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Imam Orders Woman in Italy Dismembered for Wearing Swimsuit Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Cologne is a warning sign of what is coming to Europe. The Islamic attitude toward women is a Pakistani or Egyptian problem for now. But it’s becoming a European and American problem due to migration.

What was a distant horror in Pakistan yesterday, is a nearby horror in our cities and towns today and a permanent reality tomorrow.

In 2011 in the area of Gardone Val Trompia (Brescia) two Pakistanis were killed because they had violated Islamic law: they had worn swimsuits on the beach. Condemning them was the imam of Zingonia (Bergamo) Muhammad Zulkifal, a member of a cell of Al Qaeda with its operational base in Olbia. Zulkifal has always claimed “the role of moral guardian of the community and the right to inflict exemplary punishment to enforce divine law.”

The double murder was accidentally discovered by investigators, thanks to an interception in 2012. Two foreigners, never identified, had asked a Lodi photographer to extract images from a mobile phone. Once at work, the man had found the photos sought by the two, depicting a young Pakistani woman with her face swollen, her arms amputated at the elbows and legs to the knees. The limbs were placed close to the body, “according to the technique used by the Taliban” the investigators had highlighted.

The imam was only arrested in April last year and today the trial was reopened in Sassari before the Assize Court. The investigations have uncovered that Zulkifal is part of an organization responsible for the bloody massacre in 2009 in a market in Peshawar (Pakistan) that caused the death of 100 civilians. The terrorist cell to which he belongs, despite being based in Olbia, also has great influence in Pakistan.

This took place in Italy. Not Pakistan, not Afghanistan, Europe. This nightmare is inside the West. And it’s getting worse.

In a September 9, 2011 Zulkifal said: “Taking a photo you could better position the throat of the corpse … you had to take pictures so you can see even the chest. This thing is great …. ” And in the next interception, the imam was referring to movements on the territory of Brescia, the “trunk of a car” and to a “corpse placed in the ground.”

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Palestinians: We Want Our Own Knesset by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Apparently Najat Abu Bakr forgot that she is a member of the Palestinian parliament and not the Israeli one. She and her colleagues have no right to criticize President Abbas or any senior official in Ramallah. Such criticism is considered an “insult” to top officials and even an act of treason.

And so we have two legislators. One is forced to seek shelter within her own parliament for fear of being arrested by the Palestinian security forces. The other receives all the rights and privileges enjoyed by her fellow Arabs inside Israel — in spite of her immensely provocative behavior.

That is the difference between a law-abiding country and the Palestinian Authority, which has been functioning for many years as a mafia.

Najat Abu Bakr and many Palestinians dream of the day they too will have a Knesset, a true parliament, where leaders are held accountable.

What do Haneen Zoabi and Najat Abu Bakr have in common?

Both women are outspoken members of parliament — Zoabi in Israel and Abu Bakr in the Palestinian territories.

Zoabi, who hails from Nazareth, is a citizen of Israel. Abu Bakr, from the West Bank city of Nablus, is an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the parliament that has been effectively paralyzed since 2007, when Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the Gaza Strip.

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Moderate “European” Islam: Stemming Terror with Band Aids by Judith Bergman

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

The project of a “French Islam” has failed abysmally. A 2,200-page report, “Suburbs of the Republic,” concluded that Muslim immigrants in France were increasingly rejecting French values and identity, and instead immersing themselves in Islam. The report warned that Islamic sharia law was displacing French civil law in many parts of suburban Paris.

The pattern of “importing” imams with no knowledge of the local language and customs is the same all over Europe.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where the official form of Islam is Wahhabism, are the main financiers of mosques in Europe. Wahhabism discourages Muslim integration in the West, but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims. Qatar has financed mosques in France, Italy, Ireland and Spain, among other places, thus spreading Wahhabism across the continent.

Last week Austria ordered the first foreign-funded imam to be expelled when his visa expires. The decision was made under the new provisions of an anti-radicalization law, which Austria passed one year ago under considerable controversy. The main aim of the law is to counter extremism by requiring imams to speak German, and to prohibit foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria. It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

“We want a future in which increasing numbers of imams have grown up in Austria speaking German, and can in that way serve as positive examples for young Muslims,” said Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz, who helped draft the law. Another 65 imams are expected to be deported in the coming weeks, after being informed that their visas will not be renewed. The decision to deport the foreign imam has — predictably — been deemed unconstitutional by Austria’s Constitutional Court, which finds the law discriminatory because it targets only Muslims.

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David Flint Super Tuesday and Beyond

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

The US primaries system is confusing, convoluted and apt to confound those who like their democracy short, sharp and certain. Yet for all it’s flaws and eccentricities, there is much to inspire jealousy in an Australian observer — especially if that spectator happens to vote Liberal and reside in North Sydney
An American presidential election is always of worldwide importance. This is especially true of the 2016 election. In many ways it could well be a turning point, with a series of crucial issues for determination.

Will the US continue the Obama policies and become little different from a European welfare state, gradually relinquishing its leadership role in the world? Will it continue to be ruled to a considerable extent by a committee of un-elected judges who have decided that the Constitution is what they say it is, and not what the nation’s founders intended? Will the federal government continue to be the taxing-and-regulating leviathan it has gradually become, emasculating not only the states but the traditional freedom of individual Americans? Will the borders of the United States be made as secure as they once were, with illegal immigration brought to heel ? In summary, will the United States return to being the constitutional republic it was intended to be and once was?

As in Australia, the election is marred by the mainstream media not so much reporting matters but advancing their political agenda and concentrating on personalities. Their games may be different in the two countries but the agenda is the same – diminishing the chances of any candidate for leadership who is perceived by them, and the political class, to be too conservative. In Australia , the target was Tony Abbott. In the US it is Senator Ted Cruz.

The mainstream media seems to be holding off recalling Trump’s business and personal record, investigating the inconsistencies between his stated policies and his previous positions. Above all, there is scant attention to the question whether he has the gravitas and, above all, the character to be the president and commander-in chief. Some observers even suspect that the mainstream media is holding off subjecting Trump to a rigorous investigation unless and until he becomes the Republican nominee, and then only to ensure a Democratic victory.
Similarly, they have avoided reporting on Senator Marco Rubio’s apparent betrayal of his Republican Tea Party constituency over his attachment to an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Border security and illegal immigration are even bigger issue in the United States than they were in Australia before John Howard and then Tony Abbott resolved the issue.

Thus, whenever Cruz referred to Rubio’s role in the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill or his indication that as president he would not immediately revoke Obama’s executive amnesty, Rubio’s reaction has been positively Trump- like. Instead of answering the charge, he has unleashed the all-purpose mantra, ”That’s a lie!” This has been reported by the mainstream media, but without any investigation as to whether Cruz’s allegations are true. So the constant themes have been that Cruz is accused of being a liar, or that Cruz is indeed a liar. Rubio’s other tactic has been to allege that Cruz even supported his amnesty bill, whereas on all the evidence it is clear that Cruz was one of its strongest opponents. This again was reported but rarely investigated.

In the meantime, it seems likely that the Democratic nominee for the general election will be Hillary Clinton, subject to there being no proceedings against her concerning alleged breaches of official secrecy laws, or that the Clinton Foundation received money from foreign governments while she was Secretary of State. The authorities seem reluctant to act in either case, in marked contrast to the speed with which they moved against General David Petraeus, a person of some eminence and achievement, for having revealed classified information to his biographer, who also happened to be his mistress.

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John O’Sullivan The Year of Pitchforks and Brands

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Americans have seen living standards stagnate, habits of neighbourhood co-operation undermined, job opportunities reduced and their sense of moral equality with the new American educated class decline. The establishment grasps as much, but only Donald Trump stands poised to exploit it.
Australians and New Zealanders, like most people outside the United States, have been gazing with a kind of bafflement, amused or horrified according to taste, at the early results in America’s season of primaries and caucuses. Donald Trump’s dominance in the Republican early primaries, though shaky, seemed to be spreading to more and more groups in the broad Republican coalition; and Senator Bernie Sanders won the first primary and tied in the first caucus against the well-funded but scandal-haunted favourite, Hillary Clinton, by drawing high levels of support from white progressives and young voters with a campaign rooted in undiluted socialism.

Both party leaderships (or “establishments”, as it has become fashionable to call them) have been rattled and undermined by these results. Mrs Clinton enjoyed the barely concealed backing of the Democratic machine, but it was unable to deliver the votes it once did. It modestly compensated for this failure by giving her most of New Hampshire’s Democrat office-holders as “super-delegates” to the Convention. Having been beaten better than sixty-to-forty by Sanders, Clinton left New Hampshire with more delegates.

Carnage was far greater on the Republican side. Most of the establishment’s starting candidates—governors, senators, CEOs—did so badly that they pulled out of the race before and after New Hampshire. The most establishment candidate, Jeb Bush, who is also the best-funded one, struggled to remain fourth or fifth in the polls and has now called it quits as well. And the two self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, between them have about the same support as all the other candidates put together.

All this could change, of course, as different states hold primaries. But the big picture remains a kind of stable instability. Sanders is pulling even with Clinton nationally, buoyed by polls that show his supporters and half the Democrats believing in socialism. Trump seems to be consolidating his lead (and Cruz his second place) in a field divided among too many moderate opponents for any single one to challenge the leaders effectively. And political certainties are crashing with every poll release:

• Does money dominate US politics? Candidates in both parties who spend the least are winning the most. Clinton is embarrassed by her ties to Wall Street and high lecture fees. And the moderate GOP candidates who stuck with liberal immigration reform in obedience to “the donor class” (another variant of establishment) watched helplessly as Trump soared past them by responding to long-ignored voter concerns on the scale and illegality of immigration. Money has insulated the political class from the voters.

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Coburn: Trump ‘Threatens to Undo and Reverse’ Tea Party Gains By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

“Coburn said he was picking Rubio because “America desperately needs a president who will appeal to people’s highest aspirations rather than their deepest fears; a president who will model servant leadership rather than self-promotion; and a president who will cast a vision and unite the country instead of denigrating dissenters as second-class citizens.”

A populist former senator who famously chronicled government waste and set the conservative austerity agenda blasted Donald Trump as “a populist without portfolio” in his endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) resigned at the conclusion of the last Congress to focus on his fight against cancer.

Rubio had already been endorsed in early January by Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe (R).

“Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right,'” Coburn said in a statement today.

Coburn said he was picking Rubio because “America desperately needs a president who will appeal to people’s highest aspirations rather than their deepest fears; a president who will model servant leadership rather than self-promotion; and a president who will cast a vision and unite the country instead of denigrating dissenters as second-class citizens.”

“…Marco is the only candidate in this race who is in the mold of President Reagan. While some are offering a message of victimization and helplessness against Washington, Marco understands that ‘We the People’ are the establishment and the elites in American society. We need a president who will reawaken our belief in the American idea and not merely complain about how things are but challenge us to dream of what could be.”

Coburn added that Rubio “has been an extremely effective Tea Party senator” in Washington.

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Memo to the Trumpeters By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

“So one of two things are going to happen. Either people are going to expose Trump now for the reprobate that he is, or the Democrats will do it in the fall when he is the candidate. If you don’t want a Democrat in the White House come January 2017, now is the time to wise up to what a clueless low-life Donald Trump really is.”

So here we are on the eve of Super Tuesday, tha momentous day when a candidate can win more delegates than any any other single day of the primary.

“The Republican candidates can win about half of the 1,237 delegates needed,” Wikipedia tells us. “The two remaining Democrats are after 880 delegates, roughly one-third of those needed to win. The number of delegates from Texas is much greater than the other states: 155 for Republicans and 252 for Democrats.”

The rules for how the delegates are apportioned differ between the Democrats and the Republicans. “For the Democrats,” the Constitution Center explains, “about 22 percent of all convention delegates are selected for the national convention on Super Tuesday, with 11 states, American Samoa and overseas delegates in play. All votes are counted proportionately.”

For the Republicans, there is a more complicated set of rules to select delegates in a “winner-take-most,” and in a proportional fashion, for the 12 states in play. Depending on how well the leading candidate does, he can scoop up most of a state’s delegates, or only about the same number as a third-place finisher:

The “winner-take-most” states account for 438 delegates, or 70 percent, of the delegates picked on Super Tuesday. Of the 12 Super Tuesday GOP states, eight states follow “winner take most” rules that require the leading candidate to have more than 50 percent of the vote among congressional districts and at-large groups to get most of the delegates. Without a majority winner, the delegates are divided among candidates who receive at least 15 percent or 20 percent of votes.

And that model doesn’t favor a candidate greatly who is the voting leader, with less than 50 percent of the vote within a state.

This system provides a potential lifeline to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both of whom trail Donald Trump in most of the polls (except Texas, where Cruz is ahead). Ben Carson and John Kasich are both likely to get clobbered tomorrow, but Kasich, at least, can hope to do well in the coming weeks when big, “winner-take-all” northern states like Ohio — his home state — are decided:

After March 14, GOP primaries are allowed to use “winner-take-all” rules to settle their elections. In all, 15 states use winner-take-all rules, including Florida, Ohio and Illinois on March 15, and the winner-take-all states account for 36 percent of the national convention delegates. It is the winner-take-most states that account for about 37 percent of the national delegates, with proportional states and caucuses making up the remaining 27 percent.

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How Safe Is the Nation’s Food Supply from Terrorists? By Bill Straub

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

WASHINGTON – A specialist in agricultural economics offered assurances to a House panel that the nation’s farming industry has made significant advances and is well-positioned to endure any potential terrorist attack on the food supply.

Brian Williams, from Mississippi State University, told members of the House Subcommittee for Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications that diversity of production across the broad country offers some protection from any assault.

“Upon examining past incidences of disruptions in production and trade across a variety of commodities, the U.S. agricultural sector has demonstrated a remarkable resilience,” Williams told the panel. “In most cases, it would be difficult for a terrorist to inflict damage on a large enough scale to have a lasting detrimental impact on the U.S. economy.”

If a terrorist were somehow to succeed in inflicting large-scale damage, Williams said, “the agricultural industry has proven that it can recover quickly from most threats. With the cooperation of individual industry groups, state governments and the federal government in devising plans to respond to potential terror attacks or natural disasters, evidence suggests that damage from such disasters can be mitigated.”

Williams told lawmakers there are several things to consider in attempting to predict a terrorist attack on animal agriculture. If the damage is localized to a single county or even multi-county area, the impact will likely be minimal.

“One benefit of agriculture is that production is spread over a wide area,” he said. “As a result, natural disasters and other disruptions to production are quite common but typically have minimal impacts on the economy and markets.”

Williams cited a snowstorm that hit Nebraska and Iowa on Feb. 2 that hit much of Nebraska and Iowa, preventing cattle from being transported from feedlots to packers, all but shutting down the meat-packing industry for two days.

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In Moscow, Muslim Nanny Beheads 4-Year-Old Girl By Michael Walsh

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

The sheer malevolent savagery of Islam on display:

A burka-clad babysitter has been arrested in Moscow after she walked through the streets carrying the severed head of a four-year-old girl, Daily Mail reports. Eyewitnesses say the woman shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as she appeared near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in the northwest of the Russian capital and threatened to blow herself up.

Earlier today there were reports that officers had found the headless body of a child aged about four at a block of flats in the city after they were called to a fire. The victim was a girl identified as Nastya M – and the child’s 39-year-old nanny Gyulchehra Bobokulova, from Uzbekistan, has been arrested. The woman was seen pulling the severed head out of a bag and walking around near the entrance to the metro station as police moved in.

Naturally, the police are stumped as to a possible motive. From the Daily Mail:

According to local media, she shouted: ‘I hate democracy. I am a terrorist. I want you dead. You have become so hardened, you have eliminated so many of us. Look I am a suicide bomber, I will die, doomsday will come in a second.’

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Is Trump the Harbinger of the GOP’s Demise? By Walter Hudson

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Both Donald Trump’s supporters and detractors seem to agree that the rise of his rogue candidacy was precipitated by years of widening divergence between the Republican base and its established leadership. Trump, himself representing nearly nothing of substance, has become the consummate protest candidate. While many may be attracted to his nationalist rhetoric about rounding up illegals, taking on China, and making America great again, many others see through the facade, know Trump’s candidacy will mortally wound the party, and merely want to watch the world burn.

Regardless of how we came to this point, it seems clear that the rise of Donald Trump signals a transformative moment in American politics. No matter how things sort out, the Republican Party will change. A report from the Associated Press sets the stage:

On the eve of Super Tuesday’s crucial primaries, a sharp new divide erupted between Republicans who pledge to fall in line behind Donald Trump if he wins their party’s nomination and others who insist they can never back the bombastic billionaire.

The fissure could have major implications beyond the primaries, exposing the looming challenges in uniting the party after the election, no matter who wins.

Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, a rising star among conservatives, became the first current senator to publicly raise the prospect of backing a third-party option if Trump clinches the nomination. In a letter posted on Facebook late Sunday, Sasse urged Republicans to consider whether a party led by Trump would still represent their interests.

“If our party is no longer working for the things we believe in — like defending the sanctity of life, stopping Obamacare, protecting the Second Amendment, etc. — then people of good conscience should stop supporting that party until it is reformed,” he wrote.