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January 2017

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Yazidi Girls Sold as Sex Slaves while Women March against Trump by Uzay Bulut

By on January 24th, 2017

Some Yazidi girls were “sold” for a few packs of cigarettes.

“Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day. ISIS militias have burned many Yezidi girls alive for refusing to convert… Why? Because we are not Muslims…” — Mirza Ismail, chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization-International.

“This is genocide against women.” — Zeynep Kaya Cavus, leading Alevi activist.

Sadly, many of the organizers and participants of the “Women’s March” in Washington chose to ignore women being tortured and exterminated by Islamic terrorists, and in other parts of the world, not to receive an education or even leave the house without the permission of a male.

If only these women felt as motivated to protest about the enslavement, rape and torture of Yazidi women and children, as about the cost of tampons.

On January 21, some women’s rights groups organized “Women’s Marches” in many cities across the Unites States and around the world. The rallies largely targeted Donald Trump, the recently-inaugurated U.S. President.

There were many speakers and participants. One, an actress, Ashley Judd, read a poem in Washington D.C. that asked why “tampons are taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not”.

As Mrs. Judd talked about her devastating tragedy, thousands of Yazidi children and women were being forced into sexual slavery in Iraq and Syria at the hands of Islamic State (ISIS), and available for purchase at sex-slave markets.

While actress Ashley Judd complained at a Washington D.C. “Women’s March” that “tampons are taxed when Viagra and Rogaine are not,” thousands of Yazidi children and women were being forced into sexual slavery in Iraq and Syria at the hands of Islamic State.

ISIS attacked the Yazidi (or Yezidi) homeland of Shingal in Iraq on August 3, 2014; more than 9,000 Yazidis were killed, kidnapped, or sexually enslaved. Yazidis are a historically persecuted religious minority in the Middle East.

The Islamic State has institutionalized a culture of rape and sex-slavery. ISIS is waging a literal war against women. It has even published a “price list” of Yazidi and Christian girls — as young as one to nine years of age.

Middle East scholar Raymond Ibrahim wrote about one Yazidi girl enslaved when she was 15 and endured months of captivity before she managed to escape:

“I remember a man who looked at least 40 years old coming and taking a ten-year-old girl. When she resisted him, he beat her severely, using stones, and would have opened fire on her if she had not gone with him. Everything against her will. They used to come and buy the girls without a price, I mean, they used to tell us Yazidi girls, you are sabiya [spoils of war, sex slaves], you are kuffar [infidels], you are to be sold without a price,” meaning they had no base value. Some Yazidi girls were sold for a few packs of cigarettes.

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Wilders to Prime Minister Rutte: Stop Deceiving the People by Geert Wilders

By on January 24th, 2017

Prime Minister Rutte ran an election advertisement in today’s newspapers.
And I have a message to this prime minister.

Stop with the deceit of the Netherlands. Stop deceiving your own people.

There is absolutely no-one who still believes you.

It was you, who caused the loss of our freedom, our security, and our culture.
It was you, who governed with the Labor Party; you, who conducted dangerous open borders policy.
You, who even allowed terrorists to freely travel in and out of the Netherlands.
You, who have given Islam free rein.
Why don’t you talk about that?
Four years of Mark Rutte means four years of, every day, a little less Netherlands.

Why do you not talk about Islamization?
Why do you not talk about terror?
Why don’t we hear you about the billions that are spent every year on Africa, Brussels and all those fortune-seekers, rather than on our own people?
Why don’t you mention the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and immigrants whom you’ve allowed into our country?
That is the biggest threat to our country.
That is what you, as prime minister, should never have allowed to happen.
It is your fault and no-one else’s.
And if we continue the way you are doing now, then the Netherlands will soon cease to exist.
Then there will be only one standard in this country: Islam. And we will have lost our beautiful country.

But we will not allow that to happen, because this is the land of all those millions of Dutch whom you have let down.
The millions of people whom you have cheated and robbed of their own country.
But, together with them, we will reconquer the Netherlands from the elite, from Islam, and from you, Mr. Rutte.
It’s time that you leave.
And, on March 15th, the Netherlands will become ours again.

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Ned Barnett: Do Trump Appointees Understand Climate Change?

By on January 24th, 2017

In the Senate’s ongoing confirmation hearings, knee-jerk liberals keep asking President Trump’s appointees – even though the question is totally irrelevant to the secretaries being questioned – about global warming (AGW, for anthropogenic global warming), aka global climate change. Surprisingly, most of those appointees have affirmed their “belief” in climate change. In the light of the president’s deletion of all mentions of AGW and climate change from the White House website at high noon on January 20, those appointees might want to reconsider their stance. In affirming the “reality” of AGW, these cabinet appointees buy into the two points that liberal climate fanatics seem to miss, but which President Trump seems to get.

First, when, for a decade, the globe’s temperatures refused to budge, those doctrinaire doomsayers who publicly “believe” in their patently corrupted “climate science” quietly tried to change the subject. Without making a big deal out of what is, after all, a very big deal, those obsessive climate Gore-clones tried to move away from decrying global warming and toward viewing with alarm their new menace, global climate change.

Their reasoning is simple. When the globe stopped getting hotter in the late 1990s, and since these facts slipped out despite all that “climate scientists” could do, the view-with-alarmists had to move to a more defensible position. After all, the globe’s dynamic climate changes every day. No two days are alike. Never have been, never will be. So they can actually tell the “truth” when they point to “climate change.”

These private-sector doomsayers were supported by Obama’s own climate minions – bought and paid for “experts” working for NASA and NOAA, as well as those over at the Pentagon – and even in the CIA – who had been commanded to buy into the absurd fiction that climate change is America’s greatest threat. With that “official” position about to change, President Trump’s go-along-to-get-along nominees might want to rethink their position.

The bigger issue these climate-waffling appointees need to address is one the doomsayers never admit to. President Trump seems to grasp this bigger issue, if only because he has often referred to both AGW as a hoax. His cabinet nominees should ponder this and pay close attention to the logical fallacy President Trump sees lurking behind the entire issue of climate change.

The only way AGW could possibly be important is if there were just one perfect, ideal global climate that benefits everyone and harms no one. If you follow the climate fanatics’ flawed logic, that one ideal, perfect global climate was that unnamed benchmark year, sometime in the 1980s. Those grant-addicted “climate scientists” can’t agree on a benchmark year, but climate fear-mongers act as if any variation from that perfect Year Zero benchmark climate must be a bad change.

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U.N. Unlikely to Find a Middle East Balance What is essential for Israeli-Palestinian peace is direct negotiation by both sides without preconditions. Two Letters

By on January 24th, 2017

The essential action required for the U.N. to achieve the long sought for amicable solution to the Israeli/Palestinian dispute isn’t to declare that Palestinian refugees from the 1947-49 war have no legal right to return to Israel (“The U.N. Can Find Balance in the Middle East” by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz, op-ed, Jan. 13). The five million refugees already have, unlike any other refugees in the world, a special U.N. agency sustaining them. If the Palestinian Authority’s demands are fully satisfied, there will neither be a Jewish state nor a democratic state.

What is essential are direct negotiations by both sides without preconditions. In Moscow, Fatah and Hamas officials are once more attempting to unify into a single Palestinian unit. But negotiations between the two opposing Palestinian groups in many previous attempts have failed. In Resolution 2334 the U.N. should have demanded free elections within Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem before any negotiations, to determine which party and leaders represent the majority of the electorate and are therefore qualified to negotiate—without preconditions—with democratic Israel. Not doing so confirms the bias of the U.N. toward Israel, noted in U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power’s speech before justifying the U.S. abstention vote. When will the U.N. stop treating Israel like a banana republic?

Bertrand Horwitz

Asheville, N.C.

The writers state: Security Council “Resolution 2334 forcefully reasserted the 1949 Armistice line . . . which separates the West Bank from the state of Israel.”

This is the reverse of the truth. By attempting to define the border between Israel and Palestinian territory, the resolution directly contradicted the armistice agreement, which states: “The Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary, and is delineated without prejudice to rights, claims and positions of either Party to the Armistice as regards ultimate settlement of the Palestine question.” It thus leaves Israeli claims to that area intact until an agreement is reached.

Stanley Shapiro

Teaneck, N.J.

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Congress Has Already Started to Repeal ObamaCare Expanding a provision in one of the last laws Obama signed could help undo his signature initiative. By John C. Goodman

By on January 24th, 2017

The provision was buried deep in a 1,000-page bill that Congress passed in December by large bipartisan majorities. Most lawmakers probably didn’t know it was there. Yet it is the start of an answer to the biggest question on Washington’s mind: What to do about ObamaCare?

The 21st Century Cures Act, which President Obama signed Dec. 13, focuses mainly on helping patients obtain breakthrough drugs and medical devices. But it also includes provisions that will give small employers—those with fewer than 50 workers—more flexibility in the insurance marketplace. As Republicans debate how to replace ObamaCare, giving that same flexibility to all employers would be a perfect place to start.

One reason that most Americans get health insurance through work is that there are tax advantages for doing so: Employers can pay for the insurance with pretax dollars. If companies wanted to simply give their workers cash, and let the employees choose their own insurance, that money would be taxed by Uncle Sam.

The problem is that this system ties the worker’s insurance to his job. If he quits, he loses coverage. Polls have consistently shown that what employees most want in health insurance is portability. They want to own their policy and take it from job to job.

Many companies would like to accommodate this by giving employees a “defined contribution”—a fixed amount of money—and letting them choose their own health insurance. Thanks to the 21st Century Cures Act, small employers now can do this. They can put pretax dollars into accounts called Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or HRAs. Workers can then use that money to buy their own health coverage.

This represents an abrupt reversal of policy. Since 2015 the Obama administration has been threatening to punish any employer who used HRA accounts in this way with a fine as high as $100 per employee per day.

Small companies were already exempt from ObamaCare’s employer mandate, but this has taken on increased importance. They are now the only employers that can choose how health insurance will be subsidized by the federal government. They can (1) use pretax dollars to provide health insurance directly; (2) pay higher taxable wages and allow the employees to buy their own insurance, benefiting from the ObamaCare tax credits if they quality; or (3) put pretax dollars into an HRA. Extending this freedom to all employers would be a remarkably effective solution to ObamaCare’s many problems.

One reason so little progress has been made in increasing employer-based coverage is that larger companies are meeting the law’s minimum requirements by offering low-wage workers bronze ObamaCare plans. But these plans might have deductibles of $6,000 or more and premiums equal to 9.5% of the employee’s wage. Workers routinely reject this kind of coverage.

What if these firms were given the same choice that small businesses have? What if they could put money into an HRA for each employee, which the worker could then use to purchase coverage on his own, with the help of tax credits? CONTINUE AT SITE

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A Veto for Scott Pruitt Reversing the lawless Pebble Mine veto would send a good message.

By on January 24th, 2017

The Trump Administration has a long to-do list, not least at a lawless Environmental Protection Agency. Sending early signals will be important, and one opportunity for Administrator nominee Scott Pruitt would be to revoke the Pebble Mine veto.

In February 2014 the EPA took the unprecedented step of issuing a pre-emptive veto, blocking a proposal to create America’s largest copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska. The veto was a message to every developer that EPA would stop any project the environmental left opposed—with no hearing and sham science.

Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers has the primary job of evaluating projects. The law gives EPA a secondary role of reviewing a project, and then potentially vetoing one—though only with cause. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s decision to veto before Pebble had even applied for permits or received a Corps review was a first in the Clean Water Act’s history.

A subsequent 346-page investigation (requested by Pebble) by former Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen provided evidence that EPA had decided on its veto as early as 2010. That was well before native tribes (with EPA encouragement) asked the agency to intervene. EPA then built a façade of science and procedure, inventing a phony watershed assessment based on a hypothetical mine to justify its veto.

Internal agency documents show that EPA staff and officials were also in constant contact with activists who opposed the mine. The Cohen report noted that the evidence raised “serious concerns as to whether EPA orchestrated the process to reach a predetermined outcome; had inappropriately close relationships with anti-mine advocates; and was candid about its decision-making process.”

The Pebble veto is above all a trammeling of state’s rights. Alaska owns the land for the project and protested EPA’s decision to cut the Corps and state out of the process. The Pebble proposal is controversial even in Alaska, with arguments on both sides. But the state’s residents, legislators and regulators were robbed of influence by a federal agency that pre-empted the normal process. The EPA essentially set itself up as the sole regulator of every watershed in the country.

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Nidra Poller: Sweet & Sour Paris Peace Conference

By on January 24th, 2017

Given a choice, monsieur the diplomat, between two International Peace Conferences-Kazakhstan for Syria or Paris for the Middle East- which would you prefer? Would you like to plough your brain trying to sort out the Islamist rebels from the plain Islamists, finding someone less brutal to replace Assad and a few factions to support him, resisting pressure from the Russians, Iranians, Turks, Hezbollah and the like? Wouldn’t you rather sit around a table in Paris, rubbing shoulders with distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and repeating that it is urgent to settle the “oldest conflict” by finally implementing the oldest solution: two states side by side in security?

For low ranking journalists that didn’t have the chance to come anywhere near the delegations, “covering” the Conference meant receiving the elevated address of Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault who would present the conclusions reached by the diplomats united in a spirit of sincere friendship for the parties to the conflict. (The day after the Conference, that hasn’t generated much interest worldwide, documents in several languages and videos of some speeches were posted on the Ministry site. http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr.)

I easily found a seat in the second row. Most of the people around me were speaking Arabic. I don’t usually cover events in the ministries. My stamping ground is more in the neighborhood of the UPJF, the BNVCA, and defamation hearings at the Palais de Justice. I greeted Gideon Kuntz, didn’t see any familiar faces… until a woman took a seat on my left, turned to me, and said: “I know you.” Right. We met about ten days ago at a party thrown by a journalist friend. Hustle and bustle near the door. The minister will enter any minute. My fellow American gives me some inside information: “A little while ago I was sitting next to a Palestinian. He told me that the father of one of the female soldiers killed in Jerusalem wrote on his Facebook page, ‘What can you expect when we keep them cooped up like that?'” Brushing aside a dozen reactions that tumbled around in my mind, I answered like a good journalist: “Could be. We’d have to verify it.” She shrugs: “It’s Facebook.” And I say to myself: “It’s a Palestinian.” The minister walks in, accompanied by about 15 people that line up along the wall.

Busy taking notes in my red moleskin notebook with my real fountain pen, I don’t even have the fun of observing the audience. Except for the bald head of Harlem Désir, foreign relations secretary of the Socialist party, seated right in front of me. I wished I could remind him of his gallantry that day in 1990 when a momentous wind storm caught us on the top floor of the Arche de la Défense, during an encounter with delegates from Central Europe. Maybe they represented the new democracies? The wind forced open the sliding glass doors and came barreling into the hall. You could see the wind, it was light green and terrifying. After a long wait someone finally came to take us to an elevator that brought us down to an exit at the top of a long flight of stairs. The wind was too strong, it almost blew me away, I grabbed onto Harlem Désir who escorted me all the way to the metro entrance. Those were different times.

Today, too, the times have changed. The arrogant disdain for Israel that marked the first yeas of the century has morphed here into moderate, measured benevolence, all soft and gentle. Everything about the Conference, from the motivation, hopes, and concerns, to the final recommendations is dipped in the honey of sincere egalitarian friendship. Everything is unanimous, they are all united in the same spirit, they all condemned the horrible terror attack in Jerusalem and all forms of violence and incitement to violence. But. But resolution 2334 of the UN Security Council denounced the colonization; this decision is “stamped with international legality, it’s serious.” To show just how serious that condemnation is, the minister used a strange expression: “it is the voice of the world that spoke.”

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Threats v. Buffoonery — The Case of Madonna By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 24th, 2017

At the Washington Examiner, Byron York compiles photo evidence of the freak show that Saturday’s “Women’s March” devolved into — “Women’s March” being the euphemism for the hard-left anti-Trump protest whose organizers excluded pro-life and conservative women. The lowlight of the affair was a rant by the moronic Madonna. Between F-bombs, the aging “Material Girl” proclaimed, “Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. But I know that won’t change anything.”

It is perfectly appropriate for critics to highlight this bile and mark it indelibly on Saturday’s protest march. It’s even fine to link it with the rioting at the inauguration the day before as indicative of the modern community-organizer left’s notions of dissent and civility. What would really be poor judgment, though, is to equate the fading pop star’s idiocy with felony violations of law.

There are some reports that the Secret Service will open an investigation. That agency, of course, enforces such laws as section 871 of the federal penal code, which makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, to “knowingly and willfully” threaten murder, kidnapping, or the infliction of bodily harm against the president of the United States.

Even taken at face value, Madonna’s bombast was not such a threat. If you take her seriously (I don’t), the most she said was that she had fantasized about doing President Trump harm but realizes this would be pointless. Would that Madonna had kept all her fantasies to herself lo these many decades. In any event, her remarks were not in the nature of “I’m going to blow up the White House,” or “We should go blow up the White House.”

There is often some subtlety involved in discerning threatening statements or distinguishing them from harmless commentary. If you are called to testify at a trial and a friend says, “You better tell the truth on the witness stand tomorrow,” that is good advice. On the other hand, if Luca Brasi shows up on your doorstep with a baseball bat the night before your testimony and utters the exact same words, that is a threat. The circumstances make all the difference. But c’mon: there has never been anything subtle about Madonna.

The incident would not be worth commenting on except that we are in a time when the Left is cracking down on political speech everywhere – on campus, in the media (including social media), in regulations and resolutions. That is the threat to fret over. I realize that, on a gut level, many will find it appealing to imagine Madonna blubbering her way through a visit from a couple of stern Secret Service agents who warn her to be careful when she speaks about the president. But that is exactly the thing we shouldn’t want.

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Germany’s ‘Alternative’ Party is Toxic and Dangerous BY David P. Goldman

By on January 24th, 2017

I note with disgust that the Dutch nationalist politician Geert Wilders endorsed Germany’s Alternative fuer Deutschland, a nest of unreconstructed Nazis masquerading as right-wing populists.

As Breitbart reported (citing AFP) last week, national outrage greeted a speech by a leading figure in the Alternative fuer Deutschland party calling for Germany to stop apologizing for the Nazis.

“AfD politician calls for Germany to stop atoning for Nazi past” — Daily Telegraph, January 18, 2017.

Björn Höcke called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s attitude to the Second World War and condemned the national Holocaust memorial as a “monument of shame”.

“Our mentality is still that of a totally defeated people,” Mr Höcke said in a speech in a Dresden beer hall on Tuesday night.

“We Germans, our people, are the only people in the world who planted a monument of shame in the middle of our national capital.”

Mr Höcke said that German history had been made to look “lousy and ridiculous” in schools, and promised the AfD would “rewrite the history books” if it came to power.

“This ridiculous coping policy paralyzes us, We need a complete 180-degree turn,” he said. “Until now, we have not been able to mourn our own sacrifice.”

AfD leader Frauke Petry meanwhile proposed to revive the Nazi-era term “voelkisch” (which then simply meant “Aryan”).

Last summer the moderate nationalists in the AfD left the party after it refused to expel an openly anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Wolfgang Gedeon. The Guardian reported:

Comments made by Gedeon in a book published in 2012 surfaced in the media after he entered state parliament following regional elections in March.

In the book, entitled Green Communism and the Dictatorship of Minorities, Gedeon compares Holocaust deniers such as David Irving to Chinese dissidents, claiming, among other things, that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a faked historical pamphlet purporting to outline a Jewish plan to control the global economy and media, were in fact real.

The AfD’s deputy chairman had quit in 2015.

I have lambasted Chancellor Angela Merkel in this space and elsewhere for opening her borders to 1.4 million Muslim refugees. But that does not mean that her opposition is better. The left-wing opposition (“Red-Red-Green,” that is Social Democratics, the Left, and the Green Party) would make Germany a de facto satellite of Russia. And the Red-Red-Green coalition may succeed if the “Alternative” right draws sufficient votes away from Merkel.

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David Brock Memo Lays Out Plan to Defeat Trump Through Impeachment by Debra Heine

By on January 24th, 2017

Progressives mapped out ways to combat newly sworn-in President Trump at a liberal confab at the swanky Turnberry Isle resort in Aventura, Fla., over the weekend.

The confab, organized by Media Matters founder David Brock, attracted more than 100 well-heeled progressive donors who came to plot and scheme ways to neutralize Trump, The Washington Free Beacon reports. The tireless Clinton defender is reportedly aiming to build a liberal donor network for the left that rivals that of the Koch brothers.

A confidential memo from Brock, obtained by The Free Beacon, outlined plans to use his numerous organizations to defeat President Donald Trump through “impeachment” or at the ballot box in 2020.

“No other progressive organization has the resources and assets that American Bridge has amassed over the past several election cycles to hold Trump, his administration, and the politicians accountable,” the 44-page confidential memo states.

“Only Bridge stands ready with staff already hired, Trump’s web of business ties mapped out, and a massive video archive at our fingertips.”

“The right will bolster Trump aggressively and deceptively. The campaign to stop him must be nonstop. At American Bridge, it has already begun.”

Brock’s group claims to have more than 20,000 hours of video, 289 candidate research books, and the largest available archive of Trump research in the Democratic Party. Within weeks of the election, Bridge launched a “Trump War Room,” which has already scrutinized Trump’s transition team and will continue to watch the personnel, policies, and practices of the administration.

The “state-of-the-art Trump War Room” will strive to “uncover details of Trump’s affection for Russia and Putin.” They are tracking Trump’s foreign and domestic business partners, construction projects in foreign countries, and negotiations on potential future projects that he “could use to put personal profit ahead of our national security.”

“With so many opportunities for foreign governments and corporations to gain influence over Trump, American Bridge will use every means at its disposal to hold Trump and his administration accountable—including FOIA requests, lawsuits, and regulatory complaints. As the progressive movement’s political research clearinghouse, we will arm our allies to join us in taking on the administration through paid advertising, earned media, grassroots efforts, and legal recourse.”

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