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Ruth King

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Iran: Using Torture, Execution to Defy Human Rights by Uzay Bulut

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14677/iran-torture-execution

“[T]orture is widely used against suspects after their arrest and in the pre-trial phase in order to extract a confession,” in spite of the fact that “Article 38 of the Iranian Constitution bans all forms of torture and forced confessions.” — Latest Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, Iran Human Rights.

“In 2014, a man who had confessed to the crime but was absolved of all charges 48 hours before his execution was to be carried out was asked as to why he had confessed to a murder he had not committed. He answered: ‘They beat me up so much that I thought if I don’t provide a false confession I would die during the interrogation.'” — Latest Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, Iran Human Rights.

“So far in 2019 [just the last six months] at least 140 people have been executed and 80% of them were charged with murder. At least two of them were juveniles, under the age of 18.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a neuroscientist who fled to Norway from Iran, to Gatestone Institute.

“The escalation of military tension is something that the Iranian authorities are seeking, as a way of diverting all the world’s attention to the Persian Gulf, thus enabling them to get away with abusing their own people. Leaders of the Islamic Republic consider the freedom-seeking Iranian people as their main threat.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam to Gatestone Institute.

More than a dozen political prisoners in Iran recently launched a hunger strike to protest the unspeakable conditions under which they have been living since their incarceration for civil-rights activities, according to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson for the NGO, Iran Human Rights (IHR).

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

IDF Settles Account With Murderers of Israeli Teen Thwarts major terrorist infiltration in the south. Ari Lieberman

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274607/idf-settles-account-murderers-israeli-teen-ari-lieberman

Within 48 hours of the brutal slaying of 18-year-old Dvir Sorek, Israeli security forces swooped in on his killers in the dead of night, while they were asleep. Sorek’s lifeless body was found last Thursday in the early morning hours near the community of Migdal Oz, located in the Judea District just south of Jerusalem. He had just returned from Jerusalem where he purchased gifts for his teachers at the Migdal Oz religious seminary. But Sorek, a talented musician who would have turned 19 in a week, never made it. He was ambushed by two Palestinian Authority Arabs and stabbed repeatedly. Sorek’s grandfather, Rabbi Binyamin Herling, a Holocaust survivor, met a similar grisly fate when he was murdered in a terrorist attack perpetrated by PA Arabs nearly two decades prior.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad praised the attack though they were careful not to claim responsibility. Hamas is the terrorist entity that governs the Gaza Strip and is considered the PA’s main internal political rival. Islamic Jihad is also based in Gaza and maintains the same ideologically extremist positions as its larger Hamas cousin. Both groups are heavily influenced and financed by Iran.

Security forces of various branches instantly began a manhunt for Sorek’s assailants. Army trackers were brought in to determine the attackers’ escape route.  CCTV footage collected from roadside cameras was thoroughly examined for further clues. By Friday evening, the identity of the attackers was known. Israel Defense Force units, aided by Shin Bet agents (Israel’s FBI equivalent) and elements of the border patrol zeroed in on the Arab settlement of Beit Kahil, located southwest of Migdal Oz.

On Saturday at 3 a.m., IDF troops nabbed Nasir and Qasseem Asafra, ages 24 and 30 respectively, in their home. The duo were cousins and were shocked by the breathtaking speed it took to crack the case. Nasir was a member of Hamas. Nasir’s brother Akrama and Qassem’s wife, Ines, were also arrested on suspicion of aiding the terrorists after the attack. The vehicle used by the terrorists was hauled off for further forensic examination. Precise measurements of Asafra house have already been taken in anticipation of its demolition.

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How Trump Started a Civil War Between Hamas and a UN Agency A civil war in UNRWA. Daniel Greenfield

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274492/how-trump-started-civil-war-between-hamas-and-un-daniel-greenfield

Even within the United Nations, a sprawling multinational bureaucracy linked by luxury dining, corruption and complicity in terrorism, the UNRWA stands out for waste, corruption and terror.

The UNRWA’s abbreviation leaves out its full title, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and its heavy focus on Gaza. The UNRWA classifies 1.4 million or 73% of the people living in Gaza as “refugees” even though it’s an independent territory run by Hamas.

There are really two UNRWA agencies. One is a UN agency run by a small number of international staffers. Another is an arm of Hamas which employs thousands of “Palestinians”. Many if not most of these are members of Hamas. Some, like Suhail al-Hindi, the former head of the UNRWA union, who was also a member of Hamas’ leadership, serve in the upper echelons of the terror group.

While a handful of European UN employees act as the public face of UNRWA, the actual agency is run by Hamas operatives who control its schools, using them to recruit and to store weapons. The union representing UNRWA employees is controlled by Hamas and its employees implement Hamas policies.

Hamas had announced as much when its newspaper responded to a call to fire UNRWA Hamas members by writing, “Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance.’”

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ICE Field Operation Helps American Workers When will compassion apply to beleaguered Americans? Michael Cutler

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274576/ice-field-operation-helps-american-workers-michael-cutler

On August 7, 2019 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release that announced, ICE executes federal search warrants at multiple Mississippi locations.  Fox News also reported on that massive field operation in its report, ICE raids on Mississippi food processing plants result in 680 arrests.

The mainstream media, in reporting on the ICE field operation, immediately sought to paint the most disturbing picture it could about the nature of the ICE operation and along the way, the children of illegal aliens who had been arrested were interviewed on camera, hysterically crying that they wanted their mother/father or both to come home to take care of them.

However, I doubt the media will show the lines of American workers lining up to take the jobs that have been liberated by the ICE agents.

While it is admittedly heart-wrenching to see a child in distress, it is remarkable that the media totally ignores that children are frequently separated from the parents whenever their parents are arrested for a wide spectrum of violations of law that include administrative motor vehicle violations.

Every year as the dreaded “Tax Day” approaches, the IRS frequently arrests tax cheats and fraudsters and publicizes their law enforcement actions to remind tax payers that they should not defraud the IRS.  This is a clear tactic of intimidation that creates a “climate of fear.”  Yet Nancy Pelosi who frequently lambasted immigration law enforcement efforts for creating such a climate of fear, I have never seen her or any other politician complaining about the tactics of the IRS.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

For Progressives, Trump is the ‘Jew’ Among American Politicians Why the “enlightened” Left so ferociously hates both Trump and Israel. Bruce Thornton

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274610/progressives-trump-jew-among-american-politicians-bruce-thornton

Golda Meir is credited with saying, “Israel is the Jew among nations.” In the speeches of global leaders and the pronouncements of the UN–– the so-called global “community” that strains out the besieged, liberal-democratic Israel gnat while swallowing whole herds of murderous tyrannical camels–– this international form of anti-Semitism is blatantly obvious behind the thread-bare veil of “anti-Zionism.”

The frenzy of progressive commentary blaming Donald Trump for the recent mass shootings is just the latest hysterical outburst of hatred, one suggesting that for the left the president has become the “Jew” among politicians: The object of a unique, fetishistic hatred and paranoia, Trump is the sinister agent of the Democrat Party’s festering, bitter disappointment over the sudden halt he brought to their utopian fantasies of “fundamentally transforming America.”

It’s another sign of the left’s terminal hypocrisy that such flamboyant irrationalism and habits of thought, more typical of premodern societies and the feeble-minded, would flourish among political partisans who call themselves “brights” and brag that their opinions and beliefs are “science-driven.” But Trump-hatred derives from the same atavistic impulses as anti-Semitism: The ancient need to scapegoat a victim upon which to offload the community’s own guilt and misdeeds; and the vulnerability of evangelical ideologues to conspiracy narratives as a way to explain and rationalize their own failure.

In one of history’s sad ironies, the most scapegoated people in history first documented the practice we use today to describe blaming others for our own failures and shortcomings. In ancient Israel, on Yom Kippur the priest would confess the people’s sins over the head of a goat, which was then driven into the wilderness, taking their sins with it. A corollary to scapegoating is the impulse to fabricate preposterous, paranoid conspiracies to explain the malign powers of a persecuted, marginalized minority responsible for the majority’s troubles.

Medieval false charges against Jews like the “blood libel,” the killing of Christian children to use their blood for making Passover matzos; or the desecration of the “host,” the bread used in the Christian communion ritual; or the poisoning of wells all bespeak an irrational paranoia about secret conspiratorial powers possessed by Jews. In modern times, the Russian hoax called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in 1903, detailed a global conspiracy of Jews to take over the world by corrupting Christian morals, taking control of newspapers, and dominating global economies, a canard Nazism freshened up with eugenics pseudo-science, and took to horrific lengths.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Warren Catches Up to Biden in New National Poll By Mairead McArdle

By on August 15th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/warren-catches-up-to-biden-in-new-national-poll/

Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren are polling within just one percentage point of each other as Warren catches up to the former vice president, who has led the pack of Democratic presidential candidates nationally for weeks.

Biden stands at 21 percent support, while Warren is right behind him at 20 percent, up four points from last week, according to the latest national Economist–YouGov poll.

Trailing them are Senator Bernie Sanders, who gained three points from last week to clock in at 16 percent support, and Senator Kamala Harris, who is polling at 8 percent. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Ind. mayor Pete Buttigieg are next, both at 5 percent, and Senators Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand follow at 2 percent. The rest of the Democratic presidential contenders are at 1 percent or lower.

Warren has also risen to second place among likely Iowa caucus voters, polling at 19 percent behind Biden’s 28 percent, while Sanders falls well behind them at 9 percent, according to a new Monmouth University poll.

Warren’s momentum comes after a tough week for Biden in which he botched a number of lines when speaking at the Iowa State Fair.

“Joe Biden has spoken his mind his entire life, which voters know and love about him,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager. “He’s a real person, he’s authentic, and that will never change.”

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Culturally Responsive Training By Marilyn Penn

By on August 15th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/

If New York City taxpayers want to know how their money is spent by the Dept of Education, they can consider the program to train computer science teachers to help students see this subject connected to their own lives. You might guess that ordinary inducements such as doing better in school, doing better in an increasingly computerized job market, earning more money – all of which apply to all races and ethnicities – would be reason enough to be grateful for having computer science courses available in school. You might imagine that by the time a Muslim student is in school, it is no longer essential to capture his attention by the fact that he can make a 3 D symbol of Allah’s name in Arabic script. You would hope that infantilization would not be so rampant that a teacher would boast of making up a song similar to “the head bone connected to the neck bone” in order to stimulate interest in computers. These examples are from an article in today’s WSJ and make us wonder whether school is synonymous with Sesame Street and whether all we are really doing is encouraging the soft bigotry of diminished expectations (WSJ NYC Teachers Get ‘Culturally Responsive’ Training, 8/14)

The fact remains that the whole issue of racial and cultural sensitivity has been captured by Black and Hispanic groups looking for outside answers to inside problems. Asian and Indian students seem to have no trouble meeting the criteria of NYC public schools and do not demand more Chinese teachers or more examples of Japanese food in their math problems or Indian folk legends in our literature. They have no trouble passing standardized tests in English and Math whereas only a third of Black and Hispanic students manage this basic requirement. The notion that what’s holding them back is the insufficient depiction of people of color in our curricula is as preposterous as the suggestion that Black children should be excused from the rules of decorum because their home lives have different standards of acceptability. Children of all ages must understand that school and home are vastly different and the way to adjust to this is not by talking down to them or showing them more selfies.

We are already living in an overly narcissistic culture with people consumed with posting pictures of themselves and checking their facebook pages and demanding “safe spaces” when they are not in 100% familiar territory. At the same time, we are obsessed with stressing the need for ever more diversity which seems to leave some people of color too uncomfortable to even listen to American history or see a statue on the street. In the WSJ article, a teacher summed up the issue that warranted this program for culturally responsive training: “I want to learn computer science; I’m not here for political mumbo jumbo.” The sooner our educational administrators apply this to students as well, the greater the chance for seeing real achievement.

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

DR. ALEX GROBMAN:A WAR OF WORDS SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT…..PART 2

By on August 15th, 2019

The Mufti’s meeting with Hitler in Berlin

As German historian Peter Longerich explained, when Hitler met the Grand Mufti on November 28, 1941 at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Hitler informed him that Germany was “resolved to urge one European nation after the other, step by step, to contribute to the solution of the Jewish problem, and when the time comes to non- European peoples with a similar appeal.”  He would “carry on the fight until the total destruction of the Jewish-Communist European,” and in the “not too distant future” his army would reach the southern tip of the Caucasus and into the Middle East after defeating the Russians.

Hitler assured the mufti, who from 1941 to 1945 lived in Berlin as an honored guest of the Third Reich, Germany had no imperial designs in the Arab world. The country’s only goal was to liberate the Arabs. “The German objective would be solely the destruction of Jews residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.” Although this declaration should be viewed from a pragmatic military perspective, Longerich noted that it demonstrates that Hitler’s vison of extermination of the Jews at this point already went beyond Europe.

Hitler viewed the mufti as a “sly old fox,” and ascribed his “quite exceptional wisdom” to the likelihood of “Aryan” blood according to Israeli historian Robert Wistrich. “With his blond hair and blue eyes,” Hitler speculated, “he gives the impression that he is, in spite of his sharp and mouse-like countenance, a man with more than one Aryan among his ancestors and one who may well be descended from the best Roman stock.” (See Haaretz: Never-before-seen Photos of Palestinian Mufti With Hitler Ties Visiting Nazi Germany)

Special Office Established for the Mufti to Transmit Arabic-language Broadcasts

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

A WAR OF WORDS :SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: PART ONE DR. ALEX GROBMAN

By on August 15th, 2019

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24259

Part I  A War of Words–setting the record straight 

The unending war between the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews is fought on a number of levels. One on the military front; another in the propaganda arena.

As part of this war of words, the Israelis use the Arabs own writings, including the Hamas Covenant and the Palestinian National Charter, their calls for violence against Israel and glorification of Palestinian Arab terrorists found in the media, broadcast on television, preached in the mosques and found in school curricula, as proof the Arabs in Israel refuse to accept the existence of the state of Israel.

The Palestine Authority policy of paying stipends to Palestinian-Arab prisoners and to families of terrorists who have been wounded or killed further demonstrates their commitment to make the country Judenrein. The terrorists know that whether they are killed in combat or imprisoned in Israeli jails, their families will be compensated by the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and/or other Palestinian-Arab terror organizations.  In 2019, ignoring otherwise ordinary measures of inflation, the PA increased salaries to terrorist prisoners by 11.8%, according Palestinian Media Watch. They doubled the monthly payment being made to the terrorist mastermind behind the 2014 kidnapping and murder of Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Frenkel.

With the aid of the Palestinian Media Watch and MEMRI, Israel documents how terrorists are revered in their society by honoring homicide bombers, bomb makers, hijackers, and organizers of terror attacks, who have public squares, streets, schools and youth centers named after them. A number of the vilest terrorists have been honored on multiple occasions.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

J. Frank Bullitt :Stop The Madness Before It Drives Us All Crazy

By on August 14th, 2019

:https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/12/stop-the-madness-before-it-drives-us-all-crazy/

Each week the world produces news that irritates, stuns and infuriates, and on occasion makes us question our collective sanity, leaving us, for example, wondering just how the likes of Joe Biden has been able to reach lofty positions from which he has been able to affect policies that impact our lives.

Here are a few stories from the last week that confirm suspicions we are living in foolish times:

While the Democrats fight to see who can build the biggest welfare state and promise voters that if they just gave them the power, they would make sure everyone has health care, in Great Britain — where everyone has health care — 4.4 million in a country of 66 million are waiting on surgery.

According to the United Press International, “new statistics posted by the National Health Service also showed a 16% increase of patients who’d waited for more than 18 weeks for non-emergency operations, such as hip or knee replacements.

“The NHS figures showed 233,000 Britons had waited for more than six months and 37,000 more than nine months.”

In America, Medicare for All promises free and easy health coverage, but the reality is it “would outlaw all private insurance,” makes sharp cuts in provider payments, which will lead to physician shortages and government rationing of care, and means higher taxes and Americans losing the coverage they have now.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is no longer unhinged — the door that once a barrier between his raging mind and the real world outside has completely fallen off.

On Saturday, Sanders, the Democrat or Socialist or just plain crazy uncle from Vermont, tweeted that “Donald Trump believes climate change is a hoax. Donald Trump is an idiot.” We don’t think the global warming scare is a hoax. Maybe a fraud. Perhaps a spreading swamp fever. Possibly just a big mistake. But not a hoax. We don’t believe Trump is an idiot, either. But quite a few on Twitter think Sanders is. Look at some of the responses:

“Bernie Sanders believes bread lines are good. Bernie Sanders is a communist idiot.”

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