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2016

Ramadan Massacre in Orlando At least 50 dead and 53 wounded. Robert Spencer

It was the worst mass shooting ever on American soil: Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire at the Pulse, an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub, on Saturday night. Mateen murdered at least fifty people and wounded another 53. The death count is almost certain to go higher, as many are quite gravely wounded. Mateen was a Muslim who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and mentioned the Boston Marathon jihad killers in a 911 call just before he started shooting. Thus in the wake of the jihad massacre, it was time for the Leftist political and media elites to do what they always do first and foremost after every jihad massacre: make sure that no one thought ill of Islam.

The FBI, to its credit, immediately declared the massacre a terror attack, but Barack Obama was circumspect about what kind: he declared that it was too early to know “the precise motivations of the killer.” This despite the fact that not only had Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and made reference to the Tsarnaev brothers, but also the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the FBI is investigating reports that Mateen recited Islamic prayers during the massacre. On top of all that, the attack took place during the Muslim month of Ramadan, during which the Islamic State has called for jihad attacks against Americans.

Nonetheless, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with many other Leftists, tried to turn the jihad attack into a commercial for rolling back Americans’ Second Amendment rights, tweeting: “We mourn with the people of Orlando and the LGBT community as a whole on the news that -once again- we have lost precious lives to the gun.” Who knew that guns could be so diabolical and anti-gay?

Leftist responses ranged from the ominous to the absurd. Ominously, Facebook and Reddit turned to censorship to try to prevent people from thinking ill of Islam. Facebook removed the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) page, which had been up for six years and had over 55,000 members, and Reddit began banning people who dared to mention that the killer was a Muslim.

On the absurd side, ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio tweeted that the massacre was the fault of conservative Christians: “You know what is gross — your thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created this anti-queer climate.” Does the illustrious Strangio actually believe that Omar Mateen was incited to commit mass murder in the gay nightclub in Orlando by an “anti-queer climate” created by Christian conservatives? He probably does, since, as a Leftist, he knows that non-Muslims are always and everywhere to blame for atrocities that Muslims commit.

Imam Speaking in Orlando Said Gays Must Be Killed Out of ‘Compassion’ By Patrick Poole

There is new information on the horrific terror attack in Orlando last night that has killed at least 50 and wounded more than 100 in the largest mass shooting in American history.

Sources are telling the Daily Beast that suspected killer Omar Mateen had previously been investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014, making this yet another “known wolf” terror attack:

Omar Mateen of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, came to the attention of federal authorities twice prior to being identified as the gunman in the Orlando nightclub mass shooting, a senior law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.

Mateen 53 people and shot more than 100 in total at the Pulse gay nightclub early Sunday morning, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

The senior law enforcement source reports that Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.

“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.”

Mateen was a U.S. citizen; his parents are from Afghanistan, CBS News reports.

Man Arrested with Guns, Explosive Ingredient Reportedly Headed to L.A. Pride Parade

The FBI is already circling the wagons that Marteen was just “one of hundreds” of ISIS sympathizers known to the FBI:

A Month of Islam in Britain: May 2016 Child Sex Grooming, Prison Brainwashing and “Allah Knows Best” by Soeren Kern

“A Muslim man with way too many extremist links to be entirely coincidental is now the Mayor of London. … In a couple more decades Britain may well have its first Muslim Prime Minister. … Reality cannot argue with demographics, so the realistic future for Britain is Islamic.” — Paul Weston, British politician.

One-third of Muslim adults in Britain do not feel “part of British culture,” according to a new report on British multiculturalism. Nearly half (47%) of Muslims consider their Islamic faith to be the most important part of their identity.

The government was accused of burying a report on prison extremism which warns that staff have been reluctant to tackle Islamist behavior for fear of being labelled “racist,” according to the Sunday Times. Belmarsh, a maximum-security prison in London, has become “like a jihadi training camp,” according to testimony from a former inmate. There are more than 12,000 Muslims in prisons across England and Wales.

Former MP Ann Cryer suffered verbal abuse and was accused of “demonizing” the Asian community when she began a campaign more than a decade ago to get the authorities to tackle child sex grooming in Keighley.

“At the end of the assault, when Mr. Zimmerman was lying motionless and defenseless on the floor of the ticket hall, the defendant crouched over him and quite deliberately began to cut Mr. Zimmerman’s throat with a knife blade.” — Prosecutor in the attempted murder trial of Somalia-born Muhiddin Mire, who attacked a random stranger in the London Underground.

May 1. Mubashir Jamil, a 21-year-old man from Luton, was arrested on suspicion of attempting to travel to Syria and engage in “violent jihad” with the Islamic State. He was charged with “engaging in conduct in preparation for committing acts of terrorism.”

Orlando Shooting: Pickled in Hatred by Shoshana Bryen

The terrorists are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view.

The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember, we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.”

But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

It is a lot to process. Omar Mateen, the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub Sunday. The first surprise is that it was not a surprise, especially to the FBI. Mateen was the subject of investigations in 2013 and 2014. “He was a known quantity,” a source said. “He has been on the radar before.” But Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper told reporters, “Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going.”

Omar Mateen’s father probably wasn’t terribly surprised. He told NBC News “that his son became angry after seeing two men kissing a few months ago in Miami.” He speculated that could have triggered his decision to kill. “This has nothing to do with religion,” his father added.

Christian Human Rights Activist Jailed in Turkey by Robert Jones

Assyrian human rights activist Sawo Oshana Ide, accused of “being a member of an armed organization,” has been jailed in Turkey since February 18. The indictment does not mention which “armed organization.”

The second trial will be held June 16. The international community must not abandon him.

The Assyrian human rights activist Sawo Oshana Ide, accused of “being a member of an armed organization,” has been jailed in Turkey since February 18. The indictment does not mention which “armed organization” Sawo belongs to. According to Ide’s lawyer, Erkan Metin, “He is abstractly accused of doing research in accordance with the objectives of an organization and forming lists about ammunition.”

According to the Turkish penal code, it is a charge that can bring imprisonment for five to ten years.

According to Assyria TV, “the Turkish security forces stormed the apartment of Sawo Oshana Ide in Midyat, Turkey. The police took his computer and other notes. Thereafter, Sawo and his wife were taken into interrogation. Today in the afternoon, the police released Sawo’s wife but he was arrested on charges of collaborating with a terrorist organization.”

Orlando — An Act of War By Sonia Bailley

After over 50 Americans were brutally slaughtered and over 50 wounded on their own soil in the latest Islamic terrorism attack, it’s utterly shameful that President Obama cannot bring himself to say the words “radical Islam”. Equally abhorrent are Muslim Brotherhood groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), sending out their taqqiyah deception squads to feign sympathy for victims of Islamic terrorist attacks, and referring to this most recent bloodbath as a hate crime.

President Obama, not to mention Bernie Sanders, is calling for more gun control. Most Western world leaders and politicians are living in fantasyland when they blindly claim that guns are evil rather than condemn the supremacist ideology behind radical Islam, that believes gays, non-believers, apostates, and others, must die, as mandated in the Koran and other Islamic doctrine. “We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,” stated President Obama. Not a peep about radical Islamic terrorism.

Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton also refers to the Orlando jihadist attack as an act of terror and hate. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism,” Hillary tweeted in November. If Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, then why was only an imam — and not a rabbi, priest, or swami — invited to speak at the first press conference after the Orlando slaughter at the Pulse Nightclub?

Mujammad Musri, president and senior imam of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, also mentioned nothing about radical Islamic terrorism. The imam did, however, warn the media to refrain from “rushing to judgment and from sensationalizing the story, because we do not want the story to be shifted from the focus of what it is. It is a horrible tragedy.” But again, nothing about a jihadist attack.

Is it any wonder that attacks against American citizens are being perpetrated when funding and ideology are being exported from radical Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran to Islamic centers and schools in the U.S.? When radical imams from abroad are welcome to speak at U.S. universities and mosques?

Armoring Clinton against the FBI By Jonathan F. Keiler

Looking at the morning paper last Monday gave me a start, and not just because color photos of a wild-eyed Hillary Clinton with a pasted on smile still shock. The Washington Post headline screamed that Hillary had won the Democratic nomination, with stories following on the “historic” achievement. What’s this? I thought – did I sleep for three days? Is it Wednesday, with the results from the California primary already in?

The Post along with the rest of the mainstream media anointed Clinton the winner without giving poor Bernie Sanders a last-gasp West Coast chance. And, generally speaking, what critical analysis there was about Hillary’s sudden historic victory assumed that it was created by unallocated superdelegates to pre-empt a possible Sanders victory in California. That is almost certainly true. The other thing Clinton and her supporters in the media want to do by anointing her as early as possible is to pre-empt Hillary’s other nemesis, the FBI.

There was never much doubt that Hillary would win the nomination even if Sanders pulled out a victory in California. So whatever damage control the early victory announcement produced would have been cosmetic in any event. However, with respect to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Clinton’s home-brewed email server, the stakes are far higher and the early claim of victory more significant. The FBI is investigating likely violations of federal laws governing official record-keeping, maintaining classified information, evidence-tampering, obstruction of justice, and possible pay-for-play bribery through the Clinton foundation. Prosecution of any one of these infractions could reroute Hillary’s march to the Oval Office into a penitentiary.

Hillary knows that actual prosecution by the Obama administration’s Justice Department is a very long shot, even assuming that the FBI refers charges. Nonetheless, the mere referral of charges by the FBI to Justice would damage her campaign and increase doubt among a voting public that already overwhelmingly regards her as dishonest.

What FBI director James Comey intends is perhaps the greatest conundrum in Washington these days. Is he playing Hamlet to Hillary’s Claudius, introspective, doubtful, and unwilling to strike the killing blow? Is he just being a careful apolitical policeman? Or is he a political hack who will do what’s best for Jim Comey? Perhaps it’s a bit of all three. Whatever the truth, it is in Hillary’s best interest to discourage Comey as much as possible. Her early claim to be the Democrat nominee serves that purpose.

If Comey is an honest policeman, the best time for him to have acted was before Hillary claimed the nomination. Then he would only have been referring charges against another – albeit notorious – private citizen. After the nomination, Hillary becomes not only the standard bearer of one of America’s two great political parties, but a “historic” figure as the first woman to do so. As such, it behooved both Hillary and her backers in the media to reach that point ASAP.

Democrats tussle over adding occupation’ to party platform By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Democratic Party’s platform drafting committee tussled over whether to use the word “occupation” in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue, reflecting divisions between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton camps that could play out at the convention.

The Democratic National Committee held two days of open hearings this week in Washington, D.C., on the platform, inviting experts to testify. The hearings, which will also take place in other cities, got underway the same week that it became clear that Clinton had secured her position as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Much of the back and forth Thursday afternoon, when the committee considered foreign policy, was about whether the committee should describe Israel’s presence in the West Bank as an “occupation.”

Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont who remains in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, appointed five members to the 15-member committee, including three who have advocated for Palestinian rights in the past: Cornel West, a philosopher who backs for the boycott Israel movement; James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Clinton appointed six committee members.

West said during the hearing that the party’s platform should include the word “occupation,” suggesting that to do otherwise would mean being “beholden” to American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC staffers were in the room, as were staffers from other pro-Israel groups, including J Street.

Sticking with the narrative

At least 50 people are dead in Florida, killed for their presumed homosexuality by a Muslim who proclaimed his allegiance to ISIS as he opened fire in a nightclub that proudly proclaimed itself “a gun free zone”.

The conclusion, according to the for-the-moment US president, is that more laws must be passed to restrict access to guns:

“How easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theater or in a nightclub,” a reference to other mass killings that have punctuated recent US history.

“We have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be.”

The simple act of passing laws, of course, solves every conceivable problem at a stroke. That is why no America smokes marijuana or snorts cocaine, because there are laws that declare such activities illegal. Similarly, should America’s Second Amendment ever be overturned, no one bent on using terror to make a point will ever be able to obtain a weapon.

Obama: ‘We’ are to blame, not Islamic terrorism for massacre” John Podhoretz

Omar Mateen called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS as he was carrying out his mass murderer in Orlando early Sunday morning. Twelve hours later, the president of the United States declared that “we have no definitive assessment on the motivation” of Omar Mateen but that “we know he was a person filled with hate.”

So I guess the president thinks Mateen didn’t mean it?

Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the reality of the Islamist terror war against the United States and how it is moving to our shores in the form of lone-wolf attacks.

He called it “terror,” which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease “cancer” without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.

So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that “we need the strength and courage to change” our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

That’s just disgusting. There’s no other word for it.