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Germany: Migrant Crisis Delusions by Vijeta Uniyal

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

A report commissioned by the German government found that newly-arrived asylum seekers were behind more than 90% percent of the increase in violent crimes in the state of Lower Saxony.

As of December 2017, an estimated 600,000 able-bodied asylum seekers in Germany were on the welfare dole, according to Die Welt. “More than half of the able-bodied unemployment benefit receivers at present are of foreign descent,” wrote Der Spiegel on April 10, 2018.

Meanwhile, poverty in Germany, especially among elderly pensioners, has reached a historic high.

While the number of Salafists in Germany reaches a record high and machete-wielding gangs riot on the country’s streets, the establishment media not only covers up the fallout from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door migration policy, but continues to paint a false picture of the country’s current state.

“Cool Germany,” a cover story on Britain’s magazine, The Economist, claims that, “Germany is becoming more open and diverse” and “[m]any of the country’s defining traits” including “its ethnic and cultural homogeneity, conformist and conservative society” are “suddenly in flux.”

The Economist attributes this change to Chancellor Merkel’s migrant policy. “The biggest change comes from Mrs. Merkel’s “open door” policy towards refugees, which brought in 1.2 million new migrants in 2015-16. The magazine celebrates the sudden outburst of diversity as its transforms “once-homogeneous Germany” into a “melting-pot” and claims that the “patriarchal culture has become more gender-balanced.”

The Economist also advocates the urgent necessity of the open-door policy for refugees, and alleges that the “flow of newcomers to Germany” will “cushion the demographic crunch.”

Since the onset of the migrant crisis, which began in the autumn of 2015, much of the mainstream media has been peddling the idea of an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Arab and Muslim countries as a silver bullet for Europe’s economic woes. Young and sturdy immigrants were going to bolster Europe’s shrinking labor force and usher in the next economic boom, a miracle comparable to Germany’s post-war Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”).

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Should Robert Mueller Be Investigated for Violating Civil Liberties? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so, too, the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is civil liberties.

Many traditional civil libertarians have allowed their strong anti-Trump sentiments to erase their long-standing commitment to neutral civil liberties. They are now so desperate to get Trump that they are prepared to compromise the most basic due process rights. They forget the lesson of history that such compromises made against one’s enemy are often used as precedents against one’s friends. As Robert Bolt put it in the play and movie A Man for all Seasons:

Roper: So now you would give the Devil benefit of Law!

Thomas Moore: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that?

Thomas Moore: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

But today’s fair weather civil libertarians are unwilling to give President Trump – who they regard as the devil — the “benefit of law” and civil liberties.

Consider the issue of criticizing Robert Mueller, the Special counsel. Any criticism or even skepticism regarding Mueller’s history is seen as motivated by a desire to help Trump. Mueller was an Assistant US attorney in Boston, the head of its criminal division, the head of the criminal division in Main Justice and the Director of the FBI during the most scandalous miscarriage of justice in the modern history of the FBI. Four innocent people were framed by the FBI in order to protect mass murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people. An FBI agent, who is now in prison, was tipping off Whitey Bulger as to who might testify against him so that these individuals could be killed. He also tipped off Bulger allowing him to escape and remain on the lam for 16 years.

What responsibility, if any, did Robert Mueller, who was in key positions of authority and capable of preventing these horrible miscarriages, have in this sordid incident? A former member of the parole board – a liberal Democrat who also served as mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts – swears that he saw a letter from Robert Mueller urging the denial of release for at least one of these wrongfully convicted defendants. When he went back to retrieve the letter, it was not in the file. This should surprise no one since Judge Mark Wolf (himself a former prosecutor), who conducted extensive hearings about this entire mess, made the following findings:

“The files relating to the Wheeler murder, and the FBI’s handling of them, exemplify recurring irregularities with regard to the preparation, maintenance, and production in this case of documents damaging to Flemmi and Bulger. First, there appears to be a pattern of false statements placed in Flemmi’s informant file to divert attention from his possible crimes and/or FBI misconduct….

Second, contrary to the FBI’s usual policy and practice, all but one of the reports containing Halloran’s allegations against Bulger and Flemmi were not indexed and placed in an investigative file referencing their names. Thus, those documents were not discoverable by a standard search of the FBI’s indices. Similar irregularities in indexing and, therefore, access occurred with regard to information that the FBI received concerning an extortion by Bulger of Hobart Willis and from Joseph Murray concerning the murder of Brian Halloran, among other things.

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Spain: Jihad Continues by Soeren Kern

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Since the March 2004 attacks on Madrid’s trains, Spanish authorities have arrested more than 750 jihadis in 243 counter-terrorism operations, according to the Interior Ministry.

Jihadis remain undeterred. A recent Islamic State document included a list of grievances against Spain for wrongs allegedly done to Muslims since the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa on July 16, 1212.

“There is little doubt that the autonomous region of Catalonia has become a prime base of operations for terrorist activity. Spanish authorities tell us they fear the threat from these atomized immigrant communities prone to radicalism, but they have very little intelligence on or ability to penetrate these groups.” — US diplomatic cable, October 2, 2007.

Ten members of an Islamic State jihadi cell have been sentenced to combined prison terms of nearly 100 years for a plot to bomb landmarks and behead infidels in Barcelona.

The cell, composed of five Moroccans, four Spaniards and a Brazilian, was separate to and independent of the jihadi group that killed 16 people in Barcelona and nearby Cambrils in August 2017.

The case shows that Spain continues to be a prime target for jihadis, many of whom are striving to reconquer al-Andalus, the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France occupied by Muslim conquerors (also known as the Moors) from 711 to 1492. Many jihadis believe that territories Muslims lost during the Christian Reconquest of Spain still belong to the realm of Islam, and that Sharia law requires them to re-establish Muslim rule there.

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Revolution and Worse to Come By Victor Davis Hanson ****

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Resistance wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block.

On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer confidence, and in some, Trump himself has gained ground. Yet good news is bad news to the Resistance and its strange continued efforts to stop an elected president in a way it failed to do in the 2106 election.

Indeed, the aim of the so-called Resistance to Donald J. Trump is ending Trump’s presidency by any means necessary before the 2020 election. Or, barring that, it seeks to so delegitimize him that he becomes presidentially impotent. It has been only 16 months since Trump took office and, in the spirit of revolutionary fervor, almost everything has been tried to derail him. Now we are entering uncharted territory — at a time when otherwise the country is improving and the legal exposure of Trump’s opponents increases daily.

First came the failed lawsuits after the election alleging voting-machine tampering. Then there was the doomed celebrity effort to convince some state electors not to follow their constitutional duty and to deny Trump the presidency — a gambit that, had it worked, would have wrecked the Constitution. Then came the pathetic congressional boycott of the inauguration and the shrill nationwide protests against the president.

Anti- and Never-Trump op-ed writers have long ago run out of superlatives. Trump is the worst, most, biggest — fill in the blank — in the history of the presidency, in the history of the world, worse even than Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler.

Next was the sad effort to introduce articles of impeachment. After that came weird attempts to cite Trump for violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. That puerile con was followed by plans to declare him deranged and mentally unfit so that he could be removed under the 25th Amendment. From time to time, Obama holdovers in the DOJ, National Security Council, and FBI sought to leak information, or they refused to carry out presidential orders.

As the Resistance goes from one ploy to the next, it ignores its string of failed prior efforts, forgetting everything and learning nothing. State nullification is no longer neo-Confederate but an any-means-necessary progressive tool. Suing the government weekly is proof of revolutionary fides, not a waste of California’s taxpayer dollars.

Anti- and Never-Trump op-ed writers have long ago run out of superlatives. Trump is the worst, most, biggest — fill in the blank — in the history of the presidency, in the history of the world, worse even than Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, or Hitler. So if Trump is a Hitler who gassed 6 million or a Stalin who starved 20 million, then logically Trump deserves what exactly?

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Trump and the North Korean Tipping Point By Arthur Herman

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

The president’s potential meeting with Kim Jong Un would come at a time when American foreign policy is rapidly changing.

The world has been stunned by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s announcement last week that he was suspending his country’s nuclear tests in preparation for the impending meeting with President Trump. Even critics have had to concede that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric since last summer regarding the North Korean threat may have actually paid off — especially when his “speak loudly and wave a big stick” approach to foreign policy is backed by the real use of force, as demonstrated by the recent air strikes in Syria.

How sincere are Kim’s promises? Trump skeptics like to point out that Kim has announced suspensions of his nuclear program before. But Kim made one other concession last week that has gone largely unnoticed but is even more significant for the future: He withdrew his previous demand that U.S. troops leave the Korean peninsula before any discussion of denuclearization. That means any deal struck on shutting down North Korea’s nuclear program may well be separate from the status of U.S. forces in Korea — and America’s strategic role in the region.

Trump’s success points the way to a major realignment of the balance of power in East Asia. For that reason, it’s time to pause to consider how Trump’s approach to foreign-policy issues such as North Korea, and that of national-security adviser John Bolton, differs from the approach of his predecessors — and represents a revolution in America’s relations with the rest of the world.

The contrast with Trump’s two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, could not be sharper. Both Obama and Bush were animated by grand visions of the U.S. leading the world toward a new era of peace and stability, either (in Bush’s case) through an ever-widening process of coalition-building on the multilateral level and state-building on the bilateral level, or (in Obama’s) via “strategic patience” and “leading from behind,” phrases Obama’s foreign-policy team made famous — or rather notorious.

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Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s Low-Stakes Summit If the leaders meet, they’re likelier to reframe the standoff than to resolve it. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

The news from Korea is dramatic, but not quite historic. In the run-up to his proposed summit with Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un has floated a repackaged version of virtually every concession North Korea has ever proposed, from suspending its nuclear and missile tests to accepting the continuing presence of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula following a peace treaty between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Given that Messrs. Trump and Kim are two of the most unpredictable leaders in modern times, the frenzied pace of North Korean diplomacy has raised hopes for a breakthrough in the summit. But Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump are more likely to reframe the longstanding U.S.-North Korea standoff than to end it.

The first thing to understand is that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not going away. Pyongyang is willing to sit at a table where their removal is discussed, and perhaps even to sign pieces of paper stating that their removal is a goal. But talking is one thing; disarming is something else.

The North Korean leadership follows the news. It knows what happened to Ukraine, to Saddam Hussein and to Moammar Gadhafi without nuclear arms. No piece of paper offers a country the serene peace of mind that it gets from a few atom bombs in the missile silos.

But there’s something else. Nuclear weapons aren’t only the centerpiece of North Korean security policy. They are the centerpiece of its political and economic strategy as well. The Kim dynasty hasn’t chosen the Chinese or Vietnamese path for prosperity based on international integration. Instead they cling to the idea of “juche,” or self-reliance, and have one of the least open, least dynamic economies in the world.

The reason is fear. Compared with China, where many companies have a market value greater than North Korea’s total gross domestic product, North Korea is a minnow swimming next to a whale. And there are other whales in the sea. If North Korea opened up for trade and investment, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese investors and traders would swallow it whole. The Kims would rather be the absolute rulers of a poor country than the former rulers of a middle-income one. North Korea spends an estimated 22% of its GDP on the military; that expenditure makes the country poorer but keeps the regime in control.

Those nukes give the Kims clout and they bring in cash. Kim Jong Un can provoke an international crisis by test- launching a missile; few other leaders of small and poor countries have that ability. China, Japan, South Korea and even the U.S. have been willing to make economic and political concessions to keep Pyongyang sweet. North Korea won’t trade all that away for a treaty. That the U.S. is negotiating with North Korea rather than bombing it surely seems to the Kims like proof that their nuclear strategy has worked.

But if Mr. Kim doesn’t want to give up his nukes, the U.S. doesn’t want war. Besides the 28,500 troops, there are more than 200,000 American civilians in South Korea on any given day. The first day of hostilities in a new Korean War could see tens of thousands of U.S. civilian casualties with more to come. The total cost of such a war in treasure and in blood is both incalculable and unacceptable. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Cuba’s ‘Transition’ Fake news with bells on. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Castro’s (unregistered) agents of influence are frantically busy this week thanks to their (unregistered) accomplices in the Fake News Media. All claim an earth-shaking “transition” is underway in Cuba!

Needless to add, according to these (unregistered) foreign agents, President Trump should promptly avail himself of this golden opportunity to embrace those harmless, innocent, free-health-care providers that U.S. policy has unjustly and vicariously “bullied” for so many years.

Could anything be more transparently facetious and idiotic? To quote the late Joan Rivers: “Can we talk?”

In fact, what’s happening as Cuban “President” (dictator) Raul Castro “steps down” in favor of Cuban “President” (eunuch and puppet) Miguel Diaz-Canel is about what happened when Korean “President” Kim Jong-il stepped down in favor of his son Kim Jong-un—except that Korea’s Kim Jong-il actually kicked the bucket before his son fully took over the reins of the mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring, nuke-rattling regime.

In fact, much of the vital day-to-day functions of the Stalinist regime will remain in the hands of Raul Castro’s son Alejandro Castro-Espin, a KGB-trained colonel in Cuba’s secret police and a fanatical Stalinist. Alejandro denounces to the U.S. as “an Empire of Terror!” and shrieks that “Cuba will never return to capitalism!”

As proof of Alejandro’s (secret) eminence and importance within the Stalinist regime, he was the person actually in charge of the “negotiations with” (demands upon) the Obama administration back in 2014. Nothing was more vital for the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate than securing and growing that multi-billion-dollar lifeline from the U.S. So naturally fanatical Stalinist and secret policeman Alejandro was put in charge of securing and protecting this flow through the Stalinist regime’s jugular.

And naturally Castro’s (unregistered) agents-of-influence kept this explosively embarrassing item very hush-hush, with the ever loyal and time-honored assistance of their (unregistered) accomplices in the Fake News Media. To hear them tell it, Pajama-Boy Ben Rhodes was harmlessly “negotiating” with other harmless Cuban Pajama-Boy diplomats. But here’s the ugly proof otherwise.

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Emerging Islamist Political Clout Accelerates Europe’s Self-Islamization Jihad by culture. Abigail R. Esman

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Forget the beheading videos, the ISIS propaganda on social media, even the terrorist attacks themselves. Europe, says counterterrorism expert Afshin Ellian, is Islamizing itself, and in the process, the Western values on which its democracies are built are increasingly put at risk.

Take, for instance, Belgium’s ISLAM Party, which now hopes to participate in the country’s October local elections in 28 regions. (Its name serves as an acronym for “Integrité, Solidarité, Liberté, Authenticité, Moralité.)

Its ultimate aim: transforming Belgium into an Islamic state. Items high on its agenda include separating men and women on public transportation, and the incorporation of sharia law – as long as this does not conflict with current laws –according to the party’s founder, Redouane Ahrouch. His own behavior, however, suggests that his respect for “current laws” and mores has its bounds: He reportedly refuses to shake hands with women, and in 2003, he received a six-month sentence for beating and threatening his wife. Currently, the Islam Party has two elected representatives in office – one in Anderlecht, the other in Molenbeek – both regions that happen to be known as hotbeds of extremism.

Or consider DENK, Holland’s pro-Islam party founded in 2015 by Turkish-Dutch politicians Selçuk Ozturk and Tunahan Kuzu. The party platform, which supports boycotts and sanctions against Israel, also discourages assimilation, calling instead for “mutual acceptance” of multiple cultures. Non-Muslims, for instance, would apparently be required to “accept” the Muslim extremist father who beats his daughter for refusing an arranged marriage, or for becoming too “Westernized” for his taste. It’s his culture, after all.

DENK also calls for a “racism police force” to monitor allegedly racist comments and actions. Those found guilty would be placed in a government “racism register,” and banned from government jobs and other employment.

So far, such pro-Islamist views have served the party well. In local Dutch elections last month, DENK (which means “think” in Dutch) gained three seats in Rotterdam, totaling four seats among 45 total and edging out Geert Wilders’ far-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), which fell from three seats to one. In Amsterdam, which also has 45 seats, a full 50 percent of Dutch-Moroccans and about two-thirds of Dutch-Turks gave the party a three-seat win in its first election there, as well. Many of these voters, according to post-election analyses, moved to DENK from the center-left Labor Party (PvdA), clearly feeling more at home with a more overtly pro-Muslim politic.

Similarly, France’s Union of Muslim Democrats (UDMF) has taken a number of voters from the Green Party by promising to defend Muslims. UDMF’s online program statement condemns burqa and headscarf bans. What’s more, in its pretense of supporting what it calls the “sweet dream of Democracy, Union and Human Rights,” the party loudly (though rightly) condemns “anti-Muslim speeches” that “lead the most psychologically fragile people to commit acts of unprecedented violence.” Examples of such “unprecedented violence” follow: a German white supremacist, who killed an Egyptian woman wearing a veil in 2009, and the stabbing of a French Muslim in Vaucluse. “Heavy weapons attacks have exploded in Europe since the beginning of the year against Muslim places of worship,” the statement reads.

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Kanye West – Revolutionary in the Making? Hell hath no fury like Progressives spurned by blacks. Mark Tapson

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

A seismic shift in the cultural and political American landscape this weekend emanated from an unlikely epicenter: superstar rapper Kanye West, who tweeted a controversial endorsement of black conservative commentator Candace Owens. Nothing triggers leftist anger quite like blacks thinking for themselves, and not like they do. So the left erupted with predictable fury toward both West and Owens.

Kanye, whose ubiquitous wife Kim Kardashian was a prominent supporter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has drawn leftist fire before. First, he incurred online scorn from the left and right in 2015 for announcing his serious intention to run for President in 2020. Then shortly after the 2016 presidential election, he shared with a California audience that he didn’t vote, but if he had, he “would’ve voted for Trump,” an admission that was unusual to say the least for a celebrity of his stature, black or white. It angered and bewildered fans so much that they actually expressed concern about Kanye’s mental health.

In December of 2016, he met briefly with Trump, who referred to Kanye at the time as his “friend,” to discuss “multicultural issues,” primarily the topic of violence in Chicago where Kanye was raised. This showed some surprising independence of mind and considerable courage on Kanye’s part, considering that black-on-black violence in blighted urban centers controlled by Democrat politicians is a scourge the left is silent about.

Then this past Saturday morning, Kanye dropped a bombshell tweet, declaring, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” As of this writing it has been retweeted over 21,000 times and “liked” over 81,000 times. A few minutes later he followed up with another seemingly supportive message, “only free thinkers,” which holds similarly high numbers of retweets and “likes.”

Owens is a millennial black conservative commentator known to her 183,000 subscribers on YouTube as “Red Pill Black.” Her recognition factor was increased last September by an interview with fellow former lefty Dave Rubin on his immensely popular YouTube talk show, The Rubin Report. In that interview she discussed her journey from left to right, her issues with the left’s corrosive identity politics, and her thoughts on activist journalists essentially serving as media “hitmen.” Rubin has continued to be a big supporter of Owens.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn(R- Tenn) : Facebook’s 20,000 Content Reviewers Bring ‘Bias to Work’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

WASHINGTON – Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Facebook’s 20,000 content reviewers bring their political “bias to work” and have blocked content that’s not related to issues such as terrorism.

Blackburn mentioned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Silicon Valley an “extremely left-leaning place” during his recent Senate hearing under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“We don’t ask people their political affiliation when they are hired,” Zuckerberg said at the hearing.

Blackburn said Congress should examine “guardrails” that could be put in place to prevent content that might offend certain people for political reasons from being blocked.

“He has 15-20,000 content reviewers and managers. So one of the things we have to realize is they bring that bias to work and then, as they develop an algorithm, how are they manipulating that algorithm?” Blackburn said during a Family Research Council discussion last Tuesday, “Losing Our Voices: Who Owns Free Speech on the Internet?”