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July 2018

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ireland’s Anti-Israel Bill and the Muslim Brotherhood by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12733/ireland-israel-boycott

The Irish bill could have a negative impact on American companies with subsidiaries in Ireland: it is illegal under US anti-boycott laws to cooperate with a ban on commerce with Israeli settlements.

What is behind the proposed bill? One possible explanation is the prominent role played by Islamic institutions and organizations in Ireland, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. There is evidence to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood has established its European headquarters in the Emerald Isle.

Leaked US Embassy cables indicated that even some Irish Muslims refer to a certain mosque in Dublin as “Tora Bora,” a cave complex on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. One of the mosques imams, Yayah al-Hussein, originally from Sudan, is a member of Hamas, and many of its congregants are Bosnian and Afghan jihadists.

On July 11, the Irish Senate approved a bill criminalizing local companies that engage in commerce with Israeli firms based in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Introduced in the body’s Upper Chamber by independent member Senator Frances Black, the bill passed initial muster, in a 25-20 vote with 14 abstentions. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, 2018 would prohibit any import of goods or services from “occupied territories,” with financial penalties of a quarter million euros in fines and up to five years imprisonment for violators.

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Sweden’s Turbulent Election Year by Fjordman

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12731/sweden-election-year

Disaffection with immigration has affected the two largest establishment parties.

“What you read about Sweden on alternative news platforms is true. We are facing problems more severe than ever before in our history, where Swedes face a situation of being a minority within 20 years if nothing is done to stop the replacement of our people…What makes the situation even more difficult is, of course, the extreme political correctness that has haunted Sweden for decades, but which is now finally breaking up.” — Gustav Kasselstrand, co-founder and Chairman of the Alternative for Sweden party.

Kasselstrand and the Alternative for Sweden argue that the policies of the Sweden Democrats are no longer sufficient to deal with Sweden’s problems with violent crime and public gang shootings.

Sweden’s general election on September 9 looks set to become the most interesting the country has had in years. Concerns over mass immigration and rampant crime are redefining the political landscape. For the first time in more than a hundred years, the Social Democrats may be dethroned as the country’s largest political party. By Swedish standards, this constitutes a political earthquake.

Concerns in Europe over crime and mass immigration have been changing the political atmosphere, from Italy to Germany. Now, these developments may finally have caught up with Sweden as well.

The Social Democrats in Sweden are not just any political party. They have shaped Swedish political and cultural life for generations. At the peak of their power, they dominated Swedish society to such an extent that the country almost resembled a one-party state. They have been the largest party in all national elections for more than a century. From the 1930s until the early 1990s, they received more than 40% of the vote. Several times during this period, they got more than 50% of the votes and held an overall majority of the seats in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag). They received 45.2 % of the votes as late as in 1994, and 39.9 % in 2002.

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The Great British Foreign Office Fantasy by Douglas Murray

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12755/golan-israel-white-helmets

The armies of ISIS came right up to the villages on the Syrian side along the borders of the Golan. There, they were able to bring that form of peace-through-barbarism which the world has come to know well. If ISIS had triumphed in the Syrian conflict rather than suffering repeated set-backs, would the UK Foreign Office have handed them the territory by way of reparational justice, or victor’s prize?
The painful irony of this situation should be clear to all observers. If the Israelis did not lay claim to the Golan, there would have been no means to have got the White Helmets and their families out of Syria. Had Israel not made the Golan the peaceful and thriving area it is, it would simply be another part of Syria in which different sectarian groups were slaughtering other sectarian groups.
The British Foreign Office will have to back out of its self-imposed corner regarding the Golan at some point and accept the reality on the ground. How much better it would be if it did so now in a spirit of goodwill and reciprocity, rather than later on in a spirit of inevitable and grudging defeat.

According to the British Foreign Office, the Golan Heights are ‘occupied’. They have been ‘occupied’ — according to the logic of the UK Foreign Office — since 1967, when Israel took the land from the invading forces of Syria. Ever since then, the Israelis have had the benefit of this strategic position and the Syrian regime has not. This fact, half a century on, still strikes the British Foreign Office as regrettable, and a wrong to be righted in due course.

Of course, since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the official position of the UK government has become ever-harder to justify. For example, if the Israeli government were at some point over the last seven years suddenly to have listened to the wisdom of the Foreign Office in London and handed over the strategic prize of the Golan, to whom should it have handed it? Should Israel be persuaded to hand over the territory to the Assad regime in Damascus? It is true that, throughout the course of the Syrian civil war, the one bit of territory to which the Syrian regime has laid claim and which it has not been able to barrel-bomb and otherwise immiserate the people there has been the Golan Heights. Only in the Golan has anybody in this ‘Greater Syria’ been able to live free from the constant threat of massacre and ethnic, religious or political cleansing.

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We Are Behaving Like a Silly People What’s really driving the hysterical response to the Helsinki summit. Bruce Thornton

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270800/we-are-behaving-silly-people-bruce-thornton

The hysterical reactions to Donald Trump’s comments in Helsinki show how we are becoming what David Lean’s T.E. Lawrence called the Arabs: “a little people, a silly people.” The difference is, we are the richest, most powerful, freest people in the history of the world, yet like children we are obsessing over words rather than paying attention to meaningful deeds.

Here from the Washington Post is one sample of the thousands of bipartisan complaints about Trump’s comments in Helsinki: “Trump was just compliant and submissive, nearly fawning over Putin. Without a doubt, Putin is more powerful now than he was before the summit and Trump is weaker.” Notice how the subjective adjectives in sentence one become objective facts in sentence two. In a world where language trumps reality, what you say is what you are, not what you do. This has been the central fallacy of most Trump criticism since he walked down that golden escalator.

Words have consequences, Trump’s critics warn. But they forget to add that words mean something when they are linked to deeds. Here’s an example: “This is my last election . . . After my election I have more flexibility,” especially on “missile defense.” In 2012 Barack Obama was caught asking Dimitri Medvedev to pass this message along to Putin in regard to missile installations planned for Poland and the Czech Republic. True to his word, Obama halted the programs, earning kudos from Medvedev, who called it a “responsible approach,” and Putin, who called it “correct and brave.”

And how was this appeasement of a geopolitical rival received? Very differently from Trump’s words. Republican John McCain said of Trump that he had “abased himself . . . abjectly before a tyrant,” and warned that “The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.” Democrat Nancy Pelosi said of Trump that his “weakness in front of Putin was embarrassing, and proves that the Russians have something on the president, personally, financially or politically.” But Obama’s deeds that followed his abjectly appeasing words, from McCain earned a mild rebuke of “seriously misguided.” And Pelosi said Obama’s move that weakened our allies and strengthened our rival was “brilliant.”

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The Genocidal Assault on Nigeria’s Christians Where’s the international outrage? Jack Kerwick

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270787/genocidal-assault-nigerias-christians-jack-kerwick

With the election of President Trump and the reported rise of nationalist parties across the Western world, leftists in America and beyond are having a blast self-styling as “resistors” to “fascism.”

They are outraged explicitly over the so-called “Islamophobia” of the President’s “travel ban.”

Yet the perpetually indignant, unsurprisingly, are utterly silent regarding the massive slaughter and persecution by Muslims of Christians throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

For example, how many people know that just last month, over a span of four days, militant Islamic Fulani herdsmen embarked on a killing spree that reduced a dozen Nigerian villages to dust and claimed the lives of at least 200 Christian men, women, and children?

Open Doors, an organization dedicated to serving persecuted Christians throughout the world, describes these targeted villages as Nigeria’s Plateau State, and describes the region as “the epicenter of Christianity in northern Nigeria’s Middle Belt.” The organization is still trying to piece together the events surrounding the genocidal attack of Nigerian Christians on June 25th,

According to reports, 120 villagers were hunted down and hacked to death by machete-wielding Muslims while traveling home from the funeral of an elderly villager in In the Nigerian ward of Gidin Akwati.

Also slaughtered that day was a Christian pastor, the Reverend Musa Choji – murdered by these savages along with his wife and son.

These terrorists scorched the entire community of Gidin Akwatito the ground. Reports claim that some of those forced to flee their homes are now hiding in the Bush – remaining ever vulnerable to future attacks.

In a neighboring community of Gidin Akwati , another Christian pastor reported “more than 50 heavily armed Fulani herdsmen” laid waste to his whole village via fire and murdered 100 of his neighbors. Predictably, these Islamic militants destroyed that town’s Christian churches while also laying waste to all the homes in the community. Remarkably few people managed to save themselves that day.

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Attacking A Toddler in Worcester Britons profess “shock” at a now-daily phenomenon. Bruce Bawer

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270832/attacking-toddler-worcester-bruce-bawer

On Saturday afternoon, a three-year-old boy was sitting in a stroller at a Home Bargains store in Worcester, England, when some kind of corrosive liquid – later described as a “pungent pink chemical” with “an astringent kind of smell” – was “thrown or sprayed” at him, causing serious burns on his face and arms. The boy was with his mother; news reports make no mention of a father. One suspect, a 38-year-old man, was apprehended on the spot and is in police custody; three others were arrested in London on Monday morning. One shopper said she had heard that the first man to be picked up was “a skinny white guy”; the others, seen in CCTV footage, look rather swarthy. This assault, as it happens, took place on the same day as an English Defence League rally in Worcester against the construction of a new £3 million mosque in that city and of counter-protests by an array of Muslims, students, trade unionists, and Antifa types.

At first rumors were rife that the assailants were EDL members, but this seemed unlikely: genuinely racist though the EDL is – Tommy Robinson quite admirably quit the group on that account – and despite its record of violence, causing grave harm to small tots isn’t part of its usual M.O. Still, savagery begets savagery. Not until Monday did the police rule out any EDL or gang involvement and, while withholding the names of the suspects, say that the child had been “deliberately attacked” and describe the assault as part of a “dispute in communities.” This sounded, of course, very much like one of those awkward euphemisms the British authorities insist on using whenever the subject is Muslims. (If the culprits were ordinary English guys, the cops would likely have said something like “neighborhood dispute.”)

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Trump Makes Clear: Era of Appeasement Is Over The Iranians receive just the warning they were asking for. Joseph Klein

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270830/trump-makes-clear-era-appeasement-over-joseph-klein

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned on Sunday that “America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” Reacting to the prospect of U.S. actions aimed at cutting off all Iranian oil exports by this November, Rouhani said that Iran could respond by shutting down international oil shipments in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a threat the Iranian regime has made in the past. “We have always guaranteed the security of this strait,” Rouhani said. “Do not play with the lion’s tail; you will regret it forever.”

President Trump was not impressed. He tweeted what amounts to an ultimatum in all caps. Stop the threats against the United States or suffer severe consequences:

“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

President Trump’s tweet contained a none too subtle reference to the feckless Obama administration’s appeasement of the Iranian regime. There is now a different sheriff in charge who will brook no threats, lies or chicanery.

Former President Obama coddled the thugs running the Iranian regime to get his disastrous nuclear deal over the finish line, no matter what concessions he felt he had to make to secure his “legacy achievement.” Obama frontloaded relief from the onerous sanctions that had brought the Iranian regime to the negotiating table in the first place. And he threw in cash bonuses as well, including $1.7 billion in ransom payments to secure the release of five American hostages seized by the rogue regime even though several Americans are still detained and missing inside of Iran. In return, Obama got loophole-ridden temporary “commitments” from the Iranian regime to wind down its nuclear enrichment program. The final terms of the deal allowed Iran to claim its military sites off limits to international inspections and failed to bar Iran from developing and testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

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Trump Doctrine vs. Rouhani Is Donald Trump Serious about Iran? You bet. Kenneth R. Timmerman

By on July 24th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270829/trump-doctrine-vs-rouhani-kenneth-r-timmerman

Is the President of the United States a mere “twitter warrior?” Or is he really serious about Iran? Here is his early morning, all-caps statement that is making heads explode in the Twittersphere:

“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”

The proximate cause for Trump’s tweet was a threat by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani the day before to close the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping traffic, where he warned Trump, “Do not play with the lion’s tail; you will regret it forever.”

Rouhani himself was responding to a momentous speech at the Reagan Library by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, where he outlined the new “Trump Doctrine” toward Iran.

“The mission set for our team is clear,” Pompeo said. “It’s to deny the Iranian leadership the resources, the wealth, the funds, the capacity to continue to foment terrorism around the world and to deny the people inside of Iran the freedoms that they so richly deserve.”

If you’re reading this page, you’ve probably already had your fill of the hysterics and bombast from the organized left in response to this latest Trump tweet, starting with Rachel Maddow, the Atlantic, and their fellow gutter-creatures.

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Trump Threatens to Revoke Security Clearance of Ex-Intel Chiefs By Julie Kelly

By on July 24th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/23/trump-threatens-to-revoke-security

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders today confirmed that President Trump is considering revoking the security clearances of former law enforcement and intelligence officials who are waging a public relations war against the president and his administration.

The list reads like a Rogues’ Gallery of Liars from the Obama Administration: Former CIA Director John Brennan; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former FBI Director James Comey; former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe; and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice. General Michael Hayden, a Bush administration intelligence chief, also made the list.

“The president is exploring the mechanisms to remove the security clearance because they’ve politicized and, in some cases, monetized their public service security clearances,” Sanders said. “Making baseless accusations of improper contact with Russia or being influenced by Russia against the president is extremely inappropriate. And the fact that people with security clearances are making these baseless charges provides inappropriate legitimacy to accusations with zero evidence.”

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None Dared Call It Treason . . . When It Was a Democrat By Ned Ryun

By on July 24th, 2018

The past week of Russia hysteria has me longing for the good old days. Like 2009, when a Democratic president could pull missile defense systems out of Poland and the Czech Republic to appease Vladimir Putin without facing charges of treason. Or 2010, when a former Democratic president could take a cool half-million from a suspected Russian government-backed source to speak in Moscow and that wasn’t considered treasonous, either. Or 2012, when no one was screaming for impeachment when a Democratic president on a hot mic assured the Russian president that he’ll have “more flexibility” on missile defense systems once he’s re-elected. Or when the previous Democratic administration helped Putin toward his goal of controlling the worldwide supply chain of uranium and that was really all about “resetting” relationships.

Oh, how the times have changed!

Now, according to screeching harpies like Commie-lover John Brennan or many in the Democratic Party’s kept media, if you don’t say the right words during a press conference, you might be a traitor, worthy of impeachment, and probably Putin’s hand-picked agent sitting in the White House to bring about . . . well, that’s where the narrative gets a little fuzzy.

But the point is not to focus on substance. Just the style. It’s all about words and feelings, not about what actually happens because that would ruin a really good story, much like telling children the story you’re reading them at bedtime isn’t real. Forget such things as facts when you can have a good rip-roaring fairytale that soothes you and distracts the world from reality.

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