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Ruth King

Chinese Naval Base in Djibouti Poses Problem for U.S. Ryan Healy

On Monday April 18, 2016, China officially broke ground on its first naval base in Djibouti, Africa, a country which has also been the home of the United States (U.S.) African intelligence-gathering base for the past 15 years. The Chinese base will be encroaching upon a major U.S. military installation with 4,000 troops and has the largest drone installation base outside of Afghanistan.

Djibouti may be a proving ground for China’s foreign policy as the nation looks to further expand its influence in Africa. China has participated in anti-piracy missions off the coast of Somalia since 2008 and increased those missions in 2010. Chinese President Jinping donated $100 million to the African Union (AU) and said it was to help build a standby force as well as an emergency response and quick response force.

American Ambassador to Djibouti Tom Kelly warns that Djibouti is the forefront of U.S. national security policy in Africa and raised concerns of Chinese military efforts to intercept American intelligence.

The U.S. also has to deal with Djibouti president Ismali Omar Guelleh, viewed by many locals as a dictator, who curtails free speech and human rights, makes arbitrary arrests, and uses torture on opposition. Guelleh may be increasing his ties to China following the Chinese purchase of the Port de Djibouti for $185 million. Chinese investment has also establish a $4 billion dollar railway project from Djibouti to Ethiopia; and is expected to Djibouti $20 million per year for the Djibouti naval base over the next decade.

Iran’s Nuclear Missiles in Our Future by Peter Huessy

Iran has not only failed to sign the agreement, it passed a parliamentary resolution reiterating Iran’s right to do the nuclear activities the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) forbids.

Iran’s purpose seems obvious. By blocking transparency for its nuclear activities and evading enforcement of the terms of the JCPOA, Iran gets to move forward with its nuclear weapons development even as it pretends not to.

Most of the media have ignored satellites photos showing that Iran has hidden its Parchin military atomic complex by completely bulldozing the area and then building an underground nuclear facility off limits to any inspections.

A missile can be launched from the sea — as Iran has done at least twice — by a freighter, which leaves no return address. Even the threat of missile launch can have significant coercive political effect particularly if one does not know from where it will be fired.

As for accuracy, if a missile in the mode of an electro-magnetic pulse exploded anywhere in the atmosphere between Atlanta and Boston, it would knock out most of America’s electric grid.

In 2017, the next administration will face the choice of keeping the US-Iran 2015 nuclear deal – still unsigned by Iran — or of creating a new approach to eliminate Iran as an emerging nuclear power.

Supporters of the current deal, the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA), will continue to argue that Iran has implemented the important provisions of the deal; that current violations and uncertainties are not critical to fulfilling the agreement, and that troublesome activities by Iran’s leadership are just designed to appease some hardliners opposed to any concessions to the United States, “The Great Satan.”

Veiling Women: Islamists’ Most Powerful Weapon by Giulio Meotti

The first victim of the Islamist war in Algeria was a girl who refused the veil, Katia Bengana, who defended her choice even as the executioners pointed a gun at her head. In 1994, Algiers literally awoke to walls plastered with posters announcing the execution of unveiled women.

In April 1947, Princess Lalla Aisha gave a speech in Tangiers and people listened astonished to that unveiled girl. In a few weeks, women throughout the country refused the scarf. Today Morocco is one of the freest countries in the Arab world.

In the mid-1980s, sharia law was implemented in many countries, women in the Middle East were placed in a portable prison and in Europe they resumed the veil to reclaim their “identity,” which meant the refusal of assimilation to Western values and the Islamization of many European cities.

First veils were imposed on women, then Islamists began their jihad against the West.

Laurence Rossignol, France’s Minister for the Family, Children and Women’s Rights, sparked a furor about the Islamic veil proliferating in her country, when she compared headscarved women to “American negroes who accepted slavery.” In addition, Elisabeth Badinter, one of France’s most famous feminists, even called for boycotting Europe’s fashion companies, such as Uniqlo and Dolce & Gabbana, which are developing Islamically correct clothes (in 2013, Muslims spent $266 billion dollars on clothing, and the figure could reach $484 billion by 2019).

A new trend is also emerging in Western popular culture, which was almost invisible in the media a decade ago: headscarved women are now also present in television programs such as MasterChef.

ED CLINE: HOW NOT TO TALK ABOUT ISLAM

Language must conform to wishful thinking or delusions. It must never, never be anchored to reality. That would be “radicalization” and we want none of that.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, knows how to not talk about Islam. Across the sea, Daniel Greenfield, Stephen Coughlin, and a few others not detached from reality, also know how to not talk about Islam.

Boris Johnson wants to find a new term for linking Islamic terrorism without mentioning Islam or Muslims. Or even terrorists or terrorism.Daniel Greenfield et al. do not think you can discuss Islamic terrorism without mentioning Islam. If you talk about Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, you are talking about a cereal, and not about sushi or hummus. Finding a new term for Islamic terrorism isn’t necessary. The current term says it all.

Boris Johnson does not believe that Islamic “radicalization” has anything to do with Islam. “Radicalization” is a very real term to him, yet it has nothing to do with Islam. By what are British, American, and European Muslims being “radicalized”? The answer to this question is to Johnson as elusive as Peruvian guano dung. He tries several explanations but none of them rings true, for they all avoid “Islam” like the plague. It’s almost funny how finicky he is when trying to solve a problem by evading the simplest answers.

The title of this column lends itself, at Boris Johnson’s expense, to an old Monty Python skit, “How not to be seen.” Or, how not to be heard or seen speaking of Islam in any but praiseworthy and respective language. Language that deprecates or indicts Islam is out of the question. In Britain, it probably isn’t even legal.

Boris Johnson about a year ago, in a June 28th Telegraph article, “Islamic State? This death cult is not a state and it’s certainly not Islamic,” tackled the conundrum with a subheading, “We must settle on a name for our enemies that doesn’t smear all Muslims but does reflect reality.” To Johnson, ISIS, or ISIL, is merely a “death cult” and has no relation to Islam. It isn’t fair to Islam or to Muslims, he says, to characterize Islamic terrorism as something performed exclusively by hooded Muslims who usually quote Koranic verses while broadcasting their latest beheading, stoning, or hurling of a gay from a rooftop. Johnson writes:

If we are going to defeat our enemies we have to know who they are. We have to know what to call them. We must at least settle on a name – a terminology – with which we can all agree. And the trouble with the fight against Islamic terror is that we are increasingly grappling with language, and with what it is permissible or sensible to say.

Kurdish official says ISIS executed 250 women in Mosul

As the operation to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS ramps up, anti-ISIS forces are detailing some of the atrocities committed by the terrorist group.

An official for the Kurdistan Democratic Party told Iranian news agency ABNA ISIS has been forcing women into arranged marriages with ISIS fighters — and executing women who refuse.

The official said “at least 250 girls have so far been executed … and sometimes the families of the girls were also executed.”

Mosul fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014. Since then, the group has been taking pains to portray their occupation of the city as benevolent.

But ISIS’ reign has been particularly oppressive to women; the group practices sex slavery and requires women to adhere to a strict set of rules.

The push to retake Mosul began last month, and President Obama says he expects the city to be ripe for the retaking by the end of the year.

ESPN Fires Curt Schilling for Opposition to Transgender Restrooms By Stephen Kruiser

Via Variety:

ESPN has fired Curt Schilling over his recent anti-transgender comments on social media.

Schilling, a baseball analyst for ESPN and former Red Sox pitcher, posted a Facebook comment criticizing a transgender women.

“A man is a man no matter what they call themselves,” read Schilling’s comment, which he apparently posted in response to a photo about a recent North Carolina law that restricts transgender people’s access to bathrooms and locker rooms. “I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.”

ESPN issued a statement on Tuesday, saying “ESPN is an inclusive company. Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.”

Author: U.S. Official Who Issued Visas to 9/11 Hijackers Still Works for State Department By Nicholas Ballasy

The State Department official who issued visas to many of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists is still employed by the federal government, according to J. Michael Springmann, the author of Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World.

Springmann, former head of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, told PJM that Shayna Steinger approved 11 of the visas granted to the 19 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen received their visas at the Jeddah consulate.

Page 7 of the 9/11 Commission report states that “one consular officer issued visas to 11 of the 19 hijackers.” Those visas were reportedly approved between the years 1999 and 2001.

Springmann, an attorney who no longer works for the federal government, learned the State Department commissioned Steinger as a class four foreign service officer in 1999, which he said is “a high rank for someone hired just out of Columbia University with no prior experience.”

“Despite her issuing visas to terrorists and giving equivocal answers to the 9/11 Commission, Steinger is still an FSO,” Springmann wrote in his book.

She was appointed and confirmed by the Senate under the Clinton administration in 1999 as Shayna Steinger Singh in the Congressional Record, Volume 145.

Springmann said he was never given an official reason why he was fired by the State Department in 1991. He requested the documentation used to support the government’s decision but says he never received anything. To this day, he believes he was fired because he denied visas to individuals in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia, who submitted applications from 1987-1989 that raised red flags.

Climate Alarmism and the Muzzling of Independent Science By Ari Halperin

This Friday (Earth Day and Lenin’s Birthday) President Obama will sign the Paris Agreement, supposedly to control global climate. Last week, the attorney general of a tax shelter – the US Virgin Islands — subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This was part of a campaign to intimidate climate realists and to shake down, and possibly shut down, the energy industry. The campaign was launched by a number of Democrat Attorneys General and Al Gore, colluding with trial lawyers and other special interests, under the guise of investigating ExxonMobil. As bizarre as these moves are, they are just an escalation of 30 years of persecuting distinguished scientists who disagreed with Al Gore’s climate change fantasies.

Scientific research is supported by private industry, governments, universities (largely government dependent) or some combination of the three. Before Gore’s tenure as vice president, the majority of scientists with some knowledge of the subject firmly rejected climate alarmism. During his two terms almost in the White House, Al Gore and the academic liberals executed a quiet purge. They packed the scientific establishment with environmentalists, defunded inconvenient research fields, removed distinguished scientists, and bullied others into silence or equivocation. Huge budgets allocated to climate studies (even before Gore) produced hordes of worthless PhDs, incapable of making a living outside of climate alarmism. But a large segment of scientists and professionals versed in science are independent in a free society, deriving their income from private business. Al Gore and other climate alarmists had a problem.

David Daoud and David Andrew Weinberg:Saudi Clerics’ Rhetoric — and Implications for Global Security

“Saleh bin Humaid is considered a relative moderate within the kingdom’s religious establishment. But some of the messages even he has articulated are deeply intolerant by U.S. standards. He has, for example, proclaimed that it is the Jewish people’s “nature” to “plot against the peoples of the world, permit usury, promote immorality and unlawfully eat people’s wealth.” In March, he called for a judgment-day reckoning that would “break the cross” of Christianity and reimpose the jizya, a tax that subordinates non-Muslims as second-class citizens.

The day President Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia on a 2014 trip, Saleh bin Humaid delivered a sermon at the Grand Mosque–printed by the official state newswire–with pronouncements including that homosexuality “strips man of his humanity” and makes human beings “lower than beasts.” Last week he ended his Friday sermon at the Grand Mosque with a prayer for divine intervention against the “usurper, occupier Jews.”

President Barack Obama’s meeting Wednesday with King Salman of Saudi Arabia is to be followed by a summit Thursday with the Arab Gulf monarchs to discuss cooperation against terrorism and other regional threats. Central to these efforts is a pledge the Saudis and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council made in 2014 to help combat Islamic State by repudiating the ideology underpinning violent extremist groups. U.S. officials have reason to question Riyadh’s commitment.

Under King Salman, Saudi Arabia has announced some restrictions on its religious police, who enforce–sometimes with brutal force–morality laws such as dress codes and gender segregation. Yet the government in Riyadh continues to embrace and promote clerics who espouse views that would disturb many in the U.S.

King Salman personally handed a prominent foundation’s award for “service to Islam” last month to Saleh bin Humaid, a member of the top state council of religious preachers. A former head of the top Saudi judicial body, the cleric is an imam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.

Campus Unicorns: Conservative Teachers One professor told us he was ‘lying to people all the time’ to hide his politics. By Jon A. Shields and Joshua M. Dunn Sr.

Mr. Shields is an associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. Mr. Dunn is an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. They are the authors of “Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University” (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Everyone knows that academia is predominantly liberal: Only 6.6% of professors in the social sciences are Republicans, according to a 2007 study. But what is life like for the pioneering conservatives who slip through the ivory tower’s gates? We decided to find out by interviewing 153 of them.

Many conservative professors said they felt socially isolated. A political scientist told us that he became a local pariah for defending the Iraq war in his New England college town, which he called “Cuba with bad weather.” One sociologist stated the problem well: “To say a strong conservative political opinion with conviction in an academic gathering is analogous to uttering an obscenity.” A prominent social scientist at a major research university spoke of the strain of concealing his political views from his colleagues—of “lying to people all the time.”

Some even said that bias had complicated their career advancement. A historian of Latin America told us that he suffered professionally after writing a dissertation on “middle-class white guys” when it was fashionable to focus on the “agency of subaltern peoples.” Though he doesn’t think the work branded him as a conservative, it certainly didn’t excite the intellectual interest of his peers.

A similarly retrograde literature professor sought advice from a colleague after struggling to land a tenure-track job. He was told that he had “a nice resume for 1940.” As Neil Gross has shown, liberal professors often believe that conservatives are closed-minded. If you got to choose your colleagues, would you hire someone you thought fit that description?

Yet the professors we spoke to were surprisingly sympathetic toward their liberal colleagues. “The majority always thinks it’s treating the minority well,” said the tormented social scientist mentioned above. “That’s a basic psychological trick we all play on ourselves.” Reflecting on bias in the peer-review process, a sociologist told us: “I don’t think there is conscious bad faith going on. I think when people read things they wish to politically sympathize with, it adds brightness points.” CONTINUE AT SITE