugurated by the bishop of Trabzon in 386 A.D.

The province of Trabzon, located in the ancient region of Pontos, the northeast portion of Anatolia adjacent to the Black Sea, also has a long Greek and Christian history. The word “Pontos” means “sea” in Greek.

“Trabzon was settled by Greeks probably by the 7th century BC,” writes researcher Sam Topalidis for the website Pontos World. “Trabzon was the ancient capital of the Greek speaking Komnenos Byzantine Kingdom (1204–1461). It survived until 1461, eight years after the fall of Byzantine Constantinople when both localities fell to the Ottoman Turks.”

After the city’s invasion by the Ottoman Turks, the local demographic began to change; but for centuries, Christians were the majority in the city.

According to Topalidis, Trabzon’s Muslim population increased dramatically under the Ottoman rule due to:

Muslims moving into the city (Most of the Trabzon’s Muslims were involuntary immigrants)
Deportations of Christians out of the city, probably to Istanbul
Christians converting to Islam, probably for fear of deportation

“However, the most important reason for the conversions was probably due to the higher taxes paid by Christians (compared to Muslims), a strong economic incentive for the poorest Christians,” writes Topalidis.

FBI Releases Video, New Details in Minnesota Mall Terror Attack by Somali Refugee Dahir Adan By Patrick Poole

The FBI held an unusual press conference today in the case of last month’s terror attack at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The attacker, 20-year old Somali refugee Dahir Adan, was shot and killed on the scene by an off-duty police officer after stabbing ten mall workers and shoppers.

The press conference was unusual in that the investigation into the matter is still ongoing, but the FBI and local law enforcement felt the need to release graphic video of the attacks in order to shoot down various conspiracy theories circulating in the Minnesota Somali community and perpetuated by Black Lives Matter groups.

The county prosecutor in St. Cloud says an off-duty police officer was justified in fatally shooting Dahir Adan, the mall stabbing suspect.

— Mitch Smith (@MitchKSmith) October 6, 2016

Stearns Co. Atty: Jason Faulkner told Dahir Adan to drop his knives several times, followed him through Macy’s, shooting when Adan charged

— Courtney Godfrey (@courtneygodfrey) October 6, 2016

One of the early conspiracy theories floated by Adan’s family was the claim that he was an innocent bystander who was in the mall to pick up his new iPhone at the mall:

Family of St Cloud stabber tells community leader Dahir Adan was headed to Mall Sat to pick up a preordered iPhone 7 @wcco 5 and 6 pm

— esme murphy – WCCO (@esmemurphy) September 19, 2016

Those false rumors led some in the Somali community to use the incident to circulate claims that the shooting of Adan was unjustified: