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January 2019

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

“Jihadists”—A Review written by Robin Simcox

By on January 15th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/01/14/jihadists

Jihadists (dir. François Margolin and Lemine Ould Salem, Cinema Libre Studio 2018, 75m)

Some years ago, when assessments of the Arab Spring were at their most optimistic, it became common to hear it suggested that al-Qaeda was, if not defeated entirely, then virtually irrelevant. And yet, with all eyes on the Middle East, towns and cities in Mali would soon be falling like dominoes to al-Qaeda and its Islamist allies. This was the context in which two French filmmakers, François Margolin and Lemine Ould Salem, boldly journeyed to North Africa to document life in territory now governed by sharia law. The result of that trip is an extraordinary documentary entitled Jihadists, an unprecedented, unflinching, and unsettling glimpse into life under Islamist control.

While it is increasingly hard to miss the existence of this totalitarian ideology, the same cannot be said for Margolin and Salem’s film. Worried that Jihadists offered no dissenting voices to counter the extremists featured in the film, France’s National Center of Cinematography expressed concern that, rather than repel people, the film’s stark portrait of Islamic rule might instead serve as Islamist propaganda. The French government agreed, and the film was subsequently handed an “18” certificate—a classification both rare and prohibitive in France. According to Margolin, no documentary has been rated “18” in decades. As a result, Jihadists opened in only three theatres rather than the initially slated 30. It will have a belated American premier on January 25 in New York, followed shortly thereafter by a limited run in Los Angeles. That the film continues to struggle to draw widespread coverage is hardly surprising. Its topic and conclusions run contrary to the prevailing zeitgeist. This is a pity, because Jihadists is a powerful and important document that deserves a bigger audience.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

New Migrant Caravan Heads North From Honduras to the Border By Jack Crowe

By on January 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-migrant-caravan-heads-north-from-honduras-to-the-border/

A new caravan of more than 500 migrants gathered at a bus station in a Honduran city Monday night to begin the perilous trek to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Members of the caravan, which left from the city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, begged local shop keepers for food and water for their journey on their way out of town, Fox News reported.

President Trump cited the formation of new migrant caravans on Thursday to illustrate the necessity of the $5.7 billion in funding he has demanded Congress provide for the construction of a border wall.

“There is another major caravan forming right now in Honduras, and so far we’re trying to break it up, but so far it’s bigger than anything we’ve seen,” Trump said. “And a drone isn’t going to stop it and a sensor isn’t going to stop it, but you know what’s going to stop it in its tracks? A nice, powerful wall.”

The 6,000-person caravan that arrived in Tijuana, Mexico in the fall was organized by a number of pro-immigration activist groups but it remains unclear which, if any, organization orchestrated the latest mass movement. Many members of the last caravan are still waiting in Tijuana for their asylum claims to be processed.

The Mexican government recently vowed to work with the U.S. to ensure more migrants can claim asylum and find work in Mexico in order to reduce the burden on the overwhelmed U.S. asylum system. Mexican officials have announced that those migrants who enter Mexico lawfully will be allowed to keep traveling toward to the U.S. border while those that enter illegally will be deported.

More than 300,000 Central Americans entered Mexico illegally last year, 80 percent of whom were headed for the U.S. border, according to Mexico’s interior minister, Olga Sánchez Cordero.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Parliament Rejects May’s Brexit Deal By Jack Crowe

By on January 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/parliament-rejects-mays-brexit-deal/

The Brexit deal painstakingly negotiated by British prime minister Theresa May over the past two years was rejected overwhelmingly by Parliament on Tuesday.

The deal, which fell in a 432–202 vote in the House of Commons, represented the only established path forward to prevent a so-called “no-deal” British exit from the European Union, which is set to take place in March and would likely result in massive political and economic upheaval.

In response to the historic defeat, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a vote of no confidence, which, if passed, would oust May and give Corbyn a chance to form a new government. If Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister then failed to gain the support of a majority of MPs within 14 days, Parliament would dissolve and a new general election would be held.

May, in advocating on behalf of the deal she has negotiated over the past two years, cast it as the only viable option that accorded with the will of the British people, who voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union.

“This is the most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers,” May said as the five-day Commons debate concluded. “The time has now come for all of is in this House to make a decision . . . a decision that each of us will have to justify and live with for many years to come.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI Tramples Our Political Order By Rich Lowry

By on January 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/fbi-trump-collusion-investigation/

The FBI should brush up on the powers of the chief executive.

The FBI took it upon itself to determine whether the president of the United States is a threat to national security.

No one had ever before thought that this was an appropriate role for the FBI, a subordinate agency in the executive branch, but Donald Trump isn’t the only one in Washington trampling norms.

The New York Times reported the astonishing news. “Counterintelligence investigators,” the paper writes, “had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security.” U.S. presidents over the decades have made many foolhardy decisions that have undermined our security; never before have they been deemed a fit subject for an FBI investigation.

The proximate cause for the probe into Trump was his firing of FBI director James Comey, which the FBI considered both a potential crime and a national-security matter because it might shut down the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

Even if they were shocked by the treatment of Comey, top FBI officials should have been able to quickly ascertain that the Russia investigation continued unimpeded — indeed, it is still ongoing today.

If the Times reporting is correct, the FBI grew more suspicious of Trump’s conduct based on comments that have been widely misunderstood. Among the bill of particulars:

—During the campaign, he urged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Trump clearly meant this line sardonically, though.

—The GOP platform allegedly was softened toward Russia. Never mind that, as Byron York of the Washington Examiner has demonstrated, this didn’t actually happen.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The New, New Anti-Semitism By Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/new-anti-semitism-woke-progressives-old-stereotypes/

Old stereotypes resurface among today’s woke progressives.

The old anti-Semitism was mostly, but not exclusively, a tribal prejudice expressed in America up until the mid 20th century most intensely on the right. It manifested itself from the silk-stocking country club and corporation (“gentlemen’s agreement”) to the rawer regions of the Ku Klux Klan’s lunatic fringe.

While liberals from Joe Kennedy to Gore Vidal were often openly anti-Semitic, the core of traditional anti-Semitism, as William F. Buckley once worried, was more rightist. And such fumes still arise among the alt-right extremists.

Yet soon a new anti-Semitism became more insidious, given that it was a leftist phenomenon among those quick to cite oppression and discrimination elsewhere. Who then could police the bigotry of the self-described anti-bigotry police?

The new form of the old bias grew most rapidly on the 1960s campus and was fueled by a number of leftist catalysts. The novel romance of the Palestinians and corresponding demonization of Israel, especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, gradually allowed former Jew-hatred to be cloaked by new rabid and often unhinged opposition to Israel. In particular, these anti-Semites fixated on Israel’s misdemeanors and exaggerated them while excusing and downplaying the felonies of abhorrent and rogue nations.

Indeed, evidence of the new anti-Semitism was that the Left was neutral, and even favorable, to racist, authoritarian, deadly regimes of the then Third World while singling out democratic Israel for supposed humanitarian crimes. By the late 1970s, Israelis and often by extension Jews in general were demagogued by the Left as Western white oppressors. Israel’s supposed victims were romanticized abroad as exploited Middle Easterners. And by extension, Jews were similarly exploiting minorities at home.

Then arose a relatively new mainstream version of Holocaust denial that deprived Jews of any special claim to historic victim status. And it was a creed common among World War II revisionists and some American minorities who were resentful that the often more successful Jews might have experienced singularly unimaginable horror in the past. The new anti-Semitism that grew up in the 1960s was certainly in part legitimized by the rise of overt African-American bigotry against Jews (and coupled by a romantic affinity for Islam). It was further nursed on old stereotypes of cold and callous Jewish ghetto storeowners (e.g., “The Pawnbroker” character), and expressed boldly in the assumption that black Americans were exempt from charges of bias and hatred.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Bloody Quarter-Century Later, the Jury Is In on the ‘Two-State Solution’ By David Levy

By on January 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/a-bloody-quarter-century-later-the-jury-is-in-on-the-two-state-solution/

Martin Sherman is the founder and CEO of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, and served for seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli defense establishment. He holds undergraduate degrees in physics and geology, an MBA, and a PhD in political science. Sherman’s publications include The Politics of Water in the Middle East (1999), Despots, Democrats and the Determinants of International Conflict (1998), as well as numerous essays.

Here is a December 25, 2018 quote from Israel’s Major General (res.) Gershon HaCohen, spoken just days after I conducted the interview with Martin Sherman that follows:

It is mind-boggling how proponents of West Bank withdrawal so cavalierly ignore the likely threats attending this move. So strong is their fixation on the necessity of withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines that it has made them totally oblivious to realities on the ground.

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David Levy: What is one to make of the so-called two-state solution? Makes little sense today. Did it ever make any sense? The Fatah and Hamas charters are and have always been very clear in their advocacy of a one-state solution: A Palestine from the river to the sea that would replace Israel. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah never speak of two states.

How is it that there are, even now, prominent Israelis who see this mythical two-state solution as a resolution of the conflict?

Martin Sherman: I certainly identify with the skeptical tone of your question and I certainly have never been able to understand why people chose to go along that route. Apparently many were taken in by its seductive allure. I think in many ways Israeli political parties that opposed the two-state notion were at fault, because they did not offer a sufficiently persuasive case for the alternative view.

I think you are right about Fatah and Hamas. In fact, if you look at the Fatah constitution, if anything it is more explicit about eradicating the the “Zionist entity” than Hamas.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Trump of One’s Own By Bruce Bawer

By on January 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/a-trump-of-ones-own/

Here’s one reason to hold out some hope for 2019. On January 9 — while the British political class continued to bungle Brexit, French officials kept battling the gilets jaunes, and leaders across Europe persisted in waving the EU flag and waving in armies of Muslim immigrants — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini went to Warsaw and, at a press conference with Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński, envisioned Italy and Poland as ushering in a new “European spring” to challenge the primacy of the “Germany-France axis.”

The Guardian spelled out to readers just how they should feel about this “European spring.” Identifying Salvini — in the first two sentences of its article, mind you — as a “far-right interior minister” who seeks “far-right alliances” and leads “the far-right League” (later in the piece, Marine Le Pen, too, was labeled “far-right”), Guardian scribe Angela Giuffrida was quick to add that Salvini’s party and Brudziński’s “share similar anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and Eurosceptic views.”

It would be fairer, of course, to say “anti-Islam” here rather than “anti-Muslim,” and to describe Salvini and Brudziński not as “anti-immigration” but, rather, as opposed to suicidal immigration policies that have flooded much of Western Europe not with potential Nobel Prize winners but with likely rapists, Jew-beaters, gay-bashers, and lifelong welfare recipients, not to mention more than a few would-be jihadists and cheerleaders of terror.

Salvini further declared that if Europe follows along the path charted by himself and Brudziński, which involves “strengthening borders,” it might well experience a “renaissance of European values” and reverse the severe damage done to the continent by bureaucrats in Brussels and in the various national capitals. To any American, needless to say, this rhetoric will sound very familiar. And indeed, the fact is that while the Western European political class and its allies love to sneer at Donald Trump, millions of ordinary citizens across the continent wish dearly that they had a Trump of their own.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Islamophobia’ Invention Has Served Its Purpose Spectacularly Well By Philip Carl Salzman

By on January 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/islamophobia-invention-has-served-its-purpose-spectacularly-well/

“Islamophobia” is an idea recently invented and defused by advocates and apologists for Islam for the purpose of silencing criticism of Islam. The term “phobia” indicates an irrational fear, which is how users of the term hope criticism of Islam will be understood.

As is well-known, criticism of Islam, of Allah, of Mohammed, or of the Koran is forbidden by Sharia law; violators (or even those unjustly accused) are subject per Sharia law to summary execution. Where execution for this offense is rarer due to its extralegality, such as in America and Canada, defenders of Islam have tried to avoid criticism by presenting themselves as unjust victims of persecution and by using moral suasion through the concept of Islamophobia.

Islamophobia has become a standard topic in Middle East Studies and Islamic Studies courses, often presented in conferences and publications as a great threat to the well-being of Muslims in North America. In reality, government statistics on religion-oriented hate crimes indicate that Jews are by far the most targeted group — and many of these cases are perpetrated by Muslims. Muslims are targets in a small minority of cases.

Some Middle East and Islamic Studies professors appear to believe it is their job to present Islam in the best possible light. While daily Islamist militias and proto-states fight to conquer land and populations in the name of jihad for the caliphate, professors and media commentators claim that jihad actually means “inner struggle to submit to God.” Most of the West’s most prominent political leaders announce that Islam is a religion of peace, even as they contemplate going to war against jihadis. They claim that the Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam,” even as the Islamic State justifies its policies and actions with detailed references to Islam’s foundational texts.

The Islamic State has distinguished models to follow: Did not Mohammed spur the military thrusts of the great Arab Muslim Empire, which soon conquered land between India and Iberia for Allah? Does not the Koran divide the world into the Dar al-Islam, the land of peace, and the Dar al-harb, the land of infidels and war?

From the Koran to present-day Muslim imams and ayatollahs (read the word-for-word translations published by the Middle East Media Research Institute), a prominent theme is the commanded killing of infidels and the conquest of the world. This theme is repeated in the charters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the writings of bin Laden and myriad others, and by preachers of Middle Eastern origin and funding in mosques throughout America and Canada. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Popularity Rose Despite 90 Percent Negative Media Coverage in 2018 By Tyler O’Neil

By on January 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trumps-popularity-rose-despite-90-percent-negative-media-coverage-in-2018/

Despite constant one-sided negative news coverage by the big three TV networks, President Donald Trump’s public approval rating rose slightly in 2018, according to a new report from the Media Research Center (MRC). MRC analyzed the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts, which were seen by approximately 23 million people each night.

“The tone of coverage remains incessantly hostile: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive (excluding neutral statements),” MRC’s Rich Noyes reported Tuesday. “Yet despite the media’s obvious disapproval, public opinion of the President actually improved slightly during 2018, from an average 40% approval on January 1 to 42.7% approval on December 31, according to RealClearPolitics.”

According to MRC’s monitoring, coverage of the Trump presidency slightly declined in 2018. In the first year of the Trump presidency, ABC, CBS, and NBC spent 99 hours covering the president, while this past year they dedicated 87 hours to his tenure, which still accounted for 28 percent of all evening news airtime.

“As has been the case since the President took office, the tone of network coverage has been exceptionally hostile, ranging from 82% negative in April 2017 (after Trump was praised for a missile strike punishing Syria for a chemical weapons attack) to 96% negative in February 2018 (when the news agenda focused on the Russia investigation, demands for gun control, and a White House aide accused of domestic abuse),” the report noted.

MRC also referenced the Pew Research Center’s finding that during Trump’s first 60 days in office, 62 percent of network stories were negative while only 5 percent were positive and 33 percent were neutral. “If you remove the neutral stories and look at just the stories with a clear spin, Pew’s bottom line looks like ours: 93% negative spin, v. just 7% positive.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Coup Against Trump Has Failed — Is the Worm About to Turn? By Debra Heine

By on January 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-coup-against-trump-has-failed-is-the-worm-about-to-turn/

It is now obvious that for two and a half years, Democrats and their friends in the deep state have been peddling an elaborate hoax: the spurious charge that President Trump conspired or colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election.

The entire enterprise from the beginning was always about defeating Trump — either by planting smears in the media in 2016 to prevent his election or if that didn’t succeed, by doubling down on the investigation in an effort to keep the president from uncovering their election-year espionage malfeasance.

But the honey-badger president didn’t care and said he did nuthin’ wrong and didn’t try to stop it. So the “rigged investigation” led by “13 angry Democrats” lumbered on for nearly two years, racking up several process crimes and unrelated financial crimes in the process — all while trying the nation’s patience.

Then The New York Times’ “bombshell” report last Friday confirmed that the FBI’s case against the president was scandalously flimsy.

Trump’s former attorney John Dowd told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on his radio show Monday that he believes the president was facing a “coup” and accused Mueller, former FBI Director James “Cardinal” Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe of conspiring against the president.

“Little did I know that it appears that they were all in it together,” Dowd said. “I mean Rosenstein, Comey, Mueller, McCabe, the whole crowd and they were out to get this president no matter what. I don’t think they sincerely believed anything about Russia.”

“This is our worst nightmare that someone with that kind of power would then decide to go after the president. I mean, it’s a coup,” Dowd added. “That’s what it is — an attempted coup by Comey and his crowd. And the evidence is all over there. I take the New York Times article as an admission of their bad behavior.”

Dowd isn’t alone.

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