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2016

White House Says It Has Not ‘Reached’ Determination That ISIS Slaughter of Christians Is Genocide Susan Jones

(CNSNews.com) – Asked on Monday if Islamic State terrorists are carrying out a campaign of genocide against Syria’s Christians, White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said the word genocide “involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached.”

He condemned the terrorists’ “willingness to target religious minorities, including Christians.”

Earnest noted that the Obama administration has long expressed its concerns over ISIS/ISIL’s “slaughter” of religious minorities in Iraq and Syria.

“You’ll recall, at the very beginning of the military campaign against ISIL, at the–some of the first actions that were ordered by President Obama, by the United States military were to protect Yazidi religious minorities that were essentially cornered on Mount Sinjar by ISIL fighters. We took those strikes to clear a path so that those religious minorities could be rescued.

“So we have long been concerned by the way that–that ISIL attempts to target religious minorities.

“We also know that they target Christians in the area, too. In that region of the world, Christians are a religious minority, and we certainly have been concerned–you know, that’s one of the many reasons that we’re concerned with ISIL and their tactics, which is that it’s an affront to our values as a country to see people attacked, singled out or slaughtered based on their religious beliefs.”

The reporter asked Earnest, “But you’re not prepared to use the word ‘genocide’ yet in this situation?”

“The — my understanding is the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached. But we’ve been quite candid and direct, exactly, about how — how ISIL’s tactics are worthy of the kind of international, robust response that the international community is leading. And those tactics include a willingness to target religious minorities, including Christians.”

As CNSNews.com recently reported, Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress last week that he is having an “additional evaluation” done to help him determine whether the systematic murder of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East should be declared “genocide.”

Palestinians: The Right Time to Take Big Steps? by Bassam Tawil

Despite the “official” surveys taken among Palestinians, which show support for Hamas, the residents of the West Bank are terrified that Hamas will gain control and destroy our lives and property, the way they did in the Gaza Strip.

The BDS organizations are trying to boycott products made in the West Bank, which only throws masses of Palestinians out of good jobs in an effort to force Israel into a hasty withdrawal that has no chance of taking place. The Israelis and everyone else remember all too well that the last Israeli withdrawals — from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip — led to the terrorist takeover of the vacuums created.

Ikrima Sabri, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, often said that Palestinians were better off with the Jews in charge of Al-Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem, because in the future they could be removed and killed off, but if the Crusaders returned to Jerusalem — such as an international commission headed by the French — it would be harder to get rid of them.

During a visit to Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu that now is not time to move forward with the “two-state solution” and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Merkel, evidently seeing Israel as a dam protecting Europe from Islamist extremists, told Netanyahu that while the Germans recognized the terrorist threat faced by Israel, and that a peace process had to be advanced based on two states for two peoples, now was not the right time to take big steps.

FBI Investigating whether Hillary Shared Secret Passwords with Aides for Access to Classified Material By Debra Heine

In another exclusive for Fox News, intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports that the FBI is investigating whether Hillary Clinton shared computer passwords with her closest aides to allow sensitive intelligence to “jump the gap” between the classified systems and Clinton’s unsecured homebrew server. The government forbids sending or storing classified information outside secure, government-controlled channels, and has prosecuted employees for violations.

An intelligence source familiar with the Clinton probe told Fox News that “if [Clinton] was allowing other people to use her passwords, that is a big problem.” The sharing of passwords is strictly prohibited in the Foreign Service Officers Manual.

Such passwords are required to access each State Department network. This includes the network for highly classified intelligence — known as SCI or Sensitive Compartmented Information — and the unclassified system, known as SBU or Sensitive But Unclassified, according to former State Department employees.

According to Herridge, there are several potential ways classified information could have gotten onto Clinton’s server:

Reading intelligence reports or briefings, and then summarizing the findings in emails sent on Clinton’s unsecured personal server.
Accessing the classified intelligence computer network, and then lifting sections by typing them verbatim into a device such as an iPad or BlackBerry.
Taking pictures of a computer screen to capture the intelligence.

Trump Gives Another Hint About Abandoning Supporters on All Things Immigration By Stephen Kruiser

Last week, I pointed out that Donald Trump is a bit too comfortable with standard Democrat talking points regarding illegal immigration.

In Thursday’s debate, he tip-toed to the left a little more.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Thursday he is softening his stance on visas for highly-skilled workers.

“I’m changing. We need highly-skilled people in this country,” Trump said during the Fox News Republican debate in Detroit. “If we can’t do it, we will get them in.”

Trump’s stance toward awarding H1-B visas is different from the one he takes on his campaign website, which argues that more visas for highly-skilled foreigners would “decimate American workers.”

“One of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges … as soon as they’re finished, they get shoved out. They want to stay in this country,” Trump said at the debate. “They want to stay here desperately. They’re not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brainpower in this country.”

Trump said he was now in favor of the H1B-visa program – despite what his website still says.

“So you are abandoning the position on your website?” Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly asked.

“I’m changing it and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country,” Trump said.

It Ain’t Even Close to Over By Joe Herring

With Super Tuesday receding in the rearview mirror, it is prudent to turn our attention to the road ahead. This isn’t an ordinary election year – at least not in the fashion we have come to know in the post-WWII era – where primaries and caucuses easily winnow the field of candidates without upending the process itself.

This view, however, is a relatively recent phenomenon. For a far longer period, the nominating convention was much more consequential than the state events that preceded it. Yes, primaries and caucuses were held, but the real decisions were made behind the scenes, at the convention, where alliances were struck and deals were made to coalesce support behind the strongest (or best connected) candidate. Ever heard the phrase “smoky backroom deals”?

The states choose the candidate to whom their delegates (delegates to the nominating convention) will be pledged for the first floor vote. Typically, by the time of the convention, a candidate has amassed enough delegates to win the nomination on the first vote. However, if no single candidate has enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination on the first vote, all delegates are released from their obligations and can vote however they choose in each subsequent vote.

Here’s where the deals are made. Here’s where second- and third-place candidates jockey for position (cabinet posts, ambassadorships, etc.) in return for urging their pledged delegates to support someone else.

It is this moment where the frontrunner is naked and exposed, vulnerable in the extreme, and it is this moment where a popular but politically naïve or poorly organized candidate can see his presumed nomination dissipate like so much smoke.

The Netanyahu Legacy vs. Obama Legacy By Jim Pettit

U.S.-Israeli relations reached a low point one year ago yesterday as the White House scolded Congress over allowing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak directly to the American people through an address to a joint session. Nevertheless, from the well of the U.S. House of Representatives last March, the Prime Minister delivered his speech about the perils of the Iran nuclear deal, and now a recent poll suggests the message was received.

A Gallup poll released last month finds 30% of Americans approve, while 57% disapprove of the Iran nuclear deal. Along party lines, the difference is far more drastic, as a meager 9% of Republicans approve of the agreement compared to a slight majority of 51% of Democrats. Also telling is that only 30% of Independents support it. Gallup concludes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s disapproval may have helped “shape the sour national mood on this issue.”

Yes it is sour; a word defined in this context as “harsh in spirit, or temper.” But it was not Mr. Netanyahu who was sour, because at the beginning of his remarks the Prime Minister recounted longstanding ties between the two countries, citing specific instances where President Obama assisted Israel in recent years. It was U.S. politicians who shaped the sour national mood.

President Obama, who refused to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu while he was in Washington at that crucial moment, also made sure the world knew he wasn’t planning on watching the speech, dismissing it altogether afterwards. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she was “moved to tears” during Netanyahu’s address because the speech took place without the Obama Administration’s blessing, and nearly 60 Democrats in Congress refused to attend.

Muslims and the Maypole By Eileen F. Toplansky

Since 2006, when Bruce Bawer wrote his illuminating book entitled While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, the situation has worsened tenfold. Not surprisingly, when his book was first published, Bawer was accused of Islamophobia. Yet as early as 1998, Bawer noted the widening divisions between the liberal and democratic policies of the Netherlands and the fact that “Dutch Muslims kept that society at arm’s length, despising its freedoms[.]”

In the late 1990s, Bawer and his male partner decided to live in Amsterdam because it seemed to him to be “the one place [he’d] ever been where homophobia really seemed to have disappeared.” He felt that the Netherlands had moved from the “foolishness of [American] fundamentalism,” and although he loved America “not because of its wealth or power, but because of its culture and values,” he wanted to really know what it meant to be an American by living elsewhere as a means of contrast.

Once in the Netherlands, Bawer began to appreciate “American virtues” that he’d always taken for granted – most importantly a “belief in the future.” He found that while he enjoyed the culture of Europe, he also saw that much of Western Europe was “bound up with a stifling conformity, a discomfort with excellence and an overt disapproval of those who strove too visibly to better their lot” – in short, “mediocrity.” He saw that France and Germany were “plagued by low growth and rising unemployment, a direct consequence of welfare state policies.” He also realized that Europeans “had been fed a zero-sum understanding of economics.”

In addition, he perceived that “fundamentalist Muslims were on the march and their numbers and power were large and growing rapidly – and the ultimate objective was far more than a ban on abortion or gay marriage.” A sea change was overtaking Europe that involved female genital mutilation, viewing women as property, and subsidies from the Dutch state as well as from Islamic governments that taught hatred of Jews, Israel, America, and the West. The very countries that these Muslims were living in were to be scorned, since they were meant to be replaced by a Muslim caliphate governed according to sharia law.

But surely, Bawer believed, this could not be permitted. He naively presumed that such contempt for pluralism, open-mindedness, democracy, and sexual equality would not be tolerated. Instead, political correctness, spineless leaders, and Islamic intimidation worked their magic so that in 1998, “Europeans were clueless” as to what was occurring under their very noses.

EU’s Tusk Tells Economic Migrants to Stop Coming to Europe European council president says countries cannot act as transit states any more By Nektaria Stamouli in Athens and Emre Peker in Istanbul

European Council President Donald Tusk appealed to economic migrants to stop coming to Europe, saying they shouldn’t try to risk their lives at the hands of smugglers as the path into the European Union constricts.

He was meeting on Thursday with leaders in Greece and Turkey, two countries that are playing a key role in the bloc’s efforts to stem the tide of migrants.

“I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money,” Mr. Tusk said after meeting with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens. “It is all for nothing. Greece or any other European country will no longer be a transit country.”

Balkan countries and Austria are restricting their borders, moves that have left huge numbers stuck at the Greece-Macedonia border. In the Greek town of Idomeni, more than 10,000 people are stranded at a camp built for 1,500 and more than 30,000 are stuck throughout the country.

Mr. Tsipras said his country would continue to try to help migrants, just not at any cost.

“Greece will not leave anyone helpless,” he said. Greece would “create centers for temporary hospitality,” but the country won’t become “a warehouse of souls.”

Greek authorities are trying to reduce the crush at the border with Macedonia and prepare new camps further south with the aim to distribute those stranded all over Greece. But many migrants say they fear they may be detained indefinitely in the new camps. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump a ‘Unifier’? Not Quite His favorable rating even within the Republican Party keeps dropping. Kimberley Strassel

The Donald Trump that showed up at his Super Tuesday news conference was a different Donald Trump than we’ve seen before. We’ve witnessed angry Trump, flustered Trump, (at least once) gracious Trump, and exuberant Trump. This was presidential Trump. Kind of.

The presidential bit was Mr. Trump’s pivot toward the general election, and his promise that he is a “unifier” who is creating “a much bigger party” that can’t be “beat.” He then reverted to true Trump style to warn that if Republican power players succeeded in taking him out, they’d also take out his new loyalists, meaning the party would “lose everything” in November.

Both claims are worthy of some analysis. GOP turnout, no question, is epic. More than 8.5 million people turned out for Republican races on Super Tuesday, a stunning 81% higher than the 4.7 million in 2012. (The other side, by contrast, saw turnout fall 32% from 2008, the last contested Democratic primary.) Vermont aside, every single Republican primary and caucus has drawn record numbers.

Let’s stipulate that Mr. Trump is behind some of this. Both surveys and anecdotal evidence show that he is pulling new people to the polls. Yet let’s also stipulate that so, too, are the other Republican candidates. The reality is that a lot of Americans are rebelling against the Obama presidency. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich are inspiring their own droves. CONTINUE AT SITE

The HillaryFiles Continue With More Israel Trash Talking From Blumenthal : Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Blumenthal repeatedly told Clinton the U.S. must punish Israel for “wrongdoings.” Clinton’s response? ‘Pls print.’

On May 31, 2010, there was an historic confrontation between the Israeli Navy and six ships sailing from Turkey, seeking to blow up the internationally-recognized legal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Starting the very morning of the incident, Sidney Blumenthal began emailing Hillary Clinton, haranguing her to treat this grave tragedy as a whip with which to lash Israel.

Blumenthal also sent screeds written by his unhinged son Max, who insisted that the entire incident was orchestrated in advance by a bloodthirsty Israel as a means to blow up the peace process.

But this confrontation, known as the Mavi Marmara raid – after the lead Turkish ship – or as the Gaza Flotilla built to a crescendo when the IHH-terrorists aboard the ship ignored repeated warnings to change course and steer towards the Israeli coastal town of Ashdod, just north of Gaza. When the ships refused to heed the directions, elite IDF naval commandos were lowered from helicopters by ropes, onto the ship’s deck.