From Execution to Medieval Torture: “Iran’s Mandela”, Ayatollah Boroujerdi by Majid Rafizadeh

Ayatollah Boroujerdi has long advocated for the abolishing of “execution, and cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishments; such as torture, stoning and whipping. He rejected anti-Semitism and advocated religious freedom. He established charities and welfare centers to help the poor and assist victims of natural disasters. He condemned personal financial gain from religious activities.

His prison sentence was recently completed. It is critical to point out that Boroujerdi is still nowhere near free.

“He is said to have been beaten, thrown against a wall, and had cold water thrown on him when he was sleeping. He suffers from a heart condition, pulmonary issues, diabetes, severe problems with his eyes including untreated cataracts, and kidney stones. His legs are swollen which makes it very difficult for him to walk. His hands also shake as a result of his Parkinson’s disease. While in detention, he has not been receiving necessary medical treatment…” – Amnesty International.

Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi is a high-ranking prominent dissident clergyman in Iran. He has strongly called for separation of religion and state, and he condemns Islamic radicalism, fundamentalism, and terrorism. He is opposed to political Islam and the rule of Velayet-e-Faqih (Islamic custodianship over people), the theocratic system that governs Iran. Boroujerdi has many supporters and is known as Iran’s Mandela.

“He has long advocated for the abolishment of execution, and cruel, inhumane, and degrading punishments; such as torture, stoning and whipping. He rejected anti-Semitism and advocated religious freedom. He established charities and welfare centers to help the poor and assist victims of natural disasters. He condemned personal financial gain from religious activities. His call has been welcomed by an increasing number of followers to the point that, until his arrest, his gatherings surpassed the theocracy’s organized ceremonies, by their sheer size and numbers.”

For these humanitarian endeavors, he was sentenced to execution by the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, due to international pressure, in 2006, the Iranian regime changed the judgment to 11 years in Iran’s most notorious prison, Evin.

The Golden Age of Jewish Baseball Next foe for the Israeli nine is Cuba. Lee Smith

After going 3-0 in the first round of the World Baseball Classic, Israel moves on to the second round of pool play this weekend in Tokyo when it squares off against international powerhouse Cuba Saturday (10 p.m. EST). The other two teams in Pool E are the Netherlands, whom Israel defeated Wednesday night 4-2 in the preliminary round, and Japan, the 2006 and 2009 WBC champions. The pool winner and the runner-up will move on to Los Angeles for the semi-final round starting March 20. If the Israeli nine makes it through, it might be the first time a Chavez Ravine crowd gets to the park early and stays till the end.

The club’s success, Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer told me, “is a real home run for the Jewish state.” Some credit the team’s undefeated run to mascot “Mensch on the Bench,” while more seasoned baseball observers note that the lowest-ranked club in the 16-team tournament is stacked with current or former major leaguers, like pitcher Jason Marquis, catcher Ryan Lavarnway, first baseman Nate Freiman, designated hitter Ike Davis, third baseman Ty Kelly, and centerfielder Sam Fuld, while the rest of the roster has plenty of minor league experience.

It’s not a star-studded lineup, like the Dominican Republic’s, for instance, but they play good baseball. They’re also playing role of lovable underdog. One broadcaster read aloud from the promotional material concerning Israel’s slick-fielding shortstop during Wednesday night’s game like a mother boasting about her son. In high school, “Scott Burcham was selected top defensive shortstop in the Southland by the Los Angeles Times prior to his senior season.” We are all very proud of Scotty.

Yes, even people who aren’t normally baseball fans are pulling for Israel. Even before the U.S. team has taken the field (the Americans open Friday night against Colombia), the Israeli squad has generated an unusually high level of interest in the WBC. Initiated in 2006, followed by the 2009 and 2013 tournaments, the WBC is roughly modeled after the FIFA World Cup, held every four years. Previously, the WBC seemed to get lost in that strange gre -zone of spring training, somewhere between catchers and pitchers first reporting the second week of February and opening day. For scouts and baseball executives, it’s an opportunity to get a closer look at foreign talent, especially Asian players and the Cubans. In past WBCs, Cuban stars who eventually signed major league contracts after fleeing the island, like Aroldis Chapman and Jose Abreu, showed they could more than match up with big leaguers.

But for most casual fans, the WBC is essentially a string of exhibition games. Sure, you’re watching some of the game’s greats go against each other, but it’s not clear why Robinson Cano working Daisuke Matsuzaka to a 3-2 count is super exciting just because they’re in the uniforms of their national teams. It’s still March.

It’s different for fanatics with immigrant backgrounds from the Caribbean baseball powers, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the 2013 WBC championDominican Republic. Here some of the Dominican players celebrate “plátano pride,” and Baltimore Orioles star Manny Machado explains why he’s playing for the D.R. rather than the United States. The U.S. third baseman and star of the Colorado Rockies Nolan Arenado, whose mother’s family is Puerto Rican and father’s family comes from Cuba, remembers that his family made it “clear that I should be proud to live in this country because so many of the freedoms we have here do not exist in Cuba. But despite the negative views of the Cuban government, my family members still root like crazy for the Cuban national baseball team.”

I suspect there’s something similar going on with the Israeli club. American Jews are thrilled to see Jewish ballplayers take their place among the nations of baseball. Most of the Israel roster is made up of American ballplayers whose family history qualifies them for Israeli citizenship, but only two active players are Israelis. There’s veteran pitcher Shlomo Lipetz, and Dean Kremer, a right-handed pitcher the Los Angeles Dodgers selected out of the University of Nevada Las Vegas last year in the fourteenth round. He’s the first Israeli drafted by a big league club.

From Horned Helmets to Pussy Hats

If you thought Sweden’s men have become mice think again.
They are yet worthy of their warrior ancestors! They are still a fighting breed whom Sweden’s great seventeenth century soldier-king Gustavus Adolphus would recognise with pride!

Be not deceived! Those horned helmets we associate with the Vikings, those fearsome raiders who struck terror into all hearts, have not been abandoned.
They have merely been given a makeover, in keeping with the Wallstrom/Soros era.

See?

These stalwarts, members of the Construction Workers’ Union in Sweden, have been marking International Women’s Day.

You could read the original here On the other hand, you may wish to read a translation: the Vlad Tepes blog has one here

Too bad these guys couldn’t do something really constructive (no pun intended!) for the cause of Swedish women by breaking ranks with the rape capital of Europe’s crazy leftist-feminista-Islamophile government and identifying exactly where the clear and present danger to women’s rights and women’s safety really lies in the country Swedish journalist Ingrid Carlqvist so rightly terms Absurdistan!

Turkish Riots in Rotterdam Threaten Dutch Political Stability Ahead of Elections This Week By Patrick Poole

The Reuters picture above of supporters of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan are not from Istanbul or Ankara, but from riots overnight in Rotterdam that threaten the stability of the Netherlands ahead of Dutch parliamentary elections later this week.

The Rotterdam riots, which required a state of emergency to be declared by the Dutch government, are part of a larger unfolding drama involving provocations by the Turkish government inciting millions of Turkish citizens living in European countries.

The current crisis began when the Dutch government prevented the Turkish foreign minister from landing in the Netherlands to hold a political rally in Rotterdam in support of dictator Erdogan and an upcoming referendum in Turkey intended to give Erdogan more power. The foreign minister then landed in Metz, France.

Reuters reports:

Several hundred demonstrators waving Turkish flags gathered outside the Turkish consulate in the Dutch city of Rotterdam on Saturday, demanding to see the Turkish minister for family affairs as a dispute between the two countries escalated.

Police erected metal barriers and patrolled on horseback to keep the demonstrators away from the consulate as the crowd grew with more pro-Turkish protesters arriving from Germany.

Turkish Family Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya traveled by road to the Netherlands from neighboring Germany after the Dutch government revoked landing rights for a plane carrying Turkey’s foreign minister earlier on Saturday.

Dutch TV footage showed police stopping the minister’s convoy near the Turkish consulate in Rotterdam and preventing her from entering the building.

The Dutch government said it did not want Turkish politicians campaigning among Turkish emigres in the Netherlands, leading President Tayyip Erdogan to brand the fellow NATO member a “Nazi remnant”. CONTINUE AT SITE

Marine Deputy Commandant: Half Our Aircraft Not Ready to Fly By Rick Moran

The deputy commandant for programs and resources of the Marine Corps, Lt. Gen. Gary Thomas, says that budget sequestration has cut into the Corps’ readiness for combat, with less than half of their aircraft ready to fly. General Thomas said that number should be 75 percent, meaning the Marines’ ability to meet challenges is severely restricted.

Washington Examiner:

The service’s goal is to have 75 percent of its aircraft on the flight line ready to go, a number he called “reasonable” since routine maintenance will always take some aircraft out of commission.

But the actual number now is just 45 percent, mostly due to aircraft exceeding their planned service life, Thomas said. The statistic seemed to shock Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Subcommittee.

“I’m sorry, can we go back for a second,” Turner said. “That’s pretty abysmal. To have that be closing the gap, we must have been in dire straits.”

Thomas also said the service has identified a capability gap when it comes to keeping forces safe in vehicles.

“If you look at some of our current vehicles, they no longer are adequate for the types of threats that they face in terms of protecting our Marines,” Thomas said.

Oshkosh Defense is building a new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle for the Marines that Thomas said will help better protect troops from current threats.

Other capability gaps include counting an emerging threat from drones, and coping with a fleet of amphibious vehicles that is 40 years old, Thomas said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Holland: the Canary in the European Coal Mine By Michael Walsh

Holland was the first European country I set foot in as a lad, and it continues to have a special place in my memory. But the country I encountered in the summer of 1970 is all but unrecognizable now. In a fit of cultural enervation, social ennui, and just plain suicidal stupidity, it was among the first Western countries to throw open its doors to the avant-garde of Islam, and is now paying the price. So with the Dutch elections now looming, the question is: can the tide of Muslim social conquest be reversed?

The question is precipitated by the extraordinary sight of riots in Rotterdam this weekend when the Dutch government forbade the Turkish minister of family affairs from landing in Holland in order to openly campaign among Holland’s Turkish “emigrant” community on behalf of Turkish strongman Erdogan’s latest power grab, which is coming up for a vote on April 16. Naturally, she simply snuck across the border from Germany into the Netherlands, but the Dutch somehow managed enough backbone to block her.

Police using water cannon, horses and dogs moved in to disperse the crowds after several hours of demonstrations on Saturday evening. Protesters hit back, throwing rocks at the police, while hundreds of cars jammed the streets blaring their horns.

Tensions tipped over into violence after a day of fast-moving events, triggered when Turkey’s family affairs minister Sayan Kaya was stopped from attending the rally by being expelled from the Netherlands. Ms Kaya could be seen in images on Dutch NOS television appearing to argue with officers about the situation.

Earlier, Dutch authorities also refused permission for foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to land in the city, saying he was not welcome to campaign for the referendum. In response, Mr Erdogan accused the Dutch, who were once under Nazi occupation, of being “the vestiges of Nazis”.

To which a Dutch official replied: “It is a crazy remark, of course. But I understand they are angry, but this is of course way out of line.” If that’s the best riposte the Dutch government can muster, they’re going to need a lot more riot police.

Peter Smith: The Left Left Leak

Bill Leak, Australia’s eminent political cartoonist was forced to move his home and family to a secret location after being marked for death by Islamic fascists — real fascists, mind you, not the sort the sniveling Left perceives at every word of disagreement. He died of a heart attack.

The left is no longer the left unless names mean nothing. The old left would never, ever kneel before an oppressive medieval culture, nor would they cheer as Star Chamber commissars assault free speech. Bill knew that and it sickened him.
In Bill Leak’s last cartoon in The Australian (below) he has Rob Stokes, the NSW minister for education, in front of Punchbowl Boys High School, severed head in hand, explaining to an interviewer that “boys will be boys.” Getting to the nub of the matter is the cartoonist’s art. Bill Leak was a peerless grandmaster of it.

I was at the CIS function last Wednesday evening for the launch of his book Trigger Warning, which contains his cartoons over the year 2016. Partway through his speech, he was stopped in his tracks by Sir Les Patterson. If you are going to be pushed off stage I can’t think of any more formidable person to do it than Sir Les; though perhaps Dame Edna would come close. In any event, Bill took it in his stride: brilliant cartoonist interrupted by iconic entertainer. Ending is hard but I can’t think of a much better sign-off than a book launch, Sir Les and a final, cutting cartoon.

I met Bill only twice but on both occasions he told me how much he enjoyed reading Quadrant. Like me he was a convert from the dark side. I don’t know, but I tend to have more affinity with those who’ve seen the light than with those who start out that way. Being youthful and conservative doesn’t always sit right somehow. Aren’t the young supposed to be, at the least, a touch radical? Mind you, I think I’m living in the past when being left had more of a respectable and honourable cloth cap about it.

The left is no longer the left unless names mean nothing. The traditional left would not have happily seen miners thrown out of work and power stations and heavy industries closed down in pursuit of a climate chimera. They would not have been happy with strange men visiting their daughters’ bathrooms. They would not have been happy to have gender-fluidity studies shoved down their children’s throats. They would not have been happy to have free speech closed down to appease an alien and oppressive medieval religious culture.

Free speech? Not at my college! By John Meinhold

“You’re not going to let us speak.”

You would expect to hear those words in oppressive Communist regimes, or in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan where unacceptable speech can get you beheaded.

No — this is what was disgracefully heard this month at Middlebury College, an elite private liberal arts college in Vermont. This was what Professor Allison Stanger acknowledged to an unruly crowd of Middlebury students who decided it was “unacceptable” for Dr. Charles Murray, an invited controversial conservative political scientist and author, to speak on their campus. Among chants yelled by the mob was “Shut it down!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Charles Murray has got to go!”

Stanger, who had agreed to moderate the discussion then pursued plan B — go to a closed location and live stream the discussion. The angry students pursued and banged on the walls and set off fire alarms to try and stop any talk with Murray. Murray was there to discuss his book called Coming Apart, that details the plight of poor working class white Americans and how whites in America live in a stark two class society. Murray has been vilified for a previous book he co-authored called The Bell Curve. This book had some discussion on ethnicity and I.Q. which has led Murray to be called “a racist” and “white supremacist” among many other nasty labels.

No one seemed to know or care that Murray is the father of two biracial children, has degrees from Harvard and MIT, and even has a daughter who is an alumnus from Middlebury.

During the interrupted live stream talk Murray asked simply, “What is it that is so terrible that I cannot speak?” While Murray was trying to leave the campus, Stanger was assaulted and endured a neck injury and was treated at a hospital. Stanger later wrote, “I feared for my life.”

The incident at Middlebury has received national attention and articles have been written in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and many others. Last month a violent protest also broke out at UC Berkeley to stop Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial conservative writer, from speaking that resulted in $100,000 in property damage. Though the media has portrayed the incidents at Middlebury and Berkeley as a new trend, censorship of conservative speakers on U.S. college campuses has been ongoing. Furthermore, Caroline Glick, writes in the Jerusalem Post, “Jewish speakers and students have been subjected… to campaigns of repressions for nearly 20 years at universities and colleges throughout the US. What is new about the riots against Murray and Yiannopoulos is that they were shouted down despite the fact that they weren’t talking about Israel.”

The Arabs Know that the Moslem Brotherhood are Terrorists By James Lewis

Conservatives see the threat of aggressive Islam, which puts us far ahead of liberals, who merely live in stupefied denial. But conservatives tend to treat Islam as monolithic, which it is not.

Right now the Trump administration is considering whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, which sounds to Arab ears like “Is the Pope Catholic?” Do the Saudis play double games?” “Are the mullahs of Iran really genocidal?”

The answer is Yes! Yes! and Yes!

Which is why even Saudi Arabia, Russia, Syria, Bahrain, and the UAE have officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group. One of biggest on the Sunni side of the street.

A new article in Cairo’s Al Ahram this week gives an explanation even the New York Times could understand (if it wanted to). The MBs promote violent Jihad, and carry it on themselves in their civil war against Egypt. They sponsor Hamas terror against Israel. They follow radical doctrines. Most of all (and here comes a new word), the MB’s are taqfiri. (TAHK-fear-ey). They regularly declare other Muslim groups to be infidels, which means they will kill other Muslims unless they submit to the MB version of Islam. From its most basic belief, the Ikhwan is at war with all Muslims who do not follow its militant war doctrine. The doctrine of taqfir is basic, and deviation puts you outside of the circle.

And yes, there are peaceful Muslim sects, like the Ahmadiyya. But they are small minorities in constant trouble from the violence-supporting majority.

There are also rational Muslims like Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has said in a famous speech:

It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! …

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

Those may be the most important words any Muslim leader has said since 9/11/01.

Yet Obama chose to ignore Sisi and supported the Muslim Brotherhood instead. What does that tell you?

Hillary’s closest confidante, Huma Abedin, comes from an MB family, was indoctrinated from childhood onward, and is paid by a family “charity” who are all MBs. Hillary and Bill know all that, of course, but the Moobs bring in huge amounts of money to the Democrats, and that’s what counts for the Clintons. (It should also matter to the rest of us.)

Can America function with fewer than 33 assistant secretaries of state? By Ed Straker

The New York Times is again making hay of the fact that President Trump has not nominated any assistant secretaries of state, and Trump has been giving mixed signals on whether he thinks they are even necessary.

It turns out there are six undersecretaries of state and 22 assistant secretaries of state who report to them. If you factor in those with equivalent ranks, there are actually more like 33 assistant secretaries of state, each making an average of $155,000 a year, plus benefits!

Seven of the assistant secretaries cover different regions of the world, which makes some sense. You can’t have all ambassadors reporting directly to the secretary of state.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs

But after these posts it makes less and less sense. Let’s go over the rest of the list.

Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research

The State Department has an intelligence branch? I have never heard of it. Well, except maybe this guy (paragraph eight).

Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs

Why does a congressional liaison need to have the rank of assistant secretary?

Assistant Secretary of State for Administration

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs

Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security

The assistant secretary of state for administration deals with administering what? The consulates, I’ll bet! Why then do we need another secretary for consular affairs? And since diplomatic security is so integral to consulates, why can’t this all be wrapped into one job, rather than three?