The Ins and Outs of Delaying a Senate Impeachment Trial - Joseph Klein

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by Joseph Klein

What the Dems are up to -- and what the Constitution says about it.

After her Democrat-controlled House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against President Trump Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she might just wait awhile before sending the articles over to the Senate for trial. “We will make our decision as to when we are going to send it when we see what they are doing on the Senate side,” Speaker Pelosi said. “So far, we have not seen anything that looks fair to us.” The House Democrats want the Senate to call the witnesses who House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler failed to call during their sham hearings. In their rush to impeach, they were too impatient to wait for a court decision compelling the witnesses to testify.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded Thursday morning to the House’s impeachment process and the latest delay tactics.  He said that “House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.” In a further dig, the Senate Majority Leader added, "Looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet." He noted that the same Democrats who stressed the urgency of impeaching President Trump immediately now seem "content to sit on their hands."

Senator McConnell excoriated "Speaker Pelosi's House” for conducting “the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history." He charged the Democrats with exhibiting “partisan rage at this particular President,” creating “a toxic new precedent that will echo well into the future."

Speaker Pelosi once again displayed her partisan rage when she went out of her way to personally insult Senator McConnell, calling him a "rogue leader." She continued to insist at a Thursday morning press conference that, before the House moves forward with appointing its prosecution managers, it must first “see the process that is set forth in the Senate.” In other words, the House Democrats want a veto power over the Senate trial process. Like petulant children, they threaten to take their marbles and go home unless they get their way. Speaker Pelosi was testy when pressed by reporters.

The House Democrats most likely got their idea to delay sending their articles of impeachment over to the Senate from Harvard Law School’s Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe. Professor Tribe has been a strong advocate for impeaching President Trump. Nevertheless, in an op-ed column he wrote for the Washington Post, Professor Tribe recommended delay in sending the impeachment articles to the Senate until there is clarification of the Senate trial rules. “This option needs to be taken seriously now that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced his intention to conduct not a real trial but a whitewash, letting the president and his legal team call the shots,” Professor Tribe wrote. He then disputed any constitutional objections to such a delay strategy. He opined that “the House, whose historical role is to prosecute articles of impeachment in the Senate after exercising its ‘sole’ power to impeach, is under no affirmative constitutional obligation to do so instantly.”

Professor Tribe’s partisanship has clouded his judgment on the Constitution’s delegation of impeachment and trial powers to the House of Representatives and the Senate respectively. So, let’s educate him on some elementary points.

Article I, Section 2 does indeed say that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” The House exercised its sole power of impeachment Wednesday night. It’s constitutional role in the process is done. Now it’s the Senate’s turn. But Professor Tribe says not so fast.

Relying on Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution that says each legislative chamber sets its own rules, Professor Tribe tweeted that “It’s up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate.”

Yes, the Democrat-controlled House was free to set its own one-sided rules governing its own impeachment process. That was its constitutional right, despite having exercised that right so irresponsibly in this case. But Professor Tribe neglected to mention the power of the Senate to decide when and how it will try impeachment cases. Article I, Section 3 provides that “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.”

The current Senate Rules of Procedure and Practice regarding impeachment trials set out an order of proceedings. The process in the Senate would begin currently under these rules with notice received from the House that it has selected its managers to conduct the impeachment against the president, who are directed to carry the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts are trying to exploit these Senate rules by delaying the rules’ trigger for Senate trial action. However, there is no constitutional requirement that the Senate must wait to act until the House formally names its prosecution managers and presents its articles of impeachment to the Senate. The Senate alone has the power to set and to change its own rules.

If the House Democrats persist in dragging their feet after rushing to complete their own rigged impeachment process, the Senate majority needs to consider its options. By majority vote, the Senate could set a firm date by which the House must provide notice of its appointment of managers and deliver its articles of impeachment. If the House refuses to comply with this deadline, the Senate could then immediately vote to dismiss the charges against President Trump on the grounds that the House accusers failed to prosecute their case in a timely fashion.

In his op-ed column, Professor Tribe referred to a Supreme Court decision involving the public’s constitutional right to observe a criminal trial. He meant to use the case to bolster by analogy his argument for the House’s constitutional right to hold back sending its impeachment articles to the Senate until it is assured that the Senate will act fairly. However, the House does not get any say in how the Senate conducts its impeachment trials. If this constitutional law professor wants to use analogies, he should start with the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a “speedy” trial.

That said, perhaps the Democrats should be permitted to dig the hole in which they find themselves even deeper. Senator McConnell said, “'It's beyond me how the Speaker and Democratic Leader in the Senate think withholding the articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage. Frankly, I'm not anxious to have the trial. If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn't want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch.”

The House Democrats were already witnessing a decline in public support for their rush to impeachment. Delaying the final resolution of the impeachment charges they rushed through the House will leave the House Democrats even more exposed as rabid, hypocritical partisans. The voters will render their verdict on November 3, 2020.

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/delay-senate-impeachment-trial-joseph-klein/

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Rat-Catchers: The True Function of a Free Press - A. Welderson

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by A. Welderson

The mainstream media have lost sight of what a free press is for. That's why they're bleeding viewers and readers.

That there are scoundrels in government will come as no surprise to anyone. All governments. Always have been and always will be, despite our best efforts to remove them. They are like cockroaches, the ultimate survivors. Scoundrels, like a virus, hijack the nominal purpose of government and use it to their own ends, entrenching their positions, lining their pockets, and growing their power.

All societies have sought to eradicate scoundrels in government through various measures, a hopeless but necessary effort. These measures work to some extent, but the end result is just to select for sneakier and craftier scoundrels in a Darwinian manner. The rats learn to play the game better and still end up running most of the structure, if not all of it.

The most effective, though certainly not foolproof, method attempted to date was hit upon by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers stumbled upon a great idea to keep dishonest people away from the levers of power. They subcontracted the job out.

A watchdog within the government structure will sooner or later be corrupted. So the framers set up a free and independent press to sniff out scandal. Nothing sells papers like scandal, and scandalous behavior of those in power is the juiciest scandal of all. The free press was created with a built in financial incentive to find and expose scoundrels. Journalists are, in effect, paid by the rat for every rat they catch and display for public scorn.

The result has been a long struggle between the press and scoundrels in the government, a predator/prey dynamic. The scoundrels are striving to maximize the amount of loot they can wring from the public coffers, while shrouding nefarious activities from the press. Simultaneously, the members of the press are ransacking the corridors of power for scandal, while competing with colleagues for the most sensational dirt. If a journalist fails to feed the public's voracious hunger for scandal, he is replaced with more ambitious, and more competent, rivals. This fearsome and beautiful ecology evolved from the simple act of unleashing people to print anything they want. And it worked fairly well for more than a century. Then the press decided to pick an ideology.

In the early twentieth century the free press in America, decided to shackle itself to progressivism. Now the media lean so far left that it resembles a sinking cruise ship with a heavy list to port. 

Honestly, if reporters want to be leftists, that really is their own business – as long as they do their jobs. Unfortunately, the job isn't getting done anymore, at least not all of it. Pure and simple, journalists have stopped looking for scandals in the Democrat party. Leftist journalists are under the mistaken impression that cheerleading for the Democrats and ignoring scandalous Democrat behavior is the best way to advance their agenda. They couldn't be more wrong.

By the same logic, leftist journalists hound Republicans like a pack of rabid wolves. If no disgraceful Republican behavior can be found, the diligent progressive journalist will manufacture it. This slipshod dance is thought to aid the Democrats by hobbling the opposing Republicans. Wrong again.

The wily scoundrels have noticed that journalists are stalking only Republicans nowadays. Life for Republican scoundrels has become bleak, cold, and dangerous, menaced by the hovering shapes of ravenous lefty reporters. To be sure, there are still Republican scoundrels, endangered as they might be. It's probably impossible to completely eliminate scoundrels from any human endeavor. However, you can force the overwhelming majority of them to migrate. Displaced scoundrels have been flooding into the safe space of the Democrat party for a long time now, like a wildlife preserve. All the invasive scoundrels have to do is spout the correct talking points, and it's as if the reporters can't even see them. The consequence of the press ignoring half of its natural hunting ground is a massive imbalance in scoundrels between the Republican and Democrat parties. 

While journalists think they are being loyal to those who believe in the socialist utopia, the scoundrels are unfettered by ideology. The scoundrels are just telling the media what they want to hear as the rats loot the treasury and further secure power and position.

Whatever scoundrels run quickly devolves into a dumpster fire, because the scoundrels' modus operandi is to ride the gravy train for as long as they can and then get out before things get too hot. I surmise that the marks are wising up. Things are starting to get awkward for the snake oil salesmen and their pet reporters. Nobody but the journalists is drinking the Kool-Aid anymore. Fewer and fewer people are listening to what the journalists spew, especially when they tell such obvious lies in defense of the scoundrels.

Why do the geniuses at CNN think they're shedding viewers so fast and Fox News is gaining? Fox is just one network with relatively limited resources and reach. But Fox and its sisters hunt for scandals in the Democrat party, where the progressive journalists fear to tread. And such juicy scandals they find, too. The Pulitzer committee honors fake news while conservative media outlets scoop the others with embarrassing regularity.

The public appetite for political scandals is insatiable, and the made-up ones the conventional journalists have been peddling lately are just not feeding it. Perhaps the media will wake up in time to realize their true calling. Members of the free press are really just scandal-mongers we contracted to keep the pests under control. Or maybe they'll go bankrupt first.

Doesn't matter. Others will take the job if it's beneath the dignity of the current flock of rat-catchers. Just look at the independent internet journalists, which have started to pop up like weeds in a neglected garden, tough, savvy, and persistent. They seem to understand their job a lot better than the so-called professionals do, or ever did. It's not as if the mainstream media has a monopoly anymore on publishing whatever the hell you want to say.

A. Welderson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/ratcatchers_the_true_function_of_a_free_press.html

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Cory Booker Protected the Terrorists Behind the Jersey City Anti-Semitic Shootings - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

He shut down surveillance of black nationalist terrorists -- and people died.

After black nationalist gunmen opened fire in a Jewish market in his state, Senator Cory Booker issued a statement that did not mention Jews, but did mention fighting “gun violence”. A secondary joint press release with Senator Bob Menendez, the other politician representing the state in the Senate, did mention "rising anti-Semitism" before shifting over to the need for, “lifesaving gun safety reform.”

"There is no room in our communities or in our hearts for this evil," the press release concluded.

The Senator from New Jersey doesn’t give himself enough credit. There is plenty of room for this evil in his heart. The Democrat politician has repeatedly quoted Stokely Carmichael in his speeches. The black nationalist also known as Kwame Ture would have approved of the Jersey City market shootings.

“The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist we must take a lesson from Hitler,” Ture had once declared. “I’ve never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler.”

David Anderson, the Jersey City gunman, had obsessively listened to the ravings of Louis Farrakhan.

Cory Booker had tweeted a photo celebrating Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March which featured a photo of Farrakhan. Like Stokely, Farrakhan believes that Hitler is a “great man.” Earlier in the campaign, Booker had flip-flopped over whether he would agree to meet with Farrakhan, after saying, “I have heard Minister Farrakhan’s speeches for a lot of my life.” Ultimately, Booker decided to nix the idea.

But, much more significantly, Booker had worked to nix the FBI’s monitoring of black nationalist terror.

Earlier this summer, Booker had grinned at a Senate grilling of FBI Director Christopher Wray. “So, you no longer use the term Black Identity Extremism,” he had gloated. “That's great news.”

“So nobody is being investigated or surveilled under black identity extremism?” he demanded.

Nobody. Including David Anderson, the Black Hebrew Israelite hate group member, who had loaded up a U-Haul van with guns and explosives before setting out to kill Jews in the name of his racist hatred.

Had the FBI defied Senator Booker, the people at the JC Supermarket might still be alive today.

The end of the BIE category was great news for Booker who, along with Senator Dick Durbin, had waged a relentless crusade against the FBI for warning against the rising terror threat from black nationalists like the ones who murdered Detective Joseph Seals, Moshe Hersh Deutsch, Leah Mindel Ferencz, and Miguel Jason Rodriguez in the wave of brutal violence by Black Hebrew Israelite terrorists in Jersey City.

And it was bad news for those who lost their lives to the terrorists whom Booker was protecting.

After the hearing, Booker issued a press release urging “Director Wray to issue updated guidance notifying law enforcement agencies about the elimination of this misleading designation.”

The lack of awareness by local law enforcement in Jersey City, particularly by Detective Joseph Seals, who was unaware of the danger he faced when approaching the U-Haul of the black identity extremists, may have proven fatal not only to Seals, but the three people shot in the Kosher market, as well as to the two police officers wounded in the fighting. If Seals had understood the danger he was in, the entire attack could have been headed off at the Bayville Cemetery where the detective had confronted them.

At the Senate hearing, Booker followed the same talking points as other defenders of black nationalism did, objecting to Director Wray’s suggestion that racist violence was coming from both sides of the spectrum. “That language you said, both ends of the spectrum, the murders at synagogues, the murders we've seen motivated,” he rambled. “You said both ends of the spectrum, as if there actually is a movement of black identity extremism: it's almost creating this reality.”

Less than a year later, the reality that Booker was pretending didn’t exist hit home. The likely target, according to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, was a Jewish school and synagogue next door to the store.

Anderson and his girlfriend had opened fire on the glass front of the store while 50 children were trapped in a school and worshipers in a synagogue in the much less visible building next door.

The attack came from the black identity extremists whom Booker had been avidly protecting.

"The Trump Administration is conjuring up the idea that 'Black Identity Extremists' are a threat to our communities, particularly the safety of the brave men and women who serve in law enforcement. There is just one problem though: there is no such movement. No serious journalists or academics have written about or even found that 'Black Identity Extremists' exist," Booker had posted on Facebook.

That was in 2017. That same year, black nationalists Micah X. Johnson and Gavin Long, had murdered 8 police officers in mass shootings. These were some of the crimes that Senator Booker claimed didn’t exist.

And he wasn’t alone.

Booker, along with Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and Senator Richard Blumenthal had sent a letter to Attorney General Barr this year claiming that "so-called 'Black identity extremists'" was a "fabricated term based on a faulty assessment of a small number of isolated incidents."

A letter by the Congressional Black Caucus had also taken issue with the BIE category. Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr, who represents the district in which the Kosher market shooting happened, is a CBC member. In his press release, Payne failed to mention the ideology of the gunmen, repeatedly describing the killings as “senseless” and blamed Republicans for not supporting Democrat gun control proposals.

“I will continue to encourage my House colleagues to support my Safer Neighborhoods Gun Buyback Act to help me get guns off the streets,” his press release boasted.

The Democrat House member failed to explain how buying back guns would have stopped a black nationalist terrorist who had stocked up on guns in order to kill police officers and Jews.

The FBI’s response to the rise in black nationalist violence was the right one.

You don’t stop terrorist attack with gun buybacks, but through monitoring and surveillance. Senator Cory Booker went to war to cripple the FBI’s ability to monitor and to warn local police departments of the threat of black nationalist terror. He shamelessly lied by repeatedly claiming that it didn’t exist.

And there is no reason to think that he will admit the truth now.

In between praising Greta Thunberg and touting his own political prospects in the 2020 election, Booker tweeted, "We won't be silent in the face of bigotry & hate. Sending love & prayers to the victims, their families, our Jewish neighbors & the JCPD."

The victims didn’t need Cory Booker’s love or prayers. Nor did the JCPD which lost one of its own, while two others were sent to the hospital, it needed to have the information to stop that from happening.

For the last two years, Booker had the opportunity to stand with police officers and the victims. Instead he chose to cover up for David Anderson and other racist black nationalist terrorists.

The people of New Jersey paid the price.

Senator Cory Booker was not only silent in the face of bigotry and hate, he silenced the FBI. His silencing enabled the terror attack in Jersey City. And his response to a terror attack in his own state by the very black identity extremists whom he claimed don’t exist, was this perfunctory sending of “love & prayers.”

President Trump has been repeatedly asked about his ties to white nationalists. Imagine if President Trump had repeatedly quoted an admirer of Adolf Hitler who had called for the murder of Jews. Imagine if he had played a major role in shutting down surveillance and monitoring of the KKK and Neo-Nazis. And imagine if nobody in the media were willing to report on it or ask him about his motives.

It’s time Cory Booker were asked, as he aspires to Trump’s job, why he covered for black nationalists.

And whether, after the bodies were removed from the floor of that small Jersey City market while he rushed between fundraisers and campaign events, he has any regrets.


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/2019/12/cory-booker-protected-terrorists-behind-jersey-daniel-greenfield/

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The End of a Jewish Presence in Europe? - Guy Millière

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by Guy Millière

Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.

• "Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews." — French Member of Parliament Meyer Habib.
• Anti-Semitism is advancing throughout the continent and often has a Middle Eastern cast. Yet, the authorities also talk only about right-wing anti-Semitism.
• Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.
• The demographic transformation taking place in France is also happening throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere.

On December 3, the French National Assembly passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism. MP Meyer Habib, who supported the resolution, delivered a passionate and poignant speech, highlighting the extent of the anti-Semitic threat in today's France, and the close links between hatred of the Jews and hatred toward Israel. Pictured: France's National Assembly in Paris. (Image source: Daniel Vorndran/DXR/Wikimedia Commons)

On December 3, the French National Assembly passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism. The resolution stressed that the definition "encompasses manifestations of hatred toward the State of Israel justified solely by the perception of the latter as a Jewish collective." MP Meyer Habib, who supported the resolution, delivered a passionate and poignant speech, highlighting the extent of the anti-Semitic threat in today's France, and the close links between hatred of the Jews and hatred toward Israel:

"Since 2006, twelve French people have been murdered in France because they were Jewish. Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews. Anti-Zionism is an obsessive demonization of Israel and an abuse of anti-racist and anti-colonial rhetoric to deprive the Jews of their identity."

He added that getting the votes to pass the resolution was extremely difficult because of a general lack of "political courage" -- sadly, a quality often absent in France when it comes to anti-Semitism and Israel.

French political leaders often declare that fighting against anti-Semitism is of utmost importance; they say it every time a Jew is murdered in the country. The only anti-Semitism they seem ready to fight, however, is right-wing anti-Semitism. They seemingly refuse to see that all the Jews killed or assaulted in France since 2006 were victims of Muslim anti-Semites -- and French political leaders never utter a word about it. They appear to hide Islamic anti-Semitism -- embedded in the Qur'an and Hadiths and reinforced in the 1930s by the Nazis' friendship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini -- under a Muslim hatred of the Jews based on a supposedly "legitimate" Muslim hatred of 'Zionist crimes'".

French political leaders also seemingly refuse to see another form of anti-Semitism that is on the rise: leftist anti-Semitism. It is precisely this leftist anti-Semitism that uses the mask of anti-Zionism to spread anti-Jewish hatred.

French political leaders also never speak about the way the French mainstream media talk about Israel, or about the consequences of those articles and reports. They constantly -- and falsely -- describe Israel as an evil country whose soldiers cavalierly kill Arabs on a daily basis and whose citizens "illegally occupy" territories (despite having been there for more than 3,000 years) that might belong to another people whom they cruelly deprive of everything.

French political leaders do not criticize anti-Israel articles and reports: the way most of them talk about Israel is just as anti-Israel as the worst anti-Israel articles. The government itself does no better. When Israeli Jews are murdered in a terrorist attack, the French government publishes a statement "deploring" the attack and urging Israel to "show restraint" and avoid "starting a cycle of violence". When an attack takes place in the eastern part of Jerusalem or in the West Bank, the statement mentions that "East Jerusalem" and the West Bank are "Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel". It is a way of saying that Jews should not be there, that the victims are the guilty party, and that those who attack them had good reason to do so.

November 12, when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Jewish communities in the disputed territories do not contravene international law, the French government immediately issued a statement saying that "the Israeli policy of colonization in the Palestinian occupied territories is illegal under international law, in particular international humanitarian law".

This reaction is in line with the positions taken by the French government in recent years: when US President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the move was a "serious mistake" and stressed that the French embassy would remain in the make-believe capital of Israel, Tel Aviv. An official statement added that France is "the friend of Palestine" and supports "the creation of a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital". France does not recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel's territory: the French consulate in Jerusalem is described in French official documents as "the French Consulate in Jerusalem"; the word "Israel" is omitted. When French citizens residing in Israel vote, the votes of those in Jerusalem are counted separately from the votes of those elsewhere in Israel.

At the Institute of the Arab World, funded by the French government and Arab countries, opened its doors in the center of Paris in 1987, the conferences and exhibitions are often imbued with anti-Israeli hatred. Currently, at an exhibition called "AlUla, marvel of Arabia", visitors can see a map where the entire land of Israel is covered with the words "Palestinian territories". When Jewish organizations protested, the word, Israel was finally added next to "Palestinian territories".

Almost all the murders of Jews in France were not only committed by Muslim anti-Semites, but by Muslims unjustly identifying French Jews with "criminal Israel". Mohamed Merah, who murdered Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse, told a police officer that he killed Jewish children because "the Jews kill Palestinian children" and that he saw "many reports on French TV showing it". What he said did not prompt the French government to ask French television stations to be more careful to avoid whatever could be regarded as incitement to hatred and murder.

At the moment, Meyer Habib is nearly the only French MP denouncing anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Israeli bias in the French media and the anti-Israel positions of the French government and many politicians. He often receives anti-Semitic death threats; his family and he need to live under around-the-clock police protection. He represents French citizens living abroad -- in Israel, Italy and Turkey; he could not be elected anywhere on French territory.

Habib has also said that the December 3 resolution is just a resolution. Only a minority of MPs voted in favor of it. The only reason it was passed at all is that many MPs chose to abstain. Several voted against it and once again announced that they were proudly "anti-Zionist". Either way, the resolution will not become a law and has no consequences.

The French media, political leaders and government will almost certainly not change their hostile positions regarding Israel. No French political leader supports Meyer Habib or dares to disagree with the French government's statements regarding Israel, except to say that the French government is still too pro-Israel.

As a demographic change is rapidly taking place in France, the country's media, political leaders and government are behaving accordingly. Jews have become a shrinking part of the population -- 0.6 % -- and carry no political weight. The French Muslim population is quickly growing -- to more than 12% of the total. It has become virtually impossible to win an election in France without now counting on the Muslim vote.

The few people who still criticize Islam and Muslim anti-Semitism in France are mercilessly harassed by Islamic organizations and even more harshly condemned by the courts. A few days ago, on December 4, a prosecutor asked the court to sentence Christine Tasin, president of the anti-Islamic movement Republican Resistance. In June 2017, she wrote an article containing the statements: "Anti-Muslim acts of anger are inevitable in the short or medium term in all European countries, including France, which are undergoing a Muslim invasion" and "Islam may be incompatible with Western civilization". Tasin was accused by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) of inciting "anti-Muslim terrorism". The CCIF, is an organization created by Muslims of France, the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The prosecutor said that the charge pressed by the CCIF was "perfectly valid", and that Tasin "needs a lesson". She could be the first person in France to be sent to prison for the "crime" of "Islamophobia".

Many participants at the Islamic and leftist demonstration against "Islamophobia" in Paris on November 10 shouted explicitly anti-Zionist slogans, such as "Israel Assassin" and "Palestine shall win". Several demonstrators carried Palestinian and Hamas flags. By contrast, a demonstration a week later, denouncing Islamic terrorism, brought together fewer than 2,000 participants.

On October 30 in Paris, when President Macron inaugurated the European Center for Judaism, he named all the Jews recently murdered in France. He did not, however, name the murderers. He merely denounced the "foul beast", an expression created by Bertolt Brecht and now often used in France to incriminate Nazi sympathizers. He mentioned threats posed by "those who want to sow hatred and division " and expressed his support for the Muslims wounded in a failed attack on the mosque in Bayonne, in southwest France. He spoke positively of a time when a large part of Spain was Muslim, and said that there, in Andalusia, "the Jews, despite their dhimmi status, developed an extraordinary culture".

The author Barbara Lefebvre saw in these words a eulogy for Jews -- an acceptance of dhimmitude [being ruled under Islam as a third-class "tolerated" citizen, sometimes paying a "protection" tax] and of the submission that comes with it. She wrote that "summoning the brown plague and the dark hours of our history to evoke the threat faced by the Jews living in France is a historic, memorial and political insult", and that Macron's speech paved the way for condemning the French Jews to "move out of the country or lock themselves in a community bubble, like dhimmis in the land of Islam".

In Europe, France is no exception. Anti-Semitism is advancing throughout the continent and often has a Middle Eastern cast. Yet, the authorities talk only about "right-wing anti-Semitism".

In Germany, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution conducted a study analyzing Muslim attacks perpetrated against the Jews there in 2017 -- but it explicitly refused to say that these attacks were anti-Semitic, and instead attributed them to "religious and cultural beliefs that Muslim immigrants bring with them" to Germany.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas added, as if it were an excuse, that Muslims arriving in Germany "come from countries in which the powerful incite hatred toward Jews and Israel". A study conducted in the United Kingdom by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research showed that anti-Semitism is far more prevalent among British Muslims than among other citizens of the country -- but the study was reported only in the British Jewish press.

Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.

In the United Kingdom, anti-Semites entered the Labor Party through the Left. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was recently accused by Britain's chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis of "anti-Jewish racism".

Most major European media are as anti-Israel as the major French media. In July, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described an article published by the magazine Spiegel as using "anti-Semitic clichés" to vilify Israel. It is not the only article of its kind in the German press. Shuli Davidovich, an Israeli press attaché in London, said a decade ago:

"Definitely some papers never give any credit to Israel ... for some people especially in such papers as the Guardian, the human face of the Israeli does not exist. It's always the helmet, the rifle, the aggressor, the occupier."

Today, nothing has changed. The Guardian often publishes articles supporting the economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a commentator, noted the growing abundance of anti-Semitic cartoons that now accompany anti-Israeli articles in the European press. Anti-Semitic cartoons, he pointed out, abound in Norway -- a country with only 700 Jews. Many cartoons, he said, depict Jews as "parasites", exactly as in the Muslim countries' press.

Most of Europe's political leaders are as hostile to Israel as France's political leaders are. The European Union stubbornly defends the idea that Israel must return to the 1949 armistice line, often referred to as the "1967 borders". The EU claims that Israel illegally occupies "Palestinian territories". Every time Federica Mogherini, Vice President of the European Commission until last month, speaks about the Middle East, she describes Israel as an "occupying power". Her successor, Josep Borrell, advocates for unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood. "Iran wants to wipe out Israel," he has said; "nothing new about that. You have to live with it". Nine of the 28 member States of the European Union -- Sweden, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania -- recognize a "state of Palestine" but ignore that the Palestinian Authority has never renounced its plan to obliterate Israel and take its place, nor stopped committing acts of terrorism.

The demographic transformation happening in France is also spreading throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere. Political parties opposed to Islamization are pushed to the margins. Some Central European leaders – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland and President Miloš Zeman in the Czech Republic -- are the only ones explicitly to reject the Islamization of their countries and take measures to curb Muslim immigration. They are often condemned by Western European leaders who want to force them to welcome immigrants by the thousands.


Reports show, not surprisingly, that the rise in the number of Muslim immigrants has led to an even broader rise in anti-Semitism.


In 2018, the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency surveyed Jews in the 12 European countries with the largest Jewish populations. The report concluded that "28% experienced some form of harassment for being Jewish", "47% worry about anti-Semitic verbal insult or harassment and 40% about physical attack", "38% have considered emigrating in the past five years over safety fears".

Another study, undertaken by Germany's University of Bielefeld in 2011, showed that 40% of European adults agreed with the statement, "Israel behaves toward the Palestinians like the Nazis behaved toward the Jews."

In an article named "Judenrein Europe", the American political commentator Joel Kotkin wrote that all available data show that anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Israel prejudices will continue to spread throughout all Europe, and that it could mean the end of Jewish presence on the continent:

"For millennia, following the destruction of the Second Temple and the beginning of the diaspora, Europe was home to the majority of the world's Jews. That chapter of history is over. As Jews continue fleeing the continent, by the end of this century all that's left will be a Jewish graveyard".

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

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15293/antisemitism-france-europe

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CAIR Pennsylvania Poster Girl Resigns in Shame - Leonard Getz

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by Leonard Getz

Pennsylvania's first female Muslim elected official crashes and burns.

Movita Johnson-Harrell seemed to take pride in her position as the first Muslim woman elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature. Now that record will forever have an asterisk next to it as Johnson-Harrell has turned herself in to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s Office, pleading guilty on charges of perjury, record tampering, and embezzling over $500,000 in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disability funds, as well as donations to Motivations Education and Consultation Associates (MECA), a charity she established to allegedly serve the mentally ill and drug addicted poor in her predominately African-American neighborhood.

In a press conference, Attorney General Shapiro described Johnson-Harrell’s actions as “brazen corruption... her theft knew no bounds.” Johnson-Harrell stole funds that personally belonged to the residents of her facilities and used it to purchase fox furs, trips to Mexico, to make payments on a Porsche, pay delinquent utility bills, cover her granddaughter’s private school tuition and even fund her political campaign. After the facility, where residents were living in squalor, was closed, Johnson-Harrell continued collecting their rent from MECA even though the facilities were no longer operating.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Johnson-Harrell’s dereliction of duty extended to her short time as a Pennsylvania state representative.

During her brief period in office, Johnson-Harrell seemed to spend the majority of her time celebrating herself as the first Muslim woman elected to the state legislature, and helping to fundraise and advocate for the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Two months after being in office Johnson Harrell flew across the country to Washington State to stand with anti-Israel BDS supporter Congresswoman Ilhan Omar at a CAIR fundraiser with a separatist theme "Muslim Power for 2020 & Beyond."

Two months later she made an appearance at the Muslim Ummah of North America convention in Philadelphia over the July 4^th weekend, where she shared the stage with numerous extremists all speaking out for a surge in Islamic political influence in American life. Johnson-Harrell added her political voice to this worrisome rhetoric, calling on Muslims to "occupy every space of this world."
Speakers included Nihad Awad, cofounder of Hamas-linked CAIR, and Zahid Bukhari, president of the Islamic Circle of North America, a Jamaat-e-Islamii proxy group. 

Also present was Ayman Hammous, executive director of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has been identified as the affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. Johnson-Harrell shared the stage with Hammous even though just two months earlier, in May of 2019, the Muslim American Society’s Philadelphia chapter made news after it was caught after uploading a skit where Muslim children sang about beheading Jews. 

Johnson-Harrell responded to the controversy over the video by equating it to Jewish and Christian religious texts, “ I wanted to note that all religions have sections of their holy books that they might not be particularly proud of.” She then quoted scripture from the Hebrew bible and Christian New Testament, but nothing from the Koran.

In November 2019, Johnson-Harrell spoke at two more CAIR events, one in Los Angeles and one in Washington D.C. at its national banquet. In LA she was joined by fellow Philadelphian and BDS supporter Marc Lamont Hill and congratulated him for receiving CAIR’s "courage under fire" award. Referring to her successful election, Johnson-Harrell said, in a statement now dripping with irony:

“I was tired of people who look like me not protecting people who look like me… I got here by divine intervention, I’m going to leave by divine intervention. I have been obedient to Allah.”

Not only was Johnson-Harrell propelled as a prominent speaker at CAIR’s national convention on November 9^th in Washington D.C. but she enthusiastically uploaded a promotional selfie video excited about rabid anti-Semite Linda Sarsour and anti-Israel/ anti-Semite Congresswoman Ilhan Omar appearing as a guest speakers. She spoke along with sheik and “motivational speaker” Aderraoot Alkhawaldeh a frequent speaker on Sharia Law for the Islamic Circle of North America. 
 
Acknowledging her arrest, Movita Johnson-Harrell tweeted “"Allah v Akbar" (God is greater) expressing no regret or sorrow for the people she hurt, but instead positioning herself as a martyr, tweeting, “My life is one of service. If I have to suffer persecution to save one from the grave then God’s will, not mine be done.”

Johnson-Harrell’s martyrdom complex has been a fixture of her short time in office as well. Her first accusation came on the day she was sworn in when freshman state representative Stephanie Borowicz referred to Jesus and praised our country’s support for Israel in her invocation. CAIR Philadelphia chimed in, not only condemning Rep Bororwicz as Islamophobic but anti-Semitic as well. During her time on the Islamist speaking tour Johnson-Harrell’s allegations against Borowicz would continue to grow with each retelling.

Meanwhile CAIR Philadelphia, which was so proud of Johnson-Harrell when she was elected the first Muslim woman to the Pennsylvania legislature, has not uttered a word about her pleading guilty to stealing over $500,000 from those who trusted her, which no doubt including members of the Muslim community. 

In its end of year "An important message from CAIR" the Philadelphia chapter issued no criticism or regret for backing a candidate who was improperly vetted, even though her previous bankruptcy was in the public record.

While the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR calls itself a civil-rights advocacy organization, it refuses to acknowledge the underprivileged members of the Philadelphia Muslim community who fell victim to its first Muslim woman elected official. While claiming to represent the interests of Muslims and promote civil rights, the group’s only real goal is to promoting itself, and its own influence through putting Islamists into political power in America. So it’s unsurprisingly that Johnson-Harrell’s political demise is a setback they’d prefer to ignore. 


Leonard Getz, CPA, is the Philadelphia Associate of the Counter-Islamist Grid and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the American Thinker, the Algemeiner, PJMedia, the Clarion, the Daily Wire, Lifestyles Magazine, Nostalgia Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Bulletin, the Jewish Exponent, and the Lock Haven Express. He is the author of the book From Broadway to the Bowery

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/cair_pennsylvania_poster_girl_resigns_in_shame.html

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Denmark: Why Integration Fails - Judith Bergman

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by Judith Bergman

The dilemma is that by seeking Islamist votes they allow those who wish... Denmark to become Islamized to be strengthened

• "Here my point is that Islam has never fully assimilated into any society and that Muslims have never fully adapted into non-Muslim cultures. With an increasing number of Muslims in the West, this will end in conflict." — Ahmed Akkari in his new report, "The loyalty conflict in the West – why Muslims are hard to integrate."
• "As Islamists influence Western Muslim circles, Western political parties engage with them to win more votes, thus making unfortunate alliances with forces that really... condemn the established system...The dilemma is that by seeking Islamist votes they allow those who wish... Denmark to become Islamized to be strengthened... the same sort of dilemma as if one sought the votes of a neo-Nazi, fascist or Stalinist group." — Ahmed Akkari in his new report, "The loyalty conflict in the West – why Muslims are hard to integrate."
• "Many mosques were formed to be a spiritual and religious space for believers, and not as places where violence, hatred and political agendas should dominate. Nevertheless, the leading mosques in Denmark are characterized exactly by a pseudo-Islamic influence under the control of small strong elites of Islamic leaders. In that world, influence, not numbers, counts, and therefore it is not possible to say that Islamism is weak, just because it only exists in one quarter of all mosques, which I estimate." — Ahmed Akkari in his new report, "The loyalty conflict in the West – why Muslims are hard to integrate."
• Akkari's warning holds true not only for Denmark, but for most Western European countries. Is anyone listening?

In a recent survey conducted by the Danish Ministry of Foreigners and Integration (Udlændinge- og Integrationsministeriet), 48% of descendants of non-Western immigrants in Denmark said that they think it should be forbidden to criticize religion, according to Kristeligt Dagblad. Forty-two percent of immigrants who had lived in Denmark for three years agreed with the statement, while only 20% of ethnic Danes agreed with it.

The results of the survey came around the same time that a Danish think-tank, UNITOS -- where Danish politician Naser Khader is a board member -- published a report by former Islamist imam Ahmed Akkari, "The loyalty conflict in the West – why Muslims are hard to integrate."

A few months after Jyllands-Posten's publication of the Mohammed cartoons in 2005, Ahmed Akkari and a group of other Danish imams traveled to the Middle East to stir up local protests, which escalated and resulted in the Mohammed cartoon crisis. Akkari subsequently left the Islamist environment that he had been a part of and in 2014 published a book in Danish about Islamism, My Goodbye to Islamism.

In the new report, Akkari (quoting Aarhus University professor of political science Mehdi Mozzafari) defines Islamism as the "religiously based ideology, which contains a totalitarian interpretation of Islam that seeks to conquer the world." Akkari suggests that traditionalist interpretations of Islam wield a monopoly of power over Muslims. This monopoly prevents them from integrating into Western societies, because it prevents them from thinking and acting freely concerning Islam. Akkari writes:

"Here my point is that Islam has never fully assimilated into any society and that Muslims have never fully adapted into non-Muslim cultures. With an increasing number of Muslims in the West, this will end in conflict.
"Most conflicts result from Islamism's control of the definition of 'what it means to be Muslim'... Many Muslims do not really use the mosques in their daily lives and do not listen... to the imam's advice and guidance. These are Muslims of culture and of background. Although they are many, they are unable to influence understanding or interpretation because cultural Muslims are not legitimate...
"Islamism works against cohesion with the West -- also when it preaches understanding and democracy -- and it produces a counter-pressure that shows itself in terrorism, gangs and politicized groups. It shows itself in cynical speculation of influencing political power, not because it accepts democratic life, but because it thereby attempts to become strong enough to overcome it...
"The problem with the Muslim minority in the West... is that it dare not be independent, when it comes to religious issues... because the strong religious and cultural elite governs... and posits itself as self-elected representatives of Muslims".

The other challenge, writes Akkari, is that:

"As Islamists influence Western Muslim circles, Western political parties engage with them to win more votes, and therefore make unfortunate alliances with forces that really... reject the established system...The dilemma is that by seeking Islamist votes they allow those who wish... Denmark to become Islamized to be strengthened... the same sort of dilemma as if one sought the votes of a neo-Nazi, fascist or Stalinist group".

Akkari blames Islamism for the failure of Muslims to integrate into Western societies.

"Islamism works against integration of Muslims with its active proselytizing and because Islamism with its palette of more or less fanatical and extremist groups creates a tumor in public society".

Akkari stresses that Islamism should not be confused with Islam or Muslims in general. He names Islamist mosques in Denmark as a significant problem that works against integration.

"Many mosques were formed to be a spiritual and religious space for believers, and not as places where violence, hatred and political agendas should dominate. Nevertheless, the leading mosques in Denmark are characterized exactly by a pseudo-Islamic influence under the control of small strong elites of Islamic leaders. In that world, influence, not numbers, counts, and therefore it is not possible to say that Islamism is weak, just because it only exists in one quarter of all mosques, which I estimate".

Akkari writes that the Islamic cultural and religious elite in Denmark, "... Uses its influence over Muslims to negotiate with typically the left-wing... "

"They use the support of the left to strengthen the grip on Muslims' choices. They do so by standing as their representatives (often without having asked them for legitimacy of the representation)... The left supports the positions and representatives of the [Muslim, ed.] elite by helping them to stand for election or to have dialogue and cooperation with them during and after the elections. The left... shows good will for dialogue with the [Muslim, ed.] power elite. They increase their political votes with this relationship and use it actively..."

Akkari writes that up to one quarter of all Muslims in Denmark listen to the agendas of the Islamists in Denmark to some extent and that the latest election proved this, as the number of votes for the far-left Enhedslisten and the center-left Det Radikale Venstre went up significantly in areas with a concentration of Muslims.

According to a report in Jyllands Posten, in the last elections, which took place on June 5, Muslim voters were organized in certain urban areas listed by the government as ghettos. In Gellerup, in western Aarhus, an electoral group was set up, which, in co-operation with a mosque and various other associations, recommended that people vote for the far-left Enhedslisten and the center-left Det Radikale Venstre. As a result, in Gellerup, Det Radikale Venstre went from receiving 5.1% of the vote in 2015, to 34.2% in 2019. The same trend could be seen in other ghetto-areas, such as Vollsmose, Tingbjerg and in Nørrebro, where Enhedslisten was also popular. Both parties have a pro-immigration stance. Det Radikale Venstre, for instance, wants to make it easier for refugees to gain permanent residence in Denmark. The parties gained 8.6% and 6.9% of the votes respectively, corresponding to 16 and 13 seats in parliament.

Akkari writes that extremists, "Thrive on laxity and lack of consistency" and that "establishing and supporting official representatives of the Sharia... is a form of legitimization of an alternative justice system..."

"... the identification of special laws for Muslims, such as halal meat at all institutions, special rules for swimming and socializing with other people, special exceptions from current law on divorce, women's rights... etc... will weaken the state's sovereign enforcement of the law. There must be no appeasement when it comes to these cases, because it is about more than respect for a minority. [These concessions] are perceived as a victory for the messages of Islamism, and it will bring more Muslims into a serious dilemma between the norms of Danish society and the norms of the minority community. That dilemma does not serve anyone well – least of all the Muslims themselves. There needs to be clarity... for everyone to function on roughly the same terms in accordance with the Constitution and the prevailing cultural norms".

Akkari continues:

"...The biggest problem in Western societies today appears to be that they do not have a common understanding of how to deal with these issues. It is largely left to political trends and coalitions that then change direction after every other election... the demographic changes in the West are being taken too lightly as a result of especially the growth of Muslim cultures and the resistance of Muslim cultures to dissolution in the indigenous cultures. Even the United States, which is the forerunner of the melting pot theory, has seen a rise in visible Muslim cultures and where jihadists became visible after the famous and tragic September 11, 2001".

Akkari's warning holds true not only for Denmark, but for most Western European countries. Is anyone listening?


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

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15294/denmark-integration

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