President Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
I remembrance of all of those who have paid the ultimate price in defense of this nation, Black Rifle Coffee Company and Matt Best from Article 15 Clothing have made a special video tribute for this Memorial Day 2017.
May the fallen never be forgotten.
The Congressional Budget Office score of the American Health Care Act [claims to shows] that the bill will reduce deficits by $119 billion over the next decade and result in 23 million more people being uninsured by 2026. This leaves the impression that people would be better off if Obamacare were unchanged. But a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services dispels this myth.
Premiums have doubled and tripled and are rising further.
The HHS report shows that premiums in the individual market exchanges increased by 105 percent in the 39 states using Healthcare.gov from 2013 to 2017. This is equivalent to $244 per month in additional premium payments for people buying insurance through the exchanges, or $2,928 over the course of a year. People not eligible for exchange subsidies are fully exposed to these increases, while taxpayers will bear the brunt in the form of higher outlays for subsidies for enrollees who are eligible.Despite the promises that Obamacare would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year,” average premiums on the exchanges more than doubled over this period. In some states, such as Alabama and Alaska, the average premium more than tripled.
The high average increase is not driven by a few outliers, as 23 out of the 39 states included in the analysis experienced premium increases in excess of 105 percent. Only three states, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, had cumulative premium increases below 50 percent.
Source: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
Created with Datawrapper
As the report acknowledges, the composition of the population enrolling in plans through the exchanges has changed over time due to the adverse selection problems created by the laws subsidy and regulation frameworks.
For example, the community rating age bands, which dictate how much more companies can charge older, higher-risk enrollees, were set at 3:1 under Obamacare. A recent study by Milliman estimated that relaxing these age bands to 5:1 would reduce premiums for people aged 20-29 by 15 percent while increasing premiums for older enrollees.
Lower premiums for younger, healthier people would encourage more of them to enroll through the exchanges instead of foregoing health insurance because it is too expensive for them. Older, less healthy people make up a larger share of the exchange population now than in earlier years, which exacerbates the premium increases on that population.
Due to data limitations, the report does not deal with the population getting plans on the individual market but not through the exchanges. These people accounted for more than a third of the total individual market. They are not eligible for the law’s subsidies, so there is likely less adverse selection for the off-exchange population, but these enrollees have to bear the entirety of the costs of those increases.
Families choosing a plan through the exchanges have seen their premiums more than double since 2013. In some states, a wave of insurers leaving the exchange market has created situations where only one insurer is offering products for entire states.
Alabama and Alaska, which have seen the two highest cumulative premium increases, are both down to only one insurer. In the entire country, only Virginia saw the number of participating insurers increase from 2016 to 2017. Just today, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City announced it would be exiting the exchange, leaving 25 counties in Missouri without a participating insurer for now.The lack of choices and competition in a growing number of places makes it unlikely that there will be an end to rapid premium growth, absent reform. While the CBO estimates will provide some insight into the effects of the bill in its current iteration, a working group of Senators is crafting a revised bill with major alterations.
Getting the design of replacement legislation right is important, and the CBO score will give the working group of senators more information about which aspects of the bill that passed the House need the most adjustment. Provisions that allow for more competition and choice for people trying to get insurance through the individual market will help bring down annual premium increases.
Since 2013, this group has had to grapple with fewer choices while their premiums doubled. A well-crafted bill could go some way to reversing that unsustainable trend.
This originally ran on the E21 blog.
Charles Hughes is a research associate at the Cato Institute.
RELATED ARTICLE: In 3 Charts, the Biggest Revelations From New Obamacare Study
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Media Matters is targeting companies that advertise on Sean Hannity because of his conservative values.
Media Matters provides a list at the bottom of this article of companies that advertise and companies that stopped advertising.
USAA is one of seven companies and the largest company that has stopped advertising on Sean Hannity. USAA tweeted the following:
“As a forty-one year member of USAA and proud member of a military family I am shocked that USAA would bow to the pressures of the extreme left.” Proclaims David Caton, President of Florida Family Association.
USAA provides insurance and financial services to millions of active and retired military personnel as well as their families.
There is no doubt that the super majority of the millions of military families USAA serves believes in the public policies and social morals espoused by Sean Hannity.
USAA tweeted “Advertising on opinion shows is not in accordance with our policy and we’ve since corrected that.” USAA must have just adopted that policy because USAA ads have appeared on Sean Hannity and numerous other opinion shows for years.
The fact is USAA caved to leftists who do not represent the values of the super majority of their members. USAA’s decision goes against the core values of their membership base.
If USAA truly has a policy not to advertise on “opinion shows” then USAA must stop ALL advertising on CNN and MSNBC because their entire programming including news is opinion based and loaded with fake news.
Unlike many cable news programs, Sean Hannity routinely gives honor to military leaders, fallen heroes and military families in need.
Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to urge USAA officials to continue advertising with Sean Hannity.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Look What Was Just Uncovered About Former Hannity Sponsor USAA
In a post on their website Newsbusters, Media Research Center reports:
A quick search of our recent recordings shows that USAA advertised routinely on cable news channels, so then you can wonder what their “policy” is? Do they somehow think Hardball is not an “opinion show”? Is Chris Cuomo yelling at Republicans on New Day a “news program”? Advertisers can’t just claim they’re not supporting wild partisan opinions and hope no one notices that their claims of a “policy” aren’t true when you watch TV.
Here’s video of a USAA ad on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews on May 24.
The First Lady of the United States and the First Daughter of the United States bravely displayed, by their dress, the clear difference between respect and submission during the President’s first trip overseas to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican. Women deserve respect and these two women bravely showed they are true feminists, by how they dressed.
Fashion has become a weapon in the global war against women.
The First Lady of the United States in Saudi Arabia.
Jean-Patrick Grumberg in a Dreuz.info article titled Veiled in front of the Pope and heads naked in Saudi Arabia, Melania and Ivanka Trump make the difference between respect and submission wrote:
The Westerners under Islam were shocked to see First Lady Melania Trump and President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, with their heads uncovered and their hair in the wind before King Salman and throughout their presence in Saudi Arabia.
But when they saw them veiled before the Pope, they were choked.
On Twitter, a Muslim has tried to say that the Pope demanded that they be veiled, unlike King Salman. This is of course inaccurate, and anyone who follows Pope Francis knows that he has instead relaxed the protocol – for example, he has refrained from wearing traditional red shoes.
The First Lady greeting Pope Frances at the Vatican.
David Martosko, U.S. Political Editor for the Dailymail.com in Brussels reports:
When Melania Trump recited The Lord’s Prayer before a Melbourne, Florida presidential rally in February, the Internet went hog wild.
Now we know one reason why the first lady began with ‘Let us pray’ and ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ when she introduced the president that evening: She’s a practicing Roman Catholic.
Her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham confirmed that to DailyMail.com on Wednesday, hours after Pope Francis blessed a rosary for her at the Vatican.
The last Catholics to live in the White House were John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie. Melania and her son Barron will move to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the summer.
Mrs. Trump did more than just show up for a Papal audience.
She spent time in prayer at the Vatican-affiliated Bambino Gesù (Baby Jesus) Hospital, and laid flowers at the feet of a statue of the Madonna.
Ivanka and Melania showing respect.
Respect and submission cannot coexist. Respect is the enemy of submission. As Malcolm X said, “I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”
These two women showed, by the subtleness of their dress, what it means to respect one another. They showed their freedom and liberty to address as they wish, as their faith tells them to dress.
The core issue facing women in the world is the ongoing struggle between respect and submission. Women deserve respect. The First Lady and First Daughter are fighting for respect for all women.
RELATED ARTICLE: Philippine Muslim terrorists kidnap Catholic priest, 13 others at cathedral
It’s clear that many big government policies are creating winners and losers in America.
The story has been the same for decades. Government makes friends with a company or an industry, blocks out the competition with regulation, and in some cases gives the company subsidies.
Such cronyism is bad for innovators and for consumers. But fewer people realize that it’s also bad for the poor. A recent report from The Heritage Foundation detailed 23 of these big government policies that hurt the poor, and provided concrete ways to address them.
Winners and losers from big government policies are not always clear. And yet for some crony policies, the winners and losers are very clear. The winners are a small group of identifiable government cronies, while the losers include people of little or no influence with the government.
Here is a look at eight big government policies from the report that benefit government cronies at the expense of other groups of people, including the poor.
1. Renewable Fuel Standard
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that renewable fuels be mixed into America’s gasoline supply, primarily by using corn-based ethanol. Then, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Acts significantly increased the amount that must be mixed in.
This mandate is known as the Renewable Fuel Standard. It forces the use of higher levels of biofuels than the market would otherwise bear. The result has been higher food and fuel prices.
Who Wins: Corn farmers, soybean farmers, and biofuel companies.
Who Loses: Consumers of gasoline, consumers of food, and farmers that rely on feedstock and restaurants.
2. Federal Sugar Program
The federal government tries to limit the supply of sugar that is sold in the United States.
This federal sugar program uses a combination of price supports, marketing allotments that limit how much sugar processors can sell each year, and import restrictions that reduce the amount of imports.
As a result, the price of American sugar is consistently higher than world prices.
Who Wins: Sugar growers and sugar harvesters.
Who Loses: Workers in sugar-using industries, and consumers of food (including bread) that contains sugar.
3. Catfish Inspection Program
As a result of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s catfish inspection program, the USDA inspects catfish while the Food and Drug Administration inspects all other seafood.
This creates duplication because seafood processing facilities that produce both catfish and any other seafood will have to deal with two different types of seafood regulatory schemes instead of just one.
This program also creates a non-tariff trade barrier that will make it extremely difficult for foreign catfish exporters to export to the U.S., likely reducing competition for the domestic catfish industry.
Who Wins: Domestic catfish producers.
Who Loses: Domestic catfish consumers.
4. The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the Jones Act)
The Merchant Marine Act – nicknamed after Sen. Wesley Jones, R-Wash. – requires the use of domestically built ships when transporting goods between U.S. ports. The ships must also be U.S.-owned, and mostly U.S.-crewed.
Who Wins: The U.S. domestic shipping industry.
Who Loses: The U.S. military, automobile drivers, users of propane and heating oil, and anyone benefitting from the trade and transportation of goods between U.S. ports.
5. Occupational Licensure
Licensure laws create government requirements for being allowed to practice a profession. These requirements exist even though the market would produce certification options if consumers desired such information.
Who Wins: Workers who have already obtained licenses.
Who Loses: People wanting to work who can’t because they don’t have a license, and consumers who have to pay higher prices for services.
6. Economic Development Takings
On June 23, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Kelo v. City of New London that the government can seize private property and transfer it to another private party for economic development.
This type of taking was deemed to be for “public use” and ruled a proper use of the government’s eminent domain power under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Who Wins: People who successfully lobby the government to seize other people’s property for financial gain.
Who Loses: Property owners who have their property seized.
7. Home-Sharing Regulations
Local governments sometimes ban or excessively regulate home-sharing – that is, renting out one’s home to accommodate travelers, such as through Airbnb.
When this happens, consumers have less choices of where to stay when traveling, hotels can charge higher prices, and homeowners and renters can’t make full use of their legally possessed homes to earn income for themselves.
Who Wins: Hotel employee union lobbies, and the hotel industry.
Who Loses: Homeowners and renters.
8. Ride-Sharing Regulations
In some state and local jurisdictions (such as outside Portland, Oregon; Alaska; and Austin, Texas), the government bans or heavily regulates ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft.
These companies are popping up all over because they meet consumers’ needs, but they are being held down in certain cities where the government backs the establishment industry.
Who Wins: Traditional taxicab companies.
Who Loses: Uber, Lyft, and drivers looking for low barriers to entry; taxicab customers; customers who want to go in or out of certain neighborhoods that traditional taxi drivers avoid; and users of public transportation seeking to complete the “last mile” of their trips.
When industries or groups win special favors from politicians at the expense of ordinary Americans and the poor, it is an affront to freedom – especially to the economic freedom of the poor.
Policies that drive up prices – especially of commodities – are harder to absorb if you are poor.
The policies listed above can block off the only escape route that poor people have from poverty, preventing them from doing what they are good at for a living, for example, or from renting out their home or other property.
All Americans should have the same opportunities open to them. But when government cronyism rears its ugly head, they don’t.
Those who fall on the losing side of cronyism are more likely to agree with President Ronald Reagan when he said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Reprinted from Daily Signal.
Patrick Tyrrell is a research coordinator in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.
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There is a moment I found a bit startling in the new Anne of Green Gables series on Netflix. The farm is in trouble and the bank is talking foreclosure. The family starts to panic. Anne suggests that many people will chip in and help the family through these hard times.
The mother reacts with firmness and conviction: “Absolutely not. We do not accept charity.”How old fashioned! The statement alone reveals we are talking about the past here. I vaguely recall people in my own extended family – at family reunions in West Texas, sitting around shelling peas – saying something similar. It was a matter of pride, even morality.
When was the last time you have heard that assertion? I personally can’t remember hearing that in many years.
Maybe it is time to bring back that ethos and ethic.
What we have here is a principle at work, a matter of character. Don’t live at other’s expense. Make your own way in this world. Keep your independence and retain your dignity.
Is there any virtue here? I would suggest so. It is a forgotten virtue, to be sure, but a virtue nonetheless.
Charity with Dignity
The family in the story truly needed help. Rather than beg, they gathered up many of their possessions and took them to town to sell them. Merchants had heard about the family’s need, so some actually overpaid as a way of helping without letting the family know what was going on.
This is a great way to be charitable without letting the person know about it, which is yet another expression of virtue. The Bible tells people to give unto others without letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing – which is to say, don’t congratulate yourself and likewise expect others to praise you for your generosity. This is what the neighbors did.
By the same token, the shame associated with begging is ever-present in the Bible. In the parable of the unrighteous steward, the guy complains that he is been released from his master, but he is too weak to dig and “too ashamed to beg.”
Ashamed! Can you imagine? Social welfare professionals have been trying to remove the stigma of welfare for a century. But let’s face: it will never entirely go away. That might even be a good thing.
Don’t Be a Beggar
The story of Anne is set in Canada, but the attitude behind it feels quintessentially American. It is fundamentally a character trait forged in a setting of freedom. You encounter this often in the Little House books too, this attitude that it represents something of a humiliation to accept charity from others.
Even when the opportunity is there, there once seemed to be a cultural commitment against dependency, against living off others. Think of the old term hobo. The hobo ethic was never to beg – that’s what bums do – but rather to completely avoid all forms of dependency, even the need for a comfortable bed and nice clothes, and to travel and work small jobs to get enough to live and then move on. The hobos believed that this was the only way to stay free.In the American spirit, the hobo was making a dignified choice. The bum? Never.
Even when the redistributionist state came along, the American spirit of individualism rebelled.
Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of the author of those books, writing at the height of the New Deal, put it like this:
The spirit of individualism is still here. The number of us who have been out of work and facing actual hunger is not known; the largest estimate has been twelve million. Of this number, barely a third appeared on the reported relief rolls. Somewhere those millions in need of help, who were not helped, are still fighting through this depression on their own. Millions of farmers are still lords on their own land; they are not receiving checks from the public funds to which they contribute their increasing taxes.
Millions of men and women have quietly been paying debts from which they asked no release; millions have cut expenses to the barest necessities, spending every dime in fear that soon they will have nothing, and somehow being cheerful in the daytime and finding God knows what strength or weakness in themselves during the black nights.
Americans are still paying the price of individual liberty, which is individual responsibility and insecurity.
This view is of course routinely lampooned in the progressive press, overtly by socialists like Elizabeth Warren but implicitly in venues like the New York Times and National Public Radio. Their voices drip with disdain for what they say is the myth of “rugged individualism,” a phrase popularized at the end of the 19th century. It is the supposedly cruel and unrealistic idea that people should get by on their own wherewithal.
The idea behind this phrase is to celebrate individual achievement and to suggest that it is a compromise of your potential as a human being to expect others to care for you if it is not necessary.Too often the idea has been caricatured, at least since the New Deal sought to break down the social stigma of dependency on government. For example, maybe people associate this with selfishness. It’s not true. There is a paradox that the more independent you are, the more you are willing to step up and help others. As Lane says: “We are the kindest people on earth; kind every day to one another and sympathetically responsive to every rumor of distress. It is only in America that a passing car will stop to lend a stranded stranger a tire-tool.”
This is not living off others. This is benefitting from the kindness of others when it is necessary and helpful. You accept it because you would certainly do the same for them. And you don’t expect it from others. And you certainly don’t craft your life around the idea that everyone or anyone is morally obligated to help you when you encounter misfortune.
Help Yes, Dependency No
It’s not complicated: you accept help when necessary but don’t make a habit of it. My own mother, who comes from the stock and heritage that celebrated self-reliance, used to say to me, very simply: “never be beholden.” If you owe others, you have given up that most precious thing, your independence, which means giving up some of your freedom.
That includes owing debt. CNN reports: “Total household debt climbed to $12.58 trillion at the end of 2016, an increase of $266 billion from the third quarter, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” Meanwhile, 44% of Americans don’t have $400 cash that they can throw at an emergency expense.
Private creditors are bad enough. It is surely worse to be beholden to government. Right now 43 million Americans are on food stamps. That is not a mark of national pride. And this is true even in times when groceries are absurdly cheap and available by any historical standard.
Once you accept the largesse, you have a political investment in continuing it. Your loyalties gradually change.
People justify this based on observing how much they are paying into the system. It pillages them with every paycheck, so they might as well get something back. No matter how much welfare they pay in, they can never take enough out to make the bargain work out equally. For most people, this is surely true.Once you accept the largesse, you have a political investment in continuing it. Your loyalties gradually change. The state becomes your benefactor. Your sense of self reliance is compromised.
Do you see the vicious cycle? You are forced to pay in, so you have no moral resistance about taking out when the time arises. Pretty soon you find yourself part of the Bastiatian calculus: the state becomes the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense.
In service of people’s dignity, programs like food stamps ought to be abolished, as much as that would upset the corporate agricultural interests that are forever lobbying for this racket to continue.
It seems that government does everything possible to rope people into the role of dependent these days. Whether it is student loans, Obamacare, or just guilt tripping us all to love the highways and glorious national defense we get for our tax dollars, we are supposed to feel forever on the hook, forever beholden. Forever indentured.
This is not the attitude of a free people.
A Word for Individualism
To hear about “rugged individualism” is a bit strange for us today. We have a vague sense that people used to believe this. We feel mischievous even to sense that there might be a grain of truth in it. The attitude built the world’s most prosperous economy. It gave us new inventions. It created the most dynamic, thriving, progressing society in history, and this became a model for the world.
To be sure, there is often a confusion over the phrase self-reliance. It does not mean to grow your own food, make your own furniture, and walk instead of drive. It has nothing to do with the technology you use, and there is a sense in which the market and the division of labor it creates makes us all deeply dependent on each other. That is a beautiful thing.
The point is that market dependency is rooted in exchange and mutual benefit. We go into every exchange with the freedom to change our minds, and we benefit from exchange as much as the other party. We aren’t doing favors for each other. We cooperate together in our own interest.Self-reliance really means something else. It means not being on the hook for a favor someone else did you or being expected to live in a constant state of owing others for some act of benevolence on their part. It certainly rejects forcing others through the state to be productive so that you can get a free ride.
Pay Your Debts
My mother is right. It’s not good to be beholden to others. This idea was once baked into our institutions. Government had no charity to offer anyone. Your debts had to be paid. Americans didn’t rush to create the cradle-to-grave welfare state. The thing existed in Europe long before it came to our shores. Even when we created the institutions, people were reluctant to use them.
And it’s not just about the compromise of your individualism that you make when you accept welfare. It is also about the annoyance others feel when forced to pay for it. Both sides are degraded in this forced wealth transfer.
For our ancestors, it was a matter of personal character.
This is the underlying thinking behind the quote that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged worked to forge into a life doctrine: “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”It’s best to think of that line, not as a hard religious doctrine but just very solid life advice, a good bedrock practice for how to think of yourself in relation to others. With that idea in place, all the rest of the virtues fall into place.
What Can We Do About It
The idea of rejecting charity means that you should take charge of your own life, regardless of pressures around you to do otherwise. This is possible even today. It’s true that you are forced to pay into the system. But no one is forcing anyone to take food stamps, to live on handouts, to be dependent on government programs. It’s not so easy to refuse them anymore. The struggle is real. Still, this is something you can control – unlike national politics.For our ancestors, it was a matter of personal character. It is always easier to take the more temporarily lucrative path and the safer route. Maybe you feel like a chump for turning down government money when it is so easily available. But if you relent, what are you giving up in the exchange?
We don’t need to bring back the shame that comes with living off others. Anyone who does that when it is not absolutely necessary knows in his or her heart that there is a better way. If we can choose the better path, we should.
If everyone did this, the welfare state would be de facto abolished overnight.
Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press.
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The emerging profile of 22 year Salman Abedi, the home grown suicide bomber or shahid (martyr) who perpetrated the Manchester Arena massacre, whose family were Libyan refugees, raises questions about the political future of UK Prime Minister Theresa May in the looming June 10, snap elections called over the Brexit impasse. Abedi was claimed by ISIS as one of their own, “a solider of the Caliphate.” With arrests of four suspects, following the Manchester Arena massacre, police are now saying “we may be dealing with a network.” The Manchester Arena attack triggered UK PM May ordering the deployment of thousands of soldiers to prevent an imminent attack after raising the threat level to the highest level, “critical.”
In the wake of the dastardly Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people, especially young girls, injuring 59, many with life threatening wounds, questions abound about the policies May implemented as former UK Home Minister. May had been the long term Home Minister in the former Cameron Conservative governments. Her track record on lax immigration controls and surveillance of radical Muslim communities ironically may have contributed to the massive terror explosion at 10:30 PM at the close of U.S. pop star Ariane Grande’s concert that shredded the lives of those killed and injured with a bomb loaded with deadly shrapnel of nuts and bolts.
Here’s what we know about Abedi, the perpetrator of this heinous attack on the 20,000 attendees at Ms. Grande’s Manchester Arena concert. Police obtained a photo ID card from his remains identifying him as the suspected bomber. They stormed his residence in South Manchester seeking information about both him and possible jihadist network connections. He was born in the UK to Libyan refugee parents who lived in a tight émigré community. He prayed at a Mosque with known Al Qaeda connections to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. A number of worshipers who left to join ISIS as foreign fighters.
Abedi had made numerous trips to Libya following the fall of the Gadaffi regime and may have received training in bomb making with powerful ingredients. His travels to and from Libya must have put him on the Mi-5 watch list. Abedi had enrolled at a local university studying business management. He appears to have enrolled for the 2016 academic year but not attended classes. More concerning was he had outward vestiges of becoming radical such as wearing a long Islamic Islamic gabilla gown, Kufi skull cap and growing a beard.
Note what this UK Telegraph article revealed, “Everything we know about Salman Abedi, named as the Manchester suicide bomber:”
Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.
A school friend told The Times: “He went to Libya three weeks ago and came back recently, like days ago.”
He had become radicalized recently – it is not entirely clear when – and had worshipped at a local mosque that has, in the past, been accused of fundraising for jihadists.
Abedi’s older brother Ismail had been a tutor at Didsbury mosque’s Koran school. The imam last night said that Salman Abedi, who wore Islamic dress, had shown him “the face of hate” when he gave a talk warning on the dangers of so-called Islamic State.
His mother, Samia Tabbal, 50, and father, Ramadan Abedi, a security officer, were both born in Tripoli but appear to have emigrated to London before moving to the Whalley Range area of south Manchester where they have lived for at least a decade.
Abedi went to school locally and then on to Salford University in 2014 where he studied business management before dropping out. His trips to Libya, where it is thought his parents returned in 2011 following Gaddafi’s overthrow, are now subject to scrutiny including links to jihadists.
A group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in Whalley Range.
[…]
Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father-of-four from Manchester, who left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda.
Azzouz, 48, an expert bomb-maker, was accused of running an al-Qaeda network in eastern Libya. The Telegraph reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control and was an expert in bomb-making.
Another member of the Libyan community in Manchester, Salah Aboaoba told Channel 4 news in 2011 that he had been fund raising for LIFG while in the city. Aboaoba had claimed he had raised funds at Didsbury mosque, the same mosque attended by Abedi. The mosque at the time vehemently denied the claim. “This is the first time I’ve heard of the LIFG. I do not know Salah,” a mosque spokesman said at the time.
At the Abedi family home in Elsmore Road, a non-descript red-brick terrace, neighbors told how Abedi had become increasingly devout and withdrawn.
Lina Ahmed, 21, said: “They are a Libyan family and they have been acting strangely. A couple of months ago he [Salman] was chanting the first kalma [Islamic prayer] really loudly in the street. He was chanting in Arabic.
“He was saying ‘There is only one God and the prophet Mohammed is his messenger’.’
A family friend, who described the Abedis as “very religious”, said most of the family had returned to Libya, leaving only Salman and his older brother Ismail behind.
UK PM Theresa May. Source: The Independent
As to why UK PM Theresa May is partly to blame for the lax surveillance of radicals like suicide bomber Abedi, we turn to a UK Spectator article in July 2016 by Jonathan Foreman about May’s track record as Home Secretary under former Conservative PM David Cameron, “Theresa May’s record as Home Secretary is alarming, not reassuring.”
Foreman wrote:
Despite her carefully fostered reputation for toughness, Mrs. May’s record on extremism is perhaps the least impressive aspect of her checkered tenure at the Home Office. Any public official who seriously addresses radicalization, ghettoization and extremism risks being labeled an Islamophobe or worse. It takes a brave politician, one more committed to doing the right thing than to securing a glorious political future, to take on this hornets’ nest; Mrs. May was not such a politician. This began to be clear during the Trojan Horse affair, when official reluctance to confront radicalization in Birmingham schools prompted a concerned Education Secretary to venture onto the Home Secretary’s turf. (Her characteristic fury at this trespass was damaging to both departments at the time, and may well wreak havoc into the new government. Certainly her firing of Michael Gove’s as Justice Minister, despite the fact that his incomplete prison reforms have been universally lauded, looks like a destructive act of petty vengeance and personal spite.)
[…]
It became more apparent when Mrs. May, having delivered some appropriate sound-bites, avoided potential career-inhibiting controversy by ensuring that the Home Office’s efforts to deal with tricky issues like female genital mutilation, honor killings and forced marriage remained as low key – and low impact – as possible. But it is even more obvious in the investigation Mrs. May eventually set up into whether Britain’s Sharia courts, some legal, some not, might possibly discriminate against women in matters of divorce, domestic violence and child custody, as a result of a ‘misuse’ of Sharia teaching. (In the past the Home Secretary has implicitly claimed a surprising intimacy with Islamic law and political thought, asserting in 2014 that the actions of Isis ‘have absolutely no basis in anything written in the Koran.’)
[…]
Then there was the cynical political correctness. Mrs. May talked about coming down hard on hate crimes and lambasted the police about a lack of diversity. But she abjectly failed to identify the child rape rings of Rotherham, Rochdale, Sheffield, Bradford and Oxford as the racially and ethnically motivated hate crimes that they were. [SEE: Peter McLoughlin, Easy Meat: inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal, New English Review Press, 2016.]
[…]
May has also done little to reverse various policing trends that have alienated the public from the police, including the abandonment of neighborhood policing, the substitution of decoy-like PCSOs and CCTV for beat patrols, and the massaging of crime statistics, At the same time Mrs. May has given the nod to massive, transformative budget cuts that may genuinely make Britain’s police forces unfit for purpose.
[…]
As the then shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper pointed out, three years after May took over the ministry, the number of people refused entry had dropped by 50 per cent, the backlog of finding failed asylum seekers had gone up, the number of foreign prisoners removed had gone down, and the number of illegal immigrants deported had also gone down. Tens of thousands of international students kicked out of the country by the Home Office – in a panicked response to a TV documentary about a test cheating scam – then turned out to have been wrongly deported.
UK PM Theresa May’s track record as Home Secretary may now been thrust into the public limelight as a result of the Manchester Arena massacre by UK born Jihadist, the late Salman Abedi. The prior neglect by Mi-5 and UK security services monitoring jihadists in the country’s midst may impact on the looming snap election originally called to empower her to resolve the Brexit impasse. With her raising the terror threat to its highest level in the UK following the Manchester Arena attack, perhaps Conservative backbenchers might question her policies and performance.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The New English Review.
Yesterday a coalition of consumer and anti-trafficking advocates released a report documenting that Google has financially backed the efforts of digital rights groups to defend Backpage.com—a website notorious for facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking—from numerous legal challenges. The report cited evidence that Google and the groups it financially supports have filed a series of amicus briefs on Backpage.com’s behalf, distorting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to defend the company’s actions. The report further documents that Google has deployed a band of lobbyists to stymie efforts to amend the CDA. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) applauds this report for revealing mainstream supporters of sex trafficking.
“There can be no doubt that Backpage’s entire business model is built on sexual exploitation, and that as such, Backpage’s CEO and founders represent America’s top pimps,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “What will come as a shock to many is that Google—a company with the motto ‘Don’t be evil’—has aggressively buttressed the legal defense of Backpage.com in an effort to protect its own corporate interests, according to the report.”
“In a series of court cases favoring Backpage.com, the courts have interpreted Section 230 of the CDA to give third-party hosting sites carte blanche immunity for everything and anything that occurs online. To help ensure Backpage’s legal defense was successful,” Hawkins added,
“Google has financed powerful digital rights groups to bolster Backpage’s legal arguments, according to the report. The report also indicates that Google has taken its campaign to Capitol Hill where it has unleashed a cadre of lobbyists to oppose efforts to amend the CDA.”
“While the law is important in protecting Internet companies from frivolous lawsuits for content posted by users of those websites, we believe that the Backpage.com case is fundamentally different as evidence suggests that the company proactively coaches sex traffickers about how to post ads for underage victims in order to avoid detection by legal authorities.”
“We believe that reasonable reforms to Section 230 are essential to ensure that companies like Backpage.com can no longer hide behind the safe harbor provisions of the law when they knowingly and with reckless disregard allow sex-trafficking ads to be posted on their site. We call on Google and all Internet companies to recognize that people are not objects to be sold online and to support reasonable reform of Section 230 of the CDA.”
Backpage.com is a member of the 2017 Dirty Dozen List due to its history of facilitating, and profiting from, sexual exploitation. Google’s Youtube is also a member of the 2017 Dirty Dozen list for its failure to address the volumes of sexually explicit videos available on its site.
Florida Family Association started sending emails to the CEOs and Marketing VPs of companies that advertise at Aljazeera.com in February 2017. The emails educate corporate officials regarding Al Jazeera’s ties with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and their Islamist history. Some alarming history regarding Al Jazeera is posted below.
The Florida Family Association office has communicated with one hundred three (103) companies since February 2017 regarding their advertising on Aljazeera.com as of May 22, 2017.
• A total of ninety seven (97) companies stopped advertising. Ninety four percent (94%) of the companies did not advertise again after receiving emails from the Florida Family Association office or after receiving emails from thousands of people in response to Florida Family Association’s online campaigns.
• Six companies continued to advertise.
To see the lists of companies that stopped advertising and companies that continue to advertise please click here.
The following chart shows the progress of this campaign.
| Number of | Percentage of | |||
| Companies | companies that | companies that | Number of companies | |
| Contacted | stopped advertising | stopped advertising | that kept advertising | |
| February | 58 | 37 | 64% | 21 |
| March | 61 | 50 | 82% | 11 |
| April | 93 | 87 | 94% | 6 |
| May | 97 | 103 | 94% | 6 |
Al Jazeera, whose leaders espouse hate for Israel, who showed disdain for Paris murder victims, is a news company that is owned by the non-democratic, monarch styled emirate of Qatar. Qatar allows wealthy citizens to financially support ISIS, supports the Muslim Brotherhood, backs the head of Hamas, espouses Islamic Sharia law and does not afford citizens freedom of the press. Eighty one percent of respondents to an Al Jazeera survey said they support ISIS.
Why is it important to urge companies not to advertise at Aljazeera.com? Sharia law poses its greatest threat of acceptance through the market place. American companies that advertise with Aljazeera.com are giving United States consumer dollars to an Islamist Sharia minded regime. Florida Family Association’s communications with advertisers informs Corporate America about Qatar’s history and Islamist public policy and educates corporate officials about Sharia law. Our online campaigns to companies that are reluctant to stop advertising shows Corporate America that there are many Americans who are very concerned about the Islamist political threat to American freedoms and way of life.
The cable channel, Al Jazeera America, was disbanded in April 2016 after Florida Family Association influenced 260 out 275 companies to stop advertising during a two year period on the Islamist owned network. We are not likely to shut down Aljazeera.com because of its financial support from advertisers in Arabic and European countries. However, our goal is to create a firewall between Corporate America and Islamist establishments governed by Sharia law who would like to see America follow their doctrine.
Some history regarding Al Jazeera.
The Washington Times reported on May 28, 2015 “Eighty one percent of respondents to an Al Jazeera survey said they support ISIS.”
Adweek.com reported on April 28, 2015: Two Al Jazeera America executives voluntarily resigned after Matthew Luke filed a lawsuit against Al Jazeera America and Osman Mahmud, vice president at the network. Luke claimed Mahmud created a hostile work environment and was prone to “making discriminatory, anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks such as ‘whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell.‘”
The Washington Times reported on December 10, 2014 Qatar allows money to flow to Islamic State, other terrorists. “Qatar-based terror finance challenges have metastasized into a pressing, world-class crisis,” states the report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, warning the flow of money from private individuals in the Persian Gulf nation is likely only to continue without a “serious change in U.S. policy.”
Fox News reported on January 10, 2015 Leaked Al Jazeera emails reveal disdain for Paris murder victims. “Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile,” wrote Khadr, quoting Time magazine, as he urged Al Jazeera staffers to consider that “I am Charlie” is an “alienating slogan – with us or against us type of statement – one can be anti-CH’s racism and ALSO against murdering people.”
Qatar is ruled by an emir who has been very adept at using Islamists, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, to promote his country’s interests and bolster his own domestic legitimacy. AL Jazeera journalists were imprisoned in Egypt for allegedly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in 2014. The Qatari-owned media company Al-Jazeera saw 22 members of its staff in Egypt resign over what they allege was “biased coverage” of the events that unfolded in Cairo during the week of July 2, 2013. The Washington Times.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi hosts the most popular show called al-Sharia wa al-ayah (“Shariah and Life”) on Al Jazeera. Qaradawi prayed in a January 9, 2009 sermon during the Gaza War, shown on Al-Jazeera, “Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people of Thamoud (Sodom)at the hand of a tyrant, and You annihilated the people of ‘Aad with a fierce, icy gale, and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers – oh Allah, take this oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.” Many provisions of Sharia law are antithetical to the rights afforded under the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. See Wikipedia.
Aljazeera.com reported that Qatar supported the April 1, 2013 re-election of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Khaled Mashaal said that the “Zionists are enemies of Allah and the prophets, and called for preparing to liberate Jerusalem and restore the homeland once more through jihad, the rifle, and self-sacrifice” during a speech in Cairo on October 3, 2012. Khaled Meshaal lives in Qatar.
“I had to do it. This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.”
His country? He is an American. But like so many converts to Islam, he believes that his religion commands him to commit treason (as well as murder), and to give his allegiance only to the global umma, not to the nation of his birth and citizenship.
Muslim convert Devon Arthurs
“Tampa PD: Angry Muslim convert killed roommates over disrespect to his faith,” WFLA, May 22, 2017:
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Tampa police say a double homicide suspect told them he killed two roommates because they disrespected his Muslim faith.
During an interview, 18-year-old Devon Arthurs admitted to the shooting deaths of Jeremy Himmelman and Andrew Oneschuk, and said they all used to be friends and shared neo-Nazi beliefs. Arthurs says he later converted to Muslim, and became angry with the world’s anti-Muslim sentiment. He told police he wanted to bring attention to his cause.
The double homicide happened Friday night on Amberly Drive in New Tampa.
Tampa police were called to the Green Planet Smoke Shop and say Arthurs was holding three people at gunpoint. According to the police report, Arthurs told them he killed someone and was upset over America bombing his Muslim countries.
When police showed up, they convinced Arthurs to let the hostages go and eventually handcuffed him.
The police report says Arthurs then made references to, “Allah Mohammed!” and told police, “I had to do it. This wouldn’t have had to happen if your country didn’t bomb my country.”
While he was being arrested, Arthurs told an officer people in an apartment were dead….
Police found two men, later identified as Himmelman and Oneschuk, dead inside the apartment from gunshot wounds.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Robert Spencer in PJ Media: Trump Moves U.S. Towards a Realistic Approach to Jihad Threat
Egypt: Muslim who committed jihad massacre in church left note: “I will meet you in Paradise”
According to a new report published by the World Jewish Congress (WJC), 2% of global online anti-Semitism originates in Canada where over 382,000 anti-Semitic posts were posted on social media in 2016, reaching over 29 million internet users in over 50 countries.
In April 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that ISIS supporters have the right to defend their freedom, and was reported to have referred to Evangelical Christians as the “worst part of Canadian society.” These remarks came despite some Canada’s imams regularly calling for the annihilation of Jews.
The prime minister did comment about these attacks on Jews, but Mr. Trudeau only made a statement on Facebook and not on his official Prime Minister website. The statement seems to be missing from mainstream news outlets and published only on a couple of Jewish media sites. Where is the outrage Mr Trudeau normally has for anything remotely shown for acts of hate against Islam? Mr. Trudeau has failed to mention anything about the attacks on Jews stemming from some Canadian Imams.
On Wednesday, March 8, 2017, following is the statement Mr. Trudeau made on his Facebook page:
“This week, Jewish communities across the country have again been targeted by hateful threats and acts designed to make us all afraid. I want to say again–we will stand by you every day in the face of intolerance, prejudice and outright criminal acts. We understand the fear and anxiety each one of these threats creates in the Jewish community, especially when the locations targeted are places where Jewish families and children gather. The cowards who target Jewish schools, community centers and synagogues won’t shake our resolve, and we’ll work with law enforcement to bring them to justice.”
“In Canada, we stand together because we know that diversity is our strength. It built this country. Jews in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and across the country should know they have the full support of the Government of Canada as we guard against a resurgence of anti-Semitism. We’re with you, and will do everything we can to keep you safe.”
It was only because of alternative reporting from CIJ News that the imams listed were exposed, put under police investigation, and one Imam fired from teaching at a university. Mr. Trudeau has never criticized those Imams who call for the annihilation of Jews while repeatedly saying, “Canadians have understood that our differences are a source of strength, not a source of weakness.”
In March, Trudeau slammed a video posted to YouTube that offered a $1,000 reward for recordings of Muslim students at schools in a district of Ontario that were “spewing hate speech” during Friday prayer. With this action he appears more interested in guarding specific faith group even if some of its members promote hatred towards Jews, and infidels which is an ironic contradiction to Mr. Trudeau’s Facebook comment concerning anti-Semitism. Is he creating confusion, and public denial that some of our differences could be our greatest weakness?
Meanwhile, Canada is also encountering many issues with our current Liberal Government. For instance, a parliamentary committee is working on motion M-103, Anti “Islamophobia” Motion which has recently passed by Canada’s House of Commons to condemn all forms of Islamophobia and any links of radical Islam to terrorism. The committee is studying this phenomenon now and it may be made into a bill in the future, which will result in shutting down free speech and suppressing public concern and discussion about unsafe Islamic beliefs. These are the OIC compliant blasphemy laws embedded in M-103.
Considering the threats Jewish and other Canadian citizens are now facing due to the increase in refugee and immigration under Trudeau, a bill that looks like M-103 only further injures the already existing wounds those citizens and their communities have incurred. Yet, Trudeau Liberals continue to pursue this course at full speed ahead.
Even more disturbing is a technical loophole in the Canada Elections Act. The law allows foreign entities to make contributions to Canadian candidates. This means that players such as Iran or Saudi Arabia will be able to further their agendas through a particular politician, as long as they pump him with funds for six months and a day prior to his official bid for office. With the entrance into the country of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers with criminal records– thanks to the increasingly dictatorial policies of Mr. Trudeau and his Liberal Party strongmen–this legal loophole leaves Canada wide open to extreme political change, and not for the better.
In another foreboding sign, Canadian journalist Josh Sigurdson was recently all over the media for calling Justin Trudeau a scumbag. However, the mainstream media was wrongly critical of him.
According to Sigurdson, the reason he called the Canadian Prime Minister a scumbag is because Josh had to wait for several hours to ask a question about the carbon tax and for the children to leave the room. Yet, no one called on him, for he came from the alternative, rather than, mainstream media.
Given that and other actions by the PM, Josh considered his own actions justified: “The state-run media got to ask him pre-screened questions, at that. How is it that a journalist must ask “pre-selected” questions of a politician? Restricting opposition, restricting free speech, pretending to support women while sending money to dictatorships that stone women to death for driving cars, and kill gays… this is the definition of a scumbag.”
Although many might not have used that exact word to describe Trudeau, one might sympathize with the sentiment behind it. As a Canadian citizen who was born in Iran and watched my country come under Islamist Sharia run State of the Ayatollah Khomeini, it is not hard to spot a tyrant. It is not hard for Trudeau, either, apparently. Three years ago, as head of the opposition, Mr Trudeau told a group of women in Toronto: “There is a level of admiration that I actually have for China, because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime and to say we have to go the greenest the fastest. We need to start investing in solar. There is a flexibility that Stephen Harper must dream about—having a dictatorship where he could do everything he wanted.”
When Mr. Trudeau issued a statement about the death of Fidel Castro, he called the former Cuban dictator “remarkable” and a “larger than life leader who served his people.”
Recently, there have been attempts to shut down the Canadian House of Commons on Fridays in order to limit the appearance of the Prime Minister at the Parliament to only one day per week and to limit the debates held in the Parliament before the passages of bills. Interim leader Rona Ambrose charged that apparently he has been trying to limit the ability of the opposition to debate him in Parliament prior to the passage of proposed bills.This is shameful and totally unacceptable! It will not be tolerated by anyone who is truly dedicated to the Canadian democracy, to the importance of debate in the Parliament, and to holding the Prime Minister accountable for his actions.
In my opinion, this kind of behavior makes Mr. Trudeau into a new version of Fidel Castro. One has to consider with all seriousness, in light of these facts, the philosophy behind him. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
As George Orwell wrote: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”
RELATED ARTICLE: New report alleges outside influence in Canada’s 2015 federal election
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Times of Israel.
NOM has just released an important new video calling on all marriage supporters to sign our new petition to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to issue comprehensive rules to protect the religious liberty of people who support marriage, life and the truth of gender and ensure we are not targeted by the federal government because of our views. Please watch the video.
This powerful new video is part of our ongoing commitment to pressure the Trump administration to once and for all fulfill President Trump’s repeated promises to people of faith that his administration would “do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty.”
There are a number of things that we have applauded President Trump on since his election, especially the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court and the rescission of President Obama’s illegal transgender bathroom mandate in the public schools. But we are obligated to call President Trump out when he has not done what he has promised to do – and protecting the religious liberty of people of faith to continue to live out their beliefs about marriage, gender, life and human sexuality is at the top of the “unfulfilled promises” list.
There is still time for President Trump to get this right. That’s why we encourage you to watch our new video, share it with your friends and family, and then make sure that you and everyone you can reach has signed the petition to Attorney General Sessions.
NOM is a top group in the country continuing to pressure the Trump administration to fulfill the president’s promises to provide comprehensive religious liberty protections. We need to raise additional funds to expand the launch of this video and invite more people to sign the petition.
Please make a generous financial contribution to NOM today, which will be matched dollar for dollar by a generous donor. If you can contribute $25, NOM will receive $50. Whatever amount you can manage — $25, $50, $100, $250 or even $500 or more – will immediately be matched and NOM will receive twice the amount that you contributed.
Thank you for all your support, and for helping us continue to fight for religious liberty for everyone who believes in the truth of marriage.
Faithfully,
Brian S. Brown
President, National Organization for Marriage
Democrats who believe Hillary Clinton won the election and who remain dedicated to besmirching President’s Trump’s actions irrespective of facts need not read this column, since there is nothing this president can do that would win their approval.
For those still in touch with reality, please read on.
I was about to go the air on Sky News Arabia on Friday when Defense Secretary James Mattis began a live press conference, where he touted recent U.S. military success against ISIS.
You wouldn’t know about the on-the-record briefing, which also featured the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Dunford, and Obama-appointee roving ambassador Brett McGurk, from the U.S. news media.
In fact, even if you searched Google for it, you would find just a single mention of the press conference, which was just a preview from the Washington Examiner with the misleading headline, “Today’s Mattis briefing: Progress report, but no ISIS strategy.”
Think of that for just a moment: even Google, the world’s principal gatekeeper to information on the world wide web, is engaging in anti-Trump censorship.
Alternative web search engine Bing is slightly better. There, you would find seven relevant stories, led by a New York Times piece with the ominous headline, “Mattis says escalation against ISIS doesn’t imperil more civilians,” a reference to a charge from unnamed human rights organizations that an alleged change in U.S. rules of engagement has “jeopardized the safety of civilians” in countries of increased U.S. action.
Melania Trump shakes hands with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud
Only in the ninth paragraph would you learn the news that U.S. military action, which vastly accelerated once President Trump took office, has pushed ISIS out of 55,000 square kilometers of territory it once occupied in Iraq and Syria, the core areas it is claiming as its caliphate.
Reporters at the press conference were so stunned — as I was — to hear such a statistic that they immediately tried to walk it back, and General Mattis obliged. “[We] were talking about the campaign since 2014,” Mattis said, when ISIS had the initiative and was “shattering every force in their path. “Since then it’s been reversed. We’ve accelerated…I was not saying it all started with us,” Mattis said.
Even more important than the numbers, however, is the momentum on the battlefield. ISIS is no longer winning. We are finally killing more of them than they are recruiting. And this was not happening under Obama.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump ordered a review of the war against ISIS. Two changes came from that review, as Mattis revealed, “Delegation of authority to lower command levels, and the president directed a tactical shift from shoving ISIS out of safe locations in an attrition fight to surrounding the enemy in their strongholds, so we can annihilate ISIS.”
Both changes were directed by the president with the goal of crushing ISIS. “The intent is to prevent the return home of escaped foreign fighters,” Mattis said.
This was welcome news to Saudi King Salman and the more than 50 Arab leaders he assembled in Riyadh over the weekend, who breathed a collective sigh of relief when President Trump arrived. And it wasn’t just because he and his cabinet took part in a traditional sword dance.
It was both Trump’s attitude and his reputation as a man of action — a reputation they could already changing the battlefields of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia.
The president’s signature accomplishment was the speech on Sunday, where he outlined America’s new approach to defeating radical Islamic terrorism. “We are not here to lecture,” Trump said, a clear allusion to President Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, which is credited with having helped to spark the Arab spring revolts that brought down the governments in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt and led to the rise of ISIS.
Instead, President Trump laid out a vision where the United States and its allies, including Israel, cooperate with Muslim countries to vanquish radicalism before it takes root in the heart. “This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations,” he said. “This is a battle between Good and Evil.”
Instead of blaming Muslim leaders for the rise of radicalism, he called on them as partners to “drive them out”:
“Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land, and Drive them out of this earth.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called Trump a “unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.” With characteristic modesty, Trump replied, “I agree.” And everyone laughed — good-naturedly, not as the Washington insiders do, to conceal a snicker.
The Arab leaders gathered in Riyadh understood what they were witnessing: the strong horse has returned.
I say to the president’s critics, watch this president on the world stage and feel proud for your country. America is back.
RELATED VIDEO: President Trump’s Trip Abroad: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Hill.
You’ve been hearing the news here and at other news outlets about the stepped-up deportations of Somalis back to their homeland. Many failed asylum seekers are in the mix.
Asylum, for new readers, is, in a way, the other side of the same refugee coin. Either ‘refugees’ are chosen abroad (usually by the UN these days) and are flown to your towns after supposedly proving that they are persecuted people, or one gets in to the US either illegally or through some temporary legal way and then applies for asylum.
It is difficult (impossible I think) to find photos of Somalis being deported from the US, but there are an unending supply of the Saudi deportations in 2014. Saudi Arabia deported as many as 12,000 Somalis that year. I wonder did Trump ask the Saudis why they don’t take any refugees, including their fellow Muslims?
When the wannabe ‘refugee’ cannot prove his or her case—that they will be persecuted if sent home—then they are supposed to go home!
Conversely, if granted asylum, the migrant is then given all the rights of a ‘refugee’ who was chosen abroad and flown here and will be put on track for US citizenship.
Now, under the Trump Administration, more of those who failed in their asylum bid are being found, detained and sent home.
By the way, this up-tick in deportations is news that should be sent far and wide so as to discourage even more illegal entry and flimsy asylum claims that clog up the courts.
DHS should actually promote an ad campaign around the world trumpeting the news of stepped-up deportations!
Here is Voice of America on the news about Africans, but more importantly I learned about a new and very cool data base.
The United States has expelled about 326 Somali nationals since January.
That number is greater than the total for all Somalis expelled from the country in 2016.
This is the third consecutive year in which the number of Somalis deported by the U.S. government has risen. The rising numbers have increased immigrants’ fears of raids, detentions and deportations.
The deportations of Somali citizens appear to be part of a larger movement, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse*** at Syracuse University. It found that in the first three months of 2017, the U.S. government ordered the deportation of more than 1,200 Africans. Citizens of Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya have received the most removal orders.
Recent deportation orders are undoing a ten-year-long trend.
From 2006 to 2016, the number of Africans deported every year fell from 2,100 to about 1,000. If the trend continues, four times more Africans will be deported by the end of this year than during 2016.
Continue reading here.
***Now check out the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse!
Here is one page that I screenshot to show you what interesting stuff is archived there.
On this page we see that there were 19 deportations for reasons of national security in fiscal year 2017 (that fiscal year began on October 1, 2016). You can learn in what states and what courts those cases came from and the nationality of the person to be deported. From this screenshot page, we note that there was one, an Iraqi, ordered by the court in Detroit to be removed.
This post is filed in our ‘Where to find information’ category.
You can watch that 2014 video about Saudi deportations here:
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Melania Trump has become America’s champion of free women and a classy representative of the decent women of the USA.
RELATED IMAGES:
Melania Trump shakes hands with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud
Melania Trump with a prince of the house of al-Saud
First Lady Melania Trump’s tweet on visit to Saudi Arabia.
