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June 2018

Up to 60 organizations may sue SPLC for defamation By Rick Moran

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/up_to_60_organizations_may_sue_splc_for_defamation.html

According to a report from Tyler O’Neill at PJ Media, up tto 60 mostly conservative organizations may sue the Southern Poverty Law Center for being included in the organization’s list of “hate groups.” The SPLC just settled a defamation suit for more than $3 million with Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz, whom the SPLC branded an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

Dozens of Christian and conservative groups have been similarly unfairly tarred by the SPLC as “hate groups,” and it appears they will exact their own revenge on the organization.

The SPLC published its “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” in 2016, listing Nawaz for an ever-changing list of reasons. The left-wing group first falsely claimed Nawaz had called for “an outright ban on the niqab,” or veil. This first charge disappeared from the website, and Quilliam accused the SPLC of “reverse engineering their justification to keep Maajid Nawaz on their list.” The SPLC later justified attacking him because he visited a strip club for his bachelor party.

Worse, the Islamist Muslim owner of the strip club who leaked the story to the press said he wanted to punish Nawaz for “being an atheist.” The SPLC, Quilliam argued, was “acting like religious police.”

“I’ve memorized half of the Quran, I am a Muslim, I am born and raised a Muslim, I learned classical Arabic, I’ve spent time in prison,” Nawaz declared last year, shortly after announcing his lawsuit. “You know who else lists heretics? The jihadists. We know what happens when you list heretics among Muslims in this way: They end up dead.”

The SPLC statement of apology was self-serving:

“The Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong to include Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation in our Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists,” Cohen said. “Since we published the Field Guide, we have taken the time to do more research and have consulted with human rights advocates we respect.”

Rep. Meadows Names Trump-Hating Investigators the FBI Refuses to Identify By Debra Heine

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) on Tuesday outed two previously unidentified anti-Trump, pro-Hillary FBI investigators who were referred for investigation by the inspector general.

Meadows unmasked the pair during a joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee hearing examining the IG report on the bureau’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Friday referred five current and former FBI employees — including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — for disciplinary action. In addition to Strzok and Page, the report identifies anti-Trump text messages from FBI employees referred to as FBI Attorney 2, FBI Agent 1, and FBI Agent 5.

According to the IG, one of the unidentified pro-Clinton FBI investigators interviewed Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016, along with Strzok.

Rep Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked the IG if he could reveal the identities of the unnamed FBI officials who were mentioned in the report. But Horowitz said the FBI was withholding the names from the public “because they work on counterintelligence.”

“So the FBI does not want their names released?” Poe asked Horowitz.

“Correct,” Horowitz replied.

FBI Attorney 2 reportedly worked as the top lawyer on the Russia probe and also worked on the special counsel’s investigation until this February.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes referred to this individual in a tweet Monday:

Amy Schumer, Breaking the Wedding Glass, and Jerusalem by Moshe Phillips

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/06/13/amy-schumer-breaking-the-wedding-glass-a

With the summer wedding season upon us, Jewish couples are preparing for marriage ceremonies that will conclude with the ancient ritual that many know simply as “the breaking of the glass.” Many a groom’s heel will crush a small glass under a handkerchief.

Unfortunately, for many assimilated Jews, the only Jewish aspect of the traditional wedding ceremony that they retain at all is the breaking of the glass.

What is this strange act? And what drives so many Jews, even those who are seemingly detached from the Jewish community and may even be marrying non-Jews, to nevertheless want to break the glass?

When Chris Fischer and actress Amy Schumer — not exactly a paragon of Jewish religious observance — married in a Malibu beach ceremony earlier this year, they too broke a glass.

Even some non-Jews have appropriated this aspect of Jewish wedding celebrations. At actress Cameron Diaz’s wedding in 2015, her groom stepped on a glass even though, as one newspaper account put it, “neither Diaz nor Madden are Jewish, so the reason for this elaborate traditional Jewish ceremony is best known to them.”

The sad truth is that an extremely high percentage of Jews break the glass because it is “traditional,” yet they have no idea what the deeper meaning really is.

Berkeley Jury finds Antifa NOT GUILTY of Violent Beating of Trump Supporter — Despite Multiple Witnesses! Jim Hoft by Jim Hoft

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/berkeley-jury-finds-antifa-not-guilty-of-violent-beating-of-trump-supporter-despite-multiple-witnesses Remember the Antifa riots in Berkeley back in 2017?At one of the rallies, several firefighters and police officers personally witnessed at close range a mob of Antifa rioters violently attack a guy who was just sitting on a wall; the attackers would have killed the man if the cops had not interrupted the attack […]

Update: Jury finds 5 men not guilty of assault during 2017 Berkeley protest

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/06/18/jury-deliberates-over-alleged-berkeley-protest-attack-of-trump

The jury has found all five defendants not guilty of misdemeanor assault, and not guilty of assault causing great bodily injury, also a misdemeanor. About 30 supporters of the defendants were in the courtroom for the reading of the verdicts, which began at about 3:40 p.m. Some cried quietly as the clerk read the decisions for each person. After the reading, there was a brief round of applause before the judge released the jury.

One of the defendants, Scott Hedrick, said it was a relief for the case to be over.

“It’s been over a year of this,” he said. “It was intense. We’re all just ready to move on with our lives.”

The men, who met through the underground punk scene, said they now plan to hold benefit concerts to help raise money for their attorneys.

Several jurors told Berkeleyside the group found itself in agreement relatively early on regarding the not guilty verdicts. But they wanted to make sure they worked through the process carefully. They deliberated for nearly a day. Ultimately, they said, they were not convinced a crime had occurred. There were other viable explanations for what took place, they said.

Original story: March 4, 2017, brought a day of violent political clashes to downtown Berkeley’s Civic Center Park. The event, dubbed the “March on Berkeley” by its pro-Trump organizers, was the first of several large protests in the city in 2017 that would pit pro- and anti-Trump activists against each other. There were verbal altercations and street brawls. And despite efforts by some to keep events peaceful, nearly every rally resulted in violence and arrests. Both sides have blamed the other for provoking the fights.

Wednesday, a trial began in Alameda County Superior Court where jurors have been asked to decide if five self-described “anti-fascist” defendants are guilty of attacking Trump supporter Moshe Daniel Quillinan during his evaluation by Berkeley firefighters for a large cut on his head that ultimately required 10 staples to close, according to testimony last week.

Prager U Video: Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids And we are financing them. Prager University Video

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270501/prager-u-video-dangerous-people-are-teaching-your-prager-university

Dangerous people are filling the heads of young people with dangerous nonsense. Who are these people? They are what Jordan Peterson calls “the post-modernists:” neo-Marxist professors who dominate our colleges and universities. And here’s the worst part: we are financing these nihilists with tax dollars, alumni gifts and tuition payments. Time to wise up.

New Faces on the Dutch Anti-Islam Front New valiant patriots enter the stage. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270500/new-faces-dutch-anti-islam-front-bruce-bawer

These days in Europe, when you meet a stranger and let slip that you’re an American, you know beyond any doubt what the next question is going to be.

“Who did you vote for in the presidential election?” he asked. It was the other day, and I was in Amsterdam, and I had just sat down next to him at the bar and ordered a gin and tonic.

“Donald John Trump,” I said amiably.

“I’m impressed,” he said.

“By what?”

“When I ask other Americans that question, they get emotional. They act like I’ve attacked them. You’re the first who didn’t react like that.”

We were in a gay bar. “So are you talking about gay guys that you meet here?”

“Yes.”

“And they voted for Trump?”

“Some of them. Not all. The Hillary voters are proud. The Trump voters….”

“They’re defensive.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s understandable,” I said. “They’re used to being told that they voted for the incarnation of evil. I find it interesting that so many gay guys you meet did vote for Trump.”

Turkey: Erdogan’s “Holy War” Obsession by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12552/turkey-erdogan-holy-war-obsession

When non-Muslims deny Muslim minorities the rights that Muslim-majority countries systematically deny non-Muslim minorities, extremist Muslims in Turkey seem to have the habit of threatening non-Muslim lands with holy war.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who spoke of “a war between the cross and the crescent” because the Austrian government closed down seven mosques, does not seem to bother with any of those visible, documented cases of religious discrimination against non-Muslims and against Islam’s minority sects.

Muslim leaders complain of travel bans on some Muslim nations, but many Muslim countries have travel bans against other Muslims in addition to banning Israelis.

When non-Muslims deny Muslim minorities the rights that Muslim-majority countries systematically deny non-Muslim minorities, extremist Muslims in Turkey seem to have the habit of threatening non-Muslim lands with holy war.

“Soon religious wars will break out in Europe. You are taking Europe toward an abyss. That’s the way it’s going,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, predicted in a 2017 speech. The minister was angry with the European states that had banned Turkish Islamist political shows in their territories.

Switzerland Welcomes Radicalization by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12558/switzerland-islam-radicalization

There are approximately 250 mosques in Switzerland, but the authorities do not know who finances them. By rejecting the proposal compelling mosques to disclose who finances them, the Swiss authorities can now remain willfully blind.

The Muslim World League is behind “a whole network of radically-oriented mosques in Switzerland… with the clear intention of spreading Salafist thought here”. — Saïda Keller-Messahli, expert on Islam in Switzerland.

Above all, the Swiss government seems not to have considered the rights of Swiss non-Muslim citizens, who are the ones left to live with the consequences of the government’s ill-thought-out policies.

Switzerland has just rejected a proposed law preventing mosques from accepting money from abroad, and compelling them to declare where their financial backing comes from and for what purpose the money will be used. According to the proposal, imams also would have been obliged to preach in one of the Swiss national languages.

While the proposal narrowly passed in the lower house of parliament already in September 2017, the upper house recently rejected it. The proposal was modeled on regulations in Austria, where already in 2015, a law banning foreign funding of religious groups was passed. The Austrian law aims to counter extremism by requiring imams to speak German, prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria, and stressing the precedence of Austrian law over Islamic sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

The Federal Council, which constitutes the federal government of Switzerland, was also against the proposal, and claimed that it constituted ‘discrimination’: “We must not discriminate against Muslim communities and imams and put them under general suspicion,” Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said. The Federal Council noted that in Austria, Islam is officially recognized, whereas it is not in Switzerland. According to the Swiss government, therefore, the model applied in Austria does not apply to Switzerland, as “One cannot demand obligations without rights”. Instead, the Federal Council evidently believes that the risks posed by extremist Islamist preachers and communities can be combated within existing law.

A Feeble Pushback Against the Inspector General’s Whitewash By Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/20/a-feeble-pushback-against

For even the most cynical among us, there is a Baghdad Bob aura of unreality about the Justice Department Inspector General’s report absolving the FBI of partisan wrongdoing in the Clinton email investigation. The IG report follows in Comey’s footsteps: enumerating appalling and illegal behavior, and then concluding there is nothing to prosecute.

There’s no such thing as being too cynical when it comes to our government. Yet once again, Americans have had to suffer through the cycle: assurances that while the FBI investigation of Clinton was crooked, the honest Inspector General Michael Horowitz would bring us justice. This from the same press that assured us Robert Mueller is an honorable man.

The contrast with the treatment meted out to President Trump, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and camp Carter Page, is turning people’s stomachs.

Alan Dershowitz, who has emerged as the only Democrat on the national stage with any principles, explained what should be plain to see, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo:

“We’ll stop him.” That is not an expression of bias . . . It’s a message to the American people that the FBI is going to interfere in an election . . . . How can Strzok remain an FBI agent? The red line was crossed . . . you’re not allowed to try to use your office to try and stop somebody from being elected president of the United States.

Horowitz’s report supports Dershowitz’s view that a red line was crossed:

The inspector general concluded that Strzok’s text, along with others disparaging Trump, “is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

But the report exonerates Strzok anyway.