“There is No Justice in Argentina”

Yesterday, the late Argentine Prosecutor, Alberto Nisman was laid to rest in the La Tablada Jewish Community in Buenos Aires amidst a veritable firestorm of controversy that stretched from Argentina to Israel. There were signs of “Justice for Nisman” and “Thank You” in the throng of hundreds outside La Tablada cemetery. Nisman was appropriately interred in the Martyrs Section reserved for the Jewish victims of the July 18, 1994 AMIA blast. A separate section in La Tablada is reserved for suicides. The obituary in La Nacion contained the Hebrew abbreviation z”l of blessed memory.’ Many in the Argentine Jewish Community considered that appropriate as they deemed him the “86th victim” of the AMIA blast. In effect his burial in the Martyrs section repudiated initial official assessments from President Cristina de Fernandez Kirchner and the investigating prosecutor that he may have been a suicide. Kirchner quickly changed her story to a likely murder by rogue intelligence elements who had “manipulated” Nisman.

Among the mourners at his funeral were his two daughters 7-year old Ila and 15 year old Kala, his sister, mother and ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado. The Times of Israel (TOI) report noted:

“This is burying part of our republic,” said Patricia Bullrich, an opposition member of Congress, before entering the cemetery. “It’s a day of reflection and sadness for all of Argentina.”

A farewell letter written by Nisman’s daughters to their father was published Thursday in Argentine papers. “We hope now you can rest in peace. We will guard in our hearts the beautiful moments we lived together,” they wrote.

In a separate funeral notice, Nisman’s ex-wife Salgado said she felt “profound sorrow” for their daughters. “I say goodbye to you, hoping you find the peace that your dedication to your job did not let you fully enjoy,” it said.

The Guardian reported:

Hundreds of protesters, convinced that he was a victim of foul play, gathered in front of the cemetery, some holding placards demanding “Justice for Nisman”.

“It is a great injustice. He was threatened,” said Cristina Paredes, 53, who said Nisman’s death “is the straw the broke the camel’s back” for Argentineans fed up with Kirchner and accusations of corruption by her administration.

The death was mourned as far away as Israel, which hailed Nisman – son of a textile merchant who had studied law at the University of Buenos Aires – as “courageous”.

A friend in Geneva, Switzerland, Imre Herzog, who had forwarded several of our Iconoclast posts on Nisman death to members of the Argentine Jewish community, reported a woman commenting, “There is no Justice in Argentina.”

Nisman was found dead shot with a .22 caliber pistol delivered to him on January 17th by Diego Lagomarsino, the IT manager of the Special Investigative Unit. Lagomarsino, the last person to see Nisman, told a news conference the Prosecutor “didn’t trust his security detail.” Moreover, as the TOI reported, Nisman had chilling evidence of a threat on his life from alleged Iranian sources. He played a recorded voice message recorded while one of his daughters visited him. Ironically, Lagomarsino is being accused of violating Argentinean laws regarding conveying unregistered weapons. Nisman’s death on Sunday January 18th occurred on the cusp of his scheduled testimony at a Congressional hearing on a 289 page Compliant his Special Investigative Unit had prepared.  It contained accusations of a cover up  by President Kirchner and Foreign Minister Timerman of a trade deal with Iran in exchange for dropping charges against Iranian officials involved in the 1994 AMIA Bombing. Nisman’s murder might have been by members of his security detail on orders of shadowy Argentine opponents or a professional hitman from Hezbollah. Iran and proxy Hezbollah have operatives in the Triple Frontier border zone, where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet considered the Iron Triangle of terrorism in Latin America.

The 1994 AMIA blast that created the Martyrs section in the La Tablada cemetery was attributed to 29 year old Lebanese Hezbollah suicide bomber, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, who was driving a Renault Trafic van packed with 275 kilograms of shaped explosives using ammonium nitrate fertilizer and a fuel oil mixture.  Eighty-five were killed and hundreds were injured in the blast that tore off the façade of the Jewish community facility causing it to collapse. The explosion spread death, havoc and injuries in the street in a crowded Buenos Aires central commercial district.  Berro had been identified by his brothers in Michigan as a Hezbollah member. They gave Nisman a photograph that matched an artist rendering of a description from other eye- witnesses who had briefly glimpsed Berro driving to his fateful end.  Nisman remarked, “The brothers’ testimony was substantial, rich in detail and showed that he was the one who was killed”.

Nisman’s relentless pursuit of who organized this pre-9/11 action led him to obtain an Interpol red tag warrant for the arrest and prosecution of senior Iranian officials and Hezbollah terrorist mastermind, Imad Mughniyah. Mughniyah was brought to justice when on February 12, 2008 he was killed in a car bombing when he stepped into his Mitsubishi Pajero leaving a celebration of the 1979 Islamic Revolution at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria. Many believe that this may have been by Mossad in retribution for Mughniyah’s role in planning and executing both the 1992 Israeli Embassy and 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombings in Buenos Aires. Others identified in the 2007 Compliant, approved by a majority vote of the Interpol Assembly meeting in Morocco, were several Iranian officials including former President Rafsanjani and current President Rouhani. They had all been present at a meeting in Mashad, Iran in August 14, 1993 that authorized the operation with the proviso that it “kill without leaving a trace”- the title of a book  on Nisman’s investigations by Israeli-Argentinean Gustavo Perednik. The animus for these murderous attacks against Israelis and Argentineans is alleged to be Argentina’s suspension of a nuclear transfer agreement that same year that began during the era of the late Shah. Immediately following the AMIA blast, a Panamanian commuter flight on August 19, 1994 was blown up in mid-air by an Arab passenger carrying forged Columbian documents. All 21 passengers and crew were killed, including 12 Jewish businessmen bound for Panama City from Colon. Panamanian and US investigators deemed that a terrorist action.

One aspect of the Nisman saga affects the US, as well. In an interview with Lou Dobbs of Fox News, Claudia Rosett, Journalist- in- Residence at the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies told of Nisman being barred by the Argentine Justice Ministry from appearing at a 2013 Congressional Hearing on Iranian-Hezbollah terror networks. Networks as Rosett pointed out that originated in the Triple Frontier, spread throughout all of Latin America to Mexico and even here in the US. Think of the Quds Force deal with a Mexican Cartel and an Iranian émigré in Texas seeking to arrange the assassination of the Saudi Ambassador to the US at a Washington, DC restaurant.  Despite Nisman being barred from testifying before the Congressional Committee, an empty chair with a place card bearing his name was placed in front at the Hearing. A testament to the esteem and his courage in warning us of Iran’s long reach of state sponsored terrorism that have claimed over hundreds of lives of innocent victims and  now, Nisman.  His legacy cries out for independent Argentine/US/Israeli filings before the International Criminal Court at The Hague to finally bring to justice Iranian officials who organized the crimes and corrupt Argentinean officials complicit in the monstrous cover up.

Watch the Fox News Lou Dobbs interview with Claudia Rosett:

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of th funeral cortege for late Alberto Nisman La Tablada Jewish Cemetery 1-29-15 in Buenos Aires. Source: AP.

Draft Joint Resolution Declaring War Against the Global Jihad Movement Released

csp plan against global jihadThe Center for Security Policy has released it’s Plan for Victory over the Global Jihad Movement. The  plans highlights section states:

The United States is in mortal period from a false friend: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The peril emanates from the totalitarian legal-religious-military-political code the Saudis call Shariah and their assiduous efforts to impose it worldwide. The danger is enormously exacerbated by the almost-complete failure of American officials at every level of government to acknowledge, let alone act to prevent, the Saudis’ true agenda.

For over thirty-five years, the United States has been at war with enemies sworn to its destruction. It did not seek enmity or hostilities with them. Both are the product of forces that long predated the establishment of this country, to say nothing of its adoption toward the end of the 20th Century of policies towards the Middle East or other regions.

Part of the Plan includes a joint resolution of war against the Global Jihad Movement. Here is the text of that joint resolution:

JOINT RESOLUTION Declaring that a state of war exists between the Global Jihad Movement and the Government and the people of the United States and making provisions to prosecute the same.

Whereas the Global Jihad Movement consists of nations, organizations and movements that seek to wage, or materially enable jihad (warfare) against non-Muslims as well as those Muslims deemed insufficiently adherent to the Islamic faith, for the purpose of imposing a global political order governed by the doctrine of shariah, and administered by a ruling political entity called a caliphate;

Whereas the Global Jihad Movement consists of entities that carry out violent jihad as well as those that seek, through non- or pre-violent means, materially to enable the success of the jihadists by undermining the ability of the United States to challenge and/or counter effectively the triumph of shariah;

Whereas entities waging or materially enabling jihad against the United States and its national security interests include, but are not limited to, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS); alQa’eda; Hamas; Hizballah; the Islamic Republic of Iran; the Taliban; Boko Haram; al-Shabaab;
Ansar al-Shariah; the Muslim Brotherhood; and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC);

Whereas the ideology of jihad poses a threat to the security and sovereignty of the United States, and therefore requires a comprehensive response from the United States Government in the military, intelligence, law enforcement, political, financial, and informational spheres akin to that authorized by President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 75 with respect to Soviet Communism;

Whereas the embrace by Islamic authorities globally of jihad notwithstanding, millions of Muslims worldwide – including within the United States – seek neither to wage nor materially enable violent jihad, nor wish to have shariah imposed on their communities or others:

Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

DRAFT AUTHORIZATION OF THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AND OTHER MEANS AGAINST THE GLOBAL JIHAD MOVEMENT

Joint Resolution

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces, and other resources of the Government of the United States, against the Global Jihad Movement.

Whereas the Global Jihad Movement consists of nations and organizations that seek to wage, or materially enable, jihad (warfare) against non-Muslims as well as those Muslims deemed insufficiently adherent to the Islamic faith, for the purpose of imposing a global order governed by the doctrine of shariah, and administered by a caliphate;

Whereas the Global Jihad Movement consists of entities that carry out violent jihad as well as those that seek, through non- or pre-violent means, materially to enable the success of the Jihads by undermining the ability of the United States to counter effectively the triumph
of shariah;

Whereas entities waging or materially enabling jihad against the United States and its national security interests include, but are not limited to, the Islamic State in Iraq and alSham (ISIS); al-Qa’eda; Hamas; Hizballah; the Islamic Republic of Iran; the Taliban; Boko Haram; al-Shabaab; Ansar al-Shariah; the Muslim Brotherhood; and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC);

Whereas the ideology of jihad poses a threat to the security and sovereignty of the United States, pledges the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States and therefore requires a comprehensive response from the United States Government in the military, intelligence,
law enforcement, political, financial, and informational spheres akin to that authorized by President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive 75 with respect to Soviet Communism;

Whereas the embrace by Islamic authorities globally of jihad notwithstanding, millions of Muslims worldwide – including within the United States – seek neither to wage nor materially to enable violent or non- or pre-violent jihad, nor wish to have shariah imposed on their communities or others;

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This joint resolution may be cited as the “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Global Jihad Movement of 2015.”

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

• IN GENERAL – The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations and organizations waging any phase of jihad against the United States or in contravention to the national security of the United States.
• WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS

1. SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION. – Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

2. APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS. – Nothing in this Act supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

SEC. 3. SUPPORT FOR UNITED STATES HOMELAND SECURITY, LAW ENFORCEMENT, FINANCIAL, AND INFORMATIONAL EFFORTS

The Congress of the United States supports the use of federal homeland security, law enforcement, financial, and informational mechanisms against the Global Jihad Movement
to—
• Fully secure all land and maritime borders and ports of entry against illegal entry into the United States by individuals, or agents of organizations or foreign nations,
seeking to carry out Jihad attacks or engage in material support for Jihad activities; • Undertake law enforcement operations within or at the borders of the United States in order to identify and prevent acts of jihad or material support for Jihad activities; • Deny Jihad entities financial revenue, including through the maximum deployment of domestic energy resources and the denial of access to global financial markets;
• Secure information dominance over the Global Jihad Movement through the use of information warfare to undermine the movement and its objectives.

SEC. 4. AUTHORIZATION OF MILITARY CUSTODY FOR INTELLIGENCE GATHERING PURPOSES

The Congress of the United States authorizes that individuals waging or materially enabling jihad on behalf of, or at the instigation of, a Jihad government or entity, who are captured by the United States military abroad, or by federal law enforcement within or at the borders of
the United States, shall be detained initially by the United States armed forces for the purpose of gathering intelligence before any transfer to civilian authorities, and, in the case of foreign nationals, detention until trial by military commission in Guantanamo Bay.

Attorney General nominee Lynch: “Illegal Aliens have a right to work!” Will Republican’s Approve Her?

The Republicans now control the 114th Congress. The most pressing issue facing the American worker is the invasion of illegals under President Obama. Will Republicans approve Loretta Lynch, will she get voted out of Committee?Loretta Lynch quote on illegals

Senator Sessions, Chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, questioned Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch at the January 28th Judiciary hearing to consider her nomination. Sessions asked Lynch about the President’s decision to bypass Congress to order a sweeping amnesty, and how this action undermined the rights of disadvantaged American workers.

Senator Sessions states:

In addition to suspending enforcement for nearly all of the 12 million individuals unlawfully present in the United States, President Obama issued an executive decree on November 20th, 2014, extending work permits, Social Security, Medicare, tax credits, and government identification to 5 million illegal immigrants and illegal visa violators. This would allow illegal immigrants to take any job in America, regardless of chronic high unemployment for Americans—including a 10.4 percent unemployment rate for African-American workers. Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, explained—contra AG Holder’s “breathtaking” contention that amnesty was a civil right—that unlawful amnesty for illegal immigrants violated the rights of U.S. citizens to the full protection of their laws, including those laws passed by Congress to protect their jobs and wages from illegal competition. The President’s executive edict (an edict he said previously only an Emperor would deign to issue) voids Americans’ legal protections in law, supplanting them with a new executive policy that Congress and voters have rejected, a policy which forces unemployed Americans to compete against a large and growing illegal workforce.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of NBC News.

My Problem with Sarah Palin

With Sarah Palin once again hinting at a presidential run, pundits and politics wonks are all the more aflutter with 2016 talk. The predictable slings and arrows of the surly left are coming her way, while her excited fans are firing up the troops. Then there are those who say that while they like the ex-governor, they don’t believe she could win the presidency. My focus, however, is a bit different: I have an objection to Palin — one relating to something of which most are unaware.

Before getting to that, please indulge me as I ask a few questions that establish where we all stand. Are you adamantly pro-life, or might your position change if (as in polling) the question is framed as a woman’s “right to choose”? Do you stand foursquare against amnesty, or could you be persuaded to accept a “path to citizenship” for illegals? Do you uphold the proper and only definition of marriage, or have the unrelenting attacks on tradition worn you down to a point where you might conclude, “Well, none of this affects me, anyway”?

If you’re unwavering on all those issues, as I am, you’re a real Sarah Palin conservative.

Or are you?

You see, I’m pretty sure how Palin would answer those questions — and one answer is a real problem.

On October 26, 2008, Palin had an interview with Jorge Ramos of Spanish-language network Univision. She was asked about amnesty: “So you support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants?” Her answer:

“I do because I understand why people would want to be in America. To seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here. It is so important that yes, people follow the rules so that people can be treated equally and fairly in this country.”

Sarah Palin supported amnesty…in so many words.

See if you can put enough lipstick on that pig.

Now, since our country is subject to a somewhat planned invasion that’s changing its face and involves the importation of leftist voters-to-be, I consider any pro-amnesty position a deal-breaker. I’ve been front and center on the issue, so much so that Pat Buchanan saw fit to quote me in his book Death of the West. I even stated, “Marco Rubio is dead to me” after he supported the Gang of Eight amnesty group in 2013.  And, believe me, I once had high hopes for the photogenic, articulate Rubio. But my principles aren’t negotiable (especially the one in question here).

Some may now say that Palin had to play ball, as she was running for the White House in 2008 with amnesty poster boy John McCain.

But as they say back home, that dog don’t hunt — certainly not grizzly in Alaska.

Remember that Palin has been billed by supporters as a breath of fresh air, the un-politician, a principled crusader and transformational figure. Her whole stated appeal is based on the notion that she’s not just another politician who goes along to get along.

But on Oct 26, 2008 she gave a quintessential politician-like answer. And on one of the biggest issues of our time.

Yet there’s more than just Palin’s words on immigration. There are also her actions — or perhaps inaction. As Examiner.com’s Victor Medina wrote in 2013 citing Lou Dobb’s reportage, “Palin did not appear to act on the fact that Alaska hosted two ‘sanctuary cities.’” As Dobbs put it, related Medina, “Alaska and Oregon both have state-wide policies that forbid state agencies from using resources to enforce federal immigration law. Apparently, this is by design from the highest levels” (emphasis added).

Now, since I’ve learned the hard way that criticizing Palin alienates some of my usual readers, I’ll state that I bear her no special animus. She’s no different from 1000 other politicians who either don’t understand the true impact of immigration (and a lot of other things) or have principles whose malleability is proportional to the power at stake. But that’s the point.

Palin is no different from 1000 other politicians.

This brings us to her true appeal. And if you’re a fan of hers, please try to take a step back, if you can, and view the matter from an emotional distance.

Question: can you cite for me one novel or unusually insightful thing Palin has ever said?

Just one.

Anyone?

Politics wonk that I am, I can’t think of anything. Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with most of what she does say; it’s conservative boilerplate, and that’s where you generally start. But that again is the point.

Palin says nothing 1000 politicians haven’t said before her.

So I ask, what’s her true appeal, really?

Let’s be honest, if we can’t point to even one thing that makes a much ballyhooed politician substantively different from less touted co-ideologists, the process of elimination tells us where the greater appeal must lie.

It’s not Palin’s oratory, either. Oh, it’s not bad, but she’s no Reagan or Alan Keyes. The difference is what she is.

No one would be talking about Palin if she weren’t attractive and female.

This is true even if, by chance, John McCain would have been willing to choose a “Scott” Palin to be his running-mate (which he wouldn’t have).

It’s the phenomenon I expounded upon in “Cultural Affirmative Action” and “The New Chivalry”: “when people in the market and media privilege others — sometimes unconsciously — based upon the latter’s identification with a ‘victim group.’”

And most every politically aware person grasps this phenomenon to some degree. The late Geraldine Ferraro addressed Barack Obama’s meteoric political rise in 2008 and said, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” And Ferraro had noted herself that she wouldn’t have been the 1984 vice-presidential candidate were she not a woman. It’s the same reason, by the way, why Fox News hires a large number of attractive female hosts and pundits. Do you think it’s a coincidence? Is the largely conservative audience so taken with them solely because of their minds?

The fact is that it’s impossible to not benefit from fairer-sex status in politics today; it even elevates your brand among conservatives, though it’s difficult convincing many conservatives they’re thus influenced. With many motivations being unconscious, it’s common for people to not be completely aware of what drives them. How many Americans voted for Obama in 2008 without fully grasping the degree to which electing “the first black president” and wanting to feel unbigoted and open-minded influenced them?

This isn’t to say Palin fans don’t have some legitimate reasons to support her, only that the kind of heroine worship and savior-status attribution evident in some quarters — support vastly in excess of what boilerplate conservatism warrants — is due to a purely emotional reaction stoked by image and hope. Many conservatives, knowing that having a female or minority presidential candidate is advantageous today, want to believe in the Great Female Hope. Moreover, there is this politically correct notion, now seamlessly woven into our culture, of female specialness and superiority. So many today are looking for a woman to save us.

Then there’s simply the matter of conservative female politicians’ relative rarity (even many GOP women officeholders are quite liberal); it’s easier to be seen as a standout when you stand out.

So the perhaps unwelcome message here is this: as with the 2008 Barack Obama, Palin is a cult of personality.

If even now you count yourself a Palinista, realize that I’m not emotionally invested in the matter. After all, I know that political remedies won’t cure what at bottom are cultural problems, anyway. It’s also true that like so many other politicians, Palin demonstrates the ability to evolve. And at least she’s evolved in the right direction: two years ago she called the 2013 Gang-of-Eight Rubio “Judas” in a tweet. I only wonder what she now really thinks, deep down, about the 2008 Palin.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Neither Obama Nor Republicans Have Vision

Last week I thought Stevie Wonder gave a great State of the Union Speech. Oops, did I say Stevie Wonder, I meant to say President Obama. But like Stevie Wonder, I couldn’t see the America the president was describing in his speech.

Listening to Obama, you would have thought that America, especially Blacks, had full employment. But according to the Labor Department, the national unemployment rate is 5.6 percent and 10.4 percent for Blacks – nothing to brag about in either case.

The Hispanic unemployment rate is 6.5 percent. Well, this stands to reason since Obama has bent over backward to address issues uniquely impacting Latinos, but has done nothing to address the myriad of pathologies negatively affecting the Black community.

Am I really the only one who has noticed that the Black unemployment rate is almost twice that of the Hispanic community? If not, why does no one seems to be angry? How ironic it is that the first Black president has done more to help every other community more than his own – Hispanics, illegals, homosexuals, etc.

When Obama began talking about the obstructionist Republicans, I thought he was talking to an all-Black audience. He was condescending, arrogant, dismissive, and professorial in his lecture to Republicans. Listening to Obama, you would have thought the Democrats had just won a resounding victory in the November elections.

While Obama has failed Democrats and Blacks, Republican leaders in Congress have proven that they are equally blind to the needs of their followers. They have done absolutely nothing to inspire confidence within the rank-and-file of the party. They have caved on bedrock issues, including homosexuality, amnesty for illegals, and foreign labor at the expense of American workers just to name a few.

If Republicans are going to be “Democrats light,” why settle for a knockoff when we can have the real brand? It is becoming more difficult to distinguish the Republican leadership from the Democrats because Republicans are too busy trying to be liked instead of standing up for the party’s beliefs based on a core set of principles.

For example, Obama wants to mandate paid leave for those who have a baby or adopt. While this sounds good and all touchy feely, can someone explain to me what is the rationale or legitimate role for government intervention on this issue? I thought Republicans believed in keeping the government out of our lives.

Republicans are so obsessed with trying to garner the female vote that they lose sight of their principles. All they need to do is to explain that based on a Republican view of the world, the government has no legitimate role to mandate that an employer provide certain benefits. It is up to the employer to do what he or she deems is in the best interest of the company and its workers. If the employer is on the wrong side of a given issue, the marketplace will make it known through good employees leaving for a better company that will give them all the perks they feel they deserve.

This is a real-world example of a practical “conservative” principle in action. Having a child is strictly a personal, private issue and there is absolutely no role for the government in this area of one’s life. Having a child is a responsibility, not a right. If you can’t afford a child, you should delay child birth until you can afford it.

Obama wants to increase minimum wage. He said, “If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $ 15,000 a year, go try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise.”

Well, maybe these “hardest-working” people should have worked harder to reach for some birth control to avoid having kids. Minimum wage was never meant for adults; it was created to give high schoolers their first job to prepare them for adulthood.

On the surface, offering a free community college education sounds like a great idea. But how is it going to be paid for? Will Congress allot new money or merely re-direct what’s already in the pot, meaning other programs will suffer.

It’s quite obvious that Obama doesn’t care that this program will further destroy Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Obama has done more to harm HBCUs than any president in modern history. On the other hand, Republicans have been among the staunchest supporters of HBCUs. Why haven’t they stepped up on this important issue? Is this how they “reach out” to African Americans?

And what about Obama’s point about equal pay for women? He said, “That’s why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. Really. It’s 2015. It’s time.”

Obama should clean up his own home before pointing to dirt in others. The Washington Post reported last July that males get paid 13 percent ($10,200) more than women in the Obama White House.

Even when it comes to politics, both Obama and Republicans are short-sighted.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on BlackPressUSA.com. The featured image is of President Obama meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (L) and House Speaker John Boehner in September 2014. EVAN VUCCI/AP.

Obama Wants to Close Off Energy-Rich Stretch of Alaska to Development

Pultizer Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin, wrote in the New York Times that global energy markets are at an inflection point. The role of the world’s “swing producer” has swung to the United States:

By leaving oil prices to the market, Saudi Arabia and the emirates also passed the responsibility as de facto swing producer to a country that hardly expected it — the United States. This approach is expected to continue with the accession of the new Saudi king, Salman, following the death on Friday of King Abdullah. And it means that changes in American production will now, along with that of Persian Gulf producers, also have a major influence on global oil prices.

Even though hydraulic fracturing had led this shale boom, conventional oil production is still important.

This makes the Obama administration’s request to close off a big portion of Alaska’s energy reserves to development especially disappointing:

President Barack Obama is proposing to designate the vast majority of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a wilderness area, including its potentially oil-rich coastal plain, drawing an angry response from top state elected officials who see it as a land grab by the federal government.

“They’ve decided that today was the day that they were going to declare war on Alaska. Well, we are ready to engage,” said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and chair of the Senate energy committee.

The designation would set aside an additional nearly 12.3 million acres as wilderness, including the coastal plain near Alaska’s northeast corner, giving it the highest degree of federal protection available to public lands. More than 7 million acres of the refuge currently are managed as wilderness.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the area has over 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

The wilderness designation will require Congressional approval—not likely with this Congress. However, the Washington Post reports that the Interior Department will take action to limit energy development there [H/t Noah Rothman]:

While Congress would have to approve any new wilderness designation, Interior will immediately begin managing the iconic area under the highest level of protection the federal government can offer.

President Obama, who has not been to ANWR and ironically filmed his announcement on the fuel-guzzling Air Force One said, we must ensure “that this amazing wonder is preserved for future generations.”

In contrast Jonah Goldberg, someone who has visited ANWR, had a different description of the area where oil development would take place:

The oil is on the coastal plain at the very top of ANWR on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. And that ain’t beautiful. Believe me. Winter on the coastal plain lasts for nine months. Total darkness reigns for 58 straight days. The temperatures drop to 70 degrees below zero without wind chill. This is the time of year when the oil companies would do almost all of their work; when nary a caribou nor any other creature would be dumb enough to venture out on to the frozen tundra for long. Regardless, ANWR’s summer is no picnic either. The coastal plain is covered in a thick brick of ice for much of the year. When it melts, it creates, well, puddles. Lots and lots of puddles – and mud. This provides the lebensraum that mosquitoes and other flying critters need to stretch their wings.

But back to the President. In last week’s State of the Union Address he took credit for the oil and natural gas boom, but the facts tell a different story. Under his watch, oil and natural gas development has decreased on federal lands while increased on private and state lands. In fact, his administration has put up barriers to energy development. The ANWR proposal is the latest.

The administration is expected to release a draft of its offshore lease plan. That may include allowing energy development off the Atlantic coast. Such a decision will be welcome for its economic and job growth and bipartisan support, but it will further confirm how incoherent the President’s energy policy is.

An Auschwitz Anniversary

There was some serious irony when U.S. Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew gathered together with French President Francois Hollande and a Russian delegation led by Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff, along with leaders from Germany and Austria to participate in the January 27 ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 by Russian troops.

I suspect that an entire generation or two born after that year, 70 years ago, may have little or no knowledge of what Auschwitz was. It was a Nazi death camp located in Oswiecim, Poland. Its full name was Auschwitz-Birkenau and it is estimated that one million people, mostly Jews, were killed there.

I say “irony” because Auschwitz-Birkenau was part of a system of six Nazi death camps that included Belzac, Chelmo, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. Each camp was filled with the victims of a widespread anti-Semitism that had existed in Europe for two thousand years, so it was not difficult for the Germans to turn a blind eye or the French and others to provide assistance in rounding up their Jews.

Jews - Nazi starThe camps engaged in large scale murder to fulfil Adolf Hitler’s intention to exterminate every Jew in Europe. In 1933 there had been nine million living in 21 nations that would be occupied during World War II. By 1945, two out of every three European Jews had been killed.

In addition to the Jews, an estimated five million others deemed enemies of the state for political or other reasons such as being Communists, trade unionists, gypsies or homosexuals also died in the camps.

What is rarely acknowledged is that the Europeans of that era were largely educated, had a rich culture of music, literature, and drama, and many were church-goers. In short, you would not have been able to tell them apart from the Europeans of today.

The Nazis wrote the book on the use of terrorism to facilitate their barbaric, murderous theology of death. The Muslims that have moved to Europe have adapted it to their own ends, seeking like the Nazis to become globally dominant. They don’t have death camps—yet—but the widespread and constant slaughter in which they are engaged has a similar feel to it.

In the 1930s those European Jews had few places to which to flee. They were not even that welcome in America where anti-Semitism was widespread. Those that could did emigrate and, again there is irony because several of the German physicists that came to the U.S. were instrumental in the creation of the atomic bomb that ended World War II while others played roles in the Nazi’s defeat during the war. One such emigrant, Albert Einstein, was the first to suggest the creation of the weapon to Franklin Roosevelt.

In response to European anti-Semitism, a movement called Zionism had begun before World War II with the intention of reestablishing Israel as a Jewish state where Jews could be safe. The movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1896. Here again there is irony because the movement was dominated by secular Jews who were not motivated by Jewish history or the Torah. What they wanted was to be free of the oppressive antipathy of the nations in which they lived. What they were seeking was emancipation.

By the time World War II occurred they were a force to be recognized in Israel, known at the time as the Palestinian Mandate and run by the British who, as often as not, shared the anti-Semitism that had given life to the Zionist movement. It would take the Holocaust to accelerate the movement of Europe’s surviving Jews to Israel which in 1948 declared its sovereignty and was immediately attacked by the Muslim nations surrounding it.

Fast forward to our times and the Jews of Israel as well as those around the world know one truth. If Iran is permitted to reach a point where it can create its own nuclear weapons and put them on their missiles, Israel will only be minutes away from an extermination that the Iranian leadership and the other Muslim nations of the Middle East have openly called for since Israel came into being and the Islamic Revolution took control of Iran in 1979.

This time, however, the same nuclear weapons that would destroy Israel would also be turned on the United States because the shouts of “Death to America. Death to Israel” are a part of the daily lives of the Iranians, as well as others in the region.

What makes these days so dangerous is that the United States of America is engaged in negotiations with an Iran that has never made a secret of their intention to be a nuclear-armed nation. What makes these days so dangerous is that the President of the United States has barely hidden his own anti-Semitism and animus toward Israel.

One can only pray that seventy years hence some other writer will not be commenting on the second great annihilation of the Jews, literally within the lifetime of people who were alive during the first one. I am one of those people and Auschwitz is not some place that existed a long time ago. It was yesterday.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Auschwitz death camp survivor Jadwiga Bogucka (maiden name Regulska), 89, registered with camp number 86356, holds a picture of herself from 1944 in Warsaw January 12, 2015. Reuters.

The Blizzard That Wasn’t

Dateline: January 27, 2015 – 3 to 4 AM, New York City and Tri-State area.

There was no climate change where I live in a suburb of Newark, N.J. if by “climate change” you meant a dramatic blizzard with high winds and several feet of snow. It’s winter and you get the occasional, rare blizzard every few years, but more often you get snowstorms. That’s not “change” by any definition.

Cartoon - Climate Change Predictions

For a larger view click on the image.

Listening to WABC radio follow events with callers from around the Tri-State area calling in with far more accurate reports than the meteorologists was an education in the way those trained in meteorology and the rest of us have been conditioned to believe that something is happening to planet Earth that, quite simply, is not happening.

The meteorologists spent their time trying to figure out the difference between a European computer model and one generated here in the U.S. The former predicted far worse conditions. The latter fell victim, along with the rest of us, to the mindset that the conditions the computers were interpreting did not reflect what was actually happening.

At this early morning hour, it is clear that Long Island, parts of Connecticut, and generally along the coastlines, there has been a heavier snowfall. A few miles inland however it is a far different story. Callers who had been out in the midst of the storm described light, powdery snow and perhaps two to four inches at most.

Why, they asked, did the Governors of New York and New Jersey, along with the Mayor of New York City close down the metropolitan area? They speculated on the millions of lost income for everyone involved in a storm that was not posing a significant traffic or other problems, but who had seen businesses, schools, bus lines, and other public facilities shut down. When a significantly incorrect weather prediction does that, it demonstrates how important it is to correctly interpret the data being provided by the satellites—the best source.

When, earlier in January, NOAA and NASA reported that 2014 had been “the warmest year” it should have raised far more questions and media coverage given the sheer absurdity of such a report. Remember, though, these are two federal government agencies we expect to get it right. They didn’t just get it wrong, skeptical scientists were quick to note how they had deliberately distorted the data on which they based the claim.

That is the heart of the issue surrounding the endless claims of “global warming” or “climate change.” The planet has not been warming for 19 years at this point because the sun has been in a perfectly natural cycle of low radiation.

Centuries ago, it was noticed that when there are few sunspots, magnetic storms, the Earth got colder. Thus, “climate change” is not an unusual event, but rather a reflection of the well-known cycles of warmth or cold that the planet has passed through for billions of years.

At this writing it is too early in the morning hours to know what the rest of the East Coast looks like, but the indications are that, as one moves westward the “blizzard” has been far less than the one predicted and will likely be downgraded to a standard winter snowstorm.

That’s the good news. The bad news was the over-reaction of meteorologists and politicians. No doubt they wanted to be “safe than sorry” but they inadvertently taught us all a lesson about the way environmental organizations and a government led by a President telling us that “climate change” is the most dangerous challenge facing us have been deliberately lying about the true meteorological record in order to drag us all back to a time in which we burned wood for heat and rode horses for transportation.

The Greens don’t like humans much and that is why they have been lying about “man-made” climate change when the climate has nothing to do with human activities.

Listen to the skeptics, often maliciously called “deniers”, when they tell you the truth about the meteorological science that has been deliberately distorted since the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. It has been lying to us ever since.

Depending on where you live in the area in which the snow fell and the winds blew, trust your eyes. Trust your commonsense. Be more skeptical because the blizzard that wasn’t is not a lesson you want to forget anytime soon.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of the North East U.S. blizzard of 2015 is courtesy of the Inquisitor.

Florida Common Core: 2015 Legislative Session Update

education tallahassee

Photo from the top of the Florida Capitol: L-R Kathy Doan, Yvonne Isecki, Chris Quackenbush, Mitzi Hahn

BREAKING NEWS! There is a bill in bill drafting to solve Florida’s education issues. Here are the details.

Issue 1: Standards – What they are learning. The Commissioner will select several of the best standards from pre 2009 for the local districts to select. The Commissioner will select these standards for English and math are free and not copyrighted, well vetted and highly rated (higher than our existing standards). Districts will have local control to choose from this list based on their varied needs. Florida’s school districts are diverse and one size does not fit all. Rural, urban, and minority needs should allow for local flexibility to address their needs.

Issue 2: Accountability – Yes, we need to measure, but there are already nationally normed tests that will do a better job comparing us to the rest of the nation and the world. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel or force our kids to be guinea pigs. We propose the districts should have local control to choose from a list of the best of these, such as the Iowa Basics and Stanford Achievement Tests. They would administer ONE test at the end of the year between 3rd and 10th grade. These tests are less expensive and pre-common core versions are available. Teachers will not be teaching to the test if it is a nationally normed test and it is NOT used to determine graduation or promotion, but simply to inform us on our students’ progress.

Issue 3: Testing – These tests can be administered on paper and taken at the student’s own desk, eliminating the “musical chairs” now needed to address the lack of computers for testing. This has, by some reports, absorbed as much as 40% of class time for learning. By going to paper tests, we can reduce costs by BILLIONS of scarce education dollars, AND increase time for learning. It will also allow schools more control of the data to prevent data mining. Student data can be aggregated with individual identifiers removed to prevent data companies from collecting and using individual data.

There is much to do and supporters are invited to help to get this bill passed. There is something for everyone to love in this bill. It saves money, provides more time for learning, provides high standards and accountability. Supporters are having a “March for the Children” event in the Capitol March 5, 2015. Busses are being organized from several cities. If readers want to help organize this event they may contact Debbie Gunnoe or Karen Schoen. Interested parties may register at www.eventbtite/c/march-for-the-children-tickets-15317379695.

Supporters of the bill are asking Floridians to contact their legislators and let them know parents want local control and needed solutions, not posturing in Tallahassee. Credit goes to Senator Alan Hayes and Representative John Tobia for putting this bill into bill drafting. Once it emerges from Bill Drafting in about two weeks, it will have a number. Supporters still must identify who will be best to carry this bill and who is willing to do that job. Neither Rep. Tobia nor Sen. Hayes have firmly committed to carrying this bill.

Readers may Go Here to find their legislators and send a letter to support ACTION on this bill.

Many important steps remain, and supporters are counting on concerned Floridians and Common Core groups to help make a change NOW. There is no DO OVER for our kids.

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U.S. History curriculum Collier County, Florida:

English Language Arts Collier County. Florida:

Watch “Night Will Fall” about Nazi Atrocities During the Holocaust

Children who Survived  Auschwitz  Source AP

Jewish Children liberated at Auschwitz, February 1945. Source : Archives of the US National Holocaust Memorial.

On January 27, 1945 forward units of the 100th Rifle Division of the 1st Ukrainian Front entered the Auschwitz Birkenau death camp precinct liberating several thousand remaining survivors. More than 1.1 million were murdered there by the Nazi SS, 1 million of them Jews. Among the first groups they encountered in the remaining barracks were children, twins, victims of the ‘angel of death, Dr. Josef Mengele’s sadistic medical experiments. The Russian troopers in their white camouflage coats hugged and gave them chocolate. These Jewish children hadn’t felt any humane treatment during their enforced incarceration in Auschwitz.

Earlier in January 1945 the SS blew up the remaining crematoria. An earlier one was destroyed in the lone heroic resistance effort by Jews inside the camp in October 1944 with dynamite secured by Jewish women inmates.  The SS guards assembled more than 60,000 camp inmates  in January 1945 who  sent on a forced death march from which only 12,000 survived.  One of the survivors of that death march was the Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel who as a youth of 16 was eventually liberated by the US Army at Buchenwald in April 1945. Another Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor was Italian Jewish resistance fighter, chemist and author Primo Levi who received his Nobel award for Literature, posthumously in 2002. Levi fell to his death in his family home in Turin in 1987, some say depressed by the atrocities  he had witnessed. Wiesel’s biographic works about his experience at Auschwitz the forced march and liberation were memorialized in his trilogy Night, Dawn and Day. Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz: if this is a Man was testimony to the Nazi dehumanization and perseverance to survive and return home.

Israelis at Auschwitz-Birkenau Source AP

Israelis at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Source:  AP.

Another 5 million Jews didn’t survive.  They were murdered in unspeakable ways in the einstazgruppen slaughter in Russia, death camps in Germany and occupied Europe.  Their fate in the Final Solution was ratified by the SS at the Wansee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942. The objective of the SS Conference was to make Europe judenrein. Among the Six Million European Jews murdered were 1.5 million children. The Jewish children those Russian troops encountered at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 were among the lucky survivors.

Palestinian leads 2015 UN International Holocaust Memorial at Auschwitz Birkenau

Tuesday, January 27, 2015 is the 10th annual UN International Holocaust Memorial Day. Ynet.com  drew attention that this year’s  annual commemoration with be headed by a Palestinian UN official.  Maher Nasser will host the event,  Palestinian to host UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day to be held at the site of the death camps at Auschwitz- Birkenau in Poland.  Nasser was  born in Albrieh, a village near Ramallah. The 25 year UN bureaucrat   held posts in Gaza and  Jerusalem. eHeh HH He  now holds a management position in the UN Department of Public Information.  Ironic  in that the Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, fled to Berlin from Baghdad  following the Farhud, the Nazi-Arab massacre of Jews  in 1941.  The  was welcomed as  Hitler’s house guest during WWII. He  promoted  the genocide of Six Million European Jewish men, women and Children and sponsoring the recruitment of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans.

UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon will attend.   Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin will lead an Israeli delegation.  Rivlin will speak about the rise of Global Anti-Semitism and the threat of Islamic Jihadism. More than 100 Holocaust and Russian veterans will also attend the ceremonies at Auschwitz. In the Israeli delegation will be former Israeli Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom  in 2005 proposed the UN commemoration of the Holocaust  to “honor of the six million Jews, 1 million Gypsies, 250,000 disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

The Auschwitz-Birkenau UN commemoration of the Holocaust may not be televised. However, on the eve of International Holocaust Memorial Day, January 26th,  at 9:00 PM EST, HBO  will show a documentary on  Nazi atrocities, Night Will Fall.   It is based  on archival footage taken by British military photographers and cinematographers following the liberation of Nazi concentration camp, Bergen –Belsen in April 1945.  Famed Hollywood film director Alfred Hitchcock was briefly involved with the original British documentary in 1945.

Marlow Stern in his Daily Beast review of Night Will FallInside Alfred Hitchcock’s Lost Holocaust Documentary,” noted how the original project and Hitchock’s involvement came about:

Back in 1945, Sidney Bernstein, the chief of the Psychological Warfare Film Section of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, was commissioned to create the definitive documentary chronicling the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Bernstein’s aim was, in his words, to “prove one day that this had actually happened” and have it serve as “a lesson to all mankind as well as to the Germans.”

He eventually roped in his good pal, Alfred Hitchcock, to serve as the film’s supervising director. But the horrifying and heartbreaking footage of numerous concentration camps, shot by British, American, and Russian World War II soldiers as they were being liberated, became tangled up in a complicated web of politics and artistic rows. A magnificent new HBO documentary pulls back the veil on the making of German Concentration Camps: Factual Survey.

The eye-opening film-on-a-film, Night Will Fall, will premiere January 26 on HBO. It is narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, produced by Stephen Frears and Brett Ratner, and directed by Andre Singer, who serves as president of The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain.  Singer executive producer  of  the documentaries The Act of Killing and Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss. It was done in concert with London’s Imperial War Museum, and took 18 months of poring over thousands of feet of film to trace the making of the unmade epic.

[…]

The British soldiers found tens of thousands of emaciated prisoners inside the camp, many of whom were on the brink of death by starvation. The camera lingers on piles of naked, skeletal corpses stacked several bodies high, as well as line after line of dead children. A total of 30,000 corpses were witnessed by Allied troops, according to the film. Singer managed to track down several British soldiers who were there, and some break down in tears recalling the horrors.

“It’s very difficult to describe,” recalls survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who was 19 when Bergen-Belsen was liberated. “You’ve spent years preparing yourself to die, and you’re still here. Every British soldier looked like a God to us.”

night will fall poster 2Alissa Simon in her August 2014 Variety  review of Night Will fall, reported that,  “rather than wait, the impatient American government commissioned [Hollywood director]  Billy Wilder to use their footage [from German Concentration Camps Factual Survey] . Singer includes an excerpt of Wilder’s short film, Death Mills, intended for German and Austrian audiences, and clips from an interview with Wilder.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz in her Wall Street Journal review of Night Will Fall: Nazi Crimes on Film  explains why the original footage of the British film languished in the vaults of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) after excerpts were shown in the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi leaders:

Still, despite the stellar talents and authority of its creators, the film would be stored, rather than seen. Though its footage would provide some of the most damning testimony presented at the Nuremberg war crimes [trials].  It would be housed, from 1952 on, in the archives of the Imperial War Museum. Then four years ago the IWM undertook the enormous task of restoring and digitizing the documentary, along with the long-missing sixth reel. “Night Will Fall,” a new documentary about the historic film, leaves no question as to the reason it was withheld. Its commentators note that the British government then, whose policy was to bar any flow of European Jews to Palestine, was not eager to present a film that would create a great deal of sympathy for these survivors, as such a film surely would.

These graphic revelations of the Nazi final solution atrocities against millions of Jews and others should be a warning of the primary objective of the Global Jihad movement:  the annihilation of Jews, Christians and minority religions sought by Muslim extremists, following the way of Allah.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Are we toast? Saudi king is dead; ISIS expands; we’re abandoning Yemen and Iran has a missile launcher

On Tuesday evening President Obama stated, “the shadow of crisis has passed and the state of the union is strong” — and of course the blind followers cheered.

Obama also hinted that we had “turned the page” on our fight against terrorism. Remember his unilateral declaration at the National War College that the war on terror had ended — and of course he has commanded that combat operations end in two theaters of operation; Iraq and Afghanistan.

But nothing could shine the light on President Obama’s naiveté (or approval?) more than the fact that just 48 hours after he dismissed the “shadow of crisis,” we are evacuating yet another U.S. Embassy — this time in Yemen.

It’s the same Yemen that just last fall, Obama referred to as the model of his success — just like Vice President Joe Biden once chimed that Iraq would be one of Obama’s greatest successes. When Obama said the shadow of crisis has passed, we had three U.S. Naval warships off the coast of Yemen ready to evacuate the embassy.

And if you’ve forgotten, this is the second U.S. Embassy to be evacuated in less than a year — the other being Libya…y’all remember the swan diving jihadists? This hardly reflects a state of the union that is strong. What it does reflect is a foreign policy of abject failure, resulting from the Obama “pivot” away from the Middle East.

And so now we have the Houthis, whose slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel” by the way. We reported on them late last year, of course no one cared. Just the same as a year ago this week, when President Obama referred to ISIS as a “jayvee” team. The al-Houthi Islamist group is Shiite and backed by — yep, you got it — that nondescript country called Iran about whom Obama threatened a veto if Congress passed legislation restoring sanctions.

Let me put this all into perspective.

Yemen is home to the most vicious al-Qaida affiliate — yeah I know, they’re decimated and on the run – al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is the same group which claimed responsibility for the recent Paris Islamic terrorist attack.

There are now reports that ISIS is expanding into Yemen and as we reported last year, AQAP was seeking a pledge of alliance with ISIS. Yes, the Houthis and al- Qaida don’t exactly get along — but the Houthis are backed by Iran — who we are assisting the fight against ISIS in Iraq, along with their support to Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

And the Obama administration just announced it would send 400 advisors/trainers to Syria. But we’re allowing Iran to pursue its nuclear program, 10,000 centrifuges,– and the Washington Post just gave President Obama three more Pinocchios for his SOTU assertion that Iran’s nuclear program has slowed down. And as you know, Obama threatened to veto congressional action to sanction Iran.

Why should we kinda care? The Yemeni government was pro-American and was aiding in the fight against Islamists within their borders. Now, not only has the Yemeni government been toppled, it has been replaced with the specter of Iranian influence in the vicinity of a chokepoint entering the Red Sea — and not far from Somalia — yet another hot bed of Islamism.

Now, add on top of this hot fudge sundae the fact that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia just passed away. Yemen is the southernmost country on the Arabian Peninsula where chaos now abounds at a time of a transition of leadership in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are Sunni and cannot be too happy with the Obama administration’s lack of focus and resolve in the face of Iranian regional hegemonic designs. So what does Saudi Arabia do? In concern for their own existence will the Saudis provide material support to Sunni Islamic terrorists in order to defeat the Iranian-backed Houthis?

And there is another wild card to this equation, as reported by The Algemeiner, “The Israeli satellite imaging company ImageSat released images from Iran revealing a new nuclear development site. The images show what appears to be a new missile launcher that stands 89 feet tall and is capable of launching a nuclear missile to Israel or Europe, according to a report by Israel’s Channel 2.”

“Among the new nuclear developments pictured was a large long-range missile, never seen before in the West. The missile is powerful enough to launch a satellite or a manned spacecraft, the report said.”

Now does this sound like someone with whom we should — or even can – be negotiating?

Ladies and gents, I know some of you may feel, who cares, let them all kill each other. Yes, to a point they will, but the shadow of crisis will not pass that easily.

From Libya extending all the way to Pakistan, and probably beyond, militant Islam has taken root and is exporting its terror and hatred all over the globe. And the policy of this administration is to remain in a state of denial. America sides with Turkey and Qatar. America is releasing Islamic terrorists back onto the battlefield. All the while w’re told move along, nothing here to see.

There’s lots to see, and my greatest concern is that the situation only worsens in these final two years of the Obama reign.

What can we do? Well, first we gotta pray — and I am serious folks. The situation in which we find ourselves is a perfect storm benefitting the Islamic fascists. Not only are they on the move and consolidating their gains while increasing recruitment, we are enabling it by decimating our own military capacity.

We must develop a strong, potent, expeditionary and lethal strike operations-oriented force for the 21st century battlefield. And I’m not talking about any “smart power” or nuanced rhetorical response, but rather a deterrent force capable of deployment and employment in any geographical contingency area.

This is not about nation building. And at some point in time we will have to combat the enemy’s ideology — we must defeat his belief system in order to delegitimize him. Challenge the enemy and make them own their actions — and stop being Islamapologists.

The crisis has not passed; it’s right here and all over the globe — heck, there’s even a Russian naval warship docked in Cuba while our state department bureaucrats are there to discuss opening up diplomatic and travel relations.

Can we really say that the state of our union is strong? If you believe that then you’re in a state of delusion. And remember, weakness is enticing.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Cruz files bill to ban U.S.-based Islamic State jihadis from returning to the U.S.

This is simple common sense. By going to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State’s jihad, these Muslims have joined an entity that has declared war against the United States. They have committed treason. They have forfeited the rights and privileges of citizenship. But it will be interesting to see who opposes this, and on what grounds.

“Cruz Files Bill to Ban American Islamic State Fighters from Returning to U.S.,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, January 23, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) will file legislation on Friday to ban American citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) and other terror groups from returning to the United States, where they pose a significant terror threat, according to sources in the senator’s office.

Cruz, who first proposed the legislation last year, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) of their U.S. citizenship rights and stop them from coming back stateside.

The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.), tightens and updates existing regulations by which a U.S. citizen effectively renounces his or her citizenship.

Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as “detached from reality” on the foreign policy front.

“President Obama’s approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security—it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place,” said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

“We’ve seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen,” Cruz said. “These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies.”

“That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States,” he said. “I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America’s leadership in the world.”…

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Video: Robert Spencer at AFDI Free Speech Rally, Garland, Texas, January 17, 2015

American Sniper Chris Kyle: A Man with a Purpose Driven Life

chris kyle with his bookI finally went to see the film American Sniper. There has been much written about Clint Eastwood’s Oscar nominated film based upon Chris Kyle’s auto-biography of the same name. Some have ridiculed Kyle for his lethality calling him a coward, others have praised him as an America hero and battlefield legend.

I read the book well before seeing the film. What stands out in my mind is how Chris Kyle’s life was a purpose driven one. He was blessed with certain skills and used those skills to save lives, but in a way most, particularly those who have never served in combat, would not understand.

In the film one quote stands out for me. Kyle, portrayed by Bradley Cooper, near the end of the film meets with a Veteran’s Administration doctor. The doctor asks Kyle if he has any regrets, to which Kyle replies:

I was just protecting my guys, they were trying to kill… our soldiers and I… I’m willing to meet my Creator and answer for every shot that I took.

To me that is what drove Chris Kyle throughout his short but heroic life. He wanted to protect what he loved most – our soldiers.

Kyle put God first in his life, then his duty to the nation and finally his responsibilities as a husband and father of two children. In the film Taya Renae Kyle, like most military wives, finds it difficult to understand Chris’ reality – his purpose driven life. Taya, portrayed by Sienna Miller, states, “You’re my husband, you’re the father of my children. Even when you’re here, you’re not here. I see you, I feel you, but you’re not here.”

Like most combat veterans, Chris Kyle suffered from what I call “survivors remorse.” Survivors remorse is the feeling of coming home from a combat deployment and grappling with the fact that you survived the ordeal while others of your brothers, and sisters, did not. The question is always: Why did I survive? The compelling desire is to go back into combat and by doing so get another chance at “protecting the guys.”

The worth of a soldier, trained to defend his country, is measured by saving the lives of his brothers-in-arms. Coming home safely with everyone you deployed with is the goal. To achieve that goal you must kill the enemy before he kills you or your brothers-in-arms.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is founded upon the principle of sacrifice above ones self. This purpose driven life, service above oneself, is especially evident, from my experiences, with the U.S. military elite forces such as: U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Army airborne soldiers, U.S. Army Special Forces, Marine Recon and Navy SEALs.

It was this purpose driven life that inextricably led to Chris Kyle’s untimely death. Kyle became personally involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom and  Operation Enduring Freedom wounded warriors. It was one of these soldiers, a U.S. Marine, who fatally shot Kyle on February 2, 2013.

I highly recommend seeing American Sniper. It will change your view of what Chris Kyle was really all about.

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The Hollywood Jihad Against American Sniper

More ‘American Sniper’ fallout: What Kid Rock wants to see happen to Michael Moore and Seth Rogen

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5 Ways Bradley Cooper Got Pumped Up to Play Badass American Hero Chris Kyle

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Chris Kyle on a training course for Craft International, the company he started after leaving the Navy in 2009. Photo: Dallas Morning News.

Pamela Geller: CNN’s War Against Truth

Any time the mainstream media raises the question of whether there is something violent about Islam, you can be sure that their learned analysts will find it as peaceful as the day is long.

HerePamela Geller skewers yet another example: “CNN’s War Against Truth,” by Pamela Geller,Breitbart, January 21, 2015:

In the wake of daily jihad attacks (thwarted or deadly), CNN clearly is losing control of its narrative that Islam is a religion of peace and Islamic jihad is not Islamic. From the very beginning of its propaganda piece “The War Within Islam,” which aired Monday night, CNN’s agenda was clear.

The show was full of dissembling, dishonesty, and dissimulation from beginning to end. The title itself, “The War Within Islam,” is a lie. Where do we see evidence of a war within Islam? We don’t see millions of Muslims marching against jihad and Sharia. On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of Muslims marched in Chechnya against theCharlie Hebdo cartoons. In Iran, mobs chanted, “Death to France.” In Pakistan, over 10,000 marched and attacked police, and in Niger anti-cartoon mobs torched forty-five churches. They are marching for jihad and for sharia.

The only war is on the truth. “Moderate” Muslims are not arguing with jihadists; instead, they’re arguing with those who oppose jihad, claiming that Islamic jihad is not Islamic. The war is in the Western information battle-space, where CNN and the rest of the mainstream media are busy spinning, twisting, and contorting the narrative. This argument should be taking place in the Muslim world, but it is not — with the notable exception of President el-Sisi in Egypt.

Alisyn Camerota of CNN says, “1.6 billion people around the world practice Islam today, and most Muslims will tell you it’s a peaceful religion. But still, questions persist about whether there is something inherent to Islam that lends itself to extremism.”

CNN described guest Maajid Nawaz as a “former Islamic extremist.” Maajid Nawaz is the founder of the UK’s “counter-extremism think tank,” the Quilliam Foundation, a group that has the ear of the British government and counters “extremism” without ever fully confronting the roots of that extremism in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example. Nawaz claimed that jihad “comes down to a combination of four factors: a sense of grievance, identity crisis, charismatic recruiters who provide a sense of belonging, an alternative sense of belonging from mainstream society, and the role that ideology plays.” So no Islam here, folks. It is not surprising that Nawaz would focus first on “a sense of grievance”: victimhood is part of jihad. But “identity crisis”? Identity is the one thing that is not in question. The jihadis’ identification with and love for Islam is orgiastic — the more devout, the more Muslim, the more inclined they are to wage jihad.

Where were the critical scholars of Islam and the counter jihad activists on the program? Bobby Ghosh, CNN’s Global Affairs Analyst, was the former TIME magazine World Editor. He was responsible for those two outrageous cover pieces —  “Is America Islamophobic?” and  “Does America Have a Muslim Problem?” — during the Ground Zero mosque controversy. In 2011, Ghosh declared on MSNBC that to a practicing Muslim, burning Koran is much worse than burning the Bible, because the Koran is directly from God, while the Bible isn’t.

CNN devoted a large part of this spectacle of whitewash to what should we should actually call the Islamic jihadists. Bobby Ghosh, CNN’s Global Affairs Analyst, made the salient point that these jihadists are called mujahadeen (holy warriors) in the Muslim world and that there is an acceptance that these people are claiming to fight in the name of Allah. But this was not explored at all despite the fact that a large portion of the special was devoted to what words we should or should not use. It was instructive as it gave viewers an inside peek into how the media twists itself in knots so as not to offend Islam.

Al Jazeera and Huffington Post writers like Ahmed Shihab-Eldin weighed in with their fair share of taqiya (deception to advance Islam), so it can be said that on balance, there was no balance.

One of the featured experts on the Qur’an was Daisy Khan, Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, who insisted that there was nothing in the Qur’an that justified any of the violence done in the name of Islam today. She also claimed that blasphemy is not punishable by death.

There is no reference in the Qur’an, uh, which prohibits Muslims from drawing a cartoon or an image of the prophet. Uh, this ruling came from the prophet himself, who was actually concerned about people idolizing him, or worshipping idols. He was surrounded by idol worshippers, and so he told people, do not make any images of anything, any, eh, you know. And it’s similar to what’s in the Ten Commandments, which says do not create ingraven images. So, so really the ruling came from that, then the scholars extended it to saying that we should prohibit all images of all prophets and God. 1,400 years, we have not been creating images of prophets or God… It did not start in the Qur’an. It is a prophetic saying.

Cuomo asked Khan, “And is it taught that you’re supposed to kill people who do it?” Khan replied: “No. It’s actually, the Qur’an actually says that if somebody, you know, mocks your religion, you should go, either walk away from them or dialogue with them.”

Khan doesn’t mention that Muhammad said, “Whoever curses a Prophet, kill him,” and the Qur’an says, “He who obeys the Messenger [that is, Muhammad] has obeyed Allah” (4:80). She doesn’t tell CNN viewers that the Qur’an says, “Those who harm Allah and His Messenger, Allah has cursed them in this world and in the Next, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment” (33:57). How will they be cursed in this world? By being killed: “Cursed they will be. Wherever they are found, they are seized and all slain” (33: 61).

And as for “prophetic sayings,” Khan doesn’t mention these, recounted at a Muslim website in Britain:

In a sound hadith the Prophet commanded that Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf be killed. He asked, “Who will deal with Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf? He has harmed Allah and His Messenger.” He sent someone to assassinate him without calling him to Islam, in distinction to other idol-worshippers. The cause of that lay in his causing harm to the Prophet. That indicates that the Prophet had him killed for something other than idol-worship. It was for causing harm. Abu Rafi, who used to harm the Messenger of Allah and work against him, was also killed.

Similarly on the Day of the Conquest, he ordered the killing of Ibn Khatal and his two slavegirls who used to sing his curses on the Prophet.

In another hadith about a man who used to curse the Prophet, the Prophet said, “Who will save me from my enemy?” Khalid said, “I will,” so the Prophet sent him out and he killed him.

Saud Anwar, the mayor of South Windsor, Connecticut, answered a question about violence in the Qur’an by saying, “If you look at the Qur’an in the broader sense, 114 times it’s mentioned in the Qur’an that God is the most gracious and most merciful.” Camerota agreed that jihadis had “bastardized” Qur’anic teaching and gently challenged Anwar’s claim by noting that they justified their actions by citing the Qur’anic passage that directs Muslims to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them” (9:5).

Khan responded to this not by explaining this passage but by saying, “Nothing justifies killing, because in Islam, Islam is a religion of law and there is due process.” When Cuomo cut in, “But it’s a literal interpretation,” Khan pressed on with more nonsense:

It’s a literal interpretation, but it’s also contextual, so it may have happened in a specific incident where the prophet was, was being attacked, so he was given permission to fight those particular people. However, there are rules of engaging people in combat. And the rule is you do not kill non-combatants, you do not kill innocent people, you do not destroy property, you do not commit rape, you do not terrorize people and you do not declare war, without – you actually declare war, you do not do, you know, clandestine type of operations. So they’re breaking all the rules of warfare. And so even though the Qur’an gives permission for self-defense and fighting your enemies, it does not say that you have to take matters into your own hands. And surely you have to follow the rulings that the scholars have established for the last 1,400 years. Imagine if we didn’t have these rulings, we would have had mayhem all these years.

We have had mayhem all these years, but Khan is counting on CNN viewers not knowing Islam’s 1,400-year history of genocide, land appropriations, cultural annihilation, and enslavement. Her claims in this are false or deceptive: Islam does forbid killing innocent people, but many Muslim scholars say no non-Muslim is innocent. Rape is not forbidden when it comes to infidel women captured in battle: the Qur’an explicitly gives Muslim men permission to have sex with their wives and the “captives your right hands possess” – that is, sex slaves captured in jihad warfare (see Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50). This Islamic State is following the rulings that Islamic scholars have established for 1,400 years. That’s the problem.

But the clueless Camerota tells Daisy: “So interesting to hear what the Qur’an really says and means rather than what the terrorists claim it does.”

Daisy Khan is a perennial favorite of the media — she is perceived as a modern moderate. And yet in a glowing puff piece in MORE magazine in January 2011, Khan’s mask momentarily slipped:

But not every opinion of the Shura Council or its members reflects Khan’s views. At the council’s October meeting at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, she seemed distracted—texting, reading e-mails, taking cell phone calls—as 18 women sat around a table in an oak-paneled room for nearly 10 hours straight, parsing the Koran in excruciating detail. Then the result of a recent poll of WISE’s members on the subject of female genital cutting was announced. The question was, “Is cutting harmful to women?” Khan was standing when she heard that four women had responded no… “Who are those four?” she asked sharply, and then, seeing the discomfort on several women’s faces, she smiled, rolled her eyes and shrugged.

She shrugged at clitoridectomies (female genital cutting)? As soon as she saw the “discomfort” on the faces of women who had approved of this barbaric practice, she shrugged it off?

This is the Muslim “expert” CNN brings in to explain it all for you. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS et al never invite scholars critical of Islam or counter jihad activists to educate or elucidate. But no matter how much of this shameless propaganda CNN and the rest of the media pump out, they won’t be able to obscure the grim reality of Islamic jihad. Americans are waking up.

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Protest against appearance of Alan Dershowitz at Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee

Ironically, the presentation sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee on February 25, 2015, on the topic of “Global Anti-Semitism” features Alan Dershowitz, who is currently generating intense anti-Semitism relative to various Florida lawsuits centered around his relationship with convicted serial child predator, Jeffrey Epstein, whom Dershowitz chose to represent and for whom Dershowitz zealously advocated for a notoriously-light sentence.

Epstein rap sheet

For a larger view click on the image.

Per said sentence, Epstein, identified by the FBI as having trafficked at least 40 minor girls in Florida and elsewhere for sexual purposes, served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a jail, not prison, separated from the other inmates, with work-release 16 hours per day, six days per week.

… according to Dershowitz’s own public statements, Dershowitz was responsible for negotiating Epstein’s secret deal with the federal government which afforded protection not only to Epstein but to various of his associates as well … [including] Dershowitz [who is alleged] had knowledge of and participation in Epstein’s criminal conduct [1] against scores of minor children over the course of years.

In response to the filing of a pleading by the victims specifically identifying Dershowitz as a participant in criminal conduct with Epstein, Dershowitz “initiated a massive public media assault on the reputation and character of”[2] the two attorneys representing some of Epstein’s victims. Said attorneys are, in fact, a former United States federal judge and a former trial attorney at the Broward County State Attorney’s Office responsible for the prosecution of violent crimes.

In Vanity Fair (January 2005), Dershowitz is quoted, “I’m on my 20th book …. The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey,”[3] with whom Dershowitz traveled on Epstein’s private plane (according to flight logs from Epstein’s pilot) on several occasions and with whom Dershowitz was present “at Epstein’s house at times when underage females were there being molested by Epstein,”[4] according to the sworn testimony of Epstein’s housekeeper, Alfredo Rodriguez.

How has Alan Dershowitz generated a wave of anti-Semitism?

He has zealously defended a serial predator of children. He has gained a notoriously-light sentence for a serial predator, who sadly is Jewish. He has engendered lawsuits against him for defamation of characters of those attorneys representing the victims of sexual trafficking. He has traveled with and stayed with a fellow Jew who preyed upon scores of children for years on a daily basis. He defends Israel with the same intensity that he defends a sex trafficker of children, which discredits the State of Israel and the Jewish People.

Having worked for years with victims of childhood sexual abuse, I am painfully cognizant of the fact that the public detests Jewish predators and sometimes carries over that deep animosity to the Jewish People in general. At this time of swelling anti-Semitism, in particular, any acquiescence of Jewish organizations to the crimes of sexual trafficking of children is interpreted as proof of Jewish complicity in heinous crimes and/or Jewish control of this global industry.

I have worked on many cases of sexual exploitation of children, including dozens of Jewish minors, in which the sordid criminal facts involving Jewish predators were known to physicians, psychiatrists, clergymen, teachers, school principals, neighbors of the victims, reporters, hospital staff, and a host of other professionals before prosecutions were made or they received media attention, as in Penn State. Whenever Jews are involved as predators, the reputation and safety of the Jewish People are at stake.

Some are urging the Jewish Federation cancel the presentation by Alan Dershowitz, who, at the bare minimum, has zealously protected the rights of his long-time friend, a trafficker of children, at the expense of his victims, whose traumas will last forever.

Some believe Dershowitz cannot combat anti-Semitism when he himself has caused it to exacerbate, and he cannot defend Israel when he himself has refused to defend the rights of trafficked children. The contradictions to some are glaring and intolerable.

Nick Stuart · Top Commenter · SFSU, From Huffington Post, January 3, 2015:

“Surely one of the most sleazy characters in recent history, Dershowitz cannot be believed in anything he says. And Jeffery Epstein is a real slime as well.”

REFERENCES:

[1] Complaint, Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell vs. Alan M. Dershowitz, Circuit Court for Broward County, Florida, January 6, 2015, pp. 3-4.
[2] Ibid, p. 3.
[3] Epstein vs. Edwards, Exhibit C, Undisputed Statement of Facts, April 8, 2011, p. 26.
[4] Ibid, p. 26.

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Dozens of VIP Pedophile Friends of Mega-Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Attorney and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz is courtesy of CNSNews.com (AP File Photo).