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Hillary Still Doesn’t Get It on the ISIS Threat By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

The ISIS Threat Represents a Clash of Civilizations, and Hillary Won’t Admit It

Has Hillary Clinton separated herself from President Obama by taking a tougher and more realistic position on the threat from ISIS? That’s what many in the news media are saying based on some of her recent foreign-policy statements, such as her remarks in a November 19 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations:

ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions: a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria; an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond; and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three, and time is of the essence.

This portrayal of the ISIS threat sounds like an improvement over the awkward rhetoric used by President Obama to discuss what he insists on calling ISIL or Daesh, and his refusal to use words such as “jihad” and “jihadism.” But Hillary’s rhetorical improvements were offset by caveats indicating that she actually has not moved very far from the president and has a worldview that is just as incoherent.

For example, Clinton criticized “the obsession in some quarters [meaning Republicans] with a clash of civilizations.” Clinton also echoed Obama’s frequent claims that the United States is not at war with Islam when she said, “I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists.”

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Victoria Kincaid Islam and Sexual Slavery

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Islamist terrorism is not a consequence of the West’s failure to accommodate ‘cultural differences’. As Christian and Yazidi women raped by captors who simultaneously recite the Koran can attest, the problem is Islam itself
The continual attempts of the Islamic State (IS) to systematically annihilate the non-Islamic world have striking similarities. Texts such as the Koran and Hadith boast close to two hundred verses advocating jihad, and lay out specific guidelines for waging this “holy war”. Beheadings and suicide bombings are commonplace, and Westerners are primed by the media to see these atrocities as the defining features of Islamic radicalism. However, a recent development in the IS terror trend that remains distinct is the newly reinstated practice of sex slavery.

Regardless of the constant professing of IS that they act in the name of Allah and the Islamic faith, there is a strong tendency of Western left-wing ideologues to deny the religiosity of the agenda. Such vehement refusal to criticise the religion itself continues to be as baffling as it is frustrating—augmented by the paranoia of the Left that any criticism of Islam amounts to bigotry. More to the point, the lofty attitude of these self-deprecating Westerners does nothing to support the cause of the “unbelievers” enslaved and violated by IS.

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Rep.John Lewis (D-Ga. District 5): Black Lives Matter Movement ‘Must Understand’ the Way of Peace By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said the Black Lives Matter movement “must understand” the way of peace and nonviolence.

Lewis, one of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders, said many young people are using his series of March books on the Civil Rights Movement as a guide.

“I think many of the young people all over America, high school students, college students and even elementary school students, are reading the book and they are able to associate the story, my story, my involvement in the Civil Rights Movement with what is happening in America today,” Lewis told PJM at the National Press Club Book Fair in Washington. “It is teaching people the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence and this young man, [co-author] Andrew Aydin, had the idea that we should do this book.”

Lewis provided his assessment of how the Civil Rights Movement compares with the Black Lives Matter movement of today.

“When we first got involved, before we had gone on the sit-in of the freedom ride, before the March on Washington or March from Selma, we studied the way of peace, the way of life, the way of nonviolence and we accepted nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. So the young people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement must understand, and many of these people are reading this book and using it as a guide,” Lewis said.

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Rubio Vows to Restore Intelligence Programs Restricted by Obama- Exclusive Interview by Roger Simon

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

With our president running off to Paris not in response to the recent terror attacks, but to deal with what he considers our greatest national security threat — climate change — 2016 is more than ever a foreign policy election.

Not surprisingly, however, Republican candidates are emphasizing this continued spread of radical Islamic terrorism. Few have been more focused on the issue than Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. PJ Media’s Diary of a Mad Voter sent Senator Rubio six questions in the crucial area of foreign policy, which he has been gracious enough to answer. Among his responses below, Rubio has promised to restore overseas intelligence programs Obama has restricted.

Part of an ongoing series, these questions are not meant to be “gotchas,” but an opportunity for the candidates to explore their views at length, which we feel they don’t always get to do during the televised debates. Previously, Senator Ted Cruz answered a similar series of foreign policy questions for us. Readers can find his answers here.

PJM: Once deemed a “jayvee team” and then “contained” by President Obama, events (Paris, Sinai, Beirut) have shown ISIS very much alive, growing and dedicated to their goal of a global caliphate under Sharia. Furthermore, the attack in Mali has demonstrated the supposedly quiescent al Qaeda also remains active. Making matters worse, a new Pew Poll reveals upwards of 287 million of those polled in 11 Muslims countries viewed ISIS favorably or were “neutral” to it. Given the horrific situation, what specific concrete steps would a Rubio administration take starting day one to put an end to these and similar groups militarily and ideologically?

SENATOR RUBIO: As the Paris attacks demonstrate, our first priority must be to shore up our defenses. I would begin by working with regional partners to prevent jihadists from traveling between their homes and the battlefield. I would also boost domestic efforts to detect potential “lone wolf” attackers, and I would stop the flow of Syrian refugees to the U.S. for now—not because we don’t want to help those in need, but because it is currently impossible to verify their identities or intentions. I would also bolster the Visa Waiver Program’s security screening to ensure that those entering the country are not a threat. Most importantly, my administration would lift the limits on overseas intelligence collection put in place by President Obama and restore the intelligence programs required to keep America safe. The terrorists that attacked Paris reportedly relied on sophisticated technology to communicate, and we need every constitutionally available tool to uncover future plots.

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The Real Lesson of the Paris Attacks by Douglas Murray

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

What if the terrorists had been targeting “just Americans,” or “just diplomats” — would that be “understandable terrorism” in John Kerry’s thinking?

“If we should stop drawing cartoons, should we also stop having synagogues? Should they be converted into something else? Should we ask the Jewish people to leave?” — Organizer of a targeted fee speech event, in response to the question if they had brought the attack on themselves.

Much of the world may only have been just bragging or emoting in saying, “Je Suis Charlie” or “Je Suis Juif” in January. But it turns out not to matter: the terrorists of ISIS think we are all cartoonists and Jews anyway.

Since we cannot live with ISIS and similar groups, we had better do whatever it takes to speed up an end of our choosing before they speed up an end of their choosing.

When the truth is revealed, it can be not merely unpleasant but often accidental. There have been several striking examples of this since the massacre in Paris earlier this month. In the days immediately after the attack, The Times of London interviewed residents of Paris. Referring to the latest attacks, one 46-year old resident also referred back to the attacks in January on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. “Every Parisian has been touched by these attacks,” she said, referring to the latest attacks. “Before it was just the Jews, the writers or cartoonists.”

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Israel’s Blindness to Jihad – The Blight unto the Nations Ruth King

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion proclaimed: “History did not spoil us with power, wealth, nor with broad territories or an enormous community: however, it did grant us uncommon intellectual and moral virtue, and thus it is both a privilege and an obligation to be a light unto the nations.”

These are hollow words from Ben Gurion who ordered the June 20, 1948, attack on the Irgun ship Altalena where sixteen Zionist patriots were killed and scores of other injured. But that’s another story for another time .

The self-righteous notion that it is Israel’s “privilege and obligation to be a light unto the nations” inspired Israel’s early stifling socialism and a pathetic and decidedly immoral policy of self-criticism, appeasement, and abrogation of its religious and historic patrimony.It also contributed to Israel’s blindness to Islamic jihad. For it was easy to reason that the “enlightened” people who had been persecuted for their own religion could not possibly impugn another religion.

Nonetheless, while refusing to blame Islam for the unrelenting vitriol and hatred of Arab/Moslem nations, Israelis blandly accepted descriptions of patriotic and observant settlers as “ultra-orthodox messianic fanatics.”

In spite of the fact that Israel has been the frontline of Islam’s thirst for a world caliphate, Israel’s pundits, like those in the West, avoid blaming, even naming, Islam.

As Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, the essential text in the study of Islamic hatred of Jews, commented:

“This is reflected in the present inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world…If our political, journalistic, and scholarly ‘elites’ ever arrive at this understanding, perhaps they will grasp the accompanying vocabulary of the Muslim combatants and their spokespersons, in the context of the jihad against Israel. ‘Resistance’ means a genocidal jihad, whose ‘justice’ amounts to the violent restoration and forcible maintenance of dhimmitude for those surviving Jews (and Christians) in a vanquished Israel.”

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Dr. Haim Shine: The ‘Iron Wall’ is Here to Stay

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Thousands of Israeli Arabs marched in Umm al-Fahm on Saturday in solidarity with the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch. They rallied against the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet’s decision to ban its activities. This was also a show of support for the branch’s leader, Raed Salah, who was convicted of incitement to violence and is about to enter prison. The protesters observed a minute of silence at the start of the rally, in memory of the “shuhada” (martyrs) whose untimely deaths occurred as they were carrying out ramming and stabbing attacks. This moment of silence was their way of showing how ungrateful they are toward the state. It was also a means for undercutting the delicate coexistence between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens.

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The Clintons’ Colombian connection: a secret investment fund

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

Even as Hillary Clinton is upping her anti-Wall Street rhetoric, here comes word that the Clinton Foundation is running a private-equity company down in Colombia.

The private-equity field is where Mitt Romney earned his fortune — and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of negative ads from the Obama campaign back in 2008.

The foundation’s Bogota-based firm, Fondo Acceso, was started in 2010 by Bill Clinton, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and mining magnate Frank Giustra, with seed funding of $20 million from the foundation’s Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative and the SLIM Foundation, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Anything to hide here? Well, Fondo Acceso took down its website once the Beacon broke the story. And the venture wasn’t even registered as a private-equity fund in Colombia, thereby skirting government oversight. A good move for an investment firm linked to the US secretary of state.

Ken Boehm, a watchdog with the National Legal and Policy Center, notes, “At the minimum, the Clinton Foundation should disclose every company that received investment funds from them, because the public is entitled to know whether those companies benefited from any State Department foreign-aid programs.”

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Hillary Clinton’s Million Little lies: Michael Walsh

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

To hear Hillary Clinton tell it, she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the conqueror of Mount Everest — even though she was already 6 years old when he made his famous ascent.

On a visit to war-torn Bosnia in 1996, she claimed she and her entourage landed under sniper fire and had to run “with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base” — although videos of her arrival show her waltzing serenely across the tarmac, waving to the crowd.

She blamed the 2012 attack on American diplomatic and intelligence-gathering installations in Benghazi on “a disgusting video” when she knew almost from the first moment that it was a jihadist assault that took the lives of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya.

No wonder the late William Safire, writing in The New York Times in 1996, at the height of the Whitewater investigation, called her a “congenital liar.” Said Safire: “She is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.”
Photo: Reuters

Baron Munchausen has nothing on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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The Burden of Proof on Climate Change By S. Fred Singer

Posted By on November 30th, 2015

The burden of proof for Anthropogenic Climate Change falls on alarmists. Climate Change (CC) has been ongoing for millions of years – long before humans existed on this planet.

Obviously, the causes were all of natural origin, and not anthropogenic.

There is no reason to believe that these natural causes have suddenly stopped; for example, volcanic eruptions, various types of solar influences, and (internal) atmosphere-ocean oscillations all continue today. (Note that these natural factors cannot be modeled precisely.)

Let’s call this the “Null Hypothesis.” Logically therefore, the burden of proof is on alarmists to demonstrate that the Null Hypothesis is not adequate to account for empirical climate data; alarmists must provide convincing observational evidence for Anthropogenic CC (ACC)
– by detailed comparison of empirical data with GH models.

I am not aware of such proofs, only of anecdotal info – although I admit that ACC is plausible; after all, CO2 is a GH gas, and its level has been rising, mainly because of burning of fossil fuels.

However, ACC appears to be much smaller than predicted by GH models; there is even believed to be a period of no warming [“hiatus”] during the past 19 years – in spite of rapidly rising atmospheric CO2 levels [1].