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July 2016

Obama Used Taxpayer Dollars to Fund Anti-Netanyahu Campaign Daniel Greenfield

There’s plausible deniability here, but it’s not very plausible as the only real purpose for the organization being funded was to undermine Netanyahu. And when the media complains about Israel’s suspicion toward NGO’s, this is a prime example of why they have become such a problem. Foreign governments keep using them to try and control Israeli politics.

The campaign’s explicit goal was to elect “anybody but Bibi [Netanyahu]” by mobilizing center-left voters. . . .

The State Department permitted One Voice to use a taxpayer-funded grant to build valuable political infrastructure—large voter contact lists, a professionally trained network of grassroots organizers/activists, and an impressive social media platform—for the putative purpose of supporting peace negotiations. But during the federal grant period, OneVoice devised a plan to target Prime Minister Netanyahu; immediately after the grant period ended, OneVoice deployed its taxpayer-funded campaign resources to launch the largest anti-Netanyahu grassroots organizing campaign in Israel in 2015. Despite OneVoice’s known history of political activism in Israel, the State Department did nothing to guard against the clear risk that OneVoice could engage in electioneering activities using a taxpayer-funded grassroots campaign infrastructure after the grant period. Remarkably, according to the State Department, OneVoice’s conduct was fully compliant with Department regulations and guidelines.

Among the report’s most damning findings, evidence was found that the “durable campaign resources” built during the grant with taxpayer dollars included “a larger voter contact database, a professionally trained network of grassroots activists across the country, and an enhanced social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. OneVoice was even permitted to use State Department funds to hire an American political consulting firm called 270 Strategies — run by Obama 2008 campaign veterans — to train its activists in how to execute a ‘grassroots mobilization’ campaign.”

The Case for Kurdish Statehood Palestinian nationalism, the Kurds and double standards. Noah Beck

Reprinted from InvestigativeProject.org.

Why has the West been so supportive of Palestinian nationalism, yet so reluctant to support the Kurds, the largest nation in the world without a state?

The Kurds have been instrumental in fighting the Islamic State (ISIS); have generously accepted millions of refugees fleeing ISIS to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG); and embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom, and human rights. They are also an ancient people with an ethnic and linguistic identity stretching back millennia and have faced decades of brutal oppression as a minority. Yet they cannot seem to get sufficient support from the West for their political aspirations.

The Palestinians, by contrast, claimed a distinct national identity relatively recently, are less than one-third fewer in number (in 2013, the global Palestinian population was estimated by the Palestinian Authority to reach 11.6 million), control land that is less than 1/15th the size of the KRG territory, and have not developed their civil society or economy with nearly as much success as the Kurds. Yet the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, and other international bodies have all but ignored Kurdish statehood dreams while regularly prioritizing Palestinian ambitions over countless other global crises.

Indeed, in 2014 the UK and Sweden joined much of the rest of the world in recognizing a Palestinian state. There has been no similar global support for a Kurdish homeland. Moreover, Kurdish statehood has been hobbled by U.S. reluctance to see the Iraqi state dismantled and by regional powers like Turkey, which worries that a Kurdish state will stir up separatist feelings among Turkish Kurds.

Socialist Youth Leader Lies About Her Rapists’ Ethnic Backgrounds Leftist madness in Germany reaches new heights. Stephen Brown

It is an old story: A self-hating leftist willing to sacrifice anyone and anything, even herself, on the altar of political correctness for the sake of the latest, trendy, political cause.

Last January, Selin Goren, the spokesperson for the national youth wing of the Left Party, a far-left German political party, was attacked late one night close to her family’s apartment in Mannheim. With her grandparents visiting from Turkey, Goren had stepped out to get some fresh air.

At a playground, she noticed three young men hanging around, drinking alcohol. But unfortunately, she did not notice one of them sneaking up on her. He threw her to the ground and, with his two accomplices, forced her to perform a sex act before robbing her.

This is not an uncommon event nowadays in Germany. The number of young female and child victims of sexual assault has increased dramatically since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed, unscreened, more than one million migrants, primarily from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, to pour into the country in a few months.

But what Goren, described as a “convinced socialist,” did next was not only uncommon, but disgraceful – and probably illegal: She lied to police. Which Goren herself revealed in an interview in the German publication, Der Spiegel, in early July.

The nature of Goren’s lie concerned her attackers’ ethnic background. She told police they were a “mixed group” of white Germans and youths of immigrant appearance. And they spoke only German.

Twelve hours later, however, after being persuaded by a friend, Goren, of immigrant background herself, returned to police with the truth. There were no white Germans and her assailants spoke only Arabic or Farsi.

So why did Goren lie about her own violation?

The future, socialist politician, who is involved in migrant issues and has visited Middle Eastern refugee camps, provided the answer herself in “an open letter to a fictional refugee,” which she posted on Facebook (since deleted). Namely, she did not want her rape to bring migrants into disrepute and “fuel aggressive racism.”

“I am really sorry that your sexist and line-crossing treatment of me could help fuel aggressive racism,” she wrote. “I’m going to scream…I will not stand by and watch, and it can happen, that racists name you as the problem. You’re not the problem. You’re usually a wonderful human being who deserves as much as any other to be safe and free.”

This incident is a good example of how poisonous and self-destructive the leftist ideology really is.

Firstly, it seems incredible that someone who postures so publicly as such a compassionate and caring human being as to visit refugee camps would so heartlessly sacrifice and endanger other women’s safety for the sake of her twisted beliefs. In case she had forgotten, her lie had caused police to look for the wrong persons, leaving the culprits free to rob and rape again. And equally hypocritical is the fact that she is a “representative of a political organization that, next to feminism, has anti-racism inscribed on its flag.”

Secondly, her rapists are not “wonderful” human beings, but criminals who need to be removed from society as quickly as possible. They have already brought themselves into disrepute by their actions. So there is no cause for worry on that account.

Investigate #BlackLivesMatter for Black Nationalist Terror Expose the front group behind black nationalist terror. Daniel Greenfield

Prominently displayed on the #BlackLivesMatter website is a quote from cop-killer Assata Shakur. The Black Panther cop-killer worshiped by the violent racist hate group is listed by the FBI as a domestic terrorist.

A racist domestic terrorist was the ideological inspiration for #BlackLivesMatter. It is not surprising that the group’s campaign against the police led to the murder of police officers.

At the memorial service in Dallas, Obama vehemently defended the hate group against all criticism. He insisted on repeating the myth of “peaceful” protests that suddenly turn violent despite the long history of violence in #BlackLivesMatter protests and the calls for the murder of police officers by activists at #BlackLivesMatter events.

Obama has the best of reasons for covering up the ugly truth about #BlackLivesMatter and the hate groups associated with it. The massacre of police officers in Dallas was neither shocking nor unexpected.

A #BlackLivesMatter supporter had already murdered two police officers in New York. The disturbing rise in the murder of police officers had gone mostly unreported because it was politically inconvenient.

A larger attack was inevitable. It was only a matter of when.

The Justice Department was warned that the New Black Panther Party was advocating the ambush assassinations of police officers. Obama’s DOJ, which had protected the black nationalist terror group through everything from voter intimidation to major terror plots, laughed off the threat.

Micah Xavier Johnson, the Dallas black nationalist terrorist, had attended meetings of the People’s New Black Panther Party whose members were present with weapons at the scene of the anti-police hate rally. Despite the claims that Johnson was a random lunatic with no connection to the otherwise “peaceful” protest, his brand of lunacy was mainstream among groups such as the New Black Panther Party and the New Black Panther Party had supporters at the highest levels of government.

1968 Was Worse; Calm Down, Drama Queens The doom-mongers should take a chill pill and consider history. By Kevin D. Williamson — July 14, 2016

A political observer insists that the country hasn’t been this divided since the 1850s.

Which political observer? Lots of them, as it turns out.

In 2011, California governor Jerry Brown insisted that the country was experiencing a regime crisis of the sort not seen since the run-up to the Civil War. In 2013, Professor Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida said the same thing. In 2014, it was Gawker; in 2010, it was Jimmy Carter. It’s a pretty common claim.

It isn’t true, of course. While race riots and snipers do bring to mind the worst of the 1960s, it isn’t 1968, much less 1860. We’ve had a few years of economic weakness, but there is broadly shared prosperity. We have corrupt and often ineffective public institutions, but government remains responsive enough to ensure general consent, and, beyond its provision of basic physical security, it is less and less relevant to our immediate happiness and well-being. Even as our political discourse becomes more theatrical and hysterical, we are, as a people, remarkably complacent. When Sean Hannity sat down to do a “town hall” show with Donald Trump, he attracted an unusually large audience — but 28 times as many people tuned in to watch reruns of The Big Bang Theory, the Coriolanus of broad, laugh-tracked sitcoms.

You’d think a country on the verge of political meltdown would pay a little more attention to the news. Despite what you may have heard from Donald Trump, National Review is the largest magazine of its kind, and our readership is about 4 percent of US Weekly’s. Golf Digest, Glamour, and Martha Stewart Living all have readerships that the New York Times management would sell Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.’s soul for, if anybody were buying.

But telling people that we’re on the verge of civil war is a good business model. Michael Savage has made a lot more money peddling Armageddon than he ever did peddling herbal nostrums as Michael Weiner. His colleague, the Reverend Al Sharpton, has grown rich trying to give him that civil war — it’s a little like the symbiotic relationship between police and terrorists described in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent. Conrad knew all about living in consequential times: His father had been a famous revolutionary and exile. Like any sane man of his age, he became a British subject as quickly as he could, changing the dramatic rule of the czar for the sedate reign of Queen Victoria. Boring, stable societies are best appreciated by those who have known the other kind.

It is worth considering the possibility that we do not live in especially consequential times, politically speaking, and that much of the drama of our current politics is just that: drama, a performance we stage for ourselves as an entertainment.

Obama’s Hypocrisy in Dallas The Hypocrite-in-Chief complains about the problems he aggravates. Michael Cutler

In the wake of the mass killing of Dallas police officers, Barack Obama spoke at the memorial service.

His speech began with the appropriate language and tone that made it appear that finally, he was trying to bring America together. But then, apparently unable to help himself, he veered off the path of reason and fell back to his old pattern of painting with a broad brush, virtually declaring that there are only two types of racists – those who admit they are racists and those who, although they are racists, deny that they are.

The ABC Dallas affiliated station, WFAA posted the full transcript of President Obama’s speech at the Dallas memorial service on Tuesday, July 12, 2016.

Obama’s inflammatory statements, coupled with the statements made by Democratic members of the House of Representatives during hearings that were conducted to consider the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal, turned those hearings into opportunities to focus on police shootings.

Those hearings were called because of the apparent crimes committed by Ms Clinton in mishandling e-mails that contained classified information up to and including at the Top Secret level and higher. Clinton also made use of unauthorized computer servers in her house that were in total violation of laws and regulations concerning national security. Yet Democratic members of Congress insisted that Clinton’s actions were of no significance but then sought to question both FBI Direct Comey and at a subsequent hearing, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, about police shootings and issues concerning gun control.

This tactic, either by design or stupidity, fans the flames that threaten to engulf so many of America’s tinderbox poverty-stricken neighborhoods around the United States, in the flames of conflict. This threatens the safety and the lives of those neighborhoods and the safety and the lives of the police officers who patrol those neighborhoods to protect those who live there.

Obama Invites Inciters of Cop-Killers to the White House Obama hosts a roundtable of Black Lives Matter racists and useful idiots. Matthew Vadum

The day after lecturing mourning Dallas police about how racist they are, President Obama hosted leaders of the virulently racist Black Lives Matter movement at the White House.

Black Lives Matter, which is funded by hedge fund manager George Soros, is not merely a political movement: it’s a Marxist, anti-American, revolutionary cult whose members aim to unleash a reign of terror on our society. They celebrate when police officers are killed in the line of duty. They don’t want equality; they demand that black Americans receive special, preferential treatment. Disagree and they’ll howl you’re a racist, boycott your business, or try to get you investigated for hate crimes.

The White House visit came after the grotesque, undignified, un-presidential atrocity of a speech President Obama gave in Dallas on Tuesday at a memorial service for the five officers slain by black supremacist Micah Xavier Johnson. At that event Obama lectured Americans, defended Black Lives Matter, bashed police, and pontificated about how racist Americans and American institutions are, particularly the police, while spewing all manner of left-wing talking points.

“If we’re honest, perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. We know that. And while some suffer far more under racism’s burden, some feel to a far greater extent discrimination’s sting. Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.”

At an event intended to honor police murdered by a racist cop-hater, Obama chose to slander cops as racist, placing them on the same moral footing as Johnson. “Insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals,” he said.

It’s classic Obama. He tells Americans to help him heal the nation while passive-aggressively stabbing at his enemies, and then invites those tearing the country apart to the people’s mansion for milk and cookies.

The invitees were part of Black Lives Matter which urges the murder of cops. Obama has been inviting racist disciples to the White House to learn at the feet of the master agitator for years. Such invitations constitute implicit endorsement by the president of the Black Lives Matter movement’s in-your-face antics and violent activism. At such White House meetings and in speeches across the nation, the president grossly exaggerates the extent of police brutality in America today and tells lie after lie in order to throw red meat to his fellow radical agitators.

Who Do Bigots Blame for Police Shootings in America? Israel, of Course! by Alan M. Dershowitz

In response to the tragic deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling at the hands of police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, the New York University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) posted the following on its Facebook page:

“In the past 48 hours another two black men have been lynched by the police…. We must remember that many US police departments train with #IsraeliDefenceForces. The same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians. What this means is that Palestinians must stand with our black comrades. We must struggle for their liberation. It is as important as our own. #AltonSterling is as important as #AliDawabsheh. Palestinian liberation and black liberation go together. We must recognize this and commit to building for it.”

Even in moments of national mourning such as these, SJP bigots cannot help but exploit the deaths of innocent Americans to further their own anti-Semitic political agenda, namely to delegitimize and demonize the nation state of the Jewish people.

By implicating Israel in these killings, SJP is engaging in the old trope of blaming Jews for systemic and far-reaching societal problems. This practice was anti-Semitic when some Christian communities used it to blame Jews for plagues, poisonings, and murders; it was anti-Semitic when the Nazis used it to blame Jews for the failing German economy; and it is still anti-Semitic today. There is no more evidence that any of the police who killed Mr. Castile and Mr. Sterling were in fact trained in Israel than there was that Jews were responsible for any of the other crimes that formed the basis for traditional blood libels.

The oppression of black Americans long predates the founding of the state of Israel; contrary to the claims of SJP and like-minded groups, Zionism did not beget racism, nor is Zionism a reflection of racism. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. But the twisted logic on the part of SJP should come as no surprise, given that the same organization blamed Zionism for rising tuition costs in the City University of New York college system. The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews — and now Zionists — must be its cause.

Could Italy Bring Down the Euro? by Soeren Kern

A move by Italy — the third-largest economy in the eurozone — to abandon the euro could strike a potentially fatal blow to the currency and to the bloc itself.

Meanwhile, at more than 130% of GDP, Italy has one of the biggest public debt burdens in Europe, second only to Greece.

“A perfect storm of slow or zero Italian economic growth, low interest rates and politically connected, often corrupt, lending have combined to create a situation where the Italian financial system is in need of a large rescue.” — Mihir Kapadia, Sun Global Investments.

M5S blames the euro for Italy’s woes, and many Italians agree.

The eurosceptic Five Star Movement (M5S) has overtaken Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) in several opinion polls and is now the most popular political party in Italy.

The poll results represent a significant shift in Italy’s political landscape and have potentially far-reaching implications for the future of the European Union.

M5S, which would win national elections if they were held today, has called for a referendum on whether Italy, which is facing the collapse of its banking system, should keep the euro, the single currency of the European Union, or bring back the Italian lira.

A move by Italy — the third-largest economy in the eurozone — to abandon the euro could strike a potentially fatal blow to the currency and to the bloc itself.

An Ipsos poll, published by the newspaper Corriere della Sera on July 5, gave M5S 30.6% of the vote, up from 28.9% in April, while Renzi’s center-left PD fell to 29.8% from 31.1%.

A Demos poll, published by La Repubblica on July 1, gave M5S 32.3% of the vote, compared to 30.2% for the PD. An EMG Acqua poll for TeleGiornale La7 television on June 28 gave M5S 31.7%, compared to 31.2% for the PD.

According to Ipsos pollster Nando Pagnoncelli, the polls show that M5S “is increasingly viewed as a political force that is capable of governing the country.”

The anti-establishment M5S was founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a well-known comedian and blogger who has led a popular fight against rampant corruption in Italy’s political system. The party advocates for direct democracy — a system in which political decision making is devolved from the government to citizens — as a way to bypass traditional political parties embroiled in corruption scandals.

M5S, which portrays itself as post-ideological and draws support from both the left and right sides of the political aisle, has leveraged the internet to attract millions of voters, especially among the young.

The 67-year-old Grillo recently handed over the reins of the party to a new “directorate” of five young leaders, of which 30-year-old Luigi Di Maio has become the most prominent. He is widely expected to be the party’s candidate for prime minister at the next election.

Christie Davies Letter from London: Immigration is Theft

Britain is a very small island, a tiny off-shore fragment. England taken alone has a population of over fifty million crammed into a land area about twice the size of Tasmania. Due to immigration England now has the highest population density in Europe and the fifth-highest in the world. The last thing such a country, one that was once a major source of emigration, needs is more people. Yet it is experiencing very high levels of immigration due to the stupidity and wilfulness of its political rulers, who are happy to ignore the resentment felt by the ordinary citizen at this influx and some of whom, like Gordon Brown when he was prime minister, even condemn these ordinary voters as “racist”.

Between 1995 and 2014 an extra four million foreign-born people settled in the United Kingdom. In any one year as many as half a million new long-term immigrants arrive. England now has 419 people per square kilometre, which is up from 379 in 2001. England has overtaken the Netherlands in population density and it is England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, where the immigrants are settling. It is projected that the density of population will rise to 460 people per square kilometre by 2030. The prospect is intolerable.

The result of this mass immigration has been a marked but deliberately concealed fall in the standard of living of the indigenous population and a large rise in inequality. The lying politicians, notably Tony Blair, have boasted about the rise in total national income due to the extra labour the migrants have provided, but most of this increase has gone in wages and welfare payments and services to the migrants themselves. Very little of it has ended up in the pockets of the indigenous population and that little has been completely offset by a rapid and substantial rise in house prices, as more people are crammed into a fixed space. Rents and mortgage payments have rocketed and these are of course a very large part of the expenditure of British citizens and particularly the poorer ones. Not only can the building industry not provide new dwellings fast enough, but as it tries to do so it gobbles up our unspoilt countryside. Britain is being concreted over and is ceasing to be a green and pleasant land. Travel has become impossible, with clogged roads and crowded trains. Our land has been stolen from us. Immigration is theft.

The Left-liberal proponents of an open-door policy, the ones who have imposed this hell on an unwilling people, are the same ideologues who whine about rising inequality. Yet immigration is a key cause of rising inequality. If there is an influx of relatively unskilled migrants, it is those among the indigenous population without skills or capital who are bound to lose out. The leftists were recently excited about Thomas Piketty’s best-selling and utterly misguided book Capital, which set out in an over-simple algebraic formula why we were getting more unequal. However, by capital Piketty meant wealth and a large part of that wealth consists of land and housing. It is the value of these that has risen enormously. When house prices rise there is a transfer of wealth in favour of those who own one from those who do not. Those who lose out are the ones struggling to purchase or rent one. My own modest house is worth ten times what I paid for it, far more than the rate of inflation. Today I could not afford to buy it. The situation is made worse by affluent foreigners buying up the better-quality housing purely as a speculative investment.