Soros & Democracy Alliance Billionaires Headed For Your Local Community - John Perazzo

by John Perazzo

How Democrat mega-donors plan to retake power for the Left.

While Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, tenured professors, and fainthearted college students nationwide continue to react to Donald Trump's presidential election with anger, bewilderment, bouts of weeping, and illiterate tweets, the core leaders of the political Left are already busy planning how they will seek to deligitimize and destroy Trump's presidency before it even gets off the ground.

The first major effort in that direction occurred this week in Washington’s luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where a group of super-wealthy leftist funders known as the Democracy Alliance sponsored a three-day, closed-door meeting attended by the multi-billionaire George Soros, the leaders of many left-wing activist groups and labor unions, and Congressional luminaries like Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, and Keith Ellison. Over the past decade, the Democracy Alliance has given at least $500 million to pro-Democrat and leftist causes. High on the list of priorities at its Washington conference was a discussion of how to derail Trump's “100-day plan,” which the Alliance characterizes as “a terrifying assault on President Obama’s achievements — and our progressive vision for an equitable and just nation.”

In a recent email to his allies and donors, Democracy Alliance president Gara LaMarche offered a clear indication of where the Democrats plan to direct their attention and resources over the next few years. Specifically, he said that this week's conference would focus on assessing “what steps we will take together to … take back power, beginning in the states in 2017 and 2018.” Raj Goyle, a Democratic activist who is also involved with the Democracy Alliance, concurred that “progressive donors and organizations need to immediately correct the lack of investment in state and local strategies.”

Let that sink in: State and local … State and local … State and local.

This strategy of focusing on state and local politics dovetails seamlessly with the monumentally significant, recent announcement that former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will be chairing the newly formed National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), which was developed in close consultation with the Obama White House. NDRC's mission will be to: (a) help Democrats take control of the political offices that decide how state legislative and congressional districts are configured, and (b) configure them in a way that will maximize Democratic power in the U.S. House of Representatives as well as in statehouses across the country.

In almost every U.S. state, the state legislature determines precisely where the boundary lines for each congressional and state legislative district should be situated, and the resulting maps are then either approved or vetoed by the governor. This process occurs every ten years, after the U.S. Census has been taken. Obviously, a political party has a great advantage if, at that juncture in time, it has control of a state legislature, a governorship, or both. Republicans currently control 68 out of 99 state legislative chambers, and 31 out of 50 governorships.

To address this imbalance, NDRC aims to promote the election of Democrats as state lawmakers and governors by means of highly aggressive get-out-the-vote efforts, advertising campaigns, ballot initiatives, and legal challenges to state redistricting maps. The overriding goal is to ensure that those Democrats will be in office when it is time to draw up and approve new district maps after the 2020 Census. And to help the Democrats draw those maps in a manner that favors their party, NDRC will carefully analyze the demographic makeup of every neighborhood, every street, and every city block, in order to ascertain precisely how many Democrats and Republicans, respectively, reside in each proposed district. In states where Democrats are in political control, they will be able — with the aid of the demographic data supplied by NDRC — to tweak and bend the boundary lines of their districts however they wish, so as to create as many majority-Democrat districts as possible.

Of course, to accomplish all this, NDRC will need lots of money. And that's where the Democracy Alliance and George Soros come in. They've got billions of dollars at their disposal. And they can give as much as they want to NDRC, because the organization is incorporated as a tax-exempt “Section 527 Committee” — a term referring to the section of the IRS tax code that governs such entities. As Open Secrets.org explains: “These groups are typically … organized for the purpose of influencing an issue, policy, appointment or election … [and] can raise unlimited funds from individuals, corporations or labor unions, but they must register with the IRS and disclose their contributions and expenditures.”

Unlimited funds. George Soros. Democracy Alliance. Corporate and union donors. A multi-partner marriage of political radicals, made in heaven. And the presence of Democrat patron saints like Eric Holder and Barack Obama — the latter of whom has already stated that the advancement of NDRC's agenda will become the main focus of his own post-presidential activities — will undoubtedly help to convince many leftist millionaires and billionaires that it is worth their while to dump the contents of their wallets into the project.

The Democratic Party may be in turmoil for the moment, but its leaders and funders have never been more driven to increase their political power than they are right now.

John Perazzo

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264876/soros-democracy-alliance-billionaires-headed-your-john-perazzo

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ISIS is only a symptom - underneath lies a much deeper threat - Prof. Louis René Beres

by Prof. Louis René Beres

Our enemy is not ISIS per se, but rather a flagrantly sweeping Jihadist ideology with multiple, disparate, and sometimes reciprocally related terror offshoots.

“I learn a science from the soul’s aggressions.”— Saint-John Perse

Amid all current debate about the best way to defeat ISIS, one easily forgets that this Jihadist adversary is merely the most visible expression of a much wider and much deeper pathology. Failing to understand this vital hierarchy of importance will be very costly, no matter what one’s own subjective position on counter-terrorism strategy and tactics may be. After all, an inevitable consequence of any such failure would be to strike vainly against symptoms, and not meaningfully against actual “disease.”

The epidemic violence we continue to witness in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, is only microcosm. It is, more precisely, just the most visible reflection of far more pervasive determinants. They are,: (1) the relentlessly malignant tribalism of our world order system; and (2) the fusion of derivative and broadly sectarian violence with reinforcing claims of “sacredness.”

The philosopher Hegel once commented: “The State is the march of God in the world.” This crucial nineteenth-century observation now applies equally well to an expansive amalgam of twenty-first century Arab/Islamic terrorist groups, and not merely to ISIS.

Looking ahead, we must consider yet another ominous fusion. This is the prospective coming together of atomic capability with decisional irrationality. Such a fearful prospect should come to mind, not only in such “front page” venues as Iran and Pakistan, but also North Korea. As earlier instructed by the Prussian strategist, Carl von Clausewitz (On War), world politics are eternally and relentlessly systemic. It follows, we must finally understand, that what happens in north Asia, just as an example, could also substantially impact Europe and/or North America.

We can never really hope to fix the “ISIS problem” until we have first understood the more underlying human bases and expected rewards of Jihadist-engineered insurgent conflicts. It is important, therefore, that we soon learn to look seriously and continuously behind the news.

Always, it must be recalled, the conspicuously grinding threat from ISIS is more a visible symptom, than an actual disease.

If we should mistakenly focus too much on ridding ourselves of this singular symptom, and not the underlying disease, we could then find ourselves exacerbating the ultimately more fundamental and more insidiously “metastatic” pathology. To wit, if American policy should wrongly focus upon the “War Against ISIS” as consuming and overriding, we would then simultaneously strengthen other foes in Syria, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah.

For other examples, focusing too much on ISIS could undermine our counter-terrorist regime allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who are presently engaged in combat operations against Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and also strengthen assorted Muslim Brotherhood forces, including Palestinian Hamas — the Islamic Resistance Movement — which is effectively the “Son of Muslim Brotherhood.” Of course, a too-consuming counter-terrorist focus on ISIS would correspondingly embolden a variety of core al-Qaeda organizations, groups from which ISIS itself had originally been spawned.

In essence, any disproportionate harms that are consciously directed toward eliminating a particular terror group could at the same time benefit different terrorist adversaries, both Sunni and Shia. We must never lose sight of the fact that our enemy is not ISIS per se, but rather a flagrantly sweeping Jihadist ideology with multiple, disparate, and sometimes reciprocally related terror offshoots.

Always, it is this underlying ideology that we must “defeat,” not just ISIS.

It is, therefore, a war of “mind over mind” that we must now learn to wage, and not just the more familiar and more orthodox war of  “mind over matter.” In this connection, it goes without saying, such a cerebral conflict is much more difficult to conduct successfully, and is also more operationally challenging.

Although we might prefer an adversary against which we could somehow appeal to reason, it is never for us to decide any pertinent enemy’s degree of attachment to the presumptively comforting fogs of irrationality. In response, we ought not flee from reason ourselves, but must nonetheless learn to deal effectively with those Jihadist enemies who might still yearn for the incomparably seductive whisperings of personal immortality.

From the beginning, all principal violence in world politics has been driven by contrived tribal conflicts, both between and within nations, and by a conveniently “sacred” promise to reward the abundantly faithful with freedom from death. A related promise has always offered to include each believer in a uniquely privileged community of them “elect.” Significantly, this always lethal promise is not unique to the present religious moment in history. In one sense, at least, it was as evident in the expressly anti-religious policies of the Third Reich, as it is today in easily recognizable parts of the ‘dar al Islam.’

On this persistently omnivorous planet, we humans often remain dedicated to virtually all varieties of ritual violence, and, accordingly, to various sacrificial practices that are readily disguised as either war or terrorism. Ironically, however, this markedly convenient dedication is not necessarily an example of immorality, or even of plain foolishness.

Here, history takes pride of place. Our entire system of international relations, first shaped at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, is itself rooted in a seemingly immutable pattern of institutionalized horror. In this worldwide “state of nature,” as we already learned from the seventeenth century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan), the life of man is necessarily “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” No doubt, many of us may still manage to live well in this murderous condition of nature, but only because we stubbornly refuse to believe what terrors must still lie ahead.

Preoccupied with reality television, and with every other conceivable form of distracting and demeaning political entertainments, we in the West are not just tactically vulnerable to impending paroxysms of mega-terror. We are also and more importantly unprepared. To change this, to meaningfully improve our national and global security prospects, we must first learn to carefully distinguish between symptoms from disease, and then, to thoughtfully combat the substantially broader and connective ideology of our collective Jihadist enemy.

In this way, now engaged in a more purposeful war of “mind over mind,” we could finally fashion a useful “science” from the Jihadist soul’s still-planned aggression.

Sent by the author, a frequent columnist on Arutz Sheva, re-posted from the Oxford University Press blog.


Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of many major books and articles dealing with world politics, literature and philosophy, published at The Atlantic; US News & World Report; Washington Times; The New York Times; The Jerusalem Post; The Hill; Harvard National Security Journal; International Journal of Intelligence & Counterintelligence and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy, was published earlier this year.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19782

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Why did Democratic congressmen meet with anti-Israel terrorist? - David Rosenberg

by David Rosenberg

Five House Democrats met with PFLP terrorist during trip to Judea and Samaria.

Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson

Alex Wong/Getty Images via JTA 

Five congressional Democrats met with an Arab terrorist affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the organization responsible for the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi and decades of murderous terror attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces.

The five House Democrats, including Luis Gutierrez (Illinois), Hank Johnson (Georgia), Matt Cartwright (Pennsylvania), Dan Kildee (Michigan), and Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), toured Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem on a guided tour paid for by the American Global Institute.

The AGI, which was founded by Sudanese-born Arab lobbyist Alsadig Omer Khalafalla, covered the expenses for the five congressmen – amounting to between $11,000 and $15,000 for each participant.

During the trip, the five met with Shawan Jabarin, whom the itinerary described as the General Director of Al-Haq, for a discussion on “Palestinian political prisoners”.

What the AGI itinerary failed to note, however, are Jabarin’s ties to terrorism.

A member of the PFLP, Jabarin was convicted for his efforts to enlist support abroad for attacks on Israel. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but was released after nine months due to respiratory difficulties.

While Jabarin has since denied any ties to the terror group after his release from prison, rebranding himself as a “human rights activist”, a 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court found that he has used his ties with alleged human rights groups to conceal his terrorist activities.

According to the court, Jabarin is “an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights; rather, they violate the most basic right of them all, the most fundamental right that without which there are no other rights - the right to life.”

Because of his activities on behalf of the PFLP, Israel placed a travel ban on Jabarin in 2006.
None of the five congressmen responded to questions posed by The Weekly Standard regarding the meeting with Jabarin. The Standard noted that while 71 members of congress had been invited to participate in the tour, only five accepted.

Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies slammed the legislators, saying their failure to properly scrutinize the itinerary was either gross carelessness – or tacit support for terrorism.

"At best, this was poor vetting and poor decision making on the part of these members, who may not have fully understood who they were meeting with,” he told the Standard. “At worst, they were knowingly engaging with a virulently anti-Israel figure with disconcerting ties to a known terrorist organization."

Two months after the trip, one of the participants, Hank Johnson, compared Jewish families living in Judea and Samaria to “termites”.

“There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming,” Johnson said at an event organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.


David Rosenberg

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/220504

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Islamic Terrorists not Poor and Illiterate, but Rich and Educated - Giulio Meotti

by Giulio Meotti

The West seems to have trouble accepting that terrorists are not driven by inequality, but by hatred for Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian values of the West.

• "The better young people are integrated, the greater the chance is that they radicalize. This hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence". — From a report by researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
• "The proportions of [Islamic State] administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education," according to a World Bank report. "Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group."
• Britain's MI5 revealed that "two-thirds of the British suspects have a middle-class profile and those who want to become suicide bombers are often the most educated".
• Researchers have discovered that "the richer the countries are the more likely will provide foreign recruits to the terrorist group [ISIS]."
• For the Nazis, the "inferior race" (the Jews) did not deserve to exist; for the Stalinists, the "enemies of the people" were not entitled to continue living; for the Islamists, it is the West itself that does not deserve to exist.
• It is anti-Semitism, not poverty, that led the Palestinian Authority to name a school after Abu Daoud, mastermind of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

"There is a stereotype that young people from Europe who leave for Syria are victims of a society that does not accept them and does not offer them sufficient opportunities... Another common stereotype in the debate in Belgium is that, despite research which refutes this, radicalization is still far too often misunderstood as a process resulting from failed integration... I therefore dare say that the better young people are integrated, the greater the chance is that they radicalize. This hypothesis is supported by a lot of evidence."

That was the result of extremely important Dutch research, led by a group of academics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Terrorists seem to be models of successful integration: for instance, Mohammed Bouyeri, the Moroccan-Dutch terrorist who shot the filmmaker Theo van Gogh to death, then stabbed him and slit his throat in 2004. "He [Bouyeri] was a well-educated guy with good prospects," said Job Cohen, the Labor Party mayor of Amsterdam.

Terrorists seem to be models of successful integration. Mohammed Bouyeri (left), the Moroccan-Dutch terrorist who shot the filmmaker Theo van Gogh (right) to death, then stabbed him and slit his throat in 2004. "[Bouyeri] was a well-educated guy with good prospects," said Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam.

The Dutch research was followed by research from France, adding more evidence to the thesis that goes against the liberal belief that to defeat terrorism, Europe must invest in economic opportunities and social integration. Dounia Bouzar, director of the Center for Prevention, Deradicalization and Individual Monitoring (CPDSI), a French organization dealing with Islamic radicalism, studied the cases of 160 families whose children had left France to fight in Syria. Two-thirds were members of the middle class.

These findings dismantle the myth of the proletariat of terror. According to a new World Bank report, "Islamic State's recruits are better educated than their fellow countrymen".

Poverty and deprivation are not, as John Kerry said, "the root cause of terrorism." Studying the profiles of 331 recruits from an Islamic State database, the World Bank found that 69% have at least a high school education, while a quarter of them graduated from college. The vast majority of these terrorists had a job or profession before joining the Islamist organization. "The proportions of administrators but also of suicide fighters increase with education," according to the World Bank report. "Moreover, those offering to become suicide bombers ranked on average in the more educated group."

Less than 2% of the terrorists are illiterate. The study also points to the countries that supply ISIS with more recruits: Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey and Egypt. Examining the economic situation of these countries, researchers have discovered that "the richer the countries are the more likely will provide foreign recruits to the terrorist group."

Another report explained that "the poorest countries in the world don't have exceptional levels of terrorism".

Despite the evidence, a progressive mantra repeats that Islamic terrorism is the result of injustice, poverty, economic depression and social unrest. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The thesis that poverty breeds terrorism is pervasive today in the West, from French economist Thomas Piketty to Pope Francis. It is probably so popular because it plays on Western collective guilt, seeking to rationalize what the West seems to have trouble accepting: that terrorists are not driven by inequality, but by hatred for Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian values of the West. For Israel, this means: What are Jews doing on land that -- even though for 3,000 years it has been called Judea -- we think should be given to Palestinian terrorists? And these terrorists most likely wonder why they should negotiate, if instead they can be handed everything they want.

For the Nazis, the "inferior race" (the Jews) did not deserve to exist but must be gassed; for the Stalinists, the "enemies of the people" were not entitled to continue living, and had to die of forced labor and cold in the Gulag; for the Islamists, it is the West itself that does not deserve to exist and has to be blown up.

It is anti-Semitism, not poverty, that led the Palestinian Authority to name a school after Abu Daoud, mastermind of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

The Paris bombings, the anniversary of which France will commemorate in a few days, was a blow unleashed by an ideology that does not seek to fight poverty, but to gain power through terror. It is the same Islamist ideology that murdered the Charlie Hebdo journalists and the policemen on duty to protect them; that forced British writer Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade; that slit the throat of Father Jacques Hamel; that butchered commuters in London, Brussels and Madrid; that assassinated hundreds of Israeli Jews on buses and restaurants; that killed 3,000 people in the United States on September 11; that assassinated Theo Van Gogh on an Amsterdam street for making a film; that committed mass rapes in Europe and massacres in the cities and deserts of Syria and Iraq; that blew up 132 children in Peshawar; and that regularly kills so many Nigerians that no one now pays any attention to it.

It is the Islamist ideology that drives terrorism, not poverty, corruption or despair. It is them, not us.

The whole history of political terror is marked by fanatics with advanced education who have declared war on their own societies. Khmer Rouge's Communist genocide in Cambodia came out from the classrooms of the Sorbonne in Paris, where their leader, Pol Pot, studied writings of European Communists. The Red Brigades in Italy was the scheme of wealthy privileged boys and girls from the middle class. Between 1969 and 1985, terrorism in Italy killed 428 people. Fusako Shigenobu, the leader of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, was a highly-educated specialist in literature. Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path in Peru, one of the most ruthless guerrilla groups in history, taught at the University of Ayacucho, where he conceived of a war against "the democracy of empty bellies." "Carlos the Jackal," the most infamous terrorist in the 1970s, was the son of one of the richest lawyers in Venezuela, Jose Altagracia Ramirez. Mikel Albizu Iriarte, a leader of the Basque ETA terrorists, came from a wealthy family in San Sebastián. Sabri al-Banna, the Palestinian terrorist known to the world as "Abu Nidal," was the son of a wealthy merchant born in Jaffa.

Some of the British terrorists who have joined the Islamic State come from wealthy families and attended the most prestigious schools in the UK. Abdul Waheed Majid made the long journey from the English town of Crawley to Aleppo, Syria, where he blew himself up. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, graduated from the London School of Economics. Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a jeep full of explosives into the Glasgow airport, had been president of the Islamic Society at Queen's University. Faisal Shahzad, the failed terrorist of Times Square in New York, was the son of a high official in the Pakistani military. Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth man of the 9/11 attacks, had a PhD in International Economics from the London's South Bank University. Saajid Badat, who wanted to blow up a commercial flight, studied optometry at London University. Azahari Husin, the terrorist who prepared the bombs in Bali, studied at the University of Reading.

Britain's MI5 revealed that "two-thirds of the British suspects have a middle-class profile and those who want to become suicide bombers are often the most educated." Most British terrorists also had a wife and children, debunking another myth, that of terrorists as social losers. Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the suicide bombers of July 7, 2005, studied at Leeds Metropolitan University. Omar Khan Sharif had a scholarship at King's College before carrying out a suicide bombing on Tel Aviv's seafront promenade in 2003. Sharif was not looking for economic redemption, but to slaughter as many Jews as possible.

Virtually all the heads of international terror groups are children of privilege, who led gilded lives before joining the terror ranks. 15 of the 19 suicide bombers of September 11 came from prominent Middle Eastern families. Mohammed Atta was the son of a lawyer in Cairo. Ziad Jarrah, who crashed Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, belonged to one of the most affluent Lebanese families in Lebanon.

Nasra Hassan, who wrote an informed profile of Palestinian suicide bombers for The New Yorker, explained that, "of 250 suicide bombers, not one was illiterate, poor or depressed." The unemployed, it seems, are always the least likely to support terror attacks.

Europe and America gave everything to these terrorists: educational and employment opportunities, popular entertainment and sexual pleasures, salaries and welfare, and religious freedom. These terrorists, such as the "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abulmutallab, the son of a banker, have not seen a day of poverty in their life. Paris's terrorists rejected the secularist values of liberté, egalité, fraternité; British jihadists who bombed London and now fight for the Caliphate rejected multiculturalism; the Islamist who killed Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam repudiated Dutch relativism, and ISIS's soldier, Omar Mateen, who turned Orlando's Pulse Club into a slaughterhouse, said he wanted to purge it from what he perceived as libertine licentiousness and apparently his own homophilic wishes.

If the West does not understand the real source of this hatred, but instead indulges in false excuses such as poverty, it will not win this war being waged against us.
 

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9343/terrorism-poverty-despair

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Righting the Wrongs of U.S.-Iran Policy - Heshmat Alavi

by Heshmat Alavi

Iran considered the Obama presidency as a golden era. It is now on the shoulders of Donald Trump and the new Republican-controlled Congress to patch various wounds inflicted by eight years of mistaken Iran appeasement policy.

The world begins to digest the major development of business tycoon Donald Trump defeating former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Among the many questions regarding this unexpected election result is the new administration’s approach vis-à-vis Iran. Considering the Iran nuclear deal, viewed by President Barack Obama as his foreign policy crown jewel, there are inarguable mistakes that need urgent remedies. Iran considered the Obama presidency as a golden era. It is now on the shoulders of Donald Trump and the new Republican-controlled Congress to patch various wounds inflicted by eight years of mistaken Iran appeasement policy.

Iran nuclear deal

The Obama Doctrine, if you will, was based on extending a hand to America’s historical rivals. This stirred serious anger among traditional U.S. allies, especially in the Middle East, and members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. However, Obama managed to push forward his initiative at the expense of others. This policy envisioned Iran becoming a more responsible partner of the international community as a result of the nuclear deal, a premise now revealed as a wish-fulfillment daydream. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported that Iran has again exceeded the permitted level of heavy water, raising eyebrows across the board. This is the result of a weak stance adopted by the Obama administration after the nuclear deal.

Iran is also taking advantage of the opportunity to continue its gross human rights violations, enormous support for terrorist groups not only across the Middle East but even in the U.S. and Europe as well, and persisting in inflaming wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. The incoming administration in Washington has the opportunity to weigh a more serious approach against Tehran. Such a policy must force Iran to quickly wind down its nuclear efforts and bring an end to horrendous human rights violations and daily execution of its opponents.

Tehran’s terrorism and foreign intervention

The Obama administration took a turn for the worst from day one, pledging to pull out all American troops from Iraq. This signaled a major American policy shift in the Middle East, raising concerns for U.S. allies and providing a much-sought opportunity for the mullahs in Tehran. Obama’s White House argued Iran would play a constructive role in stabilizing the entire region, beginning with Iraq. Unfortunately, what the world witnessed has been anything but.

Obama turned his back to Iran’s meddling in Iraq in favor of pursuing the JCPOA at all costs -- viewed as an unofficial pact paving the way for Tehran’s political/military infiltration of Baghdad and fueling the rise of Daesh (ISIS).

The situation calls for a Trump White House to work closely with the new Congress in adopting a firm Middle East policy by recognizing the root of all such crises. Iran must be brought to comprehend that a new administration in Washington means an end to an enormously profitable political period.

Atrocious human rights record

Choosing not to support the 2009 uprising movement in Iran, Obama made it crystal clear to all his intention to pursue a policy of close engagement with Tehran. This emboldened the mullahs to take full advantage of such a change in attitude from Washington by significantly intensifying their domestic crackdown. Despite claiming to be a moderate, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has presided over 2,500 executions during his tenure. Scores more are on death row and Iran’s jails are packed with inmates like never before. While smiling to the outside world and claiming to seek reforms, Rouhani has remained completely loyal to the establishment by supporting a continuing policy of oppression, torture, and executions.

Congress rightfully introduced the Iran Human Rights Legislation and a new administration must build upon this initiative. Donald Trump has the opportunity to show his support for the Iranian nation and their thirst for freedom, democracy, and other values cherished also by the American people.

Conclusion

President Barack Obama made a strategic mistake in adopting a mistaken and already failed Iran appeasement policy. Iran continues to quietly cheat on the nuclear accord, inflame wars across the Middle East, and clamp down on human rights inside its own borders. This must end, and the wrongs of the Obama era must be made right. Donald Trump has the opportunity to create a completely new perspective on Iran. The Iranian people are begging for the new administration to support their struggle for freedom.

Obama failed to extend his hand to the Iranian people. Donald Trump should not. His White House and the new Republican Congress should work closely to adopt a firm Iran policy worthy of the values America stands for.

Heshmat Alavi

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/righting_the_wrongs_of_usiran_policy.html

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The Ellison Challenge - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads today. And so do the Jewish Democrats.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads today. And so do the Jewish Democrats.


Out of power in the White House and both houses of Congress, the Democrats must decide what sort of party they will be in the post-Obama world.


They have two basic options.


They can move to the Center and try to rebuild their blue collar voter base that President-elect Donald Trump captivated with his populist message. To do so they will need to loosen the reins of political correctness and weaken their racialism, their radical environmentalism and their support for open borders.


This is the sort of moderate posture that Bill Clinton led with. It is the sort of posture that Clinton tried but failed to convince his wife to adopt in this year’s campaign.


The second option is to go still further along the leftist trajectory that President Barack Obama set the party off on eight years ago. This is the favored option of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. Sanders’s supporters refer to this option as the populist course.


It is being played out today on the ground by the anti- Trump protesters who refuse to come to terms with the Trump victory and insistently defame Trump as a Nazi or Hitler and his advisers as Goebbels.


For the Democrats, such a populist course will require them to become more racialist, more authoritarian in their political correctness, angrier and more doctrinaire.


It will also require them to become an antisemitic party.


Antisemitism, like hatred of police and Christians, is a necessary component of Democratic populism.


This is true first and foremost because they will need scapegoats to blame for all the bad things you can’t solve by demonizing and silencing your political opponents.


Jews, and particularly the Jewish state, along with evangelical Christians and cops are the only groups that you are allowed to hate, discriminate against and scapegoat in the authoritarian PC universe.


From the party’s initial post-election moves, it appears that the Democrats have decided to take the latter path.


Congressman Keith Ellison from Minneapolis is now poised to be selected as the next leader of the Democratic National Committee. This position is a powerful one. The DNC chairman, like his Republican counterpart, is the party’s chief fund-raiser.


When a party is out of power, the party chairman is also treated like its formal leader, and most active spokesman.


Ellison is the head of the Democrats’ Progressive Caucus. His candidacy is supported by incoming Senate minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid. Obama has indicated his support for Ellison. Sen. Bernie Sanders is enthusiastically supporting him.


Ellison made history in 2006 when he was elected to serve as the first Muslim member of Congress. As the representative of an overwhelmingly Democratic district, once he won the Democratic primary in 2006, he was all but guaranteed that he could serve in Congress for as long as he wishes.


As Scott Johnson, a prominent conservative writer who runs the popular Power Line blog website reported extensively in 2006, Ellison is an antisemite. He also defends cop killers.


As Johnson reported, Ellison was a long-standing member of the antisemitic Nation of Islam. During his 2006 congressional campaign, the local media gave next to no coverage to this association. But when it did come up, Ellison soothed concerns of Minneapolis’s Jewish community by sending a letter to the local Jewish Community Relations Committee.


In the letter Ellison claimed that he had only been briefly associated with Louis Farrakhan’s outfit, that he was unfamiliar with its antisemitism, and that he had never personally expressed such views.


The local media and the Jewish community were happy to take him at his word.


But as Johnson documented, he was lying on all counts.


Ellison’s association with the Nation of Islam dated back at least since 1989 and stretched at least until 1998. During that period, he not only knew about the Nation of Islam’s Jew-hatred, he engaged in it himself.


As Johnson noted, in 1998, Ellison appeared at a public forum as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam.


He was there to defend a woman who was under fire for allegedly referring to Jews as “among the most racist white people.”


Whereas the woman herself denied she had made the statement, Ellison defended and justified her alleged statement. Referring to her slander of Jews he said, “We stand by the truth contained in [the woman’s] remarks... Also it is absolutely true that merchants in Black areas generally treat Black customers badly.”


As Johnson reported, aside from engaging in anti-Jewish propaganda and actively promoting antisemitic messages and leaders, decades before the Black Lives Matter was formed, Ellison was a prominent defender of murderers of policemen.


After the September 11 attacks, Ellison likened the attacks to the Reichstag fire in 1933, intimating that the al-Qaida strike was an inside job. He then agreed with an audience member who said that “the Jews” gained the most from the attacks.


As a member of Congress, Ellison has been among the most hostile US lawmakers toward Israel. He has close relations with Muslim Brotherhood-related groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America. Both groups were unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial, implicated in funding Hamas and al-Qaida.


And now, Sens. Schumer, Sanders and Reid and President Obama along with the Democratic grassroots activists and other party leaders are supporting Ellison’s bid to serve as chairman of the DNC.


As Ellison’s statement about “merchants” makes clear, the Democrats’ Jew-hatred may not be of the “Jews are the sons of apes and pigs” variety. In all likelihood, it will be propagated through angry rhetoric about “bankers” and “financiers,” and “the rich.”


Ellison, a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement, has libeled Israel by likening the Jewish state to apartheid South Africa. Under his leadership, we can expect for Democratic politicians to veer even further away from Israel and to embrace the slander that Zionism is racism.


The populist Sanders route seems more attractive to the Democrats than Bill Clinton’s moderate path because the notion is taking hold that Sanders would have been a stronger candidate in the general election than Clinton was.


This view is hard to accept. Most Americans reject socialism, and populist or not, it is difficult to see how Sanders would have sold his radical positions to an uninterested public.


The other problem with the “Sanders would have won” argument is that it misses the distinction between Trump’s populism and Democratic populism.


Trump’s populism stemmed from his willingness to say things that other politicians and authority figures more generally wouldn’t dare to say. Trump’s allegation that the political system is rigged, for instance, empowered Americans who feel threatened by the authoritarianism of the politically correct Left.


Trump’s opponents insist that his populism empowered white power bigots. But that was a bug in his ointment. It wasn’t the ointment itself. Trump’s willingness to seemingly say anything, and certainly to say things that were beyond the narrow confines of the politically correct discourse, empowered tens of millions of voters. It also empowered white bigots at the fringes of the Right.


Whereas empowering white bigots was a side effect of Trump’s populism, empowering bigots is a central feature of leftist populism. And this is where it gets dicey for Jews.


As Obama – and Ellison – have shown, when Democrats channel populism, they use it to demonize their opponents as evil. They are “fat cats on Wall Street.”


They are “racists,” and other deplorables.


There are scattered voices on the Left that are calling for their fellow leftists to revisit their authoritarian practice of labeling everyone who doesn’t walk lockstep behind them as racists and otherwise unacceptable. But for the most part, the populists are winning the argument by essentially demanding more ideological radicalism and more rigidity.


This policy is completely irrational from a political perspective. It’s hard to see the constituencies that will be swayed to support an angry, hateful party.


But this brings us to the Jews, who voted 3:1 for the Democrats, and to the American Jewish leadership whose support for Clinton was near unanimous.


When antisemitic, populist voices like Ellison’s began taking over Britain’s Labour Party, British Jews began heading for the exits. When push came to shove they preferred their individual rights and their communal rights as Jews above their partisan loyalties.


So far, this doesn’t appear to be the case among Jewish Democrats.


Consider the Anti-Defamation League’s unhinged onslaught against Trump’s chief strategist, former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon.


While ignoring Ellison’s record of antisemitism and support for Israel’s enemies, as well as his ties to unindicted co-conspirators in funding Hamas, the ADL launched a scathing assault on Bannon, accusing him of being an antisemite.


The ADL’s assault on Bannon follows its absurd claim in the final days of the campaign that Trump’s ad criticizing George Soros was antisemitic. It also follows the group’s bizarre condemnation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent video clip in which he stated the plain fact that the Palestinian demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the territory they wish to take control over is an antisemitic demand.


As many prominent US Jews on both sides of the partisan divide have made clear, the accusation that Bannon, whose Breitbart website is one of the most pro-Israel websites in the US, is antisemitic is appalling on its face. The allegation is simply unsubstantiated.


So why do it? Why allege that a friend of the Jews is a Jew-hater while ignoring the actual antisemitism of another man? The answer is depressingly easy to discern.


The ADL appears to be trying to give cover to the rising forces of antisemitism in the Democratic Party.


By falsely accusing Bannon and through him Trump of antisemitism, the ADL defuses the real problem of Democratic antisemitism. And if the ADL doesn’t think there is a problem with Ellison taking over the DNC, but alleges that Republicans hate them, then rank and file Jews will stay put.


The ADL of course isn’t alone in sending this message.


Following the election, Conservative and Reform congregations in major cities throughout the US organized communal shivas, to mourn Clinton’s defeat as if it was a death in the family. Such actions, along with characterizations of Trump and his advisers as Nazis or Hitler or white supremacists work to bind Jews to a party that is inhospitable to their communal interests while blinding them to the fact that Republicans do not hate Jews or the Jewish state.


For decades, American Jews have been at the forefront of every major social movement on in the US.


But the Democratic Party’s move toward antisemitism, a move made apparent through Ellison’s rise, is one movement the Jews mustn’t lead.

Caroline Glick is the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project and the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264869/ellison-challenge-caroline-glick

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Russia's Growing Middle Eastern Prowess - Anna Borshchevskaya

by Anna Borshchevskaya

Moscow has effectively backed a Shiite, anti-Sunni bloc by aligning itself with Tehran - a historic-enemy-turned-ally in opposition to Western regional interests

^{Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Middle East Forum Communications Coordinator.}

Moscow's military intervention in Syria has not only made it a key factor in that country's civil war but has also boosted its regional standing, netted it a major naval outlet in the Eastern Mediterranean, and exacerbated Europe's domestic problems by accelerating the refugee outpour into the Continent.

While minimizing the Middle East's sectarian divide and portraying its intervention as support for the Syrian government's legitimate fight against terrorists, Moscow has effectively backed a Shiite, anti-Sunni bloc by aligning itself with Tehran - a historic-enemy-turned-ally in opposition to Western regional interests.

This assertiveness is emblematic of Putin's proclivity for military adventures abroad - from Georgia (2008), to Ukraine (2014), to Syria - as a means to reassert Russia's international standing and to consolidate his rule by diverting public attention from the country's domestic problems. The 2014 annexation of Crimea, for example, enabled him to rally the nation behind him in the face of tightening economic sanctions; the Syrian intervention has had a similar effect.

Social media photos of Russian soldiers in Syria's Latakia province, late 2015.

As the economy worsens still further, the Kremlin suppresses dissent and whips up ultra-nationalist sentiment by glorifying the likes of Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. This in turn makes Russia into an unstable and unpredictable one-man rule without eliminating Putin's need to generate recurring crises to continue diverting the restive population from the country's domestic problems.

In order to contain Moscow, which is likely to test the Trump administration by exploiting the divergences between Washington and its European allies, the West needs a long-term, unified strategy that will place future talks with Russia within an unambiguous and comprehensive framework. It can demonstrate its support for its Middle Eastern allies by tightening the sanctions against the Russian military-industrial complex; making Moscow accountable for its Syrian war crimes; and credibly threatening a limited use of force against the Assad regime for any future ceasefire violations.

Ultimately, the Russian options are limited and contingent on what the West will or will not do. The devastating consequences of taking Putin at his word in Syria for a year now has blinded the West to his hostile intent. Western success will therefore depend on drawing a firm and decisive line in the sand that Moscow will not dare to cross.


Anna Borshchevskaya, the Ira Weiner Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, briefed the Middle East Forum in a conference call on November 3, 2016.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/6373/borshchevskaya-russia-growing-middle-east-prowess

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European Union Orders British Press NOT to Report when Terrorists are Muslims - Yves Mamou

by Yves Mamou

To attack freedom of the press and freedom of speech is not anti-hate speech; it is submission.

• This is the moment where hate speech laws become a greater threat to democracy and freedom of speech than hate speech itself.
• In France, Muslim terrorists are never Muslim terrorists, but "lunatics," "maniacs" and "youths".
• By following these recommendations, the British government would place Muslim organizations in a kind of monopoly position: they would become the only source of information about themselves. It is the perfect totalitarian information order.
• Created to guard against the kind of xenophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda that gave rise to the Holocaust, national hate speech laws have increasingly been invoked to criminalize speech that is merely deemed insulting to one's race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.
• It is disturbing to wonder how long the EU will strongly engage its experts and influence to cut through existing legal obstacles, in a quest to criminalize any type of criticism of Islam, and to submit to the values of jihad.

According the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) -- part of the Council of Europe -- the British press is to blame for increasing hate speech and racist violence. On October 4, 2016, the ECRI released a report dedicated only to Britain. The report said:

some traditional media, particularly tabloids... are responsible for most of the offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology. The Sun, for instance, published an article in April 2015 entitled "Rescue boats? I'd use gunships to stop migrants", in which the columnist likened migrants to "cockroaches"...
The Sun newspaper has also published inflammatory anti-Muslim headlines, such as its front page of 23 November 2015 which read "1 in 5 Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis", along with a picture of a masked terrorist wielding a knife...

The ECRI report establishes a direct causal link between some tough headlines in British tabloids and the security of the Muslims in the UK. In other words, the British press is allegedly inciting readers to commit "Islamophobic" acts against Muslims.

ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fueling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety.

ECRI is basing its report on a recent study from Matthew Feldman, Professor at Teesside University. This study compiled anti-Muslim incidents before and after terrorist's attacks.

In the seven days prior to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, where 12 people were killed, there were 12 reported (anti Muslim) incidents, but in the seven days following, there were 45. This pattern was similar in relation to the terror attacks in Sydney, in December and Copenhagen, in February.

So, according to the ECRI and scholars of Teesside University, when Muslim jihadists murder people and the press reports that killers are Muslims, the press, and not Islamists, is encouraging "Islamophobic incidents" in Britain. According to ECRI Chair Christian Ahlund, "It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians."

For the ECRI, the biggest problem is:

"... where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators' motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations."

The report does not explain what could be "alternative explanations." But we can find examples in French press: when a Muslim attacks a soldier and tries to take his gun, he is not an Islamist terrorist, but a "lunatic." Such attacks by "lunatics" are very common in France.

The French press downplays attacks by deciding not to name Muslim perpetrators: incriminating a "Mohamed" could, in the minds of French journalists, incite retaliations against Muslims. In another example, Muslim gangs cannot be connected to any form of violence, so they become "youths." In France, Muslim terrorists are never Muslim terrorists, but "lunatics", "maniacs" and "youths."

But that is France. In Britain, tabloids are not so polite, and they understand perfectly the intentions of the ECRI report: to ban the word "Muslim" when it is associated with "violence or terrorism."

The ECRI Report Marks a U-Turn in Free Speech

This is the moment where hate speech laws become a greater threat to democracy and freedom of speech than the hate speech itself. Prohibiting journalists from naming "Islamic terrorism," and encouraging them to hide the association of Muslims with terrorism, is an attempt to misrepresent the truth in the same way the former Soviet Union censored the truth. Taking advantage of some real racist articles in tabloids -- not many, because not many are quoted in the report -- to attack freedom of the press and freedom of speech is not anti-hate speech; it is submission.

The proof of submission lies in ECRI's recommendations to the British government:

• "establish an independent press regulator";
• "rigorous training for journalists to ensure better compliance with ethical standards";
• "review the provisions on incitement to hatred with a view to making them more effective and usable";
• "establish a real dialogue with Muslims in order to combat Islamophobia. They should consult them on all policies which could affect Muslims";
• amending the Editor's Code of Practice to ensure that members of groups can submit complaints as victims against biased or prejudicial reporting concerning their community"

By following these recommendations, the British government would place Muslim organizations in a kind of monopoly position: they would become the only source of information about themselves. It is the perfect totalitarian information order. If a breach of that kind would open in the future, no doubt all the lobbies would rush into the breach: political parties, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, multinationals, everyone.

The British government did not fall into the trap, and firmly rebuffed ECRI's demands. It told the European council body:

"The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law."

In Great Britain, and in all countries of European Union, anti-hate laws already exist. Created to guard against the kind of xenophobic and anti-Semitic propaganda that gave rise to the Holocaust, national hate speech laws have increasingly been invoked to criminalize speech that is merely deemed insulting to one's race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

These laws have also been invoked often by Islamists to sue against anti-Islamist speech (cartoons of Muhammad, blasphemy against Islam, etc.) as manifestations of "racism" -- fortunately with little success. Most court cases that Islamists have initiated have failed because Islam is not a race.
Agnes Callamard, expert on human rights, writes in reference to the United Nations Charter:

"ARTICLE 19 recognises that reasonable restrictions on freedom of expression may be necessary or legitimate to prevent advocacy of hatred based on nationality, race, religion that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. The organisation does not extend such legitimate restrictions to offensive and blasphemous expressions."

It is disturbing to wonder how long the EU will strongly engage its experts and influence to cut through existing legal obstacles, in a quest to criminalize any type of criticism of Islam, and to submit to the values of jihad.

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Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9190/media-censorship-muslims-terrorists

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