MIDDLE EAST INTEL REPORT: Getting Wild

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Recent evens in Iraq and Libya have dominated virtually all Arabic TV news programs and internet sites this weekend, as events and reactions continue to unfold.

EGYPTIAN REACTION

Popular Egyptian talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb, on his show al-hakaya (the story) which airs every weekend on MBS-Egypt, opened his coverage of America’s killing of Qaseem Solaimani with the words:  “Trump just won re-election!”  He repeated the phrase several times, with pauses in between for dramatic effect.

“Nobody’s talking about impeachment now,” he said.  “Trump’s got four more years.”

He went on to say that Trump is “strange.  Perhaps the strangest president America’s ever had, but he made the strong decision.  And the whole world is astonished!”

He added that Qaseem Solaimani has left a “river of blood” all across the Middle East.  The protestors in Iraq, the hundreds that have been killed . . . “that’s on Qaseem Solaimani.”

He noted how Iran had attacked oil tankers, and America did nothing.  Iran had hit Aramco, and America did nothing.  And, the Iranians thought that Trump was a weak president, that he couldn’t do anything until after the elections.  But, then, Iran kills one American . . . “just one!  and Trump takes out Solaimani and al-Muhandess.”

Regarding America’s follow-up attack on installations of the Iraqi Hizbollah (one of the heshd sha’abi (Iranian operated Iraqi Shi’a militias), ‘Amru Adeeb said that it was because Trump wanted to take out those who had attacked the American embassy.

He added that “America is no longer reacting.  America is acting!”

COMMENT:

‘Amru Adeeb is close to the as-Sisi regime, and has connections with the upper echelons of Egyptian General Intelligence (EGI), so his views generally reflect those of the current Egyptian government.

U.S. intelligence is saying that Iran had been planning to stage a coup in Iraq.  Why they would want to do that might be a mystery to some, given that the current Iraqi government is virtually subservient to Iran as it is.  But, perhaps submission is not enough, what the Iranians would want is a clone of themselves in Iraq, so the coup would be to replace the current submissive government with a full Shi’a Islamic Republic.

This coup, had it occurred, would have been spearheaded by the all of the heshd sha’abi (popular militias) and directed by Solaimani.  Therefore,  just taking out Solaimani was not enough.  The Americans had to also take out elements that were to play a key role in the proposed coup.

OTHER REACTIONS

In Iran’s capital city of Tehran, the regime called out tens of thousands of their supporters to protest the killing of Solaimani, whom many thought was a future president of Iran.  However, elsewhere in Iran, there were equally large outpourings of demonstrators expressing their joy over Solaimani’s death.

In Iraq, a similar situation.  In the capital, Baghdad, there were demonstrations by the pro-Iranian crowd against the killing of Solaimani, and chants of “America is the great Satan.”  But elsewhere there were even larger outpourings of people (including shi’a) dancing in the streets, and celebrating Solaimani’s death.  “No more Solaimani” they chanted.

The Saudi-owned www.alarabiya.net is reporting that the Iraqi government has placed additional “restrictions” on the American forces in Iraq after the killing of Solaimani.  Many Iraqis have expressed their fear that their country will become the battle ground for a war between Iran and America.

Most of the guests interviewed by the anchors on the sister Saudi-owned TV channel of al-arabiyya TV were pleased with the take down of Solaimani.  The regular news casts on al-arabiyya TV have reported that Iranian newspapers are reporting that Iran’s revenge will come via their militias, meaning that militias in countries other than Iran will do the dirty work leaving Iran’s hands theoretically clean.

In Lebanon, folks also feared that their country would suffer from Iran’s anger.  In Lebanon, the largest and most powerful “political party” is Iran’s puppet terrorist militia, the heavily armed Hizbollah.  So, the fear is that they might trigger a war with Israel, which would hurt all of Lebanon, and/or attack western embassies and other western interests in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, our great, loyal NATO ally, Erdogan, is crying tears over Solaimani’s death, calling him a great martyr.

LIBYA

The UN SEC GEN Gutierez warned Turkey against intervening in Libya.  This is noteworthy because it is the UN that made the mistake of granting international recognition to the Turkey-supported Sirraaj government in the first place.

U.S. President Trump has also advised Turkey to not intervene in Libya.  Yet, the U.S., like most other countries, still maintains an Embassy in militia-controlled Tripoli.

Libyan General Hafter said they will teach Turkey a severe, and historical lesson if they try to intervene in Libya.

Nonetheless, Erdogan seems poised at this point to follow through with his plan to send Turkish troops to Libya.  He is talking about only 250-300 at this point.  However, French intelligence has reported that four civilian airliners carrying fighters from Syria has landed near Tripoli, courtesy of Erdogan.  An article in today’s www.alarabiya.net talks about 1,000 Syrian “mercenaries” that Turkey has trained and shipped to Libya.

These Syrian “mercenaries” are the al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Muslim Brotherhood types whose goals match that of the Turkish regime.

COMMENTS: 

During the above-mentioned al-hakaya program by popular Egyptian talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb, he touched on the Libya situation as well as Iraq.  While condemning Erdogan’s moves, he commented that in his view the Trump administration was okay with Turkey moving into Libya because the Russians were supporting the other side.  At the time, I tended to agree with that comment based on previous statements by the administration.  However, Trump’s more recent comment advising against Turkish intervention has to be seen as a positive development.  It is far better that the U.S. remain neutral on the Libya situation than to offer moral, diplomatic, or any other sort of support to the wrong side (which happens to be the side that Turkey supports).

While ‘Amru Adeeb was ranting about Erdogan’s Libya moves, a split screen was showing scenes from the below-mentioned Egyptian military exercises.  The Saudi-owned al-arabiya TV did the same thing during their coverage of the Libya situation.

I believe that these military exercises by Egypt were not just to make sure the troops were ready in the event they should be needed, but it was also a message sent to Turkey.  Likewise, the TV coverage of these exercises in conjunction with the news coverage on the Libyan situation made it clear that this is a specific warning to Turkey

I doubt that the Libyan National Army by itself could do much against a full scale Turkish invasion.  Their air force consists of about two or three ancient MIGS left over from the Soviet era, and a handful of helicopters.  The mechanized portion of their army appears to be primarily Japanese pick-up trucks with machine guns, artillery, and anti-aircraft guns converted to artillery mounted in the back.  Maybe two or three ancient Soviet tanks.  However, were Egypt to enter the Libyan war in earnest, they would hand the Turks their rear-ends and send them packing.  Some comments coming out of Egypt now indicate that they just might do that.

While previous comments coming out of the Egyptian regime have stressed that Egypt’s army is just for defending Egypt’s soil, and Egypt’s borders.  Period.  Comments coming out this weekend include the importance of defending Egypt’s national security, and a stable Libya (i.e. free of terrorists and Turks) as being in the interest of Egypt’s national security.  There have also been comments to the effect that Egypt is prepared “to defend its coastlines and the coastlines of its neighbors” (i.e. Libya).

Coincidentally, or not, the Egyptian military on Saturday morning 04 January 2020 staged a huge naval exercise and practice marine landing on one of its Mediterranean beaches west of Alexandria.  Participating in this exercise were landing craft for unloading Humvees, tanks, and other heavy equipment, a helicopter “aircraft carrier” and the ‘copters it bore, Apaches and Shinooks, submarines, and anti-submarine aircraft and naval craft, F-16s, and special forces.

In comparing the militaries of Turkey and Egypt, Turkey has the larger and more powerful navy, as Erdogan has been spending billions on his navy in preparation for ruling the entire Mediterranean as in the Ottoman days of old.  But Egypt likely has adequate submarine forces (including the latest German models), and anti-submarine air craft to take out any Turkish ships approaching Libya that it wants to.

In terms of air power, Egypt wins hands down.  Both countries are equipped with substantial numbers of F-15s and F-16s, and NATO helicopters, but Erdogan purged most of his pilots in the wake of the failed coup attempt of 2016, and they as yet do not have adequate replacements.

While the Turkish army could probably muster close to the same amount of manpower, given the respective populations of the two countries (80 million for Turkey, 100 million for Egypt) as Egypt, they would have the logistical problem of transporting them across the sea, and then problems of supply.  Whereas Egypt would have the advantage fighting close to their home soil.  The Turkish army also has command and control, and chain of command problems thanks to Erdogan’s numerous purges of the army beginning in 2009, and continuing through 2016.

Then there is the matter of Egypt’s huge, modern tank force, and the flat, easily traversed terrain between Cairo and Tripoli.

Stay tuned.  Things just might get exciting.

SUNDAY 05 MAY

The Iraqi parliament met to vote on expelling U.S. forces from Iraq in the wake of the killing of Solaimani and a number of his stooges.  Significantly, the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds boycotted the meeting, leaving the Iranian stooges, including the Prime Minister, totally in charge.

After the vote by the Iran-subservient Iraqi parliament, protests broke out in Baghdad against the decision according www.alarabiya.net.  Other protesters in the Shi’a holy city of Karbala protested the parliament’s decision by blocking the road to Karbala, and burning tires.

Iraqi Shi’a leader Muqtada Sadr has recommended that Iraq close down the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and pass a law criminalizing any contacts of any sort with any and all Americans.  An article in www.alarabiya.net says that Muqtadi Sadr, whom they call a “proxy” of Iran, has also called for the formation of an “international militia.”

Another alarabiya.net article hints that Iran and its proxies may go after European targets.

The Leader of Iran’s puppet Lebanese Shi’a Hizbollah, Nasrallah, has stated that the killing of Solaimani launched a “brand new era in the Middle East.”  The implication of his words were rather ominous.

ANALYSIS:

Judging from the reactions and comments coming out of the Iranian leadership, and from their client terrorist entities around the Middle East, such as Hizbollah and Hamas, Iran will try to unleash a broader reign of terror throughout all of the Arab countries using its proxies to do the dirty work.

Iran’s analysis being that by using their proxies to do their dirty work (including killing American citizens, attacking embassies, consulates, and private businesses) in other countries, that any response by the U.S. will take place in the countries where the attacks take place, causing those countries also to want to sever ties with the U.S. as Iraq is doing.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is under increasing pressure, not only economically from Trump’s embargoes, but internally from their own population’s disgust with the regime’s behavior and domestic policies.

BOTTOM LINE:  As things escalate throughout the Middle East, and assuming that the U.S. responses will increase in severity as well, the Iranian Mullah’s may well reach the conclusion that “if we’re going down anyway, we’re going to set the entire Middle East on fire and let Allah sort it out later.”

Pay Attention — Trump Ending Endless Wars

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Welcome to the New Year as 2020 kicks off with a bang!

President Trump is not starting a war with Iraq nor Iran. He is however fighting an ongoing war with the Deep State by delivering a strike against them with the take down of Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The intel. provided to the President indicated an imminent threat to Americans and our allies. You see, the Deep State wants to bring Trump into war since all of the other false flags and coups have failed to remove him from office. By bringing Trump into war, their attempt was to derail his re-election in 2020. This will fail like all other failed attempts. The Deep State is losing control and they know it, especially now with Trump trumping them on first Syria, then North Korea, and now Iraq and Iran. The first manifestation was the planned and orchestrated attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad. This was to escalate to far greater carnage and loss of American lives. Trump, once again, beat them to the punch. What’s next? The world awaits.

Endless Wars

The Deep State has kept us in a perpetual state of war for a very long time and President Trump is beginning to put a stop to these endless wars. We have a long way to go and this will create, needless to say, many confusions, speculations and outright false narratives of which we are all becoming quite used to. You see, places like Cuba, North Korea, and of course the Middle East, are Deep State partners. The Deep State controls and empowers these countries to an extent and uses them as they see fit. This has been going on for a very long time. Trump, once again, is upsetting their apple cart.

Not only is President Trump protecting Americans and their allies, he is neutering the Deep State sites in the Middle East. And has already redirected activities in both North Korea, (despite the fake news narratives), and the crisis with ISIS in Syria. The Deep State failed and we prevailed. Now we embark upon the big one, Iran. This is a MAJOR game changer and will change the course of history. You see Kerry and Obama were busy and are busy as part of the Deep State with their plans with Iran. This just ended. And please don’t forget the $1.6 Billion dollars in cash on pallets in the dark of the night being loaded on planes. Remember this, the Deep State is now being exposed as the de-class is underway and beginning to see the light of day. They are panicking. They need Trump removed. They will fail.

Additionally, the President is freeing the people of North Korea and Iran from the clutches of the Deep State. In the case of North Korea, Kim Jong-un has switched sides if you will and has left the Deep State in the dust. Forget the Fake News.  And as for Iran, we shall see how this all turns but the battle has just begun. This is the first real challenge in Iran since Ronald Reagan took his best shot, then they took a shot at him. This time the ultimate victory may lie ahead. Keep in mind how this relates to the petrodollar, the global financial reset, and how the world will conduct trade that is fair and reciprocal for our global partners. I will be discussing this aspect of Iran with Economist Dr. Kirk Elliott, nominated for two Trump committee positions, this Wednesday on our weekly GFR (Global Financial Reset ) report. Subscribe here and tune in.

What’s Next?

The world is changing. Thank God. But not without chaos, turmoil, instability, economic impacts and sadly, the loss of lives. No pain, no gain. You can’t redirect humanity which has been controlled by an intricate web of evil Globalists without any challenge. Mark my words, it will get worse before it gets better. The way out  is the way through. Support your Commander in Chief. There is a plan and it is unfolding exactly as it should. Look at all the BS they throw at him and us. We have won most all, if not all key battles to date, while others are a work in progress. Look what this miracle President has accomplished and is accomplishing. Do not waffle. Stay the course. There is a plan to save the world and we are that plan as we move from dark to light. Pray for our President and his family. 2020 will be the year that changed everything.

VIDEO: 2019 Focus on White Supremacist Violence Doesn’t Explain NYC Attacks

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In 2019, both authorities and a rising number of organizations shifted focus to the threat of white supremacist violence. The shift was necessary, considering both the El Paso attack at a Walmart that killed 22 and Poway synagogue shooting (which followed the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018).

As reported by NPR, here are some steps being taken:

  • Congressional committees held at least four hearings on hate crimes and white nationalism, calling on counterterrorism officials to treat Far-Right militants as seriously as they do jihadists
  • Two U.S. senators, one Republican and one Democratic, introduced bills that would give federal authorities tools similar to those used to combat Islamist extremists to combat white supremacist violence. The issue remains controversial because of questions of free speech and other concerns.
  • The Department of Homeland Security unveiled a strategic plan that pledged more resources for fighting Far-Right extremism – a surprise from an agency that previously focused almost exclusively on Islamist militancy. The introduction to the document stated, “As the threats evolve, we must do so as well”
  • Academics across the United States who study the Far Right formed the Consortium on Hate and Political Extremism, saying they felt compelled to help teach the public about the evolving threat. It’s modeled after Europe’s Center for Research on Extremism, known as C-REX

Yet the recent string of attacks against New York City’s Jewish population isn’t from white supremacists; it’s from members of the city’s Black-American population.

Since attacks surged, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) announced the launch of a unit focused on racially and ethnically motivated extremism, called by the same name (acronym REME) to understand and counter this phenomenon.

What Did We Miss?

I think the problem lies in the fact that we’ve been so focused on white supremacy, that we’ve ignored the larger monster in the room. The larger monster is the thing that is allowing the pattern of racial/ethnic violence to duplicate.

Anti-Semitism is the oldest hate in history. Fortunately, this scourge has been relatively dormant since the establishment of our nation, which was founded to a large degree on the idea of rights for all individuals and faiths.

Now we must ask: What is it about this hate that it is suddenly re-emerging? For better insight into the problem, I talked with former extremists who, at one point in their lives, embraced hate before they decided to walk away from it.

A common theme is the increasing polarization of our society leading to an emergence of extremism on both sides of the political spectrum, creating an environment which makes Jews vulnerable from all angles.

Former Extremists Weigh In

Jeff Schoep, former leader of the National Socialist Movement, speaks about America’s increasingly polarized landscape:

Extremism and radicalization can come from many different sources, the Far Right, Far Left, white nationalists, Black nationalists, religious extremists, the list goes on. In 2019, polarization between Americans of all various political and societal differences has risen to such extremes that people who were once considered moderate are lumped into one extreme or another.

For example, Trump supporters increasingly were being called racists and Nazis, while Democrats were being called communists. Both sides are increasingly intolerant of each other which, in some cases, is leading to violence.

As Americans we need to unite and come together and not divide ourselves over petty differences. We need to learn to love each other and accept that just because someone has a different opinion than someone else, it does not give anyone the right to act upon or against those opinions with violence and hate.

Jesse Morton, a former recruiter for Al-Qaeda, calls on us to see the relationship between different forms of extremism that we see emerging on the U.S. scene:

What Can Change . . . Today?

I personally feel the problem is significantly rooted in language. We’re using the proverbial “master’s tools” to dismantle the master’s house — meaning, we’re using language based on the mistaken idea that human beings can be reduced to generic color blocks to talk about the problem.

By using labels that speak to color, we’re reaffirming the myth of difference and invoking the language on which that myth is dependent.

Saying a white supremacist did this, or a Black person did that, we’re seeing the behavior through myth of the group. We’re not seeing the individual, which is necessary if we’re going to understand the behavior that drives these individuals.

It’s also necessary if we hope to take power away from the offending “group.” In order for white supremacists, for example, to exist, we need to see and reaffirm them as a group: white. Take away the coded language, and you’ve dismantled, in part, a significant factor that group needs to exist.

These and other ideas need to be explored if this problem is going to be tackled in the upcoming year.

Meanwhile, one group is taking to the streets and tackling the problem. Watch the following video about New York’s Guardian Angels patrolling the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where anti-Semitic crimes have been rampant in the last weeks. The citizen’s patrol group was started in 1979 by Curtis Sliwa (featured in the video) as a response to the out-of-control crime in the New York City subway. The group now has branches in over 130 cities and 13 countries worldwide. Older Jewish residents of Crown Heights remembered the Guardian Angels’ presence during the 1991 Crown Heights riots, when the police largely let widespread violence against Jews go unanswered:

RELATED STORIES:

Muslim Response to Anti-Semitism Not Good Enough, Says Reformer

Pipe Bombs, Synagogue Murders; How We Move Forward

Have Ilhan Omar and CAIR Bred Acceptance of Today’s Rampant Anti-Semitism?

EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column with video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Qassem Soleimani — Inside the twisted, terrible reign of Iran’s top general

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The killing of Iranian terror-meister Qassem Soleimani in a targeted US air strike in Baghdad on Thursday will have a dramatic impact on the stability of the Iranian regime and its ability to conduct oversea terrorist operations.

Soleimani was, in many ways, the irreplaceable man. Known as a charismatic leader — indeed, the only charismatic leader in Iran’s military today — he has no parallel among contemporary Iranian commanders.

Wherever Iran has sent its expeditionary Quds Force to war — in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen — there you would find Soleimani.

During the early years of the US occupation of Iraq, he became the puppet master of successive Iraqi governments. Not only did he select presidents and prime ministers, but over the years he placed his minions in key positions in every Iraqi government ministry where they controlled personnel and finance decisions.

He also set up a far-flung financial empire, reportedly taking a percentage of the float on all foreign currency exchange from Iraqi banks, netting close to $1 billion per month in black money to finance his terror empire.

While he was serving as Barack Obama’s CIA director, Gen. David Petraeus liked to tell a story about a text message he received from Soleimani at the peak of the surge in 2008.

After the death of General Qassim Soleimani, people throughout Iran and the city of Rasht mourned him on the streets.

“Dear General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassim Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.”

Staff Sergeant Robert Bartlett was one of several thousand US soldiers wounded by “explosively made penetrators,” a particularly deadly form of IED, in Iraq. They were designed to kill American troops, and were built and shipped to Iraqi terror groups by Soleimani. In just a two-year period, from 2005-2007, they claimed the lives of an estimated 600 US servicemen in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.

The force of the projectile “cut me in half from the left corner of my temple down to my jaw, and took my gunner’s legs off. Because of this Iranian bomb, I died three times in five days. Only my faith kept me alive,” Sgt. Bartlett told me in a videotaped interview. The US never retaliated for these attacks.

In 2011, Soleimani and his men recruited a down-and-out drug dealer named Manssor Arbabsiar, to try to assassinate then-Saudi ambassador to Washington, DC, Adel al-Jubeir, who had angered the Iranian regime by publicly calling out their terror ties.

Video shows moment Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani is blown away.

According to federal court documents, Arbabsiar traveled repeatedly to Tehran to meet with an associate of Soleimani’s to receive orders and money and ultimately recruited a Mexican drug dealer to carry out the barbarous plot the Iranians proposed: to kill al-Jubeir while he was lunching at the upscale restaurant at the Watergate Hotel.

If successful, the bombing could have killed more than a hundred people in the heart of the US capitol, but Soleimani reportedly wasn’t worried about the collateral damage. As I wrote at the time, the only reason the plot failed was very good luck (as far as the FBI was concerned). Arbabsiar chose the wrong Mexican to carry out the hit, one who happened to be an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In recent years, Soleimani has traveled repeatedly to Syria to supervise the construction of a network of military and intelligence bases Iran planned to use to expand its presence on Israel’s borders. Israeli fighter jets reportedly narrowly missed him during a 2015 strike on an Iranian base in Aleppo province. Shortly after that attack, he told an Iranian Internet news service, “Martyrdom is what I seek in mountains and valleys but isn’t granted yet.”

Former Iranian intelligence officers told me about Soleimani’s direct involvement in planning, financing and directing the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on US diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed.

At the time, writing in these pages, I called him the “Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror.”

His goals in attacking us in Benghazi were to shut down the US arms pipeline from that city to the anti-regime jihadi groups in Syria and ultimately to drive the United States out of Libya entirely, both of which he accomplished.

His many brushes with death and his outrageous terror rap sheet, which is longer than bin Laden’s, led Soleimani and his supporters to consider him invincible. His demise at the hands of US forces on Thursday not only shows that is not the case but that the aura of invincibility of the regime itself is over.

I believe the Iranian people will draw the obvious conclusion that this once powerful regime has feet of clay. Expect bigger anti-regime protests inside Iran in the coming weeks and popular revolts against Iranian interference in Lebanon and Iraq as well.

To me, the biggest question remains: Is President Trump ready for the revolution he has unleashed? With this single act, the United States has set in motion big historical forces for positive change. We must be prepared to help the forces of freedom against tyranny and oppression.

RELATED ARTICLE: 5 Things to Know About Top Iranian General Killed by US Airstrike

EDITORS NOTE: This New York Post column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

President Trump Refuses to Make the Mistakes of Yesteryear

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Today’s pundits  warn of dire consequences since President Trump killed General Soleimani. Claiming he made a grave mistake that will lead to war between Iran and the U.S. In reality Iran has waged war against the U.S. since 1979 when they incarcerated U.S. diplomats. They waged war against us by terrorist attacks on U.S. military and in Iraq for the last 40 years and killed many Americans.

Today’s warning of dire consequences are similar to those made 1939 which resulted in Great Britain’s and France’s decision in Munich Germany to appease Adolph Hitler, by agreeing to allow him to invade Czechoslovakia which he desperately needed to build the most powerful war machine the world had ever seen at the time. Great Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in an effort to avoid war returned to Great Britain talking credit for “Peace for our time”. Instead of peace the world got ‘World War ll’, the most destructive war on the planet. It is estimate between 60 and 85 million people perished. In reality Great Britain and France waited until Hitler built the most powerful war machine before confronting him.

President Obama did the same thing. In order to appease Iran the leading State sponsor of terrorism, he entered into a defective nuclear agreement, turned over $150 billion dollars plus over a billion dollars in cash in order to appease Iran, claiming this would end Iran’s terrorist activities, and it would become a ‘regular’ nation. We know Obama was wrong because Iran used the money to extend their terrorist activities in Syria, Iraq  and around the world, at the same time cheating on the nuclear agreement and creating missiles to carry nuclear war heads in violation of U.N. resolutions.

Now the Democrats and their left wing media are criticizing President Trump for killing Gen. Soleimani, the leading terrorist and the second most dangerous individual in the world next to ayatollah ali khamenei the supreme leader of Iran and that he had no authority to do so. Where were they and their captive left wing media when Obama went to war against Libya which was no threat to the U.S., without congressional authority?

The President’s failure to kill Soleimani under the circumstances would have been gross negligence. President Trump does not wish to repeat the mistakes of yesteryear. Appeasement invariably leads to a more destructive war, not less. President Trump is not a typical politician. As a businessman he knows, if you don’t address a problem in a timely fashion it grows until it reaches destructive power. He is also aware, appeasing Iran will lead to an apocalypse.

Quote:

Julian Reichelt, the editor-in-chief of best-selling German newspaper Bild, on Friday authored a barn-burning commentary praising US President Donald Trump for authorizing a military strike to eliminate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

“President Trump has freed the world of a monster whose aim in life was an atomic cloud over Tel Aviv. Trump has acted in self-defense – the self-defense of the US and all peace-loving people,” wrote Reichelt.

He added that “the Iranian terror godfather Qassem Soleimani stood for a world that no peace-loving person can want: a world in which you can be torn apart by a bomb at any time because you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The commentary singled out Soleimani’s scorched-earth campaign in the Syrian war: “A world in which entire cities are wiped out – like Aleppo. In which bloodthirsty militia go from door to door and execute civilians.”

Reichelt noted the potential of Iran’s regime to carry out terrorism in Germany and Israel, “in which the kindergartens in Germany could burn up in fireballs at any time because its children are Jewish. In which Israel is under threat of extinction every day.”

The title of Reichelt’s commentary was, “Trump has freed the world from a monster.”

The US Pentagon said it took preventive military action against Soleimani because he planned attacks against American diplomats. According to the US State Department, Soleimani oversaw terrorist operations  that were “responsible for the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq.”

The US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, wrote on Twitter, “As a diplomat, I believe there isn’t enough media attention on the fact that General Soleimani was planning to attack US diplomats. @realDonaldTrump caught Soleimani in the act. And saved lives by stopping him.”

Reichelt wrote: “Soleimani, the world’s most repelling and bloodthirsty terrorist, who brought suffering and harm over humanity on the mullahs’ behalf, was an enemy of our civilization. He represented the unbearable thought that murderers will live more safely and be more untouchable the more people they kill (with the support of the state).”

The editor-in-chief declared that, “His violent and overdue end will not stop global terrorism, but the image of his burnt-out car still sends out a powerful message. US President Donald Trump has made it clear that the worst figures in the world, however big-mouthed and ruthless they may be, cannot hide from America’s strength.”

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Qassem Soleimani — Inside the twisted, terrible reign of Iran’s top general.

The other ‘marriage story’: divorce is at a 40-year low. And more kids are being raised in intact families.

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The rise of divorce and the decline of marriage following the sexual revolution have destabilised the family life of two generations and have been the source of much unhappiness both for children and parents. We have lamented these trends often enough on MercatorNet, and a new movie dramatises the pain of divorce in wrenching detail.

But there is another, true and encouraging story about divorce – not the much bruited “good divorce” but the fact that divorce is in a four-decade decline, and family stability indicators are ticking up.

Writing in USA Today before Christmas family scholar Brad Wilcox and Institute for Family Studies blog editor Alysse Elhage highlighted three positive trends in the US: the continuing decline of divorce; falling births to unmarried women; and a rising share of children being raised by married parents. Divorce, in fact, has been falling since its peak in 1980 and is predicted to decline further.

At the same time British family advocate and researcher Harry Benson reported that marriages are lasting longer in the UK. Including couples who marry overseas, he finds that for marriages starting today, the median duration before divorce or death would be 40 years, not the 30 years estimated by the Office for National Statistics, let alone the oft-quoted “12 years”, which is the average duration of marriages ending in divorce, not all marriages.

So, what’s going on?

Divorce is down: Benson says almost all the decline in divorce in the UK is due to fewer wives wanting out of their marriage. In the absence of social pressure to marry, he suggests, men in particular are becoming more intentional about it. “More committed men means fewer unhappy wives filing for divorce.”

According to Wilcox and Elhage, it’s because modern marriage is about children:

Surveys tell us that Americans are less tolerant of divorce today. That’s in large part because, as family scholar Richard Reeves put it, “Modern marriage is not principally about money, sex, or status. It’s about children.” Today’s married couples seem to invest more in staying together, unlike the Boomers who were obsessed with their own fulfillment in the ’70s,offering their children a better shot a more stable family life and future.

Children following marriage: Non-marital births have been falling for nearly a decade in the US, the American writers note:

The rate of nonmarital childbearing has fallen from 41.% in 2009 to 39.6% in 2018. We think what has happened, in part, is that young adults in America have become more cautious in the wake of the Great Recession about forming families and, hence, are less likely to leap into parenthood without a ring on their finger.

 

Intact families: The share of US children being raised by their own married parents seems to have bottomed out, rising from 61.8 percent in 2014 to 62.6 percent in 2019, say Wilcox and Elhage, who expect the trend to continue. They add:

What does all this mean for American children? Children raised by their married parents enjoy a host of life-long benefits compared to children born into other family forms, including more financial stability, greater physical safety, more involved fathers, and greater educational, social and psychological outcomes.

This might not be the marriage story Hollywood wants to tell, but it’s a true story and young people have a right to hear it at home, in church, school and on social media, for their own sakes and that of the next generation.

COLUMN BY

CAROLYN MOYNIHAN

Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.

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

The 2010s: A Decade of Marital and Sexual Erosion

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Originally published by USA Today.

A decade ago, President Barack Obama affirmed that marriage unites a man and woman. So did 45 states and the federal government.

The only states to redefine marriage had done so through activist court rulings or, in 2009, legislative action. At the ballot box, citizens had uniformly voted against redefinition. A majority agreed with Obama.

Then, in 2012, Obama “evolved,” and the Supreme Court took cases involving marriage law.

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

Nothing in the Constitution answered the actual question at hand: What is marriage? The court should have left the issue to the people. But in 2013, it struck down the federal definition of marriage as a male-female union in a 5-4 ruling.

The court also punted on a challenge to a state definition of marriage adopted in a 2008 constitutional referendum by which a majority of Californians—yes, Californians—overturned an activist court.

Only in 2015 did the Supreme Court, breaking 5-4 again, redefine marriage for the nation, provoking four irrefutable dissents.

Same-sex marriage advocates told the public that they sought only the “freedom to marry.” Same-sex couples were already free to live as they chose, but legal recognition was about the definition of marriage for all of society. It was about affirmation—by the government and everyone else.

It was never really about “live and let live”—that was a merely tactical stance.

It’s unsurprising that once a campaign that used to cry “live and let live” prevailed, it began working to shut down Catholic adoption agencies and harass evangelical bakers and florists.

This shows it was never really about “live and let live”—that was a merely tactical stance.

Family, Marriage—Redefined

While these were the early effects of redefinition, the more profound consequences will be to marriage itself. Law shapes culture; culture shapes beliefs; beliefs shape action.

The law now effectively teaches that mothers and fathers are replaceable, that marriage is simply about consenting adult relationships, of whatever formation the parties happen to prefer. This undermines the truth that children deserve a mother and a father—one of each.

It also undercuts any reasonable justification for marital norms. After all, if marriage is about romantic connection, why require monogamy?

There’s nothing magical about the number two, as defenders of “polyamory” point out. If marriage isn’t a conjugal union uniting a man and a woman as one flesh, why should it involve or imply sexual exclusivity? If it isn’t a comprehensive union inherently ordered to childbearing and rearing, why should it be pledged to permanence?

The law now effectively teaches that mothers and fathers are replaceable, that marriage is simply about consenting adult relationships, of whatever formation the parties happen to prefer.

Marriage redefiners could not answer these questions when challenged to show that the elimination of sexual complementarity did not undermine other marital norms. Today, they increasingly admit that they have no stake in upholding norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence.

Same-sex marriage didn’t create these problems. Many in America had unwisely already gone along with the erosion of marital norms in the wake of the sexual revolution—with the rise of cohabitation, nonmarital childbearing, no-fault divorce, and the hookup culture.

It was no surprise that many would then question the relevance of the male-female norm. Legal redefinition is a consequence of the cultural breakdown of marriage.

Monogamy Is Old News

But same-sex marriage is a catalyst for further erosion. Already, we see respectable opinion-makers mainstreaming “throuples,” “ethical nonmonogamy” and “open relationships.” This was predictable; we and others predicted it.

Something we didn’t predict are the headlines about transgender and nonbinary “identities.” A decade ago, few Americans had given much thought to the “T” in “LGBT.” Today, transgender identity seems to dominate the discussion of sexuality and sexual morality.

There’s a logic here. If we can’t see the point of our sexual embodiment where it matters most—in marriage—we’ll question whether it matters at all. Hence the push to see gender as “fluid” and existing along a “spectrum” of nonbinary options.

There’s a deeper logic, too. Implicit in the push for same-sex marriage was body-self dualism—the idea that we’re actually nonphysical entities inhabiting physical bodies, or ghosts in machines. That’s why the “plumbing” in sexual acts seemed not to matter.

True one-flesh union, the foundation of conjugal marriage, was thought illusory. What mattered was emotional union and partners’ use of their bodies to induce desirable sensations and feelings.

Of course, two men or two women (or throuples or even larger sexual ensembles) could do that. But the logic didn’t stay with marriage. If the body is mere plumbing, then sex matters less than identity.

This has had tragic consequences, especially for children.

Children Burdened by Our Mistakes

Nearly unthinkable a decade ago, certain medical professionals tell children experiencing gender dysphoria that they are trapped in the wrong body, even that their bodies are merely like Pop-Tarts foil packets, as one expert explained.

Nearly unthinkable a decade ago, certain medical professionals tell children experiencing gender dysphoria that they are trapped in the wrong body.

Some doctors now prescribe puberty-blocking drugs to otherwise healthy children struggling to accept their bodies. They prescribe cross-sex hormones for young teens to transform their bodies to align with their gender identities.

As part of a government grant-supported study, doctors even performed double mastectomies on adolescent girls—including two 13-year-olds.

These changes weren’t grassroots movements. They’ve come from people wielding political, economic, and cultural power to advance sexual-liberationist ideology.

The change has been top-down—from Hollywood’s portrayal of LGBT characters to business executives boycotting states over religious freedom laws. Having lost at the ballot box over and over—even in California—activists found new avenues: ideologically friendly courts, federal agencies, big corporations.

Having secured a judicial redefinition of marriage, they pivoted to the “T,” with the Obama administration redefining “sex” to mean “gender identity” and imposing a new policy on all schools.

The change has been top down—from Hollywood’s portrayal of LGBT characters to business executives boycotting states over religious-freedom laws.

And having won government support, activists turned to eliminating private dissent. Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke wants to yank the tax-exemption of noncompliant churches. Megadonor Tim Gill vows to spend his fortunes to “punish the wicked.”

Who are “the wicked”? Those who refuse to accept the new sexual orthodoxy.

All of us, including those identifying as LGBT, are made in God’s image, are endowed with profound dignity and thus deserve respect. It’s because of this dignity and out of such respect that the institutions serving the human good—like the marriage-based family—should be supported, not undermined or redefined. That basic rights like religious freedom ought to be upheld, not infringed. That a healthy moral and physical ecology—especially for children—must be preserved.

The “progress” of the past decade has exacted steep costs.

COMMENTARY BY

Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he researches and writes about marriage, bioethics, religious liberty and political philosophy. Anderson is the author of several books and his research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two separate cases. Read his Heritage research. Twitter: .

Robert George

Robert George is the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, where he directs the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He also serves on The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees. Twitter: .

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A Note for our Readers:

With the demand for socialism at an all-time high among our young people—our future leaders and decisionmakers—the experts at Heritage stopped and asked a question that not many have asked:

Is socialism really morally sound?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you and our fellow Americans better understand the 9 Ways That Socialism Will Morally Bankrupt America.

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

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

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

Obama stopped Israel from killing Soleimani in 2015, threatened to shoot down IAF strike on Iran

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Just whose side was this man on? Yes, of course, he was just trying to avoid a costly war with Iran. That’s why he gave the mullahs billions that they used to finance jihad terrorist groups.

“Report: Obama Administration Stopped Israel From Assassinating Soleimani in 2015,” by Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media, January 3, 2020:

When President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran’s Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, he not only made an arguably proportionate response to the invasion of the U.S. Embassy this week but he also reversed a policy of the Obama administration. According to a report from 2018, Israel was “on the verge” of assassinating Soleimani in 2015, but Obama’s officials foiled the plan. In fact, they reached out to Iran with news of Israel’s plans.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, gave Israel a green light to assassinate Soleimani, according to a January 1, 2018 report from the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida. The paper quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that “there is an American-Israeli agreement” that Soleimani is a “threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.” According to Haaretz, Al-Jarida is generally assumed to be a platform for the Israeli government to disseminate its message to other Middle Eastern governments.

According to the report, the agreement between Israel and the U.S. came three years after Washington thwarted an Israeli attempt to kill the Iranian general.

“The report says Israel was ‘on the verge’ of assassinating Soleimani three years ago, near Damascus, but the United States warned the Iranian leadership of the plan, revealing that Israel was closely tracking the Iranian general,” Haaretz reported.

The incident “sparked a sharp disagreement between the Israeli and American security and intelligence apparatuses regarding the issue.” That sounds like an understatement.

President Barack Obama frequently snubbed Israel, considered by many to be America’s best ally in the Middle East. Yet the news that the Obama’s administration prevented Israel from assassinating the Quds Force leader seems particularly significant, since the Obama administration also kept a list of approximately 500 American soldiers who were murdered by Iranian IEDs. Since the Quds Force spearheads Iran’s operations outside the Islamic Republic, Soleimani would arguably be responsible for all of those deaths.

When Trump finally gave the order to kill the Quds Force leader, it came after multiple attacks against Americans and American facilities in Iraq — attacks that arguably traced back to Soleimani himself….

There is much more. Read the rest here.

We had this news back in 2015. “‘Obama Threatened to Shoot Down IAF Iran Strike,’” by Mark Langfan, Israel National News, January 3, 2015:

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Following Obama’s threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.

According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel’s back.

The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Al-Jarida quoted “well-placed” sources as saying that Netanyahu, along with Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon, and then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, had decided to carry out airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program after consultations with top security commanders.

According to the report, “Netanyahu and his commanders agreed after four nights of deliberations to task the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Benny Gantz, to prepare a qualitative operation against Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Netanyahu and his ministers decided to do whatever they could do to thwart a possible agreement between Iran and the White House because such an agreement is, allegedly, a threat to Israel’s security.”

The sources added that Gantz and his commanders prepared the requested plan and that Israeli fighter jets trained for several weeks in order to make sure the plans would work successfully. Israeli fighter jets reportedly even carried out experimental flights in Iran’s airspace after they managed to break through radars.

Brzezinski’s idea

Former US diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for Obama in 2008, called on him to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast.

“We have to be serious about denying them that right,” he said. “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a ‘Liberty’ in reverse.’”…

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

Iraq: MPs scream “Allahu akbar” after voting to expel US forces from the country

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This vote was a foregone conclusion, since Iraq has had a weak Shi’ite government dominated by the Islamic Republic of Iran ever since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. And the MPs are right: we should leave Iraq and everywhere our troops are without any defined mission or goal.

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“An Entire World Will Avenge You”: Pro-Soleimani rally in Molenbeek, Muslim area of Brussels

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

The Demise of the Private Colleges

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Private colleges are in financial straits, induced by their own progressive policies.

Private colleges are in serious financial trouble.  According to Bloomberg, they may have to merge with others or close their doors.  The seeds planted by the “homeless, tempest-tossed” academics from Frankfurt, Germany, 84 years ago, are now bearing fruit.

The private colleges are yet another casualty of the plot against American values and exceptionalism initiated by those outcasts from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory who arrived in New York, in 1935.  The theorists began their “long march through the Institutions,” including higher education, changing the system that was among the best in the world, and poisoning the wells as they advanced.  Whether fools or rogues, they soon realized that the Judeo-Christian West’s superiority could only be destroyed from within, by having their operatives join the machinery of the old institutions, and by collaborating with Third World liberation movements and other dissident minority.  It would take some generations, but the prize of the most envied capitalist country in the world – America and the Free West — was worth their patience.

The learned academics within the private colleges readily complied with the new Common Core curricula, textbooks, teaching films and scripts, recognizing the Frankfurt stamp of approval.  They introduced identity politics, which now requires a six-figure professional to help the children cope with the resultant tribalism and victimhood – sorely needed funds down the drain.

They welcomed new professors who spew antisemitism and anti-Americanism and stood mutely by while guest speakers with opposing opinions were jeered out of the lecture halls.  The students are emerging as leftists, socialists, communists, and Islamists, decidedly ignorant in every discipline, but eagerly engaged in social justice courses, community organizing, political protests, and deadly violence to destroy the spirit of freedom and the soul of our nation.  Critical Theory has taught the younger generation to break down fences before they understand why they were erected.

These are the rebels with a thousand empty causes, the socialists who will not support their universities, but who will expect compassion.  Unsurprisingly, this is affecting the coffers of Academe; the alarms have been sounded.

The business of destroying American education from within is gathering momentum.  As  Walter E. Williams explained in Fraud in Higher  Education, only 37% of white college students test as college-ready, but 70% are admitted, and  only 17% of black high school graduates test as college-ready, but 58% are admitted, with most unable to read, write, and do math at 12th grade level.  Forty percent of college students require developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of ~$7 billion.  Only 25 percent of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the readiness benchmarks in English, reading, math and science.  Students are advanced by their race, not by achievement, showing no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore year.  Education Secretary Betsy deVos just confirmed, “The country is in a student achievement crisis.”

Ronald Reagan famously said, ”Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Every generation must uphold the legacy of freedom and to do so, it must understand the origins of democracy, our government structure, rights and responsibilities, and methods of public engagement.  But the work of the so-called Progressives (ultra Regressives) has brought the knowledge of civics and government to an all-time low.  Some young people are even learning tolerance and social justice from books supplied by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an FBI-recognized global and domestic terrorism-inspiring hate group, a perfect example of the bedfellows recommended by the Frankfurt outcasts.

National pride and patriotism are slated for destruction, corroborated by history classes that use Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” which focuses on the communist’s views of America’s historic injustice, with its dubious evidence and conclusions.  America is shown as colonialist oppressor of the poor and disenfranchised, with no reference to our 13th amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery here.  The students are intentionally dumbed down about America’s history, and taught to accept a whitewashed Islam and Communism.  Their violence against the monuments is denial of our history and extends to disrespect and breakdown of our laws and law enforcement.

Progressives vilify our national pride and corrupt public trust so as to destroy our society and reconstruct it into another – hideous – image, with the morale or soul of the generation siphoned out.  Therefore, the bulk of high-quality fiction, poetry, theater and other imaginative and inspiring texts are replaced by informational prose, newspaper and social media stories – dry topics of social studies designed to enervate the individual and discourage reading.  Instead of topics that encourage and inspire, young teens read of emotional difficulties and social justice issues – topics such as teen angst, bullying and sexual harassment, underage drinking, sexual molestation, complex relationships in dysfunctional families, and suicide.  These depressing social issues, irrespective of the students’ emotional maturity, may well have a direct correlation to their increased suicide rate, doubled for boys and tripled for girls.  Our thirty million illiterate adults are a step toward the illiteracy of despotic regimes.

The intellectual depletion shows our 15-year-olds to be lagging behind in math at 39th of their peers in 69 other countries.  These are not “cultural differences,” as math is the most concrete and easiest way to judge across cultures.  Common Core math offers a “one size fits all” approach that holds the children back and thwarts autonomy.  DeVos reported that eighth graders failed to meet the low standard of the ‘90s, sinking below their predecessors from two years earlier.

In an unexpected twist, Progressives have found some inspiration in Islam and the two are now cooperating to destroy and restructure the society that has nourished them.  Common Core includes the study of LGBTQ history for a full year, with transgender organizations, activists, and websites abetting gender confusion, encouraging life-altering “treatments” that damage their bodies and mental health.  This is sold as “inclusivity,” but is a step toward fully accepting and imitating the Islamic family unit of one man with four wives as young as age 7, and the approval of pedophilia.  The Islamic family unit is a hotbed of dysfunction, complete with rivalry, tension, childhood rape, stealth homosexuality, blame, shame, and extreme violence.

The closer we come to emulating Islam, the further we fall from grace, from the morality of Judaism and Christianity, until we become no better than lower species.  Quotes from Islam’s most famous spokesman, Ayatollah Kohomeini, provided only partially here, may be found on the Internet: Sex and Islam.

Pedophilia and Bestiality in Islam, by Jennifer King, stipulates that all Muslims are ordered to imitate Muhammad’s perfect example in thought, word and deed.  The Prophet engaged in bestiality; it is not forbidden, but bathing instructions must be followed.

The traditional family, based on fidelity, is the surest bastion against the collective-hive society that is being planned for us.  For this reason, schools are increasing sexualization even in Kindergarten, encouraging masturbation, sexual intimacy and intercourse. The comparison with Islamic practice is inescapable: the man has no need to develop self-control and the woman is responsible only to him, invisible, covered from head to toe and obedient under the threat of rape or death.  The Progressive is coalescing with the Islamic mindset to shape the future agenda.  The schools have replaced our Judeo-Christian values with a shared commitment to social causes – racism, supremacism, climate change, America’s evils, boycotting Israel, gun control, unlimited abortion, and more.

David Coleman was the architect of the Common Core standards.  It was developed by a leftist-Washington-based think tank, Achieve, and funded with millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress, and others, allies of the left and George Soros groups.  Coleman’s vision was profoundly flawed, and parents were not consulted.

Secretary of Education Betsy deVos admitted, “The results are, frankly, devastating.”  Literacy and civics must be made a national priority and it is time to denounce what socialism is doing to our children. This is America’s wake-up call.

DECADENT DEMOCRATS: The Enemies of America are Our Best Friends Forever

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“Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani.” – President Donald J. Trump on January 3, 2020.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Robert K. Hudnut, A Sensitive Man and the Christ, 1971

It has become clear there are those in the Democrat Party, the media and in Hollywood who take exception to the termination of Iranian al Quds General Qasem Soleimani. Some members of Congress, like Nancy Pelosi, are upset that they were not notified prior to the termination of this “number-one terrorist.” Others have shouted that this termination is tantamount to an act of war against Iran.

It seems like the Democrats are tripping over themselves to undermine our national security.

Iran, Democrats Best Friends Forever

Let’s look at a few Twitter posts to understand how the enemies of America are the Democrats best friends forever.

First Rose McGowen, NYT bestselling author of #BRAVE Amazon.

Here is Max Blumenthal the Editor, the @GrayzoneProject, , Co-host of Moderate Rebels, @moderate_rebels  Author, The Management of Savagery. Note Blumenthal is at the White House standing shoulder to shoulder with Code Pink, Answer Coalition and Pop Resistance.

MSNBC Iran’s BFF

The big lie from Susan Rice on speaking to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC stating that during the entire eight years of the Obama administration wasn’t “presented an opportunity” to terminate Soleimani.

Representative Ilhan Omar Iran’s BFF

President Trump stated in his announcement of the termination of Qasem Soleimani:

We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.

This statement was not good enough for Ilhan Omar (D-MI). She has made this a campaign issue and is using it to raise funds for her reelection.

Omar and war crimes.

Iran’s new Quds Force Commander Ismael Qaani.

CONCLUSION:

In a TownHall.com column titled There Is Something Fundamentally Wrong With Democrats Derek Hunter writes:

It’s odd how the political left cheers America’s shortcomings and mourns its victories.

[ … ]

Weirdly, the people who use the word “justice” most often saw no justice in the death of a man who’s been killing innocent people for their whole lives. Ilhan Omar reacted the way someone would when their childhood hero passes away, then tried to fundraise off of it because anti-Americanism translates into cash on the left.

Rashida Tlaib warned about a “lawless President recklessly moves us closer to yet another unnecessary war that puts innocent lives at risk.” She expressed no concerns for the innocent lives Soleimani had taken over his career.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whined that “the President engaged in what is widely being recognized as an act of war against Iran, one that now risks the lives of millions of innocent people.”

Democrats and their supporters support Iran. They have, since President Trump withdrew from the Iranian Nuclear Deal, tried to undermine him and his foreign policy in the Middle East.

© All rights reserved.

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Are AR-15 Rifles a Public Safety Threat? Here’s What the Data Say.

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Is it true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety?

From Parkland, Florida, to San Bernardino, California, the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and its variants have seemingly become the weapons of choice for mass shooters in the United States.

Many people simply cannot believe that regular civilians should be able to legally own so-called “weapons of war,” which they believe should only be in the hands of the military.

According to Pew Research, for example, 81 percent of Democrats and even 50 percent of Republicans believe the federal government should ban “assault-style rifles” like the AR-15. Given the massive amount of carnage AR-15s and similar rifles have caused, it makes sense that the civilian population simply cannot be trusted to own such weapons, right?

Perhaps, but is it really true that the AR-15, a popular firearm owned by millions of Americans, is a unique threat to public safety, so dangerous that it deserves to be banned or even confiscated by the federal government?

It cannot be emphasized enough that any homicide is a tragedy, but in order to get a sense of how dangerous to public safety “assault-style” rifles are, it’s useful to compare their usage in homicide to other methods.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are the two authoritative sources for homicide statistics in the United States.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the CDC reports “produce more accurate homicide trends at the national level” because they capture less under-reporting than the FBI statistics.

However, the homicide data recorded by the CDC includes all homicides committed by civilians regardless of criminal intent. The FBI data instead focuses on intentional homicides (i.e murder) known to law enforcement and excludes non-negligent homicide (i.e manslaughter.)

According to the BJS, the FBI data is “better suited for understanding the circumstances surrounding homicide incidents.” This is especially true given that the FBI, but not the CDC, records the type of firearm used in a given homicide. For the purposes of this analysis, the data from the FBI will be used.

There are two further limitations of FBI data worth noting.

Firstly, the FBI reports do not look at “assault-style” rifles specifically, but rather, murders involving all types of rifles, whether they are committed with an AR-15 or a hunting rifle.

Secondly, each year there are a few thousand homicide cases where the type of firearm used goes unreported to the FBI. This means that some murders listed under “unknown firearm” may, in fact, be rifle murders.

To account for this under-reporting, we will extrapolate from rifles’ share of firearm murders where the type of weapon is known in order to estimate the number of “unknown” firearms that were in actuality rifle homicides.

If we take the time to look at the raw data provided by the FBI, we find that all rifles, not just “assault-style rifles,” constitute on average 340 homicides per year from 2007 through 2017 (see Figure 1.). When we adjust these numbers to take under-reporting into account, that number rises to an average of 439 per year.

Figure 2 compares rifle homicides to homicides with other non-firearm weapons. Believe it or not, between 2007 and 2017, nearly 1,700 people were murdered with a knife or sharp object per year. That’s almost four times the number of people murdered by an assailant with any sort of rifle.

Figure 1. The Relative and Absolute Frequency of Rifle Homicides 2007-2017

Figure 2. Homicides per year by weapon 2007 – 2017

In any given year, for every person murdered with a rifle, there are 15 murdered with handguns, 1.7 with hands or fists, and 1.2 with blunt instruments. In fact, homicides with any sort of rifle represent a mere 3.2 percent of all homicides on average over the past decade.

Given that the FBI statistics pertain to all rifles, the homicide frequency of “assault-style” rifles like the AR-15 is necessarily lesser still, as such firearms compose a fraction of all the rifles used in crime.

According to a New York Times analysis, since 2007, at least “173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s.”

That’s 173 over a span of a decade, with an average of 17 homicides per year. To put this in perspective, consider that at this rate it would take almost one-hundred years of mass shootings with AR-15s to produce the same number of homicide victims that knives and sharp objects produce in one year.

With an average of 13,657 homicides per year during the 2007-2017 timeframe, about one-tenth of one percent of homicides were produced by mass shootings involving AR-15s.

Mass shootings involving rifles like the AR-15 can produce dozens of victims at one time, and combined with extensive media coverage of these events, many people have been led to believe that such rifles pose a significant threat to public safety.

However, such shootings are extremely rare, and a look at the FBI data informs us that homicide with these types of rifles represents an extremely small fraction of overall homicide violence. Banning or confiscating such firearms from the civilian population would likely produce little to no reduction in violent crime rates in America.

Image courtesy of Gun Holsters and Gear.

COLUMN BY

Being Classically Liberal

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The 20 Biggest Advances in Tech Over the Last 20 Years

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Despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.

Another decade is over. With the 2020s upon us, now is the perfect time to reflect on the immense technological advancements that humanity has made since the dawn of the new millennium.

This article explores, in no particular order, 20 of the most significant technological advancements we have made in the last 20 years.

  1. Smartphones: Mobile phones existed before the 21st century. However, in the past 20 years, their capabilities have improved enormously. In June 2007, Apple released the iPhone, the first touchscreen smartphone with mass-market appeal. Many other companies took inspiration from the iPhone. As a consequence, smartphones have become an integral part of day-to-day life for billions of people around the world. Today, we take pictures, navigate without maps, order food, play games, message friends, listen to music, etc. all on our smartphones. Oh, and you can also use them to call people.
  2. Flash Drives: First sold by IBM in 2000, the USB flash drive allows you to easily store files, photos or videos with a storage capacity so large that it would be unfathomable just a few decades ago. Today, a 128GB flash drive, available for less than $20 on Amazon, has more than 80,000 times the storage capacity of a 1.44MB floppy disk, which was the most popular type of storage disk in the 1990s.
  3. Skype: Launched in August 2003, Skype transformed the way that people communicate across borders. Before Skype, calling friends or family abroad cost huge amounts of money. Today, speaking to people on the other side of the world, or even video calling with them, is practically free.
  4. Google: Google’s search engine actually premiered in the late 1990s, but the company went public in 2004, leading to its colossal growth. Google revolutionized the way that people search for information online. Every hour there are more than 228 million Google searches. Today Google is part of Alphabet Inc., a company that offers dozens of services such as translations, Gmail, Docs, Chrome web browser, and more.
  5. Google Maps: In February 2005, Google launched its mapping service, which changed the way that many people travel. With the app available on virtually all smartphones, Google Maps has made getting lost virtually impossible. It’s easy to forget that just two decades ago, most travel involved extensive route planning, with paper maps nearly always necessary when venturing to unfamiliar places.
  6. Human Genome Project: In April 2003, scientists successfully sequenced the entire human genome. Through the sequencing of our roughly 23,000 genes, the project shed light on many different scientific fields, including disease treatment, human migration, evolution, and molecular medicine.
  7. YouTube: In May 2005, the first video was uploaded to what today is the world’s most popular video-sharing website. From Harvard University lectures on quantum mechanics and favorite T.V. episodes to “how-to” tutorials and funny cat videos, billions of pieces of content can be streamed on YouTube for free.
  8. Graphene: In 2004, researchers at the University of Manchester became the first scientists to isolate graphene. Graphene is an atom-thin carbon allotrope that can be isolated from graphite, the soft, flaky material used in pencil lead. Although humans have been using graphite since the Neolithic era, isolating graphene was previously impossible. With its unique conductive, transparent, and flexible properties, graphene has enormous potential to create more efficient solar panels, water filtration systems, and even defenses against mosquitos.
  9. Bluetooth: While Bluetooth technology was officially unveiled in 1999, it was only in the early 2000s that manufacturers began to adopt Bluetooth for use in computers and mobile phones. Today, Bluetooth is featured in a wide range of devices and has become an integral part of many people’s day-to-day lives.
  10. Facebook: First developed in 2004, Facebook was not the first social media website. Due to its simplicity to use, however, Facebook quickly overtook existing social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace. With 2.41 billion active users per month (almost a third of the world’s population), Facebook has transformed the way billions of people share news and personal experiences with one another.
  11. Curiosity, the Mars Rover: First launched in November 2011, Curiosity is looking for signs of habitability on Mars. In 2014, the rover uncovered one of the biggest space discoveries of this millennium when it found water under the surface of the red planet. Curiosity’s work could help humans become an interplanetary species in just a few decades’ time.
  12. Electric Cars: Although electric cars are not a 21st-century invention, it wasn’t until the 2000s that these vehicles were built on a large scale. Commercially available electric cars, such as the Tesla Roadster or the Nissan Leaf, can be plugged into any electrical socket to charge. They do not require fossil fuels to run. Although still considered a fad by some, electric cars are becoming ever more popular, with more than 1.5 million units sold in 2018.
  13. Driverless Cars: In August 2012, Google announced that its automated vehicles had completed over 300,000 miles of driving, accident-free. Although Google’s self-driving cars are the most popular at the moment, almost all car manufacturers have created or are planning to develop automated cars. Currently, these cars are in testing stages, but provided that the technology is not hindered by overzealous regulations, automated cars will likely be commercially available in the next few years.
  14. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC): With its first test run in 2013, the LHC became the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It’s also the world’s largest single machine. The LHC allows scientists to run experiments on some of the most complex theories in physics. Its most important finding so far is the Higgs-Boson particle. The discovery of this particle lends strong support to the “standard model of particle physics,” which describes most of the fundamental forces in the universe.
  15. AbioCor Artificial Heart: In 2001, the AbioCor artificial heart, which was created by the Massachusetts-based company AbioMed, became the first artificial heart to successfully replace a human heart in heart transplant procedures. The AbioCor artificial heart powers itself. Unlike previous artificial hearts, it doesn’t need intrusive wires that heighten the likelihood of infection and death.
  16. 3D Printing: Although 3D printers as we know them today began in the 1980s, the development of cheaper manufacturing methods and open-source software contributed to a 3D printing revolution over the last two decades. Today, 3D printers are being used to print spare parts, whole houses, medicines, bionic limbs, and even entire human organs.
  17. Amazon Kindle: In November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. Since then, a plethora of e-readers has changed the way millions of people read. Thanks to e-readers, people don’t need to carry around heavy stacks of books, and independent authors can get their books to an audience of millions of people without going through a publisher.
  18. Stem Cell Research: Previously the stuff of science fiction, stem cells (i.e., basic cells that can become almost any type of cell in the body) are being used to grow, among other things, kidney, lung, brain, and heart tissue. This technology will likely save millions of lives in the coming decades as it means that patients will no longer have to wait for donor organs or take harsh medicines to treat their ailments.
  19. Multi-Use Rockets: In November and December of 2015, two separate private companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, successfully landed reusable rockets. This development greatly cheapens the cost of getting to space and brings commercial space travel one step closer to reality.
  20. Gene Editing: In 2012, researchers from Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Broad Institute each independently discovered that a bacterial immune system known as CRISPR could be used as a gene-editing tool to change an organism’s DNA. By cutting out pieces of harmful DNA, gene-editing technology will likely change the future of medicine and could eventually eradicate some major diseases.

However you choose to celebrate this new year, take a moment to think about the immense technological advancements of the last 20 years, and remember that despite what you may read in the newspapers or see on TV, humans continue to reach new heights of prosperity.

This article was reprinted from Human Action.

COLUMN BY

Alexander Hammond

Alexander C. R. Hammond is a researcher at a Washington D.C. think tank and Senior Fellow for African Liberty. He is also a Young Voices contributor and frequently writes about economic freedom, African development, and globalization.

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A Sad Baltimore Tale

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Over the Christmas holiday, Mary and I drove from West Virginia to visited her widow birth mother who lives in Baltimore. I’ll call her Ruth. Mary and I grew up in the Baltimore area.

Wow! What a striking decline in our beloved hometown, once renowned as Charm City. We saw countless blocks of empty trashed row-houses.

Baltimore is also known for great neighborhoods; Fells Point, Little Italy and so on. We drove through Highland town, pronounced, “Hollin” town by locals. I was shocked to see so many Highland town businesses which once thrived were gone, boarded up. They should have grown rather than failed.

Upon our arrival, Ruth excitedly greeted us with a hug.

Ruth has lived in her Dundalk home for 39 years, a block from the city line. Her companion is Corky, her old fat hound dog. She said thugs from the city have begun spilling over into her neighborhood. There is a party house a few doors down from her with loud music filled with expletives. She called the police a few times but nothing has changed.

We were told that the East Point Mall which was once a hub of family activity has become a place to avoid, infected with drugs and criminals.

Ruth said her old female friend barely escaped being carjacked in Baltimore in broad daylight by locking her doors before thugs could open them. Ruth does not venture into Baltimore unless it is absolutely necessary. Baltimore hit a new record high for homicides over the holidays.

Because Ruth is white and I am black, I sensed Ruth’s discomfort expressing how horrible Baltimore’s black female mayor has been. Ruth said, “I heard her say the police should allow rioters to destroy businesses to get out their frustrations.” I told Ruth that she heard correctly. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said, “We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well…”

Democrat controlled cities are insanely obsessed with pandering to criminals and illegals against the safety, best interest and rights of law abiding citizens. NYC Mayor de Blasio’s latest soft-on-crime initiative includes giving freed inmates gift cards and cell phones. The gift cards are ending up at liquor stores. Democrat presidential candidates boldly proclaim that if elected, they will declare war on law enforcement which includes ICE and police.

Ruth served Mary and I delicious cake she baked from scratch. She moved to Baltimore as a child with her mother and baby brother. The word in West Virginia was those folks in Baltimore don’t want to work. Ruth’s mom moved to Baltimore for a job. Her mother was never without a job. Ruth’s dad stayed in West Virginia working in the coalmine.

Ruth shared a horrible story about a relative who got too close to the fireplace. Her robe caught fire. She pushed her two children outside the house but could not save herself. Grandparents raised the two children.

Hearing Ruth share about the lives of her and her family, Mary and I later discussed how clearly Ruth’s generation was not whiners. They simply kept moving forward doing whatever they needed to do to survive. They were not snowflakes.

Mary and I made sure to get-outta-Dodge (Baltimore) before dark. It is truly tragic what 50 years of Democrat control has done to a once great American city.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader vows jihad for Qassem Soleimani’s killing

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Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has threatened the United States with ‘jihad’ after an American drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, the chief of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

“All Enemies should know that the jihad of resistance will continue with a doubled motivation, and a definite victory awaits the fighters in the holy war,” Khamenei said in a televised statement.

In his Friday’s sermon, Khamenei vowed revenge for the slain terrorist, saying, “this is the time to clear the region from these insidious beasts.” The chants of “Death to America” followed the weekly Islamic prayer.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed terrorist group Hizbollah, which operates in Lebanon, also joined in the Iranian call to jihad, urging “all resistance fighters worldwide” to avenge the killing of the top Iranian commander.

Soleimani, considered to be one of the most powerful figures in the Iranian regime, was the chief architect of Iran’s network of terrorist groups across the Middle East. The head of Quds Force, the elite wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was responsible for the killing of hundreds of American servicemen and women in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Department confirmed. At the time of the attack, he was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon disclosed.

Soleimani’s Quds Force is tasked with carrying out terrorist operations beyond Iran’s borders, propping up pro-Iran regimes, and building proxy terrorist militia. For two decades, he was in charge of Iran’s foreign intelligence and terrorist operations. “The killing of Qassim Soleimani is one of the biggest developments in the Middle East for decades – it far eclipses the deaths of Bin Laden or Baghdadi in terms of strategic significance and implications,” the UK newspaper Telegraph noted.

Iran’s allies, Russian and China, condemned the U.S. anti-terror operation, calling all sides to exercise restraint, “especially the United States.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry offered glowing praise for the slain terrorist: “Soleimani served the cause of protecting Iran’s national interests with devotion. We express our sincere condolences to the Iranian people.” His killing “was an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region,” the Russian news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS reported citing Foreign Ministry sources.

The response from the EU and European leaders was muted, with Germany and France calling for “easing” of the tensions and “deescalating” the situation.

The French TV channel EuroNews reported the European response the U.S. counter-terrorism strike:

The first European country to react to the killing of Soleimani is France. The country’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Amelie de Montchalin said on RTL radio, “we are waking up to a more dangerous world. Military escalations are always dangerous.” She added that “escalation is underway.”

Montchalin indicated that urgent reconciliation efforts are being launched behind the scenes. French President Emmanuel Macron and his foreign minister were reaching out to “all the actors in the region,” she said.

The British government is urging caution, saying “further conflict is in none of our interests.””

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab stated that the UK has “always recognised the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani.“

The statement does not explicitly endorse or condemn the actions of the U.S., a major British ally.

Germany says the situation in the Middle East has reached ” “a dangerous escalation point” and that conflicts in the region can only be resolved diplomatically.

German government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer characterised the U.S. move as “a reaction to a “whole series of military provocations for which Iran bears responsibility,” pointing to attacks on tankers and a Saudi oil facility.

The drone strike that killed Soleimani also took out Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. The terrorist group was behind the storming of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Sunday. The terror outfit also carried out a recent rocket attack at a U.S. military base in northern Iraq, killing one American civilian contractor and injuring several soldiers.

Hours after the strike, Iran was busy regrouping its terrorist network in the region. Iranian leader Khamenei appointed Esmail Qaani (Ghaani) as commander of Quds force to replace the slain terrorist.

Cross-posted from Legal Insurrection.

COLUMN BY

Vijeta Uniyal

Vijeta Uniyal is an Indian journalist based in Germany. He is Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

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