Jihad Defined By Tabitha Korol

Islamic scholarship divides the world in two: the House of Islam (dar al-Islam, nations ruled by Sharia law) and the House of War (dar al-harb, nations in rebellion against Allah). It is incumbent on dar al-Islam to make war upon dar al-harb until all nations submit to the will of Allah and accept Sharia law. “He it is who has sent His Messenger (Mohammed) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam) to make it victorious over all religions even though the infidels may resist.” — Koran 61:9. Jihad is the force that gives Islam meaning.

In his book, Lights Out: Free Speech, Islam and the Twilight of the West, Mark Steyn wrote: “These are the books we will never read, the plays we will never see, the movies that will never be made… The lamps are going out all over the world – one distributor, one publisher, one silenced novelist, one cartoonist in hiding, one sued radio host, one murdered film director at a time.” This may be called World Jihad. Preventing free speech is Jihad, with the Jewish people as Islam’s perpetual target.

In the 7th century, the prophet Mohammad struck the infamous ten-year hudna, with the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, who rejected his claim of prophethood. He broke the agreement over a minor infraction, conquered Mecca, and extirpated the last remaining major tribe of Jews in Medina, the Qurayza, because they rebuffed his faith. Preferring bloodshed to mercy, Mohammad’s 3,000 Muslims set the paradigm of merciless inhumanity for future generations. The brutal annihilation of entire communities is Jihad, and modern-day Israel remains in the spotlight of Islam and her many accomplices.

Allah endorses Islam in battle, celebrates slaughter and enslavement (Sura 33:25-27), and sanctions the capture and beheading of Jews and plundering their property. Jewish experience has shown that Land for Peace has brought nothing but violence and bloodshed from their Muslim neighbors. The concept cannot succeed because land is not returned when the peace agreement fails and becomes a base of operations against Israel. Truces and treaties with Islamic regimes is another opportunity for Jihad.

A similar spirit now infects the nations. The Jews have been a presence in the Golan Heights since Biblical times. After many attacks by Syria, Israel won and, in 1979, Syria signed a disengagement agreement; Israel then democratized the Golan Heights. Although Syria continues supporting terrorism, the Golan is flourishing under Israeli civilian law – with infrastructure, electrical and water services, agricultural improvements and job training, and health clinics for 46,000 Jewish and Druze residents. Israel’s protection has brought welfare and social security programs, schools, freedom of worship, industry and tourism. Yet now, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Syria and the UN are calling for the return of the Golan to Syria. While thousands of people are being massacred in Syria, the UN Security Council together with Israel’s enemies are focused on Israel. Intimidation and coercion for land is Jihad.

Obama Frees USS Cole Bombing Terrorist American lives don’t matter. Daniel Greenfield

On Thursday morning, sailors on board the USS Cole were lining up for an early lunch. Seventeen of them died as an Al Qaeda bomb on board a fishing boat tore through the hull outside the galley. The dead included 15 men and 2 women, one of whom had a young child. For three weeks the crew of the USS Cole struggled to keep their ship from sinking while working waist deep in water with bucket brigades, sleeping on the deck and living surrounded by the terrible aftermath of the terrorist attack.

The survivors, wounded and whole, received the words “Glory is the Reward of Valor” written on the bent steel removed from the site of the explosion that tore through their ship and their lives.

The President of the United States promised that justice would be done. “To those who attacked them we say: You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you and justice will prevail.”

Despite Clinton’s words, justice did not prevail.

The father of Home Maintenance Technician Third Class Kenneth Eugene Clodfelter believed that there would be justice, but he was to be disappointed. “I just felt, for sure, you know, they’re not going to go ahead and just kiss off the lives of 17 U.S. sailors,” he said. “In fact, they didn’t do anything.”

Walid bin Attash, a planner of the USS Cole bombing and who also played a role in the 9/11 attack, is still at Gitmo. His trial continues to drag on while he and his lawyers play games. Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, another of the planners, is still awaiting trial. But Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri, one of the members of the USS Cole cell, has already been released by Barack Obama from Guantanamo Bay.

Sabri was rated as a high risk terrorist who is ”is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies”, but that was no obstacle for Obama who had already fired one Secretary of Defense for being slow to free dangerous Al Qaeda terrorists and was browbeating his latest appointee over the same issue.

The very paperwork that was used as the basis for the decision to free Sabri describes him as “a member of a Yemeni al-Qaida cell directly involved with the USS Cole attack”. This cell “conducted surveillance” on the targeted vessel and “prepared explosives for the bombing”. Sabri had been arrested in Yemen for his involvement in the attack before he managed to make his way to Afghanistan.

Now he is a free man and has been sent back to the homeland of terrorism, Saudi Arabia.

Obama’s Lame Duck Economy Two ways of judging the president By Kevin D. Williamson

On the matter of Barack Obama and the performance of the U.S. economy, the aptest metaphor is anatine: We aren’t swimming in gold like Scrooge McDuck, and we haven’t blasted the beak off our face with a shotgun like Daffy Duck, but instead limp along like what the president is: a lame duck.

Spare me the technicalities about how President Obama isn’t officially a lame duck until after the election; we aren’t officially in recession, either, but 0.5 percent annualized growth — the most recent figure — is close enough.

How should we judge President Obama’s economic record? There are two ways to go about that: First, from the point of view of people who understand at least a little about economics; second, from the point of view of Barack Obama.

We Americans maintain a superstitious, priest-king attitude toward presidents and economies. Just as moral and religious defects in the holy chieftains of old were thought to be the source of droughts and crop failures, we take weakness in the economy to be the result of presidential flaws: He didn’t “care about people like us” enough, he followed the wrong policies, listened to the wrong people, etc. That’s mainly not true.

The most important factors shaping the economic performance of the United States, or that of any advanced country, isn’t policy, but events, from developments abroad to entrepreneurship and innovation at home. The 1990s didn’t boom because Bill Clinton pursued a radically different economic agenda from that of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush: He ran on “time for a change” but more or less stayed the course, thanks in no small part to Newt Gingrich and the 1994 election. The 1990s boomed because the development of the personal computer and other forms of information technology, supercharged by the growth of the web, launched an extraordinary period of investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen (whose Netscape browsers brought the web to the masses), the development teams at Ericsson and Nokia, and a few million Americans who invested enthusiastically in everything marked “dot-com” had a lot more to do with the economy of the 1990s than Bill Clinton did. Likewise, the rough spots of that era (such as the Asian currency crisis) weren’t the president’s doing, either.

There is no mystical connection between presidents, GDP growth, employment, and wages.

Exclusive: These Expensive DOJ Offices, Rented With Your Money, Are EMPTY! By J. Christian Adams

PJ Media has obtained video taken inside Justice Department offices which show empty, unused office space within leased commercial space. The offices are intended for at least twenty federal employees according to DOJ sources — but only TWO are using them.

The Justice Department Community Relations Service offices in Dallas are on the 20th floor of the Harwood Center, a luxury downtown high rise. Justice Department sources provided PJ Media with a video taken inside the Dallas DOJ offices which documents the brazen waste of taxpayer dollars.

The video shows empty offices, boxes stacked on unused desks, jumbo window offices with couches, large conference rooms with television sets running, enormous offices which appear to be unused, stacks of printer boxes, bookshelves filled with VHS tapes, and a kitchen area with seating for four.

The video shows 58 chairs for use by just two employees working in the office.

Europe’s Migration Crisis: No End in Sight by Judith Bergman

According to France’s Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, 800,000 migrants are currently in Libyan territory waiting to cross the Mediterranean.

The multitude of very costly social problems that Muslim migration into Europe has caused thus far, do not exist in this whitewashed European Union report, where the “research” indicates that migrants are always a boon. Similarly, any mention of the very real security costs necessitated by the Islamization occurring in Europe, and the need for monitoring of potential jihadists, simply goes unmentioned.

Several European states have a less optimistic picture of the prospect of another three million migrants arriving on Europe’s borders than either the Pope or the European Commission do.

Pope Francis, on his recent visit to the Greek island of Lesbos, said that Europe must respond to the migrant crisis with solutions that are “worthy of humanity.” He also decried “that dense pall of indifference that clouds hearts and minds.” The Pope then proceeded to demonstrate what he believes is a response “worthy of humanity” by bringing 12 Syrian Muslims with him on his plane to Italy. “It’s a drop of water in the sea. But after this drop, the sea will never be the same,” the Pope mused.

The Pope’s speech did not contain a single reference to the harsh consequences of Muslim migration into the European continent for Europeans. Instead, the speech was laced with reflections such as “…barriers create divisions instead of promoting the true progress of peoples, and divisions sooner or later lead to confrontations” and “…our willingness to continue to cooperate so that the challenges we face today will not lead to conflict, but rather to the growth of the civilization of love.”

The Pope went back to his practically migrant-free Vatican City — those 12 Syrian Muslims will be hosted by Italy, not the Vatican, although the Holy See will be supporting them — leaving it to ordinary Europeans to cope with the consequences of “the growth of the civilization of love.”

There is nothing quite as free in this world as not practicing what you preach, and what the Pope is preaching is the acceptance of more migration into Europe, and more migration — much more — is indeed what is in the cards for Europe.

At the UN’s Geneva conference on Syrian refugees on March 30, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paolo Gentiloni, put the total number of asylum seekers into Italy in the first three months of 2016 at 18,234. This is already 80% higher than in the same period in 2015.

According to Paolo Serra, military adviser to Martin Kobler, the UN’s Libya envoy, migrants currently in Libya will head for Italy in large numbers if the country is not stabilized. “If we do not intervene, there could be 250,000 arrivals [in Italy] by the end of 2016,” he said. According to France’s Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the number is much higher: 800,000 migrants are currently in Libyan territory waiting to cross the Mediterranean.

Reza Moridi: The Changing Faces of an Iranian-Canadian MPP by Majid Rafizadeh

The real question is: does Moridi represent the Canadian-Iranian community in Canada, or was he just collecting their votes to represent the Iranian and the Azerbaijani governments to Canada?

Although Moridi has ridden to his present position on the Iranian votes in Canada, he has changed faces and seems to be representing the interests of several other governments and institutions — including the Iranian regime; the Islamic Revolutionary Guards business empire and its links in Iran and Canada, and the Azerbaijani government; he is not representing the cultural and political interests of Canada or the Iranian-Canadians who gave him a seat in the Ontario government.

In Iran’s political establishment, as in others, there are often opportunistic figures who change their colors and views, apparently based on what they might gain politically and economically.

A current example is Reza Moridi, a Canadian citizen originally from Iran, who is currently a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) in Ontario and the provincial government’s Minister of Research and Innovation.

Originally, to benefit from the votes of Iranian-Canadian constituents, Moridi strongly opposed human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime and rejected the idea of rapprochement with Iran, currently the world leader per capita in executing people.

Previously, he had written a letter to Canada’s then prime minister, Stephen Harper, urging “the Government of Canada to continue speaking out against the restrictions on free speech and democracy in Iran” and arguing that “The Iranian people must have the opportunity to voice their opinions freely and without fear of harm.”

But his position soon changed dramatically. Suddenly, the Iranian regime’s human rights violations, oppression, and interventions in other countries became less of an issue. He recently met with Canada’s External Affairs Minister, Stephane Dion, to discuss further rapprochement with Iran’s regime, and is currently calling on the Canadian government to re-open its embassy in Tehran.

Turkey Seizes More Christian Churches By Fran Fawcett Peterson

Father Joseph (Yusuf) Akbulut is one brave man. He is a soft spoken, highly intelligent, Syrian Orthodox Priest I had the honor to meet in November 2013 at his parish, the 1700 year old Church of the Virgin Mary in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, Syria. The Church, and the rectory in which Father Joseph, his wife and six children lived, were in the crossfire of the 10-month war between Kurdish fighters and the Turkish military.

In January they were in the Church with bombs exploding all around. A rocket-propelled grenade destroyed a portion of the wall surrounding the Church. Initially, Father Joseph refused to leave the Church he has overseen for 23 years, fearing it would be leveled if left empty. Unfortunately, he did have to leave – it became too dangerous. Now, the state has seized it along with all the other Christian Churches in Sur, including one of the largest Armenian Churches in the Middle East, Surp (Saint) Giragos.

Father Joseph Akbulut pointing out the “holy spirit” door knocker once so prevalent in the Sur district. Photo by Fran Fawcett Peterson

World Watch Monitor reports;

“We wouldn’t have left the church. But when we looked [on the street] and saw that land mines and rockets were exploding non-stop, we knew that we couldn’t stay,” he told World Watch Monitor. “Our house was shaking and we thought it would collapse.”

The power, electricity, and water were cut off. It was time to flee. They stepped out on the street cautiously, with Fr. Akbulut waving a white flag. Nobody was there.

“It was like a war zone,” he said.

Fr. Akbulut and his family are staying in a hotel for the foreseeable future. Ongoing clashes in the church’s neighborhood prevent their return.*
But controversy has followed him. He has fended off reports from the Turkish media that his church had indirect involvement with the PKK.

Islamic Council of Germany calls for ban on Alternative for Germany party By Sierra Rayne

Germany is now headed down the road to civil war.

In a remarkable interview with the BBC Newshour program on Sunday night, the spokesman for the Islamic Council of Germany (ISC) called for an outright ban on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party after comparing the AfD to the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP) of the 1930s:

BBC: But in a democratic system, if people are voting for them, what can you do?

ICG: We have to teach the people that we have made some experiences from the history, which are very similar and close to the what the AFD is now doing. They are excluding one religious group from the social life. Therefore, they have to be banned from the political system because you cannot deal with the enemies of the democracy by means of the democracy, so the democratic people have to exclude them from all the democratic platform.

BBC: So you want them banned. A party which has won seats in half of regional elections, which has — as you say — between 10 and 15 percent of the vote in opinion polls at the moment — you’d like to see them banned completely, would you?

ICG: Yes.

The call by the ICG to employ German state powers to ban the AfD came after the AfD adopted policy platforms at its conference stating that Islam is “not part of Germany.”

Germany is increasingly falling under the stranglehold of Islamification pressure by Muslims in the country who seek to bring sharia law into full force.

Back in January, a Muslim group called for the banning of alcohol in Germany, and now the ICG is seeking to ban political parties that hold a negative view of Islam. So-called “sharia zones” have already been declared by Muslims in western Germany, with “sharia police” patrolling the streets under the support of the German court system. A growing number of legal cases are also being decided by sharia law.

One side will ultimately need to give in on its own initiative, or the path towards civil war on German soil is now set in stone.

North Korea Poses EMP Threat By Daniel John Sobieski

The nightmare scenario of an America sent back centuries in time before electricity, refrigeration, and smart phones has grown unnervingly closer with the presence of two North Korean satellites with orbits over a blissfully unaware American populace and an Obama administration indifferent to the apocalyptic threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

On Feb. 7, North Korea launched a second satellite, the KMS-4, to join their KMS-3 satellite launched in December of 2012. In an article in the Washington Times on April 24, R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Peter Vincent Fry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security as well as director of the Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards, warned of the dangers of an apocalyptic EMP attack that these and similar satellites pose:

Both satellites now are in south polar orbits, evading many U.S. missile defense radars and flying over the United States from the south, where our defenses are limited. Both satellites — if nuclear armed — could make an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could blackout the U.S. electric grid for months or years, thereby killing millions.

Technologically, such an EMP attack is easy — since the weapon detonates at high-altitude, in space, no shock absorbers, heat shield, or vehicle for atmospheric re-entry is necessary. Since the radius of the EMP is enormous, thousands of kilometers, accuracy matters little. Almost any nuclear weapon will do.

Moreover, North Korea probably has nuclear weapons specially designed, not to make a big explosion, but to emit lots of gamma rays to generate high-frequency EMP. Senior Russian generals warned EMP Commissioners in 2004 that their EMP nuclear warhead design leaked “accidentally” to North Korea, and unemployed Russian scientists found work in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Woolsey and Pry, along with former Reagan science adviser William R. Graham, chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, Ambassador Henry Cooper, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative and chief negotiator at the Defense and Space Talks with the USSR; and Fritz Ermarth, chairman of the National Intelligence Council; warned of the North Korean EMP threat an article in the February 12 issue of National Review:

Naïve reliance on their transparent disavowals could end up costing millions of American lives.

Roger Kimball New York: Trump L’Oeil

From Gilbert and Sullivan “Iolanthe”

When in that House M.P.s divide, If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too,They’ve got to leave that brain outside,And vote just as their leaders tell ’em to.

Like any good caricaturist, Private Willis exaggerates, but in exaggerating reveals something essential. When we step into the topsy-turvy world of Gilbert and Sullivan, we are not only taking a holiday from the pedestrian concerns of everyday life: we are also entering a world in which those concerns are accurately, if comically, anatomised.

The great matter concentrating the attention of New Yorkers these days—and not only New Yorkers—is the 2016 presidential primary. The prospect of hanging in a fortnight, Dr Johnson remarked, does wonders to concentrate the mind. The New York primary, with a prize of ninety-five delegates to the Republican National Convention in July, takes place just about a fortnight from the moment I write. At stake is not the fate of a single neck, but the collective noggin of the United States. And as one looks around, one wonders whether the topsy-turvy extravaganza of this primary is any more absurd than the world dramatised by Gilbert and Sullivan.

In one corner we have an unreconstructed Stalinist battling an as-yet-unconvicted felon whose campaign focuses heavily on “women’s issues” but whose philandering husband almost destroyed his presidency and put an entire generation off cigars when his dalliance with a White House intern became the talk of the town. Whatever you can say about Bill Clinton from the waist up, in the other direction he ostentatiously embraces Strephon’s mortality. Looking over the receipts of the Clinton Foundation or contemplating Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees—between them, they’ve raked in more than $153 million since 2001—one longs to enlist them to join in Iolanthe’s March of the Peers (“Bow, bow ye lower middle classes …”).

But of course the real show this season is the Donald Trump Cavalcade. In Iolanthe, the Queen of the Fairies engineers Strephon’s ascension from piping shepherd to powerful MP. Through the intercession of the fairies,

Every bill and every measure
That may gratify his pleasure,
Though your fury it arouses,
Shall be passed by both your Houses!

Explains one fairy: “We influence the members, and compel them to vote just as he wishes them to.” “It’s our system,” says another. “It shortens the debates.”

If Donald Trump were to be believed (in Latin, that would be a contrary-to-fact conditional), he would be like Strephon, magically enlisting hoi polloi (that’s Greek) to catapult him to a position of irresistible eminence. The Mexicans would pay for a wall along America’s Southern border. The Chinese would stop making all the things American workers want but wouldn’t be able to afford if they were manufactured in the United States. The Iranians would buy their missiles from the United States and when they discovered they did not work as advertised, Trump would tell them that was just too bad and he had already cashed the cheque.