Cartel Jihad Rap - Dawn Perlmutter and Doyle Quiggle

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by Dawn Perlmutter and Doyle Quiggle

Sinaloa Cartel recruiting gangster jihadists.

Chérif Chekatt, the 29-year-old perpetrator of the December 11, 2018, mass shooting in Strasbourg, France was designated a gangster jihadist by French Police. The term refers to people previously convicted of various crimes and radicalized in prison. Chekatt, a French born citizen was a hardened criminal with 27 convictions in France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Gangster-jihadists are not just recruited in prison by Islamic extremists. The Sinaloa Cartel appears to have seized upon the opportunity to recruit and exploit hundreds of locals in France and Germany, including children and refugees already primed by jihadist propaganda, many possessing criminal records and combat experience.  International law enforcement agencies have long known that Hezbollah launder money for the Sinaloa cartel. Recently, German law enforcement have been aggressively disrupting the criminal operations of traditional Arab Clans in Berlin and even the operations of La Cosa Nostra. Neither are known to have been affiliated with Sinaloa or Hezbollah. Sinaloa have quickly filled the narco-vacuum, similar to how the Cali Cartel took over Pablo Escobar's market after the DEA killed him.  The sudden and alarming proliferation of top-shelf weaponry among Hamas and Hezbollah on the Israeli border is very likely the consequence of a renewed and strengthened alliance between them and Sinaloa, in which German-based "refugees" deal Sinaloan coke and heroin and kick part of the profits back to their Iran-based handlers, Hezbollah who, in turn, shuffle weapons over to Lebanon. This arrangement provides Iran deniability, while also providing Sinaloa broader access to and deeper penetration of the German narco market, as well as plenty of easy money to SUV-driving, Gucci-toting "refugees."    

Music and accompanying videos of German Rappers further indicate a new alliance of transnational criminal organizations drug trafficking and Islamic State terrorism. Jihadist sympathizers and Islamic State fighters have long embraced hip-hop culture, specifically gangsta rap, to promote and disseminate their message via the Internet and social media.  ‘Jihad Rap’ was a successful recruitment tool targeting young men who felt dispossessed and marginalized, one of the most notorious being the German rapper and ISIS terrorist, Denis Cuspert, aka "Deso Dog". After the fall of the Islamic State Caliphate a new form of gangsta rap emerged in Germany. Best described as ‘Cartel Jihad Rap’ it is a combination of Islamic State nasheed, jihad rap and narco-cultura.

Fawzi Yamouni aka Fousy is a German rapper and producer of Algerian origin from Siegen, Germany. Chérif Chekatt’s most recent prison sentence was served in Singen, Germany. He was radicalized in the infamous area of Konstanz, a town that borders France and has been a hub of Islamic radicalism since the mid-1990s. Many of Germany's prisons are now effective recruiting stations and training camps for cartel jihadis. Chekatt was expelled to France after his release in 2017.

Fousy produces and composes his own songs in the music genre Hip-Hop and Trap. Since 2017 he is under contract with the label Almaz Musiq of the Heidelberg rapper Kurdo who calls himself a "Rapper-terrorist." On March 2, 2018, the first release of Fousy appeared on Almaz Musiq entitled "20Mille EP". This release contains 7 songs in EP format including "Sinaloa Cartel” (featuring Kurdo)", "Sicario" and "Narcos". In April 2018, the "20 Mille EP" was voted the 8th best release in the month of March by 49 hip-hop releases in the user-voting on the German hip-hop portal Hiphop.de. This inspired an explosion of Sinaloa narco-cultura symbols among German youth, who are making their own narco-cultura tee-shirts, hoodies, and tattoos, imitating and honoring their "role models" like El Chapo, Pablo Escobar, "Tony Montana," who many believe was a real person.  The emergence of these symbols of narco-terrorists on the streets coincides with Fousy's growing popularity. They were not significantly present before 2018. Chekatt, also of Algerian origin, was most likely familiar with Fousy’s music, which is especially popular among teenaged ethnic and Muslim populations in Konstanz. 

Fousy’s music video ‘Narcos’ is a high-quality polished production that glorifies narco culture and promotes Islamic terrorism. The German language video depicts a luxurious lifestyle with expensive designer watches, duffle bags, clothing, weapons, cars and equipment, but blended and back dropped with jihadi and Salafi symbolism. On the surface the Narcos video glorifies drug trafficking but also functions as a terrorism training manual pointing out specific tactics and targets. It depicts men receiving messages on a shortwave radio, creating fake identities and building a bomb. The names on the forged identification cards include standard German names as well as Arab, Kurdish, and Turkish names, which is meant to suggest a kind of multicultural gang. The pluralism of the new gang has appeal to street criminals like Chérif Chekatt, as well as war-hardened refugees seeking a new home identity.  

Images of Islamic State militants fleetingly appear throughout the Narcos video. This differs from narco propaganda which emphasizes drug trafficking and cartel affiliation. These subliminal messages symbolize an ideological identification with the global jihad and a continuation of Islamic State goals. Nasheed rhythms reinforce this imagery, as well as lyrics that categorically list all the cities in which ISIS mass casualty terrorist attacks have taken place in the past four years. The attacks are praised in the name of Allah. The video also includes aerial shots and blueprints of the Port of Rotterdam Harbor, the largest port in Europe. Located in the city of Rotterdam, Netherlands, the harbor appears to be the terrorism target in the video.

The Sinaloa Cartel music video was written by Fousy and Kurdo and released on February 8, 2018. The German language video includes images of a homicide crime scene, expensive cars, hotel rooms, euros and mapping imagery [from Oman City, to Marseille, to Heidelberg, to Frankfurt]. One scene depicts a woman weighing, wrapping and hiding drugs in dead fish while wearing a narco / soldier skeleton bandana. The Sinaloa Cartel had previously smuggled drugs using fish.

She is the only woman in the video. She is white, covered in tattoos, has make up, black hair, long black nails and sexual clothing. She is later depicted lying dead in a bath tub with her throat slashed. Both Jihad and Narco culture is male dominated and women are considered inferior, submissive and subservient to men. Many women are labor and sex trafficked by both cartel and jihadist gangs.

Another scene depicts Kurdo rapping in front of kids from his home project and packing drugs into a duffle bag. The use of kids in the video from one of the rapper's home projects reveals the recruitment base/target group. The projects scene is in Heidelberg, the same building that Kurdo grew up in. The kids are holding the album on which Kurdo's hit song "Ya Salam" appears. Ya Salam means "Well done!" in this context Kurdo means, "Well done, ISIS, in Amsterdam," and all the other cities in which ISIS conducted mass-casualty terrorist attacks. The video ends with a time bomb placed in front of the Frankfurt Opera House signaling it as a target. Jihadists have previously targeted concert venues including the Bataclan theatre in Paris on November 13, 2015.

The two main activities of the Narcos and Sinaloa Cartel music videos is running drugs and building bombs. The bomb building is associated with jihad imagery. The drug running is elaborated with narco-cultura imagery. The videos source the point of origin for the drugs in America, coming in from the West through North Africa, which may be a declaration of war on Turkish and Russian cartels who push their drugs into Germany from the East, typically through Istanbul, Prague, and along the Middle Land Canal.

The lyrics in the videos create a new gang language by introducing and effectively adding key narco-cultura Spanish terms to German street slang, terms such as "vato," that already uses many Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish words. Vato is cartel Spanish for what the Italian mafia call "a made man."  The lyrics repeatedly glorify Pablo Escobar, El Chapo, and other well-known narco kingpins. The lyrics strictly eschew white German or Western women in favor of Muslim or Arabic women, who are commonly called Cleopatras. White women are referred to throughout the albums in English as "hoes" or "bitches" or "whores."

Distinctions between terrorists and transnational criminal organizations are blurred in these rap videos. The videos target juvenile criminals and jobless refugees for recruitment in Germany, France and the European Union. Cartel jihad rap is distinct from early Al-Qaeda recruitment videos that radicalized students, intellectuals or other previously non-violent individuals and were often longwinded sermons from bin Laden. They also differ from ‘jihad rap’ that specifically promoted a Salafi pro-jihad message. This album is unique in that it openly affiliates with the Sinaloa Cartel and appeals to young men like Chérif Chekatt who are already accustomed to and excited by violence. Unlike typical jihad propaganda the narco cultura aspect celebrates wealth and materialism depicting narco-culture as a Western lifestyle acceptable for the jihadi.

These videos inspire a new type of terrorist, one who wants to survive his attack, enjoy his newly acquired respect and live to kill again. If he survives, he earned his gangster jihadi street cred, if he is captured and sent to prison he is celebrated as a hero, if he is killed, he is a martyr for Islam. It’s a win-win, Paradise on earth and in heaven.


Dawn Perlmutter and Doyle Quiggle
Dawn Perlmutter Bio:
Dawn Perlmutter is the Director of the Symbol Intelligence Group and one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in symbols, symbolic anthropological methodologies, semiotics; atypical homicide and ritualistic crimes. She trains law enforcement agencies throughout the United States and presents expert witness testimony on ritual homicides.

Doyle Quiggle Bio:
Doyle Quiggle researches the anthropology of war from within the battlespace, focusing on counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency. He has deployed as a battle-space professor to US Troops downrange, at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, Africa and at FOB Fenty, Jalalabad, Afghanistan. His articles have appeared in Small Wars Journal; Journal of Terrorism Research; Foreign Policy; Arizona Quarterly; and Augean Stables.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272321/cartel-jihad-rap-dawn-perlmutter

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American Criminals’ Lobby Unlimited - Lloyd Billingsley

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by Lloyd Billingsley

ACLU: the faithful friend to America’s foes.

“The ACLU is creating more national immigration policy than the federal government.” That was Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones back in 2015, after the American Civil Liberties Union sent letters to sheriff’s departments across the country explaining that immigration detainers are requests, not commands, and threatening legal action with those sheriffs who comply.

Since more than 200 jurisdictions failed to honor all ICE detainers, Jones said, “we’ve become a de facto sanctuary state.” California is now an actual sanctuary state, and has made false-documented illegals, even violent criminals, a privileged, protected class. The ACLU still takes measures to ensure that no criminals ever get deported.

Of the 1,303 immigrants at Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department facilities in 2017, 83 percent of those detainees were Hispanic. That year ICE conducted 51 interviews at county facilities, barely 2 percent of all law enforcement interviews that took place. Yet ACLU attorney Sean Riordan expressed concern about, “the experiences people have had in being transferred from sheriff’s custody to ICE custody.”

The ACLU also strives to keep the U.S. border open for virtually anybody who wants to cross it, for any reason. In August, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to remove asylum protections for victims of domestic and gang violence.

“This is a naked attempt by the Trump administration to eviscerate our country’s asylum protections,” ACLU attorney Jennifer Chang Newell told reporters. “It’s clear the administration’s goal is to deny and deport as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.”

On the other hand, the ACLU favors deportation if the country of origin is a Stalinist dictatorship.

Elizabeth Broton Rodriguez fled Communist Cuba in 1999 and perished with ten others. Her son Elian Gonzalez, age five, was found floating in an inner tube and taken to relatives in Florida. The Clinton administration set out to deport Elian to Communist Cuba, and the ACLU agreed.

ACLU attorney Brenda Bernstein Shapiro blasted “the failure to return Elian to his father,” still in Cuba. The ACLU also urged the court to rejected the concerns of his Miami relatives about custody being determined by the best interests of the child. The ACLU further argued that federal courts must have jurisdiction to review Immigration and Naturalization Service decisions on asylum applications.

When Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno deployed a SWAT team to grab Elian from relatives, the ACLU said in statement that “law enforcement officers have a right to protect themselves.” ACLU bosses got what they wanted, the return of a child to the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. 

When “unaccompanied minors” now show up at the southern border, the ACLU does not want to send them back to their parents in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. And the ACLU does not want ICE agents looking for criminal illegals in American jails. As Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese said, the ACLU is a criminals’ lobby, also concerned about the rights of terrorists.

After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the ACLU’s major concern was that police would question the suspect without reading his Miranda rights. In 2016, the ACLU rushed to provide legal counsel to Ahmad Khan Rahami, in custody following a bombing in New York that injured 31, and a gun battle with police.  

In 2005 in California, when the FBI made contact with Hamid Hayat about connections with an al-Qaida training camp, the ACLU teamed with CAIR to charge that the FBI had violated Hayat’s rights. In 2006 he was sentenced to 24 years.

In 2009, ACLU boss Anthony Romero said in statement, “Immediately after President Obama took the courageous step of ordering the closure of the illegal detention camp at Guantánamo,” a “chorus of Bush administration apologists” opposed the move. According to Romero, “It was the Bush administration’s detention and torture policies that made us less safe and more reviled by the Muslim world,” and “President Obama’s executive orders are a first step to defusing that hatred and giving us an America we can be proud of again.”

This from a supposedly non-partisan organization dedicated only to civil liberties. In reality, the ACLU always had a problem with America.

ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, wrote that the Soviet Union “has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world.” Baldwin was “for Socialism, disarmament, and ultimately the abolishing of the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion.” Baldwin headed the ACLU until 1950 and in later years explained, “I wanted what the communists wanted and I traveled the United Front road to get it.”

On January 16, 1981, President Jimmy Carter awarded Roger Baldwin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, praising the ACLU founder as “an inspiration to those of us who have fought for human rights, a saint to those for whom he has gained them.” Any regime that opposed the United States could count on Baldwin’s support, and that bias remains with ACLU.

The public does not elect ACLU bosses, but as Scott Jones sees it, the ACLU is creating immigration policy. For their part, elected representatives might require the ACLU to register as an agent of the foreign governments whose citizens they represent. That requirement might also apply to any U.S. officials who serve the interest of false-documented foreign nationals above the interests of legitimate American citizens and legal immigrants.

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation, recently updated, and Hollywood Party: Stalinist Adventures in the American Movie Industry.  Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield, is a collection of his journalism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272338/american-criminals-lobby-unlimited-lloyd-billingsley

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Tectonic Shifts in Attitudes toward Israel - Daniel Pipes

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by Daniel Pipes

Muslims show increasing indifference to the breakdown in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy, but Leftists express growing anger over it.

As Arabs and Muslims warm to Israel, the Left grows colder. These shifts imply one great imperative for the Jewish state.

On the first shift: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently pointed out "a great change" in the Arab world which has a growing connection to Israeli companies because it needs Israeli "technology and innovation, ... water, electricity, medical care, and high-tech." Explaining this normalization as a result of Arab states "looking for links with the strong," Netanyahu was too tactful of American liberals to add another factor: Barack Obama's policy of appeasing Tehran jolted the Arab states to get serious about the real threats facing them.

Miri Regev, Israel's minister of culture and sports, cried as "Hatikvah" played in Abu Dhabi to celebrate judoka Sagi Muki's victory.

It is striking to note that full-scale Arab state warfare versus Israel lasted a mere 25 years (1948-73) and ended 45 long years ago; and that Turkey and Iran have since picked up the anti-Zionist torch.

Nor is it just Israeli companies making inroads into Arab countries. The Israeli minister of sports broke into tears as Hatikvah, Israel's anthem, was played in Abu Dhabi upon the victory of an Israeli athlete. Rumors are swirling about a handshake to come between Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and Israel's prime minister.

That Arab and Muslim enmity has fractured, probably never to be reconstituted, amounts to one tectonic shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The second, no less important, involves the global Left's growing hostility to Israel.

This pattern can be found consistently from South Korea to Thailand to South Africa to Sweden to Brazil. The Durban conference of 2001 initially brought this phenomenon to light. Among many other examples, the Black Lives Matter platform accuses Israel of "apartheid" and "genocide." A communist labor union in India representing 16 million farmers, apparently joined the boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement.

An All India Kisan Sabha rally. Note the hammer and sickle.

Attitudes toward the Jewish state follow an almost linear progression of growing negativity as one goes from right to left. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey of American adults found 75 percent of conservative Republicans sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians, followed by 60 percent of moderate and liberal Republicans, 47 percent of Independents, 46 percent of conservative and moderate Democrats, and 33 percent of liberal Democrats.

It was not always thus. Joseph Stalin was so instrumental to Israel's birth in 1947-49 by providing diplomatic support and armaments that Abba Eban, Israel's first UN ambassador, observed that "we couldn't have made it, either diplomatically or militarily," if not for Soviet help. Democrats Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy rank among the most pro-Israel of American presidents, but Republican Dwight Eisenhower was unquestionably the most antagonistic.

MbS versus Jeremy Corbyn symbolizes these two tectonic shifts, as does Israel now enjoying better relations with Egypt than with Sweden. The president of Chad turns up in Israel but a singer from New Zealand does not. Israel's athletes compete in the United Arab Emirates but get banned in Spain. Muslims show increasing indifference to the breakdown in Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy, but Leftists express growing anger over it.

This last point has great importance: the rage against Israel is not about Ashkenazi-Sephardi relations, tensions on the Temple Mount, a possible attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, or Israel's own nuclear weapons. Rather, it almost exclusively concerns the status of some 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Thanks to a mix of Palestinian public relations expertise and continued antisemitism, the welfare of this small and powerless but fanatical population has transmogrified into the premier global issue of human rights, getting endlessly more attention than, say, Ethiopia – and motivates nearly all denunciations of Israel.

The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona: not the source of Israel's public relations problems.

Therefore, when the Left, now largely excluded from power, eventually returns to office in countries like Japan, India, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Israel will face a crisis due to the unresolved situations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Accordingly, a resolution of this issue should be an utmost priority for Israelis.

That does not mean touting yet another "peace plan" doomed to crash on the hard rock of Palestinian intransigence. It does mean, whatever one's favored plan might be, the need to end Palestinian aggression toward Israel: no more suicide attacks, kite bombings, and rockets. Only this will soothe Leftist rage.

Only an Israel victory and a Palestinian defeat will achieve this. In other words, getting the Palestinians to cry uncle is an urgent priority for Israel and its supporters.

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2018 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/18644/tectonic-shifts-in-attitudes-toward-israel

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Save the Children, Build a Wall - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

The Democrats would rather see children die than build a wall.

Since the Democrats went to war against what they called, “family separation”, two migrant children have died. They did not die, as the media would have you believe, because border security is cruel, but because encouraging migrants to cross the desert with their children, as the media has done, is evil.

The outrage, the tears and fury over the policy of deterring illegal migrants from using children to force their way into this country was not compassionate. It did not help migrant children. It killed them.

The 8-year-old boy from Guatemala and the 7-year-old girl from Guatemala, who died earlier this month, are the casualties of their false compassion for children. The media would have its viewers, readers and listeners believe that its outrage was meant to save children. It was not. It was meant to take their lives.

The dead children are not the victims of an overworked Border Patrol that has been deliberately starved of the resources to do its job, because its job would limit the ability of Democrats to steal elections. They are the victims of abusive parents or caretakers, who are willing to use the lives of their children as tickets to get inside the United States, not to escape persecution, but to double or triple their incomes.

The migrants are not refugees fleeing totalitarian regimes that are persecuting them for their beliefs. They are economic migrants who are willing to kill their children to earn more and get more free stuff. And they are every bit as guilty as the parents who leave their children to die in hot cars while they play slot machines. Any sane society would treat their murderous abuse of their children the same way.

Unfortunately we are not a sane society.

The flow of illegal migrants manufactures Democrat votes, not just through illegal voting, but through the far more pervasive problem of fake districts, boosted by illegal aliens and other non-citizens. The political machine that turned California into a Democrat one-party state where democracy is an alien concept, that has ravaged Virginia and has its gimlet eye on Texas, depends on illegal migration.

Americans have turned on the Democrats, their entire future depends on migration, legal and illegal. Without displacing American votes with foreign votes, the Democrats would have no future.

Dead kids are a small price to pay for the Democrats winning a few more House seats so Nancy Pelosi can get down to the business of repaying all her billionaire backers with taxpayer money. Not only are the dead children a small price to pay for political capital, but the media arm of the Democrats will exploit their deaths to create more political capital. Kill more children, win more elections.

The more children die, the more money the Democrats will have to divert to a “Green New Deal” for the billionaires funding their dirty tricks campaigns, gerrymandered maps and stolen elections.

It’s a political strategy made in hell and the DNC.

The deaths of these two children are already being used to argue for a further dismantling of border security that will lead to the flow of more illegal migrants and the deaths of more children.

This Cloward-Piven strategy for using children to kill immigration enforcement took off earlier with phony outrage over family separation by a political movement exploiting their suffering for votes. Now the strategy has fully matured by using not just the abuse of children, but their deaths, to perpetuate the abusive behaviors that led to their deaths.

The more children die, the more pressure there is to dismantle border security, and the more border security is dismantled, the more illegal migration will increase and the more children will die.

The Democrat war on border security is being lubricated with the deaths of children.

Meanwhile Senator Schumer and Rep. Pelosi have shut down the government to prevent it from building a wall that would save the lives of the children being trafficked through the desert.

The only way to stop children from dying in desert crossings is to put an end to the entire practice. And the only way to do that, to stop migrants from gambling that they can get away with it, is to build a wall.

Democrat leaders insist that they would rather shut down the government than build a wall because walls don’t work. Rep. Pelosi claimed that it would be immoral to waste money on a wall. Sen. Jeff Merkley claimed that a wall was “fourth century technology”. So is the wheel. And fire.

Walls work quite well. That’s why military bases, government buildings and the Obama home have them.

The Democrats don’t oppose a wall because they’ve suddenly developed a conscience over “wasting” $5 billion in the massive multi-trillion budgets that have become the norm. The same politicians who casually plunk down the lifetime income of a working family on a study about alcoholic lesbians or the sex lives of squirrels at one of their hometown academic institutions have not suddenly learned to watch taxpayer wallets. If Trump had proposed spending $5 billion on a giant hamster wheel or another Vermont museum dedicated to President Chester A. Arthur, it would be in the budget.

Democrats are willing to shut down the government over a wall because they fear it would work.

A wall would cut off the flow of illegal aliens, shrink the growth of illegal alien districts and kill the electoral strategy of the Democrats for the next twenty years. And it would save children’s lives.

Building a wall would save the lives of American children taken by illegal alien drunk drivers.

Like Marten Kudlis, a 3-year-old boy who died on the floor of a Baskin Robbins with his jugular vein slashed by broken glass after an illegal alien, who had previously been arrested 16 times, slammed into a pickup truck while going 81 miles an hour. Or 11-year-old Abigail Robinson and 6-year-old Anna Dieter-Eckerdt who were killed when an illegal alien DREAMER ran over them while playing in a pile of leaves.

But building a wall would also stop children from being exploited and abused by illegal aliens. A wall would save the little boys and girls, who suffer and die, while being used as pawns by the Democrats.

The Democrats would rather shut down the government than build a wall. They would rather see women raped in the desert than build a wall. They would rather see children die than build a wall.

The best way to deal with the deaths of these two children is not to dismantle border security. That would lead to even more deaths. It’s to stop children from being endangered by ending illegal migration.

Save the children, build a wall.


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/272368/save-children-build-wall-daniel-greenfield

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Palestinians: Silencing and Intimidating Critics - Khaled Abu Toameh

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by Khaled Abu Toameh

Any Palestinians who dare to ask Hamas the wrong questions will find themselves behind bars.

• Palestinian columnist Sami Fuda denounced the Hamas crackdown on its critics in Gaza: "Apparently, freedom of expression is unacceptable to the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip... The policy of intimidating and imprisoning writers will not deter them and is completely ineffective and unacceptable."
• While these few Palestinians have expressed concern over Hamas's effort to silence its critics, international human rights organizations, including some that operate in the Gaza Strip, continue to turn a blind eye to this assault on public freedoms. They are either afraid of Hamas, or they do not give a damn about human rights violations unless they can find a way of pointing an accusatory finger at Israel.
• Hamas is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rally marking the 31^st anniversary of its founding, but says it cannot afford to provide financial aid to impoverished Palestinians. Meanwhile, any Palestinians who dare to ask Hamas the wrong questions will find themselves behind bars.

What does the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas do when it is not firing rockets at Israel or sending Palestinians to clash with Israeli soldiers along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel? It sends its security officers to arrest, interrogate, intimidate and harass anyone who dares to criticize Hamas. Pictured: Palestinians in Gaza prepare to attack Israeli soldiers at the border fence with Israel on May 14, 2018. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

What does the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas do when it is not firing rockets at Israel or sending Palestinians to clash with Israeli soldiers along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel? It sends its security officers to arrest, interrogate, intimidate and harass anyone who dares to criticize Hamas.

It is not as if anyone was expecting Hamas to act differently. The terms democracy and freedom of expression have never been in Hamas's dictionary. For Hamas, it is either you are with us or you are against us. There is no third option for Palestinians living under Hamas's rule in the Gaza Strip, even for those who were previously associated with Hamas, but later changed their minds and dared to express a different opinion or, worse, criticize the Islamist movement.

In the past week alone, Hamas has arrested two Palestinian academics on suspicion that they voiced criticism of the group: professor of biology Salah Jadallah and writer Khader Mihjez.

Jadallah was arrested earlier this week after he posted a comment on Facebook in which he accused the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip of enjoying a comfortable life while Palestinians were wallowing in poverty and misery. In the December 19 post, he wrote: "It's a life of hypocrisy, lies and quackery when an official lives in luxury while his people are overstrained and impoverished." He went on to accuse the Hamas officials of stealing funds earmarked for the people in order to build villas and mansions for themselves.

On December 26, Jadallah's son, Mohammed, said that Hamas ordered his father remanded into custody and refused to release him on bail. "My father criticized corruption in general and was not talking about a specific person or family," the son said.

This was not the first time that Prof. Jadallah found himself in trouble because of his public criticism of Hamas. In March 2016, he was suspended from his job at the Islamic University in the Gaza Strip because of Facebook comments criticizing Hamas and the university administration.

The professor, according to Palestinian sources, was once considered a prominent figure in Hamas -- probably why Hamas takes him seriously. As someone who grew up in Hamas, he knows more than anyone else about the conduct of the group's top brass. Far from being an outsider or a political rival, Jadallah is the ultimate Hamas insider.

The second man, Mihjez, was detained by Hamas for several hours on December 26 -- apparently for criticizing the arrest of Jadallah. In one Facebook post, Mihjez asked: "What is the academic degree that the man who is interrogating Prof Salah Jadallah hold?" Because of this rhetorical question, Hamas summoned Mihjez for several hours of interrogation.

Two years ago, Mihjez was also arrested by Hamas after he wrote a series of articles in which he explained why he no longer supported the Muslim Brotherhood organization. Notably, Hamas is an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood.

A Gaza-based group called the Journalists Forum for Human Rights condemned the Hamas measures against Jadallah and Mihjez as a "violation of freedom of expression" and called on Hamas to explain why its men were harassing prominent figures in the Gaza Strip.

Commenting on the arrest of Jadallah, Hassan Asfour, a former Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet minister and columnist, said that most Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip shared the professor's criticism of the Hamas leadership, but were afraid to speak out:

"Professor Jadallah did not use a sword or bullets. What he said was not a secret. According to which logic was he taken away at night and thrown in detention centers that carry several names? What kind of message of terror is Hamas trying to impose on the Gaza Strip? Hamas is panicking, and that's why it won't allow any form of criticism of its policies. Intellectual repression and the confiscation of freedom of opinion, as well as preventing the exposure of corruption, is more dangerous to the society than any disease."

Another Palestinian columnist, Sami Fuda, also denounced the Hamas crackdown on its critics:

"Apparently, freedom of expression is unacceptable to the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip... The policy of intimidating and imprisoning writers will not deter them and is completely ineffective and unacceptable."

While these few Palestinians have expressed concern over Hamas's effort to silence its critics, international human rights organizations, including some that operate in the Gaza Strip, continue to turn a blind eye to this assault on public freedoms. They are either afraid of Hamas, or they do not give a damn about human rights violations unless they can find a way of pointing an accusatory finger at Israel. The silence of the international community toward human rights violations in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip allows the Islamist group to continue its policy of intimidation against its critics.

The Hamas measures against its critics are aimed at preventing Palestinians and the rest of the world from learning about the group's corrupt dictatorship. Hamas leaders want to continue living the good life while their people are facing devastating living conditions. The millions of dollars of Qatari cash that were delivered to Hamas in the past few weeks have further emboldened the group, giving it carte blanche to intimidate its critics.

Hamas is more interested in muzzling its critics than improving the lives of its people. Hamas leaders are more interested in padding their own bank accounts than in grappling with the problems of unemployment. Hamas is prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a rally marking the 31^st anniversary of its founding, but says it cannot afford to provide financial aid to impoverished Palestinians. Meanwhile, any Palestinians who dare to ask Hamas the wrong questions will find themselves behind bars.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13477/palestinians-silencing-intimidating-critics

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Trade Wars and China - Peter Skurkiss

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by Peter Skurkiss

A trade war with China is so winnable that to not win it, America would have to deliberately want to lose.

As President Trump's MAGA policies start to undo the unfair trade practices of China and Europe, he faces a wall of criticism from the global elite who personally benefit from the current arrangements. One of the most commonly heard arguments used to sustain the status quo is that 'nobody can win a trade war.' This line is formulated by highly credentialed economists and then picked up and spread by TV talking heads. The problem is that line is false. 

What is accurate to say is that a trade war, say between the America and China, cannot be won by the U.S. without some short-term pain and sacrifice. That much is true. But as far as winning a trade war, giving the immense advantages America has, it is as Trump said: "Trade wars are good and easy to win." And when the president says that trade wars are good, he means that the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial costs.

With regard to China, without belaboring that country's particular vulnerabilities for now, let's look a fairly recent trade war that America won rather handily. This was with Japan in the 1980s. 

In the 1980s, all the talk was that Japan was destined rule the world economically. Japan was registering huge trade surpluses with the U.S. I recall reading numerous accounts back then of how Japanese engineers would be given tours of American facilities and were allowed to take photographs of everything they were shown by naive American managers. At the same time, Japanese companies, under if not under direct government control then at least the heavy influence of centralized bureaucrats, were positioning themselves to obtain global dominance. This was called Japan, Inc. back then, and it appeared to be a juggernaut destined to steamroll the world. 

To make a long story short, Japan's mercantile policies were brought to heel by President Ronald Reagan, cumulating in the Plaza Accord of 1985. According to Peter Landers, the Tokyo bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal:

Faster than anyone thought possible, Japan ceased to be a threat to U.S. economic primacy. Under U.S. pressure, it cut interest rates to stimulate demand for imports. That spurred a historic bubble, which collapsed in the early 1990s, sending Japan into a tailspin. Soon after, all the handwringing about a world controlled by Tokyo ceased.
By that measure, the U.S. emerged from that trade war a winner.

What made Japan capitulate to U.S. demands? It was the same as it is today -- access to the vast American consumer market. Without that, Japan realized it could not function at a high level. So Japan wisely trimmed its sails and accepted the terms the Reagan administration laid out. 

That win was made possible because Reagan, unlike his successors, unapologetically put America first, just like Donald Trump is now doing with our trading partners. 

The Japan-America trade war happened within living memory. That the so-called economic experts of today choose to ignore it and the lesson therein indicates they have a hidden agenda, probably self-interest of some sort. Note that the unfair trading arrangements has been allowed to fester for so long that a significant number of domestic special interest groups have grown fat on it. Accordingly, they fight to preserve the status quo. 

As for China's vulnerabilities, I'll quickly touch on just a few. The first is that China runs a huge trade surplus with the U.S. For September 2018, the surplus was $34.1 billion, which would translate into over $400 billion for the year. This means China can ill afford to go tit-for-tat with America on tariffs before running out of ammunition. Trump has explicitly said so, and the Chinese know it.

Second, China is a resource-poor country. It needs a steady flow of imports of raw materials, especially food and energy, to keep its export-oriented economy running and even to feed its people. America is nearly self-sufficient and is especially so when trade within North America is included.

China trade brings us no food or energy or technological innovations. Whatever China exports to America can be obtained elsewhere. It's just a matter of cost, an advantage that China is rapidly losing. 

China's third vulnerability lies in innovations. Made in China 2025 is the grand initiative of the Chinese Communist Party to basically have Chinese industries to lead the world in various hi-tech sectors by 2050. This is a laudable objective, but its premise is flawed. Basically, the Chinese plan to do this not by their own innovations but by continuing to steal technology and intellectual properties from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. As President Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro put it, "China is basically trying to steal the future of Japan, the U.S. and Europe, by going after our technology."

When U.S. trade negotiators demand that the technology theft must end, the Chinese dig in their heels. They do this for two reasons. First, Made in China 2025 is impossible without massive technology transfers from the West, particularly the U.S. And second, China has built itself up as far as it has based on theft of technology and intellectual property. Perhaps the Chinese figure (or hope) that Trump is just a passing storm and soon things will reset to the good old days. That is not likely.

A trade war with China is so winnable that to not win it, America would have to deliberately want to lose. That won't happen with Trump.

Peter Skurkiss

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/trade_wars_and_china.html

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Turkey and EU: Can this Marriage be Saved? - Burak Bekdil

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by Burak Bekdil

Just as there cannot be a "not free" member of the EU, there cannot be a member that blatantly ignores rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

• In Freedom House's democracy index, Turkey belongs to the group of "not free" countries, performing worse than "partly free" countries including Mali, Nicaragua and Kenya.
• Just as there cannot be a "not free" member of the EU, there cannot be a member that blatantly ignores rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.
• "I think that, in the long term, it would be more honest for Turkey and the EU to go down new roads and end the accession talks ... Turkish membership in the European Union is not realistic in the foreseeable future." — Johannes Kahn, EU Enlargement Commissioner; interview in Die Welt.

In September 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will seek an end to talks for Turkish membership in the European Union. Pictured: Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meet in Berlin, September 28, 2018. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

When Turkey first applied for full membership in the European Union in 1987, the world was an entirely different place -- even the rich club had a different name: the European Economic Community. U.S. President Ronald Reagan had undergone minor surgery; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a third term; Macau and Hong Kong were, respectively, Portuguese and British territory; the Berlin Wall was up and running; the demonstrations at the Tiananmen Square were a couple of years away; the Iran-Contra affair was in the headlines; the First Intifada had just begun; and what are today Czech Republic and Slovakia were Czechoslovakia.

In March 2003, just a few months after he was elected Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Turkey was "very much ready to be part of the European Union family." In October 2005, formal accession negotiations between Turkey and the EU began.

Today, 31 years after the first date, the alliance seems to be broken, with no signs in the foreseeable future of a marriage between two perfectly unsuitable adults. Knowing that, both sides in the past decade have played an unpleasant diplomatic game of pretension: not be the one that throws away the ring. This boring opera buffa is no longer sustainable.

Turkey's democratic deficit has grown just too bitterly huge to make it compatible with Europe's democratic culture. According to the advocacy group Freedom House:

"In addition to its dire consequences for detained Turkish citizens, shuttered media outlets, and seized businesses, the chaotic purge has become intertwined with an offensive against the Kurdish minority, which in turn has fueled Turkey's diplomatic and military interventions in neighboring Syria and Iraq."

In Freedom House's democracy index, Turkey belongs to the group of "not free" countries, performing worse than "partly free" countries including Mali, Nicaragua and Kenya. The EU is certainly not a club of the "not free."

Most recently, a legal dispute between Turkey and the EU highlighted, once again, the huge disparity between the understanding of the rule of law in Turkish and European democratic cultures. This time, Turkey and the EU clashed over the rights of a prominent Kurdish politician who has been in jail on flimsy charges of terror. In a November verdict, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), to which Turkey is a signatory, ruled that Turkey should swiftly process Selahattin Demirtaş's case; the court said his pre-trial detention had gone on longer than could be justified. A Turkish court, however, ignoring the ECHR's verdict, ruled against Demirtaş's release from prison. The Turkish court's decision was a clear violation of the Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution:

"In the case of a conflict between international agreements in the area of fundamental rights and freedoms duly put into effect and the domestic laws due to differences in provisions on the same matter, the provisions of international agreements shall prevail."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoğlu described the ECHR ruling as motivated by politics, not the law, and asserted that the case would be determined by Turkey's courts.

Just as there cannot be a "not free" member of the EU, there cannot be a member that blatantly ignores ECHR's rulings.

Fortunately, there have been signs from Brussels that the "show must not go on." In April 2017, the European Parliament called for a formal suspension of Turkey's EU membership bid, which was already effectively frozen. In September 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will seek an end to Turkey's membership talks.

More recently, in November, the official overseeing the EU's future enlargement said that, in the long term, it would be "more honest" for the bloc to give up talks on membership for Turkey. EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Kahn told German daily Die Welt, "I think that, in the long term, it would be more honest for Turkey and the EU to go down new roads and end the accession talks ... Turkish membership in the European Union is not realistic in the foreseeable future." Kahn's was honest talk, calling a cat a cat.

In fact, a month earlier than Kahn's comments, President Erdoğan proposed a most realistic solution – although not for reasons of honesty, but merely for pre-election bluffing. Evidently he is signalling exasperation with the election process. Erdogan seems to be trying to appeal to the EU-weary, nationalistic voters ahead of Turkey's municipal elections on March 31, 2019 that Europe's reluctance to let Turkey into the EU is based, supposedly, on "Islamophobla". In an October speech, Erdoğan said he would consider putting Turkey's long-stalled bid to join the EU to a referendum.

Good idea, assuming that Turkey's most popular ever leader should campaign for Leave (the negotiations). All the same, as always, Erdoğan was bluffing, in a seeming effort to remind EU's leaders of Turkey's "strategic value" for Europe. At the same time, he was playing the tough man to his usually xenophobic, conservative voter base that has grown weary of being humiliated by 'infidel Europe.'

This author believes that there should be simultaneous EU and Turkish referenda asking the Europeans if they endorse an eventual Turkish membership, and at the same time asking the Turks whether they want to drop their bid to join. A "No" vote triumphing in either referendum should suffice formally to end Turkey's membership process; two "Yes" votes would mean the show must go on, that the audience is happy with the opera buffa.

The unconvincing pretention that Turkey should be "kept at bay" for strategic reasons is dishonest.

"Pulling the plug" is honest but probably not practical one: no one will wish to take that historic responsibility. In addition, polling numbers suggest a decline in Turkish public opinion for membership. On the other side, in the EU, the sympathy for Turkish membership is dramatically lower than in previous years. Support for Turkey's entrance, for instance, is at 8% in France, 5% in Germany, 8% in the UK, 5% in Denmark, 7% in Sweden and 5% in Finland. There is no way the EU average could surpass the 50% threshold.

So, let the club members and the applicant decide on a membership bid for a marriage that will never work.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was recently fired from the country's most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13404/turkey-eu-marriage

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Trump's Wall and Democratic Ideology - Alexander G. Markovsky

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by Alexander G. Markovsky

The Democrats' policy of open borders or no borders is designed to open our country's gates to a tsunami of immigrants with morals and values diametrically opposed to those of Americans.

It would require a fierce liberal skeptic to deny that open borders bring crime, disease, drugs and votes to the Democratic Party. Reprehensible as it might be, the open borders and the subsequent upsurge of refugees serve the Democratic Party’s political objectives of perpetuation of the Democratic Party rule.

The Democratic scheme is to change the country’s demographic with an emphasis on open borders and relaxation of the immigration laws, thus ensuring a continuous inflow of Latinos and Muslims to the U.S. The central premise of this strategy is to entice the immigrants with welfare benefits, free health care, free education of children, and eventual citizenship in order to vote Democratic and ultimately to bring this country in conformity with the socialist principles.

Therefore, a border wall with Mexico would create a serious hurdle to the implementation of this strategy.

Mick Mulvaney recently said “We don’t understand why the Democrats are so wholeheartedly against it… They voted for it in 2006, then-Senator Obama voted for it. Senator Schumer voted for, Senator Clinton voted for it. So, I don’t understand why Democrats apply in politics just because Donald Trump is in office.”

Mulvaney seems to emphasizing the obvious over the important. The important is that this Democratic rebellion against building the wall has little to do with the mixture of disdain and fear of Donald Trump. This is a fight of two bitterly opposed and ideologically hostile, irreconcilable camps for the future of this country. In a broader ideological sense, the current brinkmanship is another chapter in the epic struggle between socialism and freedom. There can be no stalemate and no compromise is possible; this struggle can only end up in total victory or total defeat.

For decades the Democrats successfully deceived the country and Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush by professing their support for the border security and building the wall while at the same time refining procrastination into a high art without assuming responsibility for the consequences. The political landscape had been steadily shifting in their direction until the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s statements about border security touched on the conservative argument no borders -- no sovereignty. It mobilized the Republican Party and brought the issue to the top of his agenda. 

When it became apparent to the Democrats that they had failed to deceive Donald Trump, they dropped the charade when Chuck Schumer exposed the party’s duplicity and openly declared, “Trump will not get his Wall.”

As we know from history, the building of socialism is an organized and disruptive artificial process associated with ideological polarization, cultural and political confrontations, and violation of the existing moral order. 

Being aware of voters' discontent with socialist policies, the Democrats proceeded to dismantle the established constitutional order by offering suffrage to foreigners. Backing up this malicious concept, the state of California began to automatically register illegal aliens to vote when they obtain or renew a driver's license. It is only a matter of time before other states under Democratic leadership adopt this election model. This massive legalized election fraud requires a constant influx of foreigners.

Since not all of Mexico, Central, and South America have crossed our open borders into Texas, Arizona, and California, and those states are not yet annexed to the possession of Mexico or Honduras, any notion of closing the borders or restricting emigrants’ flow into this country will be met with fierce opposition by the Democrats.

If the speeches of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other leading Democrats are any indication, it is becoming exceedingly obvious that despite dreadful consequences, the Democrats exhibit a greater hatred for capitalism than for terrorism, drugs, and crimes which makes them inherently incapable or rather unwilling of safeguarding this country. 

Indeed, the road to socialism is soaked with blood of millions who could not appreciate the fairness of economic equality; hence, a few hundred or even a few thousand deaths from the hands of “poor immigrants” should be a relatively small price to pay for the "bright future."

The Democrats’ policy of open borders or no borders is designed to open our country’s gates to a tsunami of immigrants with morals and values diametrically opposed to those of Americans, promoting resentment instead of assimilation, polarization instead of unification, and ultimately making the United States of America not united, not states, and not even American.


Alexander G. Markovsky is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, a conservative think hosted at King’s College, New York City, which examines national security, energy, risk-analysis and other public policy issues, He is the author of Anatomy of a Bolshevik and Liberal Bolshevism: America Did Not Defeat Communism, She Adopted It. He is the owner and CEO of Litwin Management Services, LLC.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/trumps_wall_and_democratic_ideology.html

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