IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Enough Iraqi Refugee Terrorists and Rapists An immigration policy that puts America first. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

There are more Iraqis living in the United States than there are in some major cities in Iraq. 156,000 Iraqi refugees have entered this country in just the last decade. 30,000 of those have ended up in California.

In Obama’s first year in office, the United States resettled three-quarters of Iraqi refugees.

71% of Iraqi refugees are receiving cash assistance. 82% are on Medicaid and 87% are on food stamps. Compare those atrocious numbers to only 17% of Cubans on cash assistance and 16% on Medicaid.

It should be obvious why Obama shut the door on Cuban refugees while holding it wide open for Syrian Muslims (but closing it tightly on Syrian Christians), Iraqis and Somalis (77.4% food stamp use).

President Trump’s migration pause was met with lectures about how much immigrants contribute to the economy. But the immigrants that the left likes are a drain. If the left finds immigrants who actually contribute to the economy, it fights tooth and nail to keep them out of the country.

Notable Iraqi refugees include Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi.

Alwan and Hammadi were thoroughly vetted before they were resettled in Nevada and Kentucky. The only omission in their thorough vetting was an unfortunate failure to note that the refugees were terrorists who had spent years trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Alwan had boasted that of how he had “f___d up” Hummers using IEDs and admitted to having taken part in an attack that killed Americans.

He had even left his fingerprints on an IED in Iraq. But the thorough vetting had failed to turn that up.

Alwan and Hammadi tried to send grenade launchers, plastic explosives, missiles and machine guns to the branch of Al Qaeda that would become ISIS. Meanwhile the Al Qaeda in Iraq plotter had quit his job and was living in public housing and collecting public assistance. Like so many other “refugees”.

And law enforcement was soon on the trail of dozens of terrorists who had arrived here as refugees.

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Crazy Democrat Wants White House to Have In-House Psychiatrist Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Few people have heard of Congressman Ted Lieu. He spends most of his time ranting about President Trump like some sort of insane stalker.

The last time he made national news was when he insanely threatened legislative action against a home improvement store for pulling ads from a show he liked. After Lowe’s stopped advertising on All-American Muslim, he sent a letter which hung precariously between Stalin and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

He sent a letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert A. Niblock warning that if he didn’t get those ads running again there would be hell to pay. “If Lowe’s continues its religious bigotry, I will encourage boycotts of Lowe’s and look into legislative remedies.”

When asked by Fox 11 News last night why he wasn’t focusing on the state’s major problems… Lieu answered that people could always shop at Home Depot.

Now Lieu is on board with moving from obstructionism to just trolling with bills.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) reportedly plans to file a bill that would require the White House to have an in-house psychiatrist.

“I’m looking at it from the perspective of, if there are questions about the mental health of the president of the United States, what may be the best way to get the president treatment?” Lieu told the Huffington Post.

But Ted is the one who actually sounds nuts.

Lieu said he thinks a republic cannot tolerate a president who lies pathologically, claiming such circumstances are dangerous and can lead to authoritarian regimes. He also urged residents to write letters to editors of publications to help publicize their dissent with Trump’s recent actions.

Lieu said he, like many of his constituents, struggles to explain Trump’s presidency to his children. He said he thinks Trump is especially dangerous since he makes the public believe fake news is everywhere and causes them to doubt reality. He urged listeners to tell their children reputable news sources such as the Los Angeles Times and ABC News do their best to report the facts, and that Trump’s disapproval of such agencies does not invalidate their legitimacy.

Can we get an in-house psychiatrist here.

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Jeff Sessions Heads to the Department of Justice Race baiters and hypocrites turn on a fellow senator — and are defeated. Joseph Klein

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Despite childish Democrat obstructionism, including a needless all night talkfest to delay the inevitable outcome, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions as this nation’s next attorney general by a vote of 52-47. As with his other cabinet nominations, President Trump needs only a majority of senators to confirm, thanks to former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to change the filibuster rules. Only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, showed courage in bucking the herd mentality of his “resistance” party and voted in favor of Sessions.

Contrast the Democrats’ irresponsible behavior with how Republicans treated Barack Obama’s nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general in 2009. Back then, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urged quick action by the Senate:

“I would hope that we would have a prompt confirmation so he can restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department, it is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay. The attorney general is the top law enforcement officer in the country; he is a key member of the national security team.”

The Republicans obliged, despite serious questions regarding Holder’s role in President Clinton’s controversial pardons of Marc Rich and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorists while Holder was serving as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Department of Justice. Republicans did not put up procedural roadblocks. The Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to confirm Holder. The Senate as a whole then confirmed Holder by a lopsided bipartisan vote of 75 to 21.

Ironically, Senator Sessions voted in favor of Holder, saying he was sure that Holder would be “a responsible legal officer and not a politician.” His decision to vote to confirm Holder, despite serious policy differences, demonstrated Sessions’ own bipartisanship and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the president’s cabinet nominees. Yet when it became Sessions’ turn to be considered for the same position as Holder’s, his fellow Democratic senators turned viciously partisan. They threw every slur at him they could think of, and used every procedural trick in the book to slow down the confirmation of a fellow senator to whom they should have shown deference.

Democrats resorted to their usual tactic of rolling out the race card. Senator Leahy, for example, stated last month that “Sen. Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took to the Senate floor Tuesday evening to quote from a decades-old letter attacking Sessions, in blatant violation of a Senate rule against impugning the character of a fellow senator on the floor of the Senate. Following rebuke of her for violating the Senate floor rule, she tweeted, “I will not be silent about a nominee for AG who has made derogatory & racist comments that have no place in our justice system.”

Mr. Sessions in fact filed multiple desegregation lawsuits as U.S. attorney and filed charges against a state leader of the Ku Klux Klan in a capital case, which he followed through on when he became the state attorney general. As mentioned above, he voted for Eric Holder, the nation’s first African-American attorney general. Back in 2009, during Holder’s confirmation hearing, Senator Leahy had nothing but high praise for the man he has now turned against. “Sen. Sessions is here: of course, Sen. Sessions is also a former U.S. attorney and knows what one goes through in that regard,” Senator Leahy said back then, “and we’ve relied on him for that experience. And, Sen. Sessions, it’s over to you.” Senator Sessions responded, “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, congratulations, Mr. Holder, on the nomination.”

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The Islamic Jihad and Peace with Jews by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

On the face of it, the anti-normalization campaign appears driven by political motivations. However, it turns out that there is also a powerful Islamic angle to this campaign of hate, which is aimed at delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.

The Palestinian anti-normalization “enforcers” do their utmost to conceal the Islamic aspect of their campaign. They are not eager for the world to know that Islam supplies much of the ideology and justification for their anti-Israel activities.

Fatwas (Islamic religious decrees) and statements issued by leading Muslim scholars and clerics have long warned Muslims against normalization with the “Zionist entity.” Such normalization, they have made it clear, is considered an “unforgivable crime.” The authors of these hate messages are not opposed to normalization with Israel because of settlements or house demolitions, but rather because they believe Jews have no rights at all to any of the land.

In 1989, more than 60 eminent Muslim scholars from 18 countries ruled that it was forbidden for Muslims to give up any part of Palestine.

The vicious campaigns to boycott Israel and Jews, while political in dress, are in fact deeply rooted in Islamic ideology.

These campaigns are patently not a legitimate protest. They are not even part of an effort to boycott Israeli products or politicians and academics. The real goal of the campaigns is revealed in the words of the Muslim leaders: that Jews have no rights whatsoever to the land, and must be targeted through jihad as infidels and enemies of all Muslims and Arabs

Settlements, checkpoints and fences are irrelevant; Muslim scholars want Jews off what they define as sacred Muslim land. Supporters of BDS and the anti-normalization movement would do well to consider this fact. Failing to do so is tantamount to aiding and abetting Muslims to destroy Israel, and kill as many Jews as possible in the process.

Muslim scholars have feverishly citing chapter and verse from the Quran and the hadith, the words of the Prophet Mohammed, in their efforts to encourage Arabs and Muslims to avoid normalization with Jews.

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Jihadist Groups in the US: What Next? by Benjamin Weingarten

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) continues freely to operate in America. In the wee hours of election night 2016, in fact, its Los Angeles office leader called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.

The Trump administration has stated its commitment to fighting Islamic supremacism, including the Muslim Brotherhood itself.

To what lengths would America’s leaders go to protect a group that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) deemed a terrorist organization?

A bombshell new report from the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reveals the alarming answer.

It involves a man who in his almost 50 years of public life has done more for America’s enemies — first of the Communist variety and later of the jihadist brand — than perhaps any other: Iran lobbyist-in-chief John Kerry.

In the most recent case, he did so in secret, apparently well aware of the political consequences of exposing the potentially catastrophic policy he was pursuing to the light of day.

As IPT’s report details, Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS) were classified as terrorist groups by the UAE in 2014, as two of the 83 entities identified as such for their ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Furious at such a charge, CAIR pushed Secretary of State Kerry to lobby on its behalf. Kerry’s State Department reportedly complied, meeting with UAE officials regularly to plead CAIR’s case.

State signaled such a stance publicly almost from day one. As IPT notes:

At a daily State Department press briefing two days after UAE released its list, a spokesman said that State does not “consider CAIR or MAS to be terrorist groups” but that it was seeking more information from UAE about their decision. He added that “as part of our routine engagement with a broad spectrum of faith based organizations, a range of U.S. government officials have met with officials of CAIR and MAS. We at the State Department regularly meet with a wide range of faith based groups to hear their views even if some of their views expressed at times are controversial.”

“Controversial” is an interesting way of describing the views of a group that makes common cause with jihadists and jihadist sympathizers. There is an irony, as IPT recounts:

Just days before the UAE’s 2014 designation of CAIR as a terrorist group in the organization’s San Francisco chapter bestowed its “Promoting Justice” award to Sami Al-Arian and his family. Al-Arian secretly ran an American support network for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group in the late 1980s and early 1990s. PIJ was responsible for terrorist attacks which killed dozens of Israelis and several Americans.

CAIR’s jihadi ties are numerous and longstanding, involving not only the links of its founders and present leaders to Hamas, and as critics say, apologists for Islamic terrorism, but also for impeding counterterrorism efforts. Lawyers in a class-action lawsuit representing the family of slain former FBI counterterrorism official John P. O’Neill — who perished in the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center — named CAIR part of a criminal conspiracy to promote “radical Islamic terrorism,” and declared that CAIR has

“actively sought to hamper governmental anti-terrorism efforts by direct propaganda activities aimed at police, first-responders, and intelligence agencies through so-called sensitivity training. Their goal is to create as much self-doubt, hesitation, fear of name-calling, and litigation within police departments and intelligence agencies as possible so as to render such authorities ineffective in pursuing international and domestic terrorist entities.”

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Is Iona Community Sabotaging Itself by Embracing Kairos? by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

At the heart of its call for peace and justice, however, lies a profound imbalance. We might say that Ionians, like Quakers and many other Christian groups, are naïve innocents let loose in the real world. There is a role for idealists in limited situations. But problems arise when such do-gooders do not properly understand what lies behind mutual hatred, enduring antagonism between people, and conflicts in the name of one cause or another. And here, the Iona Community falls down spectacularly.

Kairos is built on an Islamic, not a Christian narrative. Under Islamic law, territory once conquered by Muslim armies becomes sacrosanct and can never be forfeited to non-believers. If non-Muslims take control of formerly Muslim land (for example, Spain or Portugal), then Muslims are bound to reconquer it through renewed military action.

Kairos, significantly, does not refer to the fact that Jews lived in and ruled in the region long before the Arab conquests.

When Christians choose to ignore the rights of Jews, they deny their own origins in the land. Jesus was a Jew. The first Christian community was made up of Jews who adhered to Jewish law. All Christian churches recognize the Jewish Bible as part of their own scriptural, and the New Testament is a clear record of Jewish existence in the first Christian century.

There never was a “historic Palestine”, and it is disturbing to find a Christian community buying into the modern Islamic narrative. and the “Palestinian” inhabitants of the Mandate are a combination of the descendants of the 7th-century Arab invaders.

In Israel, Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze and other citizens, regardless of race or religion or any other circumstance, have exactly the same rights under law to form political parties, serve in parliament, seek employment. Why does the Iona Community single Israel out?

Why is the Iona Community seemingly uninterested in the fate of their fellow Christians in the Palestinian territories yet determined to accuse Israel of enormities, when in fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population, instead of diminishing, has grown since the establishment of the state?

Why, then, does the Iona Community join forces, not with the people who support Christians but with Palestinian Muslims who seek to destroy Israel and who will, in due course, treat the Christians as badly as they are treated in other Arab Muslim states?

The Israelis have never stalled in the peace process: they have made offers and the Palestinians have turned them all down. There has never been peace because Israel has no partners for peace. That a so-called Christian organization should misrepresent history in this way is an appalling dereliction of truth and honesty on its part.

When will the Iona Community come to terms with its far-left bias, its anti-Semitism, its own reputation, and the harm it is doing to any real hope in the Holy Land for peace?

The Iona Community is a famous ecumenical Christian community with three centers in Scotland, two on the island of Iona in the beautiful Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland and another on the nearby Isle of Mull. But the community is also a far-flung body, with members across the globe. These include people from many denominations, from Presbyterians and Anglicans to Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Quakers, not forgetting members who do not belong to any church.

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FROM GATESTONE EUROPE

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

Watch! Migrants chant “Allah Akbar!” as they approach European coastline
by Timon Dias

Hungary stands its ground on migration despite taking heat
by Vincent van den Born

Swedish cop now under investigation for inciting racial hatred after Facebook post
by Vincent van den Born

Syrian immigrant rapes two underage Swedish girls, gets away with two-month sentence
by Vincent van den Born

ECB President Draghi contradicts himself: ‘France can’t leave the euro, but Italy can’
by Willem Cornax

Leaked report: ‘Salafism in Belgium spiralling out of control’
by David Frankenhuis

Study: ‘Majority of Europeans support Muslim immigration ban’
by Vincent van den Born

92% of German ‘anti-fascist’ protesters still live with their Mum
by Benjamin de Wolf

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DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

1. Saudi columnist Siham Al-Qahtani: Jews should no longer collectively be blamed for all disasters throughout history
2. “No Jewish plot against Arabs, without Arab knowledge”
3. Muhammad Al-Sheikh: Only political ignoramuses advocate armed resistance; the two-state solution is the only feasible option
4. Al-Sheikh criticized by Al-Jazeera presenter
5. Prominent Saudi Journalist: West Jerusalem is part of Israel; moving the U.S. embassy there as part of a peace agreement could herald the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
6. Kuwaiti journalist: I support relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
7. Saudi Cleric Awadh Al-Qarni: 9/11 was “fabricated”
8. Assad welcome in London, Trump not?

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BARRY SHAW: THE DOOR IS CLOSING ON “PALESTINE”

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

At a time when the leaders of Arab-controlled Ramallah continue their rejection of the Jewish State and their civil society enemy in Gaza has launched more missiles at Israel and been deprived of yet another terror cell in Hebron they continue to refuse to sit and negotiate a permanent peace agreement. They think they can weaken and destroy Israel is stages by applying the alternative strategy of force and diplomatic pressure.

They’ve got it wrong. They have misread us. In the Bible they called us “a stiff-necked people” and today this stiff-necked people are saying enough is enough!

It’s time to reclaim our land. It’s been out there dangling as a reward for Arab pragmatism, recognition of our rights, and peace, but the olive branch has been knocked out of our hand by their lethal ideology of a world without the Jewish State.

It has left us no other option but to make a loud statement of intent that in the face of rejection, threats, violence and non-compliance with signed agreements, Judea & Samaria not only exists, it’s about to get stronger.

Since 1967 instead of accepting our generous concessions they thought they could play an end game that would leave us weaker and more vulnerable to a double sucker punch of terror and international pressure which would take them along the path to what they call the final solution of the Jewish problem in the Middle East.

All the evidence is there for the compliant diplomats who have been dragging the dead carcass of a two-state solution for decades even as they rip out the three thousand year beating heart of Judaism from our grasp by calling it “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

Has anyone except me worked out why Mahmoud Abbas refuses to call Israel “the Jewish State”? He plays into the Arab manual of deconstructing Israel in stages. Their argument is that Israel was wrongly and illegally created in 1948 on Palestinian land, that there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab, they are “Palestinians of the Interior” or “Palestinians of ’48.” In other words they are Palestinians waiting to be liberated inferring that the Jews have no claims to nationhood anywhere, that Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous people and their rights will be honored by their liberation. That is why the Palestine Liberation Organization still exists with important relevance to their leadership. Their charter still calls for liberating “every inch of Palestine,” and to think that we play into that narrative with our blind concessions.

On February 6, 2017, the Israel Knesset passed an historic law that legalizes our thousand homes and opens the way for Israel to claim long awaited sovereignty over a part of Judea & Samaria known as Area C which, in the signed Oslo agreement falls under the civil and security purview of Israel.

To the failing two-state diplomats allow me to inform you that there are several valid alternatives to your failed vision. But let me put it bluntly. It is way past time for diplomatic dancing. Let’s call the Palestinian spade the bloody shovel that it is. Our generosity has been rejected and perceived as weakness. It is time for Israel to reverse out of the blind alley we have been forced into by an international community unable to see they have become willing hostages to a Holocaust denier in Ramallah and a radical Islamic terror regime in Gaza.

In this dangerous neck of the woods strength rules and you get devoured when you display weakness. Liberal niceties have little place in this murderous region. The time has come for Israel to assert its legitimate and God-given rights and the world be damned for not acknowledging them.

The door is closing on Palestine. They had their chance and they blew it.

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CIA That Funded the ‘Moderate Muslim Brotherhood’ Narrative Opposed to the Group’s Terror Designation By Patrick Poole

Posted By on February 9th, 2017

According to our late PJ Media colleague Barry Rubin, the CIA paid for the research and travel expenses for then-Nixon Center researcher Robert Leiken and his younger colleague Stephen Brooke to travel around the Middle East and Europe meeting with Muslim Brotherhood leaders. They reportedly met with Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia, the UK, Spain, and elsewhere.

This resulted in a still-classified paper commissioned by the National Intelligence Council and, according to Barry Rubin, paid for through a CIA contract. Barry Rubin was hired to write the rebuttal to the Leiken/Brooke paper.

This became the basis for an article by Leiken and Brooke in the March/April 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs entitled, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood.” This one article became the basis for virtually every single talking point in support of the Muslim Brotherhood parroted by the “smart set” and the media.

At the time, I wrote a three-part criticism of the Leiken/Brooke Foreign Affairs article. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

There is proof of Barry’s claim about the U.S. intelligence community’s role in hyping the “moderate Muslim Brotherhood” narrative, namely the admission by Leiken himself.

With their Foreign Affairs article in hand, Leiken and Brooke were tasked to push compliance with this narrative throughout the Bush administration agencies.

A June 2007 New York Sun report by Eli Lake tells of an event Leiken hosted by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research that reveals:

Earlier this year, the National Intelligence Council received a paper it had commissioned on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood by a scholar at the Nixon Center, Robert Leiken, who is invited to the State Department meeting today to present the case for engagement.

[…]

Mr. Leiken’s Foreign Affairs paper and classified study for the National Intelligence Council has gotten the attention of senior National Security Council officials and Secretary of State Rice, according to two administration officials.

“The NIC asked me to provide an analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood and I was happy to oblige,” Mr. Leiken said.

The intelligence community has not always been so sold on the Muslim Brotherhood’s so-called moderation.

After 9/11, a joint U.S.-European intelligence analysis on the Muslim Brotherhood that raised concerns about the organization’s global goals was obtained by reporters Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, then at Newsweek :

As the spread of Islamic radicalism began to accelerate a few years ago, a team of U.S. and European intelligence agency officials collaborated on a secret study of a sensitive subject: the global operations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Their classified report highlighted what its authors saw as disturbing trends. Founded by fundamentalists in Egypt in 1928, the Brotherhood has grown rapidly in recent years and established beachheads in over 70 countries, including virtually every major nation in Europe and the Middle East, as well as many parts of Africa. According to the report, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, the group’s members “frequently communicate and meet in secret” and appeared to have access to hundreds of millions of dollars.