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Ruth King

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One Girl’s Escape from ‘Single Most Deadly Terror Organization in the World’ By Bridget Johnson

By on May 12th, 2016

WASHINGTON — A former congressman who was one of the foremost champions of human rights during his years on Capitol Hill returned today with one of the escaped Chibok schoolgirls to warn about the escalated threat posed by terror groups in West Africa.

Frank Wolf, who represented the 10th district of Virginia in the House from 1981 to 2015, is now a distinguished senior fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative and the Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor University.

He told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Affairs that he traveled to Nigeria in late February, where he listened to “hundreds of individuals in small villages, and remote areas miles off the main roads” in addition to “tribal leaders, pastors, mothers and fathers as well as government officials and our own Embassy personnel.”

Wolf stressed that the death toll wreaked by Boko Haram “makes them the single most deadly terror organization in the world” — with more victims than ISIS.

Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS last year — a vow that makes the U.S. government their sworn enemy in addition to their old foe the Nigerian government, the former congressman stressed.

“Boko Haram attacks villages, conducts drive-by shootings, and uses young girls as suicide bombers. They target politicians and clerics for assassination, focusing on the symbols of Western advancement such as schools, hospitals, and churches, but also mosques. While no one has an exact number, thousands of young girls have been abducted by Boko Haram,” Wolf said.

“Just last month, we commemorated the two-year anniversary of the kidnapping of the Chibok Girls, and despite the loud protests in the West and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, it is extremely doubtful that any of the girls have been released. One counselor with whom we spoke on the ground told us that the girls who have been captured may never return without a major concerted effort by the Nigerian government and the West, and if they do they will have been the victims of sexual violence, and are often times pregnant and will have been forced to convert to Islam.”

A young Nigerian woman who wore dark glasses during the hearing and went by the pseudonym Sa’a for protection described the April 14, 2014, attack on the Government Secondary School in Chibok.

It was the second Boko Haram school attack she survived.

“They marched us out of the school for miles to where their trucks were. Then they asked us to enter the trucks and said that if we did not, they were going to shoot all of us. We were all scared, so we entered the trucks,” Sa’a said. She and a friend decided to jump from their truck while it was careening down a forest road in the dark.

When Sa’a was first offered an opportunity to continue her education in the United States, she “felt like if we go to school again they are going to kidnap us wherever we are.” Her brothers were among those who convinced her to keep studying. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Jim Campbell Islam and the Constitution

By on May 12th, 2016

Section 116 guarantees the right to worship in whatever manner your favoured creed prescribes — but only so long as beliefs and practices conform with the definition of religion laid down by the High Court. In this regard, Koranic edicts are somewhat problematic
Thumbing through the Constitution the other day I came across Section 116 covering freedom of religion:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

Trusty Wikipedia then sent me to what is regarded as a leading authority on the question of religion, the 1983 judgment of the High Court in Church of the New Faith v Commissioner for Pay-Roll Tax (Vic). In this case the court found that Scientology is a religion, despite some justices commenting that its practices were “impenetrably obscure”. In reaching this finding, the court argued that the definition of religion needed to be flexible while also recognising the need to be sceptical of disingenuous claims of religious practice. Justices Mason and Brennan held:

“… the criteria of religion [are] twofold: first, belief in a supernatural, Being, Thing or Principle; and second, the acceptance of canons of conduct in order to give effect to that belief.”

Justices Wilson and Deane were less prescriptive, setting out five “indicia” of a religion:

1/ a belief in the supernatural
2/ a belief in ideas relating to “man’s nature and place in the universe
3/ the adherence to particular standards, codes of conduct or practices by those who hold the ideas
4/ the existence of an identifiable group of believers, even if not a formal organisation
5/ the opinion of the believers that what they believe in constitutes a religion.

A definition by the fifth judge, Justice Murphy, included the supernatural, but was less prescriptive on other matters.

It led me to ponder how effectively Islam meets these requirements: belief in the supernatural (Being, Thing or Principal) and adherence to codes of conduct. In the Koran these are most commonly presented as the Five Pillars: the Affirmation, Prayer, Charity, Fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. These are what might be called housekeeping precepts and form the populist face of Islam. The more significant codes are those which are driving resurgent Islamism.

Firstly, the Koran encourages an ethos of ‘us’ and ‘them’, where the ‘us’ are Muslims and the ‘them’ are Jews, disbelievers and Christians: that is, Muslims and the rest. For example:

You who believe, do not take the disbelievers as allies and protectors instead of the believers: do you want to offer God clear proof against you? (Women 4:144)

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A Climate Courtroom Crusade Scorches Due Process Attorneys general demand Exxon’s files without first asking a judge—a case of the fox guarding the hens. By Philip Hamburger

By on May 12th, 2016

Six months ago, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a subpoena demanding that Exxon Mobil turn over records concerning its research on climate change. In March, Mr. Schneiderman took the predictable next step, announcing that a coalition of attorneys general will hold fossil fuel companies accountable. “The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, does not give you the right to commit fraud,” he said.

The threat to scientific inquiry and political speech is obvious. Not so widely recognized is the underlying violation of due process. Start with the fact that Mr. Schneiderman and the other attorneys general have relied, as their opening move, on a nonjudicial subpoena to force the disclosure of information.

Traditionally, federal and state governments could demand testimony, papers or other information in only very limited ways. A legislative committee could call witnesses and insist that they appear and testify. But an attorney general who wanted to rifle through a private company’s filing cabinet had to get a warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause, or had to ask a court overseeing a grand jury to issue a subpoena.

Otherwise the attorney general had to wait until he brought civil or criminal charges, and in a criminal case he could get only a very limited version of discovery. As the founding generation knew from experience, government demands for papers could be dangerous.

Much has changed over the past century. When civil discovery of evidence, now a common process, evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some states, for the sake of convenience, allowed subpoenas for such purposes to be signed not by judges, but by clerks, and then even by parties in cases. The subpoena power thus began to drift out of the hands of the judiciary. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Ryan-Trump Summit Thursday’s summit could be the beginning of a useful, if not beautiful, relationship. Daniel Henninger

By on May 12th, 2016

Paul Ryan and Donald Trump are the two leaders in the Republican Party’s Cold War. Which one is the U.S. and the other the Soviet Union is beside the point. What matters is that Republican Party factions—once again—are on the nuclear brink. On Thursday the two men will hold a summit meeting at a neutral site, with the Republican National Committee headquarters serving as Reykjavik.

Mr. Ryan has said he isn’t ready to endorse Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump replied that if the Speaker can’t support him, so what?

Suffice to say that before now, it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that a party platform of mutually assured destruction was a strategy for winning the presidency.

Anyone who went through the U.S. education system before it fell apart is familiar with the saying: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The man who said that was talking about the human compulsion to repeat national nightmares.

Stepping back from a nightmarish brink is precisely what House Republicans did mere months ago, when they elected Mr. Ryan as House Speaker. Some seem to have forgotten what a corrosive, destructive and potentially self-annihilating mess that was for the Republicans. And here they go again.

Last September, under siege from the most conservative members of the Republican House Conference, John Boehner announced his intention to resign as Speaker.

His presumptive successor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, abruptly ended his candidacy to succeed Mr. Boehner, and House Republicans descended into chaos.

The House’s 40 or so conservatives, the Freedom Caucus, seemed unappeasable. Insults and threats of retribution were rife. The White House and indeed pretty much everyone mocked the Republicans as ungovernable and incapable of governing. CONTINUE AT SITE

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War Weapons for America’s Police By Adam Andrzejewski

By on May 12th, 2016

Despite public outcry, new federal data shows that 2014 and 2015 were peak years for shipments of surplus military gear to local police departments across America.

This week our organization released the study, OpenTheBooks Snapshot Report – The Militarization of Local Police Departments, that quantified the transfer of 1.5 million weapons-related items from the Department of Defense (DoD) to federal, state and local law enforcement since 2006. New federal records show police agencies in Florida, Texas, California, Tennessee and Arizona led the nation in procuring surplus military-weaponry from the DoD over the last 10 years.

We found a federally-sponsored ‘gun show’ that never ends: small town police are armed with M16 and M14 rifles, night-vision googles, bayonets and armored trucks; junior colleges and county sheriffs procured mine-resistant vehicles (MRVs); even local park districts and forest preserves stocked up on military-style equipment.
The 1033 Program created by the National Defense Authorization Act (1997) authorized the transfer of excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement.

The 1033 Program created by the National Defense Authorization Act (1997) authorized the transfer of excess military equipment to civilian law enforcement.

In total, our new data reveals $2.2 billion worth of military gear including helicopters and airplanes, armored trucks and cars, tens of thousands of M16 and M14 rifles, thousands of bayonets, mine detectors and many other types of weaponry.

Thousands of units of government across America received military equipment. Using our mapping technology, citizens can quickly search the military ‘gun lockers’ of your local government: park districts, forest preserves, hometown police departments, junior colleges, universities, county sheriffs, natural resource and public safety departments, state police – and Homeland Security, Interior and the Justice Department – across any ZIP code.

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Who Is Responsible for Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party? Jeremy Corbyn. Something is rotten in the United Kingdom By James Kirchick

By on May 12th, 2016

James Kirchick, a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative, is a columnist at Tablet. He is a former writer at large for Radio Free Europe based in Prague and a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow based in Berlin. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/202104/anti-semitism-labour-party-corbyn

The most charitable explanation for Jeremy Corbyn’s inept handling of the British Labour party’s latest anti-Semitism row (which have become so numerous that one wag created a clock counting the “number of days since [Labour’s] last anti-semitic incident”) is that it once again demonstrates his indecisive leadership style. After it was revealed that MP Naz Shah had authored social media posts advocating the deportation of Israeli Jews to America, likening the Jewish State to Nazi Germany, and comparing Zionism to al-Qaida, Corbyn initially refused to suspend the lady from Bradford West. Only after members of his own caucus publicly demanded it did Corbyn finally cave and withdraw the whip.

Then came the defense of Shah by Corbyn’s longtime friend and ally, former LondonMayor Ken Livingstone. In a truly weird, touring performance across several BBC programs meant to defend the disgraced Shah, Livingstone performed a sort of poor man’s impersonation of David Irving, claiming that Hitler was himself a Zionist. Digging his heels further, Livingstone claimed that Shah and other Labour figures accused of anti-Semitism have been smeared because “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel.” It takes one to know one.

Livingstone also said that he had “never heard anyone say anything anti-Semitic” in his near half-century involvement with Labour, which is a bit rich coming from the guy who once claimed that the Conservative Party was “riddled with homosexuals.”

Like his belated punishment of Shah, Corbyn only reluctantly suspended Livingstone from the party. And as if to send a signal to what is clearly a significant, and growing, anti-Semitic constituency within his party, Corbyn simultaneously reprimanded fellow Labourite John Mann MP, the heroic chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism who publicly confronted Livingstone and accused him of being a “Nazi apologist.”

As Labour and the media debate whether or not there is an anti-Semitism “crisis” within the party, nearly everybody seems to agree on at least one thing: Jeremy Corbyn himself is no anti-Semite. This generousness extends even to Corbyn’s harshest critics. “It is not that Labour’s leadership is anti-Semitic,” opines the New York Times’ Kenan Malik in a piece titled, “The British Left’s Jewish Problem.” “There is no reason to believe Corbyn is an anti-Semite,” writes the Financial Times’Robert Shrimsley in a column explaining why he can no longer vote for a Corbyn-led Labour Party.

On the contrary, there is every reason to believe Corbyn is exactly that.

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Americans, the Almost-Chosen People By David P. Goldman

By on May 12th, 2016

On Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, lessons for our world from theirs
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/202040/americans-the-almost-chosen-people

When we speak of culture in general, we typically think of fixed roots in the form of memory, custom, and habit. Yet the salient characteristic of the American character is restlessness, as Tocqueville observed. We are journeyers rather than settlers. We are risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and innovators. How then should we think about ourculture?

One approach is to steer clear of the problem and define America as a “propositional nation,” as John Courtney Murray contended. A proposition is something one assents to rationally. Culture, by contrast, is the context in which we perceive things, which we receive from our ancestors and pass down to our descendants. It is pre-rational, instinctive rather than intellectual, a manifestation of who we are rather than what we think. It is the way in which we cannot help but understand the world.

It is one thing to assert that a proposition is true and quite another thing to pledge one’s life, fortune, and sacred honor. The American Revolution is in some ways the strangest conflict in history: There is no other example of prosperous, property-owning people who were free to publish their thoughts and practice their religion taking up arms against the world’s most powerful empire. Four generations later, half a million Northerners died to end slavery.

If America is merely a propositional nation, moreover, then this proposition can be taught to any other nation, like a proof in logic. From Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush, our attempts to instruct the rest of the world in the American proposition have had baleful consequences, and it behooves us to consider the side of being American that cannot be learned but rather must be lived—what we call culture.

American culture is so singular that the general concept of culture we inherit from the Old World does not suffice to cover it. Critic Russell Kirk refers us to T.S. Eliot, who wrote:

[T]he term culture … includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the 12th of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th century Gothic churches, and the music of Elgar.

These are the sorts of quaint things American tourists used to look for in England, that is, when England still had them. If we Americans had things like that, we would put them in a theme park. I do not mean to deprecate Eliot. His is the common-sense way to think about culture, and to deviate from it takes us into deep water. Nonetheless, Eliot’s definition does not well suit the American example.

For Martin Heidegger, our Being-in-the-World, or Dasein, always occupies a particular space in a particular temporality. “Heritage” for Heidegger refers back to something like an autochthonous peasant archetype. In his later years Heidegger withdrew to a cabin in the Black Forest to write dithyrambs to the German Heimatendangered by the encroachment of technology. Americans do not stay in any one place long enough to accrete the Bodenständigkeit, or rootedness, that Heidegger sought at the core of our Being. No wonder Heidegger hated America.

Recently Alexander Gauland, the deputy chair of the ultra-right Allianz für Deutschland, called Americans “a people thrown together by chance without an authentic culture.” It is true that we do not have a high culture to compare to Europe’s, for all the good that did them. We cannot claim a national poet with the stature of a Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe. Not until the 1920s did we discoverMoby-Dick when critics in search of an American classic rescued Melville’s work from 70 years of obscurity. We have Walt Whitman, the butt of innumerable parodies, and Hemingway, the subject of a famous imitation contest.

America nonetheless has a distinct national culture, with a national epic, a national poem, and a national place.

It is instructive to start in medias res, with the most original and influential work of American fiction, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, whence “all modern American literature comes,” as Hemingway said. Its flaws shed light on our problem as much as do its virtues. Twain devised the most arresting image in American literature: the runaway boy Huck and the escaped slave Jim, fragile and free on the great river. The evocative opening of the novel, though, eventually fades into a disappointing sequel to Tom Sawyer. “The book ends so lamely,” Harold Bloom rightly observes. Nonetheless, we forgive Mark Twain his sin of literary construction and love the work. Our critics, I think, misunderstand why. Lionel Trilling thinks Huck is a “servant of the river-god,” while Bloom cannot decide whether Huck is a “wholly secular being” or an “American Orphic.” This seems far-fetched. What fascinates us in Huckleberry Finn is not the plot but the image of the journey itself. Twain gives us the most poignant picture of a journey ever imagined by an American: the vulnerability of the two fugitives against the backdrop of the great current that bisects the American heartland.

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Misnomer Mischief By Marilyn Penn

By on May 12th, 2016

Certainly the most famous transgender in America is Caitlin Jenner who has graced the cover of many magazines, occupied two slots on reality t.v., received recognition and many awards from the media, the LGBTQ movement and praise from the president of the U.S. Her Woman of the Year award from Glamour magazine for her “courage” in telling her story prompted the return of a similar award issued in 2001 to first responder police officer Moira Smith who rushed into the South Tower to save lives on 9/11, dying at the age of 38. Her husband questioned why this award was now being given to a man when there were so many heroic women in the military, police force, fire brigades or medical teams who put their lives on the line daily. Less forgivable was President Obama’s own use of the word “courage” coming from his position as Commander in Chief with dedicated troops offering their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and various other global hotspots. That same word simply doesn’t apply to a man squeezing himself into a bustier, hiding his package between his thighs and posing for the cover of a magazine whose title more aptly fits the situation – Vanity Fair.

Caitlin, formerly known as Bruce, has not had sexual reassignment surgery although it does appear he has had breast implants; we may soon find out if the rumor that she will be photographed nude turns out to be true. In any event, it is true that gender dysmorphia can now be rectified by the sufferer without altering the biological equipment that was present at birth. This means that many transgender women are actually bi-gender, sporting features common to both sexes: breasts, hairless face, smooth skin, female hormones and a penis. Ordinarily, what’s underneath one’s clothes would be unknown to anyone but the individual and those people with whom he was intimate. That has changed however, with the Justice Department stipulation that transgenders must be entitled to use the bathroom, locker room and shower facilities of whichever sex they choose to call their own. The state of No. Carolina disagreed and issued a law reserving bathrooms and locker rooms to biologically appropriate users. In answer to this flouting of her department’s ruling, Loretta Lynch claimed, “They created state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security.” (NYT 5/10/16) The question is for whom?

For adolescents who have been spared exposure to the multiple pornographic sites on t.v. and the internet, the sight of a boy or man with a penis and breasts would certainly be confusing, if not alarming. The same is true for many adults, despite the growing attempts by social and conventional media to become increasingly explicit with previously considered “fringe” elements of sexual behavior. Several series and films on cable tv have featured bondage, torture and recreational urination as just some other kind of sex the folks enjoy. This defining deviancy down has now decided that the rights of bi-genders trump the rights of those with conventional gender identity. Somehow, a girl who thinks she’s a boy and vice versa, has been parlayed from a gender dysmorphic problem with an abnormally high suicide rate (even after sexual reassignment surgery) to a civil rights issue. Our president, attorney-general and NY governor want us to believe that all the Caitlin Jenners have not only the freedom to morph into the opposite gender but the constitutional right to do so. Why bi-gender people deserve more consideration than people suffering from other forms of delusional thinking remains a mystery. A white woman who chooses to identify as black will not be protected under the same acts that prohibit discrimination by race. A man who wishes to be known as Napoleon and dresses accordingly will not be tolerated in the military and probably not even at the local gym. Neither the military nor the gym will be forced to provide a place for him to park his horse.

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Baltimore epilogue: a funeral amid the riots: Julia Gorin

By on May 12th, 2016

This time a year ago I dreamt that Aunt Berta was in my kitchen in Las Vegas, telling me she was rescinding my invitation to her “jubilee.”

“What jubilee are you talking about?” I demanded. “You just had your jubilee last year when you turned 100. But fine, go ahead and disinvite me. See if I show up to your funeral. Or if I do, see if I bring your beloved Lev (my husband).”

My father’s aunt just listened meekly as I berated her, and soon wakefulness dawned. What if Berta actually was referring to her funeral? Oh, but she couldn’t be dead. Berta doesn’t die. Besides, holding on until 100 is understandable, but what’s the point of 101? And would she really want to bring people to Baltimore — right into the middle of the riots?

The phone rang. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, and it was my mother.
“Eh, Lyusha?”

“Da. Is this about Tota Berta?”

“Someone already told you?”

“No, I just had a dream she was telling me not to come. You think she was letting me off the hook?”

My mother, only ever momentarily impressed by my sporadic ESP, answered, “It’s possible. Anyway, your father is in no shape to fly, but I’m going so let me know whether to buy one ticket or two.” We hung up.

It was hard to believe Berta was gone. Once someone makes it to 101, you figure that person just isn’t going anywhere. Clearly, God has forgotten about them.

The president, for one, did forget about Berta. She never got the presidential letter you’re supposed to get when you turn 100. Granted, she didn’t vote for Mr. Obama, and another Russian-American — a group known for conservative leanings — might have mused, “Forthis I lived a hundred years?” But Berta looked forward to that letter. I had assured her it would come to the Section 8 apartment building where she lived, which was situated between Park Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road.

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No Death Penalty for a Benghazi Jihadist — Is this Law or Politics? By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 12th, 2016

In a terse submission to the federal district court in Washington, D.C., the Obama Justice Department has announced that it will not seek the death penalty against Ahmed Abu Khatallah. He is the only terrorist charged in the Benghazi massacre of September 11, 2012, in which U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American officials were killed in an attack carried out by dozens of jihadists.

Government lawyers provided no explanation for this decision. If you are wondering whether politics played a role in it, you have good reason to be suspicious.

On the face of it, Khatallah is a textbook case for capital punishment. The Benghazi indictment alleges that he willfully and maliciously caused the death of Americans in a terrorist attack that he helped coordinate. The facts of his offense check several of the “aggravating factor” boxes in federal death-penalty law. There is, moreover, a national-security component, inherent not only in the Benghazi atrocity itself but in the perverse incentive that the government’s failure to seek an available death sentence would create for others considering mass-murder attacks against American installations overseas.

In addition, terrorists imprisoned by the United States after being prosecuted for successful attacks against America become iconic figures in the jihad. As long as they live, they can and do inspire more attacks, recruitment, and fundraising.

Thus, legal and national-security considerations militate in favor of seeking capital punishment. Remember, Mr. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. An attack on our ambassador and on sovereign American facilities abroad is an act of war against the United States. Since national security is the core responsibility of the federal government, there can be no federal offense more worthy of capital treatment.

We are talking about the Obama administration, though, so there are always political considerations. And when it comes to Benghazi, they always take precedence.

A criminal trial is an opportunity for a defendant to challenge the government’s version of events. It is not like a press conference or a congressional hearing, at which administration officials can get away with spin and stonewalling. Presided over by an independent judiciary applying rigorous rules of due process, criminal trials arm highly capable defense lawyers with copious discovery of the government’s files and legal avenues to demand further disclosures. And because of the life-and-death stakes of death-penalty litigation, federal law gives no one more ample opportunity to test the government’s story than a death-penalty defendant.

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