Tents, Homelessness, and Misery: 9 Things I Saw in San Francisco

/in , , , , , , , /by

SAN FRANCISCO—Call me a poop skeptic.

After years of reading about the alleged horrors of San Francisco, I decided I wanted to see for myself if the City by the Bay was really in such dire conditions.

I’d grown up 30 miles south of San Francisco, occasionally popping in for field trips or shopping or sightseeing. Sure, the city had always had homeless people, but the conditions I read about—needles everywhere, “poop maps” documenting the location of human feces—seemed absurd.

How bad could it actually be in one of America’s most famous cities?

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Could one of the most famously liberal cities in the nation have disintegrated into disaster?

In 2009, I’d moved away from California. In the decade and change since, San Francisco has undergone a radical transformation. A new wave of top Silicon Valley companies—Twitter, Uber, Facebook—opened headquarters or offices in the city. And while San Francisco hadn’t ever been inexpensive, housing costs soared, with the median housing price more than doubling since 2010.

The 49ers, a football team, retained “San Francisco” in their name, but left famed Candlestick Park, now demolished, for Santa Clara, a California town south and in the middle of Silicon Valley—although San Francisco did gain the Golden State Warriors, a basketball team.

Uber and Lyft, which first came to San Francisco in 2010, now dominate ride-sharing services, their drivers swooping up and down the city’s famous hills.

Yet one change hadn’t occurred: The city has proudly remained a liberal bastion.

Home to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, San Francisco is reliably and overwhelmingly blue in every election (with perhaps a few votes going to the Green Party).

In just the past year, the city’s Board of Supervisors declared the National Rifle Association to be a “domestic terrorist organization,” and the school board voted first to paint over, and then to hide, a mural of George Washington in one of the city’s high schools—a mural, incidentally, painted by a leftist who strove to show both Washington’s greatness and flaws.

Such actions are just par for the course for San Francisco, a city of more than 884,000 that in the past decade also banned fast-food restaurants from including toys with most children’s meals; prohibited city-funded travel by local employees to 22 pro-life states; raised the minimum wage from $9.79 to $15.59 an hour; and, after banning plastic bags in 2007, first set a 10-cent fee for each nonreusable bag at stores, and then a 25-cent fee per bag.

Yes, leftist insanity has long been the norm for San Francisco. But the liberal would-be-utopia had once been seen as a great city, not a filthy environment full of struggling people.

In a tweet in December, President Donald Trump wrote: “Nancy Pelosi’s district in California has rapidly become one of the worst anywhere in the U.S. when it come[s] to the homeless and crime. It has gotten so bad, so fast.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1210183406904074240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1210183406904074240&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailysignal.com%2F2020%2F01%2F13%2Ftents-homeless-and-misery-9-things-i-saw-in-san-francisco%2F

Showing it wasn’t just some “right-wing conspiracy” that San Francisco was falling apart, Oracle, one of the huge tech companies in the region, announced in December that its annual OpenWorld conference was going to Las Vegas for the next three years—costing San Francisco an estimated $64 million in potential revenue. An email from the San Francisco Travel Association, obtained by CNBC, mentioned “poor street conditions” as a factor.

So two days before Christmas, I left my parents’ house and made my way over to San Francisco.

I wanted to see for myself what conditions were really like. Was the middle class being driven away? Was the city as liberal as its politicians suggested? How many people were living on the streets?

Twenty-two thousand steps and four Uber and Lyft drives later, here’s what I saw.

1. Tents on Sidewalks

Before arriving in the city, I’d read that the Tenderloin neighborhood—just blocks from a major mall and retail area—is one of the worst.

Sure enough, as soon as I drift away from the retail and go a couple blocks into the Tenderloin, things get, well, smelly.

(Photos: Katrina Trinko/The Daily Signal)

To my surprise, there are tents everywhere in the neighborhood. Years ago, during the Occupy Wall Street movement, I’d visited an Occupy encampment in Boston.

This seemed similar, although there is one key difference. In Boston, the tents were set up in a park. In San Francisco, the tents are openly obstructing the sidewalk—and not just on one block.

In the course of my day, I see several blocks like this clustered in the Tenderloin neighborhood and vicinity.

Some are just a block or two away from a police station. San Francisco’s new district attorney, Chesa Boudin, told the ACLU in a candidate questionnaire: “Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc. should not and will not be prosecuted.”

I also notice something that I hadn’t seen much during my years in New York City and Washington, D.C.: homeless women, although far fewer than homeless men.

Nationally, homelessness increased by 2.7% in 2019, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Homelessness in California is at a crisis level,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a formal statement.

Residents of San Francisco likely agree: Three-quarters of respondents to a survey said homelessness in the city was getting worse, and a little over half mentioned it as a top issue, according to a 2019 report from the San Francisco Office of the Controller.

2.  24-Hour Public Restrooms

In 2019, San Francisco decided to try keeping three public restrooms open 24 hours a day in the worst areas. It’s not cheap—to keep them clean, one attendant is present during daytime hours and, presumably for safety, two are present at night.

“History has shown that without attendants, public toilets in some of San Francisco’s most challenging neighborhoods are used for drug activity and prostitution, and become targets of vandalism,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle’s Phil Matier.

Matier also did the math: After looking at the cost of funding the toilets and the amount of times the toilets were used at night, he calculated each restroom use cost the city $28.52.

In addition to three 24/7 toilets, another 21 public toilets are available at certain hours, funded by the city. “The popular program … provides an alternative to using our streets and sidewalks as a toilet,” states the San Francisco Public Works website.

The toilets advertise that people can dispose of needles there, another sign of San Francisco’s relaxed approach to drugs. Thomas Wolf, a former drug addict who lived on the streets of San Francisco for a few months in 2018, is among those now advocating the city change its approach toward drugs.

Wolf “thinks the city is too wedded to harm reduction—making it safer to use drugs—rather than encouraging people to stop using,” the Chronicle reported in December. “He said he was offered free, clean drug paraphernalia by outreach workers, but doesn’t remember ever being offered a treatment bed or even being asked whether he wanted help quitting. Not once.”

Wolf, who has ceased using drugs and now serves on San Francisco’s Street-Level Drug Dealing Task Force and works for the Salvation Army’s Railton Place as a case manager and life skills coach, estimated that 90% of the homeless he lived with in Tenderloin and the adjacent South of Market neighborhood were addicted to drugs or alcohol.

“With harm reduction, the whole point is to use less while respecting your civil liberties,” Wolf told the Chronicle. “When I was out there homeless and leaving my needles in the street and defecating in the street and urinating in the street, was I protecting your civil liberties?”

3. Washing Sidewalks

Walking around the Tenderloin neighborhood in the morning, I encounter workers washing a sidewalk—and asking homeless people to move.

A worker sprays water right up to the brink of a homeless man’s stuff on the sidewalk. The homeless man, who is shoving his belongings into a bag or backpack, starts shouting at the worker, saying (and I’m editing this since we’re a family news outlet), “The f—, man?”

He keeps shouting, bellowing sentiments along the lines of “Who the f— do you think you are, f—ing my stuff, man?” as he continues to pack up.

In early December, the Tenderloin Community Benefit District and San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney announced the beginning of weekly power-washings in the district, instead of monthly.

David Elliott Lewis, a local who is a community organizer, said, per the press release: “Even though seeing human and animal feces on our sidewalks is a common occurrence, I find it upsetting and disturbing every single time.”

According to RentHop.com, “Tenderloin has been on a winning streak for the ‘poopiest neighborhood’ contest for the past three years. The neighborhood saw 8,644.2 animal/human waste incidents per square mile in 2017, 7,722.8 in 2018, and 6,887.9 so far in 2019.”

Washing sidewalks is hardly the only way the city is addressing the crisis. In the past decade, San Francisco has been on a spending spree to help the homeless.

“Between 2011 and 2012, SF spent $157 million on homeless services. By the 2015-2016 fiscal year, it was up to $242 million. In the most recent 2019-2020 budget proposals, the figure hit more than $364 million. But the consensus remains that more is needed,” reports Curbed San Francisco, which estimates the homeless population now could be as high as 17,600.

4. Tourist Areas

What’s going on with the tourist areas, attractions that long have drawn people from around the country and the world to San Francisco’s shores?

“The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay/The glory that was Rome is of another day/I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan/I’m going home to my City by the Bay,” Tony Bennett famously warbled in “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

But local business owners are concerned tourists aren’t so tempted these days to explore what was once dubbed the “Paris of the West.”

For years, Pier 39—a mix of kitschy shops, restaurants, a carousel, and the odd street entertainer—has been a top tourist destination. Now, businesses fret, times are a-changing.

“We saw a pretty sharp decline since [2016-2017],” Brian Hayes, who owns seven shops and kiosks on the pier, told ABC7 (KGO-TV). “A lot of it is attributed to the homeless.”

“I know myself I’ll go on vacation, I’ll spend more money, but I have to have a good experience and I don’t want to have to look at the homeless and I don’t want to have to see needles on the ground and human feces. It’s not where you want to go on vacation,” Sandra Fletcher, president of Simco Restaurants, which owns five restaurants on the pier and also is facing more trouble drumming up business, told ABC7.

The day I am there, Pier 39 appears to have its usual hustle and bustle. A pack of people gather around an entertainer boasting that he can pull out the balloon he’s swallowed. A kid shrieks on a bungee flying ride.

In a store that sells products only for left-handed people, customers browse. The women’s restroom is decently clean, given that it’s a free public one in a high-traffic area.

A little outside Pier 39, I see a man in a wheelchair gliding along, plaintively asking people if they could help him out. He wears a 49ers cap and a red scarf and a checked sports coat, which I hope keeps him warm in this neighborhood right on the water.

In the few blocks between the Pier and Fisherman’s Wharf—another frequent tourist stop, essentially a line of bayside restaurants and food counters selling seafood—I notice one man sleeping on the ground.

In the area around Fisherman’s Wharf, souvenir shops sell swag and gifts that capitalize on the city’s liberal reputation:

I also browse Union Square, rimmed by some of the top shopping destinations of San Francisco: a gigantic, eight-story Macy’s, a Saks Fifth Avenue boasting of carrying “faux fur” in one of its windows, a Tiffany’s with sparkling jewelry in its whimsical Christmas displays, and a sleek Apple Store. A Christmas tree is lit in the square, and an ice skating rink is open for Californians wistfully wanting to capture some taste of a white Christmas.

About a week before my visit, Union Square was where San Francisco strained to restore its reputation. On the heels of the news of the Oracle convention’s move to Vegas, Mayor London Breed declared that San Francisco is a “world class city” and pledged further steps to address homelessness.

Yet as the Chronicle’s Matier noted, Breed’s comments in Union Square came at the same time that “an image of a man with his pants around his knees defecating in a [San Francisco] Safeway aisle was rocketing around the internet and TV.”

For San Francisco, the Oracle convention wasn’t even the first blow. In 2018, tourism and convention bureau SF Travel announced that a medical association, never named, was looking for another location for its conferences after 2023, despite holding the gatherings in the city since the 1980s.

“Postconvention surveys showed their members were afraid to walk amid the open drug use, threatening behavior and mental illness that are common on the streets,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

I see a couple of homeless people around Union Square, but nothing unusual for an urban area. The Union Square neighborhood effectively borders the Tenderloin, however, meaning a confused tourist could easily end up there.

5. A Church for the Homeless

At lunchtime, I pop into a church—one with the glorious architecture, high ceilings, and impressive art characteristic of so many older Catholic churches in the United States.

As the church’s bells chime, the sound of a vigorous snorer fills the lulls in between.

St. Boniface Church, in the Tenderloin neighborhood, allows the homeless to sleep in the pews every weekday through a nonprofit program called the Gubbio Project.

Around since the 1860s, the parish originally was the religious home of Germans in the city. The current church was built in 1902, and although it escaped the 1906 earthquake, it was ravaged by the subsequent fires. Rebuilding was completed in 1908.

“The Gubbio Project uses the back two-thirds of the sanctuary; the church uses the front one-third to celebrate the daily Mass,” the program states on its website. “This sends a powerful message to our unhoused neighbors—they are in essence part of the community, not to be kicked out when those with homes come in to worship. It also sends a message to those attending Mass—the community includes the tired, the poor, those with mental health issues and those who are wet, cold and dirty.”

The day I arrive at St. Boniface’s, the front of the church glitters with Christmas decorations.

During the Communion service—there isn’t a Mass that day—the church is mostly quiet. During one brief moment, someone starts babbling, only to be told to be quiet by others.  When I look back, I don’t see any of the homeless people actively participating in the religious rites.

After the service, I explore the rest of the church. Most of the wooden pews—with no padding for comfort—are occupied by a sleeping person. Three people are lying on the floor in the back.

I speak briefly to Michael Bonner, a new employee of the Gubbio Project. When I ask Bonner how the homeless can be helped and what should be done, he speaks of a lack of motivation, of people “going down a path of not caring anymore” instead of having “a fire burning in you.”

Bonner talks about the need for a work ethic, and how it’s too simplistic to say the homeless problem is an effect of the city’s expensive housing. But he’s also adamant that people need help: “We just can’t give up on the willing,” he says.

I ask him if the homeless people he encounters have loved ones or families who could help. Bonner says most of them are “probably embarrassed to go home” because “you don’t want to hear it from your family anymore” after presumably failing in previous tries to get off the streets.

6.  No Place for the Middle Class

One of the big tensions in San Francisco—and in the wider Bay Area region—in recent years has been the perceived gulf between the affluent and everybody else. As my colleague Jarrett Stepman has chronicled, California increasingly is becoming a place for the poor and the rich, not the middle class.

So out of curiosity, I walk over to Twitter’s headquarters, just a few blocks away from St. Boniface’s, passing City Hall.  Twitter is just one of several companies—others include Salesforce, Facebook, Square, and Uber—that have come to San Francisco in recent years.

No doubt the city has seen a business boom: “Citywide, the unemployment rate fell from 9% in 2011 to 2.6% this year, and the number of jobs grew from 543,600 in 2011 to an estimated 730,900 last year, according to state data,” reports the Chronicle.

The area around Twitter is quiet the day I am there, and there is no sign of anyone living—or begging—on the streets. Beneath Twitter’s headquarters is a bougie food hall and a grocery store that, incredibly, makes Whole Foods seem like an affordable option.

In the food hall, I stop for lunch at The Organic Coup—which was basically everything you’d expect from a shop in a  Francisco food hall. It brands itself as the first “organic fast food restaurant” and urges me to “taste the revolution.”

Apparently, fast-food prices don’t apply in the revolutionary era: My lunch of chicken strips and tater tots, and nary a drink, costs $12.81.

However, the food hall offers plenty of options beyond organic tater tots, including—I kid you not—caviar.

One of my Lyft drivers, whose name I’m not using because I didn’t get his permission to quote him on the record, calls San Francisco a “ridiculous city.”

As we pass a gas station, where regular gas is going for $3.99 a gallon, he notes in frustration that gas where I live is probably significantly cheaper.

My Lyft driver also complains that affordable housing is a joke, saying it means something like a $900,000 for a two-bedroom condo instead of a million. The driver, who moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco 10 years ago, blames San Francisco residents for not allowing more housing, noting it had created a situation where people made a fortune on their own homes’ going up in value but where their children could not afford to buy a home and stay.

The Lyft driver’s attitude isn’t an anomaly: A 2019 survey conducted by the controller’s office found that 35% of respondents were somewhat or very likely to leave the city in the next three years, including 48% of those 35 or younger.

Although the city notes that the 35% number is in line with statistics for the past 14 years, data suggests people aren’t merely talking about leaving the city. According to real estate firm Redfin, San Francisco was second only to New York City among American cities with the dubious distinction of losing the most residents in the third quarter of 2019, the most recent period tracked.

And my driver isn’t wrong to be concerned about housing prices. “In 2010, the median sale price for a single-family house in SF came in at $751,000 … But by October of 2019, the California Association of Realtors estimated that a median-priced SF house sold for $1.65 million, more than double the value of a home the same time ten years ago,” reports Curbed SF.

7.  Life on the Sidewalk

Toward the end of the day, I speak to Anthony Rodriguez, who is sitting on a box next to a man smoking in a tent. Next to the tent is a sofa.

Neither Rodriguez nor the tent man, who doesn’t want to be quoted, knows where the sofa originated.

Rodriguez is from Oakland, a city across the Bay, but says he’s been in San Francisco for about a month.

“That’s one thing about San Francisco,” he observes. “You won’t starve.”

The 51-year-old says he’s been homeless since 2015, when his mother died, and that he had been homeless at times prior to that as well.

Rodriguez tells me a complicated story I have trouble following—and entirely believing—about being discharged from a hospital too soon for an injury he incurred on his knee.

“I started drinking again because it’s cold out,” he mentions.

Overall, he likes San Francisco, especially because he meets so many people.

“If I’m lonely and sad, I always like to come out here,” Rodriguez, who doesn’t want his photo taken, tells me.

He says he has seven children, and that he’s outlived two of his ex-wives. It doesn’t appear that he is in regular touch with any family now.

The company he finds in San Francisco “fills a void for me,” he says, noting that he’s less depressed here.

“The police will wake you up,” Rodriguez says, but adds that it’s usually OK to just go across the street when that happens.

8. Poop and Needles

So am I still a poop skeptic?

After walking all over the city, I’ve seen only one instance of poop (in the Tenderloin neighborhood) and one possible needle (I wasn’t anxious to get close enough to verify)—despite the fact that I kept diligently studying the sidewalk to see if I would spot either feces or needles.

My anonymous Lyft driver, however, says that he regularly sees people shooting up heroin, and notes you can spot the dealers by noticing who has backpacks.

“In San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ producers filmed drug dealers operating in broad daylight. In the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, where many apartments rent for nearly $4,000 a month, the sidewalks were lined with used syringes,” writes Fox News’ Charles Couger.

And in the course of my research, I encounter Twitter accounts that portray a dirtier reality than what I happened to observe:

At the end of the day, the increased power-washing and presence of public restrooms show the city has a real problem with these issues. But if you’re thinking about a trip to San Francisco, I wouldn’t skip it on account of these matters—just make sure you know where the bad neighborhoods are, and be sure to avoid them if you’re concerned.

9.  Misery

In the weeks since I visited San Francisco and started writing this article, I’ve caught myself often thinking about the homeless people I saw—from the man who was barefoot on the street in the Mission District, to those I saw on the sidewalks from my passing car, to the man rushing to pack up his belongings as a worker sprayed the sidewalk near him.

I don’t pretend to know the exact policy solution that will “solve” homelessness—although I hope to do further reporting and interviews this year at The Daily Signal to talk to experts who have insightful ideas on ways to help.

But any visitor to San Francisco can tell the current situation isn’t working—for tourists, for residents, and perhaps most importantly, for the homeless themselves.

No doubt, mental health and addiction, perhaps both in many or most cases, make helping the homeless while respecting individual rights uniquely challenging.

But as clichéd as the term is, it’s genuinely heartbreaking to walk through blocks of people, spending their lives on the streets, often seemingly in a drugged haze—and sometimes passed out entirely.

I can’t imagine tents provide much shelter against the chilly, Bay-driven winds of San Francisco, or that anyone who feels driven to defecate on the street is truly in his right mind.

Seeing this at Christmastime—when most of the country was on the cusp of days of joyful celebrations, ample family time, presents galore, and gourmet meals—was especially upsetting.

The status quo in San Francisco has a real human cost.

The left long has prided itself on having more compassion for, and solutions for, the poorest Americans than the right does.

But if one thing is clear when walking around San Francisco, it’s that this liberal bastion has absolutely failed some Americans who are struggling the hardest right now.

All photos in this article were taken by the author. In a few photos, faces have been blurred to respect privacy.

COLUMN BY

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast. Send an email to Katrina. Twitter: @KatrinaTrinko.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Podcast: What It’s Like on the Streets of San Francisco

Jobs, Family, Future: Gov. Kristi Noem Shares What’s on the Mind of America’s Heartland

California Governor’s Proposed Budget Shows Just How Clueless He Is

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Terminating Terrorists and Assessing Assassinations

/in , , , /by

Whatever the operational efficacy of targeted assassinations may be—or not be—the conscience of every decent individual should rebel at the thought that arch-purveyors of terror should be permitted to pursue their deadly profession with impunity

“Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin” – attributed to Aesop, Greek fabulist (circa 620 BCE – circa 584 BC).

Last week’s assassination of the commander of the Quds brigades, the overseas arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) thrust the topic of targeted killings of high-ranking adversaries dramatically to the center of international debate—and ignited the dispute over their use as an instrument of policy, both in terms of their moral justification and their operational efficacy.

Targeted assassinations: A brief overview

Broadly defined, “targeted killing” is a form of assassination carried out by governments against their perceived enemies, typically beyond the borders of their own countries—either for what they are about to perpetrate in the future or what they have perpetrated in the past.

Such targeted killing operations and their underlying rationale span the divide between the view of terrorism as a crime, on the one hand; and the view of terrorism as an act of war on the other. In broad brush strokes, when pursuing a policy of law enforcement, governments are held to punish persons for their individual guilt that must be proven in a court of law, where defendants enjoy the protections of due process. However, when engaged in war, governments often claim the need to suspend certain peacetime constraints on the use of deadly force. Accordingly, enemy combatants may be targeted and killed not because they can be legally proven to be guilty of a specific offense, but because they are potentially lethal agents of an enemy entity. No prior warning is necessary, no attempt to arrest or capture is required.

Targeted assassinations have been used repeatedly by both Israel and the United States (as well as other countries) beyond their borders to eliminate individuals deemed to comprise a threat to the security of the nation or to the safety of their citizens—or for retribution for inflicting harm on national security or civilian safety.

Targeted assassination: Punitive or preemptive?

It would seem that Israel and the US have employed targeted assassination both to preempt planned enemy attacks that are about to be carried out and to punish past ones that have already been committed.

Thus, although he was (unsuccessfully) pursued by the Clinton administration as early as 1998, for the US, the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 was probably far more punitive (for his role in the 9/11 atrocities in 2001), than preemptive—to forestall imminent future attacks by the founder of al-Qaeda. By contrast, the targeted assassination of Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 was—despite the ISIS leader’s grisly record of murder and mayhem—largely preemptive. Indeed, author of “ISIS: A History”, Prof. Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, who has followed the organization since its inception, asserts: “The killing of al-Baghdadi is a preemptive move that throws ISIS onto the defensive and complicates its efforts to recover…”

Preemption was also advanced as the motivation for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Thus, a statement issued by the Department of Defense, stipulated: “ General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region…This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

Punitive or preemptive? (cont.)

Israel, too has engaged in targeted killing across the globe, for motives both preemptive and punitive.

Thus, in the early 1960s, Israel initiated a campaign of assassination and intimidation against German scientists, engaged to work on the development of a rocket project for Nasser’s Egypt. The campaign, named Operation Damocles, was instrumental in the rocket program being aborted.

Operation Wrath of God was very different, being launched ostensibly to avenge the Munich massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics by the Black September terror organization and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). However, there are claims that the operation, which was conducted from of 1972 to 1988, was also intended to deter future terror attacks—by conveying to potential attackers what their fate would be.

But not only terrorists have been in Israeli sights.Since Operation Damocles, Israel has allegedly targeted scientists and engineers involved in weapons developments for the enemy – whether this included the manufacture of a “supergun” for Saddam Hussein, the Iranian nuclear program or the production of drones for Hamas.

The 1988 assassination in Belgium of Canadian engineer, Gerald Bull, one of the world’s leading artillery  experts, who was working with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, on Project Babylon to develop a massive “supergun” with a planned range of 750 km., has been persistently attributed to Israel. The project was never implemented but some components for the formidable weapon were delivered to Iraq and others intercepted on route to Iraq.

Between 2010—2012, several scientists and engineers working on Iran’s nuclear program were killed, usually by an explosive device attached to their cars, in incidents ascribed to Israel.

More recently, Israel has reportedly targeted Mohamed Zouari in Tunis and Fadi al-Batsh in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who were said to be working on drone development for Hamas and Hezbollah.

 Israeli targeted killings: A brief –and abbreviated—review

Since the 1950s, Israel has engaged in targeted killings of individuals considered to be (or to have been) an unacceptable menace to its security or to the lives of its citizens. The following is a brief—and admittedly arbitrarily abbreviated—list of some of the more noteworthy cases, generally thought to have been executed (no pun intended) by Israel.On July 27, 1979, Zuheir Mohsein  leader of the pro-Syrian a-Sa’iqa faction of the PLO was shot and killed as he left a casino in Cannes.

On April 16, 1988, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Yassir Arafat’s deputy, was assassinated in his home in Tunis by a team of Israeli commandos (led by Moshe “Bogey” Yaalon, -later Chief-of-Staff and Defense Minister), which landed from the sea on a nearby beach.

On February 16, 1992, Abbas al Moussawi, co-founder and Secretary General of Hezbollah, was killed by missiles fired by Israeli helicopters in southern Lebanon. His wife, his five-year-old son, and four others also died in the attack. Barely a month later, (March 17,1992), the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was attacked in retaliation, resulting in the death of almost 30 civilians, with over 240 injured. Moussawi was swiftly succeeded as Secretary-General of Hezbollah by Hassan Nasrallah.

On October 26, 1995, Fathi Shaqaqi co-founder and Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ) was shot and killed in front of his hotel in Malta. He had been travelling under a false identity to his home in Damascus, on his way back from Tripoli after visiting then-Libyan leader, the late Muammar Gaddafi, who promised to help finance Shaqaqi’s organization.

On August 27, 2001, Abu Ali Mustafa (a.k.a .Mustafa Ali Zibri), the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was killed by an Israeli air strike while he was sitting at his office desk in Ramallah.

Israeli targeted killings: A brief review (cont.)

On March 22, 2004, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas, and spiritual leader of the organization, was killed outside a mosque after morning prayers by an Israeli airstrike. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release, stating that: “Yassin, who was the dominant authority of the Hamas leadership, which was directly involved in planning, orchestrating and launching terror attacks carried out by the organization… was personally responsible for numerous murderous terror attacks, resulting in the deaths of many civilians, both Israeli and foreign…”

On February 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyeh (Al-Hajj Radwan), number two in Hezbollah‘s leadership, was killed by a car bomb blast in a neighborhood of Damascus, in what was reported to be a joint CIA-Mossad operation. Described as “a brilliant military tactician and very elusive”, Mughniyeh, who was on the FBI’s “most wanted terrorist” list, is believed to have been Hezbollah’s Chief of Staff and to have overseen Hezbollah’s military, intelligence, and security apparatus. In 2015, his son Jihad Mughniyeh, himself a prominent member of Hezbollah, was killed in an airstrike attributed to Israel that also killed another five Hezbollah militants, and a general in the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi.

On November 14, 2012, Ahmed al-Jabari ( Abu Mohammad), second-in-command of the Hamas military wing and widely credited as the leader of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, was killed by an Israeli drone strike while driving through Gaza City.

On November 12, 2019, Baha Abu al-Ata, a prominent leader of Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (PIJ), was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike. According to the IDF, it carried out the strike on al-Ata as he was planning an “imminent” attack on Israel—at Iran’s behest.

Israeli targeted killings: Assessing the efficacy

How effective have targeted killings been as an instrument of policy for Israel?

There is no unequivocal answer to this question. Indeed, the record is, at best, ambivalent. Operation Damocles seems to have contributed to the termination of Nasser’s attempt to establish domestic rocket production in Egypt, but it did not prevent Cairo from procuring considerable missile capability from external sources including North Korea.

Clearly, the numerous assassinations of prominent members of Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ have not impeded their development, although the elimination of Shaqaqi in Malta did induce a significant weakening of the organization for some time. However, PIJ is still active today and continues to carry out numerous terror operations.

The assassination of Hezbollah leader, Moussawi, raises particularly challenging questions, especially in view of the ascendance of his charismatic successor and the horrendous results of the reprisal attack on the embassy in Buenos Aires.

Indeed, arguably the only case where a single targeting killing appears to have brought about the end of a terror organization is that of Zuheir Mohsen and the a-Saiqa movement which he headed. Once the second largest faction in the PLO after Fatah, since the demise of Mohsen, a-Saiqa has descended into insignificance and irrelevance.

Overall, however, it does appear that, unless targeted assassinations are part of a sustained, ongoing policy of lethal pursuit of adversaries, the effect of a “stand alone” assassination is, at best, short-lived.

The imponderable “What ifs”

Of course, one of the imponderable questions is that of what would have occurred had targeted assassinations not been undertaken.

After all, one thing is certain. If Israel’s enemies know that they are in danger of losing their lives, their modus operandi will inevitably be more constrained, cumbersome and costly than if they could operate unperturbed, secure in the knowledge that their personal safety was not at risk. With the threat of potential targeted assassination hovering over them, the resources, that need be devoted to their own security, may be considerable and hamper the freedom they might otherwise have.

There is, of course, one other consideration that militates strongly in favor of targeted assassinations. After all, whatever the operational efficacy of targeted assassinations may be—or not be—the conscience of every decent individual should rebel at the thought that arch-purveyors of terror should be permitted to pursue their deadly vocation with impunity.

Indeed, as Pulitzer Prize winner, Bret Stephens recently wrote in the New York Times:

“No U.S. president [or Israeli Prime Minister – MS]…should ever convey to an enemy the impression it can plot attacks against Americans [or Israelis – MS] with impunity. To do otherwise is to invite worse.”

Indeed it is!!

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran Sentenced Us to Death. Here’s How Iranians Really View the Regime.

Islam: A Plague Upon Humanity

/in , , , /by

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, most Americans did not have any understanding as to what Islam was. The attacks on September 11, 2001 opened the eyes of many people to the reality that Islam was a widespread plague upon humanity and responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Islam and its variants mean, in practice, bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal actions, forced ‘hijabs,” fatal deportations, extrajudicial executions, show trials, and genocide

This ideology of terror does not allow Muslims to leave Islam. It does not allow people of other faiths to exercise their religions freely, let alone preach them freely. Islam does not recognize equal human rights for those who are not Muslims nor does it recognize equality for women. Islam does not allow freedom of thought let alone freedom of speech.

Currently, Islam is on the march in much of the Western world, and it aims to destroy anything and anyone that stands in its way. Ironically, many Europeans have allowed them to take advantage of democracy without a fight. In addition, Islam apologists call those who warn of the threat of Islam are attacked and stigmatized as hatemongers and Islamophobe, even though a phobia is a baseless irrational fear.

If by now we have not come to the conclusion that Islam is not a religion but a militant, political and violent cult created by one man and is the greatest threat to the human race, there is no hope for humanity to survive.

Recall that it took only 19 of these killers to launch the aerial mass murder of 9/11 that killed almost 3,000 people, shattered our open trusting way of life, and cost us trillions of dollars. Unfortunately, we have not learned anything from the 9/11 attacks but instead, act as if we are suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

What is Islam

Islam is a creed of an ignorant people in a primitive and barbaric Arabian Peninsula. It is fixated in time and place; it harbors the ambition of taking the 21st century world back 14 centuries and ruling it by its dogma of violence, intolerance, injustice and death. Yet, Islam is not only an obsolete vestige of a defunct era, but itself is an infinitely fractured belief that can hardly put its own home in order. The numerous Islamic sects are at each other’s throats; sub-sects and schools despise one another as much as they hate non-Muslims. Hatred, not love, drives Islam.

Every American should be ashamed of any elected officials anywhere when they call Islam a “religion of peace.” Those officials are appeasing, if not an outright lying.  We, the people, elect our leaders, and we hold them accountable to be honorable and faithful to their oath of office.  When the people’s representatives downplay the deadliest threat to everything we cherish, they not only legitimize Islam, but also confuse the rest of the uninformed population with a false belief and information.  Therefore, politicians, while using political correctness to advance their own lofty agenda, expedite the demise of our civilization.

I see America and even Canada, in thirty years or so, becoming a war zone if we do not stop Islamic ideology from advancing and identify it for what it truly is.  If we ignore these warnings, the future of America will not be so bright and ultimately, like Persia, will suffer a slow death.  This is historical fact, not fiction.  I have seen what Islam has done to the country of my birth.

Freedom is fragile.  Anything that protects freedom can also become an Achilles heel for those blessed with freedom.  This is because freedom always entails the unfortunate ability to use one’s rights to destroy the freedoms and rights of others.  People can use the protections afforded them by the Constitution to inflict great harm to those who live within the law.  We know that this is the main argument against the Second Amendment.

Constitution

In the interest of impartiality, the authors of the Constitution did not define what constitutes a religion.  Presently, a plethora of sects, cults, and orders, all claiming to be religion, cover the length and the breadth of the land. So long as these “religions” minister to the legitimate spiritual needs of their congregations without threatening the rights of others, there is no reason for concern.  However, when one or more of these claimants strive to undermine the very Constitution that protects them in order to impose their belief and way of life, serious problems arise and It must be stopped.

© All rights reserved.

National Slavery and Human Trafficking Month: What You Need to Know

/in , , , , , , /by

By Patrina Mosley, FRC’s Director of Life, Culture, and Women’s Advocacy

For the 11th straight year, January has been declared National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Through a presidential proclamation issued on December 31, President Trump intends to raise awareness about the estimated 24.9 million adults and children who “are trapped in a form of modern slavery around the world, including in the United States,” and to prevent the future trafficking of many more people who may be vulnerable. As we enter January 2020, National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month is an opportunity for Americans to learn about the human rights violations happening all around them — even in plain sight.

As President Trump declared in his official proclamation, “Human trafficking erodes personal dignity and destroys the moral fabric of society. It is an affront to humanity that tragically reaches all parts of the world, including communities across our nation.”

Human trafficking is a $150 billion global industry, according to the International Labour Organization and is the second-most profitable form of transnational crime after drug trafficking, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has found. As discussed in my previous blog post, “What Most People Don’t Know About Sex Trafficking,” human trafficking can take several forms. But it most frequently takes the form of labor and sex trafficking, and women and girls are the most frequent victims.

Notably, “[T]his year marks nearly 20 years since our nation took decisive steps in the global fight against human trafficking by enacting the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA).” The TVPA has structured U.S. law to recognize human trafficking. Polaris Project summarizes the law’s definition of human trafficking “as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor or services against his or her will. The one exception involves minors and commercial sex. Inducing a minor into commercial sex is considered human trafficking regardless of the presence of force, fraud or coercion.”

Sex trafficking is happening all around us, even out in the open. See here for the most recent press releases from the Department of Justice of the documented sex trafficking incidents being investigated or prosecuted.

It’s a true saying that “Human trafficking is often a hidden crime that knows no boundaries.” Modern-day sex slavery is largely facilitated through the internet, which is why the passage and signing of the FOSTA-SESTA — Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) — was so critical. FOSTA-SESTA makes it easier for individuals to take legal action against those who use websites to facilitate sex trafficking, while also helping victims fight back against websites that profit from their exploitation.

There is an inseparable link between prostitution and sex trafficking. Both are sophisticatedly operated through chat rooms, social media sites, advertisement sites, and the dark web. Today, recruitment and transactions largely take place online through social media accounts, the dark web, and ad listings sites such as Craigslist and Backpage. Before the FBI seizure of Backpage, it was the most popular site for traffickers and pimps to trade off their victims. The average age of recruitment for prostitutes is 14 and the average age of pimps and traffickers are between the ages of 18-34. We have become a generation that are exploiting ourselves.

This May in D.C., as efforts to decriminalize prostitution began to wane, local police made arrests in a major human trafficking case involving teenagers. Terrell Armstead had an Instagram hashtag “#TeamSupreme” for his prostitution business, according to court documents. He used it to advertise a commercial sex business, posting videos and images of money and luxury goods with the caption “Who wants to join TeamSupreme?”

Detectives believe he would direct message teenage girls, telling them they could make $1,000 a day working in strip clubs and arranging sex dates with customers inside…Among the evidence is a text from one of the young women to Armstead saying, “I only made 200 so far.” He replied, “It’s only 9pm, I got faith that you’ll get 800 more at least.”

Around the time of FOSTA-SESTA’s passage, “the FBI seized Backpage.com, the largest child-sex trafficking website in the United States. Nearly three-quarters of the cases submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children relate to ads posted on Backpage.com.” DHS continues “to identify technology that can be quickly deployed and to develop technology that can disrupt human trafficking on a large-scale – ensuring we use modern means to remain ahead of an ever changing criminal landscape.”

They have even put forth their Blue Campaign that is dedicated to educating the public on the signs and dangers of human trafficking. Make yourself aware of the signs and key indicators of human trafficking. This is the first step in identifying victims and getting them help.

Always contact your local police authorities if you see that someone may be in immediate danger. To request help or report suspected human trafficking, you can also call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text HELP to BeFree (233733).

As we mark National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in 2020, let’s commit to stopping all forms of modern-day slavery.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Miami Voice: Evangelicals Speak out in Florida

U.S. Gets off on the Wrong Foote with Zambia

Fighting porn addiction (1)

RELATED VIDEO: Episode Trailer — “The Brain” II Brain, Heart, World Documentary Series, Fight the New Drug

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Is Pelosi Timing the Impeachment Articles’ Release so as to Damage Bernie?

/in , , , , , , /by

The conventional wisdom regarding Nancy Pelosi’s holding of the impeachment articles is that, as someone put it, she’d pulled the pin on the grenade and then didn’t know what to do. Yet even if she has bumbled into her current predicament, which seems likely, is there now some method to her madness? Has she found a way to turn lemons into at least a thimble of lemonade by using the situation to damage the presidential candidate she doesn’t want to see capture the Democratic nomination — burgeoning Bernie Sanders — and help the establishment choice, Joe Biden?

It’s now being pointed out that if Pelosi releases the impeachment articles next week, as is rumored, it will hurt the campaigns of the five senators seeking the Democratic nomination, as they’ll have to leave the campaign trail to be present for the trial. This is at just the time when one of those senators, Sanders, is surging in the polls; is leading in the first contest, Iowa, which is just weeks away; and who now, many Democratic observers say (and often fear), may very well be the nominee.

In reference to this forced campaign-trail absence, “‘Of course it matters,’ [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren said in an interview this week,” reports Politico. “‘We just did a 3½-hour selfie line. Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter to do face to face.’”

Yet the Massachusetts politician and the three other senators who aren’t Bernie are expendable. Warren’s star has been fading, her lies and fanciful policy proposals having caught up to her. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has risen a bit of late, but no one really believes she’ll be the nominee. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) now just serves as a token allowing the Democrats to say, “Look, our field isn’t entirely white!” (an unpardonable sin in their now “woke” party). As for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), well, few people will notice his absence because few even notice his presence.

But Bernie matters. With him hitting his stride and the first contest (on Feb. 3) being significant because it can establish or kill momentum — and with the polls close — his absence is significant.

This has to please the Democratic establishment. Its power brokers hobbled Bernie in 2016, and they surely don’t want him now, either. First, he’s not actually a Democrat but an independent; he’s also anti-establishment, and the Democrat machine wants in the White House a Democrat, and one who’ll play ball. It’s also likely that insiders consider the white and wizened socialist septuagenarian unelectable.

Evidencing this establishment antipathy was a November report stating that Barack Obama had actually vowed to intervene if Sanders seemed poised to be the nominee. In fact, one could just imagine the ex-president on the phone with Pelosi strategizing on how to bury Bernie.

But Pelosi wouldn’t need any prodding. Not only is she a major head on the Democratic-machine hydra who has assuredly pondered how the impeachment articles’ release will affect the primary contest, but there’s another factor:

It’s quite likely that to Pelosi this is not just professional, but personal.

Remember that Bernie is the candidate of Pelosi’s nemesis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In fact, the New York socialist upstart has been campaigning by his side, helping to rally younger voters, and is a major factor in his post-heart-attack campaign’s resuscitation.

Also note that it’s Ocasio-Cortez and her radical crew who pushed Pelosi into going forward with impeachment in the first place, an action the House speaker apparently opposed and which has been disastrous for her party. So she certainly must find the prospect of using Ocasio-Cortez’ tactic of choice (impeachment) to damage her candidate of choice quite poetic — and delicious.

Add to this that Ocasio-Cortez is now refusing to pay her Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dues and has been working to primary establishment Democrats — thus challenging Pelosi’s power — and one can only imagine how much the speaker despises the congresswoman.

Remember, too, that Pelosi is a political operator who’ll “cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding,” as her daughter Alexandra put it last year. I suspect the speaker may believe that releasing the impeachment articles next week sticks a shiv in Bernie’s back — and by proxy in Ocasio-Cortez’ — and will relish every minute of it.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Gab (preferably) or Twitter, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Takeaways from the US Impeachment Imbroglio

Iran publishes film portraying jihad attack on the White House and Capitol, killing Trump, Pompeo and Netanyahu

/in , , , , /by

Iran didn’t indulge these fantasies when Obama was President, right? Wrong.

Iran: Muslim cleric vows to “raise flag of Islam on White House” February 28, 2015

RELATED ARTICLES:

Iran Sentenced Us to Death. Here’s How Iranians Really View the Regime.

Iranians chant “Down with the dictator” after regime admits it downed civilian plane

Illinois: Muslim slashes tires of 19 cars at churches, explains he did it because he doesn’t like Christians

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Ilhan Omar enraged as Minnesota county bans refugee resettlement

/in , , , , /by

“What Beltrami County is doing is denying refugees a chance at a better life,” said Omar. “Native Minnesotans blame the influx of Somalis for spikes in crime. Minnesota statistics released in July 2018 showed that incidents of violent crime including murder decreased compared to 2017, but rape and involuntary sex trafficking rose to the highest rate seen in almost a quarter-century.”

So apparently Minnesotans aren’t allowed to try to provide a better life for themselves and their children. They must instead be wholly concerned with providing Muslim migrants a better life.

“Omar sounds off after Minnesota county bans refugee resettlement – aided by Trump executive order,” by Danielle Wallace, Fox News, January 10, 2020 (thanks to the Geller Report):

After an executive order by President Trump made it possible, a northern Minnesota county on Tuesday night opted to ban the resettlement of refugees within its boundaries, becoming the first in the state and the second in the nation to do so.

The vote at a crowded public meeting in Beltrami County, a sparsely inhabited area surrounding Red Lake, drew condemnation from many Minnesota Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.

The move was viewed by many as a reaction to spiking crime in the state since large numbers of Somali refugees began arriving, according to reports. But supporters say it was simply an exercise of their rights, as facilitated by the president.

“President Trump empowered counties to have a voice in the decision-making process for the federal refugee resettlement program,” state Rep. Matt Grossell, a Republican, told the Duluth News Tribune. “Tonight, Beltrami County exercised that option.”

In a Twitter message Wednesday, Omar – who immigrated to Minnesota from Somalia as a teenager – saw the vote differently.

“Over 20 years ago, the state of Minnesota welcomed my family with open arms. I never would’ve had the opportunities that led me to Congress had I been rejected,” Omar wrote. “What Beltrami County is doing is denying refugees a chance at a better life.”

Omar fled Somalia with her family near the beginning of the country’s civil war in 1991 and lived in a Kenyan refugee camp for four years until immigrating to the U.S. in 1995.

The Trump administration announced in November that resettlement agencies must get written consent from state and local officials in any jurisdiction where they want to help resettle refugees beyond June 2020. The order says the agencies were not working closely enough with local officials on resettling refugees and his administration acted to respect communities that believe they do not have the jobs or other resources to be able to take in refugees. Refugees have the right to move anywhere in the United States after their initial resettlement, but at their own expense.

The vote drew applause from many of the crowd of more than 150 people present at the board chambers in Bemidji, Minn., which is about 140 miles northwest of Duluth. Native Minnesotans blame the influx of Somalis for spikes in crime.

Minnesota statistics released in July 2018 showed that incidents of violent crime including murder decreased compared to 2017, but rape and involuntary sex trafficking rose to the highest rate seen in almost a quarter-century, The Duluth News Tribune reported, citing the state Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The report did not give a definitive reason for the spike….

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Iran publishes film portraying jihad attack on the White House and Capitol, killing Trump, Pompeo and Netanyahu

Iranians chant “Down with the dictator” after regime admits it downed civilian plane

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Texas: Somali Cleric Arrested on Charges of Sexually Assaulting Children

/in , , , , , , , /by

The first question I have is:  Is he a refugee since the vast majority of Somalis in the US are refugees, but I am seeing no definitive answer on that, so I figured this news would be best reported at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ rather than at my other blog, ‘Refugee Resettlement Watch.’ 

Although let me say that there are many of my RRW stories that could just as easily be reported here especially those stories involving the nine anti-Trump federal refugee contractors masquerading as ‘religious’ non-profits! See today’s post at RRW!

From the Houston Chronicle:

Islamic religious teacher arrested for alleged sex crimes against children

The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office has arrested an Islamic religious teacher for alleged sex crimes against children. Mohamed Omar Ali, 59, was charged with one count of sexual assault of a child and three counts of sexual indecency of a child following his Jan. 3 arrest.

At a press conference Monday morning, Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls said that all four victims were children under the age of 14. Ali is a Somalian national who was living in the U.S. illegally, according to Nehls. The bail for Ali was set at $125,000, but due to his illegal status, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement put a detainer on Ali, and he is being held at the Fort Bend County jail, Nehls said.

According to Detective Michael Alexander of the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office, Ali gained access to his alleged victims by gaining the trust of the victim’s families, who invited him into their homes to teach the Quran to their children.

Other Members of the Islamic community are distancing themselves from Ali:

Shariq Abdul Ghani, Director of the Minaret Foundation and representative of the Muslim community, added that Ali was not an employee or official volunteer of any particular mosque, but he traveled to different mosques and schools in the area, establishing himself as a defacto religious leader.

In a phone interview on Monday afternoon, Ghani also said that leaders within the Houston Muslim community were unfamiliar with Ghani. Ali lives in the Houston area of Fort Bend County, according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.

[….]

Surveillance of Ali began in September of 2019, after victims reported the abuse to the FBI, but investigators believe the alleged crimes date back to 2013. Investigators said they believe there are many more victims who have not spoken up, and the sheriff’s office urges those victims to come forward.

More here.

I’ve been joking here at ‘Frauds and Crooks’ that Michigan and Florida seem to have the most ‘new American’ crooks and criminals, but Texas might be giving them a run for the money.

See yesterday at RRW about the Iraqi refugee arrested in Texas suspected of murdering a mother of three in Colorado.

As you can see, there is a lot of crossover between my blogs!

EDITORS NOTE: This is Frauds, Crooks and Criminals republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

145,000 Jobs Added in December, Unemployment at 3.5%

/in , , , , /by

The U.S. economy added 145,000 jobs in December, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.5%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.

In December, 145,000 jobs were added, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report—about 121,000 fewer jobs than were added in November.

Decembers’ unemployment rate remained steady at 3.5%, matching September’s unemployment rate, the lowest since December 1969.

Economists had predicted that 164,000 jobs would be added and that the unemployment rate would remain at 3.5%, according to CNN, about 100,000 jobs fewer than the previous month when a General Motors strike ended and boosted job numbers.

Job growth has come back strong after February, when just 33,000 jobs were added.

The unemployment rate has held steady between 4% and 3.7% for more than a year before the April jobs report showed it drop to 3.6%. Prior to April’s report, the consistent unemployment rate suggested that workers are jumping back into the workforce to fill open jobs, rather than the workers who are currently collecting unemployment welfare, according to The Wall Street Journal.

RELATED ARTICLE: Unemployment Claims Hit 50-Year Low

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Bernie Sanders: Killing a Terrorist Is Like Putting Muslims in Concentration Camps

/in , , , , , , , /by

With Beto O’Rourke out of the race, it’s up to Bernie Sanders to come up with the best hot take on the killing of Soleimani. And he delivers exactly the sort of rambling senile socialist rant you would expect from Jeremy Corbyn. All he leaves out is throwing around “empire”, “endless war”, and “neo-liberalism”. And then blaming the whole thing on corporations. But at least he manages to compare Trump to Putin and Xi.

SANDERS: No, I think it was an assassination. I think it was in violation of international law. This guy was (INAUDIBLE) — was a bad news guy, but he was a ranking official of the Iranian government.

And Baghdadi was the ranking head of the Islamic State.

So what?

If a foreign government official decides to engage in terrorist operations, he’s a terrorist. The silly argument that Soleimani can’t be killed because he has an official title is nonsense. Terrorists don’t stop being terrorists because they have titles.

And you know what? Once you get into violating international law in that sense, you can say there are a lot of bad people all over the world running governments. Kim Jong-un in North Korea, not exactly a nice guy, responsible for the death, perhaps, of hundreds of thousands of people in his own country, to name one of many, you know?

Killing terrorists isn’t a violation of international law, but if it were, are all violations equivalent? Bernie’s argument is that if you shoplift, you might as well be a serial killer. It’s the sort of purity that lefties would vehemently reject when it comes to criminal justice, but not international law.

Funny.

The president of China now has put a million people in — Muslims, into educational camps. Some would call them concentration camps. But once you start this business of a major country saying, hey, we have the right to assassinate, then you’re unleashing international anarchy.

Some being Bernie. Anyway I thought he was a supporter of anarchists. And assassinations. The KGB did quite a bit of it.

I’m not a lawyer on these things, it might be. But this guy is, you know, was, as bad as he was, an official of the Iranian government.

And you unleash — then if China does that, you know, if Russia does that, you know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents.

I’m not a lawyer, I’m just a senator running for president and speaking on CNN.

Doesn’t Bernie have any lawyers working for his campaign? Or proxies? Or is it all Islamists who support Louie Farrakhan and killing Jews?

Anyway, according to a supporter of every Marxist terror group on the planet, killing an Islamist  terrorist is just like Putin killing dissidents. So Soleimani must be a dissident? Attacking a US embassy would be his form of dissent.

What would President Sanders do if a US embassy were attacked by Iran? Apologize. And blame some guy on YouTube for making a video.

COLUMN BY

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Leftists Are Wrong: US Killing of Iran’s Suleimani a Legal Action

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren hosting call with pro-Tehran lobby group NIAC

Ilhan Omar On the Warmongering Trump and the Killing Of Qassem Soleimani

Rep. Ilhan Omar Casts Iranians, Iraqis as Victims of Trump

RELATED VIDEOS:

Iran’s Islamic Republic – 40 Years of Terror and Crime

Afghans rape 3 American sisters in Spain Posted by Eeyore

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

I Lost My Child Due to a Driver High on Marijuana. Now, This Bill Would Reward Big Pot.

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Seven years ago, I got a call every parent fears: I lost my daughter to a driver who was high on “legal” marijuana. With this new pot vaping crisis, I’m worried more parents will lose their children if we don’t stop the growth of the marijuana industry.

Across the nation, a growing number of vaping-related illnesses and deaths have left government officials scrambling to fix a problem they should have seen coming.

After years of dubious claims by both the vaping and pot industries, we are now feeling acute consequences. America is beginning to wake up to some of these concerns. That is, everyone except the banking industry, which senses a massive investment opportunity: legalized pot.

While parents like me are losing their loved ones, the marijuana industry and its promoters are pushing a bill granting increased investment into the industry, dispensaries in Oregon and Colorado are furiously pulling contaminated vapes from their shelves, and pot growers are shipping their over-production of high-potency marijuana to and through non-legalized states.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

The banking industry is now ramping up lobbying on Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. Indeed, Crapo recently announced his committee, the Senate Banking Committee, will take up legislation supported by the pot industry, disingenuously named the “SAFE Banking Act.”

The legislation, which would create an exception to U.S. banking law to allow lenders to make loans to marijuana firms even though it remains against federal law, is part of an aggressive effort to commercialize today’s new super-potent pot.

This would give pot shops and their corporate parent companies access to more investment capital even though marijuana has been proven to be addictive and harmful by medical science and is being used increasingly by young people in the form of flavored pot vapes. Today’s marijuana isn’t your Woodstock weed.

As a mom, it is difficult to understand why lawmakers have decided that now, with an epidemic in drug use going on, is a good time to push for legislation that amounts to backdoor legalization and a reward for this industry.

The vaping crisis is broader than flavored tobacco products. Marijuana vape oils account for more than 80% of the cases of the mysterious lung illnesses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned against vaping any tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) oils. Even the American Vaping Association’s national spokesperson warned the public, “If you don’t want to die or end up in a hospital, stop vaping illegal THC oils immediately.”

Some are quick to blame the black market, but at least three deaths and numerous cases of illness are linked to “legal” pot products.

Crapo is considering advancing legislation that will ensure the explosion of the commercial pot market without addressing the long-lasting consequences that have been the hallmark of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma.

The SAFE Banking Act fails to acknowledge the industry’s practice of working around state regulations to continue marketing flavored, potentially deadly pot vaping oils, and pot candies that appeal to children. We should not reward them with this legislation.

If Crapo and others in the Senate empower Big Marijuana, they could be setting up Americans for a lifetime of negative consequences.

Let’s prevent drug use—not promote it.

COMMENTARY BY

Corinne Gasper

Corinne Gasper lost her daughter to a marijuana-impaired driver and is now an advocate with Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes the legalization of recreational marijuana.

FOR MARIJUANA RELATED ARTICLES CLICK HERE

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Pelosi Is Realizing Impeachment Was a Mistake

/in , , , , /by

America is the midst of an imaginary impeachment standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Both have drawn firm lines in the sand. Someone’s got to give,” one reporter recently declared.

There is, of course, nothing to “give.” Pelosi has no standing to dictate the terms of a Senate trial; no constitutional right or political leverage. Why she has put herself in a position that will ultimately end, one way or another, with her surrendering to McConnell is perplexing.

A new piece in Time magazine does shed some light on the thought process behind Pelosi’s decision to refuse to hand over articles of impeachment to a Senate whose majority doesn’t want them.

One of the most interesting nuggets in the piece isn’t that Pelosi—portrayed as courageous risk-taker—had gotten the bright idea from CNN; it’s that she specifically got it from noted felon John Dean, Nixon’s former White House lawyer.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Now, Dean is often portrayed as a patriotic, whistleblowing impeachment expert—which is true insofar as he planned the Watergate coverup, and then informed on everyone whom he conspired with after they were caught.

His real expertise is cashing in on criminality for the past 50 years.

Surely Pelosi, blessed with preternatural political instincts, wouldn’t rely on Dean’s advice? Surely Pelosi wasn’t browbeaten into doing this by podcast bros and talking heads on America’s least popular major cable news network?

Because whatever you make of the case against President Donald Trump, it’s getting increasingly difficult to argue that this amateurish, constantly shifting effort by the House has been effective.

After two dramatic emergency impeachment hearings, a pretend standoff, and massive cooperative coverage from the media, poll numbers haven’t budged. They may even have ticked back toward Trump.

Yet, to hear Time tell it, Pelosi has micromanaged every step of this process, from signing off on every committee report and press release— “aides say she caught typos in the Intelligence Committee’s final report before it went out”—to picking furniture that would make Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the more diminutive Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., look like equals.

My working theory is this: Pelosi realized that impeachment was a mistake. She didn’t want the president to be able to tell voters that he had been exonerated by the Senate.

The only way to mitigate the damage was to undertake a ham-fisted effort to attack the Senate trial and dampen, or perhaps circumvent, that inevitable moment.

In the process, however, Pelosi destroyed the Democrats’ justification for rushing impeachment in the first place. Nadler and Schiff both argued that Trump’s tenure in office constituted a national emergency, and that the only way to save the republic from another stolen election was to move quickly.

McConnell, on the other hand, had to take only a short break from confirming judges to inform the House that the Senate would treat the impeachment of Donald Trump the same way it treated the impeachment of Bill Clinton—with a rules package that passed 100-0 in 1998.

Under the Clinton precedent, the Senate would allow both the House impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers to make their case, with questions from the Senate to follow.

Pelosi’s defenders are running out of arguments. Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin now says that acting on the Clinton precedent means that moderate Republican senators such as Susan Collins of Maine “will face the real possibility that conclusive evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing will come to light after a sham trial. That would make for a disastrous, humiliating legacy.”

The gaping hole in this argument, and the reason Democrats are losing the debate, is that they’ve already claimed to have conclusive evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing. They claimed they had proof of bribery, but they didn’t include it in the impeachment articles. They claimed to have proof in the Mueller report that Trump obstructed justice, yet it’s not in the articles of impeachments either.

Rubin herself has alleged, dozens of times, that we already have definitive proof Trump has committed an impeachable offense.

In truth, if the House had made a persuasive case, there would be public pressure on Republicans to act in a different manner. That the House did not is the only reason Pelosi embraced Dean’s silly idea—which has drastically backfired.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

David Harsanyi

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump: Impeachment ‘Should Not Even Be Allowed to Proceed’

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — McCarrick Mystery

/in , , , , /by

TRANSCRIPT

We have been telling you for years, even as recently as earlier this week, that the Catholic establishment media cannot be trusted because all they do is republish press releases and lies from various bishops’ offices.

And wouldn’t you know, practically no sooner had those words come out of our mouths a couple of days ago, but all the proof you need just plopped into our laps.

Late Tuesday, news broke that the monstrous serial molester former Cdl. Theodore McCarrick was being transferred from his former residence in St. Fidelis Priory in Victoria, Kansas. His new whereabouts — where he was being transferred to — however, was still a mystery.

Church Militant had received information shortly afterward from a very reliable source that his destination was some facility in the diocese of St. Augustine, Florida, near Jacksonville.

After confirming what we could, we published what we knew after performing our due diligence and calling various places in the diocese where he might be being housed and — this is important — calling the diocese itself, which we did.

Our article set off a series of denials and accusations and charges that Church Militant was producing fake news.

Now, so we have the record straight, we did call the diocese of St. Augustine in Jacksonville and asked about our information. They called us back and said no one there had heard anything about it. But that’s not the story we’re talking about today, the McCarrick-specific story.

What we are talking about is how that same diocese of Jacksonville yesterday issued a formal statement denying McCarrick’s presence in the diocese and that Church Militant had called them and asked questions about the information we were chasing down.

Here is the relevant part of their official statement: “It is unfortunate that Church Militant didn’t contact the diocese for the truth before posting their inaccurate story.”

Oops. That’s unfortunate for them they would lie in an official statement. Remember: They denied we ever contacted them and asked, implying of course that we don’t know how to do our jobs and are fake news.

Please listen to this recording between Church Militant and Jerome Wilamowski, who calls himself Jerry. He was returning our call.

Jerome Wilamowski: This is Jerry Wilamowski, Bishop Felipe Estevez’s assistant. Just got back to my desk, got your message.

CM: Calling from Church Militant, we received a rumor today on our tip line that they’re moving the former archbishop McCarrick to a facility there in St. Augustine diocese. 

JW: I got your message. Bishop Estevez is actually on a retreat this week with, like, 30 other bishops in South Florida, so I did, I sent him a note with your information and your contact information to have him give you a call back when he gets a chance.

CM: Ok. 

JW: I chatted with our chancellor here in our communication area, and they have not heard anything, they have not heard anything, nor have I. That doesn’t mean the bishop doesn’t know. I did send him a note that you called, and I’ll have him reach out to you.

So not only did we speak with Jerry, the executive assistant to Bp. Felipe Estévez, but he himself tells us, as you heard yourself, that he had discussed it with the chancellor in the communications area.

So they did get a call from us and they admitted it. That press release is, in short, a straight-up lie.

Now part two to the story: The Catholic establishment media couldn’t resist licking their chops and coming after Church Militant, trying to prove we are fake and sensational news.

Catholic News Agency editor-in-chief J.D. Flynn pounced on the diocesan statement, gleefully tweeting out that we never called the diocese: “That was a rumor circulated by Church Militant, who never contacted the diocese for information,” a spokeswoman said.

Now, Catholic News Agency’s (CNA) repeating of the diocese’s charge is rich because they released a social media hit on us for not contacting the diocese, when CNA had never contacted us asking if what the diocese claimed was true.

So we get lied about by a diocese — formally, publicly, officially (which we have the proof of is a lie) — and then the Catholic establishment media, unquestioning, just repeats the lie.

This is exactly what Church Militant has been reporting for years, and now thanks to the phone recording, we have the proof.

And thanks to CNA’s horrible reporting skills and lack of professional due diligence, we have the goods on them as well.

In journalism, we have a term for this: gotcha!

A lying diocese and sycophant media outlet.

Gotcha, guys. Gotcha.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ex-pope Benedict rejects opening up priesthood to married men

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Antifa Violence Talk Cancelled Due to . . . Threat of Antifa Violence

/in , , , , , /by

The University of British Columbia cancelled a talk on Antifa violence by conservative journalist Andy Ngo due to the (wait for it) threat of Antifa violence.

The event, planned for January 29 and sponsored by the Free Speech Club, was originally given the go-ahead, but the university reversed its decision on December 20, citing safety and security concerns.

Antifa is a violent, Far Left protest group. Their activists are aptly described by The Epoch Times, which reported that the university is now being threatened with legal action due to the cancellation:

“Antifa activists are self-described communist anarchists who have used vandalism, physical violence, threats, and even blockades to shut down events or protest opinions they oppose. They typically dress in black, sometimes carry clubs, and wear masks to hide their faces.”

Ngo is no stranger to Antifa violence, having been the brunt of a number of brutal attacks by the group’s “activists,” one of which landed him in the hospital with a brain bleed.

Last weekend in Seattle, Antifa activists assaulted conservative reporter Elijah Schaffer, a BlazeTV contributor and host of the show “Slightly Offens*ve,” when Schaffer tried to prevent an Antifa protester from grabbing a camera from one of his producers.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) demanded a reinstatement of the event in a letter to UBC president Santa Ono.

“It is an alarming betrayal of the foundational pillar of higher education—the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. Furthermore, it signals automatic acquiescence to the ‘heckler’s veto,’ which will embolden threats from those who oppose the very notion of free expression,” said Marty Moore, a JCCF lawyer.

Moore also said that cancelling the event a month in advance was unreasonable, considering the fact that “UBC could have taken numerous steps to address any safety concerns, including letting the police deal with anyone making specific threats.”

Ngo acknowledged that UBC’s concerns about Antifa violence were real, but disagreed with their response and the message it sends.

“Violence from left-wing ideologues on campuses is routine,” Ngo said. “The only thing to do is to be brave. The authoritarian Far Left seek power through intimidation, harassment, and violence, if need be. We can’t give them that.”

RELATED STORIES:

Police Stand By While Conservative Reporter Assaulted by Antifa

Conservative Journalist Andy Ngo Suffers Brain Bleed After Attack

Antifa Blocks, Berates Elderly Woman Using Walker

Why is the Dems’ Progressive Caucus obsessed with protecting the Post Office?

/in , , , , , , /by

“The USPS is bleeding red ink and the company’s finances will likely get worse. The Trump administration is correct that ‘USPS’s current model is unsustainable’.” – Chris Edwards, DownSizingGovernment.org

I receive, on a weekly basis, at least one fundraising email from the Progressive Caucus outraged that there are efforts to reign in the spending by the United States Postal Service (USPS). The Progressive Caucus is obsessed about the destruction of “yet another vital public service.” But there are other companies that provide mail delivery services that make the USPS look archaic. Yes, there are. Among them are: Amazon, E Bay, FedEx and UPS.

QUESTION: Would not competition improve this vital service?

Is USPS a Disaster?

In a July 9, 2029 DownSizingGovernment.org column title Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service Chris Edwards wrote:

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is a large business enterprise operated by the federal government. It has more than 600,000 employees and more than $70 billion in annual revenues. Revenues are supposed to cover the postal service’s costs, but mail volume is plunging, and the USPS has been losing billions of dollars a year for more than a decade.

The USPS has a legal monopoly over letters and mailboxes. That policy is an anomaly because the federal government’s general economic stance is to encourage open competition in markets. The USPS monopoly means that entrepreneurs are prevented from entering postal markets to try and improve quality and reduce costs for consumers. [Emphasis added]

USPS’s Predicament

Edwards points out the following about USPS:

Congress confers on the USPS monopolies over the delivery of first-class mail and access to mailboxes, the latter of which is a unique protection among the world’s postal systems.

The USPS also enjoys a range of other benefits:1

  • It can borrow up to $15 billion from the U.S. Treasury at low interest rates.
  • It is exempt from state and local sales, income, and property taxes, and from parking tickets, vehicle fees, and other charges.
  • It pays federal corporate income taxes on its earnings from competitive products, but those taxes are circulated back to the USPS.2
  • It is not bound by local zoning laws, is immune from a range of civil actions, and has the power of eminent domain.
  • It has government regulatory power, which it can use to impede competitors.

On the other hand, Congress ties the hands of the USPS in many ways that prevent it from operating like a private enterprise. Congress restricts the USPS’s pricing flexibility, requires it to provide expansive employee benefits, imposes collective bargaining, and prevents it from cutting costs in various ways, such as by reducing delivery frequency and closing low-volume post offices.

Read more.

Incremental Reforms

Edwards in his column recommends the following reforms of the USPS:

  1. Close Post Office Locations.
  2. Cut Labor Costs.
  3. End Collective Bargaining.
  4. Narrow the Universal Service Obligation (USO).
  5. End Cross Subsidies.

Conclusions

Edwards concludes with:

The [Trump] administration’s Task Force found that the USPS’s current business model “is unsustainable and must be fundamentally changed if the USPS is to avoid a financial collapse and a taxpayer-funded bailout.”61 The GAO said that a “comprehensive package of actions is needed to improve USPS’s financial viability.”62 That comprehensive package should be privatizing the USPS and opening U.S. postal markets to competition.

As Barry Goldwater wrote in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative“:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

Perhaps it it time to reduce the size of government starting with the USPS?