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The Myths of Black Lives Matter The movement has won over Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But what if its claims are fiction? By Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

Editor’s Note: Originally published Feb. 11, 2016

A television ad for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign now airing in South Carolina shows the candidate declaring that “too many encounters with law enforcement end tragically.” She later adds: “We have to face up to the hard truth of injustice and systemic racism.”

Her Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders, met with the Rev. Al Sharpton on Wednesday. Mr. Sanders then tweeted that “As President, let me be very clear that no one will fight harder to end racism and reform our broken criminal justice system than I will.” And he appeared on the TV talk show “The View” saying, “It is not acceptable to see unarmed people being shot by police officers.”

Apparently the Black Lives Matter movement has convinced Democrats and progressives that there is an epidemic of racist white police officers killing young black men. Such rhetoric is going to heat up as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders court minority voters before the Feb. 27 South Carolina primary.

But what if the Black Lives Matter movement is based on fiction? Not just the fictional account of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., but the utter misrepresentation of police shootings generally.

To judge from Black Lives Matter protesters and their media and political allies, you would think that killer cops pose the biggest threat to young black men today. But this perception, like almost everything else that many people think they know about fatal police shootings, is wrong.

The Washington Post has been gathering data on fatal police shootings over the past year and a half to correct acknowledged deficiencies in federal tallies. The emerging data should open many eyes.

For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black homicide deaths. According to the Post database, in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.) Using the 2014 homicide numbers as an approximation of 2015’s, those 662 white and Hispanic victims of police shootings would make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths. That is three times the proportion of black deaths that result from police shootings.

The lower proportion of black deaths due to police shootings can be attributed to the lamentable black-on-black homicide rate. There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.

Police officers—of all races—are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.

Some may find evidence of police bias in the fact that blacks make up 26% of the police-shooting victims, compared with their 13% representation in the national population. But as residents of poor black neighborhoods know too well, violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Clinton’s Information Lockdown The private email server was only semiprivate: Putin likely has everything. By L. Gordon Crovitz

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

Lyndon Johnson did his best to block the Freedom of Information Act, but public opinion forced him to make government records available. The question now is how FOIA, which LBJ signed 50 years ago this month, survives the precedent Hillary Clinton set with her basement server intended to keep her emails hidden from public view.

Bill Moyers, LBJ’s press secretary at the time, recalled in a 2003 broadcast how FOIA nearly didn’t become law: The president “hated the very idea of a Freedom of Information Act, hated the idea of journalists rummaging in government closets, hated them challenging the official view of reality.”

LBJ relented and signed what he called “the damned thing” on July 4, 1966, but insisted on no fanfare. In the decades that followed, FOIA became an essential tool for government accountability.

No public official since LBJ has gone as far as Hillary Clinton to evade public-disclosure laws. In 2010 her adviser Huma Abedin recommended that she use a government email account, as the State Department required. “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible,” Mrs. Clinton responded in an email that has since come to light. She used a private email server for all her communications because this kept both official and personal communications off government servers, where they would have been subject to disclosure under FOIA.

FBI Director James Comey concluded that Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information in her emails didn’t meet the legal test for a crime because he couldn’t prove that she intended to disclose national secrets. But Mr. Comey testified to Congress last week that the FBI determined that Mrs. Clinton did violate the Federal Records Act, which makes his legal analysis of her intent incomplete. Her most relevant intention was to defy disclosure laws. Her actions had the incidental effect of mishandling confidential communications.

Mrs. Clinton stonewalled FOIA requests for years with her keep-no-records, produce-no-records strategy. In a deposition last month in a civil lawsuit challenging her personal email server, the State Department said its staffers in charge of records didn’t realize until 2014 that its former boss had used private email.

Appropriately enough, Mrs. Clinton’s explanation that she used a private email server to keep her records secret only became public in a lawsuit challenging the State Department’s insistence that it couldn’t respond to FOIA requests because it couldn’t locate her emails on its .gov server.

The State Department’s inspector general in May ruled that Mrs. Clinton broke record-keeping laws such as those requiring compliance with FOIA requests, never got permission for her home server and ignored numerous security warnings. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Peter Smith: The Truth in Black and White

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

Statistics don’t lie and those for black crime in the US are damning. When agitators and promoters of racial animosity note that African-Americans are hugely over-represented in prison populations, what they never acknowledge is that they also commit far more crimes. No wonder police are nervous.
The police shootings of two black men (Philando Castile in Flacon Heights, Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana) look problematic to say the least, judging by the video recordings that I have seen on TV. But all of the facts aren’t in so it is wise to suspend judgement. Clearly more evidence will emerge to throw greater light on the incidents.

I don’t want to comment directly on these cases nor on the demonstration in Dallas which they prompted; during which five police officers were shot and killed and seven others and two bystanders wounded. It now appears that the shooter acted alone. Micah Johnston was a 25-year-old army veteran turned ‘black terrorist’ (for want of a better description) intent, as he said, on shooting white police officers. My comment primarily goes to public safety in America but it has application to Australia and to all societies living under the rule of secular law.

The reaction of the Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Dallas when they became aware that shots were being fired is instructive. They scattered in all directions crying out in fear and panic. The police ran towards the danger. There are two lessons to draw I think.

The first is that untrained unarmed people are no match for a trained gunman. This is so obvious why say it? It’s worth saying because we civilians, but particularly progressives and those intent on feminising society, have to realise that power does come out of the barrel of a gun. A few ruthless bad guys with guns can subjugate and enslave many unarmed people (otherwise called ‘sheep’) without any difficulty at all.

Our safety (the safety of us sheep) in Australia is totally dependent on the police and defence forces. In America it is a little different because many millions of citizens have the capacity to defend themselves. I like the American model better because the resurgence of militant Islam is making the world a more threatening place, but that is by the way.

The second lesson is that delegating our safety to police officers, as we must in the course of ordinary life whether we are personally armed or not, carries risks. One risk is that some police officers will at times act outside their authority; and sometimes brutally. But a second risk is likely to be realised much more often. That is that police officers may ‘overreact’ to perceived danger. Like us civilians, they don’t want to be harmed and have the same adrenalin reaction to danger as do we all. They are not a race apart.

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Arizona Jihadist Charged With Plotting Attacks on Jewish Targets

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

An Arizona grand jury has indicted an accused Islamic State sympathizer on charges of plotting to stage an attack Phoenix-area Jews and other targets with bombs and other weapons, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The suspect, Mahin Khan, 18, of Tucson, was arrested on July 1 by FBI agents in an investigation that began with citizens alerting authorities to suspicious behavior, according to a statement from the Arizona attorney general’s office.

In a three-count indictment, Khan was charged with terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons. He faces a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted with aggravating factors proven at trial, attorney general spokeswoman Mia Garcia said.

He was scheduled for arraignment on July 14, she said.

Prosecutors said the charges stemmed from an investigation by the FBI and state authorities of Khan’s repeated communications with an individual he believed was an Islamic State fighter.

In the communications, prosecutors said, Khan sought to “obtain weapons including pipe bombs or pressure cooker bombs” for an attack on a Motor Vehicle Division office in Maricopa County.

The identity of Khan’s alleged co-conspirator, or whether the person was an informant or undercover FBI agent, was not disclosed. Neither the FBI nor the state attorney general’s office would provide further details.

In a probable cause statement filed in the case earlier this week, the FBI said Khan described himself in an email as an “American Jihadist who supports” Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for bomb and gun attacks in France, Belgium and Bangladesh.

The document cites an alleged email in which Khan asks a contact he believes to be Pakistani to furnish him with assault rifles and a pistol because he wants to “take out marines and jews.” It also accuses him of “identifying an Air Force recruitment center in Tucson as a potential target for a terrorist attack.”

The indictment makes no mention of the recruitment office.

Although the investigation was continuing, “there is not believed to be a further threat” from Khan or his alleged activities, prosecutors said.

He was being held without bond in the Maricopa County Jail, prosecutors said. Court documents filed by the government said that Khan, who has lived with his family in Tucson since 2011, had indicated he would flee to Syria or Pakistan if released

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Europe’s Continuing Fixation on Jews Must Not Grip the United States By Michael Oren

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

“The fiercest arguments we have in parliament are over Israel.” These words, spoken by the chairman of the Dutch Foreign Affairs Committee, startled me. But they failed to faze the other committee members from the both the left and right. On the contrary, they all readily agreed. In the end, only I displayed surprise.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Your country is in economic crisis, tens of thousands of refugees are massing on your borders, and the EU may be unraveling, and yet the issue that most occupies you is…Israel?”

My hosts unanimously nodded. However shocking, the conversation was by no means unusual. As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in Israel’s Knesset, I frequently meet with European legislators.

Whether Dutch or Belgian or German, they all report the same phenomenon. Israel—more than security, more than refugees, and the economy—sparks their bitterest debates. And each time I hear this, I find myself astonished. At stake, I realize, is not Israel’s identity but the Europeans’. For them, the Jewish State is exactly that, a state of Jews against whom the West is once again defining itself.

So it has been for more than two thousand years. The ancient Hellenic and Roman worlds, challenged theologically by a Judaism that rejected their polytheism and the divinity of kings, and threatened demographically by burgeoning Jewish populations, designated the Jews as the ultimate Other.

The first large-scale pogroms and expulsions took place in Rome and Alexandria well before the birth of Christianity. “How could one consider admitting such a people to citizenship or allowing them political rights?” Apion, a first century anti-Semite, wrote. “The Alexandrians were right in detesting the Jews.” By the early second century, Alexandria’s Jewish community, once a million-members strong, had all but vanished.

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THE HILLARY-FBI FIX — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

Posted By on July 11th, 2016

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Special Agent. He discussed The Hillary-FBI Fix, revealing the catastrophic damage to American national security interests.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch The Brigitte Gabriel Moment with Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of ACT for America, in which Brigitte discussesWhat is Really Driving the Terrorists, unveiling what is really inspiring jihadists — and why Obama and the media don’t want you to know it.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/07/10/the-hillary-fbi-fix-on-the-glazov-gang/

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The Arabs’ Historic Mistakes in Their Interactions with Israel by Fred Maroun see note please

Posted By on July 10th, 2016

I have great respect for Fred Maroun, however, the UN Partition Plan of 1947 was the most egregious betrayal of the Jews. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 (with ten abstentions) to implement the new partition as Resolution 181. Absent in all the media hailing of the “compromise” was any mention that the Jews of Palestine had already relinquished 75 percent of the area promised in the Balfour Declaration. Media and diplomats alike would declare that the Jews were gaining 53% of “Palestine” when in fact they were left with roughly 12 percent. rsk
We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians. Our worst mistake was in not accepting the United Nations partition plan of 1947.

Perhaps one should not launch wars if one is not prepared for the results of possibly losing them.

The Jews are not keeping the Arabs in camps, we are.

Jordan integrated some refugees, but not all. We could have proven that we Arabs are a great and noble people, but instead we showed the world, as we continue to do, that our hatred towards each other and towards Jews is far greater than any concept of purported Arab solidarity.

This is part one of a two-part series. The second part will examine what we Arabs can do differently today.

In the current state of the relationship between the Arab world and Israel, we see a patchwork of hostility, tense peace, limited cooperation, calm, and violence. We Arabs managed our relationship with Israel atrociously, but the worst of all is the ongoing situation of the Palestinians.
The Original Mistake

Our first mistake lasted centuries, and occurred well before Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948. It consisted of not recognizing Jews as equals.

As documented by a leading American scholar of Jewish history in the Muslim world, Mark R. Cohen, during that era, “Jews shared with other non-Muslims the status of dhimmis [non-Muslims who have to pay protection money and follow separate debasing laws to be tolerated in Muslim-controlled areas] … New houses of worship were not to be built and old ones could not be repaired. They were to act humbly in the presence of Muslims. In their liturgical practice they had to honor the preeminence of Islam. They were further required to differentiate themselves from Muslims by their clothing and by eschewing symbols of honor. Other restrictions excluded them from positions of authority in Muslim government”.

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UK: Labour Pains by Douglas Murray

Posted By on July 10th, 2016

It is hard to expel junior members for crimes no worse than those committed by the leader of their party.

That two anti-Semitic incidents had occurred at the launch of this whitewash — one from Corbyn himself in which he seemed to compare Israel with ISIS, and another in which a Jewish Labour MP felt bullied into leaving — apparently was just the tip of the problem.

It is finished. The last attempt to instil a portion of decency into the party of the British left is over. The party of the UK left — the Labour party — has now returned to precisely the position it was in before its recent racism row. It has investigated itself, found itself innocent and now reappointed the figure who kicked the whole row off.

Gatestone readers have been able to follow this from the start. After Jeremy Corbyn’s shock election as Labour party leader last year, in November we covered the “new racism” that came — and would increasingly come — from a party that had just elected a man who has called Hamas and Hezbollah ‘friends’ and who has spent a lifetime palling up with the worst anti-Semites and anti-Western bigots on the planet. The election of such a man, we predicted, would have consequences.

Then in February of this year, when the Labour Club at Oxford University turned out to be overrun by barely disguised and largely open anti-Semitism, we suggested that the rot of this party had surely started “from the top.” It is hard to expel junior members for crimes no worse than those committed by the leader of their party.

In March we covered the growing tolerance within the party for the spread of anti-Semitic tropes and the dominance of anti-Semitic types. Parliamentary candidate Vicky Kirby had previously been suspended from the Labour party for tweeting about Jews having “big noses” and about Adolf Hitler being the “Zionist god” and similar less-than-attractive outpourings. Under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, Ms Kirby was reinstated and became the vice-chair of her party’s local chapter.

Then in May came the beginning of the big scandal — the one that looked finally, perhaps, even likely to move Jeremy Corbyn from his position. At the end of April, a string of scandals had occurred all in precisely the same area. Naz Shah — an MP for Bradford — was found to have spread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic messages on Facebook and other social media. These included a suggestion that the Jews of Israel all be forcibly deported and sent to America. At the same time, Labour MP Rupa Huq appeared to try to justify, and then swiftly step back, from endorsing such sentiments and a set of Muslim Labour councillors were suspended for anti-Semitic outbursts.

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U.S. Expels Two Russian Officials After Attack on American Diplomat in Moscow : Aaron Kliegman

Posted By on July 10th, 2016

The United States expelled two Russian officials on June 17 in response to an attack by a Russian policeman on an American diplomat earlier in the month, the State Department said Friday.

“On June 17, we expelled two Russian officials from the United States in response to this attack,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. He would not provide any further detail.

Kirby said a Russian guard attacked an American diplomat outside of the U.S. Embassy compound in Moscow on June 6. He described the attack as “unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the diplomat was a CIA agent who hit the guard in the face.

“Instead of the CIA employee, who was in disguise, as we understand, it could have been anyone –a terrorist, an extremist, a suicide bomber,” said Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.

Kirby responded to Moscow’s accusation by telling reporters, “The Russian claim that the policeman was protecting the embassy from an unidentified individual is simply untrue.”

The State Department has said that Russia has harassed U.S. diplomats in the past, a claim the Kremlin denies.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have been especially strained since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

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The New Middle East By Ted Belman

Posted By on July 10th, 2016

The Obama Era opened with his Cairo speech, in which he embraced Muslims in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. He planned to depose the secular dictators and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus Gadhafi, Mubarak and Assad were marked for removal in that order. The EU was on board.

After supporting the takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Mohamed Morsi, he backed the takeover of Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood in collaboration with the newly Islamist Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyid Erdogan, extolling him as his best friend.

Simultaneously, beginning in 2009, he reached out to Iran. He wanted to embrace it as an ally rather than to designate it as an enemy. His efforts culminated in the disastrous Iran Deal, which provided a tail wind to Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. He overlooked the fact that Iran was a long standing ally of Assad’s and was fighting to resist his removal, which was Obama’s stated goal.

Obama’s reach exceeded his grasp.

Libya, sans Gadhafi, is in chaos. The Egyptian military under Gen al Sisi is in power. He indicted Morsi for treason and banned Muslim Brotherhood again. Obama called his takeover of power a coup thus preventing the US from supporting him. Russia and Saudi Arabia have moved in to take up some of the slack.

Even though Turkey, the Gulf States and the Muslim Brotherhood shared his goal of removing Assad, they have not succeeded due entirely to Obama’s lack of leadership and unwillingness to fight. His removal of the last of the US military forces in Iraq and his willingness to have Iran manage Iraq gave rise to ISIS. Turkey and the Gulf states in different ways supported ISIS, which was Sunni and was seen as a proxy to stop Iran expansionism and topple Assad. The US over time began to see ISIS as a bigger threat than Assad and began to support the Kurds, who they originally shunned, so that they would fight ISIS. They did this even though Turkey was adamantly opposed.

Obama announced that if Assad used chemical weapons, that he would be crossing America’s red line. Rather than enforce that red line, he seized on a lifeline that Russia offered, namely, to work to remove the chemical weapons with the cooperation of Assad. This was a major turning point in the war, as Russia proceeded to take on a greater role in the fighting with America’s blessing, thereby enabling Syria to stabilize and go on the offensive. Russia was not so much interested in defeating ISIS as they were in stabilizing Assad and taking back some territory.

Meanwhile Obama’s plan to have the Muslim Brotherhood with the backing of Turkey replace Assad is no longer operative. The Muslim Brotherhood as a player in Syria is no longer discussed, let alone active. Turkey, who started out with grandiose ambitions to recreating the Ottoman Empire and assuming the mantel of Sunni leadership, has abandoned such ambitions and is working to contain the self-inflicted damage its policies have caused.

Erdogan’s embrace of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has strained relations with Egypt, who has banned them and is actively fighting them. Egypt is also partnering with Israel to neutralize and contain Hamas in Gaza and all insurgents in Sinai.

Obama’s bellicose statements and actions regarding Cyprus have resulted in new alliance between it and Israel based on their mutual interest in defending and developing their new found gas reserves. Greece too has joined that alliance.

Erdogan has enraged the Russian bear by shooting down one of its fighter planes. As a result, Russia has imposed sanctions on Turkey and is supporting the Kurds who are an anathema to Turkey.

Erdogan started out trying to reconcile with Turkey’s Kurdish population but ended up fighting them instead, in addition to fighting the Syrian Kurds that the US was supporting. Along the way they alienated ISIS, who they were supporting. Now both ISIS and the Turkish Kurds are committing terrorist atrocities against them.

All this has given rise to a new Middle East.