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The Presbyterian Church USA’s Obsession With Israel Institutional anti-Semitism becomes too apparent to ignore. Joseph Puder

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

The Presbyterian Church USA (PC-USA) assembled in Portland, Oregon for its 222 General Assembly, lasting from June 18-25. Once again, latent anti-Semitism in the form of controversial resolutions on divestment from Israel became a major issue in the proceedings. Delegates from 171 PCUSA presbyteries, representing the 1.57 million members, along with other participants and observers from around the world, gathered in Portland for the biennial General Assembly (GA).

Elements from within the PCUSA displayed their unrestrained prejudice against the Jewish state when according to the former Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, Alan Wisdom, only one resolution about the Middle East entailed “anything besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He described the PCUSA GA as an “onslaught of anti-Israel legislation.”

Wisdom further explained that “of the six items placed before the assembly’s Middle East Issues Committee, five aimed harsh criticism at Israel.” Only one issue raised gently concerned itself with the threats to Middle Eastern Christians. That resolution does not even bother to identify the threat as being Islam and Muslim radicalism and jihadism. Instead, it qualified the threat coming from “unnamed religiously based actors in the region.”

The multiple anti-Israel resolutions proposed divesting from companies doing business in the Jewish state, with one specifically called the PCUSA, to prayerfully consider Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against the State of Israel. Israel alone was singled out. The only vibrant democracy in the Middle East where religious freedom exists and is flourishing, where human and civil rights are sacrosanct, was vilified. Yet, Arab Palestinian Muslim terrorism, authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, incitement against Israelis and Jews, and denial of human rights and religious freedom has been ignored.

There were no “overtures,” i.e. resolutions against the most notorious dictatorships in the Middle East including the Islamic Republic of Iran, which tramples on basic human rights, denies religious freedom to Christians, Jews, or Baha’is, hangs youthful dissidents, gays and lesbians, and oppresses its minority Kurdish, Baluchi, and Ahwazi people. The hypocrisy and glaring bias displayed by the PCUSA General Assembly was obvious when the worst human rights offenders in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Assad of Syria, and a host of other Middle East Muslim states did not get mentioned, let alone subjected to BDS.

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Refugee Jihad Spreads in Germany Why the recent wave of attacks is only the beginning. Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

The German people are suffering the consequences of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reckless open door “refugee” policy. Merkel laid down the welcome mat for around a million migrants last year, many of them from troubled areas of the Middle East and South Asia, including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been four violent attacks in Germany within just the past week. Two of them were committed by Syrian migrants. A third was committed by an Afghan asylum seeker. The fourth, a mass shooting in Munich, was committed by the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers.

ISIS had forewarned that attacks in Germany were coming. Shortly after the Brussels airport attack, ISIS sent out a call for an attack on Germany’s Cologne airport. An ISIS video threatened to turn Germany into a “battle field” and targeted Chancellor Merkel for murder. After the attack in Nice, ISIS supporters celebrated on social media and said that Germany was next.

Now that the attacks have started, German government officials are trying to calm peoples’ fears, minimizing as much as possible any connection to ISIS. Chancellor Merkel’s Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier actually claimed early last week, after the first attack, that terrorist acts committed by refugees are “not larger or smaller than that in the rest of the population.”

However, the official explanations, including claims as to the mental instability of the perpetrators, ignore the reality that the attackers find legitimacy for acting on their hatred from the “new normal” of violence created by the successful actions of ISIS.

At least two of the most recent attacks in Germany have been directly linked to ISIS.

A Syrian asylum seeker, whom had pledged his allegiance to ISIS, blew himself up last Sunday and injured twelve other people, outside of a wine bar in the town of Ansbach. It could have been far worse. His original target appeared to have been a music festival, but fortunately he was turned away because he did not have a ticket to the event. ISIS claimed that the suicide bomber “was a soldier of the Islamic State.”

The Afghan refugee who attacked train passengers in Germany early last week, injuring four people, two of them critically, was found to have had an ISIS flag in his room. He is reported to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) several times. A news agency linked to ISIS claimed the assailant “carried out the operation in answer to the calls to target the countries of the coalition fighting the Islamic State.”

A machete-wielding Syrian asylum-seeker, who killed a pregnant woman in Germany, was arrested on Sunday. The police claim that, based on the current evidence, “there is no indication that this was a terrorist attack.” Nevertheless, ISIS exploited the incident to urge more so-called “lone wolf” attacks.

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ISIS lauds “results” of a bloodthirsty Ramadan, claims 5200 victims by Lisa Daftari

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

In a celebratory infographic posted online, the Islamic State is claiming major victory in killing and injuring up to 5,200 people over the holy month of Ramadan.

The infographic, lauding the “results” of a bloodthirsty Ramadan, published by ISIS’ Al Naba weekly magazine notes the 14 terror attacks around the globe attributed to ISIS including the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and the Dhaka, Bangladesh bakery attack.

They also mention the Magnanville, France stabbing of a police officer and his wife and a suicide bomb attack that killed 14 Nepalese soldiers who worked at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Recent attacks against Nigerian, Jordanian and Somali troops as well as the downing of six drones and demolition of 440 tanks are also among their listed successes.

The infographic also gives a breakdown of the 5,200 victims with 1,988 Shiites, 965 Kurdish soldiers, 752 Libyan militiamen, 580 Syrian Alawites, 285 Christians who are labeled ‘Crusaders,’ 100 Yemeni soldiers, 50 Egyptian troops, 74 Pakistani and Afghani soldiers and 50 Iraqi military men.

Despite recent reports of the Islamic State’s significant loss of territory, attacks around the world were meant by the terror groups as a wake-up-call demonstrating their intended growth and reach.

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When It Comes to Islam, Western Leaders Are Liars or Idiots Or both. No other alternatives exist. Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

When it comes to the connection between Islam and violence against non-Muslims, one fact must be embraced: the majority of those in positions of leadership and authority in the West are either liars or fools, or both.

No other alternative exists.

The reason for this uncharitable assertion is simple: If Islam was once a faraway, exotic religion, today we hear calls for, and see acts of, violence committed in its name—or the name of its deity “Allahu Akbar!”—practically every day. And many of us still have “ears that hear and eyes that see.”

It’s no secret: Muslims from all around the world and from all walks of life—not just “terrorists” or “ISIS”—unequivocally and unapologetically proclaim that Islam commands them to hate, subjugate or kill all who resist it, including all non-Muslim “infidels.”

This is the official position of several Muslim governments, including America’s closest “friends and allies,” like Saudi Arabia and Qatar; it’s the official position of Islamic institutions of lower and higher learning—from Bangladeshi high schools to Egypt’s Al Azhar, the world’s most prestigious Islamic university; and it’s the official position broadcast in numerous languages on Islamic satellite stations that air into Muslim homes around the world.

In short, there’s no excuse today for ignorance about Islam—especially for those in positions of leadership or authority. Yet it is precisely they who most vehemently deny any connection between Islam and violence.

Why?

The most recent example (as of this writing, that is) took place on July 18 in Germany. An axe-waving Muslim refugee attacked a number of train passengers and critically injured three. Although an ISIS flag was found in his room, although he called for the slaughter of any Muslim who dares leave Islam, although he yelled “Allahu Akbar”—Islam’s unequivocal war cry—authorities claimed “it was too early to speculate about the motives of the attacker.”

Catholic Bishop Friedhelm Hofmann of Wuerzburg, where the axe attack took place, was bewildered: “One is speechless at such a moment. This fact can not be understood.” Instead of being vigilant around Muslim migrants, he suggested “Maybe we need to help the unaccompanied young refugees even more and help them to overcome their own traumas.”

About a month earlier in Germany, this same scene played itself over: while screaming “Allahu Akbar” and “infidels must die,” another Muslim man in another train station stabbed to death one man and injured three others. Still, German authorities “found no evidence of Islamist motive.”

In neighboring France—which has “Europe’s largest Muslim minority” and is also (coincidentally?) the “most threatened country”—this sequence of events (a Muslim attacks in the name of Islam, authorities claim difficulty in finding “motive”) is becoming endemic. On July 19, a Muslim man vacationing with his pregnant wife and children stabbed a neighboring woman and her three daughters for being “scantily dressed.” The youngest girl, 8, was in critical condition with a punctured lung.

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Knives Out In Philly Democrats in disarray. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

Deeply divided Democrats spent the first day of their unruly convention here desperately trying to reassure everyone that their fractured, out-of-touch party is united heading into the November election.

The chaotic convention begins after a hotly contested primary season and as signs emerge that Republican Donald Trump could be cruising to victory in November. Famed statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight said if the election had been held yesterday, Trump would have had a 57.5 percent chance of winning the presidency versus Clinton’s 42.5 percent. According to Silver’s “Now-cast” model, Trump would win the battleground states of Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

“Don’t think people are really grasping how plausible it is that Trump could become president. It’s a close election right now,” Silver tweeted July 22.

Bernie Sanders supporters made their displeasure known, booing and interrupting speeches for hours. They even booed and chanted “Bernie” during the opening invocation.

Their fanatical devotion makes sense. As Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller astutely observed a few hours later on Fox News Channel, to his followers Sanders is more like a religious figure than a politician.

In the early part of the first day of the convention, loud boos rang out over and over again when Hillary Clinton or running-mate Tim Kaine’s names were mentioned. Sometimes the boos drowned out the speakers. Some angry Bernie Sanders supporters taped their mouths shut to protest how the party treated their candidate. At other times, the noise generated by Sanders delegates shook the Wells Fargo Center.

In Philadelphia the official theme of Day One was “United Together,” which ought to set off alarm bells.

The statement about party unity, it turns out, was aspirational, not factual. Monday was a down-and-dirty, raucous affair. Delegates sat through seven hours of speeches, live music, and videos extolling the virtues of Clinton and ridiculing Trump. Throughout the home base of the Philadelphia Flyers, 76ers, and Soul, there are “all-gender” bathrooms. Delegates displayed smartalecky signs reading “love trumps hate.”

Protesters arrived in seemingly greater numbers than at the GOP convention in Cleveland last week. They were angrier and more physically aggressive than in Cleveland. More than 50 of them associated with something called Democracy Spring were detained by police and issued citations for disorderly conduct. Some held a sit-in at an entry point to the convention site while others climbed barricades erected for crowd control.

And inside the convention hall the knives were out for those who resisted the so-called revolution led by Sanders, a self-described socialist.

As the City of Brotherly Love roasted in 100-degree heat, Democrats unceremoniously dumped the administrative head of the party, Democratic National Committee chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. She had been booed by fellow Democrats at events leading up to the convention — and for good reason.

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Congressman Hank Johnson Compares Israeli Settlers to Termites By Rick Moran see note please

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

Dummiecrat Johnson is well rewarded by the Arab American Institute and gets a 5+ for his anti Israel sentiments…..rsk
Rep. Hank Johnson is not known for his towering intellect or penetrating insight. In fact, he’s an ignorant loon.

Back in 2010, Johnson astonished attendees at a House Armed Services Committee hearing by claiming that if too many U.S. military personnel transferred to our base on Guam, it could cause the island to “capsize.”

These days, Johnson has turned his attention to the cause of the Palestinians. At a meeting for the anti-Israel U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Johnson compared Israeli settlers to “termites” and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Donald Trump.

Washington Free Beacon:

“There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming,” Johnson said during an event sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an anti-Israel organization that galvanizes supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

“It has come to the point that occupation, with highways that cut through Palestinian land, with walls that go up, with the inability or the restriction, with the illegality of Palestinians being able to travel on those roads and those roads cutting off Palestinian neighborhoods from each other,” Johnson continued. “And then with the building of walls and the building of check points that restrict movement of Palestinians. We’ve gotten to the point where the thought of a Palestinian homeland gets further and further removed from reality.”

Johnson, who in 2010 voiced his fears that Guam would tip over and capsize if too many people resided on the island, said that “Jewish people” routinely steal land and property from Palestinians.

“You see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people who come in to claim that land just because somebody did not spend the night there,” he said, referring to claims that Israeli settlers plot to seize Palestinian land. ‘“The home their [Palestinian] ancestors lived in for generations becomes an Israeli home and a flag goes up,” he said, adding, “the Palestinians are barred from flying flags in their own neighborhoods.”

Johnson went on to compare Lieberman to Trump as he lashed out against the Israeli government.

“The fact is the Israeli government, which is the most right-wing government ever to exist in the state of Israel in its history, the most right wing government, you got a guy like Trump who is now the minister of defense in Israel calling the shots on defense,” he said, adding that he is not the only member of Congress who holds these views.

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Michael Galak: Russia’s Five-Ring Circus

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

Judging by Moscow’s delighted reaction to the news that its athletes will be free to compete at the Rio Games, the IOC has confirmed perceptions of the West as corrupt, weak, easily intimidated and, most of all, lacking the courage of its alleged convictions.
There is a contemptuous saying in the Russian language which, loosely translated, sgoes something like this: ‘Piss in his eyes but he will still say it is a God’s dew’. Despite its crudity, this saying perfectly reflects the habitual pattern of deception by the Russian authorities, who lie, prevaricate and stonewall despite whatever weight of evidence condemns them.

Doping in sport? Never! Crimea? We had no Russian soldiers there! Ukraine? Nothing to do with us. Malaysian aircraft shot down with horrific civilian casualties? Someone else’s fault! And always, “You have no proof!”

The doping scandal and the near miss at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a humiliation for the entire country of incomparable magnitude. And, I regret to say, a wasted opportunity by the IOC to declare, clearly and strongly, ‘Enough is enough!’

The IOC did not have the guts to kick out the dope cheats and to send a message to the world that doping is unacceptable. Instead, it preferred to pass the buck and “leave it to the discretion of the individual sports bodies” to decide the fate of the Russian Olympic sports team. Judging by the delighted Russian reaction, this decision has confirmed their contemptuous opinion of the Western institutions, especially European ones, as corrupt, weak and easily controllable by discrete (or should I say – hybrid?) means.

The IOC has made a mockery of integrity. It let countries aspiring to the same level of corruption as in Russia know that all they have to do is respect the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught. And if they do get caught, the appropriate response is to deny and lie, despite all evidence. If that doesn’t work, get the IOC to refer the cheaters to individual sports bodies. Countries, like China, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, North Korea and their ilk will understand the message quite clearly.

The harm IOC inflicted by this decision goes much deeper than sports. It strengthens the Russian and similarly autocratic, corrupt and oppressive countries’ opinion that everyone is as corrupt as they are; that the rule of law is just a figment of the Western propaganda; that Europeans are weak and cowardly; that the niceties of international civilised behaviour and the primacy of individual freedom over the collective predominance is nonsense; that a state can and should interfere wherever it wishes and is not answerable to anyone, least of all to the rule of law.

In effect, the IOC has colluded with the Russian government in blatantly breaching international decency. Declaring its decision as motivated by the desire to be inclusive, it has, by a simple exercise of intellectual dishonesty, approved of the Russian government’s behaviours. The meek and mild IOC decision, in effect, gave the Russian government, which committed a hanging offence, a slap on the wrist. In exchange for what?

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Tony Thomas: The Clintons and Their Corruptocrats

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

In Hillary’s term at State, wealthy crooks, influence-seekers and tyrannical governments rushed to donate millions to the Clinton Foundation, its spin-offs, Bill Clinton personally or vague combinations of all/any of them. Figuring large on the donor list, Australia’s taxpayers.
Australian governments’ $85 million aid to the Clinton Foundation is a bit surprising, given that ex-President Bill and presidential candidate Hillary are synonyms for financial and personal sleaze. That total sum was paid by both Coalition and Labor governments over the past decade. Coalition and Labor have also despatched and committed $460m to the Clinton-affiliated Global Partnership for Education, chaired by our ex-PM Julia Gillard. Abbott’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop threw Gillard’s show a lazy $140 million of taxpayer money in 2014, no questions asked. That aid was in the teeth of Gillard’s lusty presidential campaigning for Hillary against Trump.

Ostensibly charitable, the Clinton Foundation is the centerpiece of the couple’s amassing of a vast personal fortune. Bill was president from 1993-01. Hillary was Secretary of State for Obama from 2009-13.

In Hillary’s term at State, every variety of wealthy crook, influence-seeker and tyrannical government rushed to “donate” millions to the Clinton Foundation, its spin-offs, Bill Clinton personally or vague combinations of all/any of them. Lots of those crooked donors later scored disgrace, convictions and/or gaol on unrelated matters. Amid the sleaze, of course, the Clinton Foundation did manage to do some genuine charity work.

The Australian’s Greg Sheridan reported last February that the Coalition and Labor governments aided the Clinton foundations by more than $75 million in the past decade. The aid was via partnerships with the Clintons’ outfit as ‘technical implementing partner’. There are still three deals involving the foundations aiding Indonesia, PNG and Vietnam. Australia appears to be the biggest single foreign-government source of Clinton Foundation funds, he said. Annual aid has ranged from $6.5 million to a peak $10.3 million in 2012-13, the final Labor year.

However, Sheridan and/or his US source overlooked $10 million in a direct donation by a Rudd government entity to the Clinton Foundation in 2009-10. Rudd in 2008 set up the Global CCS Institute for research into carbon capture and storage with $100 million of taxpayer money. “The Institute provided AU$10 million to the Clinton Foundation to support the work being conducted through the Clinton Climate Initiative to accelerate key ‘early mover’ CCS projects around the world,” the Institute said.

According to the ABC, Rudd’s little venture actually involved a further commitment of $215m, at the rate of $100m a year. Other countries were supposed to tip in money too but by 2012 that amounted to a tiny $4.5m from the US and EU. The Institute itself had no idea what to spend its money on, actually complaining to the ABC that “the Rudd Government funding was too much, too soon.” After two years, Rudd’s institute had spent $7.4 million on travel and meetings, $11.3 million on contractors and consultants, and almost $6 million on administration. It had donated only $37m to carbon capture projects around the world but had $145m sitting idle in the bank. The $10 million thrown to the Clinton Foundation appears to be part of the institute’s desperate attempts to spend its piggy bank. Carbon capture of course has proved to be a total turkey.

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Wikileaks reveals apparent sale of presidential appointments by DNC By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

It has always been taken for granted that presidents appoint wealthy donors to commissions, ambassadorships, and other honors. But we have never before seen evidence of the way the transactions are carried out. However, thanks to Wikileaks, we have an actual spreadsheet listing donors and possible purchases of office being circulated among DNC officials.

Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller has the story.

The spreadsheet — which was accompanied by emails sent between officials with the DNC’s finance team — contains 23 names of little-known corporate executives and professional fundraisers who have donated to the committee and various Democratic political action committees.

(snip)

The donor spreadsheet is included in an email chain in which Jordan Kaplan, DNC’s national finance director, asks other officials to provide names of donors they want to propose for federal commissions.

“Last call for boards and commissions,” Kaplan wrote on April 20.

“If you have someone, send to [DNC finance chief of staff Scott] Comer – full name, city, state, email and phone number. Send as many as you want, just don’t know how many people will get to.”

The email confused at least one official involved in the exchange.

“Boards and commissions? Sorry, I’m lost,” wrote Jordan Vaughn, the national finance director for the DNC’s African American Leadership Council.

Comer explained: “Any folks who you’d like to be considered to be on the board of (for example) USPS, NEA, NEH. Basically anyone who has a niche interest and might like to serve on the board of one of these orgs.”

“I should say, though, that the likelihood of landing a spot on ones as prestigious as NEA/USPS is unlikely,” Comer added, referring to the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Postal Service.

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For Trump! Against the Disloyalists! By Jared E. Peterson

Posted By on July 26th, 2016

At last it’s beyond dispute: This time the Republican Party’s presidential nominee is someone chosen by full throated roar from its augmented voter base, not by the timid and failed leadership that’s gripped the Party since Reagan.

And just as importantly, despite furious howls from “We prefer Hillary” turncoats scattered among Republican elites and conservative intellectuals, it’s now also indisputable that Donald Trump is fighting for the major part of the Republican Party and American conservatism’s Reagan agenda: unapologetic patriotism and belief in American exceptionalism, a freer, less regulated economy, a Supreme Court that respects the Constitution, unrestricted freedom of expression, unambiguous condemnation of all domestic violence, especially against the police, and a muscular defense of America, its people and allies against increasingly murderous enemies.

Not good enough, say the allegedly Republican and conservative turncoats … we prefer Hillary Clinton and all that comes with her.

An important aside: In law as in logic, the absolutely certain consequences of actions that are known to the actor beforehand … are consequences that he intends. If he fires an automatic weapon into a crowd, he will not be heard to say he did not intend to kill or seriously wound.

Those members of the Republican elite now denouncing Donald Trump and proclaiming he will not get their votes, or failing to endorse and campaign for him when by resume they would be expected to, are actions they know — to an absolute certainty — will help elect Hillary Clinton.

Thus, the entire gaggle of Republican and conservative disloyalists — from former presidents and failed presidential candidates all the way down to obscure scribblers — are intentionally working for the election of Hillary Clinton and the now radical Left Democratic Party.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, especially if by a narrow vote, the turncoat disloyalists will forever own all of the utterly predictable consequences of her Leftist presidency (see below for a partial list).

The reasons for this astonishing betrayal of their own voter base? A mixture of motives is on display. Much social and intellectual snobbery, selfish wound licking, and sinecure protecting are all unsuccessfully seeking cover behind alleged issue or character criticisms.

The soreheads’ issue gripes with Trump focus on those positions that indisputably have expanded the potential voter base of the Republican Party: In addition to embracing much of core conservatism and Republicanism, Trump has responded favorably to two pleas from huge and long-standing majorities of Republican and conservative voters — and from large numbers of working and middle class Americans who are neither: