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The sweetheart deal for Bill Clinton’s Orgy Island pal may be exposed and overturned By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Tick, tick, tick…the highly suspicious deal that gave Bill Clinton’s billionaire buddy Jeffrey Epstein a slap on the wrist for paying underage girls for sex may finally be subjected to pubic scrutiny and even overturned, bringing with it the possibility of bargaining against real punishment in exchange for testimony against a bigger fish. This development is thanks to a court filing on the last day of 2015 that received only limited local publicity. More on that in a moment.

Shockingly, the deal that handed out token punishment to the statutory rapist has been hidden from the public and from the victims themselves:

Federal prosecutors in Florida intentionally kept underage victims of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about his plea deal, newly unsealed court papers reveal.

The documents also show prosecutors wanted to keep the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes away from a judge reviewing the deal.

“I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention ‘co-conspirators,’ but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to one Epstein lawyer in September 2007.

Another email shows she agreed to stop sending notifications about the non-prosecution deal to 34 underage girls Epstein allegedly sexually preyed upon after his lawyers complained.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Islam in our schools By Carol Brown

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Creeping sharia infiltrates every nook and cranny of America. Including our classrooms. Among other things, the Muslim Brotherhood (as well as the Saudis) wields enormous influence over curriculum that threatens not only public schools, but private and parochial schools as well.

After reporting on Islamic supremacy in our schools a year ago, I thought it worthwhile to see how things have progressed since then, for better or for worse. (Guess which it is.) When last we left off, here’s where things stood. In most cases, information only came to light because parents stumbled upon homework assignments or their child told them something of concern.

Students learned to recite allegiance to Allah along with Muslim prayers and chants. Students were also taught the Five Pillars of Islam, that Muslims pray to the same God as Christians and Jews, that Mohammed was a man with strong moral values, that terrorists are “freedom fighters,” that Muslims treat those they conquer better than America does, along with the taqiyya version of CAIR’s mission. Sharia law was promoted, Qurans were introduced into classrooms, students studied Arabic, female students wore burqas as part of a lesson on Islam, and special courses on Islam prohibited students from wearing a cross or saying the name “Jesus.”

Homework assignments required students to promote the “Golden Age of Islam” while students also had to write about what it would be like to travel to Mecca. All the while, Muslim students were given special privileges that Christian and Jewish students were not afforded, including time off during the day to pray.

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Lessons We Palestinians Can Learn by Bassam Tawil see note please

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Self contradiction here….if the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support an armed campaign against Israel, it is illusory to pretend there can be a “peaceful demilitarized ” state…rsk
Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support an armed campaign against Israel, and want to see Israel destroyed and a State of Palestine built on its ruins. The polls also show a troubling increase in popular support in the West Bank for Hamas, and a decrease in support for Mahmoud Abbas.

The greatest tragedy of the Palestinians is not 1948, it is 2015. The only thing the Palestinian leadership and terrorist organizations can agree on is their obsession to destroy the State of Israel.

It is particularly disappointing that we keep trying to defraud the Israelis and Americans with fictitious messages of peace and “two states for two peoples.” We assume they have no intelligence at all, do not understand Arabic and cannot read our Facebook pages.

The time has come to try creating — for the first time — a peaceful and demilitarized Palestinian state, which the Israelis have indicated for decades they would be happy to help us achieve.

This past week, the Israelis arrested 25 Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, most of them students from Al-Quds University in Abu Dis. Not rebels without a cause or the unemployed with a chip on their shoulder, but the finest minds we have, the intellectuals of the future Palestinian academia! The group, which dealt with recruiting and guidance and was being handled by Hamas in Turkey and its terrorist wing the Gaza Strip, was planning to carry out suicide bombing attacks inside Israel.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Notable & Quotable: Edward Gibbon on Rome’s Downfall ‘They no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence.’

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

From “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, the 18th-century English historian:

It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. . . . Their personal valour remained, but they no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honour, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army. The posterity of their boldest leaders was contented with the rank of citizens and subjects. The most aspiring spirits resorted to the court or standard of the emperors; and the deserted provinces, deprived of political strength or union, insensibly sunk into the languid indifference of private life.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Off With His Head Cicero saved the republic from conspirators in 63 B.C., only to lose his own life (and hands) as Rome slid into civil war and dictatorship. By Maxwell Carter

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

‘The history of the world,” wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1841, “is but the biography of great men.” Libertarian polymath Herbert Spencer countered 30 years later: “Before [the great man] can remake his society, his society must make him.” With whom does the novelist Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy, which began with “Imperium” (2006) and “Conspirata” (2009) and ends now with “Dictator,” side? Cicero’s lifetime (106-43 B.C.) saw the ambitions, caprices and convictions of the Roman Republic’s leading figures (Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Octavian, Antony and Cicero himself) determine the fate of Western civilization. Were these truly great men or the bitter fruits of an intrinsically corrupting political system?

“Imperium” traces Cicero’s rapid ascent; “Conspirata,” the career-defining stand against Catiline; “Dictator,” his (and the Republic’s) downfall. The middle narrative has hooked many schoolboys, myself included. The year he served as consul (63 B.C.), Cicero inveighed against Catiline, an aristocratic malcontent, gleefully detailing his alleged plot to overthrow the state. Having forced Catiline from Rome and secured Cato’s decisive backing, Cicero pushed through the execution of five conspirators without trial. (Catiline offered battle in 62 B.C., dying, according to the historian Sallust, with conspicuous bravery.) Where Cicero’s consulship was compact and—as he would have it—morally unambiguous, the events that led to his proscription were drawn out and often bewildering.

The challenge for Mr. Harris of maintaining dramatic momentum through 15 years of shifting loyalties and shabby compromises is considerable. Yet as anyone who has read his previous novels, including the riveting alternate history “Fatherland” (1992) and the political thriller “The Ghost” (2007), knows, he is incapable of writing an unenjoyable book.

Told from the perspective of Cicero’s slave-amanuensis, Tiro, who reputedly invented shorthand, “Dictator” picks up the thread in 58 B.C., when fallout from the unlawful Catilinarian executions drove Cicero into exile. Tiro recounts his master’s role in the developments of the first and second triumvirates—the alliances whereby Caesar, Pompey and Crassus and, later, Octavian, Antony and Lepidus divvied up the empire—and ensuing civil wars. Tiro’s viewpoint is partisan but not unquestioning. In “Dictator,” Cicero, whom Tiro served off and on after his manumission in 53 B.C., can be weak and monstrously egotistical.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Build a Better City How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design? By Moshe Sadfie

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

New York is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more.

The flurry of high-rise tower construction now under way in New York will bring about a quantum leap in density, one that will forever change our urban environment. The city is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more. They are a reminder that towers have become the dominant building type in most major cities around the world, increasing congestion as they accumulate.

These developments raise fundamental questions: How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design, be it residential, commercial or mixed use? Are our current planning and zoning regulations adequate in guiding this growth, in mitigating the impact of density? Or do we need new tools for a new era of mega-scale construction? Finally, towers create fundamental questions about the nature and character of the public realm.

Neither the prevailing tower designs nor current planning practice world-wide are able to cope with the new reality. The quality of life within towers is wanting. We still treat them, at best, as sculpture, and at worst, as utilitarian vertical extrusions of space. Many towers are designed from the outside in— elegant forms with decorative skins, hermetically sealed from the outside world. If instead they were designed as living, organic environments—with considerations of orientation, views, light and the capability to connect to the outdoors, creating terraces, gardens and solariums—tower designs would be dramatically transformed. The work space must also be rethought. Natural ventilation, diversity of workspaces and a connection to the exterior are all qualities that would help overcome the oppression of scale and crowding.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Marco Rubio, a Senator, Decries Congress’s Impotence and Inaction, Calls for Term Limits By Reid J. Epstein

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – To hear Marco Rubio talk, Congress is an impotent branch of government that needs a full-scale overhaul – and that’s exactly why he’s running for president.

Federal legislators, in Mr. Rubio’s description, are peripheral figures in Washington, people who can have some impact on policy but are not in a position to set it.

“While I’m a senator I can help shape the agenda — only the president can set the agenda,” the Florida senator said to a woman here who asked him during a town hall meeting how she can defend his record of missing Senate votes to her friends. “We’re not going fix America with senators and congressmen. The only way to turn this around is to reverse the damage this president has done to the United States of America.”
Of course, Mr. Rubio’s meager Senate attendance record has been a point of conflict in the Republican presidential primary for months. Rival Jeb Bush criticized him about it during an October debate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie brought it up in New Hampshire.

Mr. Rubio, who is forgoing a bid for a second Senate term in order to run for president, also endorsed constitutional amendments to instate term limits for federal legislators and judges. But congressmen, he said, will never agree to limit their own tenure.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Alastair Gale and Kwanwoo Jun North Korea Says It Successfully Conducted Hydrogen-Bomb Test Hydrogen bomb is ‘self defensive’ step against U.S., North Korea says

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

SEOUL—North Korea said it successfully staged its first test of a more powerful form of nuclear weapon, expanding the U.S.’s foreign-policy challenges and highlighting the limits of China’s ability to rein in its volatile ally.

North Korean state television said in a midday broadcast that scientists had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb at around 10 a.m. local time.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that it detected a magnitude 5.1 earthquake at that time near North Korea’s nuclear test site in the country’s northeast.

Experts have said it was unclear whether North Korea had developed the ability to build a hydrogen bomb. The magnitude of the latest explosion was the same as a 2013 test of an atomic bomb.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. couldn’t confirm North Korea’s claims of a nuclear test but is monitoring the situation.

“We are aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site and have seen Pyongyang’s claims of a nuclear test,” Mr. Kirby said.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The world from here: BDS: A weapon of Islamic warfare By Dan Diker, Harold Rhode

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Arab and Muslim leaders publicly declare the same goals as BDS activists; to eliminate Israel as a non-Muslim entity from lands that “belong” to Islam.
Hamas, PLO groups and the Palestinian Authority exploit the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign as a tool of Islamic warfare.

Arab and Muslim leaders publicly declare the same goals as BDS activists; to eliminate Israel as a non-Muslim entity from lands that “belong” to Islam. Following the al-Aksa war of terrorism in 2001, leading Muslim Brotherhood scholar Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi published an Islamic legal ruling (fatwa) on boycotting Israeli goods. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did the same. For Islamists, the reason is simple:

Since the existence of Israel is an affront to Islam, as former Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad, himself an Alawite and therefore not a true Muslim in Sunni eyes, declared throughout his life, any strategy and every tactic to rid the world of Israel is acceptable in service of advancing Islam as a victorious and conquering civilization.

Palestinian affairs analyst Khaled Abu Toameh reminds us of Hamas’s support for BDS. He writes in a Gatestone Institute brief that, “Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq, heaping praise on BDS advocates and activists openly, admitted that the ultimate goal of the BDS campaign was to destroy Israel.” Risshek said, “We call for escalating the campaign to isolate the occupation and end the existence of its usurper entity.” Yair Lapid, former finance minister and head of the centrist Yesh Atid Party put it bluntly. He said, in June 2015, speech “the BDS movement is actually a puppet in a theater operated by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”

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German women report string of sexual assaults by ‘Arab and North African men’ Mayor of Cologne to investigate “outrageous” series of New Year’s Eve attacks on women by large gangs of men “of Arab or North African appearance” By Justin Huggler, Berlin

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Latest: Mayor of Cologne urges code of conduct for young women to prevent future assault

Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”.Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve.

Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them.Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault, including one case of rape.

Police in Hamburg say there was a series of similar incidents in the city’s Reeperbahn red-light area. Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.

In Cologne, the attacks took place around the main station, opposite the cathedral, a traditional gathering spot to see in the New Year.

A 27-year-old witness named only as Anne told Spiegel magazine’s website she was shocked by the crowds when she arrived at the station with her boyfriend.

“The whole place was full and almost only with men,” she said. “Only a few frightened women, who were being stared at.”

A short time later, she said, she “felt the first hand on my behind”.