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Ruth King

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Islam Upside-Down and Inside-Out Part One Edward Cline

By on October 6th, 2016

There can’t be too many books like this one. The Impact of Islam, by Emmet Scott, is one of many books that deflate the whole history, provenance, and character of Islam. At first glance, as an atheist, I thought that reviewing a book written by a Christian with an obvious Christian bias against Islam would be difficult, mainly in segregating the bias from the truth-telling and facts. But Scott’s book, while it has a demonstrable bias in favor of Christianity, doesn’t lay it on too thickly. Scott’s arguments are very well structured and made, and he doesn’t beat one over the head. There is history and information in it that I have not encountered elsewhere, not even in Robert Spencer’s masterful and comprehensive Did Muhammad Exist? An Enquiry into Islam’s Origins, in which little or no Christian bias is evident.

For starters, Scott visits the rather shocking argument that the Islamic Koran was probably an early Jewish-Christian (or Ebionite) devotional manual (Scott labels Ebionitism as a “proto-Islamic creed”) because so much in it was cadged or plagiarized by Islamic “scholars” over the centuries (Having had a nose or sixth sense for fakery, I’ve always contended that both the Koran and the Hadith were works in progress with numerous editors and compilers over the centuries adding to them or redacting portions from them to make the works consistent and complementary and too “holy” for later scholars and believers to correct or question.) There are just too many similarities in the texts, argues Scott, and the Jewish-Christian work, if Islamic history is to be accorded any credibility, predated the birth of Mohammad by centuries. Christians of various sects existed long before Islam. When Christianity first appeared, it would be nearly half a millennium before the Islam we’re familiar with allegedly made its destructive appearance.

The Koran itself, writes Scott, is an incomprehensible mess. Written and read in its “original” Arabic, and translated into modern non-Arabic languages, it often makes no sense, not even to Islamic scholars charged with the task of interpretation. There seems to be more rhyme and reason in a chimpanzee’s random hunt-and-peck on a typewriter keyboard . In his compelling Appendix, he notes:

Among the numerous titles which have appeared recently we may cite in particular The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran, by Christoph Luxenberg (2007)and The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into its Early History, a series of essays edited by Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Gerd-R Puin (2009). Upon the publication of Luxenberg’s book, the popular media…focused on his claim that the 72 virgins promised to Islamic martyrs was a mistranslation, and that what was actually an offer of 72 raisins, or grapes. Yet this was the very least of what Luxenberg was saying, , the full import of which was ignored in the newspapers. In fact, he was claiming that the original language of the Qur’an was not Arabic (where the questionable word is read as “virgins”) but Syriac or Aramaic, where the same word would translate as “grapes.” He was furthermore claiming, sensationally enough, that the Qur’an was originally a Syriac Christian devotional text and had nothing to do with Muhammad or Islam. (p. 174)

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Islam Upside-Down and Inside-Out: II Edward Cline

By on October 6th, 2016

I opened “Islam Upside-Down and Inside-Out” with “There can’t be too many books like this one. The Impact of Islam, by Emmet Scott, is one of many books that deflate the whole history, provenance, and character of Islam. At first glance, as an atheist, I thought that reviewing a book written by a Christian with an obvious Christian bias against Islam would be difficult, mainly in segregating the bias from the truth-telling and facts.”

But I left out some of the goriest parts of Scott’s opus, parts which explain in some respect the title of his book, parts which indict Islam as a psychopathic movement, an “illness” which spread to the rest of Europe.

Islam, for example, invented the “Inquisition,” not the Catholic Church, which adopted the institution as a way of identifying and persecuting heretics. Islam’s original purpose, however, was to test the sincerity of the conversion of Jews and Christians to Islam. Untold numbers of Jews and Christians were made an offer they could not refuse: convert or pay the exorbitant jizya or die. Jizya was a poll tax, or a head tax, on anyone not a “true” Muslim. Theoretically, the tax offered the infidel, or the dhimmi ,“protection” from theft, persecution, or death by Muslims and others, much as racketeers centuries later would extort “protection money” from individuals and businesses; the extortion was simply the criminals refraining from murder or dynamiting one’s business.

As Scott and others have described the workings of jizya, this did not, as a rule, work out as expected, resulting in massacres of Jews and Christians, or their deportation from Spain across the Mediterranean to Morocco. Which leads us back to the Inquisition.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Withstanding A Second Muslim Invasion By Herbert London

By on October 6th, 2016

After two months of an onslaught by troops of the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy along with the Polish Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire under the command of King John Sobieski rose to defend Christianity at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna in September 1683. The battle marked the turning point in the 300 year Ottoman-Hapsburg wars with Christianity. In this instance Christianity prevailed on the European continent.

Three hundred and thirty years later Europe is once again being called on to defend its civilization against Muslims swarming into the continent at a record rate. This time two of Europe’s most affluent nations, Sweden and Germany have laid out the welcome mat. More than a million migrants will end up in Germany alone by the end of this year. But not everyone is so welcoming. The request for firearms in Europe has been overwhelming as people are seeking the means to defend themselves against rampaging and often criminal migrants. Self-defense – which for decades were words that connoted “out-of-control” – is now widely accepted. In Austria gun sales are at record levels.

ISIS trained jihadists, returning as European citizens are infiltrating the ranks of the migrants. They are the vanguard in this civilizational war. But resistance is building. Most Italians are opposed to new arrivals. The British passed Brexit in large part to oppose the EU mandated migrant quota. Swedes have observed baseball bat wielding teenagers beat up Muslims at the Stockholm train station. President Orban of Hungary foresees the “destruction of Europe” in this migration push and argues it is time to push back.

This, of course, is merely the thin edge of the wedge. From an electoral standpoint, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was soundly defeated in local elections. Political change is just over the horizon in France, Spain, Austria and Italy. Every incidence of reported rape, beating, and honor killing generates thousands of voters for stability at any price.

A Turkish man kicked a woman in the face leaving her severely bruised because she was wearing shorts. But in this increasingly Islamicized nation, a court released the assailant saying that he hadn’t committed any crime.

After the New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne and 17 other cities, fears were heightened in every European capital. But Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne reserved most of his concern for the threats from right wing circles that were intent on retaliation. Other cardinals raised the specter of Islamophobia and the return of “new nationalism” – a euphemism for neo-Nazis. But what the Church could not do and has not done is condemn in unequivocal language the damage to European civilization of a borderless continent that has allowed the free flow of migrants from worn torn Syria. Clearly compassion has its place, but so too do the limits of compassion.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

LAWRENCE HAAS: COLLAPSE OVER IRAN’S MISSILES

By on October 6th, 2016

The revelation of recent days that, back in January, President Obama agreed that the United Nations should lift its sanctions against two Iranian state banks which financed Iran’s ballistic missile development puts the lie to Washington’s claims – stubbornly maintained for more than a year – that it was determined to rein in the Islamic Republic’s expanding missile program.

In fact, the president’s decision reflects a larger pattern of U.S. backtracking over Iran’s ballistic missiles – one that dates back to well before the landmark U.S.-led global agreement with Iran over its nuclear program in July of 2015.

During the U.S.-led negotiations over that agreement, the president decided they should focus squarely on Iran’s nuclear program and not cover such related issues as Iran’s development and testing of long-range ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads – despite the obvious tie between nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

With an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program in place, U.S. officials argued, they could then pressure Iran over not only its ballistic missile program but also its sponsorship of terror, its efforts to destabilize Sunni nations in the region and its increasingly grotesque human rights record at home.

But the public record – of which the new revelation about sanctions relief is now a part, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal – reveals something far different: While negotiating and implementing the nuclear agreement, Washington took multiple steps that not only legitimized Iran’s missile program but actually helped Tehran make further progress.

First and foremost, the United States agreed to soften the global prohibitions directed against that program.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Should Family Affiliations with Foreign Islamist Movements Prevent a Security Clearance? A former Pentagon Assistant Inspector General is the son of a prominent American Muslim Brotherhood official. Now he wants his old job back. BY Christine Brim

By on October 5th, 2016

In 1980, Robert Dickson Crane converted to Islam. From that year to the present day, Crane has built a successful career as a high-level official in multiple Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated organizations in the U.S. and Qatar. At the same time, from 1988 to 2013, his son John Ruedel Crane rose to similar prominence in the Department of Defense to the position of Assistant Inspector General and director of both the Department of Defense and NSA’s whistleblower programs. Crane’s position in the DoD Inspector General office came with high-level clearances and access to a broad scope of DoD information. His tenure of twenty-five years within DoD also encompassed a time of multiple jihadist attacks against American targets, including the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks and the global war on terror waged in response. http://counterjihad.com/should-family-affiliations-with-foreign-islamist-movements-prevent-a-security-clearance

In a recent phone conversation, John Crane confirmed that Robert Crane is his father and stated that, during background investigations throughout his career, he was never asked, nor did he volunteer, any information about his father’s affiliations. We don’t know if the relationship was, in fact, known and approved by the Department of Defense, the intelligence community or by political administrations during Crane’s over two-decade year career. But we can state that the relationship between Robert Crane and John Crane is being described for the first time to the general public in this investigative report.

John Crane’s management of the whistleblower offices included the years when Edward Snowden stole over 1.5 million classified documents. Crane has recently been the subject of numerous media interviews as “The Third Man” in the new book Bravehearts: Whistleblowing in the Age of Snowden, a defense of Edward Snowden’s theft of classified documents from the U.S., UK and Australia. John Crane was quietly removed from his Inspector General and whistleblower office positions in February 2013, four months before the Edward Snowden case became public knowledge. He immediately became a consultant for the General Accountability Project (GAP), the legal counsel for Snowden. GAP was founded in 1977 by the extreme far left Institute for Policy Studies.

On September 15, 2016 the House Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan, unanimous report summarizing their investigation of National Security Agency computer technician Edward Snowden’s theft of 1.5 million classified documents. The Committee’s critique of Snowden was devastating: “These findings demonstrate that the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions, a pattern that began before he stole 1.5 million sensitive documents.” As former Intelligence Committee staff Fred Fleitz has observed, “Snowden is not a whistleblower; he is a disgruntled former intelligence employee who did enormous damage to U.S. national security.”

Left-wing activists have mounted a campaign for Snowden’s vindication and pardon before Obama leaves office, including Oliver Stone’s hagiographic movie, Snowden, and Bravehearts, the book by Nation magazine reporter Mark Hertsgaard in which John Crane figures so prominently. Crane’s allegations against the DoD in Bravehearts have been cited as a vindication of Snowden’s acts by the Intercept, the website of Snowden advocate Glenn Greenwald (“Vindication for Edward Snowden From a New Player in NSA Whistleblowing Saga”).

In February 2013, John Crane was placed on “administrative leave” from his position as DoD Assistant Inspector General, his security clearances and pay were suspended, and he was forbidden to come to the office. He has resurfaced in the public eye in 2016 as the subject of numerous articles and interviews promoting the Bravehearts book in Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Government Executive, Democracy Now!, Russia Today, New York Times, The Intercept, and of course Hertsgaard’s Nation. Crane asserts in Bravehearts and in these interviews that Edward Snowden’s theft of U.S. classified information was simply an understandable reaction to the DoD’s prior treatment of whistleblowers, which discouraged Snowden from becoming a “whistleblower” himself inside the system.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Please Tell Me These FBI/DOJ ‘Side Deals’ with Clinton E-Mail Suspects Didn’t Happen The ‘side deals’ are further evidence of a highly politicized Obama Department of Justice. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 5th, 2016

Just when you think it can’t get any worse . . .

According to House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.), the immunity agreements struck by the Justice Department with Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top subjects of the FBI’s Clinton e-mail investigation, included “side agreements.” Pursuant to these side agreements, it was stipulated that (a) the FBI would not scrutinize any documents dated after January 31, 2015 (i.e., about five weeks before the most disturbing actions suggestive of obstruction of justice occurred); and (b) the FBI — in an investigation critically involving destruction of documents — would destroy the computers after conducting its search.

These revelations are outlined in a letter Chairman Goodlatte penned yesterday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Goodlatte says his committee learned of the side deals upon reviewing the immunity agreements, which have not been made public. That review naturally prompted a demand by the committee to see the side deals, which — for reasons unexplained — the Justice Department elected not to provide when it gave the committee access to the immunity agreements. The side deals have also not been made public.

For anyone who worked in the Justice Department for any length of time, the striking of side deals with a defense lawyer (in this instance, Beth Wilkinson, who represents both Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson) is bracing. Written agreements with the Justice Department (regarding, for example, guilty pleas and cooperation) customarily include a clause explaining that the four corners of the document contain the entirety of the understandings between the parties. This is done precisely because defendants often claim they were enticed into signing the agreement because of this or that side deal purportedly agreed to by the government. The Justice Department likes to be able to say, “We don’t engage in those sorts of shenanigans. The agreement is the single agreement as written.” Why did the Justice Department make side deals in this case (which we’ve been told was treated like any other case . . . except, alas, when it wasn’t)?

More fundamentally, as I’ve been arguing since we learned of the immunity agreements, why did the government grant immunity in the first place? Unfortunately, the question, at this point, is rhetorical. Immunity was granted because the Justice Department would not use the grand jury against Mrs. Clinton.

RELATED: The FBI’s Defense of How the Clinton Interview Was Conducted Is Full of Holes

As I’ve explained, the computers were physical evidence. The law empowers the government to compel production of physical evidence by subpoena (or by search warrant if there is suspicion that the evidence will be tampered with or destroyed). Importantly, however, the power to compel production of evidence derives from the grand jury. In the Clinton e-mails case, unlike virtually every other criminal case, the Justice Department apparently declined to convert the FBI’s investigation into a grand-jury investigation. This meant grand-jury subpoenas would not be issued.

Why?

Patently, the highly politicized Obama Justice Department did this because commencing a grand-jury investigation suggests that a matter is very serious and an indictment (which only the grand jury can issue) is likely. In this case, the Justice Department was determined to maintain the illusion that Clinton and her underlings hadn’t committed crimes, so the grand jury was avoided. That is how you end up with such inanities as the Justice Department’s leaking to the Washington Post that Cheryl Mills was regarded as nothing more than a very cooperative witness, not a suspect, even though we now know that (a) Mills falsely denied that, while serving as then-secretary of state Clinton’s chief of staff, she knew about the homebrew server system; (b) the evidence indicates that Mills is the one who directed Platte River Networks (PRN) to destroy the e-mails stored on Clinton’s server (although there are salient questions about when this happened); (c) the private laptop Mills used to vet Clinton’s e-mails contained mounds of classified information; and (d) Mills was sufficiently worried that her lawyer sought — and obtained — immunity from prosecution before Mills surrendered her computer to the FBI.

In his House testimony last week, FBI director James Comey tried to deflect the government’s failure to use the grand jury by rationalizing that the FBI was very anxious to examine the Mills and Samuelson computers, and that it is often more efficient in a criminal investigation to make informal agreements with the subjects’ lawyers than to rely on grand-jury compulsion. As I countered in this past weekend’s column, this claim is unconvincing. Use of the grand jury and negotiations with defense lawyers are not mutually exclusive. They happen concurrently all the time. Indeed, it is fear that the government might resort to compulsion that induces defense lawyers to negotiate reasonably. Take the grand jury off the table and investigators are apt to get taken to the cleaners.

That is what happened here. With no resort to the grand jury, the FBI was reduced to relying on the Justice Department, which was working closely with Team Clinton’s defense lawyers, to cut immunity deals. These deals gave away the store in exchange for physical evidence the government actually had the power to demand without making concessions, much less extraordinary concessions like immunizing Mills and Samuelson from any prosecution based on the contents of the computers.

According to Goodlatte, those concessions were even more astonishing than they seemed at first blush because of the newly revealed side deals.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Defends Planned West Bank Construction The statement comes after the U.S. strongly criticized Israel’s approval of the new housing in Shilo By Rory Jones

By on October 5th, 2016

TEL AVIV—Israel on Wednesday defended plans to build 98 new housing units in the occupied West Bank, after the U.S. issued an unusually harsh rebuke of the proposed construction.

Israel’s government intends to use the new units to rehouse Jewish Israelis from a West Bank settlement the country’s high court has deemed illegal and ordered evacuated, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The new housing will be built within the existing settlement of Shilo in the northern West Bank and won’t constitute a new settlement, it said.

“Israel remains committed to a solution of two states for two peoples, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state of Israel,” the statement added.

The announcement of the new units comes amid increasing U.S. frustration with Israel’s expanding settlement enterprise and after the White House agreed to a major military aid package for its Middle East ally.

The Obama administration last month said it would provide Israel with $3.8 billion a year in military aid over a decade, a 23% increase over current levels.

The State Department on Wednesday said it was “deeply troubling” that Israel had decided to jeopardize its security by continuing to build settlements and making a two-state solution for peace between Israelis and Palestinians a dim prospect.

Israel’s high court in 2014 ordered that Amona, an illegal settlement outpost that is home to some 40 families, should be evacuated as it was built on Palestinian land.

The Israeli government has been discussing how to rehouse those settlers, finalizing a plan to move them to Shilo, according to Wednesday’s statement from the foreign ministry.

The new units were first highlighted by monitoring group Peace Now on Saturday, a day after President Barack Obama flew to Jerusalem to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres , the towering Israeli statesman who helped craft the vision of a two-state solution. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Cheryl Mills’s Legal Privileges The evidence of a politicized Clinton probe keeps building.

By on October 5th, 2016

The more we learn about the Justice Department’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email, the worse it looks. The latest revelation is that, along with granting immunity to two Clinton aides, Justice agreed to secret side deals that provided highly unusual protections from potential prosecution.

The side agreements came to light this week in a letter from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Mr. Goodlatte says he learned about the side deals by examining the immunity agreements, which haven’t been released to the public.

We already knew that Justice offered immunity to at least five central figures in the private email probe, including Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, the aides in charge of deciding which of the former Secretary of State’s emails on her private server would be turned over to the State Department. FBI Director James Comey struggled to explain to Congress last week why immunity was necessary to obtain the laptops the two had used for sorting the emails.

Now we learn that Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson also obtained guarantees that investigators would not search these laptops after Jan. 31, 2015. More amazing, Justice agreed to destroy both laptops after examining them. Think about that: Before the authorities knew what was on the laptops, they agreed to destroy potential evidence in their investigation. The evidence was also under a congressional subpoena and preservation order.

The “no-look” date beyond Jan. 31, 2015 means the FBI couldn’t see what the two aides said or did after the news of Mrs. Clinton’s private server became public in March 2015. Investigators would be unable to determine if Ms. Mills or Ms. Samuelson had engaged, as Mr. Goodlatte put it in his letter, in “destruction of evidence or obstruction of justice related to Secretary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server.” Why else would time limits be necessary given that the two women already had immunity?

We’re told by prosecutors that this kind of special treatment is all but unheard of. Justice would typically empanel a grand jury, which would issue subpoenas to obtain physical evidence like the laptops. No grant of immunity would have been necessary.

So why no grand jury? Mr. Comey told Congress last week that the FBI was eager to see the laptop evidence and that it is sometimes easier to have informal agreements to obtain it. But surely it’s possible to negotiate with lawyers and conduct a grand jury at the same time. Without the threat of a grand jury the Clinton entourage had all the leverage, and they were able to get away with what amounted to formal get-out-of-jail-free cards. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The FBI Treated Clinton With Kid Gloves Investigators went after Gov. Bob McDonnell with every tool they had. The double standard is obvious. By Noel J. Francisco and James M. Burnham

By on October 5th, 2016

Tim Kaine repeatedly defended Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. “The FBI did an investigation,” he said at one point, “and they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further.” But such a statement is credible only if it follows a real criminal investigation—that is, the sort of investigation that the FBI and the Justice Department conduct when they actually care about a case and want convictions.

We know all too well what that kind of investigation looks like, as two of the lawyers who defended a recent target: former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. That story had a happy ending for the governor and his wife. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in their favor this summer and all charges were dropped in September. But their victory certainly wasn’t due to lack of investigatory zeal on the part of the FBI and Justice Department.

Below are only a few of the heavy-handed tactics federal investigators used to build their case against the McDonnells. See how they compare to how Mrs. Clinton was treated.

Conduct ambush interviews. The first contact between law enforcement and the McDonnells was an ambush interview of the governor’s wife. The agents lied to her about the topic of the meeting, forbade Gov. McDonnell’s staff from attending, and then grilled her on their suspicions about potential public corruption. Statements from that interview later took center stage in the trial of her and her husband.

In Mrs. Clinton’s case, no ambush interviews were conducted, and witnesses were generously accommodated. The FBI and Justice Department even allowed a fact witness and potential target— Cheryl Mills, formerly the State Department’s chief of staff—to simultaneously represent Mrs. Clinton as her counsel.

Immunize only witnesses who can help deliver convictions. One person in Gov. McDonnell’s case got immunity: Jonnie Williams, the prosecution’s star witness. For his testimony, Mr. Williams earned a wealth of blanket immunity—not simply from potential bribery prosecution but also from unrelated crimes he might have committed (including securities and tax fraud). Reluctant witnesses—Gov. McDonnell’s children and friends—were called before a grand jury and forced to testify. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

John Kerry Sends Regrets Obama officials start to wash their hands of the Syrian catastrophe.

By on October 5th, 2016

Much of the city of Aleppo lies in ruins after days of airstrikes by Russian and Assad regime forces, and buried in the wreckage is whatever is left of the Obama Administration’s Syria policy. If it’s any consolation to the 275,000 souls trapped in the city, John Kerry has regrets.

That much is clear from a leaked recording of a conversation the Secretary of State had with a group of Syrian civilians engaged in humanitarian work during last month’s U.N. General Assembly. Mr. Kerry complained that “the Russians don’t care about international law, and we do.” He noted that “a lot of Americans don’t believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country.”

Above all, he lamented that his diplomatic efforts to end Syria’s war were never backed by a credible threat of American military strikes. “I think you’re looking at three people, four people in the Administration who have all argued for use of force, and I lost the argument,” Mr. Kerry said.
The Secretary is right that President Obama doomed whatever chances the U.S. had of shaping a better outcome in Syria when Mr. Obama made clear that nothing, including chemical attacks against civilians, could induce him to deploy even modest force to ground Bashar Assad’s air force or establish no-fly/no-drive zones.

Then again, it’s hard to credit Mr. Kerry as the scorned voice of reason within the Administration when, until last week, he was the most vocal advocate of making common cause with Moscow in Syria.

In May 2015 Mr. Kerry first broke the informal diplomatic quarantine the U.S. had imposed on Russia after it granted Edward Snowden asylum in 2013 and invaded Ukraine the following year. Last month Mr. Kerry was pushing the Pentagon, over the objections of Defense Secretary Ash Carter, to share targeting intelligence with Russia to grease a new cease-fire deal. As with a similar cease-fire Mr. Kerry negotiated earlier this year, Russia violated it within days.

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