ISIS claims Orlando gay nightclub massacre - Ari Soffer

by Ari Soffer

Official 'Islamic State' media outlet claims credit for shooting on behalf of ISIS, as jihadists take to social media in celebration.

The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group's official media wing has released a statement claiming credit for the deadly shooting attack at an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub on behalf of the jihadist organization.

In a statement published in the last few minutes, the al-Amaq agency - which functions as ISIS's propaganda and media wing - claimed that "the attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter."

50 people were murdered in the worst shooting spree in American history, and a further 53 were wounded, many of them seriously.

The attack was carried out by a Muslim American named by authorities as Omar Mateen, who swore allegiance to ISIS shortly before carrying out the attack.

ISIS has been encouraging its followers to carry out terrorist attacks throughout the Western world in "honor" of Ramadan, which began last week.

However, despite Mateen's reported pledge of allegiance to ISIS it is unclear at this point whether he acted alone or under orders from ISIS's central leadership. Previous gun rampages carried out on behalf of ISIS - including the 2015 San Bernardino attack - were committed by cells acting independently, with ISIS formally claiming responsibility shortly afterwards.

Even prior to the statement by ISIS's media wing, jihadists took to social media to celebrate and gloat over the attack.

Some ISIS supporters used the hashtag #Orlandoisburning, modeled after a similar hashtag used by ISIS social media accounts following recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.


Ari Soffer

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213554#.V13bLaKzdds

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Liberal progressive values meet Muslim terror - Barry Shaw

by Barry Shaw

Israel is a case in point. Palestinian terror conflicts with Israeli liberal progressive values.

When Israel displays so-called “liberal progressive values” to people intent on attacking our state and killing Jews the direct and immediate result is Palestinian Arab terror and the murder of Israelis.

When the Israeli government lifted restrictions on Palestinians as a gesture during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan Palestinian Arabs, particularly those belonging to Hamas, exploited the gesture by disguising themselves, arming themselves, traveling into the heart of Tel Aviv, perhaps the most liberal progressive city in Israel, to kill and injure Israelis, including many who have supported their cause.

When the terrorists entered the busy Sarona entertainment center they entered the soft underbelly of Israel and mingled with the part of Israeli society who have bought into the notion that Israel should not “occupy” the Palestinians, that it is wrong to “oppress” them. In other words, they have adopted the language of the Palestinians without understanding that, by living in Israel, according to the killers and those who motivated them, they are illegally occupying Palestine, even if they live in Tel Aviv.

These Israelis, including Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv, think that the terror outrage was a result of “Israeli occupation.” They have blinded themselves to the fact that both side of the Palestinian Arab political divide look on Israel as “Palestinian occupied territory.” 

To the Palestinian Arab leadership, both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, there is no such thing as an Israeli Arab. They are, in their language “Palestinians of the Interior” or “Palestinians of “48” symbolizing the Arabs that remained when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state of Israel in 1948 in order to destroy it.

That is why Mahmoud Abbas, the undemocratic Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, elected to a four year term nine years ago, cannot, and will not, recognize Israel as the Jewish state. To do so would put an end to the final solution of the Jewish problem in the Middle East, namely the establishment of a Palestine on all the land they desire. Accepting a Palestinian state on what are called “1967 lines” is simply a temporary stage on the way to completing the task of eliminating Israel.

Just look at Palestinian maps, read what they are teaching their children. Their “Palestine” includes Jaffa, Haifa, Acre and the Galilee. They have even turned the wandering Bedouin of the Negev into Palestinians.

They are supported in this by hundreds of foreign support groups including the BDS Movement led by Omar Barghouti who has publicly stated that “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state.”  

That is why you hear the chant on the streets of Europe and the United States from radical Palestinian supporters of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 

Words have meaning and these words mean that Palestine will only be free when Israel no longer exists.

These words fully support the PLO Charter which states, “Palestine, with the borders it had during the British Mandate (i.e. prior to 1922!!) is an indivisible territorial unit.”

Little wonder then that the Arabs opposed the UN Partition Plan of 1947. This Palestinian ambition continues today, even if the way to fulfilling that ambition means killing Jews along the way. It is written and ordered in the Hamas Charter, “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come out and kill him!” 

That is precisely what the Hamas killers did in Tel Aviv.

The PLO Charter calls for “armed resistance.” The act perpetrated by the Palestinian Arab murderers was precisely that. Bloody acts of terror are acts of “armed resistance.”

So don’t be fooled when BDS activists tell you they are a “non-violent” protest movement in support of the Palestinian cause. They are lying. Their leader Barghouti has openly said, “Palestinians have the right to resistance by any means, including armed resistance.” 

In the aftermath of this Palestinian terror outrage the Israeli government has re-imposed travel restrictions. I suppose we will hear an outcry that Israel is imposing a “collective punishment” on the Palestinians. Let them cry about it. What the Israeli government has done is impose collective safety on myself, my family and friends.

If that keeps us safe from murderous people baying for my blood I can live without the label of being called a liberal progressive. Perhaps America should do the same.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.  He is also the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism’ and the new best-seller ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19026#.V13b0qKzdds

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VIDEO: The Death of Free Speech in Europe - Giulio Meotti

by Giulio Meotti

Across Europe, cartoonists, artists and writers are forced to live under police protection, and also often face criminal prosecution -- all for the "crime" of offending Islam. "'Respect' means, for them, submission." It starts with censoring cartoons... Here is Gatestone Institute's Giulio Meotti in our latest video:

Giulio Meotti

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8236/video-free-speech-europe

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Hilarious: NPR and NYT talk about Venezuela’s economic catastrophe and avoid the obvious - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

--two earnest interlocutors (aren’t liberal elites always earnest?) struggle to explain what went wrong in Venezuela

John Hinderaker of Powerline came across an interview on NPT’s Fresh Air program that illustrates hilariously the ideological blinders that prevent both institutions from recognizing the obvious: socialism has ruined Venezuela, an extraordinarily resource-rich nation (world’s largest oil reserves), to the point where basic necessities are in short supply, civil society threatens to break down, and mass starvation cannot be ruled out.  

The two earnest interlocutors (aren’t liberal elites always earnest?) struggle to explain what went wrong in Venezuela, and just can’t bring themselves to consider socialism. It’s mismanagement, it’s corruption, it’s an inability to print enough money (seriously!), but whatever it is, it cant be socialism, because socialism is…good.

At the root of it all: the decline in oil prices:

What happened to cause the complete breakdown of Venezuela’s economy? NPR leads with this: “New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey talks about life in Venezuela, where the collapse in oil prices has caused shortages of everything….”

Hinderaker scores a bullseye, noting:

But oil prices have declined worldwide. You can still buy toilet paper in North Dakota.

Read the whole thing, and remember the old saying: There’s no fool like an educated fool.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/hilarious_npr_and_nyt_talk_about_venezuelas_economic_catastrophe_and_ovoid_the_obvious.html

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The Sinister Politicization of the Malady of Unstable Sex Identification (USI) - Deborah C. Tyler

by Deborah C. Tyler

The most tragic aspect of the sinister politicization of USI is in its waste of the potential for spiritual self-transcendance.

There are three kinds of knowledge about human life. Spiritual knowledge seeks to answer the question why do we exist. Scientific knowledge seeks to answer the question how do we exist. Philosophical knowledge addresses the question what is the meaning of our existence. The decline of the United States from a bordered constitutional republic with a Judeo-Christian spiritual foundation to an atheist socialist territory of the new world order is fueled by the systematic replacement of American spiritual, scientific, and philosophical knowledge with anti-God, unscientific, dehumanizing ignorance.

Perhaps nothing coming down the progressive propaganda pike is as regressive, ludicrous and dehumanizing as the “transgender” movement: the politicization of a rare mental malady of unstable sex identification (USI).

Statist socialism in the modern era maintains mental control over people through fallacies about the why, how and what of human life. These fallacies deny the whence and whither of Godful origination and destination; they weaken science; they offer perverted philosophies that destroy individual possibility and responsibility.

American spiritual history can be divided into two eras: classical (the founding until 1973) and post-classical (1973 to the present). The former was characterized by a distinctively American form of Judeo-Christian spiritual knowledge that supported the philosophy that men are created equal, free and responsible for their own happiness. It also supported scientific advancement. The post-classical era, marked by the Roe v. Wade decision, is characterized by a shift from Judeo-Christian privatism to atheist socialism. This shift politicizes and corrupts science.

The totalitarian subjugation of the American people has been dramatic but sly and sinister, effected through the destruction of the spiritual and philosophical foundations of classical American freedom. The pinnacles of American spiritual, scientific and philosophical knowledge scaled in classical America are tumbling into an abyss of faddish ignorance, much of it focused on the problems of sex and sexuality. As faddish ignorance goes, “transgenderism” takes the cake.

It is a spiritual truth and biological fact that humans are created, formed and programmed in every cell to be either male or female. Rare medical disorders can create ambiguity in an individual, but even in those cases there remain but two sexes. People who believe God created man and woman, and try to live as purely as possible within God's accommodation of man-woman marriage, don't need a governmental bully to force their beliefs down throats. They are much more difficult to control than those who are confused or obsessed with “transgender” entitlements.

To create that malleable confusion, the misnomer “gender” has been forced into the American vocabulary, replacing the word sex. Little boxes demark gender rather than sex; sex discrimination is misnamed gender discrimination. The tyrannies of LGBT and academia “gender studies” would have us believe that new genders, like planets, are being discovered all the time.

This sinister campaign mentally enslaves a formerly free people, and the malapropism “transgender” is a leap forward in that campaign. The term itself is senseless, comparable to the concept “transmental.” We have but one mind. The mind can imagine and direct all sorts of experience, but it is impossible to escape or transcend the unitary mind. We are each one of the two sexes. We can imagine what it would be like to be the opposite sex, and even copy its experiences, but we cannot transcend our own sex. The male with USI can take high doses of artificial female hormones, reducing the masculinity of his appearance and superficially simulating female appearance, but he cannot become a woman. With unnatural and possibly carcinogenic pharmacology, he spends his days in front of a mirror dreading signs of his own healthful nature. His shaky identity causes him to cross-dress and adopt cross-sex mannerisms, but he cannot transcend the why, how and what of he was created and born to be. Most tragically, he has managed only to trade one form of loneliness for another. Now the isolation he suffered in USI is replaced by the loneliness in needing others to lie for him, to accept he is a woman, though it is not true.

In post-classical American thought, USI has rightly come to be recognized as a mental challenge, varying in degrees of severity. But tragically, the spiritual aspects of compulsive dissatisfaction with one's own sex are ignored or forgotten, supplanted by political entitlements accorded not only full rights of public expression, but also political impositions. Hence President Obama's recent slimy statement championing the rights of anatomical males to use female bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools. Again, this is political propaganda of underhanded, anti-God socialism. Mr. Obama cares nothing about the distress and discord inevitable if such an unGodly edict were enforced, which of course he would never inflict upon his own daughters. He is interested in crushing the faith, spirit and self-respect of the American people.

There are reasons to hope. Perhaps in this trans-toilet moment, are people finally beginning to say enough is enough? Recently, the American College of Pediatricians released a statement entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children.” The statement asserts that any form of gender reclassification of children is child abuse.

Sex identification is the earliest, deepest and strongest mental connection in human psychology. USI is a stiff life challenge, but on the list of bad things that can happen in this world, it doesn't make page one. USI, like every other malady, can be handled intelligently or unintelligently. People with USI should not drug or cut themselves. They should live with their God-given forms, honest with themselves, their close ones and their God, not worry about their weaknesses which eventually will fade, and try to be happy.

The most tragic aspect of the sinister politicization of USI is in its waste of the potential for spiritual self-transcendance. The case of the great Olympian Bruce Jenner, USI in late middle age, illustrates the spiritual tragedy of “transgenderism.” Mr. Jenner is a rich, famous celebrity. When he decided the moment was right for him to declare himself a “trans-woman,” the politically correct media fell at his size 18 low-heeled $1,000 pumps. He undeservedly received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award from ESPN, sparking outrage in being chosen over a basketball star who was raising money for cancer research even as she was dying from the disease. Yet Mr. Jenner is not happy. A Kardashian-in-recovery, he leans over linen in posh restaurants, confiding across crystal goblet rims that he can't find love. He can't share in the deepest fulfillment of woman's nature. No kidding. God made us male and female so man can transcend himself in woman and woman in man. That chance comes from God, not from human contrivance. That transcendence requires humility, courage and a tranquil identification as male or female.

God's love is omnipresent and infinite whether Bruce calls himself Cait, Shmait, or Gouda cheese. The impediments are all on our side. “LGBT pride” politics are an otiose hurdle to spiritual freedom. You still have the First Amendment. Use it. Do not speak or write the word “transgender.” Say, “I prefer the term unstable sex identification, or USI.” You can add a quizzical, “Are you USI-phobic?”

Deborah C. Tyler

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/the_sinister_politicization_of_the_malady_of_unstable_sex_identification_usi.html

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Clinton admits some improper donations 'slipped through cracks' - David Rosenberg

by David Rosenberg

Likely Democratic nominee admits some foreign donations to Clinton foundation went unreported during her tenure as Sec. of State.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted on Wednesday that some foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation made during her tenure as Secretary of State were not disclosed to the State Department.

Clinton’s admission is the first acknowledgement by the likely Democratic nominee that the foundation, chaired by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, received money from foreign sources off the books.

Speaking on CNN, the former First Lady responded to accusations by GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump that Clinton had used her position in the State Department to provide political favors to foreign interest in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.

“[T]he Russians, the Saudis, and the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return,” Trump said on Tuesday.

Clinton claimed “overwhelming disclosure” saying that the bulk of donations were reported to the State Department during her tenure.

When pressed by CNN host Anderson Cooper, who noted examples of the foundation’s lack of transparency, Clinton admitted that in “one or two instances” some donations “slipped through the cracks”.

Citing donations including a large sum received from Algeria, Cooper noted the foundation’s failure to disclose donations.

“The foundation has obviously raised huge sums of money for worthy causes. It's always not been transparent, though. Tens of millions of dollars have come from a Canadian partnership whose donors can remain secret. There was a large donation from Algeria that wasn't submitted to State Department for approval. If you're president, will your husband divest himself of any association with the foundation?”

“We had absolutely, overwhelming disclosure,” Clinton responded. “Were there one or two instances that slipped through the cracks? Yes. But was the overwhelming amount of anything that anybody gave the foundation disclosed? Absolutely. And I'm proud of the foundation. I'm proud of the work it has done”.

The Clinton Foundation, which engages in humanitarian work, has been criticized for what some have described as a lack of transparency. Critics have accused Clinton of using the foundation to support staff members who later formed the core of her presidential campaign.


David Rosenberg

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213493#.V1mcdeSzdds

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Watch: MSNBC hosts blame Tel Aviv terror on... Israel - Ari Soffer

by Ari Soffer

Shocking report by MSNBC anchors focuses on attacking Israeli 'right-wing government' - as images of Tel Aviv carnage play out.

Even among some particularly outrageous media portrayals of Arab terror attacks on Israeli in the past, a strikingly hostile live discussion on MSNBC Wednesday night - as news of the deadly shooting spree in Tel Aviv broke - left many viewers stunned.

Even as images of the carnage at Sarona Market played out on screen, after four people were murdered in a terror attack by two Arab gunmen, two news anchors appeared to compete in exhibiting hostility towards Israel.

One of the two MSNBC presenters has form: Ayman Mohyeldin was caught lying last year after attempting to portray a knife-wielding terrorist as an unarmed man shot by Israeli police simply for cutting in line at a checkpoint.

In his latest reportage, first flagged by the Honest Reporting media watchdog, Mohyeldin repeatedly suggested that the fact that Israel has a right-wing government and was enacting security measures to prevent attacks, somehow justified attacks on Israeli civilians.

His colleague Martin Fletcher joined in the anti-Israel tirade, inexplicably emphasizing Israel's "extreme right-wing" in a report concerning a brutal attack by Palestinian terrorists against Israelis.

As noted by Honest Reporting, the coverage was all the more astonishing in that while it inexplicably focused on supposed Israeli "extremism", nothing was mentioned vis-a-vis the blatant extremism and support for such attacks against civilians by Palestinians - including open celebrations on the streets of Gaza, eastern Jerusalem and Palestinian Authority-ruled cities.




Ari Soffer

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213495#.V1l7BuSzdds

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The IDF generals' twenty-year long attempt to defeat Netanyahu - Giulio Meotti

by Giulio Meotti

The war of the generals makes the media war and its latest French donor battle, pale in comparison.

Israelis are great soldiers out of necessity, not because of militarism. The former chief of staff, the archaeologist Yigal Yadin, said that “in Israel a civilian is a soldier with eleven months leave.” 

Some have called Israel “the modern Sparta.” Others, less benign, “the small Middle East Prussia.” 

Because of its geographical location and the genocidal intentions of its foes, Israel can not afford a war of position and attrition, it has to win right away. It must have an army that goes hand in hand with the political leadership.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a civilian, in place of Moshe "Bogie" Yaalon in“the latest act of the war between Netanyahu and the military leaders and intelligence” according to Ronen Bergman, writing in the NYT. 

The latest chapter in this war began after Elor Azaria, an Israeli sergeant, shot and killed a wounded Palestinian terrorist in Hevron. The army condemned the killing and the soldier, while Netanyahu called Azaria’s father to offer his moral support. The Israeli generals read the phone call as a challenge to their authority. The deputy chief of staff, General Yair Golan, choose one of the most sensitive periods on Israel’s calendar,  Holocaust Memorial Day, to counterattack, suggesting a similarity between Israel and Germany in the ‘30s. Then minister of defense Moshe Yaalon, a former army chief of staff, defended the general. Haaretz already wonders if “Yaalon will be the new Ariel Sharon”.

In Netanyahu's way of looking at it, the army élite is part of the "hegemonic bloc", which he has defeated many times. In the run-up to the 1999 elections, a large group of retired generals gathered around the figure of Ehud Barak to orchestrate what will go down in history as the “democratic putsch” against Netanyahu, "guilty" of having ordered the generals to “change the disk” on the Palestinian Arabs (a few days ago Ehud Barak re-appeared on television to warn Israel of “fascism”).

In 1997 the main contender against Netanyahu for the Likud leadership was a military man, Yitzhak Mordechai, and Bibi was also challenged by his former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who later gave the victory to Barak by founding a small centrist party that stole votes from Netanyahu. Another former chief of staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz, has joined the opposition party Kadima, while General Amram Mitzna was in contention for the Labour leadership, after defining Netanyahu “dangerous for Israel”.

Today the Left dreams that two former generals, Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz, will politically unseat Netanyahu.

There’s even a law, made expressly for the generals and promoted by the Left, to reduce from three years to six months the period of leave that an IDF officer must take before getting into politics.

And while Netanyahu flew to Washington to denounce the nuclear deal between the US and Iran, a group called “Commanders for the security of Israel” made up of 180 retired generals and former officials, including three former heads of Mossad, denounced the Prime Minister. “It is the worst manager I’ve ever had”, said the late Meir Dagan, the former director of the Mossad, of Netanyahu. Dagan openly campaigned against the Prime Minister. Later, it turned out that he was secretly in cahoots with the US government to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

Netanyahu is in conflict with the generals on many issues: the proposals to reduce restrictive conditions for Palestinian Arabs (the prime minister is against) to allegations that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas incites terrorism (the Shin Bet says he helps to fight it) and Netanyahu’s proposal to expel the families of terrorists (the secret service opposed the measure).

Both the Shin Bet and the Mossad also opposed the military campaign against Hamas in Gaza in 2014. Yuval Diskin, the former head of the security services, is today one of the most eloquent opponents of Netanyahu. Diskin said that Netanyahu represents “a threat to the country”. There is bad blood between the heads of the Shin Bet and Netanyahu ever since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Carmi Gillon, who commanded the services at the time and failed to protect Rabin, declared that Netanyahu was indirectly responsible for the killing of the Prime Minister.

Meir Dagan orchestrated one of the most impressive public campaigns on how to disarm Tehran. On a day sometime in 2010, Netanyahu, together with Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, ordered the army level “P +”: meaning "get ready" to attack the Iranian nuclear plants. A leak from the office of members of the government would later indicate that the attack was foiled by the opposition of the security chiefs, including Diskin. Barak confirmed the report on Israeli television: “At the moment of truth, the answer was that they could not do it” chanted Barak. The army and the secret services never forgave Netanyahu who made them look like wimps.

The last six of the secret service chiefs are also all politically engaged against Netanyahu. Beginning with Yaakov Peri, who commanded the Shin Bet from 1988 to 1995 (now Peri is in the Yair Lapid Party).

For the Obama administration, which has never made any secret of hating Netanyahu, the security echelon in Israel is an alternative government. This is the lesson to be drawn from an article published in Foreign Affairs by David Makovsky, a member of the negotiating team of the Secretary of State John Kerry during his failed peace process. Makovsky defined the IDF as “the guardian of democratic values” ​​and “the Israeli-Palestinian arena stabilizer”.

In June 1967, then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol expected US support for what would become “the Six Day War” while the Arab armies were massing at the borders of Israel, and the top IDF brass said that going to war was less dangerous than not going. While the country was dying in an unnerving wait, then Major General Ariel Sharon tried to persuade his superior Yitzhak Rabin to stage a coup. But in those days the roles were reversed: the politicians were the doves and the generals were the hawks; today the generals seem to be diehard pacifists. Also reversed was the sentiment of the people: then, the generals were considered untouchable white knights; today they are viewed with suspicion, accused of disloyalty to their elected prime minister and of having clear political aims.

The generals' policy of unilateral withdrawal and dialogue with a gun at Israel's head has proven to be a recipe for disaster for the Jewish State.


Giulio Meotti

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19000#.V1lp6uSzddt

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Public Support for the European Union Plunges - Soeren Kern

by Soeren Kern

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a "code of conduct" to combat the spread of "illegal hate speech" online. Critics say the EU's definition of "hate speech" is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats.

Public opposition to the European Union is growing in all key member states, according to a new survey of voters in ten EU countries.

Public disaffection with the EU is being fueled by the bloc's mishandling of the refugee and debt crises, according to the survey, which interviewed voters in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

The 17-page report, "Euroskepticism Beyond Brexit," was published by the Pew Research Center on June 7, just two weeks before the June 23 referendum on whether Britain will become the first country to leave the European Union (Brexit blends the words Britain and exit).

The following are excerpts:

• Much of the disaffection with the EU among Europeans can be attributed to Brussels' handling of the refugee issue. In every country surveyed, overwhelming majorities disapprove of how Brussels has dealt with the crisis. This includes 94% of Greeks, 88% of Swedes and 77% of Italians. In Hungary and Poland, disapproval of how the refugee crisis has been managed stands at 72% and 71%, respectively. In France, 70% disapprove; in Germany the figure is 67%. The strongest approval of EU management of the refugee crisis is in the Netherlands, but that backing is a tepid 31%.
• The EU's handling of economic issues is another huge source of disaffection with Brussels. About nine-in-ten Greeks (92%) disapprove of how the EU has dealt with the ongoing economic crisis. Roughly two-thirds of the Italians (68%), French (66%) and Spanish (65%) similarly disapprove. (France and Spain are the two nations where the favorability of the EU has recently experienced the largest decline.) Majorities in Sweden (59%) and the UK (55%) also disapprove of the EU's job in dealing with economic challenges. The strongest approval of Brussels' economic efforts is in Poland and Germany (both 47%).
• Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Britons say they want the EU to return certain powers to national governments. This Euroskepticism is not limited to Britain. In Greece, 68% of those surveyed want some EU powers devolved to the national government, followed by Sweden (47%); the Netherlands (44%) and Germany (43%).
• A median of 42% of Europeans across the ten countries surveyed say they want to reclaim some powers from Brussels, while just 19% favor greater centralization (27% prefer the status quo).
• Conversely, there is little enthusiasm for transferring more power to Brussels. Only 6% of Britons, 8% of Greeks and 13% of Swedes favor more power for the EU. The strongest backing for an ever closer Europe is only 34%, in France. In most countries, a quarter or more of the public prefers to keep the current division of power.
• Three-quarters of Britons who disapprove of the EU's handling of economic problems and 71% of those who have an unfavorable view of the bloc's handling of the refugee crisis believe that Brussels should return powers to national governments.
• The strongest backers of the EU are the Poles (72%) and the Hungarians (61%). In many other nations, support is tepid. Just 27% of the Greeks, 38% of the French (down from 69% in 2004) and 47% of the Spanish (down from 80% in 2007) have a favorable opinion of the EU. Notably, 44% of the British view the EU favorably, including 53% of the Scottish.
• EU favorability is down in five of the six nations surveyed in both 2015 and 2016. There has been a double-digit drop in France (down 17 percentage points) and Spain (16 points), and single-digit declines in Germany (8 points), the United Kingdom (7 points) and Italy (6 points).
• Young people — those ages 18 to 34 — are more favorable toward the European Union than people 50 and older in six of the 10 nations surveyed. The generation gap is most pronounced in France — 25 percentage points — with 56% of young people but only 31% of older people having a positive opinion of the EU. There are similar generation gaps of 19 points in the UK, 16 points in the Netherlands, 14 points in Poland and Germany, and 13 points in Greece. It remains unclear why young Europeans are so favorable to the EU, where youth unemployment is near 50% in some EU countries.
• There is overwhelming sentiment across Europe that Brexit would be a bad thing for the European Union: 89% in Sweden, 75% in the Netherlands and 74% in Germany say the British leaving would not be good for the EU. France is the only country where more than a quarter (32%) of the public says it would be positive for the EU if the UK departed.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the European Union, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a "code of conduct" to combat the spread of "illegal hate speech" online in Europe. Critics say the initiative amounts to an assault on free speech in Europe because the EU's definition of "hate speech" and "incitement to violence" is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the European Union itself.

On May 24, the unelected president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, vowed to use sanctions to isolate far-right or populist governments that are swept into office on the wave of popular anger against migration. Under powers granted to the European Commission in 2014, Juncker can trigger a "rule of law alert" for countries that depart from "the common constitutional traditions of all member states." Rather than accepting the will of the people at the voting booth, Juncker can impose sanctions to address "systemic deficiencies" in EU member states.

On May 4, Juncker warned that EU countries that failed to "show solidarity" by refusing take in migrants would face a fine of €250,000 ($285,000) per migrant.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats. According to the plan, the 28 EU member states would have a "legally binding duty to share information."

The British Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, responded:

"These matters are supposed to be, and must be the competence of member states. Intelligence sharing can only be done on a bilateral basis. This latest EU integration project not only shows how little the EU cares for the sovereignty of nation states, but also how little it understands the business of counter-terrorism."

On December 15, 2015, the European Commission unveiled plans for a new European Border and Coast Guard force that can intervene anywhere in the EU, even without the host country's consent.

On March 8, 2015, Juncker said that the EU needed its own military in order to restore the bloc's standing around the world: "Europe's image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don't seem to be taken entirely seriously."

Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected president of the European Commission, recently vowed to use sanctions to isolate far-right or populist governments that are swept into office on the wave of popular anger against migration. In December 2015, the Commission unveiled plans for a new European Border and Coast Guard force that can intervene anywhere in the EU, even without the host country's consent. (Image source: © European Union 2015 - European Parliament)

In a recent interview with Le Monde, Juncker said that if Britons voted to leave the EU, they would be treated as "deserters":

"I am sure the deserters will not be welcomed with open arms. If the British should say 'No' — which I hope they do not — then life in the EU will not go on as before. The United Kingdom will be regarded as a third country and will have its fur stroked the wrong way (caresser dans le sens du poil). If the British leave Europe, people will have to face the consequences. It is not a threat but our relations will no longer be what they are today."

In an interview with the Telegraph, Giles Merritt, director of the Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels, summed it up this way:

"The EU policy elites are in panic. If the British vote to leave the shock will be so ghastly that they will finally wake up and realize that they can no longer ignore demands for democratic reform. They may have to dissolve the EU as it is and try to reinvent it, both in order to bring the Brits back and because they fear that the whole political order will be swept away unless they do."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in 2016.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8224/european-union-support

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ISIS Produces Kill List as Border Remains Open - Ari Lieberman

by Ari Lieberman

Why the terrorist group is ramping up its attacks on soft targets.

Just a year ago, ISIS (aka ISIL, aka Daesh) was on the offensive. In Iraq, the group had solidified its hold over Al-Anbar province by securing the predominantly Sunni city of Ramadi and was threatening Baghdad. Some twenty-thousand Iraqi soldiers fled in the face of just 3,000 ISIS fighters.  In Syria, ISIS had captured the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO heritage site and also secured nearby gas fields. Like their Iraqi kinsmen, the Syrian army was in full retreat. It seemed that no Arab army was capable of confronting the Islamic State.

The situation today is markedly different. In Anbar province, the Iraqi army backed by various Shiite militias is pressing its assault against the ISIS-held city of Fallujah, highlighting the sectarian nature of the fighting. In eastern Syria, Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower, have retaken Palmyra and are now gearing up for an offensive against the ISIS stronghold Al-Raqqah, considered to be the Islamist group’s capital.

Meanwhile, Kurdish Peshmerga troops backed by U.S. Special Forces continue to score victories against ISIS and coalition aircraft led by the U.S. have been relentlessly pummeling ISIS targets. The Islamic State is being squeezed from all sides and its future is uncertain. So desperate is its predicament that the group has reportedly been murdering many of its own members on suspicion of spying for “infidel” forces.

But it would be a grave mistake to write ISIS off just yet. In fact, as the Islamic State continues to lose ground and becomes more desperate, we can expect concerted efforts by the group to unleash terror attacks on soft targets throughout Europe and the United States, similar to the Paris and San Bernardino attacks that claimed the lives of 130 and 14 people respectively. Though achieving tactically little, these acts of terror sow fear, disrupt daily normal life, draw Jihadist recruits and most importantly, make the group relevant.

Recent reversals experienced by the Islamic State have not dulled their hatred of the West and thirst for gore. In April, the group published a 39-page list of thousands of individuals, along with their personal information, and announced that they were to be targeted for assassination. The hit list was published on an ISIS-affiliated Twitter account but the account was shut down by Twitter soon after.

Authorities are still investigating how such sensitive personal information, containing names and addresses, ended up in the hands of one of the world’s most brutal terrorist organizations but the disturbing development underscores the lengths to which ISIS will go to strike terror. It also underscores the need to carefully monitor social media, a tool terrorists have used effectively in the past to disseminate Jihadist propaganda.

In addition, the breach highlights the need for more effective cyber security. The incident should serve as a warning to agencies maintaining sensitive databases to review their security protocols and mechanisms by which they safeguard their data.

Most importantly, the United States needs to rapidly address the decrepit state of its porous borders. Western Europe has thus far been the focal point of Jihadist attacks principally due to two factors – the existence of a high concentration of Muslims, many of whom are radicalized and a pathetic lack of border controls. The current Muslim migrant influx, which includes an extraordinarily high percentage of young males, has only added to the problem. In the United States, the situation is not as acute but still poses a credible threat that mandates immediate remedial action.

President Obama has promised that those “refugees” allowed to enter the U.S. will be thoroughly vetted but that claim rings hollow in light of the San Bernardino experience. Tashfeen Malik, Seyd Farook’s partner in crime and Pakistani Jihadi bride, entered the U.S. on a K-1 (fiancée) visa and underwent two separate screenings by Homeland Security and the State Department before being granted a visa and underwent a third before obtaining her green card. But Malik had expressed pro-terrorist, anti-American rants on social media and these went unnoticed by immigration and Homeland Security officials despite the so-called "rigorous vetting process."

In addition, there have been repeated cases of Syrian “refugees” turning up on the Mexican border. In one case, five Syrians trying to make their way to the U.S. were detained in Honduras and had in their possession stolen Greek passports. Despite these disturbing developments, the Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton has stated that she would allow some 65,000 Syrian “refugees” to enter the United States. At least two members of the Islamic terrorist cell that carried out the bloody Paris attacks gained access by posing as Syrian refugees.

The Islamic State and other global Jihadist groups consider the United States their number one enemy and will spare no effort to harm Americans. The published list of NJ law enforcement officials is the latest in series of nefarious attempts by the group to harm U.S. citizens. As ISIS becomes more desperate due to its recent battlefield misfortunes, it will attempt to strike out at the U.S. making it incumbent upon policy makers to ensure that securing the borders becomes a national priority. Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership has utterly failed to appreciate the clear and present danger and is moving in the opposite direction.

Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263139/isis-produces-kill-list-border-remains-open-ari-lieberman

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