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October 2017

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Thousands Rally in Barcelona Against Catalan Independence High turnout represents rare show of strength for pro-union movement By Jeannette Neumann and Giovanni Legorano See note please

By on October 9th, 2017

WHAT IS VARGAS LLOSA DOING IN CATALONIA OPPOSING INDEPENDENCE? HE IS A PERUVIAN WRITER WHO UNSUCCESSFULLY RAN FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF HIS COUNTRY…..HE LOBBIES AND WRITES ANTI=ISRAEL SCREED FOR PALARAB INDEPENDENCE…WHY NOT CATALONIA? AS FOR HIS NOBEL PRIZE READ HIS MEDIOCRE NOVELS…..RSK
BARCELONA—Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards gathered in Barcelona on Sunday to decry Catalonia’s secessionist push, a bid by pro-union groups to build momentum against a unilateral declaration of independence that could come as soon as this week.

The demonstration in central Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, is a rare show of strength for the pro-union movement, whose gatherings have typically attracted several thousand protesters in recent years, compared with the hundreds of thousands routinely mobilized by pro-independence groups.

On Sunday, though, Barcelona’s streets were filled with an atypical sight: people waving red-and-yellow Spanish flags, unfurled alongside Catalan regional flags.

“For some time now, nationalism has been wreaking havoc in Catalonia and that’s why we’re here, to stop it,” Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa told the 930,000 people gathered, according to organizers. Local police in Barcelona put that figure at closer to 350,000. Such discrepancies are common.

“We are fed up with this situation. We haven’t been out on the street until now, but this time around has been so surreal, so unfair, that we had to do something,” Juan Maldonado, a 52-year-old electrician from Barcelona said, as people chanted “here are the other Catalans.”

Polls by the region’s survey agency indicate that more than a third of Catalans support an independent Catalonia, although sentiment could have shifted following the Oct. 1 independence referendum, which was marred by clashes between police and voters and declared illegal by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is expected to address Catalonia’s regional parliament on Tuesday and could make a declaration of independence.

“We will prevent independence from materializing,” Mr. Rajoy said in an interview published Sunday by top Spanish daily El País. “I can say with absolute frankness that it won’t happen.” He said he didn’t rule out invoking constitutional powers that would allow him to seize control of the regional Catalan government. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Christopher Columbus, Great American Attacks on the explorer are aimed at Western civilization. By Angela Rocco DeCarlo *****

By on October 9th, 2017

Christopher Columbus was an American-style entrepreneur. He conceived his project alone, suffering in poverty for nearly a decade while raising the money to sail west in search of a backdoor route to the Indies of the East. Most of us can’t begin to grasp the scope of Columbus’s insatiable curiosity, intellectual drive and accomplishments of navigation. Most of us couldn’t find the hamper without a GPS.

Leaving dry land in August 1492 Columbus depended entirely on his brilliant mind, experience and research to guide him. It was common knowledge no one had ventured into that vast expanse of water—lately called the Atlantic—and lived to tell the tale.

Columbus believed he could do it. He read Ptolemy and Marco Polo. His copy of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s “Imago Mundi” contained 898 margin notes in Columbus’s own hand.

Europeans had been accustomed to traveling over land to China, Japan and India to trade for goods. After the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims of the expanding Ottoman Empire in 1453, those ventures became dangerous. The sea became the salvation of European trade.

After three months at sea Columbus disembarked in a place no European knew existed. He believed he had reached the Indies, when in fact he was in the Caribbean. He never set foot on the North American continent. It was a monumental achievement, just not the one he was hoping for.

Today when everything is instantly known—or we think it is—it is impossible to understand how 15th-century European attitudes shaped Columbus. He hoped the profits from his voyage could finance the liberation of the Holy Land from Muslim domination. He also hoped to spread the word of God.

It’s intellectually dicey to judge those who lived hundreds of years ago according to modern norms. Doctors who routinely infected women during childbirth out of ignorance of the germ theory of disease are not reviled today. But European explorers who were similarly ignorant about how diseases are spread are routinely abused for the illnesses that befell inhabitants of the New World from lack of natural immunity.

The Columbian exchange benefited Old World and New by spreading knowledge of science, agriculture and nutrition. Without Columbus, the Renaissance may not have succeeded. Without his discoveries, Italians wouldn’t have marinara sauce, the Irish wouldn’t have mashed potatoes, and the Swiss wouldn’t have chocolate. Because America and its freedoms exist, children no longer contract polio and many other diseases. America saved the world from totalitarianism twice in the last century.

Today Columbus’s reputation is under siege. But those seeking to delegitimize the Genoan explorer’s legacy may actually have a larger target in mind. Statues of Columbus and tributes to his achievements are in many ways proxies for the Western tradition of freedom, liberty and the rule of law. America had better protect Columbus and win this war. There is no one else to save the world next time around.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Saudi government allegedly funded a ‘dry run’ for 9/11 By Paul Sperry

By on October 9th, 2017

Fresh evidence submitted in a major 9/11 lawsuit moving forward against the Saudi Arabian government reveals its embassy in Washington may have funded a “dry run” for the hijackings carried out by two Saudi employees, further reinforcing the claim that employees and agents of the kingdom directed and aided the 9/11 hijackers and plotters.

Two years before the airliner attacks, the Saudi Embassy paid for two Saudi nationals, living undercover in the US as students, to fly from Phoenix to Washington “in a dry run for the 9/11 attacks,” alleges the amended complaint filed on behalf of the families of some 1,400 victims who died in the terrorist attacks 16 years ago.

The court filing provides new details that paint “a pattern of both financial and operational support” for the 9/11 conspiracy from official Saudi sources, lawyers for the plaintiffs say. In fact, the Saudi government may have been involved in underwriting the attacks from the earliest stages — including testing cockpit security.

“We’ve long asserted that there were longstanding and close relationships between al Qaeda and the religious components of the Saudi government,” said Sean Carter, the lead attorney for the 9/11 plaintiffs. “This is further evidence of that.”

Lawyers representing Saudi Arabia last month filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which may finally be headed toward trial now that Congress has cleared diplomatic-immunity hurdles. A Manhattan federal judge has asked the 9/11 plaintiffs, represented by lead law firm Cozen O’Connor, to respond to the motion by November.

Citing FBI documents, the complaint alleges that the Saudi students — Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi — were in fact members of “the Kingdom’s network of agents in the US,” and participated in the terrorist conspiracy.

They had trained at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan at the same time some of the hijackers were there. And while living in Arizona, they had regular contacts with a Saudi hijacker pilot and a senior al Qaeda leader from Saudi now incarcerated at Gitmo. At least one tried to re-enter the US a month before the attacks as a possible muscle hijacker but was denied admission because he appeared on a terrorist watch list.

Qudhaeein and Shalawi both worked for and received money from the Saudi government, with Qudhaeein employed at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Shalawi was also “a longtime employee of the Saudi government.” The pair were in “frequent contact” with Saudi officials while in the US, according to the filings.

During a November 1999 America West flight to Washington, Qudhaeein and Shalawi are reported to have tried multiple times to gain access to the cockpit of the plane in an attempt to test flight-deck security in advance of the hijackings.

‘The dry run reveals more of the fingerprints of the Saudi government.’
– Kristen Breitweiser

“After they boarded the plane in Phoenix, they began asking the flight attendants technical questions about the flight that the flight attendants found suspicious,” according to a summary of the FBI case files.

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ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ronn Torossian :Center for Jewish History Hosting Jewish Voices for Peace Events

By on October 9th, 2017

The Center for Jewish History is making history by being a Jewish cultural landmark that hosts anti-Israel events. Is it trying to separate Jews from Israel?

The New York based Center for Jewish History (CJH) remains embroiled in controversy weeks after it has been revealed that the new CEO, David N. Myers is an active leader of the New Israel Fund, If Not Now, When, J Street and other organizations that are hostile to the State of Israel. While Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) has Myers listed in their propaganda as an academic advisor, he claims that this is inaccurate. Hiis writings reveal hostile-to-Israel viewpoints, including affinity for boycotts of Israel and sympathy for the Palestinian “Nakba.”

Despite these facts, the Center for Jewish History has defended Mr. Myers and insisted he will remain as leader of the Jewish library of congress. And while organizational and Israeli leaders continue to demand he be fired, facts on the ground show that CJH has been infiltrated by Jewish Voices for Peace.

On October 26th, CJH is hosting an event for Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), “The Balfour Declaration: Support for a Jewish Homeland or Jewish State? Is there a difference?” JVP, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States. Despite the neutral tone of its name, JVP works to demonstrate Jewish opposition to the State of Israel and to steer public support away from the Jewish State.”

On December 14th, we have learned that at the Center for Jewish History, JVP members are offered reduced admission to a play hosted by the American Jewish Historical Society entitled “Rubble Rubble” a new play by Dan Fishback, a JVP leader.

Fishback supports BDS and has previously urged plays sponsored by the Israeli government be boycotted. He’s proudly Anti-Zionist and falsely claims Israel “seeks to systematically destroy Palestinian culture based on the identity of artists and the content of work.” He believes all of Palestine must be liberated, noting in a candidacy note for JVP leadership “that the only way to liberate Palestine is to liberate world Jewry from our pain, which is why I believe in organizing from a Jewish perspective, even as I look to Palestinian organizers for essential leadership, nuance and insight.” Does this belong at the Center for Jewish History?

In a 2016 op-ed, Fishback in a lengthy op-ed about the viewpoints of Anti-Zionists like himself explained he struggles with Israel’s right to exist, noting “there is something fundamentally wrong with any state that privileges one ethno-religious group over another” describing Israel as a “supremacist state.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Hate-America Death Squad By Joan Swirsky

By on October 9th, 2017

From the founding of America 241 years ago, those opposed to and threatened by America’s Founding Fathers’ noble aspirations of freedom for all and a government in which citizens and not kings or dictators decide who will represent them have waged fierce resistance.

From the Muslim Barbary Pirates who fought America’s first presidents (George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson) to today’s equally bellicose, supremacist, and fascist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, all harbor the fantasy of destroying big bad America and replacing our Democratic Republic first with socialism and finally with communism. Predictably, they are fully supported by the leftists, progressives, communists, and Islamists among us.

The virulence of their ISIS-like demonstrations is because the real powers-that-be in the globalist hierarchy are choking with rage that everything they dreamed about and worked for and thought they achieved when they implanted the poseur “president” Barack Obama in office for a full eight years was shattered to smithereens when Donald J. Trump destroyed their other puppet, Hillary Clinton, in the presidential election of November 8, 2016.

And so the arch goal, the singular mission, indeed the psychotic obsession of these temper-tantrum infants-cum-political-activists is to destroy the man who embodies everything they are against:

Freedom
Democracy
A strong military
Secure borders
Capitalism
Low taxes
A thriving middle class
A conservative Supreme Court
Free speech
Gun rights
On and on and on…

Everything, in other words, that drives the megalomaniacal globalists, the one-world-government wonks, the deep-state traitors, and the lobbyists-enriched politicians stark raving mad!

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians Violating U.S. Law, Twisting Israelis into War Criminals. Where are President Trump & the GOP?by Anne Bayefsky

By on October 9th, 2017

If President Trump is backtracking on his promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, allegedly for the sake of a “peace process,” why is he simultaneously allowing the Palestinians to violate U.S. law and sink peace unilaterally?

American law requires that funding for Palestinians be drastically curtailed if they use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to turn Israelis into war criminals. Though Palestinians have given the ICC a veritable bear hug, hundreds of millions of American dollars are still flowing into Palestinian coffers.

Palestinians are actively using a crooked international legal system as a means to avoid a negotiated end to the Arab-Israeli conflict and an acceptance of a Jewish state. It’s called lawfare — the antithesis of a “peace process.”

Palestinian-led lawfare has two goals: to criminalize Israeli exercise of the right of self-defense, and to criminalize Israelis living on any territory that Palestinians and the UN have unilaterally appropriated.

Congress has understood lawfare to be exactly what it says — namely, war by another means. They have also understood that twisting self-defense against terrorism into a war crime will rebound on American and NATO soldiers. Feeding Israelis to the sharks will be just the first course.

The International Criminal Court Statute was a coup for anti-American and anti-Israeli globalists because it trashed the essence of the reach of international law – namely, the consent of states. For the first time, international law could be used directly against citizens of states that had refused to be bound. Neither Israel nor the United States have ratified the ICC Statute, but that cannot prevent the ICC prosecutor from going after either Americans or Israelis.

Moreover, the late stages of the drafting process of the ICC Statute – originally conceived as an instrument to target the most heinous acts perpetrated by humankind – were hijacked in 1998 by the Palestinians and their friends. The result is a statute that purports to turn Israeli settlements into war crimes.

Congress, therefore, ostensibly decided to protect Israelis from this international monstrosity by threatening serious financial repercussions to the Palestinian Authority (PA) should Palestinians start down the ICC path.

Each year beginning in 2014, and most recently in May 2017, the consolidated appropriations bills have included a commitment to deny the bulk of U.S. funding to the PA if “the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”

Palestinians have violated this law. But instead of exacting the mandatory price, the Congressional piper has gone into hiding to avoid being paid.

The PA first tested Congressional resolve in December 2014 when “the Government of the State of Palestine” claimed that it recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC to prosecute Israeli war crimes “since June 13, 2014.” The date was cynically chosen because Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers on June 12, 2014. Subsequently, on January 2, 2015, the “State of Palestine” acceded to the ICC Statute generally.

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