Europe: The New Political Weapon of ‘Islamophobia’ by Alain Destexhe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15159/islamophobia-political-weapon

The objective of using the word “Islamophobia” appears to have been to make Islam untouchable by placing any criticism of it as equivalent to racism or anti-Semitism.

The word “Islamophobia” deliberately intends to transform the critique of a religion — a fundamental right in Western societies — into a crime.

“The term ‘Islamophobia’ serves several functions….Above all, however, the term is intended to silence Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce their religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and dogmatic.” – Pascal Bruckner, in his book, Un racisme ordinaire : Islamophobie et culpabilité, Grasset, 2017 [English version: An Imaginary Racism: Islamophbia and Guilt, Polity 2018]

It is not Muslims people “hate,” any more than they hate Hindus or Buddhists or Shintos. It is the violence and coercion that some adopt — what is known as jihad or holy war — that people reject.

In the attacks at the Bataclan Theater and other sites in 2015, terrorists murdered 131 persons and wounded 413. Is it irrational to remember who was calling those shots?

France is once again profoundly divided over Islam. Last Sunday, November 10, a “March against Islamophobia” was held in Paris in response to an appeal from 50 public figures. In an op-ed in the leftist newspaper Libération, the demonstrators pleaded to “stop Islamophobia and stop the growing stigmatization of Muslims, victims of discrimination and aggression”.

Two recent incidents ignited the public debate and served as a pretext for the march. On October 26, an 84-year-old man shot and injured two men while trying to set fire to the mosque of Bayonne. Earlier in October, in the Regional Assembly of Burgundy, a member of the National Rally party (RN) complained about the presence in the gallery of a woman wearing an Islamic headscarf. The French political class and media condemned both incidents almost unanimously.

Among the signatories of the op-ed are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, president of La France Insoumise (“Unsubmissive France”), the most prominent leftist political party in the French National Assembly; Benoît Hamon, the Socialist Party candidate in the last presidential election; Philippe Martinez, leader of the Communist trade-union General Confederation of Labor (CGT); Yannick Jadot, a prominent Member of European Parliament from the Green party and Edwy Plenel, editor of Mediapart, a successful online media news platform and former editor of the newspaper Le Monde.

Europe Backs Iranian Nuclear Breakout by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15149/europe-iran-nuclear-breakout

Tehran shelters members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda, and it is reportedly continuing to facilitate the group’s operations.

Now imagine if this rogue state obtains nuclear weapons, what kind of destruction could it inflict on the world?

The international community, particularly European nations, must take urgent steps to counter Iran-backed international terrorism and prevent it from becoming a nuclear state.

When the US State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism on November 1, 2019, four countries — North Korea, Sudan, Iran, and Tehran’s staunch ally, Syria — were listed as state sponsors of terrorism. The annual report describes the theocratic establishment of Iran as “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism” in 2018.

How, in 2018, did the Iranian government receive the title “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism”? The criteria by which it is determined if a country should be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism are based on whether that state has constantly provided support for acts of terrorism.

In the region, Iran has continued to smuggle weapons and provide military, financial, intelligence and advisory assistance to proxies such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shiite militias, Kata’ib Hizballah, Hamas and other designated Palestinian terrorist groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

Tehran has spent roughly one billion dollars per year to arm and train these militant groups, which serve Iran’s interests. This sum has contributed to a greater capability for Houthi rocket launches at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, the deployment of thousands of Hezbollah foot-soldiers in Syria, and the regular bombardment of southern Israel with Hamas rockets bankrolled by Iran.

Whose Witness Is Bolton? Precisely because the Democrats and their kept media realize that the former national security advisor is unlikely to be a witness to their liking, he is unlikely to be a witness at all. Angelo Codevilla

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/13/whose-witness-is-bolton/

he would-be impeachers had been salivating at the prospect that John Bolton, who President Trump had fired after 17 months as his national security advisor, would lend his undoubted “conservative bona fides” to their campaign to convince Americans that Trump is bad, awful, illegitimate, dangerous, even criminal.

Lately however, they have settled on doing with this potential witness what they have done with the ones who have appeared before them behind closed doors—namely, publicize such anti-Trump messages as they can ascribe to him, scrubbed of any other elements, sharpen it to fit their “narrative,” and leave him and others unable to alter it.

Were Bolton to be a witness in the impeachment hearings, what would he say? More importantly, what would he not say? Odds are, he would be a witness against impeachment, and for all the things for which he had worked over a lifetime—for the things which had gained him those bona fides.

Trump parted ways with Bolton because they had come to disagree. Bolton, never one to mince words, never dissembled his disagreements; nor would it occur to him to gainsay the president’s right to be advised by someone more congenial than himself.

On constitutional grounds, he would frustrate any attempt to have him recount anything that he told the president or that the president had told him, or that anyone else had said about the president. John Bolton the lawyer would refuse to divulge his own thoughts about any person or anything that he chose. He would, however, stress that thoughts and judgments attributed to him in the media are merely the opinions of those making the attributions.

Democrats Are Failing the Reality Test Democrats push fake impeachment, fake issues, fake candidates, and fake solutions. Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/13/democrats-are-failing-the-reality-test/

It’s hard to think of a major Democrat issue and proposed solution that is not a fake. It’s an emergency. What’s the emergency? Everything. The planet, white privilege, transgender rights, Nazi policies on the border, killer cops. A health care crisis so dire the government must ban private insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals.

Most of all President Trump is a walking emergency. His voters are hate-filled bigots who love his authoritarian tendencies.  They are a danger to our democracy.

Democrat fixes are a list of economic and physical impossibilities. Ban oil, gas, and coal; make health care and college “free”; hand out reparations for slavery. They promise they will raise all the money from billionaires’ spare change.

The Democrats running for president in 2020 don’t talk about normal issues—jobs and national security. They have nothing to say about opportunities for minorities. Instead, it is all fake investigations of fake scandals.

Democrats are running fake impeachment proceedings on a fake accusation of quid pro quo from a fake whistleblower, who is one more deep state operative leaking hearsay that libels the president.

Who are they kidding? Oddly enough, themselves—very successfully.

Fake is fine with their voters. “Fauxcahontas” is a leading candidate. Fake news is all the news they’ll read.

Something has gone terribly wrong with previously normal Democratic Party voters.

Trump Just Made His Case For Reelection, While Dems Play Impeachment John Merline

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/14/trump-just-made-his-case-for-r

The day before the Schiff & Pelosi Impeachment Circus opened for its fall run in the House of Representatives, President Donald Trump gave a speech at the Economic Club of New York in which he laid out his argument for a second term. And he made it clear why Democrats are desperate to avoid talking about the economy.

Trump began by resetting the clock back to 2016 when, as we’ve pointed out in this space many times, the economic forecast was grim. 

“The so-called experts said Americans had no choice but to accept stagnation, decay, and a shrinking middle class as the new normal,” Trump said. “In short, the American people were told to sit back and accept a slow, inevitable decline.” 

The Congressional Budget Office, he said, projected that the number of jobs would increase by just 2 million from January 2017 through the end of this year. The unemployment rate wasn’t supposed to get below 4.4% and was slated to start rising again in 2019.

The CBO said quarterly GDP growth over Trump’s first three years would never top 2.6% and would average 2%. 

As Trump rightly explains, this wasn’t inevitable. It was the result of an economy being suffocated by taxes and regulations. “If we lifted these burdens from our economy, and unleashed our people to pursue their ambitions and realize their limitless potential, then economic prosperity would come thundering back.”

Sorry Trump haters everywhere, but he was right. 

Muslim Brotherhood Subversion vs. Jihadist Rage The connection between ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/muslim-brotherhood-subversion-vs-jihadist-rage-raymond-ibrahim/

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

What do Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri—that is, the late leader of ISIS, and the late and current leaders of al-Qaeda—have in common? That they’re among the world’s most notorious Islamic terrorists?  Yes, but there’s something else, something more subtle, that binds them: they all began their careers as members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most widespread political Islamic organization in the world.

In a 2014 video interview, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi—a spiritual leader of the Brotherhood whose Al Jazeera program on shari‘a is watched by tens of millions of Muslims—asserted that “this youth [al-Baghdadi] was from the start among the top ranks of the Brotherhood, but he was inclined to [positions of] leadership and so forth…  Then, after he spent years in prison [for Brotherhood activities] he came out and joined with them [the nascent Islamic State],” eventually becoming first “caliph.” (I first discussed this Qaradawi video soon after it appeared in 2014; predictably, YouTube has since taken it down, though Arabic websites still have it.)

In response, Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments (awqaf), Dr. Muhammad Mukhtar Gom‘a had said that “Qaradawi’s confession [concerning al-Baghdadi] confirms that the Brotherhood is the spiritual father to every extremist group.”

Schiff, the Whole Schiff, and Nothing But the Schiff Democrats’ gala impeachment show devolves into pathetic display of duplicity. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/schiff-whole-schiff-and-nothing-schiff-lloyd-billingsley/

In his opening statement Wednesday, Adam Schiff proclaimed that his impeachment show was about the survival of the American republic itself. Rep. Jim Jordan interrupted to ask when the committee would vote on the ability to address the vaunted “whistleblower,” known only to Schiff.

“That’s a false statement,” the intel committee boss said. “I do not know the identity of the whistleblower.” Viewers could note that Schiff was not under oath, and wonder what factual statements the Burbank Democrat might make.

Ranking Republican Devin Nunes described the hearing as a “televised theatrical performance.” The witnesses had “passed star chamber auditions” and been cast in a “low-rent” Ukrainian sequel to the Russia probe that smeared Trump as a Russian agent. The whole show was an “impeachment process in search of crime,” and Schiff’s first witness confirmed Nunes’ advance review.

George Kent bears some resemblance to actor Martin Sheen, but as Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Kent is hardly a heavy hitter. Still, he touted his illustrious family and even dropped the name of Roger Staubach. As Kent testified, the brave Ukrainians were the equivalent of our own Minutemen, and American aid was an echo of French aid to the United States during the Revolution.

The Schiff coup: Day one By J. Marsolo *****

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/the_schiff_coup_day_one.html

These facts cannot be disputed:

1. Former Vice President Joe Biden admitted and bragged on TV that he threatened to withhold one billion dollars in American foreign aid to Ukraine if Ukraine did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma.  Burisma was paying Hunter Biden, son of the Joe Biden, over $50,000 per year as a board member of Burisma.  There is no dirt to dig up.  Joe Biden admitted to the dirt.

2. The Obama-Biden administration did not supply military aid to Ukraine when Ukraine needed the aid against Russia. This was admitted by the acting ambassador to the Ukraine, William Taylor, in his testimony.Trump in December 2017 announced that the United States     would send military aid to Ukraine that then–Ukraine president Poroshenko requested from the USA.  Obama and Biden had refused the sale of $47 million’s worth of Javelin antitank missiles.

In May 2018, after Ukraine tested its new Javelin missiles, Poroshenko thanked Trump for supporting Ukraine and providing the Javelin antitank missile systems.

3. On November 25, 2019 President Trump asked Ukraine’s President Zelensky to investigate Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 election.  There is evidence that Ukraine helped Hillary in the 2016 election and tried to sabotage the Trump election.

4. The transcript of the phone call was released by President Trump.  The transcript speaks for itself.  There is no mention of conditioning American aid on any investigation of Biden.

5. There was no investigation by Ukraine into the 2016 election or any investigation of Joe Biden.

6. Ukraine received the American military aid that is the subject of the “impeachment inquiry” on September 11, 2019, six weeks after the July 25, 2019 phone call between President Trump and President Zelensky.

7. The Democrats have refused to produce the so-called “whistleblower” to testify.

The Real Mystery About C*aramella and Vindman By Charlie Martin

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-real-mystery-about-caramella-and-vindman/

I was chatting with Terry, my writing partner, this morning. He was in the Intelligence Community for years, as was I; Terry on the analysis side, me in collection and later as a computer security researcher. Both of us had, at one time, an “Extended Background Investigation” clearance, the clearance you need for that stuff people like to say is “beyond top secret.” (It’s not, but that’s another topic I explored in detail back when Edward Snowden turned.)

Now, Terry is a Democrat, pretty liberal, not at all impressed with Trump. But we were talking about Eric Ciaramella who was fired from the White House staff because he was leaking confidential information to the media. According to all the sources, he then returned to the CIA, where he currently works.

Which is, frankly, odd.

How, exactly, do you lose a job for security violations and return to the CIA? One would normally lose one’s clearance, and even janitors and cafeteria workers at CIA are cleared.

Then there’s LTC Alex Vindman, NSC staffer and active-duty Army officer. He has testified that he disobeyed orders, advised foreign governments to resist Trump, leaked internal information to others, and was actively working to subvert the president’s foreign policy.

What Happened to California Republicans? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/what-happened-to-california-republicans/

From 1967 to 2019, Republicans controlled the California governorship for 31 of 52 years. So why is there currently not a single statewide Republican officeholder? California also has a Democratic governor and Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. Only seven of California’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans.

In 1994, then-Gov. Pete Wilson backed Proposition 187, which denied state social services to undocumented immigrants. The spin goes that it backfired, alienated the Hispanic community and thus marked the road to Republican perdition.

Not quite.

Prop 187 passed with 59 percent support. Wilson’s endorsement of the bill helped its passage, and his support of it aided his landslide 1994 re-election. Among minority voters, 52 percent of Asian and African American voters supported Proposition 187. Some 27 percent of Latinos voted for it.

Liberal groups immediately sued in federal court. Just three days after the measure passed, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing Proposition 187 from going into effect. A month later, U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a permanent injunction. Prop 187 never became law.

In effect, two judges nullified the wishes of more than 5 million California voters.

Arnold Schwarzenegger had supported Prop 187. Yet in 2003 he was elected governor. So what caused the Republican demise?

Ironically, radical changes in California demography may have been brought about by Prop 187 — but not in the way many people think.