After Paris, a Global Wave of Terror Arrests by Abigail R. Esman

On Nov. 27, exactly two weeks after the terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, FBI agents swarmed into a private home in Harrisburg, Pa. Their target: 19-year-old Jalil Ibn Ameer Aziz, an American citizen and Muslim whom they’d been watching for several months, largely through his postings on Twitter. Using as many as 57 separate accounts, Aziz had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, called for the killing of non-Muslims, aided others to make hijrah to Syria to join the jihad there, and expressed his own wishes to do the same.

And if that weren’t enough, he promised further to continue the attacks against America, posting, for instance, “Know, O Obama, that we are coming to America, and know that we will sever your head in the White House.”

But as the FBI soon discovered, Aziz’s jihadist lust did not end with just words. At the home he shared with his parents in the Pennsylvania capital, according to the affidavit filed in the case, they found a “go-bag,” or knapsack, containing “five M-4 style high capacity magazines loaded with 5.56 ammunition, a modified kitchen knife with the handle removed and wrapped in cloth and string, a thumb drive, a tin filled with various over-the-counter medications, and a head wrap commonly referred to as a balaclava.”

US not Only Spying on Israel, but on U.S. Pro-Israel Legislators and Groups Did the Obama administration win backing of the Nuclear Iran Deal by eavesdropping on private communications between U.S. Congressmen and pro-Israel groups? By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus

The publication of several news stories in the Wall Street Journal late Tuesday, Dec. 29, produced a subterranean tremor in the crowd that closely monitors U.S.-Israel relations. The articles, on the surface, revealed information that was not all that astonishing: The Israelis spied to obtain information on the U.S. and the U.S. spied on Israel regarding the recent Nuclear Iran Deal negotiations. Big news for naifs, but not so for close and constant observers.

But just below the words looms a much bigger story, one not quite completely spelled out by the Journal reporters, Adam Entous and Danny Yadron. But that story may well, or at least should, lead to a whole new political firestorm harkening back to the furor that led to the Church Committee hearings in the 1970’s.

Because, really, who did not already know that U.S. President Barack Obama and his team were furious with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition to the Nuclear Iran Deal? And wasn’t it already known that the Israelis received information about the presumably “secret” back-door negotiations between U.S. intermediaries and Iran about a nuclear deal? And why would anyone be surprised that such tensions between two traditionally rock-solid allies would create or further encourage less than desirable activity to reveal what the other was doing?

Obama’s Hypocrisy on the Plight of Middle Eastern Christians By:Srdja Trifkovic

“In some areas of the Middle East where church bells have rung for centuries on Christmas Day, this year they will be silent,” President Barack Obama said in a statement on December 23. “This silence bears tragic witness to the brutal atrocities committed against these communities by ISIL.” This is a misleading and hypocritical statement for four main reasons.
(1) Obama singles out the Islamic State (IS, or “ISIL” as he still insists on calling it) as the culprit. He is thus creating the impression that anti-Christian “brutal atrocities” had been absent before the IS made its appearance on the Middle Eastern scene, or that such atrocities are limited to the IS-controlled areas today. This is demonstrably untrue.

It is a matter of historical record that the 75 years preceding the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 witnessed a more thorough destruction of the Christian communities in the Middle East than any period following the seventh century Islamic conquest. Thousands of Assyrians were murdered in the province of Mosul in 1850, and in 1860 some 12,000 Christians were put to the sword in Lebanon. Successive slaughters of Armenians in Bayazid (1877), Alashgurd (1879), Sassun (1894), Constantinople (1896), Adana (1909) and Ottoman-ruled Armenia itself (1895–1896) claimed a total of 200,000 lives. They were but rehearsals for the slaughter of 1915-1918, which claimed at least a million lives. Two million Armenians lived in what is now Turkey in 1914; some 3% (ca. 60,000) remain today. The proof of the genocide is in the numbers.

A Walk in Jerusalem By Matti Friedman

Much that is important in Jerusalem right now was visible during a short walk I took around the Old City on a rainy Tuesday in November: Four Border Police officers in riot gear, two men and two women, eyeing their smartphones and Arab passers-by with the same casual interest. Muslim women coming from the al-Aqsa Mosque, eyeing the officers. A blue-and-white flag on a wall declaring one apartment to be a Jewish island inside the Muslim Quarter. A gleaming Arabic sign announcing a new Israeli health clinic serving Palestinian clientele. Palestinian men at a traffic light outside the walls, crossing the invisible line between east and west Jerusalem on their way to work.

I waited at the light-rail stop outside Damascus Gate and boarded a train of Jewish and Arab passengers, fewer of both than usual. I got off downtown, and within an hour there had been a Palestinian stabbing attack on another train and a second attack at Damascus Gate.

The city of Jerusalem is subject to great and contradictory forces, some pulling its 830,000 residents apart and some pushing them together. The forces of disintegration have been evident in the spate of stabbing attacks against Israeli civilians and policemen this fall. In the six weeks beginning October 1 there were two dozen attacks or attempted attacks by Palestinians in Jerusalem alone, most involving knives. They persist, in Jerusalem and elsewhere, as I write. Jerusalem in crisis mode doesn’t resemble an American city during or after a race riot, for example, or a natural disaster. There aren’t burned-out neighborhoods or looted streets. There is no large-scale breakdown of public order. Instead there are small incidents of murderous violence, some localized rioting, and a cloud of unease.

EDWARD CLINE: THE ABSENCE OF FACTS IN THE WAR ON TERROR

Except that any fashioner or overseer of military and civilian threat analysis could never swear to anything in a court of law or during a Congressional committee hearing, because he would invariably perjure himself. So he would hedge behind a well-rehearsed litany of presuppositions and assumptions.

Continuing a column on “Our Ignorance” from Stephen Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad (pp. 443-484), from Institutionalized Ignorance of Islam, I will focus here on the rendering of language and words to meaninglessness by Army writing guides discussed by Stephen Coughlin in “Our Ignorance.” I thought a Socratic exposition of the subject would better drive home the point over a straight narrative.
________________________________________________________________________

In a fictive, imaginary setting, a House or Senate committee hearing member, identified here as the Interrogator, in full possession of his faculty of reason, might challenge the “expert witness” about what he knows and what he claims he knows – or doesn’t know. The hearing has been convened to examine the reason why the nation’s “War on Terror” has not prevented the commission of terrorist acts in the U.S., and is in general ineffectual.
The Witness, a captain in a U.S. Army counter-intelligence unit, has just finished delivering an opening statement about how his unit conducts threat analyses and contributes to the government’s ability to fight the “War on Terror.” He reads the conclusion of his statement:
Witness: Our recommendations and conclusions are then forwarded to the next echelon of threat assessment evaluation with the best assumptions and presuppositions underscored and emphasized, which subsume all possible likelihoods and scenarios concerning the enemy’s next activity. Our highly combed assumptions and presuppositions have played no little role in projecting anticipated enemy activity, and enabled us to counter hypothetical but very significant threats. Often, facts play a role in the final assessment.

Progressive “Thought-Blockers”: Islamophobia A deadly belief-system. by Bruce Thornton

A few days before the San Bernardino shootings, President Obama reacted to Donald Trump’s proposal to bar Muslims entry into the U.S. by saying, “It is the responsibility of all Americans––of every faith––to reject discrimination. It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country . . . Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes.” Attorney General Loretta Lynch went even further. In an address at the Muslim Advocates dinner, she commented,

“Now obviously this is a country that is based on free speech, but when it edges towards violence, when we see the potential for someone . . . lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric, or, as we saw after 9/11, violence against individuals who may not even be Muslims but may be perceived to be Muslims . . . When we see that, we will take action”––or as she warns, “They will be prosecuted.”

How is that Muslims have become “snowflakes” like those pampered college students so traumatized by opposing points of view that they need “safe spaces” from speech they don’t like, and demand scrapping the First Amendment? For an answer, look to another progressive “thought-blocker,” “Islamophobia.”

End the Anti-Cop Witch Hunt The Obama-#BlackLivesMatter cases have fallen apart, it’s time to tell the truth. Daniel Greenfield

The dirty alliance between Obama and #BlackLivesMatter has torched cities, goosed crime rates, killed cops and suppressed law enforcement with the Ferguson Effect. But the lies about “police murders” fall apart when they come up against even the most basic evidentiary standards of the justice system.

The refusal of a grand jury to indict the police officer in the Tamir Rice case buries yet another of BLM’s banner cases. The Tamir Rice case joins the Michael Brown case, the Sandra Bland case, the Eric Garner case and the faltering Freddie Gray case in the litany of failed police lynchings by BLM and the DOJ.

In four out of five of these cases, the DOJ-BLM pro-crime lobby couldn’t even get an indictment.

What does it say about a movement when its claims repeatedly fail evidence-based tests? Angry racist protesters scream about justice, but the justice system has spoken. Racist activists have tried to blame individual prosecutors, jurors and judges, but a consistent pattern has emerged, no matter what the race and political orientation of the prosecutors or jurors, BLM’s cases just don’t hold up in court.

The 13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in 2015 Warning: This article contains both pronouns and references to maracas. By Katherine Timpf

It seems like 2015 has just been so full of examples of extreme political correctness on college campuses that it might be easy to forget just how full of them it’s been.

Here, in no particular order, are the 13 stories of 2015 that made me most want to bash my head into a wall:
1. Hating pumpkin-spice lattes was declared sexist.

If you say bad things about pumpkin-spice lattes, what you’re really saying is that “girls don’t get to have valid emotions” — at least according to Min Cheng’s op-ed in the Phoenix, Swarthmore College’s student newspaper.

According to Cheng, girls generally like pumpkin-spice lattes, therefore, saying that you don’t like them is saying that none of girls’ opinions ever matter. She said the same applies to making fun of leggings, Uggs, and Grey’s Anatomy — which, as I’ve said before, is probably the worst show ever created . . . perhaps second only to Gilmore Girls.
2. A university language guide stated that the word “American” was “problematic.”

According to a “Bias-Free Language Guide” that was used by the University of New Hampshire, the word “American” is offensive and should not be used. Why? Because it “fails to recognize South America” and “assumes the U.S. is the only country inside these two continents” of course! It recommends using “resident of the U.S.” instead, but I kind of feel like “I’m proud to be a resident of the U.S./Where at least I know I’m free” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Now, the school ultimately removed the guide after media scrutiny — but the fact that it ever existed at all is pretty head-bashing-worthy if you ask me.
3. A university study declared that we have to accept people who “identify as real vampires.”

Look — we have to stop discriminating against people who think they are actual real vampires by thinking that that’s kind of weird — at least according to researchers from Idaho State University and College of the Canyons and the Center for Positive Sexuality in Los Angeles. After all, according to the researchers, “they are born with it, somewhat akin to sexual orientation.”

Sorry, but if you think you are a vampire, I’m going to call you weird. Oh, and by “sorry,” I mean that I’m actually not at all.
4. The word “skinny” was deemed “violent.”

The “Language Awareness Campaign” at Western University in London declared a bunch of words and phrases to be “violent” — including “skinny” and “get over it.” Oh, and “whitewashed,” “because it is used to insult those who do not conform to negative stereotypes of a community or culture” — yes, despite the fact that it can also be used to describe a freshly painted fence.

Marco Rubio Is the Solid Conservative Who Can Beat Hillary By Deroy Murdock

If current trends continue, Republican primary voters will give themselves a warm “stick it to the man” feeling by defying Mitch McConnell, the Bush family, and the greater GOP establishment and nominating Donald Trump for president. They have endured years of policy disappointments and ideological betrayals by Washington Republicans; it’s hard to blame them.

There’s just one problem: Once this fight-the-power euphoria has ebbed, Trump would face the Democratic nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton. Fairly or unfairly, she will pound the Manhattan real-estate mogul as a mean, insensitive, sexist, and possibly racist multi-billionaire “who doesn’t care about people like you.” Clinton, the Democrats, and their butlers and maids in the old-guard media will tar Trump as Mitt Romney with more money and less warmth.

Indeed, Clinton would smash Trump 50 percent to 40, according to a December 14 NBC/Wall Street Journal survey of 1,000 adults (margin of error: +/- 3.4 percent). A December 16–17 Fox News survey of 1,013 registered voters finds Clinton thumping Trump by 11 points – 49 percent to 38 (MOE: +/- 3.0 percent). A December 22 Quinnipiac University poll found that 50 percent of 1,140 registered voters surveyed would be “embarrassed to have Donald Trump as President.” Only 35 percent said this of Hillary Clinton. (MOE: +/- 2.9 percent).

With his coattails drenched in Crisco, Trump most likely would see Republican senators, congressmen, state-level candidates, and even local contenders slip down the general-election ticket and slide to defeat.

Memo to GOP primary voters: Breathe deep the gathering doom.

Rather than engineer a Hillary Clinton landslide, Republican voters should nominate a stalwart, quick-witted conservative whose immigrant roots and modest means make him a far more elusive target for Clinton’s slings and arrows.

DHS’s Deportation Announcement Is ‘Fundamentally a Political Exercise’ By Mark Krikorian

This was the start of the lead story on the Washington Post’s Christmas Eve front page:

The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation.

As I told the reporter, I’ll believe it when I see it. A few further thoughts:

Why now? The surge of Central Americans across the border — both adults with kids in tow (who are the subjects of this latest leak) and the “unaccompanied” “minors” who got so much coverage — subsided after the summer of 2014 because the administration bribe-threatened Mexico into doing a better job of policing its own southern border. But now there’s a renewed surge, presumably because Mexico’s zeal is waning and because Central Americans see that the U.S. isn’t deporting many of those who came earlier. Heck, even deportations of criminals are dropping.

Border Patrol statistics show the magnitude of this new surge. In the first two months of the current fiscal year (October and November), border apprehensions of unaccompanied minors were more than double the same period last year, and apprehensions of “family units” nearly triple. If the rate continues, the flow of minors will approach the 2014 peak, and the flow of families will exceed it.

In itself, the White House may not consider that a problem, given the administration’s implicit belief that these people have a right to come here. But there’s an election in about 10 months, and not many voters share the Obama crowd’s anti-borders views. That’s why my colleague Dan Cadman notes that “the plan is fundamentally a political exercise.” The Democrats will gather in Philadelphia in late July for Herself’s coronation, and it could prove awkward for her if a renewed surge of illegals across the border is still in the news. Herself’s silence in response to the news of the planned raids, contrasted with Sanders’s and O’Malley’s fulminations against them, suggests she’s in on the whole thing.