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The Jewashing of George Soros

July 22, 2017/in Commentary, Policy, Politics/by Robert Heller

Anti Semite George Soros is the moving force behind –‘MoveOn.org‘ and J Street that was embraced by the Obama administration and is an ardent Democrat supporter.

Who George Soros is is less important than the question—-why do so many Democrats support him? and why does he support them?

The Jewashing of George Soros

Millions of Jews are anti-Semitic for calling out an anti-Semite.

July 21, 2017

Daniel Greenfield

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

George Soros hates Jews.

He collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust and insisted that helping confiscate property from Jews brought him no guilt. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets that if I weren’t there of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would.” He described the season of these horrors as “the most exciting time of my life.”

Soros grew up in a “Jewish, anti-Semitic home”. He called his mother a “typical Jewish anti-Semite” who hated his first wife because she was “too Jewish”. After undergoing psychoanalysis, he was able to understand that his shame was rooted in his Jewishness. He had a special contempt for Jewish philanthropies after a failed attempt to defraud a Jewish charity in London.

He was booed when he undermined the presentation of an award to a Holocaust survivor by comparing Israeli Jews to Nazis. Elie Wiesel had declared in disgust, “I heard what happened. If I’d been there—and you can quote me—I would have walked out.”

That same year, Soros blamed the Israeli government for a “resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe”. He might have been more honest if he took responsibility considering his funding of groups that traffic in anti-Semitic smears. And his own anti-Semitic allegations that “attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views.”

Soros has defended Hamas and Hezbollah who have called for the extermination of the Jews. He championed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt despite or because of its support for Hitler. Yusuf al-Qaradawi had claimed that Hitler had been sent by Allah to punish the Jews. “Allah willing,” the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader said, “the next time will be at the hands of the believers (Muslims).”

There’s no denying that George Soros is a warped and twisted man. Especially when it comes to the Jews. But he’s also the money man behind a great deal of leftist activism. Especially anti-Israel activism.

And so he must be defended.

An editorial at New York Times by a figure linked to the +972 anti-Israel hate site decries “Israel’s War Against George Soros”. That’s right up there with Poland’s war on Nazi Germany.

What does this war consist of? Has Israel sent drones to the Soros estate? Did Mossad agents drag George out of his featherbed to face the justice of those injured through his actions?

No.

The “war” consisted of one statement. The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Soros for “continuously undermining Israel’s democratically elected governments,” and backing hate groups “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.” Not only is it true, but it’s underwhelming.

Even by the low fake news standards of today’s extremist media, you expect something more from a headline screaming “Israel’s War Against George Soros” than a single restrained criticism.

Illinois Bishop Calls Out Gay Lobby by Rodney Pelletier

July 22, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, Religion/by Church Militant

SPRINGFIELD, Il. (ChurchMilitant.com) -Bishop Thomas Paprocki, head of the diocese of Springfield, Illinois, is calling out the gay lobby in the Church.

In a decree dated June 12, 2017, and titled, “Decree Regarding Same-sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues,” Paprocki declared that clergy or representatives of the diocese cannot bless so-called same-sex unions or provide church facilities or objects for events connected to gay weddings. He further asserted that people in same-sex sexual relationships cannot present themselves for Holy Communion, serve any ministerial role in a parish, and if they die unrepentant, they cannot have Catholic funerals.

After being attacked by many self-proclaimed Catholics, including popular homosexualist Jesuit Fr. James Martin, Paprocki doubled down, clearing up confusion cast by Martin.

In his July 9 letter, Paprocki noted, “The fact that there would be such an outcry against this decree is quite astounding and shows how strong the LGBT lobby is both in the secular world, as well as within the church.”

He noted the decree is “totally consistent with Catholic teaching about the sacraments and the understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman that has prevailed for millennia in all of society, not just in the church.”

The bishop also addresses the criticisms of Fr. Martin, saying “he gets a lot wrong.”

Paprocki noted there is a difference in church law between people who commit sins of a private nature, like those who use birth control and those who are “manifest sinners” who give “public scandal” such as those who have public, legal status in same-sex marriages.

He addressed other situations in which “manifest sinners” cannot present themselves for Holy Communion without repentance and reception of the sacrament of Confession such as:

Those who have had sexual relations outside of marriage, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual
Those who have had an abortion or have assisted in performing or procuring an abortion
Those politicians and judges who helped to make same-sex marriage legal and who aid and abet abortion, for example, by voting for taxpayer funding of abortion
Those who use artificial contraception
Those who miss Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, unless it would be impossible due to a grave cause such as serious illness

In response to Paprocki’s letter, Bp. Patrick McGrath, the pro-homosexual head of the diocese of San Jose, California, wrote, “We will not refuse sacraments or Christian Burial to anyone who requests them in good faith.” It goes on, “Finally, let us remember and be guided by the words of Pope Francis, ‘The Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.'”

Paprocki is one of the only U.S. Catholic bishops to express the existence of a “gay lobby” in the Church and to issue directives to priests and diocesan representatives to have nothing to do same-sex weddings.

He finishes his letter by affirming, “The truths of the Faith revealed by Our Lord in Scripture and Tradition are not always easy to accept, especially in a world that seeks to make all truth subjective. The fact is that some truths are objective and unalterable.”

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ABOUT RODNEY PELLETIER

Rodney Pelletier is a staff writer for ChurchMilitant.com.

Follow Rodney on Twitter: @RodPelletier

The Establishment Hugh Hewitt Mindset Destroys Conservatism

July 22, 2017/in Commentary, Elections, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Rod Thomson

I listen to Hugh Hewitt every day, and was a guest on his nationally syndicated radio program a few years ago. He’s smart, well-informed and one of the best interviewers I’ve ever heard — and I’ve conducted literally thousands of interviews over the course of 25 years in journalism. And maybe his greatest feat is managing to be a football optimist despite being a Cleveland Browns fan.

But Hugh Hewitt and the establishment mindset he brings represents exactly what is wrong in Washington, D.C. today.

He is totally missing what is happening in the country, and just as importantly needs to happen in Washington, because, I think, he is too close. He is the establishment in mindset in that, of course, politicians do whatever needs to be done to get a win in the “W” column and look toward the next election.

Along the way of following this path, the Republican Party has indeed won the levers of control in D.C. — the House, the Senate, the White House and perhaps the Supreme Court — and at the same time gone a long way to losing its soul. Does the Republican Party represent conservative, traditional, Constitutional principles, or does it represent the continuation of Republican politicians’ futures and power in D.C.?

The Hugh Hewitt Mindset lists sharply towards the latter.

What is the Hugh Hewitt Mindset?

Essentially this mindset accepts swimming in the moral, ethical and principle-less cesspool that is current-day Washington, rather than living and leading by the morals, ethics and principles that could begin decontaminating the cesspool.

Yes, it is a lofty goal, and only ever partially achievable.

But the Hugh Hewitt Mindset actively works to puncture holes in the decontamination vessels sent to Washington to serve in Congress.

The Hugh Hewitt Mindset excoriates principled conservatives such as Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul who have stood by their beliefs even when taking a beating by the mainstream liberal media, to which Hewitt is dangerously cozy. The Hugh Hewitt Mindset castigates Sen. Ted Cruz for the government shutdown in 2013 and warns of the impending doom it would cause the party — and was proven totally wrong when Republicans swept to massive gains in 2014.

The Hugh Hewitt Mindset tears into the House Freedom Caucus, which tried valiantly to stick to the promises its members made to voters — that is, pour in a modicum of decontaminate — because in Washington it is totally expected to tell voters one thing and then do something else once elected. The Hugh Hewitt Mindset has no problem with Republicans promising strong conservative principles during campaigns, as long as those principles can be jettisoned to get a W for the Rs.

On the flip side, the Hugh Hewitt Mindset has seemingly no problem with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell running quite conservatively at home in Kentucky (also Rand Paul’s state) when McConnell seeks votes, then governing quite establishment-like in D.C. and tossing aside his conservatism whenever that works better. The Hugh Hewitt Mindset knows this is just the way things are, understands “everybody” does it — Republicans and Democrats in their respective ways — and accepts that. Gracious comfort is given to McConnell’s duplicity because McConnell can sometimes be effective in the cesspool. But in the end, he only adds contamination to the sludge in the system.

How the Mindset works

Hewitt writes a regular column for the Washington Post — and now has a show on MSNBC — because the Mindset makes him solidly establishment and so broadly acceptable in establishment circles in the media.

Indeed, Hewitt has an unwarranted love affair with the mainstream media. I appreciate many of the journalists he has on, but his obeisance to them is unbecoming, unnecessary and telling. He’s a terrific interviewer and asks many of the right questions and followups, but he legitimizes the most bias mainstream journalists (Glenn Thrush jumps to mind) to his audience of listeners on the conservative Salem Radio Network.

In his most recent Washington Post column, the full Hugh Hewitt Mindset was on display.

Hewitt slammed the “Wall Street Journal ideologues” because they think taxpayers in states that levy state income taxes should not get to deduct those from their federal taxes. The Journal writers understand that, fiscally, such deductions result in federal taxpayers living in states without income taxes — mostly red states — subsidizing the others. Why should Texas and Florida taxpayers be subsidizing the massively irresponsible spending in California and Illinois?

The Hugh Hewitt Mindset? “F.A. Hayek doesn’t vote in large numbers. Blue-state voters with Republican congressmen do.” Snarky, D.C. arrogant, and totally missing the principles of the “ideologues.” Another word for ideology might be principles. Instead, need a W for the Rs.

He writes: “The GOP lacks policy victories, thanks to imprudent Freedom Caucus members and scared moderates.” See? The Freedom Caucus with its foundational conservative principles would not throw them all away and go back on promises to voters regarding repealing Obamacare. They’re the problem. What are scared moderates? Those are incumbents who, if they have principles are far removed from the Founders’, and who would be frightened of losing re-election if they voted for the repeal and replace bill. He understands them.

The Hugh Hewitt Mindset prescription? “Odds of success increase if the parties go big at the start by removing the sequester’s limits on defense spending and adding immigration reform to the deal: appropriations for President Trump’s wall paired with legalization of the law-abiding, undocumented population but no path to citizenship. A truly ambitious “go big” option could also include a settlement of the judicial confirmation wars, because the more moving parts, the better the chances of success. McConnell, Ryan and Democratic leaders Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) could get together with a half-dozen of the smartest members from both parties to work on an expedited basis and go big.”

So basically, get a few really smart people in a backroom, wheel and deal out of the prying eyes of voters and the rest of Congress, make sure lots of people willing to trade their votes for bridges to nowhere get what they want, and then roll out some mammoth piece of porkified legislation covering a thousand political miles. Great idea. Always goes well. And in the end, we would have moved leftward even as Republicans controlled everything. Not an unusual outcome in the mindset.

G.K. Chesterton understood this problem when he wrote in, What’s Wrong with the World: “Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.”

So if, say, members of the Freedom Caucus were to vote no on such a leviathan bill because they, on principle, oppose legalizing 12 million people who came here illegally — and they promised their voters they would not — the Hugh Hewitt Mindset gives them a sharp smack upside the head and blames them for not being prudent team players and dumping their promises and beliefs. They’re the problem!

The Mindset vs. principles

This is why Republicans are having such a devastatingly difficult time getting anything done, despite having all the power. They are a party divided between the dominating Hugh Hewitt Mindset and a minority holding to foundational principles.

The Democratic Party mostly wants to do stuff to help people — or buy votes, depending on your level of cynicism. But it has very few actual principles, and none that fall within the tradition of the Founders. It’s why Democrats joyfully celebrated a leader who wanted to “fundamentally transform” America. He was the first black President — fine, but not a principle. And he despised the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” That fairly represents a lot of that Party — but not most Americans by a long shot.

But this absence of founding principles puts the Democratic Party on much more comfortable ground in D.C.

The Republican Party remains the repository of long-standing, bedrock American principles such as individual rights, freedom of religion and speech, limited government and capitalism. That formula of understanding that built this nation into the greatest in history is nested within the Republican Party, but rarely acted on.

But when Republicans stand up for those principles, and in doing so endanger some piece of legislation that the establishment leadership desires, they are pilloried by the Hugh Hewitt Mindset. Compromise is a necessity in legislating, but that does not mean burying principles. If this mindset pushes more politicians into compromising principles and campaign promises, or into elevating those who are ever more willing to, then the Republican Party will lose its soul. And if the Republican Party does, where are the foundational American principles to live? Do they ultimately vanish?

19th century theologian and philosopher Tryon Edwards wrote: “Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another — too often ending in the loss of both.”

This is the path of the Hugh Hewitt Mindset.

Yes, I’m using Hewitt as a proxy to represent establishment thinking in D.C. and everywhere else it is to be found.

In Washington, there are no “self-evident truths.” There is winning. There is power and influence. There is re-election. And there is access to power and influence. The Hugh Hewitt Mindset abets the continuation of this sludgy, bad-for-America mindset, which means the continuation of the decline of America.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

Glitz and Silhouettes: An Odyssey to Melania Trump’s Fashion Style

July 22, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War/by Leslie Wyman

Melania Trump is consistently in the spotlight when it comes to international headlines. As she joins President Trump throughout the trip, her stylish attires catch the public’s attention at every turn. While Donald Trump turns the media crazy while meeting world leaders around the globe, Melania continues to faze the fashion sphere with diplomatic fashion statements.

From high octane glamour, the first lady utilizes the sophisticated reinventions of model-political fashion styles. Ever since moving into the White House, Melania never fails in “dressing to impress.” She became one of the most active first ladies who dresses perfectly for every occasion.

Here are some of Melania Trump’s best first-lady fashion ticks.

Monochromes and Flow

A black and white go-to is mainstream for Melania Trump’s style. In fact, her stylist noted the color choices don’t usually change.“It’s black and white, but at least it’s not the bad blue and red that everyone wears.” She has a penchant for neutral and monochromatic colors.

The all-black or all-white ensemble brings the glitz and elegance of the first-lady just like what she wears in their state visit to Israel. Melania dressed in a white tiered fringe flapper dress by Michael Kors. She also has Gatsby vibes paired with a python Christian Louboutin pumps. She also manages to pull off a conservative all-black outfit during the pontiff meeting.

The first lady also likes wearing signature neutral silhouette dresses showing her curves. Last month, she donned a peplum silhouette by Roland Mouret upon welcoming South Korean President Moon Jae. During 2017 Ford’s Theatre Gala, Melania shows glitz through a Monique Lhuillier designed champagne-colored dress draped in front.

Prints and Plain

She usually follows trends in the summer by wearing printed dresses. During the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, she wore Valentino floral dress. Along with Trump, she attended the second day of G20 summit in Germany wearing a tan summer print dress paired with a Bottega Veneta cashmere coat.

Upon the arrival of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, Melania donned a bright summer print dress by Emilio Pucci. Floral statements also dominate her preferences.

For formal state visits, she usually has a pop of plain colors. After wearing prints for recent occasions, the first lady wore a patriotic red dress by Dior. Melania also donned a white and blue dress for dinner at Le Jules Verne Restaurant together with Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron.

Suits and Dress Coats

The contemporary “power suits” paired with pants or skirts is a trend for politicians. Melania likes to enrobe coat dress. She loves a classic -but-modern belt statement as well. She blends the belts with her coat dresses. The feminine and empowered look gives her an avenue for high-fashion aesthetic.

She also finds this type of outfit versatile for everyday diplomatic errands because the style has deep pockets and jacket edges. Melania doesn’t like to carry handbags, so only put her essential in the pockets.

As a modern first-lady, Melania reinvents diplomatic fashion statements. Together with patterned shoes and punch up accessories, she continues to spice the up the airport runways and hotel lobbies.

Takeaway

From flowing gowns, neutral silhouettes, colorful prints, to tailored suits, Melania manages to pull-off glamorous model-political styles. She transformed into a fine first lady after she moved to the White House wearing simple tank tops and trousers which you can find in online fashion destinations like Seed Heritage.

The former model showcased her fashion sense with different fashion statements and elegant pieces from top designers. Despite the criticisms, Melania stays true to her diplomatic fashion statements from the very beginning. Her powerful way of showing her style tell us that there’s more to watch out for in the coming years.

EDITORS NOTE: Leslie Wyman is a blogger and fashion enthusiast. For two years, she lived in the USA. She is very fond of reading war novels such as Birdsong, the Ghost Road, and the Quiet American. Leslie is also very particular in keeping tabs on online fashion destinations which keeps her updated with exclusive promotions and latest style news.

On Sex Robots: Dehumanizing Sin

July 21, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion, Science/by The Catholic Thing

Some disassembly required.

David Warren: Some seek satisfaction in robot “love,” but automating sex is wrong. We are facing a new “crisis”: an attempt to dehumanize sin. Fortunately, it can’t be done.

I don’t know who was surprised, but I wasn’t, to read in some electronic tabloid that sex robots can be programmed for rape. Appalled, perhaps – I am often appalled – but hardly surprised. And not being surprised, the quality of one’s outrage is spoilt. One must pretend to be shocked – as people have been doing for as long as they have been having bad sex.

Or so one might say, roguishly. There is a gap – a wide and deep canyon – between what we like to think is common, and what is. The notion of radical evil having been suppressed, in modern “education,” it is now a rift valley.

“How dare you suggest a woman would lie about something like that!”

This is an actual quote I recall (with confidence, word for word) from the critic of a column I once wrote on family court proceedings. I had suggested that it was unwise of the authorities to assume the truth of all female accusations. And vice versa, too, I had noted: men often lie. The human race is generally capable of bearing false witness, and the ability crosses all sexual, racial, and other demographic lines.

True, I had called my critic “Honey,” but that was in a moment of exasperation she had inspired. More circumspectly I tried to explain how law is supposed to work. How it is supposed to entertain the possibility that the accused may be innocent, of the crime specifically alleged. How the law should at least pretend to be blind to just those factors that she, in her feminist enthusiasm, imagined to be crucial.

Give up on principles like that, and the world will become rather as we find it, today: high-tech and crazy.

She said, too, that men treat women like robots. Well, I can remember saying, they must be robots, if they never lie.

Click here to read the rest of David Warren’s column . . .

David Warren

David Warren is a former editor of the Idler magazine and columnist with the Ottawa Citizen. He has extensive experience in the Near and Far East. His blog, Essays in Idleness, is now to be found at: davidwarrenonline.com.

RELATED VIDEO: Top 10 Memorable Female Robots in Movies and TV

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from the film Ex Machina.

Scorched Earth is the New American Politics

July 21, 2017/in Commentary, Elections, Must Read, Policy, Politics/by Rod Thomson

We are in a new era in American politics.

It’s impossible to nail down when it started, but we can identify a few steps, and each involved the devolution of a non-partisan media, an increased ferocity on the American progressive Left and a heightening response from the Right.

Let’s start with the early 1990s. During the Clinton administration, the American media launched into actively covering up scandals for an American president because of worldview affiliation. To put it bluntly, the American media had become dominantly liberal at every level and across platforms by the 90s and the election of a Democrat after 12 years of Republicans in the White House displayed this.

The media looked the other way during maybe the most tawdry actions by an American president simply because they agreed with his policies. The Clinton scandals finally became known because of alternative media, specifically the rise of the Drudge Report, bypassing the media gatekeepers. At the same time, the left — including staunch feminists — simply looked the other way when “their” man was sexually dominating women under him. The divide was growing.

During the Bush administration, we saw the emergence of Bush Derangement Syndrome, in which much of the American Left displayed astonishing animosity on a personal level for a truly decent man. There were certainly plenty of policy differences that underlied the opposition, which is right and normal. But opposition was made very personal with Bush and a surprising number of Americans on the Left dripped hatred for him as a man.

Obama’s new level of division

But the Obama years brought a dramatic rise in vitriol and division among Americans — led by Obama but practiced by both sides of the political divide. Obama divided Americans by black and white and Hispanic; by men and women and the newly evolving list of “others”; by gay and straight; by rich and poor; by urban or rural; by favored industry and unfavored industry and so on.

Many of these divisions were well established in the Democratic Party and part of the strategy for winning elections. But Obama, as the first black President, had the unique opportunity to take a large step toward healing national race relations. Instead he made them much worse, and that is true on virtually every front of the divisions he employed. On the other side, some traditionalist Americans found him so arrogant and off-putting (mostly aside from race) that they developed a personal hatred for him, also.

So the poison of dividing Americans by every category possible to pit them against each other for political gain was coursing through the nation’s veins going into the 2016 election.

At the same time, hard-working Americans were sick of the game where everyone pitted against everyone else and policies seemed designed to make America weaker as a nation. And to be fair, that is essentially what Obama wrote in his book. He genuinely thought, and presumably still thinks, the world would be better if America was not so dominant. His policies worked to make that happen.

In this election, however, instead of the Democrats going for the demographic marker of the first black President, they were going for the demographic marker of the first female president. Both were pitched as important boundaries to cross because of the history of much ballyhooed and detested white patriarchal supremacy.

But the Left’s hopes were pinned on a truly terrible and corrupt candidate in Hillary Clinton. And instead of the first woman came an outsider who captured the deep frustration of working, middle America that the progressive and divisive agenda of the Democrats had abandoned. He captured their hearts’ desire with “Make America Great Again” because they instinctively understood that the past many years were diminishing the nation.

They were ready for change, but not the superficial change based on gender, rather a change in the substance of policy and direction. And Donald Trump was offering that in a way they bought.

Trump’s win exploded American politics

But the American Left had expected a continuation of the progressive and divisive policies of the first black president to flow to the first woman president, and probably win the Senate and maybe even the House in the process. When all of that was crushed by a rich, white, real estate developer and reality star — so much of what the Left had been successfully castigating — the Bush Derangement gene mutated into a virulent new, destructive strain.

There is a certain understandability to all this.

The American Left has been fed a distorted view of America for a long time now, through the media, academia and Hollywood. They buy into the grievance culture of every sub group that feels aggrieved by a different group. This all needs correcting, and they have been taught that government — of all institutions! — is the one to do it. They’ve been taught that Christianity, capitalism and whites are the bane of America and many who are in those categories still tend to buy it through a dose of guilt.

Further, President Trump is as off-putting as Obama, in his own way. It is surely not hard to see how people who are disappointed and frustrated with losing what they fully expected to win react even worse by the way Trump handles himself slinging around personal insults. This certainly adds to the vitriol and division.

But it in no way accounts for the myriad of marches against Trump and Republicans, starting the day after inauguration, but planned starting the day after the election. The ensuing temper tantrum by the left is inexcusable, even if their frustration is understandable. Riots in multiple cities, violence against Trump supporters and top-trending hashtags such as #notmypresident were a deeply un-American response.

The Trump-Russian collusion story was promoted while Obama was still in office. His White House disseminated as much potentially embarrassing information on the new President as possible, which has been leaked for months at a rate seven times more than the leaks averaged under Bush and Obama. This also is unprecedented. And it is disturbing.

The media is now an unmasked arm of the Democratic Party, actively working to undermine the duly elected President and destroying itself in the process.

Tectonic changes are long-term

The lead up to this moment demonstrates that the changes in the political and media landscape are not a temporary blip. They’re not simply Trump-driven.

This is likely the new norm.

Think how demonized decent men like Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney were. McCain was a bonafide war hero and Romney was as squeaky clean Boy Scout as they get, and yet the Left and the media made every attempt to turn them into monsters, the worst of men. And now Trump is worse than a monster. He’s a traitor! A clown! Off with his head!

This unprecedented action by the American Left, including the active involvement by a former President, is setting a new normal for the losing side of a presidential election. Democrats should not think for a moment that when they next win the White House, things will return to the old traditional ways. That will not happen.

What can be expected is that each newly elected President will face a ferocious backlash and well organized efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any actions taken. The Right does not protest and riot like the Left does, but things could change.

This new tradition created by the Left will greatly weaken the country, regardless of who is president.

Don’t Allow Maxine Waters’ Impeachment Crap to Stick

July 19, 2017/in Commentary, Elections, Policy, Politics/by Lloyd Marcus

For our 40th wedding anniversary, Mary and I have been experiencing the grandeur and majestic beauty of God’s creation in Alaska. Did you know bald eagles are brown for 5 or 6 years before their head turns white? I was surprised by Alaska’s bountiful foliage and multicolored flowers. From towering glaciers to skies, mountains and seas painted in gorgeous blues by God, we saw numerous breathtaking beautiful scenes. In 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward purchased our 49th state for only $7.2 million. It was a Trump-of-a-great-deal. Critics called the deal “Seward’s folly.”

In our cabin, I was jolted back to ugly reality by MSNBC, one of the three available TV news channels. Folks, I continue to be amazed by the level of hate that MSNBC has for Trump and their commitment to removing him from office.

Further blowing my beauty of Alaska high was a press conference in which despicable human being Maxine Waters announced democrats’ plan to impeach Trump for criminal activities. There is not a shred of evidence supporting Waters’ accusations. Watching Maxine Waters stand at the podium lying through her teeth about all of Trump’s supposed crimes was disgusting. Waters and her democrat minions are horrible enemies of the American people and must never be voted back into power again.

Trump has been totally awesome; fulfilling campaign promises and moving the ball forward towards making America great again. In only six months, Trump has dramatically chipped away much of Obama’s mountain of regulatory overreaches; created jobs; opted us out of an anti-American climate deal and restored power back to states and We the People.

Democrats/Leftists are out of their minds with rage, desperate to stop Trump’s swift and steady dismantling of Obama’s legacy of government tyranny.

This is why the democrats and fake news media tag team continue the relentless promotion of their absurd lie that Trump used Russia to steal the election. 1. It is impossible for Russia to tamper with our vote counting. 2. Fake news media either under-reported Hillary’s multiple crimes and breaches of national security or told us they were no big deal. Fake news media thought it had successfully protected Hillary and duped voters, confident she would win in a landslide.

Hillary lost because she was a cold calculating tired old hippie wicked witch Leftist who said it was okay to abort a baby moments before birth. Thank God, this vile woman is not seated in that powerful chair in our Oval Office.

Maxine Waters’ and her minions demanding that Trump be impeached is equivalent to throwing crap against the wall, hoping it will stick. For the Leftists’ impeachment scheme to work, they must destroy Trump’s popularity. Fake news media’s strategy is to flood the airways with empty accusations of criminal activity. They throw character assassination grenades at Trump 24/7. Fake news media bombards us with reports of supposed nationwide protests. Fake news media manipulate polls to create the illusion that Trump’s appeal is sinking. Fake news media is doing everything in its power to sell their lie that Americans regret voting for Trump.

A standard practice of democrats and fake news media is to brand anyone who dares oppose their extreme socialist/progressive agenda a racist, stupid, corrupt or crazy. Leftists claim Trump is obviously crazy and must be impeached. So, because Trump is functioning like a savvy businessman rather that an impotent Republican, Leftists say he must be crazy. Sadly, we cannot count on wimpy Republicans to have our president’s back.

My fellow patriotic Americans, We the People are Trump’s firewall; the only thing blocking Waters’ and her minion’s impeachment crap from sticking. The good news is Waters and her homeys are clueless regarding our rock-solid connection with Trump and why he won our votes in an electoral landslide.

Leftists laughed, mocked and underestimated Ronald Reagan. Fortunately, they are repeating their mistake with Trump as he continues to kick their butts under their upturned noses.

During Trump’s run for the White House, I recorded a parody of the O’Jays’ “Love Train” titled, “Trump Train“. Folks, it is extremely crucial that we who elected our president stay firmly seated aboard the Trump Train.

Fashion in Combat: Military Uniform Evolution that Will Make You Travel in Time

July 19, 2017/in Commentary, Politics/by Leslie Wyman

Through hundreds of years, military uniforms go through a radical evolution in clothing and styling. Every prominent regime, US Army uniforms shifted from rags to polished black boots, from blue waistcoat and breeches to camouflage patterns, and from tricorn hat to green combat helmets.

Let’s travel back in time and learn to appreciate US soldiers who fight for freedom and threats under mental and physical challenges, through their fashion revolution.

Revolutionary War

During the early years, soldiers go to war with whatever clothes they have. Washington ordered the Continental Army to wear hunting shirt as a field uniform. However, funding problems hinder the uniformity that put them in the rough situation. They stay on blankets during winter while using rags as a substitute for their crippled shoes.

In the year 1779, uniform becomes standardized to distinguish troops from the British. As the enemy used red clothes, they used blue coats paired with white overalls and waistcoats. Soldier wear coats with various colors to identify their region. Years after, blue coats with red fore became the standard design except for the high ranking officials.

War of 1812

Caledonia Canada Day Photo commemorating the War of 1812

This time, the uniforms take inspiration to the European soldiers. US army adopted single-breasted coat with black herringbone false buttonholes and gold buttons. The use of boots is only applicable for generals and staff officers. Later in 1814, gray uniforms replaced the standard blue uniforms due to cloth shortage.

US-Mexican War

Southwest conflicts pushed the army leaders to modify the separate field and dress uniforms. In 1833, fatigue jackets, light blue pants, and forage caps served as field dress for cavalrymen. Officers and NCO’s on the other hand, wear blue trousers with white stripes and blue frock coat with silver buttons and white wool laces that indicate infantry division.

They used yellow wool lace for the artillery. Also, worsted epaulets replaced the shoulder wings on their coats.

Civil War

Throughout the mid-19th period, uniform trends embraced practicality and simplicity. In 1851, authorities issued a regulation to wear service uniform using blue wool frock coats while riding troops wear jackets paired with sky blue trousers. Years later, the style for field wear shifted to four-button sack coats and Kepi instead of army campaign hat.

Due to lack of funding, disparity on battleground attires started. Uniforms made differently in each state or privately tailored by women, created variety in the war zone.

Spanish-American War

The trend blue field uniforms lasted in this era. In 1880, soldiers wore drab campaign hat, blue jacket and trousers and brown canvas leggings. Cavalry units wear the new style with ‘neckerchiefs’ like great rough riders. Moreover, officers wear coat sheared with black mohair braid, dark blue breeches and hat, and boots same with cavalry soldiers.

World War I & II

This time, soldiers still followed the Khaki uniform for the field but used olive color instead of blue and put spiral puttees in their legs. War Department imposed changes like replacing black leather with russet, shrinking chevron sizes and revamping insignia and buttons. Also, Airborne forces received cold weather flying jackets and coats.

In 1930, armies started to wear trousers alight with khaki canvas leggings. Years later, Garrison wear began to dominate fashion in combat topped with steel M-1 helmet. Use of camouflage uniform started last 1994 in France, but allied troops confused them with the Nazis, so they go back to olive drab clothing for preferable dissimulation.

Korean and Vietnam War

Olive green fatigues remained as the official uniform during both wars. But they made adjustments for Korean winter and tropical Vietnamese weather like pockets for essential items, wind-resistant fatigues, herringbone twill cotton for overcoats and other functional features. Additionally, specialized units long range reconnaissance patrol members wear ERDL patterned uniform.

1981 and beyond

Photo: Charles Suilen at Sierra Prieta

The woodland pattern created an iconic breakthrough for war outfits. Soldiers started to wear it in service operations in Haiti, Panama, and Grenada in the late 1980s. With the additional armor system, field coat, helmet, and boots which feature camping and hiking gears help soldiers in readjusting with the surroundings.

In 1991, Army issued three-color camouflage as a uniform for Operation Desert Storm. Soldiers deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan also used the pattern and body armor. In 2004, universal and digitized gray and green camouflage replaced BDU and DCU designs.

At Present

Military uniforms of Poland

US army uses operational camouflage pattern, almost same as Multicam, with the cuts based on the ACU. They use buttons to seal leg pockets instead of loop tape and hook to avoid much noise. Army board also removed elbow and knee pads, drawstring in trouser waistband and modified infrared square identification.

Overall, Coyote brown boots and OCP headgear completes the digital universal patterned uniform. The army also issued tactical vest particular for women’s body type who accepts combat roles.

Takeaway

Before, by using horses and guns with bayonets, armies break the road of war with their uniform and accouterments. But now, they ride on military tanks and fighter planes with MOLLE or Flak Vests stuck in their body. At present, US Military unit follows Operational Camouflage Pattern that aids them to blend in the mountains.

Some army uniforms and fashion evolution remain to be unmentioned due to the diversity of uniform styles. It’s a long story to be told. If you like to spot an in-depth view at US Army uniforms, research for more. Be proud and learn to appreciate soldiers who struggle in the middle of acts of warfare.

EDITORS NOTE: Leslie Wyman is a writer for French Connection.

The English Language Is Under Attack. We Must Defend It!

July 17, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics/by Raynard Jackson

Over the past three hundred years, when foreigners contemplated immigrating to the United States, foremost in their minds was that they wanted to become Americans; sure they wanted better lives; they wanted to attend our universities; some fled oppression in their own countries, but becoming an American was the prime motivating factor in their decision to come to the United States.

It was a given that being an American would offer them the opportunity for a better life, better educational opportunities, and an environment with minimum, if any oppression.

Italians, Germans, and the Irish came through Ellis Island in New York City and settled there in their own little enclaves; many speaking little to no English.

They all spoke in their native languages at home and in their neighborhood, but they understood that in order to take advantage of all that America had to offer, they had to learn English.

In those days, part of being an American was learning the new language. They didn’t forget their language or their culture from back home; but they fully understood that being an American citizen meant adopting the American culture, which includes the language.

Today, you have foreigners becoming American citizens, who don’t have the ability or the desire to learn English. They have absolutely no interest in adapting to American culture.

They are not pursuing the American Dream; they seem only to want the government benefits of citizenship.

Citizenship is like marrying a woman. The woman leaves her family, takes the name of her husband, and moves into his house to build a new life together.

The woman doesn’t forget where she came from, nor her family name, nor her brothers and sisters, but her new life with her husband now becomes her priority and her commitment.

Now, just imagine if the woman marries, but doesn’t take her husband’s name and doesn’t live with her husband, but rather decides to continue to live with her parents.

One could argue that she is merely married in name only.

Likewise, we are allowing immigrants to become citizens who refuse to accept our culture; they refuse to build a new life, based on American values.

When I am in France, I must speak French. When I am in the Dominican Republic, I must speak Spanish. To expect these countries to put everything in English to accommodate Americans, who don’t speak their language, would be the height of arrogance and very impractical.

In 1975, liberal Democrats amended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to “mandate” that all voting ballots be printed in multiple languages to accommodate citizens who don’t speak English.

The language provision is part of section 203 of the Voting Rights Act and was meant “specifically” for Blacks who were in the South who couldn’t read or write, because many Blacks, historically, were denied access to an education.

This had nothing, let me repeat, nothing to do with people who refused to learn English.

But, as liberals are good at doing, they began to expand the definition of section 203. This mandate codified into law that the government “must” make accommodations for any citizens that don’t speak English.

Therein lies the problem. How can you be a citizen of these United States and not speak English? This foolishness cannot be allowed to continue.

Language is always the key ingredient in defining a country and is one of the defining things that make a person a part of that particular country.

You can’t be a Frenchman and not speak French. You can’t be a German and not speak German. So, why, in America, can you be allowed to be American, but not speak English?

I am really fed up with immigrants wanting citizenship, but not wanting to become Americans.

Being American must include speaking English; knowing the Pledge of Allegiance; and being loyal to America and only America and all of its values.

This must be codified in law and enforced.

You can’t be a basketball player, but play football everyday. You can’t be a chef, but study to be a lifeguard. You can’t be a preacher and never study the Bible.

Likewise, you can’t be an American and not speak English. Just because you are a legal citizen, doesn’t mean that you’re automatically an American. Being an American is about the language, the culture, and the values. That’s what every American should have in common.

Until we get back to these principles, we will continue to lose the true meaning of what should make us all Americans.

The world has gone morally insane and your tax dollars are paying for it!

July 17, 2017/in Budget and Finance, Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Florida Family Policy Council

I am sitting here stunned. Late last week, Congress voted on an amendment by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which would have barred the use of taxpayer dollars for gender reassignment surgeries and hormone therapy for transgender members of the military. Unfortunately, with the defection of 24 Republicans in the US House, the initiative failed and there is nothing to prevent the Obama-era policy from moving forward.

I believe that gender dysphoria (the condition of feeling one’s emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite to one’s biological sex) can be very painful for the individual with the condition. However, helping that person to ignore reality and basic biology and assisting them in harming their otherwise healthy body with medical treatments is not the answer. We certainly shouldn’t be using public funding to pay for those treatments! In fact, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder. As a nation, we shouldn’t be promoting gender transition and the denial of biological reality, we should be helping those individuals struggling by getting them counseling.

Just over half (14 of 27) of Florida’s Congressional delegation voted against the amendment to bar funding for gender transition treatments, with the exception of mental health counseling. Especially disappointing are the three Florida Republicans who voted against the amendment in defiance of conservative principles. FFPC reached out to each of those three Republican offices and asked them to vote yes on Hartzler’s amendment and ensure that you and I aren’t paying for treatments we believe to be fundamentally wrong. Below is a list of every member who voted to allow the use of your tax dollars to pay for service members’ gender transition:

Congressman’s Name	Party	District
Al Lawson	D	5
Stephanie Murphy	D	7
Darren Soto	D	9
Val Demings	D	10
Charlie Crist	D	13
Kathy Castor	D	14
Brian Mast*	R	18
Alcee Hastings	D	20
Lois Frankel	D	21
Ted Deutch	D	22
Debbie Wasserman Schultz	D	23
Frederica Wilson	D	24
Carlos Curbelo	R	26
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen	R	27
*Rep. Brian Mast asked that his vote be changed after the fact due to a mistake in voting

Already the Army is instructing women soldiers to accept sharing public showers, restrooms, and barracks with transgenders, including men who call themselves “women” yet remain fully anatomically male. This is absolutely outrageous! Now, we are going to further perpetuate the myth that one can change one’s gender by paying for gender transition treatment.

This issue is only going become more prominent in Florida and cities throughout our state in the coming days, weeks, months, and years, so we all need to educate ourselves. For that purpose, I’m including some resources on transgenderism:

Florida Family Policy Council is committed to continuing to educate individuals on the transgender issue and to fight for common-sense public policy, but we need your help!

If conservative principles and being aware of this kind of information is important to you, please consider giving a gift today. Your gift will help us continue our work throughout the state of Florida and ensure that our shared values are being heard in the public square. You can donate by clicking this link.

Thank you for your prayers and support as Florida Family Policy Council works to build a state and a nation where God is honored, life is cherished, families thrive, and religious liberty flourishes.

10 Things You Never Knew About Orwell’s 1984 by Anna Mathews

July 17, 2017/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

George Orwell’s novel 1984 was incredibly popular at the time it was published, and it remains incredibly popular to this day. With multiple stars citing the book as one of their favorites – including Stephen King, David Bowie, Mel Gibson, and Kit Harrington – 1984 has been growing in popularity in recent years. The book reappeared on best-seller lists in early 2017, as some argued Orwell’s dystopian vision had finally arrived.

Below are 10 facts you might not know about Orwell’s dark novel.

1. Before he wrote 1984, Orwell worked for the British government during World War II as a propagandist at the BBC. (Perhaps seeing the propaganda industry up close led to his critical portrait in 1984.)

2. Orwell initially named the novel 1980, and then 1982 before settling on 1984. Since it was written in 1948, some think that Orwell devised the title by inverting the year the book was written. Additionally, he thought about naming the novel The Last Man in Europe.

3. While writing the novel, Orwell fought tuberculosis. The disease ultimately consumed him and he died seven months after 1984 was published, with tuberculosis as the sole cause of death.

4. In addition to fighting tuberculosis, Orwell almost died while writing the novel. On a recreational boating trip with his children, he went overboard. Fortunately, neither this episode nor the tuberculosis prevented him from finishing his novel.

5. On an ironic note, Orwell himself was under government surveillance while writing his novel warning about government surveillance. The British government was watching Orwell because they believed he held socialist opinions. This surveillance started after he published The Road to Wigan Pier, a true story about poverty and the lower class in England.

6. The slogan “2 + 2 = 5” originated from Russia, where the Communist regime used it as a motto of sorts in an effort to help them accomplish the goals of their five-year plan in only four years. Though the slogan is still used to point out the ills of totalitarian brainwashing today, it was not coined by Orwell.

7. In addition to borrowing a piece of Russian propaganda, Orwell also borrowed some Japanese propaganda for his novel. The “Thought Police” are based on the Japanese wartime secret police who literally arrested Japanese citizens for having “unpatriotic thoughts.” Their official name was the Kempeitai, and they officially named their pursuit the “Thought War.”

8. When Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC, there was a conference room there numbered 101. This room was the room of which he based the location for some of his more horrifying scenes, making the scenes themselves all the more horrifying.

9. According to Orwell’s friends and families, his second wife Sonia Brownell was the model off of which he based the love interest (Julia) of the book’s main character, Winston Smith.

10. Though his book may be popular, Orwell’s novel also makes the list of the world’s top ten most frequently banned books. Some ban it for what they claim are pro-communist points of view, and others have banned it because it is anti-communist. Regardless, it is ironic that a book warning against totalitarianism is often an item for censorship.

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout.

Anna Mathews

VIDEO: Being A Millennial

July 16, 2017/in Commentary, Satire/by Dr. Rich Swier

In this episode of Ultra Spiritual Life JP shares with us what it’s like to be a Millennial.

Depending on your perspective and sense of humor he’s either created a wonderfully sarcastic parody of Millenials or a very realist documentary of what a being a Millennial is like. Either way, there is no doubt that Millennials have quite a few people confused including themselves.

To find out why and to understand them better take the time to watch The Millennial Question.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire is by Big Geek Daddy

A murder that France dares not name

July 15, 2017/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Nidra Poller

Dismay, frustration, exasperation. Three months after Sarah Halimi was savagely murdered by Kobili Traoré, the suspect is still out of reach in a psychiatric hospital, leaving the criminal investigation at a standstill. An update and action plan were presented at a July 4th press conference organized by the Comité de soutien / Vérité et Justice pour Sarah Halimi, under the auspices of the CJFAI (Conféderation des Juifs de France et des Amis d’Israël) at a restaurant in the heart of the Invalides station. Mr. Gilles William Goldnadel, counsel for the victim’s brother William Attal, Samy Ghozlan former police commissioner and president of the BNVCA (Bureau National de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme), and MP Meyer Habib presented the facts as known to date.

Despite the horrors of the case, the presentation, moderated by Richard Abitbol and André Added, was respectful, dignified, and determined. No whining, no wild accusations. The support committee counts 7,000 members, including distinguished thinkers Georges Bensoussan, Pascal Bruckner, Luc Ferry, Alain Finkielkraut, Eric Marty and more.

I was in Israel on the 22nd of May when lawyers representing Sarah Halimi’s adult children – attorneys Jean-Alexandre Buchinger and David-Olivier Kaminski – presented their position at a press conference. Without stoking controversy, let it be understood that they favor a prudent “loyalist” approach, whereas Maître Goldnadel, a mince-no-words editorialist and former president of the France-Israel Association, is more forthrightly combative. At issue: the failure of law enforcement to intervene while Traoré was beating and torturing Sarah Halimi. The autopsy concludes that the victim was still alive when she was pushed off her 3rd floor balcony. At least six policemen were in the building, waiting for reinforcements before attempting to apprehend the assailant. Too late.

A brief review of the facts as corroborated by the police report

Twenty-seven-year-old Kobili Traoré, of Malian origin, a repeat offender with at least twenty convictions for theft, violence, and drugs, has no psychiatric history. As far as can be known at this stage of the investigation, no defense of mental instability has ever been presented in the various criminal proceedings and/or prison sentences. On the 3rd of April, after allegedly spending the afternoon smoking marijuana with friends, he came home in an agitated state and made so much trouble that his mother threw him out in the middle of the night. Apparently she did not seek medical help or police protection. No interviews with or statement by the family have been made public to date. Traoré sought refuge with Malian neighbors, the Diara family, that took him in unsuspectingly. But he was so aggressive that they barricaded themselves in a room and called the police. Three agents arrived within minutes and stood outside the door of the Diara apartment. Traoré was pacing around, loudly reciting koranic verses. Three more policemen arrived but did not enter the apartment because, according to the police report, they suspected they were dealing with a terrorist (the koranic verses).

While they waited for reinforcements, Traoré climbed from the Diara balcony to the next balcony, smashed the window, and fell upon his orthodox Jewish neighbor Sarah Halimi, a 65 year-old retired M.D. Shouting allahu akhbar, shietan (devil), he battered and tortured her, interjecting koranic verses with unspeakable barbaric acts. A neighbor across the courtyard called the police and recorded several minutes of the incident. But the police were already there and still did not intervene.

No matter how many times this fact is stated, repeated, corroborated, I cannot report it without a feeling of utter dismay. By the time the elite forces arrived, 50 minutes after the first response to the Diara’s call, Sarah Halimi lay dead in the courtyard and Kobili Traoré was back in the Diara apartment, calmly reciting koranic verses and boasting “I killed the neighborhood shietan.” He was arrested and placed in psychiatric confinement. To date, the court-appointed psychiatrist has not turned over his report to police or judicial authorities, and Traoré has not been questioned by police investigators. The anti-Semitic motive has not been included as an aggravating circumstance of the charges he faces.

Two elements of incomprehension

Goldnadel, expressing his extreme reluctance to take action against the police, themselves targets of the Islamic violence that massacred Sarah Halimi, nevertheless respected his client’s instructions to file a complaint for dereliction of duty. Why didn’t the police come to the rescue of a woman whose screams resounded in the courtyard, whose interminable agony stretched out for an eternity, who could have been saved in a matter of minutes? An internal police report concluded that law enforcement had followed accepted procedures and there is no need for further investigation.

MP Meyer Habib, who represents French citizens in Israel, Greece, Cyprus, and Italy, pointed out that it takes little more than a minute and a half to terminate a terrorist attack in Israel; the Bataclan massacre that left 90 dead lasted three hours before the appropriate forces received the appropriate orders and neutralized the killers. Why did the police stand down during the interminable ordeal of Sarah Halimi? Were they obeying orders? From what level of the hierarchy? Why would they wait for orders when in fact failure to rescue is a criminal offense? One question leads to another and we cannot even be sure that the investigation will provide clear answers. Why does the judge stand down instead of qualifying the crime as anti-Semitic? Why did the media remain silent when this atrocious crime was committed between the first and second round of the presidential elections? As if safety from jihad massacre were not a legitimate campaign issue!

If the respective counsels differ on strategy and tactics, they are united in the determination to establish the anti-Semitic nature of the murder and to bring the killer from his refuge in a mental asylum to face his responsibilities in criminal court and, finally, to bring to light the obvious failure of the police to intervene on the spot and protect the victim’s life. Will their strategy change with the addition, announced Tuesday – of attorney Francis Szpiner to the legal team? Szpiner represented Ilan Halimi’s family in the case against the Gang of Barbarians. He also acted as counsel to France 2 in its lawsuit against Philippe Karsenty (the al Dura affair).

Is there a media blackout on the Sarah Halimi case?

Yes there is. In the immediate aftermath, the brutal assassination of a Jewish woman by her Muslim neighbor in Paris was barely reported. As for the far-fetched notion advanced by some mean-spirited commentators that an ordinary “neighborly murder” was too commonplace to deserve media attention in the middle of a hotly contested presidential race, it is patently dishonest. But what should we make of the suggestion, raised elsewhere, of a deliberate choice to withhold the information on the grounds that it could favor one candidate, Marine Le Pen, to the detriment of another, Emmanuel Macron? Whatever the twisted reasons for the de facto censorship, it is gradually breaking down, and even if the case doesn’t get the attention it deserves, it will not be kept out of the public eye and the judicial arena.

Why does it matter, beyond the individual tragedy of a fine woman who had spent her whole life in service to her community, brutally murdered by an enraged neighbor? It matters because it is not an isolated incident. It is one more in a 17 year series of attacks on Jews in France. It matters because this violence is an expression of genocidal hatred widely disseminated within the Arab-Muslim population in France. It matters because this hatred is so widespread that Sarah Halimi did not even file a complaint against Kobili Traoré or his sister when they snarled “dirty Jew” at her and her daughters. It matters because every attempt to discern, reveal and eventually deal with this murderous hatred is confronted with denial, hostility, derision, legal pursuits, and pathological skepticism. Witness the dogged prosecution of Georges Bensoussan for “Islamophobia,” and the stubborn refusal to accept statistics on Muslim antisemitism in France (the Fondapol survey).

Only Black lives matter?

The contrast is striking. In an attempt to mobilize a French equivalent of Black Lives Matter, that same Afro-Arab-Muslim community is repeatedly mobilized to defend alleged victims of police brutality. Whatever the circumstances that led to injury or death, the victim is always innocent. Whatever the version of the police or the judgment of the courts, it is unacceptable unless the policemen are declared guilty and punished. This is not limited to media debates and petitions. It’s in the streets and it’s extremely destructive. The 2005 Paris riots were triggered by the death of two youths electrocuted while hiding from the police in an electric substation.

French Jews do not riot, they tread a fine line between demanding justice and preserving the necessary access to authorities that ensure protection of synagogues and community centers, celebrate the Jewish contribution to French culture, defend the oft contested rights to circumcision and kosher slaughter. But the willful neglect of the Sarah Halimi case is a shocking throwback to the disgraceful practices of the early 2000s when anti-Jewish violence was misrepresented as petty delinquency and chalked up to inter-community conflict. The excuse back then was “we don’t want to add fuel to the fire,” a conscious or unconscious admission that if you say the perpetrators are Muslim, they’ll become even more violent. And Jews won’t be the only target. Seventeen years later it is obvious that throwing the Jews on the fire doesn’t appease the genocidal hatred that has now turned against the police, Christians, whites, teachers, medical personnel, Frenchmen in general, disrespectful journalists in particular, wayward Muslims, people enjoying concerts, 14th of July fireworks and outdoor cafés.

Genocidal Jew hatred is not an abstract concept

The unavoidable generalized use of the term “anti-Semitism” fuels a misunderstanding of the contemporary phenomenon. Anti-Semitism – old-fashioned and comically ideological, associated with defeated Nazism and its far right leftovers, frozen in a shameful past that can be atoned for at no cost – has become a mysterious element in the atmosphere for which no reliable barometer can be found. What is the exact dose of antisemitism that would correctly qualify as an act of violence? As Gilles Goldnadel declared at the press conference, a killer, Kobili Traoré in this case, can be motivated by anti-Semitism while in the grips of a mental crisis. A blood-spattered Adel Amastibou, after Islamically slaughtering his neighbor Sébastien Selam (November 2003), boasted “I killed my Jew, I’ll go to paradise.” He spent a few years in a mental hospital and, despite heroic efforts by attorney Alex Metzger, was never tried for the crime. Every Islamic attack or attempted attack committed in France over the past 17 years has been justified by the perpetrator in recognizable jihad terms. The folly lies in searching blindly for motivations when they stare us in the face. Who knows better than the killer what motivated the crime? Traoré said he killed the “neighborhood shietan.”

Lofty declarations and lowly copouts

The truth and justice for Sarah Halimi press conference was held a week after newly elected President Emmanuel Macron convened the Senate and the Assembly for a solemn Congress at the Versailles Chateau, where he pronounced the lofty principles of his administration, re-embroidering his campaign themes of Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The president left the ground-floor promises to his prime minister who, as it happens, made his speech at the Assembly right after the press conference and a few steps away from the venue. President Macron promised to make France a model for humanity, humanism, humanitarianism. He glorified French culture (having made the awkward error of denying its existence in a notable multicultural campaign speech) and praised the noble fiber in every French man and woman.

A few days later, presiding over a national tribute to Simone Veil [née Jacob] at les Invalides, the president announced that she would be buried, along with her husband, in the Pantheon. In a condolence tweet to Simone Veil’s family he wrote: “…may she be an inspiration to our fellow citizens who will find in her the best of France.” But Simone Jacob was defenseless when the French police arrested her and her family in Nice and delivered them to the Nazis to be exterminated. She survived Auschwitz. They did not survive. This kind of “never again” as a comforting flashback is unacceptable. When a thousand people marched to 26 rue des Vaucouleurs in the Belleville quarter of Paris to denounce the massacre of Sarah Halimi, they were met with insults from neighbors and threats from “youths” bragging that they will kill the Jews with their Kalashnikovs.

Sarah Halimi was savagely beaten, tortured, mutilated and thrown to her death because she was Jewish, but the genocidal hatred that motivated her murder is more than a Jewish problem. Beyond the personal tragedy that bereaves us, Sarah Halimi is an image of our civilization – defenseless because law enforcement stands down, the authorities mislead, the media are struck dumb, and those who tell the truth are persecuted and prosecuted.

Postscript

The French Communist Party protests the presence of Benyamin Netanyahu at the commemoration of the July 16th 1942 Vel d’hiv roundup of Jews. “The commemoration,” reads the PCF communiqué “should carry a strong message of peace. The notoriously far right Israeli prime minister is a man of war and violence who is an obstacle to the construction of a just and lasting peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Breaking news

A 54-year-old Tunisian resident of Linz, Austria, turned himself in to police last week after brutally murdering an elderly couple and setting fire to their home. He slit the throat of the 85 year-old woman, stabbed and battered her 87-year-old husband to death. He knew the couple because he regularly delivered groceries they bought at his wife’s store. Though the murderer is a Daesh sympathizer, the police are not classifying the crime as terrorist because there is no evidence that he was acting on orders from Daesh.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Sarah Halimi is courtesy of the Confédération des Juifs de France et des amis d’Israël.

Marriage and Divorce in American Politics

July 15, 2017/in Commentary, Elections, Policy, Politics/by Linda Goudsmit

CNN White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny described President Trump’s Warsaw speech: “This is a white America, America first kind of speech.”

Bobblehead Jeff Zeleny got it half right which is a record these days at CNN – it was an America first kind of speech. The Leftist Democratic Party of America has divorced itself from American democracy and found a new partner in Leftist-style globalism. Most marriages in America begin with love, respect, commitment, and shared values. When the marriage ends there are usually acrimonious arguments over assets and children – so it is with the Left and America.

American politics began its life married to traditional Judeo-Cristian values of family, church, limited government, and cultural norms defined by the 10 commandments and a deep respect for the sovereignty and independence of America and its citizens.

Marriages that continue to flourish are those where the deepest convictions of the loved ones remain intact or evolve in harmony together. America was founded on the deep convictions of equality, justice, love of country, upward mobility and a Constitution guaranteeing individual freedoms unheard of anywhere else in the world.

Generations of immigrants from all over the world have immigrated LEGALLY to the United States in search of freedom and the opportunity to build a better life for their families. They came to America to assimilate. They learned the English language, pledged allegiance to the flag, the Constitution, and the American way of life. They worked hard and sacrificed for their families to educate their children and participate in the extraordinary American dream of freedom and upward mobility. These immigrants came to America with a mature adult perspective that embraced the responsibilities that accompany the rights of American citizenship and insure the privileges of American democracy.

They married into America and their children grandchildren and great-grancdchildren were the beneficiaries of their optimism, hopes, dreams, and work ethic. Immigrant youth have been distinguished by their extraordinary academic accomplishments and consequent contributions and success of their upward mobility. They are the descendants of legal immigration and successful multiculturalism who came to an America that was the golden land of opportunity not the land of equal outcome.

The shift from America “the land of opportunity” to America “the land of equal outcome” frayed the relationship between the Democratic Party and America. The Democratic Party platform of the 2016 presidential election exposed the unraveling marriage between Leftist Democrats and American democracy. The Left had adopted a deliberate strategy to destroy American democracy and replace it with a new romance – globalism.

The Leftists claim they “outgrew” their partner, they are “progressive” and want globalism and an internationalized new world order not an old outdated democracy. There were irreconcilable differences. The New America that the Leftists envision is an internationalized collective with open borders that provides cradle-to-grave government care and guarantees equal outcome. The Left mislabels itself as “progressive” when in fact it is entirely regressive in its infantile demands for rights without responsibility, goods and services without work, and a redistribution of wealth to guarantee equal outcome for workers and non-workers. The love affair was over – the divorce was final.

The Leftist Democratic Party was certain that Americans supported their shift to globalism and collectivism represented by their legacy candidate Hillary Clinton. The bobbleheads of the mainstream media were intoxicated by their inaccurate polling that assured them of victory. The globalist elite who own the mega-corporations that own the mainstream media and employ bobbleheads like Jeff Zeleny continued to disinform the American public in an effort to dupe the public into accepting a globalized unrestricted internationalized market for their goods.

And then came Donald Trump – a patriotic American still in love with America and committed to her ideals.

President Trump believes in fair global trade but unequivocally rejects globalism, internationalism, and its incremental march toward socialism and ultimate goal of one-world government. President Donald Trump is an unapologetic America-first patriot who believes in American sovereignty, American democracy, and American multiculturalism through legal immigration and assimilation. President Trump brings a mature love of country back to American politics – a return to the emotionally adult perspective of the early immigrants who embraced the responsibilities that accompany the rights and freedoms of American citizenship and insure its privileges.

President Donald Trump is diametrically opposed to the childish escape from freedom that is socialism. He understands the deceitful trade-off in socialism: the government trades “free stuff” for complete control of the population who have unwittingly surrendered their individual freedoms guaranteed by the “old” democracy. Socialism is not fair trade. President Trump has exposed the staggering corruption in politics that seeks absolute control over the American population disguised as altruism.

CNN White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny would have gotten it 100% correct had he described President Trump’s speech in Warsaw as a contemporary expression of President Kennedy’s famous inaugural speech. JFK lead the Old Democratic Party still married to American ideals and American democracy. JFK inspired a mature love of country requiring the responsibilities that accompany the rights of American citizenship and insure the privileges of American democracy:

“And so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.” And then Kennedy addressing his international audience continued, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

President Donald Trump’s Warsaw speech was an affirmation of American democracy and love of country – an America first kind of speech from an American President still married to America and American democracy.

History the World Chooses to Forget

July 15, 2017/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Victor Sharpe

The Second World War is over and much of Europe is a wasteland. Millions of displaced persons roam the ravaged landscape in the wake of German Nazi devastation. Millions more are dead but none of the citizens of Europe have suffered disproportionally more than its Jewish remnant.

At the beginning of 1933, when Hitler assumed power by exploiting the democratic process, which he then castoff with the acquiescence of the German populace and the industrial, military, government complex, there were in the world some 18,000,000 members of the Jewish faith.

By the war’s end in 1945, there were barely 12 million Jews left. The one third who had fallen under German occupation and their European fascist allies had been beaten, starved, gassed and systematically exterminated; including one and half million children.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, might have been saved and allowed to find refuge in their ancestral and biblical homeland of Israel, but for a document known as the White Paper.

This unilateral act was created by the British government in 1939 under the premiership of the arch appeaser and self-righteous Neville Chamberlain – he who had come back from meeting Hitler with a piece of paper fluttering in the wind, announcing “peace in our time.”

The Land in which Jews had established their biblical and post-biblical patrimony since time immemorial was then known by its geographical term, Palestine; a name resurrected by the British Mandatory government, which had been awarded the Mandate over the territory by the League of Nations in 1922.

This was the name imposed upon ancient Jewish Judea by the Roman emperor, Hadrian, after he had defeated the second Jewish revolt against Rome’s pitiless occupation in the year 135 AD.

Hadrian chose to rename Judea (the name from which the word Jew derives) – Philistia after the Jews’ hated biblical enemy the Philistines – a sea people originating from Crete who became extinct over a thousand years earlier.

And here it is vital to understand that at no time throughout recorded history has there ever been an independent sovereign state called Palestine: Certainly never an Arab state.

That 1939 White Paper was produced by the Chamberlain government in an act of capitulation to the pro-Nazi Arabs who demanded that Jewish immigration into the Jews’ ancestral homeland be prevented. The White Paper was never submitted for approval to the Council of the League of Nations.

Thus Britain limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 people for five years, after which it would cease altogether. The pernicious influence of Arab oil also played a part in Britain’s decision.

World War Two broke out in September, 1939 and lasted five years. This was the five year death sentence for 6,000,000 Jews in German occupied Europe who were barred by Britain from rescue in Palestine.

The British Mandatory government controlling Palestine shut the gates of the territory for the duration of the war and after to Jews attempting to flee the German Nazi juggernaut of death.

Britain, which rose in anger at the use of brute German force in Poland, alas did not hesitate to use force against Jewish refugees clamoring to escape from the horrors of the German Reich.

It is interesting to note that the lie to Chamberlain’s fear of Arab hostility and oil blackmail was given earlier by British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm McDonald.

In a House of Commons debate on November 24, 1938 he was obliged to admit the advantages to the local Arabs of any additional Jewish immigration to the long established existing Jewish community in the territory. He said:

“The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of the country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe that the Arab population would still have been around 600,000 at which it had been stable under Turkish rule.

It is because the Jews who have come to Palestine bring with them modern health services and other advances that Arabs who would have been dead are alive today and that Arab children who would have never drawn breath have been born and grown strong.”

The League of Nations grant to Britain of the Palestine Mandate was given with the express purpose of incorporating into it the earlier British government’s 1917 Balfour Declaration facilitating the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Furthermore, the British were instructed to “use their best endeavors to facilitate Jewish immigration.” Tragically the White Paper and the subsequent British blockade against Jews fleeing the Holocaust in whatever ships they could find – usually unseaworthy hulks – was a betrayal of all such earlier commitments.

In November, 1941, two ships – the Pacific and the Milos – arrived in Haifa with 1,771 Jewish refugees. The human cargo was forcibly herded aboard another ship, the S.S. Patria and ordered to sail by the British authorities to the then unhealthy tropical island of Mauritius where the hapless refugees would be interned.

While still docked in Haifa, a mysterious explosion ripped through the ship and 250 passengers were killed. Interestingly of the Jewish survivors, 82 young men immediately volunteered for service in the British army despite the suffering they had endured.

Similarly, another ship, the Darien arrived also at Haifa carrying some 793 Jews from Rumania and Bulgaria fleeing the Nazi death machine. Half were skilled workers and farmers eager to contribute to defeating civilization’s nemesis: Hitler. The British Command in Palestine placed them in a prison camp where five of them went insane.

And then there was the searing tragedy of the Struma. Writing in her powerful blog, Sarah Honig recounts the appalling treatment meted out to the Jewish refugees on the unseaworthy craft by Britain, Turkey and an unfeeling world. She writes about the floating coffin as follows:

“The Struma was a 115 year old leaking Danube River cattle barge. Some 769 Jewish refugees, including many young men fit for work or army service, were on board. So were some two hundred women and 70 children.”

Ms. Honig continues:

“The ordeal of these hapless refugees began in December, 1941 and ended on February 23, 1942 in front of a watching but unfeeling world. On December 12, the unseaworthy hulk entered the harbor at Istanbul, Turkey. It had no fuel or water left on board. Britain pressed the Turkish officials NOT to let any of the Jews leave the crippled hulk. A sign with the word “Help” was suspended over the ship’s side but in vain.”

On February 15, the British announced they’d make an exception in the case of Struma children aged 11 to 16, but the British authorities denied entry to the other children, including babies. All could have been allowed into Mandatory Palestine.

No doubt Hitler and the Nazi High Command, watching intently at a world caring nothing for the Jews on the Struma, were encouraged to pursue with even greater ferocity their extermination of European Jewry. The same demonic attitude that much of the world displayed towards the friendless Jews on that floating coffin is repeated today as it shrugs off the never ending Arab and Muslim aggression the embattled Jewish state endures day after day.

Only when Israel, goaded beyond endurance, fights back to defend its people does much of the world suddenly take notice and display its endemic anti-Israel hostility.

Ms. Honig continues:

“On February 23, the Turks ordered the Struma to leave the port and head out into the open sea but not before truncheon wielding Turkish policeman had viciously clubbed the frightened and desperate passengers. Despite resistance from the refugees, the anchor was cut, the Struma was towed out and was left paralyzed, to drift precariously without supplies or a drop of fuel.”

Finally the following day an explosion tore the ship apart. While the surviving passengers struggled to hold onto anything that still floated, a Soviet submarine torpedoed the stricken barge and it sank immediately in the Black Sea. As Sarah Honig writes:

“It is estimated that as many as 500 were killed outright by the blast. The rest flailed feebly in the waves, till they expired of wounds, fatigue and hypothermia.”

Tragically the British nation, which had risked its life to prevent the triumph of Nazi Germany, chose to deny refuge and sovereignty to the Nazis’ first victims.

Contrast the horrific manner in which those true Jewish refugees were treated with that of the millions of Muslims welcomed into Europe who then wreak violence and rapine upon their European rescuers.