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November 2020

Macron vs. Radical Political Islam in France: A War of Civilizations? By Dr. Tsilla Hershco

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/macron-radical-islam-france/

France has declared a state of emergency following the recent terrorist attack in Nice, and violent demonstrations are being held across the Arab and Muslim worlds amid calls for boycotts and terrorist attacks against France. Exacerbated by the severe economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis reflects France’s failure to integrate its Muslim minority and to set and enforce clear boundaries against anti-democratic and separatist tendencies within it.

The shocking murder of teacher Samuel Paty by a teenaged Islamist Chechen immigrant provoked a tumultuous emotional response in France. Paty was killed after he showed his students the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published by the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo that led to the January 2015 Islamist massacre of that paper’s journalists. Paty’s object in displaying the cartoons was to prompt a class discussion on the values of freedom of speech and expression that characterize French society.

This murderous blow to the heart of the liberal French republic, which welcomes refugees and immigrants and grants them civil and economic rights, provoked a heated debate. In the past five years, France has experienced 33 terrorist attacks by French Muslim citizens. The targeting of Paty for assassination, his gruesome public beheading, and the posting of video of the murder on the internet illustrated that Islamic zealots pose an existential threat to France’s basic republican order.

Over the years, French governments have tried to address the problem through two main venues: reforms to improve the economic and social situation in the suburbs and vigorous measures against extremist Islamist elements. The latter included overseeing religious teaching institutions; closing down radical institutions and associations; deporting foreign imams who incite violence, citizens with dual citizenship who were involved in terrorist activities, and illegal immigrants; monitoring extremist social networks; and increasing budgets and manpower for intelligence and surveillance operations. President Macron’s attempt to advance legislation to monitor more illegal immigrants failed due to political disagreements between right- and left-wing parties and the proposed laws’ disqualification by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that they violate human rights.

Trump Administration Set to Sanction Top Pro-Hezbollah Politician Move on Gebran Bassil expected to shake up attempts to form new government in Beirut

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-set-to-sanction-top-pro-hezbollah-politician-11604627966

The Trump administration is expected on Friday to impose sanctions on one of Lebanon’s most powerful Christian politicians in an effort to chip away at Hezbollah’s grip on power, according to people briefed on the move.

The U.S. is preparing to sanction former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil for assisting his key ally, the pro-Iranian political movement Hezbollah, said a U.S. official and another person briefed on the plan. The move is likely to upend attempts to form a new cabinet in crisis-ridden Lebanon.

The White House has been expediting key sanctions targeting American foes in the Middle East, just 11 weeks before the end of the current presidential term.

Though a last-minute change is still possible, the decision has been approved in principle by the Treasury Department and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is expected to unveil the sanctions in Washington Friday before noon, one person said.

Treasury Department representatives didn’t return requests for comment. A spokesman for the State Department declined to comment.

Mr. Bassil couldn’t be reached late Thursday for comment. Earlier this year, when asked about the possibility of being sanctioned by the U.S. for his ties to Hezbollah, Mr. Bassil told The Wall Street Journal that working with the group was a political reality in a country in which the Shiite group is a dominant player.

“Everybody should be sanctioned in Lebanon, because everybody deals with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on all terms,” he said.

Muslims: Al-Aqsa Mosque Does Not Belong to Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16678/muslims-al-aqsa-mosque

These Gulf Muslims are also demanding an end to the Palestinian “monopoly” over the Islamic holy site in Jerusalem.”

“We will visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque because it does not belong to you, it belongs to all Muslims.” — Laila Al-Awadhi, Emirati political activist.

“How wrong we were when we thought that Israel was preventing Muslims from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” — Ali Al-Aslami, Emirati social media user, Twitter, October 19, 2020.

The furious response of these Muslims to the Palestinian assault on the Emirati delegation is yet another sign of the deepening crisis between the Palestinians and the Arab world, particularly the Gulf states…. Yet, once again, the Palestinians have opted for hating Israel and any Arab who seeks peace with it over improving their basic living conditions.

In the past few years, the Palestinians have regularly condemned Jews for visiting the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) in Jerusalem. The Palestinians depict the visits by Jews as “incursions” and claim that the visitors “defile” the Al-Aqsa Mosque when they enter the compound.

The Jewish visitors, however, do not set foot inside the mosque; they only tour the outdoor compound under the protection of the Israeli police. It is also worth mentioning that Palestinians often hurl insults at the Jewish visitors and try to physically assault them.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism and the place toward which Jews turn during prayer. Among Sunni Muslims, the Temple Mount is considered the third holiest site in Islam.

The Palestinians are now saying that they are opposed not only to Jews visiting the holy site, but also to Muslims who believe in peace with Israel.

ObamaGate: The Movie “Trump’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/obamagate-movie-mark-tapson/

As the Democrat Party moves from one duplicitous, often illegal anti-Trump operation to another without pause (such as presidential impeachment and massive, nationwide voter fraud), their earlier scandals – even recent ones – get pushed into the background of our memory. As an example: the Deep State sabotage of the 2016 Trump campaign and presidency known as “ObamaGate,” which President Trump described as “the biggest political crime in American history, by far.” Charles Lipson at Real Clear Politics wrote that ObamaGate’s abuses of power “represent some of the gravest violations of constitutional norms and legal protections in American history… The entrenched elites behind these scandals are the Swamp at its most sulfurous. They spied illegally on Americans and used powerful tools of government to damage the party-out-of-power, its outsider candidate, and then his new presidency.”

This would be great fodder for a gripping Hollywood drama – except that Hollywood doesn’t dramatize Democrat abuses of power. So it fell to conservative filmmakers, award-winning journalists, and bestselling authors Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer to capture the essence of the scandal on film for posterity.

Co-produced by the Unreported Story Society and Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch, ObamaGate: The Movie, available to watch for free here on YouTube, exposes the Deep State plot to subvert the Trump candidacy and presidency, and lays bare the lies behind the Russian collusion hoax relentlessly perpetuated by the Democrats and their abettors in the mainstream news media. Filmed in Los Angeles on the Comedy Central stage at the Hudson Theater, it stars openly-conservative actor Dean Cain, best-known as TV’s Superman, and Kristy Swanson, formerly TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as “FBI lovebird” agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. It also features familiar face John James from the Dynasty TV series as Obama administration FBI Director James Comey.

Raymond Ibrahim Video: Fatal Terror Attack in Vienna Islamic terrorism runs rampant in Europe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/raymond-ibrahim-video-fatal-terror-attack-vienna-frontpagemagcom/

MY SAY: ELECTORAL CORRUPTION AND FRAUD?

I received a rather officious note from a very nice e-pal:
“Stop it! You are whistling past the graveyard! Continuing to defend Trump is ridiculous and frankly gratuitous.”
If President Trump is wrong and cannot find enough evidence of fraud the worst that can happen is delay in Chancellor Biden’s relocation to the White House.
On the other hand, serious instances of chicanery keep mounting, and if President Trump proves his allegations, our most sacred right in America will have been mugged by criminals attempting a coup.
Stay tuned! rsk

A Republican Senate Will Keep Biden in Check? Oh, Please! If you’re disappointed with Mitch McConnell and company now, just wait until next year if Joe Biden is president. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/06/a-republican-senate-will-keep-biden-in-check-oh-please/

In February 2020, Mitt Romney became the first U.S. senator in history to vote to convict the president of his own party. Despite a laughable impeachment case concocted by House Democrats and clear evidence of corruption tied to the Democratic presidential candidate whom the impeachment effort was designed to protect, Romney nonetheless supported the removal of Donald Trump from the White House.

“My faith is at the heart of who I am,” Utah’s junior senator claimed while working up tears from the Senate floor on February 5. “The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did.”

But Romney didn’t just pontificate about the president’s behavior. In that very same soliloquy, Romney defended the actions of both Joe and Hunter Biden.

“Taking excessive advantage of his father’s name is unsavory, it is not a crime.” Romney concluded, therefore, that since no crime had been committed by the Bidens, in his opinion, the president’s request that Ukrainian officials look into their shady business dealings was “political.”

With that, Mitt Romney secured his place in political history for something other than losing two campaigns for president.

In many respects, Romney is the poster child for the present-day Republican U.S. Senate: pandering, feckless, disloyal, and weak.

Sleepy Campaign Strategy Mystery Solved Biden didn’t really campaign because he—or at least his handlers—knew the fix was in. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/05/sleepy-campaign-strategy-mystery-solved/

One of the great mysteries surrounding the presidential election of 2020 has now been solved. For months, people on both sides of the aisle noted the huge discrepancy between the campaign styles of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump was a dynamo, sitting for interviews, holding press conferences, participating in an ever-increasing series of rallies across the country. 

Joe Biden, by contrast, rarely left his basement and when he did it was to address 10 or 15 carefully screened supporters or pundits who were coached about what they could say. Even Biden’s supporters, the innocent ones, marked the difference and were concerned. How could their candidate win when he basically refused to campaign? 

We now know the answer. 

Biden didn’t really campaign because he—or at least his handlers—knew the fix was in. They knew that compliant polls would cook the numbers to show that Biden was 10, 15, or even 17 points ahead nationally and in all the battleground states even though he was more or less tied or even behind. The psychological, which means the political effect of that, was to insinuate an element of unreality into the whole campaign and to present the public, and the pundits who were there to spoonfeed them, with a false narrative about the performance and therefore the prospects of the two candidates. 

The committee fielding Biden also knew that the media was almost totally on board with a Biden candidacy. This was clear during the campaign when an overwhelming majority of media coverage was both hostile to Trump and almost comically careful about Biden. 

Is Ballotgate the Single Greatest Crime in Modern American History? By William Sullivan

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/is_ballotgate_the_single_greatest_crime_in_modern_american_history.html

Imagine, for a moment, that the night of November 3rd, 2020, had gone a bit differently, with the circumstances reversed. 

Imagine that the media was champing at the bit to call several states early for Trump, while refusing to call those states in which Biden was comfortably winning, giving the false perception of the comfortable lead that had been suggested by months of Trump’s leading the polls.  Then, imagine it had become clear that Joe Biden was surging to a comfortable lead in several closely contested swing states.  Now imagine that, after having stopped the counting of legal ballots in those states (due to the lateness of the hour and logistical challenges, we are told), hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously appeared in these states, and counted behind the curtain, with limited Democrat oversight, thus shifting the tide in Trump’s favor by the next day.

You don’t have to ponder that scenario long before concluding that the Democrats and the media would be claiming that the outcome of that election is illegitimate, and calling for investigations at the highest levels to audit the results, ensuring that each and every vote was verified as having been legally cast, with appropriate registration, postmark dates, signatures, etc.

I don’t think it’s possible to understate the following assertion: If it is proven that Democratic Party operatives illegally introduced hundreds of thousands of illegitimate ballots in order to swing an election in their Party’s favor, it will have been the single most dangerous crime in modern American history.

What are we talking about here, after all?  We aren’t just talking about the oftentimes phantom “voter suppression” that Democrats notoriously peddle, suggesting that requiring a photo ID or having to stand in line to vote amounts to it.  No, we are talking about disenfranchisement of the purest form, and the dissolution of trust in the most fundamental institution of the American republic. 

The vast scope of election fraud in America By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_vast_scope_of_election_fraud_in_america.html

November 5 is Guy Fawkes Day in England, which commemorates a failed plot to subvert the government by blowing up parliament in 1605. In America, the fifth of November yielded its share of plots too. This post summarizes some of the many examples of alleged voter fraud in Democrat-run swing states or districts.

Arizona:

A voter filed a lawsuit claiming that a poll worker gave her a Sharpie to complete her ballot. When the ballot box failed to register her vote, the poll worker refused to give her a new ballot.

Georgia:

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Thursday that there were fewer than 25,000 uncounted absentee ballots in the state. Just a few hours later, he revised that to around 55,000 – 60,000 ballots. He said that the 30,000 – 35,000 ballot fluctuation was normal. Uh-huh.

Michigan:

Despite a guarantee under Michigan law, the Trump campaign was denied access to voting locations across the state.

A postal worker whistleblower revealed to Project Veritas that the supervisor at the branch in which he worked instructed carriers to collect all ballots received on November 4, after the election deadline, and put them in a special “express” bin. Once there, they were hand-stamped “November 3” and then forwarded to the distribution center. Keep in mind that postal carriers have skin in the game because the 300,000 strong National Association of Letter Carriers (both retired and current) endorsed Biden, saying that his winning was a matter of “survival.”

William Bradley, who was born in 1902 and died in 1984, voted by absentee ballot in Wayne County.