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The Americans Obama Left Languishing In Iran’s Jails The human toll of Obama’s appeasement of the mullahs. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

President Obama had several key opportunities to put pressure on the ruling mullahs in the Islamic Republic to free the three American citizens (pastor Saeed Abedini, journalist Jason Rezaian and US Marine Amir Hekmati) who have been held for years in one of Iran’s notorious jails on bogus and baseless charges.

Last week, Jason Rezaian, the Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post, who has been behind bars in Iran since July 2014, was convicted. An Iranian court has finally handed down a verdict, but it is vague. The verdict comes after 447 days of Mr. Rezaian being in jail — that is three days more than the 444 days that American diplomats were held hostage. For those who argue Iran of 2015 is far different from the revolutionary Iran of 1979, this is a clear-cut example that the Islamic Republic is still the same: Islamist, anti-American, and oppressive.

The Iranian Students’ News Agency quoted Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardliner who is a spokesman for Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, as stating that Rezaian had been found guilty. Interestingly, Mr. Mohseni-Ejei, who was the minister of intelligence from 2005 to July 2009, insisted that he did not know the details of the sentence. Really?

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Immigration Law Enforcement: Why Bother? The crucial issues at stake for American citizens. Michael Cutler

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the responsibility for securing America’s borders against the illegal entry of people and contraband and for conducting inspections of people and cargo entering the United States has been the responsibility of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) a component agency of the DHS.

The Performance and Accountability Report / Fiscal Year 2014 reports that for FY 2014 CBP had 59,544 employees and was provided with a $13.9 billion annual budget for law enforcement and trade operations.

Yet I am compelled to ask, “Why bother spending all that money and expending that effort?”

Consider that President Obama and many politicians from both political parties have declared that we should provide unknown millions of illegal aliens, who evaded the vital inspections process at ports of entry, with lawful status in the United States. While the Democrats want to provide these individuals who have trespassed on the United States with a pathway to United States citizenship, most Republicans “only” want to provide them with lawful status and employment authorization.

Most illegal aliens do not enter the United States seeking United States citizenship. Most enter the United States seeking employment opportunities that ultimately displace American workers on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and, by their sheer huge numbers, suppress the wages for all such workers.

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Three Observations on Israel and the Palestinian Terror Wave…. When the chips are down, as isolated as ever. David Hornick ****

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

The Palestinian terror wave that began on October 1 struck again on Sunday evening with an attack at the bus station in Beersheva, my town. Monday, at the time of writing, has been quiet so far, but it’s certainly too soon to say whether the wave is subsiding.

It’s not too soon, though, to point out some things that already emerge from this latest onslaught. They are not new phenomena. They indicate, though, that even as Israel keeps making great strides in various fields that benefit humanity (water use and conservation is one of the most dramatic), and keeps upgrading its ties with important countries (lately, particularly, India), it remains a country that is subjected to special, malign treatment.

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The Democrats- Reflexively barking out slogans and soundbites that offer nothing for a nation. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

The media court-encomiasts of the Democrat Party were gushing last week over Hillary Clinton’s supposed “victory” in the first primary debate. “Crushed” was the cliché de jour used to describe Clinton’s besting of the cranks, has-beens, and nobodies running against her. Such praise is akin to calling her the tallest building in Wichita Kansas, to paraphrase William F. Buckley.

Yet when it comes to substance, there was little or nothing specific or fresh or even rational in the various nostrums the candidates shouted out like the expletives and epithets involuntarily vocalized by victims of Tourette’s Syndrome. Except for a brief tussle over who hated the NRA the most, and the occasional good sense from Jim Webb, the debate was a dreary list of reflexive progressive talking points utterly disconnected from the real world.

When gun control came up, for example, candidates immediately started twitching and barking out “assault rifles!” and “gun shows!” The facts suggest otherwise. As BusinessWeek pointed out, fewer than 3% of the 12,000 murders in 2014 involved rifles of any sort, let alone semi-automatic assault rifles––a percentage less than knives (13%) and feet and hands (6%). As for gun shows, sellers are subject to the same federal licensing laws as sellers in retail stores, and in any case guns purchased at gun shows account for no more than 2% of the guns used in crimes.

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Christie Davies Rape, Islam and the Deafening Silence

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

Authorities insist on describing predators only as “Asian”. In Banbury, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bristol, Burnley, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derby, Leeds, London, Manchester, Oldham, Oxford, Peterborough, Preston, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield and Telford locals need no translation
A few weeks ago a Muslim sex gang was convicted at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, of raping a girl when she was under sixteen and arranging for another sixty men to do the same. The offences occurred in the quiet market town of Aylesbury. It is just the latest in a long series of trials for rape and sex attacks on under-age English girls by Muslim gangs in town after town right across the country including Banbury, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bristol, Burnley, Cambridge, Carlisle, Derby, Leeds, London, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Oldham, Oxford, Peterborough, Preston, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield and Telford. The victims of these horrible sex crimes were usually vulnerable young girls without families to protect them. More trials are currently taking place in Newcastle and Manchester. The gangs were often traffickers who once they had gained control over a girl would pass her around as a sex-object so that as many of their fellow Muslims as possible could enjoy her.

What is striking is that whenever a group of Muslims commits a crime of this kind, the press and broadcasters go out of their way to avoid identifying the religion of the malefactors. They are even less willing to suggest any causal connection between these acts and the central practices of that religion, the connection that makes it both ethical and necessary to identify and stress the faith of the perpetrators.

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Trump-ism wins big in Switzerland. By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

Is It Possible to Speak about Culture?

Another populist anti-immigration party in Europe has made a very strong showing in a national election — the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) just won a third of the seats in parliament — and polite society is as always scandalized.

You’d think they’d be getting used to it. It may have happened while Senator Sanders wasn’t looking, but in Denmark, the country that currently serves as a beloved mascot of American progressives, the Danish People’s party took 21 percent of the vote in the 2015 general election, just behind the first-place Social Democrats with 26 percent; in reality, though, that wasn’t a second-place finish for the DPP, which picked up 15 seats while the Social Democrats picked up only three. The big issue for the DPP? Border controls, restrictions on immigration and asylum, and Euroskepticism.

In a pattern that will not be unfamiliar to those following the politics of “welfare chauvinism” — which is traditional welfare-statism fortified with nativism — the DPP’s win came largely at the expense of the free-market Venstre party, which seeks to reduce welfare spending while the DPP promises to increase it.

And so it goes: The anti-immigration, pro-welfare Sweden Democrats won 49 seats in parliament in the 2014 election. The UK Independence party, which was founded to oppose British submission to the European Union, has made immigration its centerpiece domestic concern, with party leader Nigel Farage calling it “the biggest single issue facing this party.” Its electoral clout continues to grow. In France, the National Front had a big year in the 2014 municipal and European elections, taking 25 percent of the vote. A 2015 poll commissioned by the left-leaning magazine Marianne found that National Front leader Marine Le Pen was the favorite to win the first round of the 2017 presidential elections. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Freedom party, which has called for a ban on immigration from Muslim countries, has gone in a few short years from non-existence to third-largest party. In 1993, there was a schism in Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ), with a faction objecting to the party’s obsessive and sometimes extreme focus on immigration and nationalism breaking off to form a more conventional free-market party, which was never heard from again, while the FPÖ, now under new leadership, thrives as the third-largest party, lagging its two larger competitors by only a few percentage points in the elections.

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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: OBAMA’S MORAL EQUIVALENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ****

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

Moral Abdication in the Middle East The West has developed a dangerous concern for ‘proportionality.’
In the current epidemic of Palestinian violence, scores of Arab youths are attacking, supposedly spontaneously, Israeli citizens with knives. Apparently, edged weapons have more Koranic authority, and, in the sense of media spectacle, they provide greater splashes of blood. Thus the attacker is regularly described as “unarmed” and a victim when he is “disproportionately” stopped by bullets.

The Obama State Department has condemned the use of “excessive” Israeli force in response to Palestinian terrorism. John Kirby, the hapless State Department spokesman, blamed “both” sides for terrorism, and the president himself called on attackers and their victims to “tamp down the violence.”

In short, the present U.S. government — which is subsidizing the Palestinians to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year — is incapable of distinguishing those who employ terrorist violence from the victims against whom the terrorism is directed. But why is the Obama administration — which can apparently distinguish those who send out drones from those who are blown up by them on the suspicion of employing terrorist violence — morally incapable of calling out Palestinian violence? After all, in the American case, we blow away suspects whom we think are likely terrorists; in the Israeli instance, they shoot or arrest those who have clearly just committed a terrorist act.

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The Latest Progressive Attack on Speech- Still infuriated by the Citizens United ruling, the left keeps trying to undo that blow for freedom.By Dan Epstein

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

On Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing arguments in Van Hollen v. FEC. Though little-known, this case is a critical part of the left’s campaign to silence political debate after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that upheld campaign spending as protected speech. At stake again are no less than the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and free association.

The central figure is Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who argues that he has a right to participate “in elections untainted by expenditures from undisclosed sources.” He sued the Federal Election Commission in 2011, claiming that the agency infringed upon this right. In his lawsuit, he says that federal law requires nonprofits that fund “electioneering communications”—ads that advocate for a candidate’s election or defeat—to release a full list of supporters. Mr. Van Hollen asked the court to strike down an FEC regulation that prevents such disclosure.

Issued in 2007, the FEC rule requires nonprofits to disclose only donors who gave money for the specific purpose of funding electioneering communications. Those who funded, say, a new research program, didn’t need to be disclosed. The FEC intended to balance the public’s interest in political disclosure with the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. As such, there is disclosure for those who engaged in the electoral process, and privacy for those who didn’t.

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Andrew Browne: Beijing Reaches for Military Upper Hand in Asia A quickly narrowing gap adds risks for U.S. in countering China

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

TAIPEI—In 1996, when China tried to intimidate voters on Taiwan by firing missiles close to the island, U.S. President Bill Clinton swiftly sent in two aircraft-carrier battle groups. His blunt message to Beijing: back off.

America was at the zenith of its power, while China was virtually defenseless at sea and in the air, so the Pentagon could afford to act with swagger. A conflict, had China been foolish enough to provoke one, would have exposed its chronic military backwardness. Confronted, Beijing was forced to yield.

Today, a gathering crisis in the South China Sea over China’s massive island building underscores how dramatically the military balance has shifted in East Asia, not just over Taiwan but everywhere within reach of Chinese missiles, fighters and submarines. The U.S. isn’t shying away; it is planning a naval challenge any day now around the Spratly Islands, where China has equipped one of its dredged platforms with a runway long enough to land military jets. But the White House has been agonizing for months about the risks.

Don’t expect aircraft carriers. They’re now targets for the world’s first operational antiship ballistic missiles. Besides, shock and awe isn’t part of any rational game plan these days against China, whose military spending has been growing by an annual average of 11% since 1996, narrowing the military gap with America faster than almost anybody thought possible.

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The Secret Awfulness of Saudi Arabia by Douglas Murray

Posted By on October 20th, 2015

Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr, arrested in Saudi Arabia at the age of seventeen, has been sentenced to beheading and crucifixion.

Last week, two Saudi human rights activists were sentenced to jail for illegally establishing a human rights organization, questioning the credibility and objectivity of the judiciary, interfering with the Saudi Human Rights Commission (one can imagine what that is like), and describing Saudi Arabia as a police state.

Karl Andree, a 74-year-old British grandfather and a UK citizen who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for the last year, is due to receive 350 lashes for unpardonable crime of being caught with some homemade wine.

British Justice Minister Michael Gove has now reportedly insisted that the UK could not possibly enter into a contract to train Saudi prison guards.

The naïve Western leaders are those who expect our countries to carry on with “business as usual” with a regime that sentences our citizens to flogging, and that beheads and crucifies political dissidents.

The naïve politicians are those who think the publics of the West do not know what a human rights sewer Saudi Arabia is, or think that we will put up with it. If that were ever the case, that time is over.

Is international opinion on Saudi Arabia finally shifting? For years, one of the great embarrassments and contradictions of Western diplomacy has been the intimacy of the West’s relationship with the House of Saud. Of course, both Britain and America have some responsibility for installing and then maintaining the Saudi royal family in their position. Were it not for this circumstance, in addition to the world’s largest oil reserves, the people we now call the Saudi royal family would be neither richer nor any more famous than any other group of goat-herders in the region.