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Ruth King

Viva la difference? Islam vs. “Radical” Islam?

Politically Correctness has no bounds, no demarcation lines. Everything is fair game to warp, subvert, and destroy, from wedding cake bakers to Halloween costumes to national security.
On December 12th, Judith Bergman, in her Gatestone column, “Europe: Illegal to Criticize Islam,” wrote:

In Finland, since the court’s decision, citizens are now required to make a distinction, entirely fictitious, between “Islam” and “radical Islam,” or else they may find themselves prosecuted and fined for “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.”

I would like some state-appointed or free, independent Islamic scholar — Western or not — to explain with a straight face to me and to the world, the essential, fundamental differences between Islam and “radical Islam” or “extremist” Islam. If Islam is not just a bizarre, death-worshipping “religion,” but basically a collectivist ideology bent on total submission of its adherents and of the world, moved by a gnawing appetite for total and universal domination, what are the salient, distinguishing differences? How would one explain the differences, say, between “ordinary” Communism and “radical” Communism, or between “ordinary” Nazism and a benign “moderate” Nazism?

You can’t list those distinguishing differences. They don’t exist. Islam is a one-size-fits-all system, from your footwear to your hairstyle to your diet.

Islam is “radical” because, as both a “religion” and as a political ideology, it prescribes total submission of the individual – indeed, of society – to the arbitrary and wholly irrational rules, permissions, prohibitions, and punishments of its “creed,” otherwise known as Sharia Law. Just as Nazism and Communism required the total submission of the individual to the state, Islam requires the total submersion of the individual to the caliphate.

Islam is essentially, and readily admits, totalitarian – root branch, and twig.

Bergman, writing about Terhi Kiemunki, a Finnish writer, was found guilty of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith,” and noted that,

Finland is the European country most recently to adopt the way that European authorities sanction those who criticize Islam. According to the Finnish news outlet YLE, the Pirkanmaa District Court found the Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, guilty of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith” in a blog post of Uusi Suomi. In it, she claimed that all the terrorists in Europe are Muslims. The Court found that when Kiemunki wrote of a “repressive, intolerant and violent religion and culture,” she meant the Islamic faith.

Phishing the Clintons If John Podesta was hacked by the Russians, he made it too easy.

Democrats claim Russian hackers stole victory from Hillary Clinton, yet President Obama told alleged comedian Trevor Noah that they released “what were frankly not very interesting emails that didn’t have any explosive information in them.” Well, either the content of the emails influenced the outcome, or not—which is it? And that isn’t the only contradiction in this narrative.

Another is the amazingly reckless information security programs of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. New details Wednesday in the New York Times still manage to astonish, even from someone who ran her own homebrew email server out of her basement as Secretary of State.

The Times reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent repeatedly called the DNC and left multiple voicemails warning that its computer system appeared to have been compromised. DNC staffers never called back for seven months because they told the Times they weren’t sure he was a real agent.

The Clinton campaign faults the FBI for not showing up in person at the DNC, as if it is the FBI’s fault the FBI wasn’t taken seriously. Yet two separate hacking rings, uncoordinated and unknown to each other, penetrated the DNC system.

Meanwhile, campaign chairman John Podesta was taken in “phishing” email, a relatively unsophisticated deception to trick someone into giving up a password. His aides thought the message was perhaps suspicious, but the IT team told them it was legitimate and to follow the link. Mr. Podesta also hadn’t activated two-factor authentication on his Gmail account, which might have provided another layer of security.

Not to blame the victims, but the reality of the modern era is that cyberattacks are a constant menace that requires vigilance. When the Chinese can steal millions of individual records from the Office of Personnel Management, any campaign must know that it is likely to be a target and take countermeasures to protect sensitive information.

Joe Kennedy told his kids never to write anything down that might one day appear on the front page of the Times. The modern analogue is to turn on two-factor authentication.

Steal This Election Abbie Hoffman wrote ‘Steal This Book.’ Democrats are doing the 2016 update. By Daniel Henninger

A serious person might ask: Why did John Podesta, the Democratic Party, and various of its media affiliates head into the fever swamps after Donald Trump won the election?

We knew months ago that the Trump phenomenon could drive women mad and make grown men weep, but how to explain the adoption of a Tom Clancy conspiracy, to wit: Vladimir Putin, using hacker slaves in a Kremlin basement, stole the election for Mr. Trump? Therefore let’s sequester the 538 folks from the Electoral College in a safe house for a CIA briefing before they vote to validate the results of the 2016 election.

Several explanations press into view, the simplest being . . . embarrassment.

Mr. Podesta and his associates lost the election, or at least the one that has been deciding U.S. presidential results since George Washington carried the Electoral College vote in 1789. (Gen. Washington got 69 votes, John Adams 34.)

This year’s loss happened in large part because the Hillary campaign ignored Bill Clinton’s advice to pursue the blue-collar vote that won him the presidency. The Clinton campaign thought Barack Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” would win a third straight time. Staring out across the U.S. political map today, they look now like the coalition of the descendant.

Little surprise that the people responsible for this debacle are filling the skies with Putin-elected-Trump flak to divert eyes from why they lost states they should have won.

Another, more plausible explanation would be the belief among Democrats that the Trump victory is a temporary political bubble.

Mr. Trump won by gaining the support of les deplorables who formerly voted Democrat or who had stopped voting altogether after losing faith in the system. That is a thin, volatile presidential base.

If President Trump doesn’t deliver prosperity that satisfies these new voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, they’ll abandon the Trump Republicans. Then, like Silly Putty, the Democrats’ Blue Wall of electoral-vote states will reform in 2020. CONTINUE AT SITE

WHO IS REP. RYAN ZINKE? (MONTANA REPUBLICAN)

https://zinke.house.gov/issues/foreign-affairs

Ryan Zinke spent 23 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL and believes in peace through strength. America has a responsibility to assist our allies in times of need and carry out humanitarian aid missions. The worsening situation in the Middle East puts America at risk. Two priorities Rep. Zinke sees include stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and defeating and destroying ISIS by way of military force, diplomacy and humanitarian aid. Airstrikes alone will not be effective. Congress must ensure American troops who are put in harms way are equipped with the tools, personnel, and rules of engagement to win and win decisively.

Foreign Policy & National Security | Congressman Ryan Zinke