WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Shiite Crescent and Regional Disaster Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

For decades, the concept of a “Shiite Crescent” anchored by the radical Shiite supremacists in Iran and passing through Iraq, Syria, and Hezb’allah to the Mediterranean Sea has been understood. It would provide Iran not only with closer access to Israel, but also spread across the northern borders of two key Sunni adversaries — pro-American Jordan, and its most important enemy, Saudi Arabia, guardian of Mecca and Medina. It would further split off Sunni Turkey (a historic foe) from the other Sunni Middle East states.

The Crescent is, for Iran, a single battlefront and the Islamic Republic has spent decades successfully undermining and wrecking each subsidiary member.

Iraq is hardly a functional country. But as a staging ground for Iranian militias and weapons depots headed west, Iraq is a prize. Syria is largely a dead zone. But as a launching pad for Iranian military bases and attacks on Israel, Syria is a bonanza. Lebanon is a corrupt satrap of Syria and Iran, governed by a terror organization with a foreign legion and an international money/drug/weapons racket. But its very weakness and its border with Israel make Lebanon invaluable.

Each member of this “gang of four” maintains a state of war with Israel and threatens it on a regular basis. Israel’s attacks on weapons centers Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are not an escalation of a fragile situation — they are a defensive response to a  high-tech military buildup orchestrated by Iran across the region.

Israel has the support of the United States for its defensive actions. But until now, U.S. foreign and defense policy have actually made things worse for Israel and others in the region by empowering Iran – and even now, when the administration is aware of its malign nature, and has reimposed economic sanctions on Tehran, it needs a strategy against Iranian gains on the ground.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why Is Trump Surrendering To The Taliban? Thomas McCardle

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/05/why-is-trump-surrendering-to-the-taliban/

President Trump may be the author of The Art of the Deal, but how can someone who knows so well that the Obama-Kerry agreement with terrorist Iran was a bad deal, and who understood the importance of annihilating ISIS (and who then did so) at the same time think the terrorist Taliban in Afghanistan will be restrained by a piece of paper backed up by no credible U.S. military pressure?

The administration has enlisted the diplomatic prowess of an admittedly impressive personage in Afghan-American former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (and, before that, to Afghanistan and to Iraq) Zalmay Khalizad, who held numerous foreign policy posts under Reagan and both Bushes.

But has there ever been a more impressive diplomat than Henry Kissinger? Yet the deal he negotiated with North Vietnam in 1973, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize, was followed two years later by the Communist North’s conquest of South Vietnam. As the disaster materialized, South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu justifiably declared: “the United States did not keep its word … The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom.”

The Vietnam Syndrome must stop. There is simply no way to negotiate successfully with an anti-democratic aggressor without military force hanging close over that aggressor’s head. And yet President Trump has already announced that U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been making territorial gains for years, will soon be reduced by more than a third, from 14,000 to 8,600. A deal would reportedly mean the withdrawal of most U.S. forces by November 2020.

It will soon be 18 years that our military has been in Afghanistan. Let’s scan the early history. “In late 2001, the CIA led a campaign to topple the Taliban with the support of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban’s foe inside Afghanistan,” the Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel wrote in 2009, noting that, “the results were spectacular and came quickly. By early 2002 the Taliban were routed, al-Qaida was on the run and the two were retreating into Pakistan.”

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: VULTURES IN DOVE’S CLOTHES

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

I hate the word “moderate”. In the Middle East it is always applied to duplicitous tyrants. Sadat, the “peacemaker” flouted every single paragraph of the Camp David Accords before the ink was dry. Then Arafat was declared a “moderate” in Oslo and the White House lawn, and there segued the PLO’s longest and most brutal spree of terrorism within Israel. Then Mahmoud Abbas was the new darling for those who sought a “moderate.” Turns out that his speeches and actions and corruption were those of a terrorist in a grey flannel suit. And now, the latest “moderate” icon to be exposed is President Sisi of Egypt.

Yesterday, Raymond Ibrahim who has reported vigilantly and courageously about the persecution of Christians throughout the Arab/Moslem world writes.

 “EGYPT REINSTATES NOTORIOUS HATE PREACHER “ So much for President Sisi’s “religious reforms.”

Andrew Bostom warned about Sisi a long time ago:

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2013/08/why-egyptian-putschist-general-al-sisis-anti-secular-u-s-army-war-college-thesis-matters/

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/727515716040151040

May 2016 tweets Sisified Egypt’s jihadist insignias on its new line of amphibious assault vehicles praising the killing of non-Muslim infidels with Koranic imprimatur (& citation):https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/72751571604015104

There goes another “moderate” fawned on by the dhimmi-eyed western observers.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Antifa Gives Progressives a Tin-Pot Dictator High Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/09/04/antifa-gives-progressives-a-tin-pot-dictator-high/

What are you supposed to do if a mob attacks you? If you have reason to believe that the mob intends to hurt you or could kill you, do you have the right to defend yourself with deadly force? Do you even have the right to say you would? Given proper policing, such questions should not even arise. But if they do, the First and Second Amendments should answer them. Increasingly, that is no longer the case.

Antifa, short for the German word antifashistisch, is a congerie of anarchists, socialists, Communists, liberals, and social democrats who disrupt, break, beat, and make it physically impossible for those whom they deem fascists, capitalists, white supremacists, etc. to carry on their activities. Antifa’s slogan is “abolish capitalism, antifascist action, smash fascism.” Their members dress in black, wear masks, and fight under black and red banners. Footage of their violence is readily available online.

In recent years, similarly violent groups have “occupied” Wall Street, shut down freeways in Chicago and Oakland, California, disrupted Trump’s campaign rallies, trashed Washington, D.C. during the 2017 presidential inaugural, and chased conservative speakers from college campuses.

The most interesting thing about this left-wing violence is that it happens almost exclusively in places where the police power is in the hands of progressives—whether mayors or university administrators—whose police stand aside as the violent ones do their work, and who have not prosecuted them. Moreover, since the persons whom these groups attack physically are the very ones whom the media and the Democratic Party attack verbally, it is not surprising that the media tries to put the best face on the violence.

Hence it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the violent groups merely do the dirty work of progressives—indeed that violence in society is essential to progressives’ quest for power. The progressive powers’ constraint of the victims’ right to self-defense caps the conclusion.

Antifa is not a problem in and of itself, any more than any mob would be. Where they lack officials’ protection, Antifa’s numbers and their capacity for mayhem are no match for ordinary police forces—nor for armed citizens.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Cowardly Congress Won’t Condemn the Anti-Semitic BDS Movement Democrats at the national and state levels need to come to grips with their anti-Semitism problem and confront it forcefully. Ned Ryun

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/04/cowardly-congress-wont-condemn-the-anti-semitic-bds-movement/

Why is it that almost every time the Left accuses the Right of some misbehavior or attitude, it’s actually something the Left is guilty of doing or being?

Take, for example, the regular accusations that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite. Forget the fact that his son-in-law is Jewish and his daughter has converted to Judaism. Those are minor inconveniences in the propaganda war against Trump. It truly does feel like the Left has a spaghetti approach at times: throw anything and everything up against the wall in hopes enough people are foolish and uncritical enough to accept whatever appears to stick.

Anti-Semitism is rampant on the Left. In all seriousness, people should be asking why Democratic leaders hate Israel and the Jewish people so much. They’ve embraced and nurtured anti-Semitism in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.

Democrats argue that the controversy surrounding the BDS movement is really more a debate over policy differences. Not so. The BDS movement is insidiously anti-Semitic, seeking to deny the right of self-determination and sovereignty to Israel. It is nothing short of economic war against the only Jewish nation-state in the world.

Founders and supporters of BDS claim they are all about freedom and equality. They are nothing of the sort: their ultimate goal is to annihilate and remove Israel from the map and they have been hoping that the world wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Answering ‘Deputy Hamas’ Muslim Federation Director Nezar Hamze confronts me with lies and revisionist history. Joe Kaufman

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274824/answering-deputy-hamas-joe-kaufman

Recently, this author’s non-profit charitable organization, the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative (JKSI), issued a video about the Executive Director of the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) Nezar Hamze and how he – a radical Muslim and former CAIR operative – should not be serving as a Deputy Sheriff in one of the most prominent law enforcement agencies in the US. Upset about the video, Hamze chose to take shots at my work by calling me a liar. Yet, what Hamze is calling lies are actually 100% true. In fact, in his attempt to defame me, Hamze issued his own set of lies, which will be exposed here for all to see.

Hamze’s first accusation was that I lied about his parents being from Lebanon or, as he put it, being “born” in Lebanon. I had answered one of the viewers of our video stating, “[W]hile his parents are from Lebanon, he was born in the US.” Hamze commented, “[A]nother lie my ‘Parents’ we’re [sic] not born in Lebanon Joe… You get most of your information from anti-Muslim websites and the other ‘facts’ you get are twisted lies.” Note: Never, did I say Hamze’s parents were born in Lebanon – only that they were from Lebanon.

According to the Broward/Palm Beach New Times, “Hamze, a 39-year-old father of four, is the son of Lebanese immigrants.” According to Salon.com, “His father came to the United States from Lebanon during the civil war there.” Neither of these quotes are from publications that would be considered anti-Muslim. Indeed, they are from two puff pieces written about Hamze that quote Hamze amply. Furthermore, Hamze’s mother, Cherylann Morris, posted on her Facebook page that, while she lives in West Linn, Oregon, she is from Brummana, Lebanon.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump Admin Overturns Lefty Light Bulb Tyranny Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274847/trump-admin-overturns-lefty-light-bulb-tyranny-daniel-greenfield

Forget, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

In the miserable Obama years, you didn’t even have the right to choose your own light bulb. Light bulb experts from organizations dedicated to sending human beings back to the caves to save the planet from the threat of light bulbs determined which light bulbs you could use.

But, in the latest resistance to the ecocracy, the light is back and light bulbs were liberated from the latest set of “standards”.

That’s right.

If you like your decorative globes, candle-shaped lights, three-way light bulbs and reflector bulbs, you can keep them.

The usual ecocratic suspects are fuming over the threat of light bulb freedom.

“The Energy Department flat out got it wrong today. Instead of moving us forward, this rule will keep more energy-wasting bulbs on store shelves,” Jason Hartke, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, said in a statement. “If you wanted folks to pay a lot more than they should on electric bills, this rollback would be a pretty good way of doing it.”

That’s a decision that people get to make. This is America.

People can choose between cheaper light bulbs and lower electricity bills without bureaucrats forcing them to do it. They can also choose life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Even if that involves non-energy efficient light bulbs.

This rule does not prevent consumers from buying the lamps they desire, including efficient options,” the agency wrote in the rule. “The market is successfully transitioning to LEDs regardless of government regulation. Consumers are clearly taking advantage of the energy savings provided by LEDs.”

But it’s not a success unless a lefty regime forces people to do it.

But Noah Horowitz, director of the Center for Energy Efficiency Standards at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said incandescent bulbs still make up about 45 percent of the market.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rape, Anti-Semitism and Assaulting Cops Will Get You a State Job in Jersey Something’s really rotten in the state of the Democrats. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274800/rape-anti-semitism-and-assaulting-cops-will-get-daniel-greenfield

NAACP President Jeffrey Dye had a record of threatening his brother with a knife, getting caught with six bags of crack cocaine, assaulting police officers on two separate occasions, so of course he was appointed to work for the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development.

Governor Phil Murphy’s Dem administration had previously appointed Al Alvarez, his guy in charge of Latino and Muslim outreach, accused of trying to rape one of his staffers during the campaign, as chief of staff the New Jersey Schools Development Authority. The last time Dye had gotten in trouble was when he had been charged with aggravated assault after a confrontation with 3 police officers in 2007.

That’s not counting the time he failed to file campaign finance reports while running for public office.

Dye morphed into a perennial Democrat candidate, running and losing one election after another, and headed Passaic’s NAACP chapter. As Rachel Dolezal, a white woman claiming to be black, who headed the Spokane NAACP chapter, showed the organization doesn’t have high standards for chapter leaders.

But Dye met the most crucial standard that the Murphy administration cared about. He supported Phil Murphy. You can be a rapist or threaten your brother with a knife, all you need to do is back Phil.

Phil is a former Goldman Sachs exec, DNC finance chair and Obama’s Ambassador to Germany.

Last year, Dye’s NAACP announced that it was honoring Marcellus Jackson at its “2nd Annual Freedom Fund Community Service Award Luncheon.” It mentioned that Marcellus, a former Passaic City Council member, was working as a special assistant in the Department of Education’s Office of Civic and Social Engagement. The reason Marcellus was a former member of the Passaic City Council was because the FBI had busted him for taking bribes and he was sentenced to 25 months in prison.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Immorality of Free and Public Education Why the demand for free education is un-American and unethical. Jason D. Hill

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274835/immorality-free-and-public-education-jason-d-hill

As I travel across the United States to give talks and seminars on my books and political and moral philosophy, I am increasingly struck by the degree to which today’s college students believe that they are morally entitled to a free education. They think that this entitlement starts from the time they were born right up until the time that they graduate from college.

Since I never politicize my classroom and generally, as a rule, do not insert my political viewpoints into that space which I believe is a sacred domain where rigorous exploration and examination of great canonical figures from the Western philosophical tradition should take place, these campus visits give me ample opportunities to explore the philosophical and moral assumptions behind the idea that “free public education,” is the birthright and human right of all human beings. In a gentle but rigorous manner, I usually begin by asking students who press the issue privately with me on such visits, a few basis basic and fundamental questions. And they are:

Are the procreative choices that your parents made the moral and financial responsibility of other individuals? Or, do they not belong to your parents? When you become a legal adult at the age of eighteen are you not responsible for your own life and existence? Do we have a constitutional right to have children we cannot afford to maintain? Is it a form of child neglect to bring more children into the world than one can afford to support? When one has children, is it fair to expect one’s neighbors or compatriots to bear in the financial responsibility of raising them when they may have decided not to have any, or to have just one, or two, or just the exact number their budget can afford over the course of a lifetime?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Jewish Newspaper Buckles to Hamas by Sam Westrop

Posted By on September 5th, 2019

https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/59302/british-jewish-newspaper-buckles-to-hamas

On August 23, the Jewish Chronicle (JC), Britain’s largest Jewish newspaper and one of the oldest Jewish newspapers in the world, published an apology and handed 50,000 pounds (more than $60,000) to Interpal, a British Muslim charity linked closely to Hamas, the murderous Palestinian terrorist organization in Gaza.

The apology and the payout come in the wake of a March 2019 article in the JC(since taken down), in which journalist Orlando Radice reported that Interpal was itself “deemed by the US a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization in 2003.” Radice also claimed that the chairman of Interpal, Ibrahim Hewitt, “has been widely described as an Islamic extremist who believes that adulterers should be stoned to death and has compared gay people with pedophiles.”

The JC is not the first publication to end up paying money to Interpal to avoid a lawsuit. In June 2019, the Daily Mail and Mail Online gave the charity more than $145,000.

In this specific case, what did the JC get wrong? What exactly is Interpal? And why has the newspaper now handed over $60,000 to a charity considered by the U.S. government to be a terrorist organization?