Italy: Salvini Down but Not Out by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14817/italy-matteo-salvini

The new governing alliance, if realized, may be short lived. In an interview with the Italian daily La Stampa, former Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the Lega Nord party said that the new government, if it comes to fruition, will be “intrinsically weak” because it would exist, “not for a shared political project but only to avoid elections.” He added that there was a possibility that the new government could last for the entire legislature “in order to avoid delivering the country to Salvini.”

“Do you think I am afraid of a few months in opposition?” Salvini asked in a Facebook video. “You have not got rid of me with your political games. You do not know me, I do not give in.” He has called for a protest against the new government in Rome on October 19. Polls show that 67% of Italians are in favor of early elections.

“We Hungarians will never forget that you [Salvini] were the first Western European leader to make an effort to prevent illegal migrants from flooding Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. Irrespective of future political developments in Italy and of the fact that we belong to different European party groups, we consider you as a brother in arms in the fight to preserve Europe’s Christian heritage and stop migration.” — Hungarian President Viktor Orbán.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy premier and interior minister since 2018, has been shut out of the Italian government after his gambit to force snap elections to become prime minister backfired.

As the de facto leader of Europe’s anti-mass-migration movement, Salvini’s departure from government may set back efforts to slow illegal immigration to the continent. Many analysts, however, believe that Salvini, who continues to lead his rivals in opinion polls, will be back in government soon and in an even stronger position than before.

Boko Haram: Bloody Terror, No End in Sight by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14785/boko-haram-bloody-terror

Every year, Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which has gained a foothold in the neighboring African countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger, appears to be growing stronger.

Suicide bombings and other deadly attacks committed by Boko Haram terrorists over the past decade have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, while more than two million others have been displaced.

Nigeria’s government has proved itself to be incompetent at best, and at worst, complicit in the attacks.”

“The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, gives billions of dollars in aid to northeastern Nigeria. The problem is that aid, which helps fix small amounts of damage, is not a sufficient answer. As long as groups such as Boko Haram are able to keep destroying whole villages and infrastructure — while devastating populations — NGOs will never be able to keep up.” — International Christian Concern; August 13, 2019.

Boko Haram, the ISIS-aligned group seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria, just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its establishment. Contrary to initial and subsequent assessments, however, the terrorist group, also known as Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP), was not to be easily defeated. On the contrary, every year, the jihadist group, which has gained a foothold in the neighboring African countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger, appears to be growing stronger.

Suicide bombings and other deadly attacks committed by Boko Haram terrorists over the past decade have claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, while more than two million others have been displaced. These figures do not even include the thousands of women and children abducted, some of whom, according to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), “have been forced to carry out suicide missions.”

The CEP explains:

“Boko Haram has increased the number of female suicide bombers due to the easy concealment of weapons under hijabs and Islamic customs that forbid men to frisk women.”

According to International Christian Concern (ICC), so far in 2019, Boko Haram has kidnapped 179 people in Niger alone, mostly women and girls, a number that amounts to nearly one person per day. This does not include the many unreported abductions or those that took place in Nigeria or Cameroon.

Obama at Columbia – Or Was He? Revelations from George Stephanopoulos, Newsweek, and Columbia grads from Israel. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274817/obama-columbia-%E2%80%93-or-was-he-lloyd-billingsley

The recent DOJ report on James Comey, the ongoing FISA investigation, and the probe of the Russia-collusion investigators under John Durham are all pointing back to POTUS 44, formerly known as Barry Soetoro. He wanted to know how Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI’s coup clan were doing. In similar style, designated prevaricator Susan Rice is on record that 44 wanted the counterintelligence operation to be done “by the book.” It didn’t exactly work out that way.

As investigators probe what the president knew, and when he knew it, other revelations about the former Barry Soetoro have managed to escape notice. This lapse comes despite massive revelations from his own handlers.

According to official biographer and Pulitzer winner David Garrow, the defining Dreams from My Father is not a memoir or biography. It is a novel, and in this work of historical fiction the author is a “composite character.” The implications proved alarming to fans and family alike.

The president, “spent the first 20 years of his life going by the nickname Barry,” the former First Lady explains in the 2018 Becoming. “Somewhere along the way, though, he’d stepped into the fullness of his birth name – Barack Hussein Obama.”  Michelle does not note that, in all his writings from 1958 to 1964, the Kenyan Barack Obama mentions nothing about an American wife and Hawaiian-born son. Becoming portrays the future president as an “exceptional” and “gifted” student who “worshipped books.” At Columbia he “consumed volumes of political philosophy as if it were beach reading.”

Egypt Reinstates Notorious Hate Preacher So much for President Sisi’s “religious reforms.” Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274828/egypt-reinstates-notorious-hate-preacher-raymond-ibrahim

Egypt’s leading authorities have reinstated a notoriously “radical” cleric and hate preacher to the pulpit (minbar), despite strong opposition.

According to Arab Weekly, “The Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, which controls the mosques, gave Yasser Burhami, the deputy head of the Salafist Call, the umbrella organisation of Salafi movements, approval to deliver sermons before Friday prayers at the Wise Caliphs Mosque in Alexandria.”

“Everybody is shocked at the decision to allow this man to preach at the mosques,” said Saad al-Zunt, the head of the Strategic Studies Centre, a local think-tank.

“Salafists adhere to a strict version of Islam,” the report explains.  “They do not believe in women’s rights and call for women to be clothed from head to toe. The Salafists adopt a hostile stance towards non-Muslims, saying they are not full citizens.”

Indeed, Sheikh Yasser al-Burhami has authored numerous fatwas—edicts based on Islamic scriptures—that demand hate and hostility for non-Muslims, most specifically the nation’s largest and most visible minority, the Christian Copts, whom Burhami has referred to as “a criminal and infidel minority,” one that he regularly  invokes “Allah’s curse” on.

For example and in keeping with the doctrine of al-wala’ w’al bara’ (“Loyalty and Enmity”), Burhami has called on all Muslims to hate all non-Muslims—going as far as to say that, although a Muslim man is permitted to marry Christian or Jewish women (ahl al-kitab), he must make sure he still hates them in his heart—and show them this hate—because they are infidels; otherwise he risks compromising his Islam.

Snowflake crybully wants people to stop wearing red caps because she feels triggered by MAGA hats By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/snowflake_crybully_wants_people_to_stop_wearing_red_caps_because_she_feels_triggered_by_maga_hats.html

“Don’t you love the appropriation of the title “normal” by someone who cannot cope with a primary color? ”

Normally, I wouldn’t comment on a ridiculous demand from a leftist who feels triggered by something conservatives do and wants everyone to change his behavior so her emotional stability won’t be threatened any longer.  But this snowflake bully is a serious author, a winner of many literary awards, and the demand is utterly, mind-bogglingly stupid.

Check out what Rebecca Makkai wants (language warning):

Rebecca Makkai ✔ @rebeccamakkai

Is anyone else made really uncomfortable these days by anyone wearing any kind of red baseball cap? Like, I see one and my heart does weird shit and then I finally realize it only says Titleist or whatever. Maybe don’t wear red caps anymore, normal people?

She doubled down on her idiocy:

If you’re here to be contrary: an equivalent here would be western Hindus choosing not to use the swastika symbol in public despite it being sacred to their faith because it would offend/frighten people. The red hat has become a symbol of hate bc of how its wearers act.

I suppose that Ms. Makkai will gain literary luster for her display of solipsism, because she has a new complaint against deplorable Trump-supporters.  Such is the level of corruption of our cultural elites.

 

End the Media’s Campaign Privilege As journalism blurs into partisan politics, the rules governing the latter are becoming unjustifiable. By David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey

https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-the-medias-campaign-privilege-11567551611

The Trump era has seen an erosion of the distinction between journalism and partisan politics, with much of the mainstream media in open opposition to the president. “Balance has been on vacation since Mr. Trump stepped onto his golden Trump Tower escalator . . . to announce his candidacy,” New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg wrote in August 2016.

Three years later, the holiday continues. Slate last month published a leaked transcript of a staff “town hall” at the Times. “We built our newsroom to cover one story,” executive editor Dean Baquet told employees, explaining that the paper’s narrative “went from being a story about whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia and obstruction of justice to being a more head-on story about the president’s character.” The new story, he said, “requires deep investigation into people who peddle hatred.”

Mr. Baquet makes the Times sound like an advocacy organization working against Mr. Trump’s re-election. Such organizations are regulated by campaign-finance statutes. So are other corporations, for-profit or nonprofit, that engage in electioneering speech. But those laws exempt media organizations, provided they are not owned by a political party, committee or candidate.

The justification for this favored treatment is the media’s “unique” role in public discourse and debate. But that has changed—and not only because the media have become more partisan. “With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media,” the Supreme Court observed in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), “the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.” CONTINUE AT SITE

A Scientific Roundup The EPA intervenes against California’s rogue cancer regulation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-scientific-roundup-11567551770

Perhaps you’ve read that science should rule when determining environmental standards. So why aren’t progressives cheering an Environmental Protection Agency order declaring that the chemical glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer?

In an extraordinary intervention, the EPA recently said it will no longer approve product labels that claim glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the popular weed killer. The herbicide has been on the U.S. market since 1974, and the scientific consensus is that it isn’t carcinogenic in humans.

The letter is a rebuke to California, which in 2015 said it would add glyphosate to its official list of carcinogens under the state’s 1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65. California cited the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s finding that glyphosate “probably” causes cancer.

This is the U.N. outfit that has warned against cancer from pickled vegetables, caffeine and working the night shift. California’s move has inspired a flood of lawsuits against Roundup-maker Monsanto, including a $2 billion jury judgment (reduced to $86 million by a judge) in May for a California couple claiming glyphosate caused their cancer.

ISRAEL, WORLD WAR 2, THE SILENCE OF THE LIBS

IS WORLD WAR II HISTORY STILL RELEVANT? By David Harris

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/09/03/is-world-war-ii-history-still-relevant/

As the world marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, when German forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, is the history still relevant? Does it have contemporary meaning? Or is it destined to fade away, as the wartime generation of soldiers, eyewitnesses, and survivors reaches the twilight of their lives? There are, I believe, five enduring lessons of this defining period in modern history.

First, a failure of imagination can be catastrophic.

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Top-PA-religious-leader-called-Jews-in-Jerusalem-colonialist-cancer-600459?fbclid=IwAR0kSkeD0tjswC2M8ui9vpUL_tzddoMERFeBXN7UALaR6RCpgfM4_SLZzds

PALESTINIAN RELIGIOUS LEADER CALLS JEWS IN JERUSALEM ‘COLONIALIST CANCER’ 

Prominent Palestinian religious leader denounced “Jewish attacks” against Palestinian religious symbols in Jerusalem and referred to the Jewish presence in the land of Israel as a “colonialist cancer,” NGO Palestinian Media Watch said on Monday. According to a report by the Palestinian Authority official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, as quoted by PMW, the Supreme Fatwa Council, led by Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, “Warned of the danger of attacks against the religious and national symbols in occupied Jerusalem, and held the occupation government fully responsible for these violations.” “The council expressed its rejection of all types of settlements and emphasized that the Palestinian people will not stand idly by in the face of this colonialist cancer,” the report added.
   The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is the Palestinian Authority’s highest religious leader. Hussein, a former imam of the Al Aqsa mosque, was appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2006.

https://jewishjournal.com/advertising_supplement/editors-note-advertising_supplement/303553/silence-of-the-libs-do-liberal-jews-see-security-as-a-jewish-value/

SILENCE OF THE LIBS: IS SECURITY A JEWISH VALUE? (David Suissa, Jewish Journal, Aug 25)

What I found odd with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC), Rabbis for Human Rights, and the New Israel Fund when I took a close look at their websites is that while they mention plenty of Jewish values, I didn’t see one mention of “security.” The closest was Rabbis for Human Rights, which mentions “safety” for “the stranger, the different and the weak, the convert, the widow and the orphan.” That is indeed noble, but what about “safety” for a 17-year-old Jewish girl whose only crime was to go on a nature walk with her family? Is it possible that the silence of these groups after the murder of Rina Shnerb was connected to the absence of “security for the Jewish people” in their values statements? After all, they are very loud when they pounce on Israel for any violation of the human rights of Palestinians…

BIDEN, HARRIS, BOOKER, KLOBUCHAR, EDUCATION

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/why_harris_booker_and_klobuchar_will_never_be_president.html

Why Harris, Booker, and Klobuchar will never be President
Patricia McCarthy, AmericanThinker.com/blog

The calculated Russia hoax devised to bring down a presidential candidate, president-elect and then president, is the most serious and egregious political scandal in US history. Second may be the Kavanaugh hearings. So determined to not let Brett Kavanaugh be seated on the Supreme Court, the demented Left decided to invent an equally monstrous lie to prevent the confirmation of Trump’s choice for the Justice to replace Anthony Kennedy. I think that every Democrat on that committee had to know that the accusations against Kavanaugh were false, that Blasey-Ford was a plant, a willing dupe in the Democrat scheme to destroy a good man for their political purposes. The entire fiasco was so unspeakable that in a just world, all the perpetrators would be in prison for fraud, Diane Feinstein among them.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/03/right-needs-revolutionary-higher-ed-reform-plan-now/

The Right Needs To Adopt This Revolutionary Higher Ed Reform Plan Now
William L. Krumholz, TheFederalist.com

Far too many pundits believe culture is upstream from politics. That might be true, but bad policy is often upstream of culture. And it is shocking how often Republicans use the “culture” trope as an excuse for long-running inaction and lack of serious thought on needed policy changes.
One such example is higher education. Speakers such as Heather Mac Donald have done an excellent job of highlighting examples of the far-left bias that is prevalent at America’s higher ed institutions. Conservative YouTube channels are great at highlighting the perils of conservative speakers attempting to speak on various campuses.
But few address the elephant in the room. Taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the entrenched and blatant anti-American and anti-Christian bent in our colleges and universities.

https://www.takimag.com/article/joe-biden-is-going-nuts/

Joe Biden is Going Nuts
Jim Goad, TakiMag.com

Joe Biden
“I want to be clear—I’m not going nuts,” Joe Biden assured a crowd in New Hampshire last Friday.
It was merely the latest in a lifetime of lies this serial fabulist has told. ALL of the available evidence proves that he is clearly going nuts.
Perhaps part of it is due to the pressure of being an old white man who’s posing as the standard-bearer of a political party whose sole agenda these days is the extermination and debasement of old white men. How taxing must it be to run on the premise of, “Well, sure, everything I represent sucks, but at least I acknowledge it, so vote for me, anyway”? I could see how that could take its toll on a fella.

Why is the US Training and Equipping the Lebanese Army? Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

LAF soldiers on a foot patrol along the Blue Line in the vicinity of Meiss el Jabel.

American security assistance generally is predicated on the principle that a smaller or poorer country that has U.S. equipment and training will be better able to defend common interests than one that doesn’t. Sometimes it works that way. But sometimes it puts the U.S. in bed with people who want our weapons and training but do not share our bottom line — their enemy is not ours; their rules of engagement are not ours; their government, in fact, is not a friend of ours, but maybe if we reward it thoroughly enough it won’t actively oppose our interests.

In that latter category is Lebanon.

As Hezbollah announced it is preparing to attack Israel, we must consider the role of the United States in arming and training the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the national army of Lebanon that technically is an arm of the Hezbollah-dominated government in Beirut.

Lebanon is not a functional country and there are those — the Assad family in Syria, for example — who don’t think it should be a country at all. Syria didn’t recognize the independence of Lebanon until 2008, after a 29-year occupation that ended in 2005. By law, power is shared among religious and ethnic groups — 19 in the current parliament.

Hezbollah, created, armed and run by Iran as a Shiite supremacist military force, has both the majority in the political cabinet in Beirut and a separate, private army complete with precision missiles and rule-making authority in the southern part of the country. Lebanon has little economy, but Hezbollah runs rackets — mostly arms and drugs, mostly in South America — and kills people in Europe, and Jews and Israelis around the world.

Hezbollah kills Americans, too. Until 2001, it had killed more Americans than any other terror organization — including 241 American service members in 1983 in their barracks in Beirut, the greatest loss of American Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.