RUTHFULLY YOURS

On April 16, 2015 Fox News posted an Associated Press report, “Ohio man accused of traveling to Syria, plotting terror act.” [1]

My focus today will be on the way that the alleged terrorist was provided with United States citizenship and consequently, a United States passport. The adjudications process failed to uncover material facts that would have barred the individual, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, from becoming a naturalized citizen and hence receive that highly valuable United States passport.

The immigration component of this story and similar stories, has been largely ignored by the media, although, the issue about his having been immigrated to the United States from Somalia and then becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen was raised in some news reports.

The complete immigration component of this case is extremely important, as you will see- indeed, this element, had it worked as it should have, could have thwarted the ability of this alleged terrorist to have traveled to Syria to join his brother who was killed in combat while fighting on the side of terrorists. This is why I frequently make the point that our borders and our immigration laws are our first and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals.

Yom Ha’shoah or Holocaust Day, marked this year on Thursday, April 16, will commemorate 70 years since the end of World War II, and the liberation of the Nazi death camps. The horrific toll anti-Semitism and Nazi racial hatred exacted on humanity in general and Jews in particular can never be overemphasized. The dwindling numbers of survivors carry the pain of losing loved ones, and the brutality of the Nazis and their helpers in Eastern and elsewhere in Europe. Six million innocent Jews were murdered, including 1.5 million children. Humanity was a loser as well. Millions of educated and productive Jews, who might have become inventors of new medical cures, scholarly researchers, poets, writers, and entrepreneurs, were sent to the gas chambers for the crime of being born Jewish. Europe has blood on its hands, but little remorse. Anti-Semitism in Europe has gone viral in 2014, and has grown worldwide.

In 2013, Egyptian media claimed [1] President Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Leading the charge was Tahani al-Gebali, Vice President of the Supreme Constitutional Court in Egypt. He spoke [2] on a TV program, Bitna al-Kibir [3], insisting there would a time when a number of conspiracies against his nation would be exposed, including why Obama’s support of the Brotherhood remained steadfast, even as they became despised by Egyptians themselves. The most damning indictment? “Obama’s brother is one of the architects of investment for the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood,” al-Gebali declared.

The brother to whom al-Gebali referred is Obama’s half brother Malik Obama. He has been under investigation [4] by Egyptian authorities for his ties to the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO), an entity created by the Sudanese Government. That government has been on the State Department’s list [5] of of designated terror sponsors since 1993.

IDO’s agenda is all about spreading the virulent Wahhabist strain of Islam across Africa, and Malik has operated as the IDO’s Executive Secretary. In 2010 he not only attended the IDO’s conference in the Sudanese capitol of Khartoum, he supervised [6] it, insisted journalists Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack. That conference was also attended by Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. Malik’s boss, IDO Chairman Suar Al Dahab also attended. That would be the same Suar Al Dahab photographed together with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and the MB’s spiritual leader, Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.

Ryszard Legutko is a philosopher and politician, Member of the European Parliament, professor of philosophy at Cracow University, and a former Polish Minister of Education. His book on the post-communist evolution of liberal democracy will be published later this year by Encounter Books, New York.

The modern left loves and worships such words as ‘debate’ and ‘deliberation’, but their use is mostly for ornamental purposes. Why should anyone seriously debate with an opponent who represents what is historically indefensible and moribund?

My theme is the similarities between communism and liberal democracy. The idea that such similarities exist started germinating timidly in my mind back in the 1970s, when for the first time I managed to get out of communist Poland to travel to the so-called West.

To my unpleasant surprise, I discovered that many of my friends who classified themselves as devoted supporters of liberal democracy, of a multi-party system, human rights, pluralism and everything that every liberal democrat proudly listed as his acts of faith, displayed extraordinary meekness and empathy towards communism. I was unpleasantly surprised because it seemed to me that every liberal democrat’s natural and almost visceral response to communism should be one of forthright condemnation. A possible hypothesis came to my mind that both attitudes—the communist and the liberal-democratic—are linked by something more profound, some common principles and ideals.

At the time, however, this thought seemed to be so extravagant that I did not have the inner strength or knowledge to explore it more deeply. But I experienced the same budding thought for the second time in the period of post-communist Poland, right at the very beginning of its existence in 1989.

None of my liberal friends like to talk politics anymore. They have nothing to say and it’s obvious why. Liberalism… or progressivism — people who wish to make the distinction can go ahead, but I find it trivial — they’re just different degrees of a self-serving lie…. liberalism, in the immortal words of Preston Sturges, “is not only dead, it’s decomposed.” (Sturges was referring to chivalry.) Not only is there no there there (as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland), there’s no there there there there to the tenth power. I asked a liberal the other day what liberalism was, what exactly it was he supported, and he was stunned that I asked, and then he was just stunned. He didn’t know how to answer because he didn’t have one. It was just a habit. (Oh, I forgot. He said he didn’t like Republicans, which of course is no defense of liberalism, just contempt… with a soupçon of habit.)

While often dismissed as just a troublesome voting bloc in the United Nations, the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) are posing an ever greater threat to the West. As Leslie Lebl of the Foreign Policy Research Institute notes, the OIC is far from a benign, peace-seeking group of nations. Rather, “the [Muslim] Brotherhood and OIC see Europe as part of a future global Caliphate, an Islamic empire governed by an Islamist version of traditional Islamic law, or sharia. This competition extends to the United Nations where the OIC is seeking to enforce global prohibitions on criticism of Islam.”

And by the West, we now mean the United States of America. The “rest of the West” has largely turned away from the fundamentals of Western civilization, choosing instead to either seek detente with the range of threats against it (Russia, China, the OIC, etc.) or to even submit.

Back in the 1980s, the West’s attention was elsewhere — namely, on the Soviet threat. Groups such as the OIC could be dismissed as a lesser problem that could be dealt with sometime in the future as needed. That “future” is now, as the following charts illustrate.

Based on President Obama’s actions of the past seven years, one can surmise that his worldview is based on three major premises. His economic perspective is deliberately aimed at weakening the United States. Thus, despite the disastrous past history of mandated government directives that forced banks to provide sub-prime loans, Obama and company are at it again forcing banks to engage in risky loans. In “separate new reports to Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveal Obama regulators are pressuring them to back high-risk home loans for ‘very low-income’ borrowers.” Both mortgage companies are being “forced to accept mortgages with as little as 3% down.”

And most telling, they must “[y]ield disparate results based on the race of the borrower.” If that were not enough, one learns that the government is allowing “lenders to use unemployment benefits as source of income.” And these mandates will not expire until 2019.

Hundreds of people just died because of Obama and Hillary’s illegal Libyan war.

The Libyan War was based on a lie about genocide that is turning out to be real as ISIS beheads African Christians captured in Libya, as migrants claw their way abroad boats out of Libya, killing each other along the way, as a civil war between the legal government and the Muslim Brotherhood drags on.

The strange thing about left-wing wars is that we don’t talk about them. The UK is debating the Libyan War, with Cameron under attack from UKIP [1] and the left for his part in it, but in the US, it’s the forgotten war. The left has done its best to turn Benghazi into a contemptuous meme and the murder of four Americans into a joke. And there’s bound to be a meme for hundreds of migrants drowning as well.

Libya was never paradise, but Obama opted for regime change, while lying about it, and then took no responsibility for the consequences. The CIA backed Jihadist rebels, allowed Qatar, a state sponsor of terror, to smuggle weapons to terrorists [2] right past NATO, then it made a futile effort to get them back.

Daniel Mael, a senior at Brandeis University, is a fellow at the Salomon Center.

The idea that upholding free speech should require “spine” is a scary indication of the world that academia is nurturing.

Censorship, for some, might prevent intellectual or emotional discomfort — but sometimes these are as essential to a real education as professors.

The thought of blocking a speaker on campus should be abhorrent to anyone who values academic freedom, free speech and the courtesy of at least listening to statements with which one might — or might not — agree.

Who should be allowed to speak on a university campus? This question has been the subject of debate during the last few years, especially as a growing sector of college students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders have begun objecting to commencement speakers they say they find offensive. As that trend continued to rise, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has renamed the commencement period “Disinvitation Season.”

In 2014, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew her acceptance of an honorary degree from Rutgers University in the face of protests from both students and faculty, while Brandeis University rescinded the offer of an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Last fall, students at the University of California at Berkeley objected to the comedian Bill Maher receiving an honorary degree after hearing his reservations about extremist Islam.

As this article was going to press five more people were hanged in the Central Prison of Karaj.

“Terrorism is not only achieved by bombs but also by terrorizing citizens for generations through executions. Is the hanging of 700 persons since the beginning of the ‘moderate’ Mr. Rouhani’s presidency… not a form of terrorism?” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

“During the P5+1 nuclear talks there was absolute silence with regards to the high rate of executions and human rights violations in Iran. Because of this silence, this matter has taken a turn for the worse.” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

“We would like to request that the Islamic Republic of Iran be held accountable by the International community and… sanctions to be placed on the regime for the high rate of executions.” — Mina Ahadi, Founder, ICAE.

As this article was going to press five more people were hanged in the Central Prison of Karaj.

After Iran’s “nuclear talks,” and after it was comfortably removed as a terrorism threat from the “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities,” the International Committee Against Executions (ICAE) reported approximately 55 executions in fewer than three weeks across Iran.