Iran’s Presidential Candidates: Two of the Same - Shahriar Kia

by Shahriar Kia

Reports from inside Iran indicate a sense of escalating public hatred among the Iranian people regarding the regime’s sham presidential election.

The presidential election in Iran, scheduled for May 19th, witnessed a major development last Thursday when Ebrahim Raisi, of the “principalists” faction and considered a close confidant of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, announced his candidacy. A few weeks ago, 50 members of the all-clerics Assembly of Experts, the body in charge of appointing the next supreme leader, issued a letter to Khamenei calling for Raisi to become the regime’s next president. Raisi himself had informed the regime’s various factions he will participate only if he enjoys Khamenei’s blessing.

​The incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, the so-called “reformist” seeking a second term, had coincidentally made it clear to his inner circle of gaining Khamenei’s approval to take part in the election. Up to now, we can reach an initial conclusion that the charade Tehran is dubbing an election is more a selection, as both the main candidates are first seeking the approval of one individual before they ever begin campaigning among the general public.

Other candidates currently in the race include Hamid Baqai, a former vice president during the administration of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has recently opted out.

For the Iranian people, however, they are generally faced with one highly deceptive figure, that being Rouhani, who is known as the “Purple Fox”, and Raisi, an utterly brutal individual, known for his decades of service to the regime’s judiciary in sending thousands of people to the gallows.

Rouhani’s report card as a security official, who, in his own words, has been involved in all of the Iranian regime’s important decisions, shows an active role in repressive measures against women in the early days after the 1979 revolution, sending children and juveniles onto minefields during the Iran-Iraq War, quelling the 1999 student uprising, advancing Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons program and deceiving the international community, and over 3,000 executions during his four years as president. We have also witnessed general poverty skyrocketing, a large swathe of Iran’s economy coming to a halt, and much of the country’s assets being allocated to foreign meddling in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond.

Raisi has been climbing the regime ladder through the judiciary, proving his loyalty to the establishment as Tehran’s deputy public prosecutor, issuing death sentences easily at a strike of a pen, and known for his support of atrocious mass executions. Most horrifying of all is Raisi’s membership in the notorious “Death Commission” behind the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), to the gallows.

Khamenei rewarded Raisi by appointing him Tehran’s prosecutor, head of the country’s Inspector Organization, judiciary deputy, the public prosecutor of the Special Clerics Court, and the regime’s leading public prosecutor. Most recently Khamenei trusted Raisi by placing him in charge of the Astan Quds Razavi, a so-called foundation considered to be one of Iran’s most powerful political and economic entities. A large percentage of this regime’s budget used to export terrorism and fundamentalism through the Revolutionary Guards abroad is provided by this very institution.

Reports from inside Iran indicate a sense of escalating public hatred amongst the Iranian people regarding the regime’s sham presidential election. People do not trust any of the regime’s factions or their candidates. Iranians inside the country and abroad have taken to social media to say “My vote is regime change".

The MEK has recently posted a statement on its website, widely viewed inside Iran, calling on people from all walks of life under this regime’s repression to boycott the elections. “Freedom and free elections based on the people’s right to sovereignty,” the statement reads in part, inviting the entire nation to “nationwide campaign” aimed at shunning the elections through a variety of protests.

The power struggle between the Iranian regime’s factions and their representatives, such as Rouhani and Raisi, is merely a dispute over usurping a larger share of plundering the Iranian people’s resources. A further inner struggle in Tehran is a clear indication of this regime’s failure in facing escalating domestic and international crises. This includes the recent U.S. airstrikes against an Assad military airfield in Syria, sending a strong message of shifting tides to Iran.

The regime in Tehran is terrified of all this turmoil spilling into a powder keg society with the potential of repeating the 2009 uprisings. Only this time around at a much larger scale.

Shahriar Kia is a political analyst and member of the Iranian opposition, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as the MEK). He graduated from North Texas University.

Shahriar Kia

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/irans_presidential_candidates_two_of_the_same.html

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Geert Wilders and the Suicide of Europe - Guy Millière

by Guy Millière

Even if the Dutch politcian Geert Wilders had won and his Party for Freedom -- had become the first party in the country, he would not have been able to become the head of the government

• None of Wilders's speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him.
• The only person talking about these problems is Geert Wilders. Dutch political leaders and most journalists seemingly prefer to claim that Geert Wilders is the problem; that if he were not there, these problems would not exist.
• What adherents of this view, that the West is guilty, "forget" is that Islam long oppressed the West: Muslim armies conquered Persia, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans, and virtually all of Eastern Europe. The Muslim armies were a constant threat until the marauding Ottoman troops were finally turned away at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

Even if the Dutch politcian Geert Wilders had won and if the Party for Freedom (PVV) he established eleven years ago had become the first party in the country, he would not have been able to become the head of the government. The heads of all the other political parties said they would reject any alliance with him ; they maintain this position to this day.

For years, the Dutch mainstream media have spread hatred and defamation against Wilders for trying to warn the Dutch people - and Europe - about what their future will be if they continue their current immigration policies; in exchange, last December, a panel of three judges found him guilty of "inciting discrimination". Newspapers and politicians all over Europe unceasingly describe him as a dangerous man and a rightist firebrand. Sometimes they call him a "fascist".

What did Geert Wilders ever do to deserve that? None of his remarks ever incriminated any person or group because of their race or ethnicity. To charge him, the Dutch justice system had excessively and abusively to interpret words he used during a rally in which he asked if the Dutch wanted "fewer Moroccans." None of Wilders's speeches incites violence against anyone; the violence that surrounds him is directed only at him. He defends human rights and democratic principles and he is a resolute enemy of all forms of anti-Semitism.

His only "crime" is to denounce the danger represented by the Islamization of the Netherlands and the rest of Europe and to claim that Islam represents a mortal threat to freedom. Unfortunately, he has good empirical reasons to say that. Also unfortunately, the Netherlands is a country where criticism of Islam is particularly dangerous: Theo van Gogh made an "Islamically incorrect" film in 2004 and was savagely murdered by an Islamist who said he would kill again if he could. Two years earlier, Pim Fortuyn, who had hoped to stand for election, defined Islam as a "hostile religion" ; he was killed by a leftist Islamophile animal-rights activist. Geert Wilders is alive only because he is under around-the-clock police protection graciously provided by the Dutch government.

In 2004, Moroccan-Dutch terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri (left), shot the filmmaker Theo van Gogh (right) to death, then stabbed him and slit his throat.

More broadly, the Netherlands is a country where the Muslim community shows few signs of integration. There are now forty no-go zones in the country; riots easily erupt, recently in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Nijmegen. People recently from other countries repeatedly attack Dutch-born citizens. Some are so sure of their impunity that they publish online videos of their crimes. Throughout the country, an ethnic cleansing that Europeans are too scared to name is taking place in the suburbs, and non-Muslim residents often say they feel harassed.

Non-Muslim women are encouraged by local authorities to dress "modestly". As in Islam dogs are haram (impure), dog owners are asked to keep their pets indoors. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, Islamists demonstrated and shouted slogans in support of Hamas and the Islamic State.

Daily life has become particularly difficult for the 40,000 Jews still living in the country; districts long inhabited by members of the Jewish community have become almost entirely Muslim. Authorities recommend that Jews avoid any "visible sign" of Jewishness to avoid creating "unrest". Muslim delinquency is high; the percentage of Muslims sent to jail for various crimes is notably higher than the percentage of Muslims in the population. Six percent of the country's population are Muslim; about 20% of all inmates are Muslim. None of this is secret.

The only person talking about these problems is Geert Wilders. Dutch political leaders and most journalists seemingly prefer to claim that Geert Wilders is the problem; that if he were not there, these problems would not exist. At best, they utter fuzzy words intended to show strength; at worst, they turn their back.

A large percentage of the Dutch population is anxious; the constant demonization of Geert Wilders apparently tries to indoctrinate the people to settle for less.

A year ago, London's Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan stated that "living with terror attacks is 'part and parcel of living in a big city." It did not used to be that way . Rotterdam's Muslim mayor, Ahmed Abutaleb used harsher words; he said that migrants had to "respect the law or go home".

In late January, the incumbent prime minister, Mark Rutte, published a full-page advertisement in several newspapers warning immigrants to "act normal or be gone"; he did not use the word "Islam". On March 11, 2017, four days before the Dutch elections, Rutte decided to send a "strong message" to bar Turkish ministers from speaking in Rotterdam. Voters who had considered supporting Geert Wilders voted instead for Rutte's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD); he thereby secured a last minute win. Wilders's party came in second. The Party for Freedom (PVV) won five more seats than before, but will have only 20 seats, out of 150. Rutte's VVD will have 33 seats. The Labor party, Rutte's main ally until March 15, collapsed and is down to nine seats, its worst result ever. The left, however, is not retreating: GroenLinks, a party largely made of former communists and radical environmentalists won 14 seats,10 more than before. The Socialist Party won 14 seats. Democrats 66, a "social-liberal", "progressive" and multicultural party won 19 seats, almost as much as the Party for Freedom. A Muslim party, Denk (Dutch for "think, Turkish for "equality "), won three seats. The VNL, a conservative party established by two former Party for Freedom members, was beaten so severely it will have no seat at all.

The next Dutch government will be a coalition of four parties, maybe five, and probably lean more to the left than previous governments. It will certainly include Democrats 66, and could include Groenlinks.

In the years to come, the situation in the country is certin to deteriorate. The Netherlands' fertility rate (1.68 children per woman) is not as catastrophic as in Germany, Italy or Spain, but is far below the replacement rate. The Muslim birth rate is higher than the non-Muslim one. Dozens of churches close each year due to the rapid decline in the number of practicing Christians; the churches are replaced by mosques. Radical preachers keep coming and proselytizing; Islamist organizations keep recruiting. In a report on the Islamization of the Netherlands published ten years ago, Manfred Gerstenfeld wrote that "resistance to radical forces within the Dutch Muslim community is weak". Nothing has changed since that time.

What is happening in the Netherlands is similar to what is happening in most European countries. In the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden, the number of no-go zones is rapidly growing. Islamic riots occur more and more often. Ethnic gangs are growing more violent. Ethnic cleansing is transforming neighborhoods. Jews are leaving for Israel or North America.The Muslim population is sharply increasing. Radical mosques are proliferating. Islamic organizations are everywhere.

Politicians who dare to speak the way Geert Wilders does are treated the way Geert Wilders is treated : scorned, marginalized, put on trial.

The vision of the world in Western Europe is now 'hegemonic'. It is based on the idea that the Western world is guilty; that all cultures are equal, and that Islamic culture is "more equal" than Western culture because Islam was supposedly so long oppressed by the West. What adherents of this view, that the West is guilty, "forget" is that Islam long oppressed the West: Muslim armies conquered Persia, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa and the Middle East, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Serbia and the Balkans, and virtually all of Eastern Europe. The Muslim armies were a constant threat until the marauding Ottoman troops were finally turned away at the Gates of Vienna in 1683.

This European vision also includes the idea that all conflicts can be peacefully settled, that appeasement is almost always a solution, and that Europe has no enemies.

It also stands on the idea that an enlightened elite must have the power, because if Adolf Hitler came to power through democratic means eighty years ago, letting people freely decide their fate might lead to ill.

The dream seems to be of a utopian future where poverty will be overcome by welfare systems, and violence will be defeated by openness and love.

It is this vision of the world that may have prompted Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel to open the doors to more than a million unvetted Muslim migrants, despite a migrant crime wave and an increasing number of rapes and sexual assaults. The only candidate likely to beat Angela Merkel in this year's German elections is a socialist, Martin Schulz, a former European Parliament president.

In France, Marine Le Pen, the only candidate who speaks of Islam and immigration, will almost certainly be defeated by Emmanuel Macron, a former minister in the government of François Hollande -- a man who see no evil anywhere.

It is this vision of the world that also seems to have led British Prime Minister Theresa May to say that the Islamic attack on March 22 in Westminster was "not an act of Islamic terrorism".

This romanticized, utopian vision of the world also explains why in Europe, people such as Geert Wilders are seen as the incarnation of evil, but radical Islam is considered a marginal nuisance bearing no relation to the "religion of peace". Meanwhile, Wilders is condemned to live under protection as if he were in jail, while those who want to slaughter him -- and who threaten millions of people in Europe -- walk around free.

This adolescent vision is so embedded in the minds of millions of Europeans that a lot fast growing-up will be required to eradicate it.

Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10179/geert-wilders-suicide-europe

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No sign Putin seeks to cool friction with US - debkaFile

by debkaFile

[Putin's] prediction of another incident sets the scene for more Syrian government chemical attacks very soon, while blaming America and US-backed Syrian rebels for “provocations.”

It is hard to see US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson coming way from the talks he is holding with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow Wednesday, April 12, with a neatly wrapped diplomatic package for cooling the boiling tensions between their governments. President Vladimir Putin seems more than ready to turn up the heat. Tuesday, he claimed he had information (no source cited) of a potential incident similar to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib province, possibly targeting the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Speaking at a joint press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in Moscow, Putin said: “The goal is to discredit the government of Syrian President Assad. We have reports from multiple sources that false flags like this one – and I cannot call it otherwise – are being prepared in other parts of Syria, including the southern suburbs of Damascus. They plan to plant some chemical there and accuse the Syrian government of an attack.” 

Putin did not say whom he was accusing, but his prediction of another incident sets the scene for more Syrian government chemical attacks very soon, while blaming America and US-backed Syrian rebels for “provocations.”

US Defense Secretary James Mattis, in contrast, appeared to be trying to pour oil on the churning waters, when he denied at his first news conference Tuesday that he had set any “red lines” and insisted that the Tomahawk missile attack on the Syrian Shayrat air base, which had destroyed some 20 percent of Assad’s warplanes, was separate from the main US goal which was to defeat ISIS in Syria. But he also stressed that the Trump administration would not remain passive in the face of more chemical attacks.

On his way to Moscow, Tillerson gave Russian an ultimatum “to choose between aligning itself with the US and likeminded countries or embracing Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah.”

The Kremlin’s riposte greeted him before he landed: Foreign Minister Lavrov invited the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministers to Moscow on Friday. They would arrive on the heels of Secretary Tillerson’s departure.  Putin was sticking to his guns and making it clear that he was solidly supported by – and in control of - his allies.

Early Wednesday, ahead of the Tillerson-Lavrov interview, President Trump tried belatedly to mute the effect of the ultimatum which left Moscow no option but to ditch Assad or else. "We're not going into Syria,” he said. Asked if the United States is going to get involved in Syria, Trump said: "No - only if I see them using gas…”

The two powers appear to have maneuvered themselves into a situation which could easily spiral out of their control.  Suffice it for someone in Tehran to decide that this would be a good time to carry out a military operation, even a small one, against US forces in Syria, or hit Israeli or Jordanian forces along Syria’s borders with Iraq, Jordan and Israel. Both Trump and Putin would be dragged into action by such events.

It is therefore to be expected that Tillerson, who failed to forge a unified front at the G7 foreign ministers’ conference in Italy Tuesday, will leave Moscow empty-handed. The military tension in Syria and around its borders will therefore remain high, with US, Russian and the Israeli and Jordanian armies all on a high state of preparedness.


debkaFile

Source: http://debka.com/article/26009/No-sign-Putin-seeks-to-cool-friction-with-US

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Arabs: Abu Ivanka (Trump) Is a Hero! - Bassam Tawil

by Bassam Tawil

Arabs and Muslims love leaders who talk tough and do not hesitate to use force. In the Arab world, compromise is a sign of weakness.

• Arabs and Muslims have long lost faith in their leaders' ability to deal with the crises plaguing Arab and Islamic countries. The civil war in Syria, which has been raging for more than five years and which has claimed the lives of more than half a million people, is seen as a shining best example of Arab and Muslim leaders' incompetence and apathy.
• Others are calling Trump "Lion of the Sunnis", "Caliph of the Muslims" and "Defender of the Islamic Holy Sites." Some wrote: "Blessed be the hands of Abu Ivanka al-Amiriki (Trump)," and expressed hope that he would do more to rid the Syrian people of their dictator. "We love you Trump" and "Trump is our hope" are two of many hashtags that have become extremely popular on social media, especially Twitter. Many of the writers are Syrians, Egyptians and Gulf citizens.
• Many Arabs and Muslims perceive themselves to have been betrayed by the Obama administration. They felt, rightly, that the Obama administration turned its back on Washington's friends and allies in the Arab world in favor of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

A new hero has been born in the Arab world and his name is Donald Trump. And this is not a joke.

Arabs and Muslims love leaders who talk tough and do not hesitate to use force. In the Arab world, compromise is a sign of weakness.

Until recently, Trump was anathema to many Arabs and Muslims. So what happened? U.S. President Donald Trump did something Arab leaders have failed to do: he helped the Syrian civilians who were being gassed by their ruler.

Arabs and Muslims have long lost faith in their leaders' ability to deal with the crises plaguing Arab and Islamic countries. The civil war in Syria, which has been raging for more than five years and which has claimed the lives of more than half a million people, is seen as a shining best example of Arab and Muslim leaders' incompetence and apathy.

The most recent Arab League summit in Jordan, which brought together many Arab heads of state and monarchs, will be best remembered for the photos of leaders falling asleep during the discussions. These pictures, which have been circulating widely in the Arab media, feel like salt in the festering wound of Arab leaders' indifference to their peoples' plights.

The summit, which utterly failed to find a solution to the ongoing killings in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab countries, is now being sarcastically referred to by many Arabs as the "Sleep Summit."

The recent Arab League summit in Jordan, which brought together many Arab heads of state and monarchs, will be best remembered for the photos of leaders falling asleep during the discussions. Pictured above: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abba (left) and the Emir of Kuwait, Sabah Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah (right) snooze during the summit proceedings.

Few Arabs, of course, were expecting their leaders to step up. As far as many Arabs are concerned, their leaders are "traitors" and "puppets" in the hands of the U.S. (and sometimes Israel), and interested only in preserving their seats and enriching themselves and their families on the backs of their constituents.

Even gassing civilians in Syria did not surprise the Arab people. Scenes of children and other civilians suffocating from poisonous gas are not new to the Arab world. Similar atrocities have already taken place in Iraq and other Arab countries in the past few decades.

Desperate for a leader who is willing to send a strong message to the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, many Arabs and Muslims are now looking at Trump as their "savior." His recent action in Syria stands in sharp and positive relief to the treacherous inactivity of the corrupt Arab heads of state who have turned their backs on their own people.

The missile strike that Trump ordered in retaliation for the use of chemical weapons in Syria has earned him unprecedented appreciation and respect throughout Arab and Islamic countries. The last time a U.S. president won such praise was when George W. Bush liberated Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's army.

Now, Arab leaders can only sit on the side and watch with envy as their constituents heap praise on Trump for ordering the military strike against Assad's forces. Thousands of Arabs have taken to social media to express their admiration and gratitude for Trump after the U.S. missile strike. Many are affectionately referring to Trump as "Abu Ivanka al-Amriki."

Others are calling Trump "Lion of the Sunnis", "Caliph of the Muslims" and "Defender of the Islamic Holy Sites." Some wrote: "Blessed be the hands of Abu Ivanka al-Amiriki (Trump)," and expressed hope that he would do more to rid the Syrian people of their dictator. "We love you Trump" and "Trump is our hope" are two of many hashtags that have become extremely popular on social media, especially Twitter. Many of the writers are Syrians, Egyptians and Gulf citizens.

Arabs are replacing their profile photos on Facebook and Twitter with an image of Trump. "Trump did in a few months what Obama was unable to do in eight years," many of them commented. "For the first time in six years, the Assad regime is being held accountable for its atrocities."

Lebanese journalist Maria Maaloof wrote: "Thank you Mr. President for not ignoring the cries of the (Syrian) children."

By striking Syria, Trump seems to have made America great again, at least in the eyes of many Arabs and Muslims.

Many Arabs and Muslims perceive themselves to have been betrayed by the Obama administration. They felt, rightly, that the Obama administration turned its back on Washington's friends and allies in the Arab world in favor of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is no surprise, therefore, that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries were among the first to voice support for the U.S. strike against Syria.

For now, Trump's military strike in Syria has partially restored U.S. credibility among Arabs and Muslims. Moreover, it has broadcast that the days of the Obama administration's appeasement and inaction are over. Arabs love world leaders who stand up to oppression and injustice; his swift and strong response accounts for the about-face on Trump in the Arab world. The U.S. strike is a first step towards restoring the U.S. role as a true leader. It remains to be seen whether Trump will demonstrate the same determination in dealing with the duplicity and malevolence of other Arabs and Muslims.

Bassam Tawil is a scholar based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10186/arabs-trump

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New Ways of Responding to Extremist Islam - Giulio Meotti

by Giulio Meotti

According to Hirsi Ali, the West is "obsessed" with terror and this makes it blind to the broader threat, dawa, outreach: the ideology behind the terror attacks.

• "According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world's Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe's population, that implies more than 160 million individuals." – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa.
• That was Ronald Reagan's major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting communism as a joke -- exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam.
• Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion and from religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent education, among other values. This is what radical Islam wants to destroy. That is why terrorists are attacking our churches, the State of Israel and why they are subverting democracy to turn it into Islamic law, sharia.

Jihad is spreading violence -- and succeeding. "Of the last sixteen years," notes Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her new book, The Challenge of Dawa, "the worst year for terrorism was 2014, with ninety-three countries experiencing attacks and 32,765 people killed."

"The second worst was 2015, with 29,376 deaths. Last year, four radical Islamic groups were responsible for 74 percent of all deaths from terrorism: the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), Boko Haram, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. Although the Muslim world itself bears the heaviest burden of jihadist violence, the West is increasingly under attack".

Hirsi Ali's research, supported by the Hoover Institution, is a summary of the war on terror since the extremist Muslim attacks on the United States in September 2001:

"Since 9/11, at least $1.7 trillion has been spent on combat and reconstruction costs in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The total budgetary cost of the wars and homeland security from 2001 through 2016 is more than $3.6 trillion. Yet in spite of the sacrifices of more than 5,000 armed service personnel who have lost their lives since 9/11, today political Islam is on the rise around the world".

According to Hirsi Ali, the West is "obsessed" with terror and this makes it blind to the broader threat, dawa, outreach: the ideology behind the terror attacks.

How large is the worldwide jihadist movement? More than we thought.

"In Pakistan alone, where the population is almost entirely Muslim, 13 percent of Muslims surveyed—more than 20 million people—said that bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets are often or sometimes justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies... According to one estimate, 10−15 percent of the world's Muslims are Islamists. Out of well over 1.6 billion, or 23 percent of the globe's population, that implies more than 160 million individuals".

According to Hirsi Ali, along with drones, counter-terrorism and security measures, the West needs to invest in an ideological war against radical Islam. If terrorist violence is the jihadi hardware, its software is radical Islam. To cripple the hardware, you have first to block the software.

The Islamic world is investing in "dawa", or Islamic propaganda. "Since the early 1970s, Middle Eastern charities have distributed $110 billion, $40 billion of which found its way to sub-Saharan Africa and contributed heavily to Islamist ideological indoctrination there", Hirsi Ali writes.

Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union's leader in the 1970s, Communism started failing to seduce the masses with its promise of a new society. The Communist utopia started to creak much before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It began when the powerful ideological myth of Communism was replaced by socialism, which has been visibly destroying one economy after another. That was Ronald Reagan's major achievement in his long war against the Soviet Union: presenting Communism as a joke -- exposing the lies of the Soviet regime, exposing the misery under which its people were living, and explaining why Western values were preferable to Communist ones. This is exactly what the West, Hirsi Ali explains, should be doing with radical Islam.

William Rosenau observed that, "the United States has so far failed to conduct anything approaching an effective counterideological campaign against al-Qaida". That was also former U.S. President Barack Obama's fatal approach to dealing with the Islamic State: apparently for his own reasons, he refused to name what ISIS was really about: a global caliphate secured through a global war.

U.S. President Donald Trump's major achievement so far is to have named the enemy: "radical Islamic terrorism". Those are the three words that separate Trump from the rest of establishment. Trump's several appointees, such as Steve Bannon, have rightly described this war, like the wars against Nazism and Communism, as primarily an "ideological struggle to preserve Western civilization".

"Western civilization", however, does not seem to be what many liberals have in mind. Instead, they have been advocating multiculturalism, gender ideology, feminism, pacifism, and militant secularism.
Western civilization is a humanist vision in which Christianity integrated Jewish wisdom, Greek philosophy and Roman law, thereby giving Western culture its distinctive character: freedom of speech and of the press, equal justice under law, the primacy of the individual, separation of religion and state, freedom of religion and from religion, property rights, sexual equality, an independent judiciary, and independent education, among other values. This is what radical Islam wants to destroy. That is why terrorists are attacking our churches, the State of Israel and why they are subverting democracy to turn it into Islamic law, sharia.

David Thomson in his new book, Les Revenants, interviews French jihadists. One of them, Zubair, who grew up in a social housing project in Seine-Saint-Denis, defines jihad as a "response to the ideological vacuum" of the West. Islamic extremists in Europe are now filling the Western ideological vacuum by appealing to the masses. This is how radical Islam convinced 160 million Muslims to hate and fight the West.

Like communism, radical Islam is a powerful ideology based on a cultural war against these Western humanistic values: the Mohammed cartoons and the murders of the editors of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo -- as well as the torrent of laws and trials criminalizing freedom of expression -- are a war against freedom of speech and of the press. The battle for women to wear the Islamic veil is a war against the freedom of women to wear what they like and not be looked on as prostitutes. The global appeal for "transformation" is a war against the democratic governance by men and for establishing a Caliphate ruled by Allah.

The supposed rejection of class and ethnic distinctions means that a huge number of Europeans are converting to Islam. Agitation and propaganda -- especially against Jews, Christians, minority groups and supposed Muslim "apostates" -- lays bare a conspiratorial mindset.

During the Cold War, the West supported organizations such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which financed the anti-Communist publishing industry through books and magazines, as well as media outlets, such as Radio Free Europe, and an aggressive ideological warfare in Europe with pro-American and pro-Western messages. But today?

Worse, the opposite is taking place: Western governments are blaming newspapers and journalists for the Mohammed cartoons affair. The publishing industry, every time it censors books about Islam, is betraying freedom of expression. When the Arab-Islamic bloc in the corrupt United Nations erased the Jewish-Christian history of Jerusalem and other sites, Western democracies abstained. Western liberal media defended symbols of Islamic propaganda, such as the female veil, as symbols of emancipation instead of oppression. And instead of supporting Islamic reformers and dissidents, Western elites are abandoning them. The elites seem to prefer dialogue with "non-violent Islamists". Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali. After being targeted by a petition of Muslim activists and human rights militants, she was recently forced to cancel a tour in Australia, ostensibly for "security reasons".

In France, Islamists continue to build "two new mosques per week". Why are Western democracies, as part of their diplomatic relations with the Arab-Islamic world, not requiring churches to be built? Instead, Western public opinion has become accustomed to the idea that mosques belong to Europe's landscape while extremist Muslims go about destroying churches in Syria and Iraq.

If we do not want to lose the ideological war against Islam, it is not too late to reverse the trend -- but time is running out fast.

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

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10178/responding-to-extremist-islam

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Israel And Obama's Political War - Caroline Glick

by Caroline Glick

Obama's spying and subversion operation extended to more than just Trump

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

Eli Lake from Bloomberg set off a firestorm in the US this week with his revelation on Monday that in the last six months of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser, requested that the US intelligence community enable her to use foreign intelligence collection as a means of gathering information about Donald Trump’s advisers.

According to Lake’s story, during the course of the US presidential campaign, and with steadily rising intensity after President Donald Trump won the November 2016 election, Rice used her access to intercepted communications of foreign intelligence targets to gather information on Trump’s advisers. Some of those reports were then leaked, injuriously, to the media in violation of US criminal statute.

Whereas in the normal course of events, the identities of American citizens whose conversations with foreigners are intercepted by the US intelligence community are shielded, in the final months of the Obama administration, Rice repeatedly – on “dozens of occasions” – asked that the identities of Americans who conversed with foreigners be exposed.

The Americans in question were Trump’s advisers.

Lake’s scoop both confirmed and expanded House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s charges from two weeks ago against the Obama White House. Nunes said that he had seen evidence that the Obama administration collected information on incoming Trump administration officials that had no intelligence value. In other words, Nunes alleged that the data gathering was not for national security purposes.

This week’s discovery that Rice played a central role in the intelligence collection regarding Trump’s advisers brings Nunes’s allegations that the outgoing Obama administration conducted surveillance of the Trump team to the highest reaches of the administration. Now that Rice has been exposed, it is impossible to claim that in the event such surveillance occurred, it did not reflect the Obama administration’s concerted policy.

With the exceptions of Obama and his top adviser and confidante Valerie Jarrett, Rice was the top official in the White House.

Lake’s story and subsequent stories have obvious implications for the public’s assessment of Trump’s March 4 allegation on Twitter that Obama spied on him. But the Rice story is equally, if not more, important for what it teaches us about Obama’s mode of governing.

The Rice story strengthens the assessment that for eight years, Obama and his associates weaponized the federal government to wage a political war against their domestic political opponents in a manner that is simply unprecedented.

On Wednesday, Lee Smith noted in Tablet online magazine that the Obama administration’s apparent exploitation of intelligence reports to harm the Trump team was not the first time that the Obama administration acted in this manner.

As Smith recalled, in December 2015 The Wall Street Journal reported that during the domestic political battle surrounding the nuclear deal the Obama administration struck with the Iranian regime, the administration used intelligence intercepts of conversations of Israeli officials to spy on its domestic opponents inside the pro-Israel community and on Capitol Hill.

In the latest iteration of the Obama White House’s abuse of intelligence data, administration officials collected and leaked information about members of the incoming Trump administration to undermine its ability to chart a new course in foreign affairs.

The Obama administration’s campaign against the incoming Trump administration was wildly successful.

Due to their efforts, Trump’s national security adviser Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn was forced to resign in a cloud of controversy just three weeks after Trump took office.

Revelations by Lake and others exposed that Flynn was targeted in the Obama White House’s abuse of intelligence. The administration used its intelligence intercepts and unmasking of Flynn to cultivate the sense – with no evidence – that Flynn was a Russian plant.

On January 12, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius published that Flynn had spoken numerous times to Russia’s US Ambassador Sergei Kislyak after Obama levied sanctions on Russia on December 26.

Ignatius reported that in their conversations the subject of those sanctions arose, but that Flynn made no policy determination regarding how the Trump administration would view the sanctions upon entering office.

In other words, Flynn did nothing wrong. He did his job.

But immediately after the story was published, Flynn was tarred and feathered as a Russian agent. He entered office with Trump on January 20, but was declared “controversial,” “embattled” and “compromised” from his first day in office.

The innuendos followed Flynn like a cloud until he was forced to resign, less than three weeks after entering the White House.

Regardless of whether or not Flynn did anything wrong – and no evidence has been proffered to suggest that he did anything wrong – his loss was a severe blow to the Trump administration. In one fell swoop, the Obama administration’s weaponization of foreign intelligence intercepts had brought down the national security adviser.

This brings us to 2015, and the fight in Washington and throughout the US about Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran. In the 2015 operation, the White House allegedly used intercepted communications between US citizens and Israeli diplomats and between Israeli diplomats in Washington and Jerusalem to defame opponents of the nuclear deal. Lawmakers and private citizens were repeatedly subjected to condemnations in the media where unnamed administration sources questioned their loyalty, alleged that they were serving the interests of a foreign power against the US, and that in the case of lawmakers, they were bought and paid for by rich Jewish donors.

Speaking to Smith, a pro-Israel activist who had participated in the battle against the nuclear deal explained how the White House operation worked.

“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s [National Security Agency’s] legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents....

“We began to notice that the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”

Weaponizing intelligence reports was only one way that the Obama administration abused its power to weaken, silence and criminalize its domestic opponents.

Weaponizing the IRS was another way.

And just as Obama’s IRS was used to hound conservative groups that opposed Obama’s domestic agenda, so it was used to discriminate against pro-Israel groups that opposed Obama’s Middle East policies.

The most well-known case of such abuse was the IRS’s failure to approve the request for nonprofit status submitted by Z Street, a pro-Israel educational organization.

After being told by the IRS that its application for nonprofit status was being subjected to “special scrutiny” due to its Israel-centric agenda, and the fact that it advocated views that “contradict those of the administration,” Z Street sued the IRS for viewpoint discrimination.

The IRS attempted to get the case dismissed, but a panel of three irate federal judges rejected its request.

After slow rolling its response to the lawsuit, ahead of Obama’s departure from office, the IRS suddenly approved Z Street’s request for nonprofit status, seven years after it was first requested.

At the same time, the IRS continued to refuse to provide Z Street with the documents that informed its decision to discriminate against it. And it refused to explain how its decision to discriminate against US citizens in its tax policies on the basis of their political opposition to the administration’s policies was legal.

There are several aspects of the story of Obama’s abuse of power, and the fact that Israel and its US allies were key targets of that abuse, that are important beyond the domestic discourse in the US.

First, the Obama administration’s abuse of foreign intelligence to wage political warfare against pro-Israel activists and lawmakers who support Israel during the Iran battle tells us that the Obama administration viewed supporters of a strong US-Israel alliance as its political enemies. This is remarkable.

Moreover, the fact that Z Street and other US nonprofit groups that espouse positions on Israel at odds to the Obama administration’s views were specifically targeted for discrimination by the IRS indicates that the Obama administration’s political war against US support for Israel was all-encompassing. It wasn’t limited to the realm of foreign policy. It related as well to the ability to Americans to educate their fellow citizens on the need for a robust partnership with a strong Israel.

The second thing that we learn from our deepening understanding of the Obama administration’s apparent weaponization of the federal bureaucracy as a means to defeat and undermine its political opponents is that apparently, Obama’s top aides deliberately acted to undermine Trump’s ability to govern. This is particularly apparent in everything related to foreign policy.

As Adam Kredo from The Washington Free Beacon has documented, in its last months, the Obama administration ensured that the National Security Council’s budget would be depleted, in order to deny the Trump administration the ability to hire new staffers. It hired political appointees into the civil service and then burrowed them in the National Security Council and other key government departments, to undermine and discredit the Trump administration from within.

For instance, in its waning days, the State Department extended Yael Lempert’s tenure at the National Security Council for two years. Lempert is a foreign service officer notorious for her rabid opposition to Israel.

In another example, last July, Obama moved Sahar Nowrouzzadeh from his National Security Council, where Nowrouzzadeh served as Iran director, to the State Department, where he is now in charge of policy planning on Iran and the Persian Gulf.

As professional foreign service officers, both Lempert and Nowrouzzadeh are essentially impossible to fire or move.

In an interview with PBS following Nunes’s revelations, Susan Rice falsely denied that the Obama White House had “unmasked” incoming Trump administration personnel whose conversations with foreigners were intercepted by the intelligence community.

After denying the charges, Rice was asked her view of Trump’s foreign policy so far. Rice responded derisively.

She noted that despite Trump’s criticism of the Obama administration’s lackadaisical and stalled campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the policy the Trump administration is enacting against ISIS on the ground is essentially the same policy that the Obama administration implemented, “as it should be,” she added, with a smirk.

In reality, if indeed Trump is implementing Obama’s ISIS policy, his failure to enact a new policy there, and indeed, the perceived chaos and disarray of his foreign policy across the board, is not a function of Trump’s incompetence or of the inexperience of his advisers. To the extent that Trump has failed to date to enact a clear foreign policy, this week’s disclosures strengthen the sense that his failure owes primarily to the deliberate subversion of his administration by his predecessor.

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

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266367/israel-and-obamas-political-war-caroline-glick

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The Case Against Legalizing Unknown Millions of Illegal Aliens - Michael Cutler

by Michael Cutler

A supposed "solution" that would be catastrophic for America

At least as far back as the administration of Jimmy Carter, the immigration debate has been waged by globalists who have, over time, succeeded in hijacking the language and terminology applied to immigration.

Consider that Jimmy Carter: Orignator of the Orwellian term "undocumented immigrant," understood that by removing the term “alien” from discussions about immigration he could, over time, subvert the debate by confounding the public’s understanding about the entire immigration issue.

Carter insisted that INS employees immediately stop using the term “illegal alien” to describe aliens who were illegally present in the United States but refer to them as being “undocumented aliens.”

Today many politicians and journalists claim that illegal aliens who run America’s borders, thereby evading the inspections process conducted at ports of entry, have entered the United States “undocumented.”

In actuality, aliens who evade the inspections process enter the United States without inspection.  This creates a huge threat to national security and public safety, after all, Entry Without Inspection = Entry Without Vetting. 

Additionally, aliens who enter the United States through ports of entry but then go on to violate the terms of their admission, depending on the category of visa they used to enter the United States, certainly are not making “undocumented” entries.

However, to the globalists and immigration anarchists, these facts are merely speed bumps that need to be overcome so that they can craft their false narrative.

One of America’s most cherished symbols is the Statue of Liberty that is equated with America’s rich and diverse immigrant heritage.  Over time his strategy of altering the terminology succeeded in convincing huge numbers of Americans that anyone who would interfere with the flow of “immigrants” into the United States was acting against America’s culture and traditions.

The media was quick to jump on the bandwagon and identified to immigration anarchists who oppose secure borders and effective immigration law enforcement as being “Pro-Immigrant” while branding advocates for effective immigration law enforcement as “Anti-Immigrant.”

Of course if honest and accurate nomenclature was used the two sides should be referred as as “Immigration Anarchists” vs “Pro “Immigration Law Enforcement.”

However the agenda is to eradicate America’s borders which, to the globalists, are impediment to their wealth and political power.

Not being content to alter the language of the debate, the immigration anarchists have concocted a false narrative about the nature of illegal aliens and the way that the immigration crisis can be fixed since, they claim, “The immigration system is broken.”

We can find adherents to this madness in both political parties, however, the Democrats are clearly leading the charge.

Of course, in reality, what has traditionally been “broken” is the lack of resources and political will to enforce our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.  President Trump is certainly sending a clear message that this situation will be finally remedied by hiring many more ICE agents and Immigration Judges and taking the gloves off the agents by stating that there will no longer be any category of illegal aliens who may not be arrested, as was the Obama administration’s policies.

But I am compelled to address an issue that is of great concern.

While many journalists and politicians have agreed that aliens who have serious criminal convictions should be deported, but insist that since the millions of illegal aliens who are present in the United States cannot all be arrested, it is reasonable to provide them with lawful status, especially if they are working and paying taxes.

Of course our immigration laws are not about aliens paying taxes and not only are illegal aliens prohibited from working but aliens admitted under certain categories of visas are also prohibited from working.  This is about protecting the jobs and wages of American workers.

This sort of “reasoning” is never applied to any other area of law enforcement whether we consider the law enforcement response to drunk driving, texting while driving, tax fraud or other crimes.  Yet this supposed solution, is no solution at all, just a thinly veiled effort to meet the demands of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association and a laundry list of industries and special interest groups who make monumental campaign contributions seeking to get “the best government money can buy.”

Additionally, the true number of illegal aliens is unknown and unknowable but the media and many “think tanks” claim that there are between 11 million and 12 million such illegal aliens present in the United States.  

During the Reagan administration it was estimated that the Amnesty of 1986 would get roughly one million such aliens “out of the shadows.”  That amnesty eventually enabled more than 3.5 million aliens to acquire lawful status.

In 2007 the CBO estimated that there were 12 million illegal aliens present in the United States.

Given those factors and others, it is likely that any massive amnesty program would likely provide tens of millions of illegal aliens with lawful status.

The numbers would be so huge that there would be no way to interview these aliens and no way to conduct any field investigations of these millions of aliens who evaded the United States surreptitiously without inspection.

What is not understood by most folks is that an adjudications officer can approve and application in mere minutes but would require days or weeks to deny an applications since it must be expected that when an application is denied the alien will, through his/her attorney, file an appeal of that denial.  Therefore before and application for legalization is denied the adjudicator would likely require an investigator conduct a field investigation and the subsequent denial would have to be reviewed by a government attorney to make certain it meets minimal standards to withstand any legal challenges.

Consequently, it is likely that well over 90% of these applications will be approved.  

Since no field investigations could be conducted, there would be no way to determine who many of these aliens actually are.  There would be no way to ascertain when these aliens actually entered the United States.

It would be simple matter for aliens to claim to have entered the United States prior to whatever cutoff date would be established to meet the statutory requirement.  As more and more aliens succeed in gaming the system more and more aliens will be encouraged to enter the United States and make similar false claims about entry data and other pertinent facts, thereby creating a vicious cycle of fraud.

The 9/11 Commission found that immigration fraud played a major role in the ability of terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves.

This was my focus in my article, Reflections on 9/11's Vulnerabilities.

Most terrorists have not had criminal histories. 

Terrorists, not unlike spies and other “Sleeper” agents seek to maintain a low profile. 

Indeed, it is believed that at least four of the 9/11 hijackers had been encountered by police officers for motor vehicle violations.  The police officers simply treated their motor vehicle violations as routine matters and permitted them to go on their way.

On January 9, 2002 BBC reported, Hijacker 'pulled over by police' as did CNN,  
Another hijacker was stopped for traffic violation.

Clearly aliens who have serious criminals histories or established involvement in gang or other criminal activities should be deported.

I would also strongly recommend that illegal aliens who frequent places of criminality such as brothels or locations associated with the drug trade should be arrested and deported (removed) in an effort to combat these criminal enterprises.

So-called “collateral” arrests are essential to imbue the immigration law enforcement program with integrity so that aliens understand that we are serious about our immigration laws.

This helps to deter aliens from entering the United States illegally.

Additionally, under the law enforcement principle known as “randomness” by arresting illegal aliens during the course of routine field work, it is to be expected that ICE agents will stumble across serious crimes and intelligence concerning major criminal organizations and even potentially uncover terrorists and aliens who support terrorism.  

My very first assigned fraud investigation, as a brand new agent in 1976, led me to uncover a terror plot in Israel that was, thankfully averted.  The investigation began with a young man from Israel who attempted entry in the United States with and altered visa.

No one expected this mundane and routine assignment to trigger a major international investigation.

Finally, aliens who are provided with lawful status are entitled, under our immigration laws, to immediately petition to have their spouses and all of their minor children to be admitted into the United States.

Families in Third World Countries tend to have many children.  It is entirely possible that a massive amnesty program would enable more minor aliens to be granted visas than the number of illegal aliens who would be granted lawful status.

The impact of admitting tens of millions of children who would immediately be enrolled in school systems across the United States would be devastating to already beleaguered school districts across the United States.   

President Trump’s immigration policies are already having the desired impact of deterring illegal immigration as reported by the Border Patrol.  It is important that he stay the course he has wisely plotted, America and Americans will benefit from his courageous leadership.


Michael Cutler is a retired Senior Special Agent of the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) whose career spanned some 30 years. He served as an Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and spent 26 years as an agent who rotated through all of the squads within the Investigations Branch. For half of his career he was assigned to the Drug Task Force. He has testified before well over a dozen congressional hearings, provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission as well as state legislative hearings around the United States and at trials where immigration is at issue. He hosts his radio show, “The Michael Cutler Hour,” on Friday evenings on BlogTalk Radio. His personal website is http://michaelcutler.net/.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266376/case-against-legalizing-unknown-millions-illegal-michael-cutler

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