Saturday, February 15, 2020

Pompeo: Renew the UN arms embargo on Iran - Elad Benari


by Elad Benari

Secretary of State calls for a renewal of the UN arms embargo on Iran after the Navy seized Iranian weapons shipment for Houthi rebels.


Mike Pompeo
Mike Pompeo                                                                                                                                       Reuters
 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday called for action against Iran after the US Navy seized an Iranian weapons shipment bound for Houthi rebels in Yemen.


“The U.S. Navy interdicted 358 Iranian-made missiles + other weapons components on their way to the Houthis in Yemen. This is another example of the world’s largest state sponsor of terror the Islamic Republic of Iran continuing to defy the UN Security Council,” tweeted Pompeo, adding a photo of the weapons that were seized.

“The world must reject Iran’s violence and act now to renew the expiring UN arms embargo on Iran,” he added.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen on March 26, 2015 to try to restore the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after the Houthis and their allies took over large parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

It has long been believed that Iran is planning to use the Houthis to take over Yemen and seize the key strategic port of Aden, which controls the entrance to the Red Sea and ultimately to the Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Iran denies it is backing the Houthis and has also denied Saudi Arabian accusations that Tehran provided the Houthi rebels in Yemen with ballistic capabilities.


Elad Benari

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276011

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Trump Demands Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities - Matthew Vadum


by Matthew Vadum


It's time for leftist jailers who free dangerous illegal aliens to pay the price.



Crime victims harmed by dangerous illegal aliens should be able to sue the so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that unleashed them on an unwitting public in defiance of federal immigration authorities, President Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. At the same time, he endorsed pending legislation that would accomplish this goal.

This is another politically astute immigration-related proposal from Trump who demonstrates time and time again that he is one of the few Republican presidents in modern American history who actually knows how to fight the Left. It puts the illegal alien-coddlers and open-borders fanatics on the defensive and educates the public in clearly understandable terms about who the bad guys really are in this fight over the nation’s future. It comes almost a year after Trump proposed shipping immigration detainees to sanctuary cities, which are Democrat strongholds.

As FrontPage readers know, the sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers call sanctuary jurisdictions “civil liberties safe zones” to blur the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S. Leftists also like to refer to all migrants, including illegal aliens, simply as “immigrants” in order to further muddy the waters. This helps the Left portray conservatives, who are generally not anti-immigrant –they’re anti-illegal immigration— as xenophobic bigots.

Sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States just as much as the Confederate Army was when it opened fire on Fort Sumter.

President Trump railed against the sanctuary laws of California in his address.

“Senator Thom Tillis has introduced legislation to allow Americans like Jody to sue sanctuary cities and states when a loved one is hurt or killed as a result of these deadly practices,” Trump said Feb. 4, referring to Jody Jones, a guest at the speech whose brother, Rocky Jones, was allegedly shot and killed by two-time deportee Gustavo Garcia, an illegal alien wanted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local authorities in California ignored ICE and let Garcia go.

The December 2018 killing happened after California, which is home to more than 2 million illegals on which the state lavishes unearned benefits, enacted “an outrageous law declaring their whole state to be a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants — a very terrible sanctuary — with catastrophic results,” the president said.

The illegal, who had prior arrests for robbery and assault, was released under California’s sanctuary laws that mandate resistance to federal immigration law. Jones “was at a gas station when this vile criminal fired eight bullets at him from close range, murdering him in cold blood,” Trump said.

And Jones was just one of Garcia’s victims during what Trump called “a gruesome spree of deadly violence.” He killed another person, committed a truck hijacking, an armed robbery, and got into a firefight with police.

“Before SB 54, Gustavo Garcia would have been turned over to ICE officials,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said previously, according to the Washington Post. “That’s how we’ve always done it, day in and day out. After SB 54, we no longer have the power to do that.”

California laws curb the power of state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of ICE, and punish employers for cooperating with the federal agency.

AB 450 prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with ICE—including officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts. SB 54 prevents state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of criminal illegal aliens in their custody. AB 103 imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme on the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts.

Legal challenges to the state’s sanctuary regime have not met with success.

In 2018 the Trump administration sued California, arguing state laws prevented ICE from enforcing federal law. The next year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the suit, finding improbably that California law was not in conflict with U.S. immigration law.

Charter cities are allowed in some circumstances to enact legislation that differs from state law, according to the League of California Cities. There are 121 charter cities across the state, including Bakersfield, Chula Vista, Fresno, Irvine, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Diego, San Jose, and Vallejo.

But in January, a California appellate court overturned a lower court ruling, finding that Huntington Beach and other charter cities have to follow the sanctuary laws.

Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes blames the sanctuary laws for a surge in crime.

“SB 54 has made our community less safe,” Barnes said earlier this month, according to the Washington Examiner.

“The law has resulted in new crimes because my deputies were unable to communicate with their federal partners about individuals who committed serious offenses and present a threat to our community if released.”

“The two-year social science experiment with sanctuary laws must end,” he added.

The federal legislation touted by Trump could do just that, though with Democrats in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, the bill won’t go anywhere for the time being. Control of the House could shift in November, allowing the next Congress to approve it.

The bill Sen. Tillis introduced, S. 2059, the proposed “Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act,” would allow a victim of a crime committed by an illegal alien to sue the sanctuary jurisdiction that shielded the alien from ICE for compensatory damages.

Among the original co-sponsors of the bill are Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

S. 2059 would allow “a civil action [to be] brought against a sanctuary jurisdiction by an individual (or the estate, survivors, or heirs of an individual) who— (A) is injured or harmed by an alien who benefitted from a sanctuary policy of the sanctuary jurisdiction; and (B) would not have been so injured or harmed but for the alien receiving the benefit of such sanctuary policy.” (Its companion bill in the House is H.R. 3964.)

In addition to creating a private right of civil action for victims of sanctuary jurisdictions, the measure would allow the feds to cut off Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to any jurisdiction that blocks victims from proceeding with lawsuits.

“If politicians want to prioritize reckless sanctuary policies over public safety, they should also be willing to provide just compensation for the victims,” Tillis said when he launched the bill.

“The Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act is commonsense legislation that will enhance public safety and hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for their refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr announced Feb. 10 that the U.S. Department of Justice is cracking down on sanctuary states and cities that have “policies and laws designed to thwart the ability of federal officers to take custody of these criminals and thereby help them escape back into the community.”

“These policies are not about people who came to our country illegally but have otherwise been peaceful and productive members of society,” Barr said at the National Sheriffs’ Association Winter Legislative and Technology Conference.

“Their express purpose is to shelter aliens whom local law enforcement has already arrested for other crimes. This is neither lawful nor sensible.”

Barr said the DoJ is taking legal action against New Jersey, King County in Washington state, and California.

Of course, it’s not enough, but it’s a good start.

Matthew Vadum

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/trump-demands-justice-victims-sanctuary-cities-matthew-vadum/

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'The danger of the century': Here's how Israelis' lives will look with a Palestinian state - Arutz Sheva Staff


by Arutz Sheva Staff

Watchdog movement warns: 'If the next government approves 'deal of the century' as is, the lives of many Israelis will turn to hell.'


The Regavim watchdog movement has launched a new campaign to expose the dangers residents of Judea and Samaria would face if the US "deal of the century" were to be implemented.

The campaign focuses on the map the deal presents, in which many Israelis in Judea and Samaria will live in enclaves or very close to the border with "Palestine," exposed to terror attacks by Palestinian Authority Arabs.

In a series of ads, notifications, and video clips, Regavim demonstrates the dramatic change in the lives of Judea and Samaria residents from all regions: The map presented by the White House shows Route 60 included nearly in its entirety in a Palestinian state, so that residents of Kiryat Arba and the Jewish areas of Hevron, which would be annexed to Israel, would be cut off from Jerusalem.

In addition, residents of Gush Etzion who work in Jerusalem would need to travel double the distance in order to reach their jobs in the capital. The Binyamin Regional Council would be split in two, and the connection between West Binyamin and East Binyamin would be severed completely.

In the illustration, which is based on the White House map, the route from Gush Etzion's Neve Daniel, Kiryat Arba, and Ofra would pass through the Palestinian terror state, with the only way to bypass the danger being to double the travel time, which could cost lives in cases where an ambulance is needed.

Despite the fact that Israeli sovereignty would be applied to these areas, the roads to leading to and from them, and their proximity to the border, would place them in great danger.


Arutz Sheva Staff

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276017

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Sinem Tezyapar: A case of profound injustice. Opinion. - Joseph Frager


by Joseph Frager

Sinem Tezyapar was imprisoned for her beliefs & her ability to speak out. Western World cannot turn its eyes away from this grave injustice.


At the outset let me say I have never met Sinem Tezyapar. She is a Muslim woman from Turkey. She believes in a better and more peaceful world. She is accused of being a spy for Israel.

This past week her trial began in Istanbul. She faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life (actually 867 years to be exact) in jail. Unfortunately, this story repeats itself over and over again throughout the Muslim world.

The lack of justice in the Muslim world has kept them from advancement, progress and peace. I got involved in the case of Sinem Tezyapar because of the extreme and profound injustice.

I beseech the Justice Department of Turkey to examine the facts and only the facts. Sinem Tezyapar is not a spy for Israel. Sinem Tezyapar is not a Mossad agent as she has been accused of being. Like so many idealistic and brave people, she had tried to develop a conversation with the people of Israel.

Sinem Tezyapar was an executive producer on Turkish Television. She was a political, and religious commentator and a peace activist.

She was the author of an Op-Ed entitled, “When will the Muslims Stop Blaming their Problems on the Jews?” She wrote the piece after Iran blamed a deadly earthquake in September 2013 on Israel. In it she writes, “Whenever a calamity falls upon Muslim majority countries, there is always a country to blame: Israel.” She quoted a number of examples including the World Trade Center attack and says, “and of course there were the accusations that the tragic events of September 11, 2001 were the fruits of another conspiracy that Zionists planned in order to demonize Arabs and Muslims in the eyes of the world.” She goes on to say that “this madness of putting the blame on Israel - and Zionists in general - is such a knee-jerk reaction that there is no logical explanation for this evasion of responsibility. The most surprising part is that so many people believe in it unquestionably and continue to disseminate these rumors far and wide.”

Tezyapar wrote another Op-Ed entitled, “Shameless Anti-Jewish Propaganda is Based Upon False ‘Hadith.’” Hadith is a saying or an act of tacit approval or disapproval attributed to Muhammad. She writes that, “one after the other, we see Arab religious and political leaders referring to one specific ‘Hadith’ as a propaganda tool against Israel. I view the interpretation by those who approach the text (Qur’an) with the spirit of war against Jewish People as a crime and perceive this as an offense to Islam.”

She wrote another Op-Ed entitled, “Islam Does Not Command War Against Jews”

Sinem Tezyapar was imprisoned for her beliefs and her ability to speak out. It is plain and simple to anyone who can see.

The Western World cannot turn its eyes away from this grave injustice. I call upon all world leaders to get involved in the case of Sinem Tezyapar and do the right thing. Once and for all set her free. The world will be a better place if that happens.


Joseph Frager

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276016

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The Terrorists Migrating into Europe - Judith Bergman


by Judith Bergman

"Most migrant terrorists involved in thwarted or completed attacks were purposefully deployed to the migration flows by an organized terrorist group to conduct or support attacks in destination countries." — Todd Bensman

  • "Most migrant terrorists involved in thwarted or completed attacks were purposefully deployed to the migration flows by an organized terrorist group to conduct or support attacks in destination countries." — Todd Bensman, "What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security", Center for Immigration Studies.
  • Bensman's report indirectly proves that the three EU countries -- Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- which refused to take in any of the migrants that came during the migrant crisis, citing security concerns, were right.
  • The leadership of the European Union, however, initiated legal proceedings at the Court of Justice of the European Union against the three countries over the issue.... A ruling on the issue by the Court is expected early next year.
  • In response to the Advocate General, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller, said that "ensuring security for our citizens is the most important goal of the government's policies. Our actions were dictated by the interests of Polish citizens and the need for protection against uncontrolled migration". — Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller, Reuters, October 31, 2019.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, describes in a new report the extent to which terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks. (Image source: Elekes Andor/Wikimedia Commons)

A new report, "What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security", by Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, describes the extent to which terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks. Although the study was written primarily for an American audience to prevent the same mistakes from being made on US borders, the study is extremely relevant for the European public -- especially as Germany recently warned of a repeat migration crisis, similar to the one that occurred in 2015. 
According to Bensman:
"Between 2014 and 2017, 13 of the 26 member states lining the so-called Schengen Area's external land borders recorded more than 2.5 million detections of illegal border-crossings along several land and sea routes, an historic, mostly unfettered surge that came to be known as the 'migrant crisis'. The Schengen Area, which generally encompasses the European Union, consists of countries that combined immigration enforcement of a common external border of 27,000 sea miles and 5,500 land miles while removing all interior border controls to facilitate the free movement of goods and people.
"During the 2014-2018 migrant crisis, the majority of travelers who crossed the external border and were then able to move unfettered between member nations came from nations in the Middle East, such as Syria and Iraq; South Asia, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan; and Africa, such as Somalia and Eritrea. It first became known that some ISIS terrorist operatives also were in the flows after some of them committed the November 2015 Paris attacks... and then the March 2016 Brussels attacks".
According to Bensman "The totality of how migration and terrorism intertwined as a destructive force against Europe, and the continent's response, remains largely unacknowledged, undocumented, and not analyzed".

Nor does it get much -- if any -- prolonged attention in European public debates about migration.

According to Bensman:
"Between January 2014 and January 2018, at least 104 Islamist extremists entered Europe by way of migration over external sea and land borders among more than two million people who crossed external European Union borders. All 104 were killed or arrested in nine European nations after participating either in completed and thwarted attacks, or arrested for illegal involvement with designated terrorist groups...
"The majority of the 104 Islamist migrant-terrorists — 75 — were primarily affiliated with ISIS, while 13 were affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra. Others were associated with Ahrar al Sham, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al-Shabaab, and the Caucasian Emirate. Some had unknown sympathies and some shifted among several groups. Only one was a woman and their average age was 26. They were from Syria and Iraq, but also from North Africa and South Asia...
"Of the 104 migrants implicated in terrorist acts, 29 were involved in 16 completed attacks inside Europe between 2015 and 2018. These attacks killed 170 people and wounded at least 878 more, according to an analysis of media accounts...
"At least 27 were part of one large cell of operatives dispatched onto the migration trails by ISIS. Most of the 27 were involved in the two highest-casualty completed attacks: the November 2015 multi-location strikes on Paris and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels. Most of the other completed attacks were smaller in scale and sometimes involved additional deployed operatives or long-distance communications with ISIS in Syria".
One of the most noteworthy findings of Bensman's report was that, "Most migrant terrorists involved in thwarted or completed attacks were purposefully deployed to the migration flows by an organized terrorist group to conduct or support attacks in destination countries."
"Of the 65 migrant-terrorists involved in completed or thwarted attacks, at least 40 appeared to have been purposefully deployed into migrant flows toward Europe, impersonating war refugees, to conduct or support attacks in Europe. ISIS was responsible for this infiltration operation. Eleven others apparently initiated attacks or plots in small groups of relatives or associates, not coordinated by any foreign group. The balance were self-propelled lone offenders or information was insufficient to determine whether they were deployed...
"In 2016, the New York Times reported, based on French intelligence material, that a clandestine 'external operations' division of ISIS in January 2014 sent its first of 'at least' 21 well-trained operatives to Europe camouflaged among refugee and migrant flows...
"More fighters trained by ISIS in Syria traveled the migrant routes alone or in pairs at the rate of every two to three months through the balance of 2014 and early 2015, according to the Times."
In Germany, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) warned in 2016 that Islamic State fighters had come into Europe disguised as refugees and that Islamic State leaders were training the fighters on how to apply for asylum.

The risks that European leaders took by allowing the migrant flows to continue ended in tragedy, as the terrorist attacks committed by the terrorists posing as migrants claimed the lives of 170 people and wounded 878 in the 2014-2018 period, as mentioned above. Furthermore, according to Bensman:
"A majority of the 104 terrorists applied for international protections such as asylum and were able to remain in European nations for an average of 11 months before attacks or arrests for plots, demonstrating that asylum processes accommodated plot incubation".
The process of former ISIS fighters applying for asylum is still ongoing, proving that European authorities are still incapable of handling the issue. In late November, police in Switzerland reportedly arrested an alleged Islamic State fighter who had lived in the country as an asylum seeker for at least six months. Several other migrants had come forward and said that they recognized the man as a former ISIS terrorist.

Bensman's report indirectly proves that the three EU countries -- Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic -- which refused to take in any of the migrants that came during the migrant crisis, citing security concerns, were right. The leadership of the European Union, however, initiated legal proceedings at the Court of Justice of the European Union against the three countries over the issue. In October, the Advocate General, legal advisor to the Court, said that EU law must be followed and that the EU's principle of solidarity "necessarily sometimes implies accepting burden-sharing".

A ruling on the issue by the Court is expected early next year. If the Court follows the advice of the Advocate General, it will rule that the three countries were in breach of EU law when they refused to take in their appointed quota of migrants. In response to the Advocate General, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller, said, "ensuring security for our citizens is the most important goal of the government's policies. Our actions were dictated by the interests of Polish citizens and the need for protection against uncontrolled migration".

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15290/the-terrorists-migrating-into-europe

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The Crumbling of Cuba's Grand Socialist Experiment - John Eidson


by John Eidson

An object lesson in the harsh and unforgiving hand of single-party socialist rule.


John Alpert is an American photojournalist whose work is featured in the Netflix documentary Cuba and the Cameraman. He first went to the island nation in 1972, a little more than a decade after the Cuban Revolution. Over the next 45 years, Alpert returned to Cuba, each time taking pictures of its towns and cities and people. The images he took are a timeline that chronicle how Castro's socialist revolution played out for the Cuban people in the years that lay ahead.

A disarmingly polite young photojournalist at the time, Alpert was one of the few Americans granted face-to-face meetings with Castro. With the U.S. media curious about the grand socialist experiment unfolding in Cuba, Alpert was invited to appear on TV programming to discuss his conversations with Cuba's communist dictator. Alpert was quite impressed when Castro said he was taking concrete measures to make life better for the Cuban people, citing as evidence a free health care system, free schools, free higher education, and shiny new and rent-free housing projects. When Alpert first visited Cuba, the shelves of grocery stores and other retail establishments were filled with consumer goods of every description.

To a young photojournalist who was idealistic and somewhat naïve at the time, socialism seemed to portend a bright future for Cuba. With its people happy and well taken care of by a paternalistic government, things were going well. But as time moved one, Cuba's house-of-cards communist system fell apart. The free goods and services given to the Cuban people were funded not by the country's top-down collectivist economy, but by a massive infusion of hard cash, gasoline, food, and other provisions from the Soviet Union. When the Soviets eventually pulled the plug as their own socialist economy was crumbling, the day-to-day lives of the Cuban people fell on hard times, a rude reminder of Margaret Thatcher's observation the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

The once vibrant island nation of Cuba is but another place where socialism added to its unbroken trail of failure. The country's capital, Havana, was once an international tourist destination. Known as the "Jewel of the Caribbean," Havana was a glamorous city with beautiful homes and modern vehicles. After six decades of socialism, only the communist rulers and their cronies live in upscale homes, and the country's poorly maintained roads are traveled by junker cars built in the middle of the last century.

The harsh and unforgiving hand of single-party socialist rule

Promising to bring fairness and equality to his troubled nation, a young and charismatic Fidel Castro led a revolution that ousted Cuba's corrupt U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. When victory was won, Castro rode triumphantly through the streets of Havana. Based on their new leader's assurance that he was not a communist, the Cuban people embraced Castro with wild enthusiasm.

Among the greatest heroes of the Cuban Revolution were two foreigners whose battlefield exploits were so legendary that they became the only non-Cubans to be awarded the rank of Comandante in Castro's army. One was an idealistic 29-year-old American named William Alexander Morgan, the other a ruthless Marxist revolutionary from Argentina named Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Hailed by Castro for acts of valor that earned him the affectionate nickname "the Americano," Morgan said he joined the Cuban Revolution because "the most important thing for free men to do is protect the freedom of others." A fervent anti-communist, Morgan was personally assured by Castro that communism would play no part in the future of the new Cuba. But once Castro had consolidated an iron-fisted grip on power, he revealed his true stripes. 

When Morgan spoke out against Cuba's sudden turn to communism, Castro accused him of being a counter-revolutionary. Morgan was arrested and sentenced to death. Standing in front of a bullet-pocked wall of an 18th-century fortress near Havana that had been converted to a political prison, the Americano was executed by firing squad on March 11, 1961, just two years after playing an instrumental role in bringing about the change he was led to believe would result in a free and non-communist Cuba.

By the time Morgan and the Cuban people realized what was happening, it was too late. With Castro having successfully shielded his true ideology — and with the mass-murdering Marxist Che Guevara at his side — he would go on to usher in a decades-long nightmare of communist oppression that continues to this day. In all of human history, single-party socialist rule has never produced a single free and prosperous society, but has destroyed every society where it was allowed to take root.

A video worth watching and sharing

As reported in this American Thinker article, four Millennial photojournalists affiliated with Turning Point USA recorded what they observed on a recent trip to Cuba: a police state in an advanced stage of decay. The appalling conditions they found coincide perfectly with what's reported in the Netflix documentary Cuba and the Cameraman. Their short video is worthy of being shared with high school– and college-aged students, millions of whom have received a steady diet of propaganda about the alleged virtues of socialism.

American Thinker published another John Eidson article about socialism: ""Socialism's Unbroken Trail of Failure."

John Eidson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/the_crumbling_of_cubas_grand_socialist_experiment.html

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Imran Awan Sues Daily Caller, Regnery Publishers - Lloyd Billingsley


by Lloyd Billingsley

Former DNC IT man sees “xenophobic conspiracies” at work.





“The former House information technology staffer whose proximity to Democratic Party leadership made him a linchpin of conspiracy theories pushed by Republicans up to the President is suing a conservative news outlet and its reporter for defamation,” CNN reported on January 29.

The former staffer is Imran Awan, who worked for “Democratic House members, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who served as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee through much of the run-up to the 2016 election.” Awan is not quoted in the story but his attorney Deepak Gupta told CNN, “When our media discourse veers away from facts and towards xenophobic conspiracies, real people are going to get caught in the crosshairs. That's what happened here.” On the other hand, even casual observers might wonder if there was more to the story.

As Ryan Saavedra of the Daily Wire reported in December, the Department of Justice said it could not release records on Imran Awan due to “technical difficulties,” but later admitted in court documents that it could not release the records “because there is a secret ongoing case related to the matter.” The DOJ also failed to produce Capitol Police records requested in a Judicial Watch lawsuit, on the grounds of “technical difficulties.”

Also in play was a “sealed criminal matter” and the government declined to reveal the information “pursuant to an order issued by the Honorable Tanya S. Chutkan.” She is the POTUS 44 appointee who postponed Awan’s case six times then cut him a sweetheart deal in 2018.

The Pakistani-born Awan came to the USA through the immigration lottery system. He earned an IT degree from Johns Hopkins but did not work for any of the six IT firms officially vetted for congressional offices. Even so, DNC boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz not only brought Awan aboard but hired his wife and other family members, though none had degrees in information technology.

Awan’s attorney, Christopher J. Gowen, was a former aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Gowen described Awan’s arrest as “clearly a right-wing media-driven prosecution by a United States Attorney’s Office that wants to prosecute people for working while Muslim.” There was a bit more to it, as Carl Horowitz of the National Legal and Policy Center noted last March in his review of  Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats by Daily Caller reporter Luke Rosiak, now the target of Awan’s lawsuit.

The Awans appeared to be thieves, Horowitz wrote, “but it was likely they were something more.” One of the recovered items was a laptop bearing the initials of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Awan, who did not qualify for a security clearance, knew the password to the iPad used by Schultz for Democratic National Committee business. Awan was fired by every House member except Wasserman Schultz, and Capitol Police failed to search the Awans’ homes or arrest Imran Awan.

As Horowitz recalled, Tanya Chutkan was more like a defense attorney than a judge. She denounced the “unbelievable onslaught of scurrilous media attacks” and “baseless accusations” that were lobbed at Awan “from the highest branches of government.” Chutkan even wished Awan “a good Eid,” and sentenced him to a weekly phone call with a probation officer.

Awan’s attorney Christopher Gowen, a veteran of the Clinton Foundation, told reporters the FBI’s investigation of the Awans was “probably the most thorough, exhaustive investigation in the history of this country.” When Luke Rosiak challenged him with facts, Gowen shot back “Totally false…You are a liar, a Trump pawn and a very bad person.”

As Carl Horowitz concluded, “fear of being called ‘racist,’ ‘bigoted’ or ‘Islamophobic’ emerges as the unspoken reason for the timidity gripping Washington.” The Deep State players and their media allies, “made clear that those who expose the Awans would pay a high price.”

As Ryan Saavedra recalls, after the DOJ closed the investigation into Awan, President Trump tweeted, “Our Justice Department must not let Awan & Debbie Wasserman Schultz off the hook. The Democrat I.T. scandal is a key to much of the corruption we see today. They want to make a ‘plea deal’ to hide what is on their Server. Where is Server? Really bad!”

The Democrats’ server was previously under the control of Rep. Xavier Becerra, once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate. Becerra is now California attorney general and a shrill voice in the anti-Trump chorus. Imran Awan was reportedly seeking a post in Silicon Valley, but has not disclosed his location.

The Pakistani-born IT man has now mounted a lawsuit against the Daily Caller and Regnery Publishers. His legal team will doubtless seek a judge like Tanya Chutkan, who will double as Awan’s defense attorney. Like Deepak Gupta, the establishment media will be warning about Islamophobia, xenophobia and such. Still, as Carl Horowitz notes, plenty to discover here.

“Consider the possibility that an extended Pakistani family used their employment as cybersecurity specialists to steal emails, documents and equipment from dozens of members of the House of Representatives and then transfer them to outside parties, including the government of Pakistan.” As President Trump says, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.


Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/imran-awan-sues-daily-caller-regnery-publishers-lloyd-billingsley/

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Pro-Crime Policies Don’t Appeal to Black Voters - Daniel Greenfield


by Daniel Greenfield


Where black voters really stand on the Black Lives Matter agenda.




In the Black Lives Matter era, everyone assumes that pro-crime policies are the way to win over black voters. Candidates tout criminal justice reform schemes like freeing criminals and legalizing drugs.

1994's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a piece of bipartisan legislation that helped roll back crime rates in the 90s by locking up criminals, is denounced for causing “mass incarceration”.

But Joe Biden, who wrote the bill, is a player in the 2020 primaries because of his black supporters.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Biden’s support has collapsed with everyone except black voters. Only 14% of white Democrats support him, but 27% of black Democrats are still standing by their racist man.

A quarter of black voters may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than any other candidate in the race.

Behind Biden is Bloomberg with 22%. Despite running on pro-crime policies so extreme that he had proposed freeing half the national prison population, ending enforcement of vagrancy and drug laws, and allowing the Boston Marathon bomber to vote from prison, Sanders is only in third place.

The opposition dumps on Michael Bloomberg have already begun with clips that show the former New York City boss discussing ‘Stop and Frisk’ gang member crackdowns, and policing in the Big Apple.

"Ninety-five percent of murders- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops," Bloomberg is heard saying. "They are male, minorities, 16-25. That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city. And that's where the real crime is. You've got to get the guns out of the hands of people that are getting killed."

"People say, 'Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.' Yes, that's true. Why? Because we put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that's true. Why do we do it? Because that's where all the crime is,” he goes on to say.

Democrats and Republicans assume that clips like this will kill Bloomberg’s black support.
Except this same exact play was run against Hillary Clinton who had referred to “superpredators” when discussing the threat from career underage criminals. Bernie Sanders had accused Hillary of racism for using the term. And Hillary Clinton still stomped him by routinely taking 80% to 90% of the black vote.

Hillary's worst performance and Sanders' best performance among black voters happened in Missouri where she only took 67% of the black vote and he got 32%. So much for the ‘superpredator’ strategy.

Going after Biden’s ‘tough on crime’ record failed just as miserably. It failed even when black candidates like Booker and Harris did it. Warren, who wants to repeal the 1994 crime bill, is polling at 8% among black voters. After four years of pro-crime pandering, Sanders is lagging ‘Stop and Frisk’ Bloomberg.

Maybe it’s time to stop assuming that black voters have signed on to the Black Lives Matter agenda.

If black voters really wanted to dismantle the criminal justice system, they could just vote libertarian. They certainly would be more likely to vote for Sanders or Warren, than Biden and Bloomberg.

Crime disproportionately affects black communities. And black community leaders used to lead the campaign against it. The idea that ‘tough on crime’ was a racist white conspiracy is revisionist history.

Why did attacking Hillary and then Biden on the 1994 crime bill fail to sway black voters?

A majority of Congressional Black Caucus members voted for it. In fact, they helped save it from the conservative Democrats who had tried to scuttle it over its social justice funding for criminals.

Rep. Charles Rangel, who helped the bill pass, had been rallying for action since the 70s. At a CBC meeting with President Nixon, it was Rangel who urged the Republican to take a stand.

“Public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive,” Rangel told him.

Even not all that long ago, Republicans appealed to black voters by getting tough on crime. After a successful crackdown on crime, Giuliani shot up from 5% to 19% among black voters.

The Rockefeller drug laws, a popular target of perpetually outraged white liberals in New York, were strongly backed by black leaders at the time. That was back when 71% of black voters supported life without parole for drug dealers. Things have changed. But not as much as people think. Most polls still show that more black people believe that crime is a more serious issue than the criminal justice system.

There is a younger upscale segment of the black community that is pro-crime and anti-police. This is where Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders, and criminal justice reform gets much of its support. Think of this as the Colin Kaepernick demographic. But most black voters are older and more conservative.

The assumption that black voters must support criminals is as stupid and racist as the equally misguided idea that Latino voters must support illegal migration. Black communities are on the front lines of crime in much the same way that Latinos are on the front lines of illegal migration. Black officers form the thin blue line in some of the most dangerous cities in America, as Latinos do serving on the Border Patrol.

Black voters have a range of nuanced positions on crime. But Democrats and Republicans have both accepted that what black people really want are candidates who put criminals first and victims last.

That’s not black voters speaking. It’s white lefties in the media speaking for the black community.

White lefties and libertarians keep promising the black vote that isn’t theirs to give to candidates who will turn over the country to criminals. Meanwhile the black vote keeps going somewhere else entirely.

Political myths spawned from the pro-crime echo chamber are everywhere in the 2020 race. Black voters, we are repeatedly told, won’t support Buttigieg because he was tough on crime. If you can picture Buttigieg being tough on anything, go for it. Meanwhile those same black voters rallied behind Bloomberg who had inherited Giuliani’s approach to crime, but utterly refused to back Buttigieg.

Black voters, we are told, wouldn’t support Kamala Harris because she was a ‘cop’. Except that she won 79% of black voters when she ran for the Senate after serving as Attorney General of California. Black voters didn’t run away from her because she used to be a prosecutor, but because she was inauthentic. Her campaign slogan, “Kamala for the People” had been coined to play off her time as AG. But instead her ACLU sister talked her into running a fluffy campaign modeled on Obama’s feigned hipness.

Black voters these days do want fewer people in prison, but their first priority is ending the killing sprees in Baltimore, Chicago, and in cities across the country. If Republicans want to appeal to black voters, the right model doesn’t lie in pro-crime ‘criminal justice reform’, which hasn’t even worked for the Left.

In 1972, Nixon won 18% of the black vote, a record, by appealing to black voters with a mix of economic progress and getting tough on crime. His campaign blitzed black publications with ads that spoke to black aspirations. That’s a path that President Trump can successfully follow to boost support in 2020.

Economic growth and federal intervention to stop the killing in Baltimore and Chicago would do it.

What Republicans should not do is address black people as if they are criminals who want nothing more than fewer cops and more criminals in their communities. Nixon won a record number of black votes by not buying into the media’s idea of what black people wanted, but by offering many what they did want.

Economic empowerment. Safer communities. And a way forward.

Lefties still haven’t learned to stop trying to win over black voters with pro-crime policies. It didn’t work for Sanders in 2016. It didn’t work for Sanders, Warren, Booker, or Harris in 2020. Democrats are unable to deviate from the herd mindset and stop repeating the same politically correct Sisyphean follies.

They can’t learn from history. Republicans can and should.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/pro-crime-policies-dont-appeal-black-voters-daniel-greenfield/

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Bloomberg’s money sowing the seeds of destruction of the Democrat party - Thomas Lifson


by Thomas Lifson

Bloomberg is luring the party’s elites into visibly betraying the principles most of its rank-and-file hold dear and identifying themselves as sellouts who can be bought by sheer force of lucre. A bitter split will be hard to avoid.


Right before our eyes, a mega-billionaire is buying the presidential nomination of a political party, and oddly enough, it is the party that decries inequality of wealth and whose leading lights debate taxing billionaires out of existence
This will not end well for the Democrats. Bloomberg is luring the party’s elites into visibly betraying the principles most of its rank-and-file hold dear and identifying themselves as sellouts who can be bought by sheer force of lucre. A bitter split will be hard to avoid.
Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal gets right to the point in his headline” “Bloomberg buys the Democratic elite.” It is not the rank and file getting rich off of Bloomberg, but rather the ostensible leadership class, and therein lie the seeds of destruction for the party that purports to be about the common man, woman, and nonbinary individual. 
He’s distorting the incentives of activists, officials and campaign fixers who suddenly are thinking less about a presidential victory and more about the Bloomberg gravy train.
Jenkins cites these examples of leaders betraying their people and their principles:
When a recording leaked of Mr. Bloomberg defending stop-and-frisk in New York, Andre Fields of the liberal voting-rights group Fair Fight Action rushed out a tweet hitting him as a “true terrorist” but promptly deleted it. Fair Fight Action had received $5 million in funding from Mr. Bloomberg.

At a historic moment when “quid pro quo” is a talking point on the left, this looks awfully bad. It is far from unique, though. Bloomberg’s stop and frisk policies as New York mayor, and his surprisingly frank discussion of criminality and race in Aspen, including his callous reference to throwing young African Americans “against the wall,” directly speak to trigger issues hyped by the Democrats for the last several years. Yet, some prominent black political leaders are endorsing him:
Three members of the Congressional Black Caucus helped out with timely endorsements of a man who spent at least $90 million on House Democratic races in the last 19 months.

Opinion leaders are also compromised:
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman on Wednesday joined in with 1,500 words implying that other Democratic candidates should make way for Mr. Bloomberg. He ended his piece with a disclosure that his wife’s charity was supported with Bloomberg donations.

Jenkins makes a strong case that Bloomberg cannot be elected and that his money is destroying the chances of candidates with a better shot at victory, pointing out that his massive purchases of broadcast airtime is driving up the cost for other candidates to get their messages out. The substantial share of the Democrat base that is hard left will never turnout and vote for him. With supporters of Bernie Sanders already convinced (with evidence) that the 2016 nomination was stolen from him, the chances are nil that they will vote in large numbers for the man who has bought support from some of their party leaders. Instead, there is a decent chance that they will either stay home or support a splinter or small party radical leftist candidate.
To Jenkins’s observation that “ads have sharply diminishing returns,” I would add that they become annoying and anger-inducing past a certain point. Already in California, we are being saturated, and there are still 8 and a half months of TV and radio annoyance to come. 
The Democrats have always been simultaneously the party of the elites and the party of the dependent classes, pretending to protect the latter while enriching the former. At the precise moment when left wing radicals sincerely aiming at taxing and regulating the wealthy out of their financial perch are daring to speak openly of confiscating wealth, along comes a man who laughs in their faces and proves that many of their ostensible leaders will sell them out. 
At some point, as the anger intensifies, expect cries to be heard that Bloomberg is a Republican plant, deliberately sent to destroy the Democrat party, perhaps at the instigation of his former golf companion, Donald Trump, who is now the fount of all evil:


One person who gets it is President Trump:
"Yeah, he's got money, but you know, they've spent $2 billion on me, Hillary Clinton, on mostly negative adds, and I won. And I won really easily if you look it. You know, the Electoral College, I won some states that were — I won by massive numbers. She spent $2 billion, they had a $2 billion campaign. He won't have that much and frankly, he's so deficient in so many ways that I think he'd be easier than Bernie. Bernie has a — and I also think this. If a guy came in and bought the election, if they bought the Democratic nomination, I really think you'd have a revolution within the Democrat Party. You had a mini-revolution last time, right, but you would have a real — because they took it away from him the last time, or at least it was perceived. She actually — you know, she got more votes than him and everything else, so I view that a little bit differently. But a lot of people perceive that they took it away from him. But this time they would be taking it away. If a guy came in to buy it and took it away from Bernie, I think you'd have a revolution within that party."

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/bloombergs_money_sowing_the_seeds_of_destruction_of_the_democrat_party.html

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Exposed: Islam’s Role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade - Raymond Ibrahim


by Raymond Ibrahim


Even in this “exclusively” European enterprise, the hidden hand of Islam lurks in the background.




Islam’s history with the West has been one of unwavering antagonism and seismic clashes, often initiated by the former.  By the standards of history, nothing between the two civilizations is as well documented as this long war.  Accordingly, for more than a millennium, both educated and not so educated Europeans knew—the latter perhaps instinctively—that Islam was a militant creed that for centuries attacked and committed atrocities in their homelands, all in the name of “holy war,” or jihad.

These facts have been radically “updated” in recent times. According to the dominant narrative—as upheld by mainstream media and Hollywood, pundits and politicians, academics and “experts” of all stripes—Islam was historically progressive and peaceful, whereas premodern Europe was fanatical and predatory.

Whatever else can be said about such topsy-turvy claims—and there is much—they beg the question:  if such a formerly well-known, well-documented and atrocity-laden history could be revised in a manner that presents its antithesis as the truth—with little objection or challenge—what then of Islam’s more subtle but also negative influences on history, the sort that, unlike the aforementioned centuries of violence vis-à-vis Europe, are not copiously documented or readily obvious but require serious historical investigation?

Take Islam’s role in facilitating the transatlantic slave trade—which otherwise is almost always presented as an exclusively European enterprise.

Slavery is, of course, as old as humanity.  Centuries before the coming of Islam, Europeans—Athenians, Spartans, Romans—were fully engaged in the slave trade.  With the coming of Christianity, and as it spread all throughout the Roman and post-Roman empire (circa. fourth-seventh centuries), the institution of slavery was on its way to becoming extinct. 

Then Islam came.  While hardly the first to exploit human flesh, it was the best at perfecting and thriving on it in the post classical, medieval, premodern, and even modern eras—with untold millions of non-Muslims enslaved throughout the centuries (one source indicates that 15 million Europeans were alone enslaved).

As usual, it was only natural for those near and in constant contact with Islam to be infected by the same vice of dehumanizing—and thus taking advantage of—the “other.”  After all, the few instances of Christians in Europe buying and selling slaves are largely limited to the long war with Islam.  Malta’s Knights of Saint John, for instance, responded to Islamic slave raids by enslaving the raiders and other Muslims.  Similarly, those Europeans who first became involved in the African slave trade, the Spanish and Portuguese, also just so happened to be the ones who for centuries lived side by side with—often in violence and themselves enslaved to—Muslims (those of al-Andalus).

Islamic slave raids into Africa began in the mid to late seventh century; then, according to Muslim records, astronomical numbers of Africans—in the millions—were enslaved in the name of jihad.  By the time seafaring Europeans reached the coasts of West Africa, the Islamic slave trade was bustling.

While most Western historians are aware that it was African “tribesmen” who captured and sold enemy tribesmen to Europeans, left unmentioned is that the “tribal” differences often revolved around who was and was not Muslim.

As John Alembillah Azumah, an African academic and author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, explained in an interview:

Slavery was a very important part of Islamic expansion in West Africa, and in fact in the Sudan, and from the very earliest period of Islamic penetration of Africa.  … Slavery was a very endemic part of Islamic interaction with Africa.  And in West Africa, the jihad’s period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries involved massive slave raiding and slave trading; and many of the slaves that were captured and sold and sent to the transatlantic slave trade [were captured by Muslims]; most of those who were doing the slaving at the time were Muslim communities (emphasis added).

A look at historic maps seems to confirm this: the western coast of Africa, where captives were enslaved and sold to Europeans, were hotbeds of jihadi slave raids.  The populations from Senegal to Angola—the regions where arguably most African-Americans trace their bloodlines—were roughly half Islamic, half pagan between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

More to the point, if today, when slavery has been formally abolished around most of the world, Muslim groups are still subsisting on the slave trade all throughout Africa—“Slavery Prevalent in Africa 400 Years After Transatlantic Trade Began” is a recent headline—the role Muslims played in facilitating the transatlantic slave trade should be evident. 

Unfortunately, however, and as mentioned, if the obvious things of Islamic history—such as more than a millennium of unprovoked jihadi attacks on Europe—have been revised in a manner that presents the antithesis as truth, surely Islam’s more insidious or subtle role throughout history, such as its facilitation of the transatlantic slave trade, will remain unheard of.

As such, here is a general rule of thumb to help cut through all fake, pro-Islamic histories: to know what Islam did in the past, simply look to what it is doing in the present, which includes a thriving underground—and of course aboveground—slave market.

Meanwhile, Europeans/Christians—who were actually the ones to outlaw slavery internationally—will continue to be the blame all for this tragic episode of history.

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Image from Wikipedia


Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/exposed-islams-role-transatlantic-slave-trade-raymond-ibrahim/

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