Displaying posts published in

2016

German Authorities Push for Increased Surveillance of Refugees, After Raids Net Three Terror Suspects by James Carstensen

After raiding refugee shelters in three towns in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein this week, German authorities detained three suspected Islamic State (ISIS) members linked to the same group that carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere confirmed that three Syrian nationals were arrested on Tuesday, and that one was found to have joined ISIS a year ago.

The young men were said to have entered Germany in November with the intention of “carrying out a previously determined order [from ISIS] or to await further instructions.”

They are thought to have traveled through Turkey and Greece, using fake passports issued by ISIS along with U.S. cash and mobile phones loaded with a communications app.

De Maiziere linked the individuals to the Paris attacks.

“There is every reason to believe that the same trafficking group used by the Paris attackers also brought the three men who were arrested to Germany,” he said [1], adding that their forged passports had also come from the “same workshop.”

More than 200 officers from the German Federal Police and agents from the GSG9 special operations unit took part in the coordinated raids.

Germany has remained on edge following several violent attacks [2] in July, including a suicide bombing attempt near a music festival, and an ax-and-knife attack on a commuter train, both later linked to ISIS.

German police have ramped up security efforts since the attacks. In raids on refugee facilities in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia last month, two men were arrested on suspicion of connection to jihadist movements. One is suspected of planning an attack at a soccer game.

After those arrests, Rainer Wendt, a police officer and head of the German Police Trade Union, called for increased monitoring of asylum seekers.

“What happened here in North Rhine-Westphalia showed that it’s right to observe these people and, at the right time, to take them into custody,” he said.

Last weekend De Maiziere warned in an interview [3] with the Bild daily that there were 520 “potential” Islamist attackers in the country, as well as a further 360 “relevant persons” under surveillance, closely affiliated with potential attackers.

Navy’s Most Advanced Warship, USS Zumwalt Arrives in Norfolk

The Navy’s newest and most technologically advanced surface ship, future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) pulled into Naval Station Norfolk Wednesday for another port visit on the 3-month journey to its new homeport in San Diego.

Crewed by 147 Sailors, Zumwalt is the lead ship of a class of next-generation multi-mission destroyers designed to strengthen naval power. They are capable of performing critical maritime missions and enhance the Navy’s ability to provide deterrence, power projection and sea control.

Capt. James A. Kirk, Zumwalt’s commanding officer, commented on the significance of the ship’s visit to Norfolk.

“It is a great opportunity to bring Zumwalt to Norfolk, an area steeped in naval history and ever vital to the U.S. Navy,” said Kirk. “It is a chance for the Sailors of Zumwalt to show their Atlantic Coast shipmates the teamwork, technical expertise and toughness it takes to operate a Zumwalt-class destroyer.”

While in Norfolk, Zumwalt is scheduled to perform operational proficiency training, certifications and preparation for its October commissioning.

“Training is the foundation of every operation we perform in the Navy, and it is our job to ensure we use the time in Norfolk to get as much quality training as we can. Successful training pays dividends for Sailors out at sea,” said Kirk.

Zumwalt departed Newport, R.I., Monday following a weekend of visits from students of several Navy schools, including the Naval War College, and distinguished government and military visitors.

“Our first ever port visit was to Newport, or the U.S. Navy’s surface warfare center of gravity, where we were able to host tours and give our schoolhouse surface warfare officers and other distinguished guests a look at the future of the surface fleet,” said Kirk.

USS Zumwalt will be formally commissioned during Fleet Week Maryland in Baltimore, Oct. 15.

Palestinians: Jibril Rajoub and the “Merry Christmas Group” by Khaled Abu Toameh

Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Football Association and a top official of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, made the offensive remarks during a recent interview with an Egyptian television station.

Many Palestinian Christians said that Rajoub’s derogatory remarks would further heighten tensions between them and Muslims. They pointed out that the top PA official was excluding them from being an integral part of the Palestinian people.

Christians see Rajoub’s derogatory remarks as part of the widespread persecution of Christians in Arab and Islamic countries, which has claimed the lives of thousands of Christians over the past few years and prompted many of them to flee to the US, Canada, Australia and Europe.

In an open letter to Rajoub, who previously commanded the PA’s notorious Preventive Security Force, and served 17 years in Israeli prison for terror-related charges, Bethlehem Pastor Danny Awad wrote: “We have been here for more than 2000 years… We are not strangers or guests or aliens who speak a foreign tongue.”

Rajoub’s disparagement of Palestinian Christians is indeed likely to encourage Christians to leave the Western-funded PA areas. Such comments are particularly unwelcome at a time when Christians in Syria, Iraq and Egypt face a campaign of terrorism and intimidation by Muslim extremists.

A senior Palestinian official has enraged Palestinian Christians by referring to them as the “Merry Christmas Group” and accusing them of supporting the Islamist movement, Hamas. Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Football Association and a top Fatah official who previously served as commander of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) notorious Preventive Security Force in the West Bank, made the offensive remarks during a recent interview with an Egyptian television station.

Referring to the Palestinian local elections, which were supposed to be held on October 8 but were suspended due to the continued power struggle between Fatah and Hamas, Rajoub said in the interview:

“Even some of our brothers, the ‘Merry Christmas Group,’ voted for Hamas [in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election]. Today, no one will vote for Hamas. What has Hamas given them? Hamas has brought nothing but destruction.”

How to Handle a Menace, NYPD-Style By Michael Walsh

Cops mow down Akram Joudeh, wielding a meat cleaver, near Penn Station.

Scruffy beard, sandals, previously arrested for carrying knives near a synagogue, living out of his car… and then he pulled a meat cleaver from his waistband and attacked a cop after his car was booted:

The man who allegedly hit an off-duty NYPD detective in the head with an 11-inch meat cleaver during a dramatic Midtown Manhattan confrontation has been identified as Akram Joudeh, 32, formerly of Queens. Joudeh was shot multiple times on West 32 Street, near Penn Station, by several officers at around 5pm Wednesday after a dramatic chase that culminated in three officers being injured, cops said.

The detective suffered a six-inch gash from his temple to his jaw, while Joudeh was left in hospital in critical but stable condition. Police were called out at around 5pm after Joudeh was seen trying to prize a boot off his car on West 31 St and Broadway. It’s believed the man, whose last registered address is in Queens, has been sleeping in the car.

The vehicle had reportedly been parked in the middle of the street, which is located in a busy, tourist-heavy area of Midtown. When police approached, however, he went into a rage, pulling out the cleaver and fleeing while ‘waving it around,’ a police spokesman said.

After slashing the cop, detective Brian O’Donnell, Joudeh faced the wrath of the NYPD, who promptly filled him full of lead:

Cops were called to the area just before 5 p.m. when several people saw a man with a scruffy beard and wearing sandals running with a meat cleaver in his hand, according to witnesses and initial reports. “He was running down the street, waving it,” said an MTA worker who asked not to be named. “The cops were chasing him.”

The Infantilizing of the Academy By David Solway

Recently, I was asked by an Italian author and journalist, working on an article for Il Giorno on the subject of “mute liberalism” and political correctness in the U.S., for my impressions of the “decadence” afflicting American culture. He wanted to know what the reasons were for what he saw as a political and cultural wasting disease and, in particular, when the inexorable slide began into self-censorship, pervasive hedonism, the debasement of the social and intellectual elites, the abandonment of republican principles and the reversal of traditional social roles.

This was a question too vanishingly large to answer definitively, but it did get me thinking once again about some of the factors that might have caused—as Québécois producer Denys Arcand put it in the title and story of his sadly amusing film—the The Decline of the American Empire, a film modeled on Edward Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Decadence, of course, is not solely an American phenomenon; no Western country is exempt from the vectors of degeneration at work in the liberal/democratic sphere today. But what happens to the U.S., as the guarantor of Western freedom and prosperity, happens to the rest of us. With America in decline, none of its dependents—and we are all its dependents, however loath we may be to admit it—will be spared. Indeed, most Western countries can survive their moral and political deterioration so long as America is willing and able to support them militarily, fiscally and politically, which is, for example, the story of ungrateful Europe since the Marshall Plan. Such is no longer the case. This is why the preoccupation of non-nationals—Italians like my interviewer, Canadians like me—with the fortunes of the U.S. is an issue of primary concern.

In any event, the “decadence” my interviewer was referring to obviously began a long time ago—when exactly is another question. One thinks of deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida’s theory of receding origins, the elusiveness or “eclipsing structure” of all beginnings. On the American historical scene, one could go back to the slave plantations and the Civil War, to the Salem witch trials, or to the bitter duels inherent in the very founding of the Republic between central-government Federalists and states-rights Republicans, a dispute that remains a political fracture to this day. Differing understandings of the Greek and Roman classics regarding the nature of enlightened rule and the proper relation between the governing and the governed were also a locus of contention. As Ron Chernow writes in Alexander Hamilton, commenting on the discrepancy between intention and result that has never been fully resolved, “Today we cherish the two-party system as a cornerstone of American democracy. The founders, however, viewed parties as monarchical vestiges that had no legitimate place in a true republic.” But why stop there? If one wishes, one can go back to the Mayflower and the Arbella and before. A prior “originary” point of decay can always be found.

To focus on the contemporary, certainly John Dewey’s left-oriented “progressivist” and “child-centered” education program, developed mainly in Democracy and Education, which took root in the 1920s, is a reasonable place to start our investigations. Briefly, Dewey believed the child should never be “forced” to learn but rather encouraged to follow his own natal interests—a theory earlier elaborated in the Romantic school of poetry, for example, William Wordsworth’s Intimations Ode where we read that the youth “trailing clouds of glory” is “nature’s priest,” possessing an innate apprehension of the divine. Wordsworth’s exaltation of the child melded seamlessly with his revolutionary belief as a young man in the re-pristinizing of society. It comes as no surprise that the Movement’s enfant terrible, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who espoused similar sentiments, particularly in poems like Queen Mab and Prometheus Unbound, earned the praise of Karl Marx. Shelley yearned for the day, as he wrote in Mab, when the “hands/which little children stretch in friendly sport” would become the emblem of a renewed social contract. Dewey’s oeuvre was clearly influenced by the rejuvenative assumptions of his nineteenth century Romantic precursors.

Unfortunately, a return to origins or the projection of initial states isn’t how the world works. It escaped Dewey’s proselytizing ardor that prior learning and hard study, guided by erudite masters, are necessary for a young person to discover what it is in the world that genuinely interests him and what his condign aptitudes really are. This is the only route to maturity, competence and achievement. “Nature’s priest” has no future unless he is a prince of learning. Failing to understand the need for pedagogical and curricular discipline, for a wide-ranging and classically imposed syllabus, and opting instead for catering benignity in both the formative and later stages of education is a surefire recipe for producing the moral narcissist who is his only truth. The casualties of this retrograde approach, in Peter Wood’s succinct articulation from his online essay The Architecture of Intellectual Freedom, are “men and women capable of wise and responsible stewardship of a free society.”

Dewey’s ideas percolated slowly through American culture and took off in the incendiary ’60s, with the free speech movement at Berkeley, the psychedelic dumbing down of the youth population, the takeover of the universities by student radicals, and the insidious inroads made by the destabilizing emigré Frankfurt School, especially Herbert Marcuse of “repressive tolerance” fame, who, in essence, popularized the Marxist theories of Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács. The world had to be purified by the exploited masses and remade in the image of youthful innocence, a revisionary project that inspired the young, the callow and the doctrinaire. These notions captured the American seminary and poisoned the minds of generations of students. After that, the die was cast, and America was on the road to becoming a European failure. CONTINUE AT SITE

Missouri‘s BLM state senator refuses to pledge allegiance to America By Timothy Birdnow

“What do you call a Muslim convert who was active in the Ferguson protests and won’t stand for the Pledge?”

Missouri state senator and Black Lives Matter protestor Jamilah Nasheed refused to stand along with her fellow legislators to recite the pledge of allegiance at the opening of a session of the Missouri senate.

The Muslim convert (she was born Jenise Williams) has been active in the Ferguson riots/protests, and although Ms. Rasheed has supported strict gun control laws, she was found in possession of a loaded firearm when she was arrested in front of the Ferguson city hall in 2014. (Nasheed also refused to take a breathalyzer.)

While there is no law compelling Ms. Rasheed to stand and recite the pledge, one wonders at a public servant (sic) willfully refusing to make a pledge to the country she is ostensibly serving. And one wonders why she is doing this now, when she freely pledged this same allegiance in the past. If she has changed her views and no longer deems America worthy of her allegiance, shouldn’t she be removed from her office?

The Missouri legislature can and should at least censure her, if not remove her from office. And since the GOP has a super majority it can be done.

Nasheed took an oath before assuming office. According to the Missouri Constitution:

Section 15. Every senator or representative elect, before entering upon the duties of his office, shall take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation: “I do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Missouri, and faithfully perform the duties of my office, and that I will not knowingly receive, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable thing for the performance or nonperformance of any act or duty pertaining to my office, other than the compensation allowed by law.” The oath shall be administered in the halls of the respective houses to the members thereof, by a judge of the supreme court or a circuit court, or after the organization by the presiding officer of either house, and shall be filed in the office of the secretary of state. Any senator or representative refusing to take said oath or affirmation shall be deemed to have vacated his office, and any member convicted of having violated his oath or affirmation shall be deemed guilty of perjury, and be forever disqualified from holding any office of trust or profit in this state.

While the Pledge of Allegiance is not the oath of office, her refusal to make it brings into question her support for the Constitution of the United States. As such, it can be argued she has vacated her office.

Migrants, Far-Right Group Clash in Eastern German Town Brawl is latest in a string of violent confrontations as nation struggles to integrate asylum seekers By Ruth Bender see note

Hmmm……not word here about the rapes, attacks the “refugees” have perpetrated in Germany…..rsk

BERLIN—Violent clashes erupted between young migrants and far-right sympathizers late Wednesday in the German town of Bautzen, the latest in a string of brawls amid rising anti-refugee sentiment.

Police in Bautzen said some 100 officers were forced to intervene after fighting broke out between a group of asylum seekers and about 80 demonstrators described as mainly from the “right-wing political spectrum.” The demonstrators were gathered at the town’s central square, propagating slogans such as “Bautzen to the Germans,” police said.
Between 15 to 20 asylum seekers living in a shelter in town threw stones at the neo-Nazis, who then attacked the migrants, police said. The confrontation escalated into street fights between the groups, Bautzen police chief Uwe Kilz said in a press conference.
When police intervened, the young asylum seekers who had come to Germany without their parents, threw bottles at officers, who used pepper spray and police batons to defend themselves, he added.

“I’m angry and shocked,” the Mayor of Bautzen Alexander Ahrens said in a statement. “I strongly condemn this violence and I say that very clearly, regardless of where it came from.”

Bautzen and other towns in eastern Germany have been the scene of tension between asylum seekers and local far-right extremists in recent months, highlighting the growing unrest in Germany, particularly in the East, over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policies.

In February, locals cheered when a fire broke out in a building in Bautzen that was set to be turned into an asylum-seeker shelter, sending shock waves through the country. When German President Joachim Gauck visited the town a few weeks later, he was heckled as a “traitor of the people” in the street.

Violence against asylum seekers has been surging since the migrants numbers peaked last year, particularly in the former communist states, according to police statistics. CONTINUE AT SITE

Germany’s Efforts to Integrate Migrants Into Its Workforce Falter Job openings and internships go unfilled because of language deficiencies, government bottlenecks By Friedrich Geiger

BERLIN—As the flow of asylum seekers entering Germany started to break historic records last fall, Continental AG rushed to tap some of the newcomers for its workforce.
But one year after the tire maker began advertising an internship program designed for 50 migrant workers, only 30 of the positions have been filled as it struggles to find suitable candidates or vet their qualifications.

Continental isn’t alone. Answering calls from Berlin to help in the country’s massive integration effort, German companies big and small have scouted refugee shelters and job centers for potential employees. Yet because of administrative bottlenecks and a mismatch in needed skills, the number of migrants in jobs with benefits was only about 25,000 higher in June than a year earlier, despite more than 736,000 arrivals in that time.

Frustrated with the slow pace of hiring, Chancellor Angela Merkel invited senior executives from the 121 companies behind a jobs-for-refugees initiative called “Us Together” to discuss their progress and difficulties on Wednesday.

More than 80 business leaders attended the three-hour meeting. Among those questioned by Ms. Merkel were top executives at Deutsche Bank AG and Lufthansa AG . “It is our common target to integrate more and more refugees into the labor market,” she said beforehand. “If we succeed, it will be a benefit for all.”

Afterward, an “Us Together” spokeswoman said there was “an open exchange” about existing projects.

Failure to integrate the recent arrivals into Germany’s economy, the largest in Europe, could seal Ms. Merkel’s political fate. The chancellor’s popularity has waned, and her party lost badly in recent regional elections as more Germans doubt the wisdom of opening the country’s doors, which has brought well over a million migrants into the country in the past 18 months. Ms. Merkel has until the general election next year to change their minds.CONTINUE AT SITE

Behind Boko Haram’s Split: A Leader Too Radical for Islamic State Extremist group’s appointment of rival commander could lead to one faction focusing on Christian targets, possibly reviving its public support By Yaroslav Trofimov

“In an implicit criticism of Boko Haram’s strategy until now, Mr. Barnawi told al-Naba that the jihadists should focus on combating Nigeria’s Christians—a target largely ignored by Mr. Shekau in recent years. The new approach should be “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all those we find from the citizens of the cross,” Mr. Barnawi announced.”

Some people can be too extreme even for Islamic State.

The self-proclaimed caliphate’s biggest and deadliest franchise outside the Middle East, the “West Africa Province” also known as Boko Haram, fractured in recent weeks over Islamic State’s decision to replace its notorious leader, Abubakar Shekau.

Mr. Shekau hasn’t recognized the August appointment of a rival Boko Haram commander, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, as the group’s new “governor.” The two factions have repeatedly clashed since then and their followers have accused each other of abandoning the true faith.

This split, while weakening Boko Haram in the immediate term, could have dramatic consequences for how jihadists continue their struggle in Nigeria and in neighboring countries. Boko Haram’s areas of influence were cut down by the recent offensives of regional militaries, which were aided by U.S., British and French advisers. But the group still controls large chunks of northeastern Nigeria and operates in parts of Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

Mr. Shekau took over Boko Haram after its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed in Nigerian police custody in 2009. He unleashed a strategy of unbridled terror, treating Muslim villages that didn’t join his organization as legitimate targets. Over the past year, he sent scores of children on suicide missions to blow up markets and mosques—with local Muslim civilians making up the vast majority of the casualties.

“You can’t really be more barbaric and more savage than Shekau. He’s the pinnacle of barbarism,” said Issoufou Yahaya, a political analyst and head of the history department at the Niamey University in Niger.

Dispatching child suicide bombers to Sunni mosques was apparently too much even for Islamic State’s leadership in Syria and Iraq. In August, the organization’s newspaper al-Naba published an interview with Mr. Barnawi that made no mention of Mr. Shekau. Instead it referred to Mr. Barnawi, who is rumored to be a son of the Nigerian group’s founder, Mr. Yusuf, as the new “governor” of the West Africa Province.

A surprised Mr. Shekau responded by accusing his rival of apostasy and by complaining that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been tricked.

Nigeria’s military, which has repeatedly announced Mr. Shekau’s death in the past, claimed to have seriously injured him in a late August airstrike. There has been no independent confirmation of that claim. CONTINUE AT SITE

Democrats’ Deplorable Emails How much to buy an ambassadorship? The answer is in the latest hacked messages. By Kimberley A. Strassel

If the 2016 election is remembered for anything beyond its flawed candidates, it will be recalled as the year of the Democratic email dump. Or rather, the year that the voting public got an unvarnished view of the disturbing—nay, deplorable—inner workings of the highest echelons of the Democratic Party.

What makes the continuing flood of emails instructive is that nobody was ever meant to see these documents. Hillary Clinton set up a private server to shield her communications as secretary of state from the public. She gave top aide Huma Abedin an account on that server. She never envisioned that an FBI investigation and lawsuits would drag her conversations into the light.

The Democratic National Committee and Colin Powell (an honorary Democrat) likewise believed their correspondence secure. But both were successfully targeted by hackers, who released the latest round of enlightening emails this week.

These emails provide what the public always complains it doesn’t have: unfiltered evidence of what top politicians do and think. And what a picture they collectively paint of the party of the left. For years, Democrats have steadfastly portrayed Republicans as elitist fat cats who buy elections, as backroom bosses who rig the laws in their favor, as brass-knuckle lobbyists and operators who get special access. It turns out that this is the precise description of the Democratic Party. They know of what they speak.

The latest hack of the DNC—courtesy of WikiLeaks via Guccifer 2.0—shows that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t alone in steering favors to big donors. Among the documents leaked is one that lists the party’s largest fundraisers/donors as of 2008. Of the top 57 cash cows 18 ended up with ambassadorships. The largest fundraiser listed, Matthew Barzun, who drummed up $3.5 million for Mr. Obama’s first campaign, was named ambassador to Sweden and then ambassador to the United Kingdom. The second-largest, Julius Genachowski, was named the head of the Federal Communications Commission. The third largest, Frank Sanchez, was named undersecretary of commerce. CONTINUE AT SITE