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October 2016

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The Myth of ‘The Age of Humdrum Terror’ Alex Grobman, PhD

By on October 14th, 2016

In response to the continued acts of terror in Europe and the U.S., the English weekly news magazine Economist recently opined that “it seems likely that much of Europe and America will have to get used to acts of Islamist-inspired terrorism becoming, if not routine, at least fairly regular occurrences.” Israel is cited as an example of where terrorism has become a part of daily life.

In this “age of humdrum terror,” the paper warned of the risk of overreacting to these acts of terrorism, since as President Obama observed, the likelihood of drowning in a bathtub is far greater than being murdered by terrorists. Though statistically the danger of being killed or maimed by a terrorist attack might be limited, this recklessly obscures the real objectives of this assault against the West, which is to undermine our way of life and substitute it for Islamic rule. Should the Islamic terrorists succeed in conquering the West through warfare or demographics, this will mean the end of the rule of law, evenhandedness, religious freedom, human dignity and the rights for women, minorities and non-Muslims.

The notion of accepting terror as a way of life in the West or in Israel is outrageous and suicidal. In December 2014, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) conducted a survey in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip that revealed the degree of support for an “armed intifada remains high; indeed support for armed struggle has increased compared to … previous findings three months ago, particularly in light of the dangerous tension in Jerusalem and the holy places.”

Twenty-nine percent of the Palestinian Arabs are concerned about the “occupation and settlement activities,” while 25 percent contend the increasing corruption in some public institutions is the most troubling; 23 percent view poverty and unemployment as the most serious issues; and 18 percent assert the siege of the Gaza Strip and the closure of its crossings are the most problematic.

Another survey found 48 percent support a two-state solution and 51 percent oppose one. Two thirds oppose renewal of negotiations in the absence of a settlement freeze. Eighty-one percent fear being harmed by Israelis or their land would be appropriated or homes destroyed. Without a real peace process, 57 percent support an armed intifada.

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The Gathering Storm Clouds: FBI Director Comey Warns Terrorists Heading Our Way One mission of our armed services is to work with our allies to locate, engage and eliminate. Michael Cutler

By on October 14th, 2016

One mission of our armed services is to work with our allies to locate, engage and eliminate terrorists overseas, while domestically our law enforcement agencies are tasked with protecting America and Americans within our borders. In the wake of the deadly terror attack in San Bernardino, California, I wrote an article, “Fighting the War on Terror Here, There and Everywhere,” in which I took on the false argument that by fighting the terrorists overseas we won’t have to fight them here.

On September 26, 2016, “Business Insider” warned, “FBI director: ISIS’ loss will create a ‘terrorist diaspora’ like we’ve never seen before,” while a day later NBC reported, “FBI’s Comey: Officials Worry About ‘Terrorist Diaspora’ from Syria, Iraq.”

FBI Director Comey is predicting that simply defeating ISIS and other terror organizations overseas, while an achievable objective, would likely have unintended consequences. He warns that as greater pressure is brought to bear against the terrorists on their turf, they will head for the West, including the United States, to create as much death and destruction as possible.

America’s borders are our first line and last line of defense against these terrorists and transnational criminal organizations. Our borders, however, include far more than the U.S.-Mexican border. Our nation has 50 “Border States.” Any state that lies along the northern or southern borders of the United States is a border state, as are those states that have access to our nation’s 95,000 miles of coastline. Finally, any state that has an international airport must, of necessity, be deemed a border state.

The official report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” focused specifically on the ability of the terrorists to travel around the world, enter the U.S. and ultimately embed themselves here as they went about their deadly preparations to carry out an attack. The preface of this report begins with the following paragraph:

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Unesco Draft Resolution Raises Israel’s Ire The resolution, up for formal approval next week, criticizes Israel’s actions toward some holy sites in Jerusalem By Rory Jones see note please

By on October 14th, 2016

There is not a single issue associated with the UN- a tribunal for tyrants and war criminals- that does not bash Israel. rsk

TEL AVIV—The United Nations’ cultural agency on Thursday passed a draft resolution that played down Jewish ties to religious sites in Jerusalem, in a decision Israel called “absurd.”

The resolution from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, heavily criticized Israel’s actions toward holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The resolution omitted the Jewish name for a shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims. Instead, it referred to what Jews call the Temple Mount as the Haram Al-Sharif, as it is known to Muslims.

A 58-member committee passed the draft resolution, put forward by Arab states at meeting in Paris, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity as the resolution isn’t official yet.

It will be referred to Unesco’s executive board for formal approval next week and isn’t expected to be challenged, the person said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the failure to acknowledge the Jews’ connection to the Temple Mount was “absurd” and called the U.N. and Unesco a “moral farce.”

“What’s next? A Unesco decision denying the connection between peanut butter and jelly? Batman and Robin? Rock and roll?” he said in a statement posted to Facebook.

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Obama’s Iran Missile War He doesn’t want to talk about America’s new proxy war in Yemen.

By on October 14th, 2016

The White House doesn’t want Americans to notice, but the tide of war is not receding in the Middle East. The Navy this week became part of the hot war in Yemen, with a U.S. warship launching missiles against radar targets after American vessels were fired on this week. Just when President Obama promised that American retreat would bring peace to the region, the region pulls him back in.

The destroyer USS Nitze fired Tomahawk cruise missiles to take out three radar sites on the Yemen coast believed to be manned by Houthi rebels. Though the Houthis deny it, the Pentagon believes they were responsible for the multiple-missile attack on Sunday against the USS Mason, another destroyer patrolling in international waters. This was no mere warning shot. The Mason had to use active defenses, including interceptor missiles, to prevent a strike that could have killed dozens of sailors.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook called the USS Nitze’s response Thursday “limited self-defense strikes [that] were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway.” That’s another way of saying this was the minimum the U.S. could do to defend our sailors and get the Houthis to stop firing, and we hope it works.

But there’s more to this story because the Houthis are one of Iran’s regional proxy armies. They are fighting to control Yemen against a Saudi-led coalition that is trying to restore the former Sunni Arab government in Sana’a. The U.S. has been quietly backing the Saudis with intelligence and arms, though the Saudi coalition has been fighting to a draw with the Houthis, who are supplied by Iran. The cruise missiles used against the USS Mason are also used by Hezbollah, another Iran proxy army.

Don’t expect the White House to acknowledge this because the ironies here are something to behold. Mr. Obama is backing the Saudis in Yemen in part to reassure them of U.S. support after the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that the Saudis opposed. Mr. Obama’s Iran deal was supposed to moderate Iran’s regional ambitions, so Mr. Obama could play a mediating role between Tehran and Riyadh. But the nuclear deal has emboldened Iran, and fortified it with more money, so now the U.S. is being drawn into what amounts to a proxy war against Iran. Genius. CONTINUE AT SITE

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Press Buries Hillary Clinton’s Sins As reporters focus on Trump, they miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record. By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on October 14th, 2016

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.

Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”

A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”

Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”

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Medieval America Free thought was not prized at universities, and wealthy lords ruled over their inferiors. Are we talking about then or now? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 13th, 2016

Pessimists often compare today’s troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison.

The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement — along with endemic insecurity, superstition, and two, rather than three, classes.

The great medieval universities — at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford — continued to make strides in science. They were not unlike the medical and engineering schools at Harvard and Stanford. But they were not centers of free thinking.

Instead, medieval speech codes were designed to ensure that no one questioned the authority of church doctrine. Culturally or politically incorrect literature of the classical past, from Aristophanes to Petronius, was censored as either subversive or hurtful.

Career-wise, it was suicidal for, say, a medieval professor of science at the University of Padua to doubt the orthodoxy that the sun revolved around the earth.

Similarly, at Berkeley or Princeton, few now dare to commit the heresy of expressing uncertainty about whether man-caused global warming poses an immediate, existential threat to human civilization.

Today, a fifth of American households have zero or negative net worth. The shrinking middle classes struggle to service trillions of dollars in consumer and student debt to big banks — in the manner of medieval peasants.

In the medieval world, impoverished serfs pledged loyalty to barons in exchange for their food and housing on the manor. In the modern world, progressive government is the bastion that distributes entitlements on the expectation that the masses show their political fealty at election time.

In medieval Europe, widespread literacy disappeared. Superstition reigned in place of reason.

Despite spending some $11,000 per student each year, are we all that much different? In many polls, more than a quarter of Americans believe in astrology. A quarter think aliens have visited Earth. More than 40 percent can’t name their own vice president. Nearly three-quarters of Americans have no idea what the Cold War was about.

The ruling cliques of the medieval court were full of insider knaves and scoundrels, plots and intrigue. Compare the current scandals, lies, and hypocrisies of our Beltway cloister in Washington.

Closeted scholiasts wrote esoteric treatises that no one read. These works were sort of like the incomprehensible “theory” articles of university humanities professors who are up for tenure.

To talk to the masses, the Latin-speaking elite spoke localized slang that would centuries later become English, French, and German — the medieval version of our electronic grunts and made-up words on Twitter and e-mail that are forming a new popular language.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

What Is Paul Ryan Thinking? The House speaker could have left Trump alone rather than stab him in the back. By Deroy Murdock

By on October 13th, 2016

Having suffered the political equivalent of a blown tire while driving along an icy mountain road on Friday night, GOP nominee Donald J. Trump stabilized a seemingly fatal situation by Sunday evening. Through his commanding, issue-driven performance against Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate, Trump steered his vehicle into a turnout. He replaced the flat with a new steel-belted radial and readied himself to return to the challenging road ahead.

But on Monday morning, House speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) raced in, slashed Trump’s tire anew, and nudged him toward the closest cliff.

Ryan could have left things alone, with Trump’s Access Hollywood tape receding in the rear-view mirror. Instead, Ryan donned his peacock feathers for an especially flamboyant display of moral preening.

Ryan erased the gap that Trump had placed between his candidacy and this controversy. Rather than let it be, Ryan dragged this whole episode back into the middle of the road.

During a conference call with GOP House members on Monday, Ryan reportedly announced that he neither would defend Trump nor campaign with him between now and Election Day. Naturally, pro-Clinton journalists (forgive the redundancy) fanned this hot coal into a forest fire.

Ryan could maintain his perch atop the moral high ground and do so quietly. He simply could go about his business and avoid Trump’s events. He could respond to journalists’ questions about the GOP nominee with bromides such as “I wish Donald Trump well and look forward to winning a larger House Republican majority on the night he wins the White House.”

This would have maintained peace on the right.

Instead, the day after Trump’s solid debate effort became the new narrative, Ryan needlessly fathered the unprecedented phenomenon of a Republican standard-bearer and a Republican speaker in open warfare with each other — just four weeks before a general election.

More than merely foolish politics, this episode exposes the reputedly level-headed Ryan as truly, deeply morally warped.

Everyone agrees that Trump’s comments about women (including references to female genitalia) were disappointing and inappropriate. Trump apologized for them twice before the latest debate and did so again at Sunday’s face-off against Clinton.

“This was locker-room talk,” Trump told a town hall in St. Louis. “I am not proud of it. I apologized to my family. I apologized to the American people. . . . I am very embarrassed by it, and I hate it, but it’s locker-room talk.”

(Remember: Trump’s words from 2005 are at issue here, not his actions. Conversely, Bill Clinton’s actual behavior somehow is no big deal. Journalists, feminists, and Democrats seem utterly uninterested in his sexual shenanigans with Monica Lewinsky, his widely acknowledged sexual harassment of Paula Jones, his alleged sexual assault of Kathleen Willey, and even a very credible accusation of rape by Juanita Broaddrick.)

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Antisemitic hate festival in Lichfield Cathedral David Collier

By on October 13th, 2016

I have just spent a weekend at Lichfield cathedral for a conference “on the Israel/Palestine Conflict and the prospect of peace”. And what a weekend it was! A naïve Dean, antisemitism, conspiracy theories, global control, blood sucking Jews, child kidnappers, Arabs in 100ad. and of course, Jesus the Palestinian.http://david-collier.com/?p=2328
Lichfield Cathedral is breath-taking. A Gothic structure that dominates the local horizon, the unique fixture of the three spires can be seen long before signposts welcome you to the city. The current masterpiece was started in 1195. The work was to take over a hundred years to complete.

Just 5 years before this work began there had been brutal massacres of Jewish people in London and York in 1190. As Lichfield Cathedral grew and began to dominate its surroundings, persecution of Jews grew as a fever and swept through England. The Nave was started in 1260, just as the Jewries in places such as London, Canterbury and Winchester were looted.

Long before the last bricks were placed on the ‘Lady of the Chapel’ in 1330, the entire Jewish community had been dispossessed and expelled from England.

History is a major passion of mine. The placing of events into perspective and context. So I wonder what a cathedral such as Lichfield would have looked like to Jews in the 13th century? As they saw the cathedral grow, as they felt the persecution begin to strangle their livelihoods and freedoms, did one come to symbolise the other? How terrifying to the Jews then, a display of power such as Lichfield Cathedral must have been.

I personally grew up in a different England. We had jumped almost 700 years since the expulsion, 300 years since the return of Jews to these islands. As a young adult I visited cathedrals as places of beauty. Stunning buildings of history that were to be cherished and adored. National treasures.
The church speaks

lichI had not been to Lichfield before. There had recently been an unsavoury anti-Israel exhibit at Hinde St Methodist church that had drawn much anger. I understand that the Church desires to help when it sees suffering. When this suffering is being registered in the birthplace of Christianity, that urge becomes an irresistible compulsion. With this I have no quarrel. However there remains a gulf between charity and pointing a finger of blame. One requires compassion, the other reminds us of darker days in Christian history.

Following the Hinde Street incident, many voices were heard from within the church community that denounced the exhibition. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord George Carey criticised the stunt as ‘demonising and singling out Israel’ in its defensive fight against terrorism.

In light of rising Jew hatred in the UK, the current Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby recently called antisemitism ‘an insidious evil’. He remarked that it “latches onto a variety of different issues” including discourse about Israel. Given what was about to occur to me personally in Lichfield, his reference to the conspiracy, “the perverted and absurd argument that a small group runs or plots against our society and manipulates international affairs” is particularly poignant.
The Lichfield Cathedral event

Encouragingly, with one eye on the event in the cathedral, the Bishop of Lichfield Michael Ipgrave also delivered a statement on antisemitism. This an extract:

“To me there seems no question that denying the right of Israel to exist, failing to take seriously the claim of its citizens to security and recognition, viewing the complex situation in the Holy Land as an unparalleled example of injustice when it is fact surrounded by egregious instances of oppression and unsettlement, adopting a one-sided view which fails to recognise the legitimate interests and real anxieties of all sides – all these can be manifestations of, or excuses for, real antisemitism.”

If this is what he truly lichfield speakersbelieves, he will be absolutely horrified to hear what was relayed inside the walls of his cathedral.

I had little doubt I was walking into a hate-festival. One of the ‘secrets’ of such an event is that the range of speakers is always skewed. People such as Ilan Pappe see sharing a stage with Zionists as ‘normalisation’. Jewish self determination, the right of a ‘Jewish home’, these are positions too ‘dirty’ for anti-Israel activists to accommodate. Therefore if Pappe is present, you know their views have been ideologically protected by the structure of the event itself. The building has been cleansed of all support for the Jewish national movement.

If Jewish Israelis are present, they must be those that come bearing 1000 apologies for ‘Israeli crimes’. Thus reinforcing the imagery of Israel the oppressor. (See Daphne Anson for a breakdown and analysis of the speakers).

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DAVID COLLIER: HATE FESTIVAL IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES

By on October 13th, 2016

Its 27th September 2016. Summer is over and the new academic year begins. Across the country, political activists such as those in the SOAS Palestinian society hold ‘freshmen’ sessions to attract new recruits to their cause. Everyone knows SOAS is important to BDS and Palestinian activism. When you walk into SOAS you enter the BDS UK student stronghold. But I am used to being inside the SOAS halls now. The atmosphere and venomous tone no longer intimidate me. I come so often they should consider presenting me with a special award.http://david-collier.com/?p=2315

Today’s talk, was part of a BDS workshop for new recruits. The person leading the talk was Riya Hassan, a SOAS alumni, who now works for the BDS central committee. Although she didn’t tell the crowd, Riya was apparently born in Lakiya (Laquia) in the Negev. That being the case, Riya failed to tell the audience that she is one of the only Arabs in the Middle East who can vote. Part of the most liberated Arab community in the entire region.

The format is typical of a BDS recruitment session. They spend the first 30 minutes or so, engaging with the crowd, asking them what they already know of BDS, where they are from, why they are here and most importantly what criticisms of BDS they have heard.

Then Riya began to speak. The first thing that Riya wanted to impress on those listening was that:

“BDS is a tactic. A tactic within a broad spectrum of tactics that an indigenous people who are fighting for liberation deploy”.

BDS: Flattening the conflict

This means that to understand BDS we need to recognise it is not alone, but rather part of the arsenal. It lines up alongside Hamas rockets, knives, suicide belts and terror tunnels, Arab violence, another ‘tactic’ that is ‘deployed’ to destroy Israel. Like ‘lawfare’ or attempts to delegitimise Israel at the UN, BDS does not oppose violence, it operates alongside it.

Riya is desperate to skip to talking about what BDS wants these students to do, but first she needs to circumvent the small issue of why Israel is so evil it needs to be (B)oycotted, (D)ivested from and of course (S)anctioned.

This is always an incredible element of any session. And it invariably follows the same pattern of history.

Firstly, 1917. Balfour. The idea that the British gave away the land of the indigenous people to European colonists. In line with this, Riya managed to discuss Balfour without even mentioning the word ‘Jewish’.

Then they skip to 1948. As if the week after 2nd November 1917, was 9th November 1948. This is done for a simple reason. For the Palestinian narrative to hold true, European colonists simply turned violent against an indigenous civilian population so as to ethnically cleanse the villages because they had to make room for more European colonists. It was as Riya suggested a ‘pre-planned expulsion’.

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Romania: Lawsuit Launched to Stop Bucharest Mega-Mosque “Romania is not a Turkish province.” by Soeren Kern

By on October 13th, 2016

The original deal called for a “mutual exchange” in which Romania would build a new Orthodox Church in Istanbul, while Turkey would build the mosque in Bucharest. In July 2015, however, Prime Minister Victor Ponta revealed that the Romanian government had abandoned the Istanbul church project because it is “not allowed under Turkish law.” Ponta approved the Bucharest mosque project anyway, saying it was a multicultural symbol of Romania’s acceptance of the Muslim community.

Ponta’s decision to approve the mosque, which will mimic Ottoman-era architecture, was greeted with outrage in a country that was under Ottoman Turkish domination for nearly five centuries until 1877.

“This plan is not about worship, it is about marking the territory of their authority through a monument.” – Ozgur Kazim Kivanc, a Turkish activist opposed to Erdoğan’s destruction of public commons to build mosques.

“Once Islam enters a land, that land becomes Islamic and Muslims have the duty to liberate it someday. Spain, for example, is Islamic land, and so is Eastern Europe: Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia…” – Omar Bakri Muhammad, a prominent Sunni Islamist cleric.

“We consider the disposal of free land which, ironically, belonged to the family of Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, who was beheaded by the Turks on August 15, 1714, to be a betrayal of the Romanian people.” – Pending lawsuit calling on the court to annul the government’s grant of free city land for the mosque project.

Opponents of a proposed Turkish mega-mosque in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, have filed a lawsuit against the government in an effort to halt the project. The court is set to begin hearing the case on October 14.

The lawsuit seeks to reverse a June 2015 decision by the Romanian prime minister at the time, Victor Ponta, to approve construction of what could become the largest mosque in Eastern Europe — second only to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul — on a large tract of city-owned land in northern Bucharest.

The property, valued at more than four million euros ($4.4 million), is being provided for free by the Romanian government, while the construction costs, estimated at three million euros ($3.3 million), are being paid for by Turkey.

Ponta said the mosque will reap economic benefits for Romania because Turkey is the country’s leading non-EU trading partner. The mosque’s critics, including an array of Romanian academics, historians, politicians, anti-immigration groups and even some Muslims, counter that not only will it increase Turkish influence over Romania, it will also encourage Muslim immigration to the country.

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