HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

U.S. ‘Vetted Moderate’ Syrians Defect to Al-Qaeda Affiliate By Patrick Poole

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

Reports are emerging this morning that a battalion of Faylaq al-Sham fighters that had previously been vetted as “moderates” by the U.S. has defected to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the recently re-branded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.

This is yet one more episode of U.S.-vetted Syrian rebel groups defecting to U.S.-designated terrorist groups in recent years. Just a few weeks ago, I reported here at PJ Media that U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army troops were openly allied with a group the State Department had designated a terrorist organization just one week before.

News of the defection of the Muhammad Rasoolullah Brigade of Faylaq al-Sham operating around Idlib initially appeared on Twitter:

#BREAKING: Muhammad Rasoolullah Brigade in Sarmada, #Idlib have defected from Faylaq al-Sham to #JFS pic.twitter.com/7pdkKHJfu7

— Nasser Rahman (@rah622) October 19, 2016

#Syria: Local Faylaq al-Sham (Ikhwani & US-vetted) battalion in Sarmada, Idlib, defects to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham pic.twitter.com/rlDzwBW0Di

— Aymenn J Al-Tamimi (@ajaltamimi) October 20, 2016

Faylaq al-Sham, backed by Turkey, is currently involved in the push against the Islamic State:

Faylaq al-Sham map showing the advances the rebels made against IS today (in blue), Northern Aleppo. #Syria#Dabiqpic.twitter.com/lWpnKjpoZw

— AliCemilKaya® (@AliCemilKaya_) October 15, 2016

Faylaq al-Sham has its roots in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and its member have been branded “Syria’s moderate Islamists.” Undoubtedly, the “experts” will lament this defection as a shock brought about by military necessities on the ground.

But if the so-called “vetted moderate” groups that receive U.S. weapons later turn terrorist, what is the point of the so-called U.S. “vetting” anyway?

The “experts” may also downplay this defection by claiming that Jabhat Fateh al-Sham cut ties with al-Qaeda, but nothing could be further from the truth. All the group did was rebrand — with permission from al-Qaeda.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton’s Insidious Threat to Traditional Christianity By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

“In a speech given in December 2011, Clinton openly compared religious opposition to the LGBT agenda to honor killings, widow burning, and female genital mutilation.”

Conservative Christian support for Donald Trump has become something of a scandal of late. But no matter how odious the Republican nominee’s faults may be, religious believers must not be fooled — Hillary Clinton represents a terrifying threat to religious freedom and traditional faith in general.

Last April, Clinton infamously declared that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” in order to make way for abortion and other forms of “reproductive health care.” These remarks, given at the sixth annual Women in the World Summit, are fully in keeping not only with other denigrating speeches she has given about religious beliefs, but even with her colleagues’ political work behind the scenes, as recently revealed by WikiLeaks.

For years, Clinton and her associates have demonstrated a contempt for traditional religious beliefs and an insidious effort to change them by whatever means necessary.

One such effort was revealed by WikiLeaks. In an email from February 2012, Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit Voices for Progress, wrote to John Podesta (now Clinton’s campaign chairman) that “there needs to be a Catholic Spring [like the Arab Spring], in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.”

Podesta, rather than dismissing the idea of infiltrating a Christian church and trying to force it to reject longstanding doctrine, said he had already attempted to do this. “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a movement like this. Likewise Catholics United,” he replied. The first group Podesta mentioned, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, is funded by George Soros and pushes left-wing ideologies which are inconsistent with Catholic doctrine.

POLITICS Comments turned off

20 reasons to vote for Donald Trump By Timothy P. Farrell see note please

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

I just need one reason….he is not Hillary- a mendacious, meretricious, greedy, immoral, scandal ridden, scurrilous, mountebank…..rsk

It seems clear that this presidential election will determine whether America remains a Constitutional Republic or continues to be “Fundamentally Transformed” into something the Founders warned against and tried to prevent.

Despite this, there still remain Conservatives and Republicans who are “Never Trump”. They are either voting for a third-party candidate, not voting at all, or — in the worst choice of all — voting for Hillary Clinton. I think that is foolish. For me, a former Ted Cruz supporter, the choice is clear. I will be voting for Donald Trump.

With hat-tips to other American Thinker contributors, here are 20 specific reasons why Trump will be getting my vote:

Donald Trump is “impeachable”. Any serious misstep by Trump will be exposed by the MSM and invite impeachment and removal from office. Neither political party would hesitate in bringing impeachment proceedings on Trump or in forcing him to resign. As a Democrat and the first woman president, Hillary Clinton would not be impeached no matter what she does.
Trump has stated that he will appoint judges who respect the Constitution and he has issued a list of potential Supreme Court justices that confirms this.
He will enforce the Rule of Law. Under Obama, there have been many acts committed by government employees, bureaucrats and elected officials –including Hillary Clinton — that are unethical or downright illegal. However, with notable exceptions, these people “skate” under the current system.
Trump appreciates the work that the police do in ensuring the safety of all communities.
Donald Trump knows that it is important to use the energy sources that we have in the USA and utilize techniques such as fracking and offshore drilling in order to secure these resources.
Trump understands Capitalism, realizing that high taxes and regulations increase the cost of doing business and have contributed significantly to the loss of American jobs. Hillary Clinton will increase business federal taxes, payroll taxes and regulations.
Trump understands finance. This means he knows that that continuing to increase the National Debt is a bad idea.
He has said that treaties such as NAFTA were “badly negotiated” and that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is a disaster.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Xi Jinping Seeks Safety in Numbers—Or Else Chinese president’s ‘Long March of today’ aims to stamp on dissent and step up his authority By Chun Han Wong

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

BEIJING—Ahead of a top-level Communist Party conclave, Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending an unmistakable signal about what he expects from the tens of millions in the party’s ranks: total loyalty.

Culminating a weekslong state-media blitz hailing the sacrifice of Communist forces that trekked thousands of miles in the mid-1930s to find a haven to continue their revolution, Mr. Xi on Friday called for an equal display of commitment. “In our Long March of today, we must strengthen the party’s leadership, persist with strict party discipline,” he said in a speech carried on national television and emblazoned across the web.

His rallying cry was also a warning. As China’s ruling party braces for a year of intense political jostling ahead of a major leadership shuffle, its leader will brook no dissent within party ranks.

When more than 300 top party officials gather Monday for a four-day policy meeting themed on discipline, Mr. Xi’s own clout will also come in for a test. The Central Committee’s closed-door plenum comes after an anticorruption drive that has punished more than a million officials over nearly four years, and ahead of a party congress due late 2017 that will be his chance to install his allies in top posts.

The plenum “marks the start of a critical year” for the party, as it grapples with uncertainties in leadership transition and pushback against Mr. Xi’s domineering style, said Matthias Stepan, a specialist in Chinese domestic politics at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Already, more than a dozen provincial party chiefs have been replaced in the past six months, with some succeeded by up-and-coming officials seen as being close to Mr. Xi. Speculation has also grown within party ranks over whether Mr. Xi may break from existing retirement norms to keep his anticorruption chief, Wang Qishan, in office.

Such a move, analysts say, may destabilize a party already wary of Mr. Xi’s stature as China’s most dominant leader in decades. Discord at the party’s highest levels spilled into the open this summer, when Mr. Xi and China’s No. 2 leader, Premier Li Keqiang, disagreed over economic policies, creating confusion among officials as they grappled with a slowing economy.

Mr. Xi has cashiered generals and is putting the politically powerful military through its most thoroughgoing reorganization in a half-century. Restructuring is also being pushed onto large state-owned industries, some of which have resisted, leading to a reminder from Mr. Xi this month that they must obey the party.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

DePaul Invokes ‘Catholic Values’ to Ban Pro-Life Poster What could be more ‘Catholic’ than fighting for unborn life? By Alexandra DeSanctis

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

Last week, Reverend Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., the president of DePaul University, prevented a College Republicans poster bearing the phrase “Unborn Lives Matter” from being displayed on campus.

According to Holtschneider’s open letter to the DePaul community, the poster constituted “bigotry . . . under the cover of free speech” that “provokes the Black Lives Matter movement.” Linda Brown Blakely, vice president of public relations and communications at DePaul, tells National Review that the banner in question “was, at best deceptive, and the words, font, colors, and design clearly were intended to do a disservice to the Black Lives Matter and pro-life movements.” Both Holtschneider and Blakely cited the university document “Guiding Principles on Speech and Expression,” which draws a “distinction between being provocative and being hurtful” and states that “speech whose primary purpose is to wound is inconsistent with our Vincentian and Catholic values.”

But Jorin Burkhart, the junior at DePaul who designed the poster in question, says that he did not mean for it to be “hurtful” to anyone. “The intention was for the poster to be eye-catching,” he tells National Review. The club planned to print the design on a large banner and hang it on the second floor of the student center beside a number of other large posters advertising student clubs.

“It has to stand out somehow if it’s going to hang there,” Burkhart added. “I decided to use a fairly simple, black-and-white design, with this three-word phrase [Unborn Lives Matter.] Yes, the style resembles the Black Lives Matter slogan and the way they tend to design it, but that was in an effort to make it stand out and to get people to look at it.” John Minster, a sophomore at DePaul and vice president of the College Republicans, agrees with Burkhart. He says the posters were merely meant “to promote our meetings, our presence on campus, and our values.”

“[The administration] constantly claims to know what our intentions are without ever asking us . . . or doing any sort of digging to figure out what we were thinking along the way,” Burkhart explains. “If we do something they don’t like, they assume we had bad intentions.” He also says that no one in the administration asked him or other club members what their intentions were either before or after the decision was made to ban the posters.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

DePaul, Where Free Speech Comes to Die : Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

Some students at DePaul want to put up a pro-life poster.

You might think that would be uncontroversial at a Catholic university.

Wrong.

This is DePaul, where Free Speech Comes to Die.

They not only banned the poster. They cited “Catholic values” for banning it. You have to give them credit for a droll sense of humor.

Here’s the poster and here’s one article about it.

Now, just for fun, see if you can guess how this poster violates Catholic Values?

Here is the open letter from DePaul’s President explaining his reasoning.

As we have declined to host a proposed speaker and asked students to redesign a banner that provokes the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some people will say that DePaul’s stance unfairly silences speech to appease a crowd. Nothing can be further from the truth.
–Letter from DePaul Pres., Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M., to the university community about speech and DePaul’s values

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Former FM director-general: Since 1973 the US has assured Israel it won’t back changes to UNSC 242. ‘Israel has every right to refuse a 1967 withdrawal’ By Tovah Lazaroff

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

US support for resolution to replace UN Security Council Resolution 242 would conflict with commitments given to Israel by Washington going back to 1973, former Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

“I remember that after the ’73 war the United States gave Israel commitments that it would not allow for a change in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242,” Gold said.

“The United States is Israel’s major ally, that has not changed,” Gold told the Post on the sidelines of a speech he delivered to the Israel Allies Caucus conference in Jerusalem.

“While we have tactical disagreements from time to time, I believe that America will stick by its commitments to Israel.”

Resolution 242 was approved in November 1967, some five months after the Six Day War. It is the basis on which the entire Israeli-Arab peace process is structured.

Most significantly, its text specified an Israeli withdrawal from “territories” – not “the territories” – captured during the war.

“All the peace agreements [and initiatives] were based on this resolution,” Gold said.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The inspiring story of Avi Rosenblum: born to African-American parents, raised by Jewish adoptive parents and now a soldier in the IDF.

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

The inspiring story of Avi Rosenblum: born to African-American parents, raised by Jewish adoptive parents and now a soldier in the IDF. http://www.israellycool.com/2016/10/21/watch-inspiring-african-american-lone-soldier-avi-rosenblum/

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on October 23rd, 2016

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTSwww.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Controlled release innovation gets European patent. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Intec has received a European patent for its Accordion oral treatment delivery system. Designed to improve efficacy and safety of any oral treatment, Accordion utilizes an efficient gastric retention and specific release mechanism. Intec itself has incorporated Accordion into its Parkinson’s, insomnia and gastric ulcer treatments.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160906005739/en/Intec-Pharma-Granted-European-Patent-Accordion-Pill%E2%84%A2%E2%80%93Carbidopa http://israelactive.com/?s=Accordion

Rosacea treatment is safe and effective. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Foamix has reported good results from the Phase II trials of its FMX103 treatment for papulopustular rosacea. The condition, suffered by millions, is characterized by facial redness from inflamed lesions. http://www.foamixpharma.com/

500 aneurysms successfully treated. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Rapid Medical has announced its 500th successful operation to treat life-threatening aneurysms (swellings of arterial wall) using its Comaneci Adjustable Remodeling Mesh. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rapid-medicals-comaneci-adjustable-remodeling-mesh-exceeds-500-successful-aneurysm-treatments-592723241.html

An easier thyroid cancer test. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Rosetta Genomics thyroid cancer diagnostic test (“RosettaGX Reveal”) can now be performed from a sample on the ThinPrep slides popular with clinicians. Previously, the sample had to come from a thyroid Fine Needle Aspirate (FNA) biopsy.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160907005941/en/RosettaGX-Reveal%E2%84%A2-Thyroid-miRNA-Classifier-Utilized-ThinPrep%C2%AE

Dispelling myths about celiac disease. A team of Tel Aviv University researchers has analyzed the medical records of 10,000 Israeli teenagers with celiac disease. The findings show no evidence of clinicians’ belief that sufferers are likely to be underweight or below average height.
https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/health/new-research-long-held-belief-celiac-disease-dispelled#!

A decade of IDF bone marrow donations. It is now ten years since the Ezer Mizion bone marrow registration booth became an integral part of the IDF recruiting station. Since then, 1100 IDF soldiers have donated their stem cells to cancer patients worldwide. Many of those saved told their stories at an event honoring the donors.
http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/1100-thank-yous/

13 miles in an Israeli bio-suit. (TY Geoffrey) Paraplegic Claire Lomas completed the UK’s Great North run in an exoskeleton from Israel’s ReWalk. Claire, who is 16-weeks pregnant, took five days to complete the 13.1-mile race. (The BBC, of course, doesn’t mention that ReWalk is Israeli.)
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-37332178
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/163142/israeli-invention-helps-paralysed-woman-finish-race

Combined PET/MRI scanner. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Aspect Imaging has launched a brand new integrated simultaneous PET-MRI that combines PET and MRI modalities. The system is based on Aspect’s compact MRI plus the SimPET system from Seoul National University’s Department of Nuclear Medicine.
http://www.aspectimaging.com/news/aspect-imaging-seoul-national-university-partner-launch-worlds-first-commercial-simultaneous-preclinical-petmri-complete-solution/

GSK markets Israeli growth formula for children. Multinational GlaxoSmithKline signed an agreement with Israel’s Nutritional Growth Solutions for GSK to produce and market Horlicks Growth+, developed by Schneider Children’s Medical Center for enhancing height and weight in underdeveloped children.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israels-ng-solutions-signs-child-formula-deal-with-gsk-1001157015

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Big Wind Tries Voter Payola in Vermont A wind-energy company is so desperate for federal subsidies, it will give part of them to citizens. By Robert Bryce

Posted By on October 22nd, 2016

A foreign wind-energy company is in such a hurry to collect the maximum possible amount of subsidies from the U.S. Treasury that it has taken an unprecedented step: It has promised to share the federal gravy with individual voters in two Vermont towns, Grafton and Windham. Earlier this month, Spanish energy company Iberdrola announced that it plans to distribute about $565,000 per year among 815 registered voters in the two towns. The payments would continue for 25 years.

But here’s the catch: On November 8, the towns of Grafton and Windham are holding referenda to decide the fate of Iberdrola’s 82-megawatt Stiles Brook wind project. If voters reject the project, Iberdrola will pay them nothing.

The climate-change carpetbaggers — both foreign and domestic — are in a hurry to get their wind projects approved and underway before the end of the year. If they can get started before December 31, they will get a $23-per-megawatt-hour production tax credit on the electricity produced by their projects. On January 1, that subsidy falls to about $18 per megawatt-hour. It decreases another 20 percent per year until it expires in 2019.

Iberdrola and other wind promoters may be eager to collect more federal subsidies, but they are facing lots of angry voters in Vermont. As I reported on NRO in August, the battle over renewable-energy siting has been raging in the state for years, and wind-project siting has become a defining issue in Vermont’s gubernatorial race.

Sue Minter, a Democrat, favors state control over siting. She’s being supported by fellow Vermonter Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org and an ardent proponent of schemes that claim that the world can be run solely on renewable energy. Minter’s opponent on the November 8 ballot is Phil Scott, a Republican, who has vowed to protect Vermont’s ridgelines from wind-energy development. While the race is close, Scott can likely count on support from most or all of the voters who supported Peter Galbraith in the Democratic primary. Galbraith made opposition to wind energy the primary focus of his campaign.