Displaying posts published in

June 2019

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Ground Zero Mosque Wife Now Expert Witness in Terror Trials Daniel Greenfield

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274127/ground-zero-mosque-wife-now-expert-witness-terror-daniel-greenfield

Our current state of counterterrorism is such that Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson, Patrick Poole, Dave Reaboi, John Rossomando, Stephen Coughlin, or Philip Haney would be extremely unlikely to be invited as experts on terrorism.

The wife of the Ground Zero Mosque Imam though? Sure. Come on down and tell us that ISIS supporters don’t understand Islam.

Ceasar believes Islam is disrespected in the United States and wanted to help “make Islam great again,” said defense witness Daisy Khan, of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, a reference to President Trump’s campaign slogan.

So we’ve got a cheap shot at Trump. But what exactly is Khan accomplishing for the defense, beyond whitewashing Islam?

Khan met with Ceasar six times at the request of defense attorneys and determined her actual knowledge of Islam was limited at best.

“She doesn’t know what much about her religion,” Khan said.

Uh-huh.

Again, why is the defense bringing in Khan to testify as to whether an ISIS supporter properly understands Islam? Is this really about helping the defendant or about allowing Khan to promote a particular narrative?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Amb. Friedman Exposes the Radicalism of Obama’s Israel Policies How Obama’s anti-Israel hostility has left the Middle East situation more dangerous than ever. Caroline Glick

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274098/amb-friedman-exposes-radicalism-obamas-israel-caroline-glick

Israel’s elections do-over has pushed back President Donald Trump’s planned roll out of his “deal of the century,” which will set out his administration’s plan for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But all the same, members of his “peace team” are making headlines.

In an interview with the New York Times published on June 8, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman spoke in broad terms about what the Trump team envisages in regards to the ultimate disposition of the West Bank, otherwise known as Judea and Samaria.

Nearly a half million Israeli Jews live in the areas. Another 300,000 Israeli Jews live in neighborhoods in northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods. The Palestinians demand that in exchange for peace, Israel must expel all of the Israeli Jews and transfer their cities, villages, neighborhoods, and farms to the Palestinians.

Israel rejects these positions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in his last term of office that he will not remove any Israelis from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria, let alone in Jerusalem.

In his interview with the Times, Friedman said, “Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”

On Sunday, his colleague Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s special assistant for negotiations, expressed his support for Friedman’s statement.

In an interview at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York, Greenblatt said, “I will let David’s comments stand for themselves. I think he said them elegantly and I support his comments.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Musical Chairs in Britain Picking a new skipper for the Tories’ sinking ship. Bruce Bawer

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274097/musical-chairs-britain-bruce-bawer

Last week the people Britain were treated to a prolonged game of musical chairs, with the candidates for head of the Conservative Party – and thus Prime Minister – being reduced, day by day, in a series of votes by their party colleagues in Westminster, from six – Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid, Rory Stewart, and Dominic Raab – to five to four to three to two. In the televised debates that were held along the way, the contenders displayed all the usual ambition and aplomb and deployed all the usual rhetoric about all the usual issues. Yes, Brexit, as expected, was Topic A. But at the June 16 debate on Channel 4 – from which Johnson, the former London mayor and odds-on favorite to succeed Theresa May as PM, chose to absent himself – nobody exhibited a credible sense of urgency about getting Brexit done already, now that three supposedly firm deadlines have come and gone, each time ratcheting up public rage and frustration.

At the June 18 debate on the BBC, with Johnson in attendance this time – and setting the tone with an expression of firm determination to honor the current Brexit deadline of October 31 – his competitors at least paid lip service to the notion of urgency. But at least two of them still didn’t get it: with classic English nonchalance, Hunt said he would be willing to “take a big longer” to withdraw from the EU, and Gove conceded he wouldn’t mind if it took an “extra couple of days” to get Brexit done. Viewers who had been following month after month of Brexit speeches in the House of Commons were treated to yet more of the tiresome nit-picking and hair-splitting – not to mention rote hand-wringing about the purportedly dire potential consequences of a no-deal Brexit – that they’ve seen at Westminster and that have brought the Tories to the brink of disaster.

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HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Muslim Syrian Refugee Plotted a Black Church Massacre Daniel Greenfield

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274083/muslim-syrian-refugee-plotted-black-church-daniel-greenfield

“The best news is when you call get ready for jihad,” Mustafa Mousab Alowemer wrote in a public housing project in Pittsburgh. “I will spill my blood for the victory of my religion.”

Northview Heights, the low-income housing project, is 90% African-American. Or at least it was.

Then a flood of Syrian Muslim refugees showed up. Obama had promised to admit 10,000 Syrian migrants in 2016. The terrorist who plotted a massacre at a black church was one of them.

The Alowemer clan arrived at JFK airport in New York City. The same airport through which other terror refugees, including the World Trade Center bombers, had penetrated the United States. Instead of staying in New York, they were resettled in Pittsburgh joining a growing Syrian enclave there.

Northview Heights’ tenant council head told reporters that the Alowemers had “isolated themselves”. They had spent all their time with their fellow Syrian Muslims while avoiding their black neighbors.

But Mustafa Alowemer was not unaware of his black neighbors. He was plotting to kill them. When the FBI and the police descended on the housing project, neighbors learned how close the call had been.

The Syrian Muslim refugee’s target was the Legacy International Worship Center, a small black church on a narrow street with battered slum houses and cracked concrete. The international part reflected the multicultural population of African-Americans and African immigrants, including Nigerian Christians.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Steele Dossier Has Been Discredited—Is the IC Report Next? By Julie Kelly

By on June 25th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/24/the-steele-dossier-has-been-discr

The three-year orchestrated campaign to discredit Donald Trump and destroy his presidency is littered with sketchy reports authored by partisan characters motivated by power and revenge.

From the Steele dossier and the personal memos of former FBI Director James Comey to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, a trove of dubious documents is burnished as compelling evidence to show the president is an illegitimate occupant of the Oval Office, a Kremlin stooge, or worse, a criminal in plain sight trying to subvert the rule of law and torch our democracy.

What truly should alarm Americans—and, one hopes, interest future historians far removed from this debacle—is how these clearly questionable materials earned the imprimatur of the world’s most powerful law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The Trump-hating media, once filled with skepticism about how intelligence-gathering violated individual rights in service of wanton political pursuits, regurgitate every outlandish accusation as undeniable fact.

One example is the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin directly interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Two weeks before Trump was inaugurated the 45th president of the United States, Barack Obama’s top security chiefs—acting on a directive from the departing president—issued an official report to suggest that Trump’s victory was tainted.

According to Obama’s FBI, CIA, and NSA, Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bolton ‘opens door’ to Iran at historic tripartite summit in Jerusalem

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/06/25/bolton-opens-door-to-iran-at-historic-tripartite-summit-in-jerusalem/

“All that Iran needs to do is walk through that open door,” US national security adviser says at security summit with Israeli and Russian counterparts, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton said on Tuesday in Jerusalem that President Donald Trump is open to real negotiations and “all that Iran needs to do is walk through that open door.”

Bolton spoke at a high-profile trilateral security summit on Tuesday, attended by his Israeli and Russian counterparts Meir Ben-Shabbat and Nikolai Patrushev, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prime minister welcomed Patrushev to Israel, thanking him and Russian President Vladimir Putin for agreeing to attend the summit in Jerusalem.

Addressing the threat posed by the Iranian regime, Netanyahu said, “I am certain that from this perspective … it is understood in Russia the significance for us of a regime that calls for our destruction, not just to conquer us but to destroy us, and is daily acting to achieve this goal.”

He continued:  “Therefore, Israel will not allow Iran, which calls for our destruction, to entrench on our border; we will do everything to prevent it from attaining nuclear weapons. Self-defense is a very important lesson of 20th-century history, certainly for the Jewish people and its state.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel halts fuel to Gaza power plant in response to arson attacks

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/06/24/arson-balloons-from-gaza-spark-8-fires-in-southern-israel/

On Monday afternoon, explosives-laden balloons floated over the Israel-Gaza border spark eight wildfires in the space of an hour. Security coordinator for one of the communities near the Gaza border blasts government’s lack of response as a “disgrace.”

Israel announced early Tuesday that it was halting the transfer of fuel to the Gaza Strip’s only power plant until further notice. The decision was a response to a surge of incendiary balloons launched from the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave into Israel.

Explosives-laden balloons floated over the Israel-Gaza border sparked eight wildfires in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon as they landed in Israeli territory.

The fires broke out in farmland near Shaar Hanegev and the Eshkol Regional Council. Firefighters and employees of the JNF and Israel Nature and Parks Authority were successfully battling the blazes in the Eshkol region.

One of the fires erupted at a memorial to the late Staff Sgt. Asaf-Yaakov Siboni near Kibbutz Nir Am. Siboni was a Nahal Brigade soldier who was killed when two IDF helicopters crashed in northern Israel in February 1997.

Another incendiary balloon sparked a fire at a nursery school in Kibbutz Saad, which was luckily empty at the time.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

At Hillary’s 50th Reunion at Wellesly College By Doris O’Brien

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/at_hillarys_50th_reunion_at_wellesly_college.html

If Hillary Rodham Clinton insists she’s not running for president in 2020, why is she running… all over the place? Well, for one thing, Her Heinous has always believed in the value of high visibility as a means of enhancing her political chances  When she’s out of sight it’s  almost like she’s out of her mind.

To that self-serving purpose, she and Bill arranged  a cross-country tour of joint speaking engagements that began last year.  It was to be a means of keeping their power-presumptive connubial image front and  fresh in the public eye, but flopped almost from the start.  And recently a Broadway show based on her 2016 rpresidential run hit rock bottom in sales, closing after a shortened run.

But there is one audience that will always come through enthusiastically for  Mrs. Clinton.  Even before she came into national prominence, Hillary found comfort in  knowing  that  she could   always return  in triumph to the place where her  venture into  politics began:  Wellesley College, her alma mater in Massachusetts

As Hillary became increasingly famous, her welcome on campus grew even more jubilant. As the younger classes graduated and began to vote, the army of her dedicated collegiate “sisters” mushroomed, and the reciprocal affection flourished.  During the period when Bill Clinton was president, Hillary invited everyone in her Wellesley Class of ’69 to attend a state dinner at the White House.  If there were any Republicans among them, they were not turned away.  Neither, presumably, were they fools enough to discuss politics at the swank event.

For Wellesley alumnae, reunions occur  every five years based on  the last number of  their graduating  class.  As a result I have always shared the same “reunion cycle” with both Hillary and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright .  Both of them are younger than I am – and that, alas, is not their only distinction.  In addition, they share the  right  — or left, really — politics with  the majority of  our alma mater’s grads and undergrads.    And as American institutions of higher learning  deliver a more liberal doctrinaire, the likelihood of finding conservatives on campus  has diminished greatly.   

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Campus Welcomes Conservatives President Bruce Benson embraced true diversity at the University of Colorado Boulder. By Steven F. Hayward

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-campus-welcomes-conservatives-11561415989

While researching what would become their 2009 book, “Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives,” sociologists Amy Binder and Kate Wood conducted extensive student interviews at two schools: Harvard and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Although the faculty members they encountered were overwhelmingly liberal, Ms. Binder and Ms. Wood found that students at Boulder “were far likelier [than Harvard students] to contend that their professors bring those personal politics into the classroom.” This stifling ideological conformity, they concluded, caused conservative students to adopt “the provocative style” as their favored tactic to fight back.

The authors’ visit to Boulder coincided with the arrival of Bruce Benson as president of the University of Colorado system. If they returned now, on the eve of Mr. Benson’s retirement this month after 11 years at the helm, they would find a decidedly different campus climate. The reason is Mr. Benson’s determination to bring vibrant and serious ideological diversity to the “Berkeley of the Rockies.”

Mr. Benson became president amid a sea of troubles after the 2007 financial collapse. The ensuing recession led the state to cut funding for the university system by about 35%. A successful businessman and one time head of the Colorado GOP, Mr. Benson didn’t limit himself to the traditional fundraising role of university presidents. He also made achieving viewpoint diversity a priority.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Iran Show He has a nose for power, and he thinks Tehran is weaker than Obama understood. By Walter Russell Meade

By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-iran-show-11561416216

President Trump’s Iran policy over the weekend was both erratic and masterful. Doves and isolationists, panicked by what they see as the administration’s inexorable drift toward war, rejoiced when Mr. Trump announced that a military strike had been called back. Hawks criticized him for an Obama-like climb-down, but the announcement of cyberattacks and tightening sanctions helped smooth ruffled feathers.

The result? Mr. Trump more than ever dominates U.S. Iran policy; contending political factions within the administration and outside it must jockey for his support. And the more he talks and tweets about Iran, the less clear anyone is about his ultimate intentions.

None of this should be surprising. Consistently inconsistent on issues from trade with China and immigration from Mexico to Venezuela and North Korea and now Iran, Mr. Trump has been by turns more hawkish than any of his predecessors and dovish enough to thrill Sen. Rand Paul.

This president is first and foremost a showman. From his early real-estate days in 1970s New York through his time in reality television and into his third career in politics, Mr. Trump has understood and shrewdly deployed the power of fame. He has turned American politics into the Donald Trump Show, with the country and the world fixated on his every move, speculating feverishly about what will come next. Whether threatening on Twitter to rain down destruction from the sky, reining in the dogs of war at the last minute, or stage-managing high-stakes summit meetings, he is producing episodes of the most compelling reality show the world has ever seen.

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