http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2016/08/im-loyal-to-country-that-gave-me.html
Many people will already have seen this heart-warming video by a brave Israeli Arab lady.
More lovable expositors of that Olde Tyme Religion.
First, the Hezbollah preacher informing of Israel’s imminent demise. (Come to think of it, he doesn’t look too convinced!)
‘In a TV interview, Lebanese cleric Hashem Safieddine, head of the Executive Council of Hizbullah, said that “Israel is closer than ever before to its demise” and warned that “the time for operations will come.” When the interviewer asked whether Hizbullah was capable of entering the Galilee or “even further than the Galilee” with ground forces, Safieddine responded: “We have that capability. Of course.” The interview aired on Mayadeen TV on August 8.’
Second, an Iraqi Shiite salivating about sex slaves:
‘Iraqi Ayatollah Abdul Karim Al-Haeri, Director of the Karbala Hawza Shiite seminary, said in a video that after the arrival of the Mahdi, it would be permissible to take five or ten slave girls from among those who oppose the imam, and to offer them to friends for sex, when they come over.
Al-Haeri recommended this as a means to prevent marital problems: “If his wife asks him where he was, he has no problem [telling her he was with his friend],” he said.
Excerpts from the lecture were posted on April 7 on the Facebook page of Beith Al-Wujdan Al-Thaqafi, a group focused on enlightenment and extremism in the Arab and Islamic world.’
(Hey, Pope Francis, what in Christianity is analogous to this? …. Nu? Nah, I don’t think His Naive Holiness could provide a convincing answer, even if he tried to, do you?)
Third, a Kuwaiti alleging a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy:
‘In a 2011 episode of his religious TV show, Kuwaiti preacher Nabil Al-Awadi claimed that there was a Jewish-Freemason conspiracy aimed at instilling un-Islamic messages in the mind of children through popular animated films. “The whole world has turned SpongeBob,” he complained. “They are instilling the message that boys are wimps, sissies, and girlish, whereas girls are butch, strong, and masculine… Brothers, there is homosexuality in cartoons.” Al-Awadi further said that “Jews are behind most of the American companies today.” The show aired on Al-Watan TV on September 24, 2011.’
(All videos by Memri.org )
On May 25, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) witnessed a shocking display of blatant anti-Semitism coupled with egregious suppression of free speech and open discourse. Campus Brown Shirts from the hate group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) violently disrupted a movie screening organized by pro-Israel groups. The screening featured the acclaimed documentary, Beneath the Helmet, which documents the personal experiences and challenges of Israeli soldiers while undergoing basic training in a paratroop battalion.
A large and vocal group of SJP hooligans initiated a campaign of violent intimidation aimed at disrupting the event and causing harm to the attendees. They blocked entrances and exits preventing ingress and egress to and from the building. Those already inside were literally trapped while others who tried to attend were physically blocked. One female student who tried to attend was threatened and chased by a number of SJP members. She was ultimately forced to call the police while taking refuge in a nearby building. Additional police were dispatched to escort the attendees out of the building where the screening was held.
As noted by Lea Speyer of the Algemeiner, the disruptive rabble shouted slogans like, “Long live the intifada,” “f*** the police,” “displacing people since ’48 / there’s nothing here to celebrate,” and “all white people need to die.”
Though the event was not canceled and the screening went on as scheduled, the upheaval and environment of fear caused by the SJP’s antics distracted from the event and dissuaded many from attending. A re-screening was subsequently held on June 8 and also featured the short film, “Crossing the Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus,” which was shown before the screening of “Beneath the Helmet.”
Given the magnitude of the SJP disruption and the blatant display of racism and anti-Semitism, one would have thought that campus officials would have instituted stern action against the vile offenders. Shockingly, however, administration officials gave the SJP what amounted to a mere slap on the wrist. An email from the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Thomas A. Parham, noted in part:
“After a thorough review, the student conduct investigation is now complete. The investigators found that SJP, the group that organized and led the protest, violated Student Conduct Policies regarding disruption: ‘Obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other University activities.’ As a result, SJP was issued a written warning, effective immediately and continuing until March 29, 2017. As part of the sanction, SJP must host an educational program by November 18, 2016.”
University officials acknowledged that the SJP violated the student code of conduct and disrupted free speech and university activities. Nonetheless, officials decided to limit the sanction to a pathetic warning and requiring the SJP to host an “educational program.” No doubt the SJP will use the “educational” opportunity to advance their pernicious, anti-Semitic venom thus defeating the purpose of the sanction.
CNN reported Tuesday that “dramatic video has emerged of Iraqi police stripping an explosive belt from a child suspected in a suicide bombing attempt for ISIS.” This followed the bombing in Turkey on Saturday, when a Muslim boy between twelve and fourteen years old murdered 51 people with a jihad suicide bomb at a wedding party. These were just the latest examples of the longstanding jihadi practice of using children in jihad attacks – a practice that the jihadis themselves regard as just the opposite of child abuse, and indeed, the greatest activity in which a child or anyone else can engage.
Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Kirkuk Governorate in Iraq, asserted that the Islamic State (ISIS) had “trained and brainwashed” the child suicide bomber. “They tell them if they do this, they will go to heaven and have a good time and get everything that they ever wanted.”
Is ISIS eccentric in this idea, or twisting and hijacking the peaceful religion of Islam? The Qur’an says: “Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties, for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed” (9:111).
This is essentially a guarantee of Paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah. This verse has become in the modern age the rationale for suicide bombing. The mainstream and revered Qur’an commentator Ibn Kathir explains: “Allah states that He has compensated His believing servants for their lives and wealth — if they give them up in His cause — with Paradise.”
Another Qur’an commentator, Ibn Juzayy, adds: “It is said that it was sent down about the Homage of Aqaba [an early pledge of Muslims’ willingness to wage war for Islam], but its judgment is general to every believer doing jihad in the way of Allah until the Day of Rising.”
Americans serving in the military lost some of their rights earlier this month when the military’s highest court ruled that a Marine has no rights under an important religious freedom law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Because this military court has exclusive jurisdiction over many military matters, only the U.S. Supreme Court can restore religious liberty to our service members by choosing to take up the case of United States v. Sterling.
Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling was a young Marine struggling with military life and getting poor reviews from her superiors. She sought encouragement in her Christian faith, posting by her computer a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:17 from the Bible: “No weapons formed against me shall prosper.”
Her supervisor ordered her to remove the Bible verse, even though other Marines in the office had personal and inspirational items in their workspaces. Sterling refused and was court-martialed. She represented herself in court without an attorney, asserting religious liberty, but was convicted and dishonorably discharged from the military.
My law firm, First Liberty Institute, along with Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general who has argued 83 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, took her case on appeal. Our team presented Sterling’s case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), arguing that RFRA protected her posting of the Bible verses. RFRA provides that whenever a federal agency or employee imposes a substantial burden on a person’s exercising or expressing faith, the government action is unlawful unless it’s the least restrictive means to achieve a truly compelling national interest.
Yet in a stunning decision, the military court ruled 4–1 that RFRA did not protect Sterling’s religious expression, splitting with other federal appeals courts on two critical points of law.
First, the court held that a religious burden is “substantial” only if it concerns something important to that person’s faith. That’s wrong; RFRA broadly states that it covers “any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” Courts have no business deciding what they think is important to your practice of faith.
Hillary Clinton just can’t catch a break.
The Democrat nominee’s new long march to the White House gets longer by the day. The scandal over her misuse of state secrets via a lawless, do-it-yourself private server seemed to be behind her last month — thanks to the FBI’s and Justice Department’s whitewashing of what looked, to the naked eye, like high crimes.
But Clinton’s initial clean getaway has bogged down into a standoff.
For starters, Clinton’s go-to excuse — “Secretary Powell has admitted he did the same thing,” as she told CNN last March — has crashed and burned. She also has claimed that she installed her private server because her predecessor made her do it.
“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Colin Powell told People magazine last Saturday. “The truth is, she was using [the private e-mail server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”
Despite the assertions of Clinton and her allies, Powell never had a private server. He did have a private AOL account, for sending personal messages to friends and loved ones and also to transmit unclassified e-mails to State Department colleagues.
Alas, a grand total of two classified e-mails wound up on Powell’s AOL account, according to the State Department’s inspector general. This compares to zero, each, for secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice.
RELATED: If Hillary Is Corrupt, Congress Should Impeach Her
As for Clinton, her server held 2,113 classified e-mails — literally more than 1,000 times as many as Powell’s AOL account, thus rendering hilarious her assertion that, “We both did the same thing.”
Meanwhile, the absolution of FBI chief James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch did not spare Clinton from the federal government’s pesky judicial branch nor the even peskier watchdogs at the conservative law firm Judicial Watch.
The State Department last week agreed to expedite its delivery of all e-mails to and from Clinton that the FBI discovered in its probe of her private, unsecured server. This decision flows directly from Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit before U.S. District Court judge James E. Boasberg, an Obama appointee.
The request for these e-mails spans February 2, 2009 to January 31, 2013, i.e., all but the first twelve days of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.
VIDEO: The Clintons Are Corruption Defined
Judicial Watch hopes to view what Clinton laughed off as “a few more” new messages on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night, namely 14,900 previously unrevealed documents that Clinton sent or received via e-mail. The existence of these records became public yesterday.
Judge Boasberg ordered the State Department to develop a plan to expedite delivery of these materials and present it to him on September 22 — just four days before the first presidential debate between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.
“The American people will now see more of the emails Hillary Clinton tried to hide from them,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated. “Simply put, our lawsuits have unraveled Hillary Clinton’s email cover-up.”
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz is demanding answers from the FBI regarding the possibility that unauthorized people such as Hillary Clinton’s lawyers and IT staffers mishandled classified emails. This comes a week after Chairman Chaffetz and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia outlining the case for perjury against Hillary Clinton, citing several examples where her sworn testimony before Congress was incompatible with evidence collected by the FBI in their investigation into her private email server.
On Monday, the Utah Republican sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking if the possibility of “spillage” had been “fully investigated and remediated.”
“Just as classified information may not be provided to anyone without an appropriate clearance, classified information must also not be stored on a computer system that is not authorized to store it,” Chaffetz wrote. “The transfer of classified information from a computer system authorized to store it to one that is not is called spillage.”
According to the Hill, information about the storage of Clinton’s classified emails at her lawyers’ offices, was not included in the documents the FBI gave to Congress last week.
Documents requested in the letter:
Information as to whether the FBI investigated the possibility that Secretary Clinton’s classified emails were improperly stored or accessed by her personal representatives or by individuals at Williams & Connolly LLP, including on any unauthorized electronic devices or media, such as desktops or servers, and the Bureau’s conclusion if it did investigate that;
A description of the manner in which Clinton’s personal representatives and individuals at Williams & Connolly stored any electronic devices and media and physical documents containing Secretary Clinton’s classified emails when they were not in use, and a description of the physical location in which those devices, media, and documents were accessed when they were in use, including the Bureau’s assessment of whether those met applicable security requirements;
What steps were taken to remediate any possible spillage of classified information stored on electronic media or in any of the other various locations in which Secretary Clinton’s emails were stored and accessed;
Whether the FBI informed Secretary Clinton of the classified findings in its investigation and, if so, when;
Whether the FBI is conducting any other related investigations, or has attempted to do so, and the current status of each such investigation;
Whether the FBI referred any of its findings to any other agency for review for potential security violations or misconduct or disciplinary proceedings;
An unclassified copy of the documents provided to the Committee on August 16, 2016, with all classified information redacted.
Over the past decades Israel has been growing and developing at a phenomenal pace. Thanks to ongoing immigration and a high birthrate, its population has doubled over the past 30 years. Since 1990 its GDP per capita has tripled. And the start-up nation—still very small with a population of 8.5 million—has become a world leader in some of the most important fields.
After a recent visit to Israel as head of a delegation from his state, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush noted, among other things, that Israel’s water-desalination company, IDE Technologies, is considering a “program in Texas to help cities, communities and industrial partners meet their water needs.” Israeli firms are already helping California solve its water crisis.
It should come as no surprise in light of a recent Scientific American article detailing Israel’s pioneering innovations in this field. Just 15 years ago Israel, one of the world’s driest countries to begin with, was suffering from a drought and at the brink of a water catastrophe. Now, thanks to its revolutionary desalination technology, Israel not only fully supplies its own water needs but is at the forefront of solving the world’s water crisis.
During his visit Commissioner Bush met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “discussed [with him] several economic areas where Israel and Texas can work together.” Bush noted that “Texas is home to the Silicon Prairie” while “Israel is the Silicon Valley of the Middle East.” We locals call it Silicon Wadi—the Tel Aviv-area beehive of Israeli high-tech companies that a Forbes article speculated could become “the dominant tech ecosystem in the world.”
At present, as Israeli commentator Yoram Ettinger notes, according to a recent study tiny Israel is “one of the top five world high-tech powers.” Only two countries—the U.S. and China—have more companies trading on the NASDAQ. Israel is one of only eight countries in the world to have launched space satellites, “a global co-leader with the US” in that field—and so on.
Of particular relevance to the Texas delegation’s visit was Israel’s offshore natural-gas exploration, which it is doing in partnership with Houston-based Noble Energy. It was Noble that, at the start of the millennium, first discovered the natural-gas deposits off Israel’s coast. Today the huge Tamar gas field is already online, and the even larger Leviathan field is on the way. Israel will be exporting natural gas to Jordan next year, and it is nearing a deal with Egypt. And although the politics are complex, Israel is also talking about possible gas deals with Turkey and with Greece and Cyprus.
Any treaty or treaty-like compact is void if, at the time of its entry into force, it conflicts with a “peremptory” rule of international law – that is, one from which “no derogation is permitted.” As the right of sovereign states to maintain military forces for self-defense is always such a rule, Palestine would be within its lawful right to abrogate any pre-independence agreement that had (impermissibly) compelled its own demilitarization.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), now officially a Nonmember Observer State to the United Nations General Assembly, will likely seek next month a Security Council resolution favoring full Palestinian sovereignty, probably as part of a cooperative Security Council initiative with France. Following such an initiative, the current U.S. president, or the next U.S. president could then be moved to accept the PA position on the grounds of some prior Palestinian “demilitarization.” Unfortunately, any such acceptance would be without any legal or practical value; therefore no state of Palestine should ever be approved because of any apparent promise of demilitarization.
Whoever wins the November election, the next U.S. president will have to deal with the continuing issue of Palestinian statehood. For the moment, agreeing to any such new Arab sovereignty – a 23rd Arab state – would appear to be contingent upon some prior acceptance of Palestinian “demilitarization.” After all, for a new president to disregard this seemingly prudent contingency would immediately place the United States in stark opposition to Israel.
More precisely, it would put Washington at odds with the core requirements already laid down explicitly by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nonetheless, there is substantial irony to this obligation. Simply put, meaningful Palestinian demilitarization could never take place. In essence, international jurisprudence could not allow it. First, international law would not necessarily expect Palestinian compliance with any limitations on negotiated agreements concerning national armies and armed forces.
But what if the government of a fully-sovereign Palestinian state were in fact willing to consider itself bound by some pre-state agreement to demilitarize? There is still a big problem. Even in these improbable circumstances, the new Palestinian Arab government could likely identify ample pretext and opportunity to invoke lawful “treaty” termination. Here are some specific examples:
Until a few years ago, the unique recipe for secularism adopted by the French seemed able to guarantee the assimilation of the country’s burgeoning number of Muslims, something now, by criminal and terrorist activity in the country, proven a resolute failure.
Next year’s election results might signal the beginning of the end for laïcité, the long-held French principle of strict prohibition against religious influence in the determination of state policies.
The remains of St. Denis, the patron saint of Paris, who was decapitated in the year 250 during the brutal pagan persecution of Christians, lie north of the French capital in the basilica that bears his name.
The church is historically noteworthy as the first proper work of Gothic architecture, a style influenced by the Crusades. The basilica is now a rarely visited Parisian landmark, lying as it does within the profoundly Islamized enclave of Seine-Saint-Denis.
“You Christians, you kill us,” were the words of the ISIS knifeman who slit the throat of 85-year old Father Jacques Hamel. The elderly priest officiating at the altar of the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray — a mere three kilometres from the centre of Rouen in Normandy — was slain on July 25, as the two terrorists also took nuns hostage. The terrorists were then shot by police.
On August 5, police swept down on a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is the Greatest”] on the Champs-Élysées, the famous central thoroughfare of the capital of France. Video of the arrest shows passers-by: veiled Muslims, tourists, and presumably indigenous French men and women.
Both of these incidents, when aligned with recent mass outrages across France, including the Bataclan Theatre slaughter on November 13, and the mass carnage caused by a jihadist plot in Nice on July 14, point to a startling reality.
Despite the rhetoric by the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls on removing dual nationality from those guilty of terrorism offences and closing extremist mosques (20 of France’s 2,500 alleged mosques have been closed down to date), the violent consequences of jihadism are a daily reality and concern stalking the heart of most French metropolitan districts.
At 7.5% of the population, Muslims in France make up the highest concentration of Muslims of any country in Europe, according to Pew Research.
For decades, those warning of the inevitable consequences of mass Muslim immigration, during a time in history when Islamic fundamentalist doctrine was on the rise worldwide, have been maligned, prosecuted, imprisoned or assassinated.
With the security infrastructure now proving inadequate to cope with the sheer scale of enthusiasm for religious war amongst those Islamists born in France, and those able to enter the country — thanks to the open border policies of the EU — the threat continues to increase day by day.
Close to the Champs-Élysées, which runs between the Louvre museum and the Arc de Triomphe, lies the official residence of the president of France.
Presently occupied by the Socialist François Hollande, who closely courted the Muslim vote to gain power in 2012, many French people are looking towards the presidential elections scheduled for April and May 2017, to provide a new occupant of the Élysée Palace in the form of Marine Le Pen.
