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Hamas-linked CAIR ejects Breitbart reporter from anti-Ben Carson press conference

September 22, 2015/in Elections, Must Read, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

“We believe in a conversation,” Awad said, but Hamas-linked CAIR really only wants a conversation with those who toe its line. In reality, Hamas-linked CAIR works hard to shut down, demonize and marginalize anyone who speaks honestly about the jihad threat. The only conversation they want is one with their sycophants in the mainstream media and the Obama Administration.

It’s a manifestation of a deep insecurity, as well as an underlying authoritarianism and thuggery, for Hamas-linked CAIR to expel Munro and bar him from the premises. It demonstrates that underneath all Hooper’s bluster, he is a coward: he knows he can’t counter what Munro says, and can’t answer any probing questions (as opposed to the loving softballs he routinely gets from the mainstream media), so he has to resort to strongarm tactics. There are cowardly little bullies like Hooper all over America today — on college campuses, in the media, in politics, and in general almost every place where there used the possibility of free and honest discourse.

“CAIR’s Islamists Eject Breitbart From Their Anti-Carson Press Conference,” by Neil Munro, Breitbart, September 21, 2015:

Islamic advocates ejected a Breitbart News reporter from a Sept. 21 news conference in Washington D.C. The Council on American-Islamic Relations was hosting the event to complain about Dr. Ben Carson’s criticism of Islamic intolerance.

Ibrahim Hooper, an American convert to the 1,200 year-old religion, also threatened to eject the Breitbart reporter from any future conferences, and admitted in front of multiple TV cameras that he had ejected the reporter from a prior press conference.

Speakers at the event included CAIR’s co-founder Nihad Awad and several others. “We believe in a conversation,” Awad said. “What unites us as Americans is…. our Constitution,” he claimed.

At the end of the statements, Awad’s spokesman announced that Breitbart’s reporter he would not be allowed to ask questions during the short question and answer period.

Immediately after the question and answer session, Hooper intervened again to stop a conversation about Islam between Breitbart and one of the speakers.

“He is just one of the hate-mongers,” Hooper said about the Breitbart reporter. The CAIR speaker said he wanted to continue the conversation, but Hooper insisted that the reporter be forced out from the event. “Could you take it outside? We have you to leave. We have to ask him to leave. We have asked him to leave in previous news conferences, so we just ask you to leave, please,” Hooper said.

To clarify: “Yes, I’m throwing you out,” Hooper added.

A letter to the U.S. Congress

September 22, 2015/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Paul R. Hollrah

The Hon. James M. Inhofe
205 Russell Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

The Hon. James Lankford
316 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

The Hon. Markwayne Mullin
1113 Longworth House Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20515

Gentlemen:

As a concerned constituent, I would like to express my concern over the apparent unconcern of the Congress for what is perhaps the greatest danger our nation has ever faced. I refer, of course, to the dangers posed by the ever-increasing “invasion” of radical Islamists into our country.

Although there are approximately 1.4 billion Muslims on Earth, we are told that we should not be overly concerned because only about 5% of them are radicalized, hell-bent on killing as many non-Muslims… me and you and our families… as possible. Of course, 5% of 1.4 billion comes to roughly 70 million terrorists and suicide bombers. During World War II, the combined military forces of Germany, Japan, and Italy numbered only 34.1 million combatants.

In the years immediately following World War II, our principal internal security threat came from the international communist conspiracy, represented domestically by the Communist Party, USA. It was the stated purpose of the communist conspiracy to seek the destruction of our constitutional republic through any means necessary, including force and violence. In response, the U.S. Congress took appropriate steps to eradicate the clear and present danger posed by the communist conspiracy through passage of the Communist Control Act of 1954, outlawing communism in the United States.

But now, in the closing years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century, we find ourselves endangered internally by an enemy far more numerous and far more deadly than was posed by the presence of communists in our midst. Yet, it appears as if the Congress prefers to take the politically correct approach to radical Islam, treating radical Islamists as if they are just another religious sect with First Amendment rights and privileges.

Islam is not a “religious denomination” in the generally accepted sense of the term. Instead, it is a complete social, economic, legal, political, and military entity with a religious component. As such, it does not merit First Amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution, and it cannot be allowed to impose itself as a protected political and religious institution within our borders.

As we see endless streams of Muslim “asylum seekers” crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa into Italy and Spain, and as we see hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Muslims from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern nations flooding across Eurasia, overrunning police and military forces of the invaded countries on their way to sanctuary in Western Europe, we know that we are witnessing the greatest human migration in history… a transmigration of cultures that is certain to devour Christianity, Judaism, and the richness of Western culture. Unless we take steps to return the waves of Islamists, who kill and rape their way across civilized nations, to their own section of the Earth, none of what we have known as western civilization will exist a decade or two from now. Just imagine the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit if we fail to take appropriate action now, while we still can.

What I suggest is that the Congress rewrite sections of the Communist Control Act of 1954, a statute that has not been overturned by the courts and is still in force, to read as follows:

SEC. 1. PURPOSE. The Congress hereby finds and declares that certain organizations exist within our borders which, although purporting to be political or religious in nature, are in fact instrumentalities of foreign political or religious entities or ideologies whose purpose it is to overthrow the Government of the United States by any available means, including force and violence. Such organizations operate as authoritarian dictatorships within our borders, demanding for themselves the rights and privileges generally accorded to all political parties and religious denominations, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution.

SEC. 2. PROSCRIBED ORGANIZATIONS. Any political or religious organization as described herein, or any successors or affiliates of such organizations, regardless of the assumed name, whose object or purpose it is to overthrow the government of the United States, or to force the political or religious conversion of its people by force or violence, or threats thereof, are not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States or its political subdivisions; and whatever rights, privileges, and immunities heretofore granted to said religious or political organizations, or any subsidiary or affiliate organizations, by reason of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof, are hereby rescinded: Provided that nothing in this section shall be construed as amending the Internal Security Act of 1950, as amended.

My question is this: If we could find the courage in 1954 to outlaw an ideology that sought only to convert us through political subversion, why can we not find the courage in 2015 to outlaw a foreign ideology that offers us only a choice between religious subservience and death… the ultimate Hobson’s Choice. I would appreciate having your specific reactions to my concerns. I would prefer not to have generic boilerplate responses prepared by staff members.

Respectfully,

Paul R. Hollrah

Iceland’s Meltdown

September 21, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Tabitha Korol

The city council of Reykjavik, Iceland, has fallen under the spell of a small, but toxic, Muslim population. Because of the customary Islamic narrative against Israel, the capital’s outgoing councilwoman, Bjork Vilhelmsdottir, declared a boycott against all Israeli products, citing oppression of Palestinians and the “wall”; she is also planning a mission to “help Palestinians.” Further, Iceland’s interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, led an anti-Israel protest complete with “blood-soaked” Israeli flags and accusations that Israel is committing a holocaust against the Palestinian people. Contrary to the Islamic narrative, Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, Gaza and Judea/Samaria (West Bank), and the constant target of Palestinian aggression, requiring the wall, one of innumerable similar barriers in the world, including Europe, that save nations from their barbarian neighbors.

The administration appears severely uninformed of Palestinian aggression and their refusal to make peace with the Jewish state. Although Iceland’s Foreign Ministry clarified that the boycott decision “doesn’t match the foreign policy of Iceland,” this small uprising could portend further discrimination as Islam gains a stronger foothold on the island nation – and Icelandic history should have served as warning that Islam is no friend of democracy.

Iceland’s first encounter with Muslims began with two raids in 1627, The Turkish Abduction – one led by a Dutch Muslim and his Barbary pirates from Morocco and Algeria, the other by the Barbary corsairs from Algiers and Sale’. The Muslims captured and sold into slavery an estimated 400 to 900 prisoners, and plundered livestock and silver (and a nearby English sailing vessel). Barely assisted by Dano-Norwegian naval patrols and having no standing army, Icelanders remained unarmed and vulnerable to Barbary corsair attacks, kidnappings and murders.

Muslims were also skilled in overland conquest. Through 1400 years of Islam, the marauders have kidnapped people for military or administrative power, for converts, wives, concubines and personal slaves as well as to replenish their relentless slave trade. They have tortured and slaughtered 900 million across continents. Nurtured in hate and usurpation, the hordes bring with them animosity, incendiary riots, property destruction, hate crimes and death to Europe – Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, etc. Muslims have turned Sweden’s third largest city, Malmo, into a twilight of social chaos and increasing violence, earning it the title “Rape Capital of the World” and Germany’s Munich into “Europe’s Biggest Brothel.” The explosive Islamo-fascism has caused the majority of Jewish citizens to flee.

When Palestinian Arabs realized that their many war tactics – centuries of deadly pogroms, terror tunnels (18 tons of concrete , cost of $3 million and the death of 160 child laborers), an estimated 20,000 rockets and mortar fired on Israeli civilians since 9/11 – could not conquer the Jewish state, they opted for war against Israel’s economy and culture by convincing a gullible world that it is Palestinian Arabs who are the victims, the David against the Goliath of Israel. Their boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) campaign is designed to defame Israel as an apartheid state, reduce her support, and enlist corporations, churches, associations, and academia in the international community to deny Israel’s right to self-defense and her very existence.

And it is now that Iceland has awakened. But it was not to speak out against Islam’s perpetual war against Iceland’s democratic ally; not to rally against the devastation in neighboring Sweden, with its Muslim youths rioting and burning hundreds of cars and buildings in 200 ghettos, raping countless women, and murder; not to condemn Muslims’ igniting or pelting emergency vehicles with rocks or the epidemic increase in rapes and calls for beheadings and a Muslim state in Norway; not to denounce the murder of Jews in France, the ruinous riots in southern Italy, or increase in terror worldwide. Rather, Iceland was stirred awake by the lie of Palestinian victimhood and, as a result, seeks to isolate Israel and inflict upon her financial damage.

What these Scandinavians fail to realize is that they, too, are at the beginning of a growing Islamic population and the chaos that is certain to follow. They fail to recognize the use of propaganda to unite the citizens in a common cause. And if Icelanders will not protest to save others, they will be unable to save themselves from the Islamic menace that festers in every multicultural paradise. Nei, they spoke out to condemn Israel, the only Jewish country in the Middle East and herself a victim of Islam.

The process has begun and Icelanders will now get their first mosque, with “foreign donors” funding its construction, and naïve taxpayers providing Reykjavik’s prime landmark location, selected and approved by Mayor Jon Gnarr, a self-described anarchist. The mosque, although far too large for the current Muslim community, will be built to accommodate the projected thousands, complete with minarets and a muezzin whose voice will be heard through the land five times a day. The Islamic community is a mere 1% of the city’s 120,000, but growing exponentially due to immigration and conversion. More than 11,000 Icelanders have offered to share their homes with the incoming new immigrants, welfare recipients, rioters, rapists, and jihadists. At 5%, they will exert influence inconsistent with their numbers, become more aggressive and push for Sharia Law. At 10% they will become more lawless and violent, and 20% will bring rioting, murder, jihad militias, and destruction of non-Muslim houses of worship. Beyond 40%, Icelanders can expect massacres and attacks, and at 50%, genocide, persecution of infidels and apostates, and Sharia will triumph.

To paraphrase Sir Winston S. Churchill, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” As Iceland may slowly slip from a constitutional republic to lawlessness and totalitarianism, we ask the government of Iceland to enact legislation, such as has been done by the United States of America, to oppose politically motivated actions that penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel, such as boycotts, divestments or sanctions, and to recognize that such actions against Israel are anti-Semitic aggression against the Jewish State.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Muslim praying in a mosque in Iceland. Photo by Eggert Jóhannesson from the Iceland Monitor.

Germany: Muslim Asylum Seeker Brags that He Killed for the Islamic State

September 21, 2015/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Ann Corcoran

Here is the brief story at the Daily Mail:

Police are investigating whether an asylum seeker living in Germany fought for Islamic State, it has been reported.

The Syrian man, who lives in a shelter in the north-east region of Brandenburg, allegedly told other refugees he had been a member of ISIS.

German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, reported that the man was filmed boasting about his blood-thirsty past.

Investigators are now trying to determine whether the Syrian was a member of ISIS, the newspaper reported.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office said the suspect was filmed by other refugees boasting about having killed for the terrorist group.

The Guardian reported overnight that European leaders will gather on Wednesday to try to figure out what the h*** they are going to do about the invasion. (not their words!)

See our extensive archive on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ going back years, here. Even casual observers have seen this crisis building for a long time and the chickens in the EU leadership did nothing to get in front of it.

Our archive on Germany is here. Previous posts on Merkel are here.

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U.S. soldiers ordered to ignore Afghan allies’ abuse of boys

September 21, 2015/in Culture War, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Jihad Watch

What are we in Afghanistan for, if not to stand for our own values and the principles of human rights? Instead, U.S. officials are aiding and abetting the destruction of these boys’ lives — and in the case of Lance Corporal Buckley, sacrificing our own troops. This is beyond shameful.

“Those are the ones brought near in the Gardens of Pleasure, a company of the former peoples and a few of the later peoples, on thrones woven, reclining on them, facing each other. There will circulate among them young boys made eternal with vessels, pitchers and a cup from a flowing spring.” — Qur’an 56:11-18

“And they will be given to drink a cup whose mixture is of ginger, a fountain within Paradise named Salsabeel. There will circulate among them young boys made eternal. When you see them, you would think them scattered pearls. And when you look there, you will see pleasure and great dominion.” — Qur’an 76:17-20

“U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies’ Abuse of Boys,” by Joseph Goldstein, New York Times, September 20, 2015:

KABUL, Afghanistan — In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

“At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militia to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.
Gregory Buckley Sr. believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death.

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore pedophilia by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander….

The American policy of nonintervention was intended to maintain good relations with the Afghan police and militia units the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also reflected a reluctance to impose cultural values in a country where pederasty is rife, particularly among powerful men, for whom being surrounded by young teenagers can be a mark of social status.

Some soldiers believed that the policy made sense, even if they were personally distressed at the sexual predation they witnessed or heard about.

“The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”

Still, the former lance corporal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid offending fellow Marines, recalled feeling sickened the day he entered a room on a base and saw three or four men lying on the floor with children between them. “I’m not a hundred percent sure what was happening under the sheet, but I have a pretty good idea of what was going on,” he said.

But the American policy of treating pedophilia as a cultural issue has often alienated the villages whose children were being preyed upon. The pitfalls of the policy emerged clearly as American Special Forces soldiers began to form Afghan Local Police militias to hold villages that American forces had retaken from the Taliban in 2010 and 2011.

By the summer of 2011, Captain Quinn and Sergeant Martland, both Green Berets on their second tour in northern Kunduz Province, began to receive dire complaints about the Afghan Local Police units they were training and supporting.

First, one of the militia commanders raped a 14- or 15-year-old girl whom he had spotted working in the fields. Captain Quinn informed the provincial police chief, who soon levied punishment. “He got one day in jail, and then she was forced to marry him,” Mr. Quinn said.

When he asked a superior officer what more he could do, he was told that he had done well to bring it up with local officials but that there was nothing else to be done. “We’re being praised for doing the right thing, and a guy just got away with raping a 14-year-old girl,” Mr. Quinn said.

Village elders grew more upset at the predatory behavior of American-backed commanders. After each incident, Captain Quinn would gather the Afghan commanders and lecture them on human rights.

Soon another commander absconded with his men’s wages. Mr. Quinn said he later heard the commander had spent the money on dancing boys. Another commander murdered his 12-year-old daughter in a so-called “honor killing” for having kissed a boy. “There were no repercussions,” Mr. Quinn recalled.

In September 2011, an Afghan woman, visibly bruised, showed up at an American base with her son, who was limping. One of the Afghan police commanders in the area, Abdul Rahman, had abducted the boy and forced him to become a sex slave, chained to his bed, the woman explained. When she sought her son’s return, she herself was beaten. Her son had eventually been released, but she was afraid it would happen again she told the Americans on the base.

She explained that because “her son was such a good-looking kid, he was a status symbol” local commanders coveted, recalled Mr. Quinn, who did not speak to the woman directly but was told about her visit when he returned to the base from a mission later that day.

So Captain Quinn summoned Abdul Rahman and confronted him about what he had done. The police commander acknowledged that it was true, but brushed it off. When the American officer began to lecture about “how you are held to a higher standard if you are working with U.S. forces, and people expect more of you,” the commander began to laugh.

“I picked him up and threw him onto the ground,” Mr. Quinn said. Sergeant Martland joined in, he said. “I did this to make sure the message was understood that if he went back to the boy, that it was not going to be tolerated,” Mr. Quinn recalled….

Sergeant Martland, who received a Bronze Star for valor for his actions during a Taliban ambush, wrote in a letter to the Army this year that he and Mr. Quinn “felt that morally we could no longer stand by and allow our A.L.P. to commit atrocities,” referring to the Afghan Local Police.

The father of Lance Corporal Buckley believes the policy of looking away from sexual abuse was a factor in his son’s death, and he has filed a lawsuit to press the Marine Corps for more information about it.

Lance Corporal Buckley and two other Marines were killed in 2012 by one of a large entourage of boys living at their base with an Afghan police commander named Sarwar Jan.

Mr. Jan had long had a bad reputation; in 2010, two Marine officers managed to persuade the Afghan authorities to arrest him following a litany of abuses, including corruption, support for the Taliban and child abduction. But just two years later, the police commander was back with a different unit, working at Lance Corporal Buckley’s post, Forward Operating Base Delhi, in Helmand Province.

Lance Corporal Buckley had noticed that a large entourage of “tea boys” — domestic servants who are sometimes pressed into sexual slavery — had arrived with Mr. Jan and moved into the same barracks, one floor below the Marines. He told his father about it during his final call home.

Word of Mr. Jan’s new position also reached the Marine officers who had gotten him arrested in 2010. One of them, Maj. Jason Brezler, dashed out an email to Marine officers at F.O.B. Delhi, warning them about Mr. Jan and attaching a dossier about him.

The warning was never heeded. About two weeks later, one of the older boys with Mr. Jan — around 17 years old — grabbed a rifle and killed Lance Corporal Buckley and the other Marines.

Lance Corporal Buckley’s father still agonizes about whether the killing occurred because of the sexual abuse by an American ally. “As far as the young boys are concerned, the Marines are allowing it to happen and so they’re guilty by association,” Mr. Buckley said. “They don’t know our Marines are sick to their stomachs.”

The one American service member who was punished in the investigation that followed was Major Brezler, who had sent the email warning about Mr. Jan, his lawyers said. In one of Major Brezler’s hearings, Marine Corps lawyers warned that information about the police commander’s penchant for abusing boys might be classified. The Marine Corps has initiated proceedings to discharge Major Brezler.

VIDEO: New Film to Expose Muslim Persecution of Christians

September 20, 2015/in Culture War, National Security, Religion, Video/by Jihad Watch

The ethnic and religious purging of Christians today is exactly like Hitler’s ethnic cleansing of Jews in WWII,” [film director Peter] Spencer said. “True Christians are today obligated to rescue the perishing from the blades of [the Islamic State].”

Brave and bold words, and all too rare in America these days, where naming the evil is all but illegal. The ‘Orange Resistance Movement’ seem like a strong and creative response to Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa. Judging from the endorsements on Mr. Spencer’s site, the message seems to be catching on among Christians and Jews. Let’s hope so.

“Filmmaker’s ‘Chilling’ Warning About the Islamic State and His Message to ‘True Christians’ About Why They Must Fight Back,” by Billy Hallowell, The Blaze, September 17, 2015:

The writer and director of a feature film about a group of young people who fought to save the innocent during the Holocaust has unveiled a new movement aimed at raising awareness about the dire religious persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Peter Spencer, director of “Return to the Hiding Place” — the sequel to Billy Graham’s “The Hiding Place” — exclusively told The Blaze about his new Orange Resistance effort to rescue Christians being harmed by the Islamic State, and the “chilling similarities” that he sees between what’s happening now and the horrors that unfolded during the Holocaust.

“The ethnic and religious purging of Christians today is exactly like Hitler’s ethnic cleansing of Jews in WWII,” Spencer said. “True Christians are today obligated to rescue the perishing from the blades of [the Islamic State].”

The Orange Resistance movement is named for the both the color of the jumpsuits worn by victims of Islamic State extremists and for the Netherlands’ historic association with orange; the setting of the ”Return to the Hiding Place,” which is based, in part, on Dutch Christian Corrie ten Boom’s heroic acts to save Jews in the Netherlands.

Spencer said that the campaign will employ a number of tactics to get the word out about the plight of Middle Eastern Christians.

“We are working with denominations across the country to schedule screenings of our film followed by a panel discussing the terrifying parallels between Nazi Germany’s extermination of the Jews and the current hate-onslaught of [the Islamic State] and their mission to liquidate Christians, starting in the Middle East,” he said. “Groups won’t even need to sell tickets to the event.”

“Return to the Hiding Place,” which is based on a true story, tells of ten Boom’s refuge for Jews, as well as an “army of untrained teenagers” who helped rescue the most vulnerable from the horrors of the Holocaust.

“We know viewers, often intimidated and discouraged by today’s frightening news will see this film and be mobilized, encouraged that there is hope,” Spencer told The Blaze. “Resistance is not futile … even one person can make a revolutionary difference.”

Spencer will also be selling Orange Resist shirts and bracelets in an effort to raise money to help organizations that are actively working to rescue Christians from the region, while also featuring these organizations in special video posts that will be distributed via social media.

The goal, Spencer said, is to cause “America to become aware and involved in politically vocalizing the need to intervene on behalf of Christians and Jews worldwide experiencing a second holocaust.”

“The only hope for coping is by taking action. The only way we can cope is if solutions are at hand,” he said. “These solutions will not present themselves — we have to stand and fight, get behind the cause, and put our resources into saving lives today.”

Spencer invited people to learn more about Orange Resistance here, and to purchase copies of “Return to the Hiding Place” here.

Watch the trailer for ‘Return To The Hiding Place’ here.

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The Clock is Ticking on “Islamophobia”

September 19, 2015/in Commentary, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

In FrontPage today I discuss the exhortation “If you see something, say something” – which holds true unless the suspicious person is a Muslim.

Of all the people arrested over the past week, only Ahmed Mohamed of Irving, Texas was invited to the White House as a result. This is because Mohamed is fourteen years old, and a Muslim, and was arrested because of rampant “Islamophobia” in the U.S. – or at least so goes the media narrative that Barack Obama has eagerly abetted by issuing his invitation.

The facts of the case are not in dispute; only the intention behind them is. Mohamed built a working clock over the last weekend, and decided to take it school to show it to an engineering teacher. The problem was that it didn’t look like a conventional clock. Instead, it was a mess of wires and other gadgets mounted in a briefcase, and looking suspiciously like the briefcase bombs that have figured in countless movies and TV shows.

Questioned by teachers and then by police, according to WFAA: “officers said Ahmed was being ‘passive aggressive’ in his answers to their questions, and didn’t have a ‘reasonable answer’ as to what he was doing with the case. Investigators said the student told them that it was just a clock that he was messing around with.” Irving police officer James McLellan explained: “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school.”

Why didn’t young Ahmed simply give McLellan the explanation he offered later, that he was planning to show the clock to an engineering teacher? This remains unexplained, but in part because of his non-cooperation, Ahmed Mohamed was arrested, and soon released without charge. An international firestorm ensued, with Obama inviting Ahmed to the White House, and a great deal of media handwringing over “Islamophobia.” Haroon Moghul wrote in CNN that “Ahmed just looked to some like someone who might want to make bombs. He’s that very menacing brownish color that racists and bigots associate with either everything south of Texas or some country they probably think is called Terroristan. As it happens, he’s of African, specifically Sudanese, descent. He’s got a doubly Muslim name.”

And it’s true: officials at Irving’s MacArthur High School, where Ahmed Mohamed is a student, ridiculously overreacted. They did so, however, not because of “Islamophobia,” but because of the general hysteria over school shootings that has led principals and teachers nationwide to react stupidly to innocuous actions. All over the country, school officials are on constant high alert for weapons — a high alert that has more than once spilled over into outright hysteria, with students being suspended for drawing guns, pointing fingers at people and saying ‘Bang,’ etc. Then there was Josh Welch, the kid who got in trouble for chewing his pop-tart into the shape of a gun. Josh Welch never got invited to the White House.

Josh Welch and the other children who have fallen victim to this hysteria didn’t run afoul of school administrators because they were Muslims — none of them were. They found themselves in hot water because administrators are so very afraid that their school will be the site of the next shooting that they leap on and magnify the smallest matters. Would Ahmed Mohamed’s clock have been suspicious if he were a white Methodist, and would he have been arrested anyway? Without any doubt. But his arrest has become an opportunity for the purveyors of the Muslims-as-victims myth, among whom Haroon Moghul is a leading propagandist, to push hard on their spurious and insidious claim that Muslims are suffering from unwarranted scrutiny, including counter-terror programs, which should accordingly be relaxed or scrapped altogether.

That will be the result of the apotheosis of Ahmed Mohamed to Exalted Victim Status. Ahmed Mohamed will most likely be the Rosa Parks of the counter-counter-terror movement. Because of this young man and his clock, Muslim students will henceforth be exempted from scrutiny for bringing suspicious objects to school: to subject them to such scrutiny would be “Islamophobic,” clearly an act of racism against “brown people.”

Because of this incident, the clock is now ticking on “Islamophobia” – that is, on reasonable scrutiny of Muslims behaving suspiciously. Such scrutiny is on its way out. And so it could happen some day: a young Muslim just as intelligent and enterprising as Ahmed Mohamed will spend a weekend building a bomb instead of a clock, and carry it with him to school on Monday morning. School officials, if they see it, will not dare utter a word of protest: they will have learned the lesson of Ahmed Mohamed, that young “brown” Muslim boys with suspicious objects are not to be questioned unless the questioner wants to be excoriated in the media and lose his job.

When that bomb goes off, will anyone recall the silly incident in the late summer of 2015 that paved the way for it, and how the President of the United States himself made it all possible? Or will they be too preoccupied with the bloody carnage to remember?

Imam: Germany is not compassionate, wants workers, but we will conquer them

September 19, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Religion, Video/by Ann Corcoran

Invasion of Europe, creation of a caliphate, so tell me again why we don’t believe what they say! Hat tip: Kyle

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A Canadian Iranian’s Perspective

September 19, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Shabnam Assadollahi

In 1968, I was only three years old and very keen to start school early. With some help, I had finished reading Grade one text books along with eight English novels. My parents enrolled me in a private school, so that I could be in a more protected and secure environment. Nevertheless, given my tiny appearance, a few girls always bullied me and I lost my confidence during my years in elementary school. My mother had to come to school to literally feed me so that I would eat my lunch. I regained my self-confidence after signing up for martial arts courses for a few years, where I excelled to a brown belt in karate.

I was just 13 when Khomeini came into power by hijacking the people’s revolution and overnight all women, including elementary school girls, were forced to cover their bodies from head to toe and were ordered to only wear dark colours. We were no longer allowed to attend school with the opposite sex. Our once praised school curriculum was now replaced by Arabic, Islamic studies and the Quran; which most of us simply loathed. It was at this time that I had an awakening and started my activism. I was robbed of my teen years by a radical regime that sought to force its values on the masses by devastating force. My childhood memories were replaced by a reality created by a regime where women were now treated as second class citizens to men and even the most mundane detail of our lives was strictly controlled by Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards and the morality police.

Like most teenagers in high school, I also spoke my mind about the changes that were happening in my country. In a modern society, teenagers attend school, openly spend time with friends, listen to their favorite music and do all the things that teenagers do. In going about their lives, they do not have to worry about political and religious consequences of engaging in normal everyday activities enforced by their government… They do not have to live in fear of expressing their opinion, no matter how unpopular that opinion. What we no longer had and would never have again under the Islamic Republic, simply put, was freedom of speech. Those who did speak up put themselves and their families in grave danger or simply disappeared behind the walls of the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. At that time even 12 year old children faced the firing squad for political dissidence.

Imagine for a moment a mother living a quiet uneventful life with her children in the safety of her own home. Imagine the horror of that same woman when in the early hours of the morning she comes face-to-face with the infamous Revolutionary Guards. Unannounced, they forced their way into her home and arrested their 16 year old daughter. The young girl, her only daughter and the eldest of her three children, was taken to the much feared Evin prison where she knew her child would be interrogated and tortured. She also knew that many mothers never saw their children again as that time people simply vanished without a trace. That child was me. I was arrested by five very large, heavy set guards. I remember distinctly four vehicles that came to our house to take me away; a 16 year old girl who barely weighed 90 pounds. Imagine the terror and anguish felt by that child. This may be unfathomable to the western mind, but this was to be my reality for the next 18 months.

In my young trustful mind, I did not think that a simple conversation, having an opinion and simply expressing it, would put my life in danger. I never considered the possibility of being tortured as a teenager and that my life would be forever changed and that I would be reminded of this torture every time I would look in the mirror and the terrible scar on my face.

My interrogator was a man known simply as the “rapist of Evin.” I never saw his face as we were always blindfolded. Both the guards and interrogators were very protective of their identity as if they knew that someday they may be the hunted like the Nazis. This gave me a clue that they knew well what they were doing was wrong or they simply could not look into the face of a child when they tortured her/him. As time went by, I realized that my interrogator had taken pity on me and decided to leave me outside the torture chambers from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, blindfolded, cold and hungry, instead of physically torturing me. I can tell you that there is only one experience worse that being tortured; having to listen to others scream and beg, not for their lives but for their death.

At the end I was given an 18-month sentence but in reality I should have been hanged for my anti-Islamic and anti-revolutionary views. To this day I have no idea why and how my life was spared. But I do remember making a deal with God, in that corner of the torture chamber, that if he spared not me but my parents of the pain of my death, I would dedicate my life to fighting the Islamic Republic to my very last breath. I also silently promised each and every one of those who screamed in pain that I would live and bear witness for them. I wanted to live as surviving was the only act of resistance in Evin. At night I would count around 60-70 bullets which meant 60-70 souls had been executed and I was hearing the last shot they would give the victim in the head. Many of my beautiful cell mates were taken before my eyes. All left bravely and without fear in their eyes and soul. We had decided that dying proudly was our final act of resistance. We were children but we wanted to die like high ranking officers….proud and defiant.

After I was freed from the clutches of Evin, I decided to find out exactly why I was taken and why so many were killed.

I found out that the Islamic Republic of Iran demanded absolute compliance with the penalty of torture and death for those that dared question it. There is absolutely no room for error by the citizen and there is no forgiveness. There were teenagers who were shot for simply being in the possession of leaflets or books of the opposition. The Islamic Republic ran elections to give an image of democracy, while allowing the masses to choose only among its carefully handpicked candidates who had subscribed to the fundamental beliefs of the regime and had an invested interest in seeing the continued survival of a dictatorship.

What are these beliefs? That boys and girls are separated throughout their schooling. That girls as young as nine years of age are forced into marriages, traded like property. Women are treated as second class citizens only second to men. Islamic Republic of Iran demands compliance to the regime and does not tolerate dissent. Young men and women that speak against the regime are rounded up and sent to notorious prisons, where they are tortured and left with scars for life, and others executed, some in public settings to teach a lesson to others. Sex outside of the marriage is at times punished by a brutal practice of stoning to death.

Outside of Iran, the regime openly and covertly supports terrorist activities. The Islamic Republic of Iran supports terrorist organizations including, the Hezbollah and Hamas in the Middle East. Those who hold positions of authority in Iran have been found responsible for bombings in Argentina and murders in Germany, to name a few. These are not isolated cases, with growing evidence of Iranian covert and terrorist activities in the Americas. ¹ Inspired by North Korea, it has sought to further guarantee its existence by building its nuclear know-how.

There has been a great deal of effort by the international community to persuade Iran to slow down its nuclear program. Promises of relaxing economic sanctions and opening up relations have been put on the table. In fear of Iran becoming a nuclear power, world leaders are willing to put aside the fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a dictatorship that continues to deny its people their fundamental rights and will remain on course to export its radical ideology. Removing sanctions and opening relations will make it easier for Iran to achieve this end.

The regime and its followers are trying hard to revive and better market a dictatorship that has brought so much pain and suffering to Iranian people for 35 years. I wish that Khomeini never started an Islamic revolution (or devolution) 35 years ago let alone try to revive it today.

The Islamic Republic of Iran enshrined the clergy and brought three decades of pain to an entire society and humanity as a whole. It speaks of moderation, reform and protecting the establishment yet during the regime’s time in power, has restricted human rights, engaged in mass executions, taken hostages, and stood in defiance of the world.

The reformists who are part of this establishment have blood on their hands. Today it is time for them and the regime which Khomeini was so instrumental in establishing to go.

Let’s hope this regime is overthrown soon so that our world is set free from this dangerous contamination. I hope that Iranians can live in a free society and have their deserved human rights which this regime has taken away from them completely. The truth about the Islamic Republic of Iran needs to reach the ears and hearts of the world for knowledge is the vessel of constructive change.

I believe that many world organizations and politicians have made the Islamic Republic stronger by refusing to hold it accountable for its dubious activities both inside and outside Iran. The regime has become even more brutal and vicious due to the impunity it has been given for the last 35 years by the international community.

References

Prosecutor in Argentina Sees Iranian Plot in Latin America, New York Times website, 29 May 2013.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Mackenzie Institute website. Featured photo courtesy of the Mackenzie Institute.

Muslim refugees eligible for over $11,000 in social services benefits for years

September 18, 2015/in Budget and Finance, Culture War, Featured, Policy, Politics, Religion, Taxes/by Ann Corcoran

I just came across this handy breakdown of which social services refugees can access immediately upon arrival in the U.S. Note that it does not show food stamps or subsidized housing (both available to refugees for years), or the cost of educating the children.

At the top you will see that each refugee gets $1850 as a one time payment from the U.S. Department of State (a family of 6 would receive $11,100). However, the contracting (non-profit) agency keeps about $750 of each refugee’s allotment for its own overhead.

But, that is not all the contractor receives, most get tens of thousands of federal dollars to run myriad other programs through their offices including English language lessons, employment counseling, and even are granted federal dollars to develop community gardens for their refugee clients.

See also: Jeff Sessions remarks that 90% of Middle Eastern refugees on welfare, here.

All non-profit groups are required to file Form 990’s with the IRS and must make them available to anyone who asks. You should not be told that you must do a Freedom of Information Act request to get their financials!

The diagram can be seen more clearly here in enlarged form: http://www.usccb.org/about/resettlement-services/upload/Refugee-Assistance-2.pdf

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For $42 million, “4 or 5” U.S. trained Syrian “moderates” fighting Islamic State

September 18, 2015/in Budget and Finance, National Security, Policy, Religion, Taxes/by Jihad Watch

Why couldn’t U.S. officials find the 5,400 “moderate” fighters that they wanted to train? If the worldwide Muslim condemnations of the Islamic State were genuine, Muslims would be flocking from all over the world to fight against the Islamic State, instead of flocking from all over the world to join it. The abysmal failure of this program is a testament to how wrongheaded, willfully ignorant and foolish the U.S. government’s response to the Islamic State has been and continues to be.

“General Austin: Only ‘4 or 5’ US-Trained Syrian Rebels Fighting ISIS,” by Luis Martinez, ABC News, September 16, 2015:

General Lloyd Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command leading the war on ISIS, told Congress today that only “four or five” of the first 54 U.S.trained moderate Syrian fighters remain in the fight against ISIS.

Christine Wormuth, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there are currently between 100 and 120 fighters in a program that was slated to have trained 5,400 fighters in its first 12 months.

Austin told the panel that goal was not going to be met and that options are being explored about how to retool the program which was intended to train moderate Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. So far, $42 million has been spent to develop the $500 million program which began training in April.

The first 54 graduates of the program were re-inserted into northern Syria in July and were quickly attacked by the Al Nusra Front, the dominant Islamist rebel group in Syria. Though the attack was repelled with U.S. airstrikes, it was characterized as a major setback for the viability of the progam [sic]. When Austin was asked how many trained fighters remained in the fight he responded “it’s a small number,” before adding “the ones that are in the fight, we’re talking four or five.”…

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Pope Karl Marx I: Blaming Capitalism

September 17, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

In FrontPage today I discuss how the Pope has blamed the refugee crisis on…capitalism:

Did Karl Marx become Pope on March 13, 2013?

As the leader of a Church that encompasses the globe, one might expect Pope Francis to be a bit more…spiritual. Instead, he has more than once had recourse to Marxist analysis to explain global events, appearing to see economic deprivation as the cause of all the world’s evils. He did it again in an interview published last Monday, when he opined that the root cause of the refugee crisis engulfing Europe was economic inequality:

It is the tip of an iceberg. These poor people are fleeing war, hunger, but that is the tip of the iceberg. Because underneath that is the cause; and the cause is a bad and unjust socioeconomic system, in everything, in the world – speaking of the environmental problem –, in the socioeconomic society, in politics, the person always has to be in the centre. That is the dominant economic system nowadays, it has removed the person from the centre, placing the god money in its place, the idol of fashion. There are statistics, I don’t remember precisely, (I might have this wrong), but that 17% of the world’s population has 80% of the wealth.

Let’s see. Are the Syrian refugees fleeing war and hunger? Certainly. Are they, however, fleeing an unjust economic system? Are they fleeing Syria because Bashar Assad on the one hand and the Islamic State on the other are top-hatted plutocrats puffing cigars and chuckling as they send the proletariat off to back-breaking labor? Are Assad and the Islamic State fighting one another for an increased market share? Are the Syrian refugees streaming into Europe because Syria is in love with the god money and the idol of fashion? (The Pope actually may be on to something with that idol of fashion bit: certainly women in the Islamic State holdings in Syria will get killed if they don’t bow to the Islamic State’s idol of fashion and cover everything but their hands and face.)

In reality, the refugees are leaving Syria because the Sunnis of the Islamic State and other jihad groups are waging jihad against the Alawite regime of Assad and his Shi’ite Iranian allies, and have torn the country apart in the process. But to acknowledge that would require the Pope to admit that there is such a thing as jihad violence in the first place, and he is not at all disposed to do that; back in November 2013, he proclaimed his “respect for true followers of Islam” and declared that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

So the peaceful Koran couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this refugee crisis, could it? It must be those heartless Syrian tycoons, or more precisely the European and American ones who are presumably keeping the Syrians in a perpetual state of poverty and deprivation.

Meanwhile, the refugees are not all fleeing hardship in Syria at all. Last February, the Islamic State promised to flood Europe in the near future with as many as 500,000 refugees. And an Islamic State operative recently boasted that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had entered Europe. “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.” He explained: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.”

And last Monday, Lebanese Education Minister Elias Bou Saab warned that Islamic jihadis make up as much as two percent of the Syrian refugees in his country alone. Since there are 1.1 million Syrians in refugee camps in Lebanon, that amounts to 20,000 jihadis. How many more are already in Europe?

Despite his Marxist analysis, in the same interview the Pope acknowledged the possibility that there could be Islamic jihadists among the refugees: “I recognize that, nowadays, border safety conditions are not what they once were. The truth is that just 400 kilometres from Sicily there is an incredibly cruel terrorist group. So there is a danger of infiltration, this is true.” He even admitted that Rome could be at risk: “Yes, nobody said Rome would be immune to this threat.”

Despite this, however, he reiterated his request that Catholic parishes take in refugees: “What I asked was that in each parish and each religious institute, every monastery, should take in one family. A family, not just one person. A family gives more guarantees of security and containment, so as to avoid infiltrations of another kind.” And he applauded Europe’s welcoming of the refugees: “I want to say that Europe has opened its eyes, and I thank it. I thank the European countries which have become opened their eyes to this.”

Yet in so many important ways his own eyes appear to remain firmly closed. Is societal suicide really a requirement of Christian charity? Must Europe allow itself to be overrun by hostile invaders in order to prove its lack of racism and willingness to extend help to the needy? These are questions that Church leaders ought to be considering, but they’re too busy with their “dialogue” sessions at the local mosque to busy themselves with such trivialities. No doubt that “dialogue” will result in calls for more redress of economic inequalities, in accord with the Pope’s own world view – and more money will be showered upon Muslim countries, enabling the purchase of more weaponry and the onset of more jihad. At least Europe, as the blade plunges into its collective throat, can congratulate itself that even unto death, it always welcomed the stranger.

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GOP Debate: Winners and Losers on National Security by Ryan Mauro

September 17, 2015/in Elections, Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Clarion Project

American voters’ concern about Islamist extremism is at the highest level since 2002, with 66% of Republicans, 56% of Independents and 48% of Democrats describing it as a “critical threat.” National security is a major issue that received significant attention at last night’s Republican presidential debate.

The following is Clarion Project National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro’s compilation of the candidates’ expressed stances on fighting Islamist extremism at the debate and his personal assessment of the contest’s winners and losers among national security voters.

Winners

Businesswoman Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina is widely considered the biggest winner of the debate overall. Her performance included details on national security policy.

She criticized rivals who oppose the nuclear deal with Iran without presenting a broader strategy. She said she’d inform Iran that the regime would be prevented from moving money through the global financial system until it agrees to anytime-anywhere inspections.

Fiorina said the U.S. should not negotiate with Russia because it is on the side of Iran. She said she’d provide intelligence to Egypt and armaments to Jordan to fight the Islamic State, in addition to arming the Kurds.

She advocated a military buildup that includes increasing the 6^thFleet, military exercises in the Baltic States, installing anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland, modernizing all three legs of the nuclear triad, increasing the Navy to 300-350 ships and adding 50 Army brigades and 36 Marine battalions.

Fiorina is currently in 8^th place in an average of national polls with 3 percent. She is in 6th place in Iowa (5%), 4th place in New Hampshire (8%) and 6th place in South Carolina (4%).

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham

Graham is the winner of the undercard debate that featured the bottom four candidates and virtually every answer of his related to national security. Of all the candidates, he was the most impressive on dealing with the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). He explicitly said he is running for president to “destroy radical Islam.” Graham said he would “rip the caliphate up by its roots” and “will kill every one of these [ISIS] bastards we can find.”

Graham’s standout moment was challenging every candidate to state whether they support increasing troop levels in Iraq from 3,500 to 10,000 to fight the Islamic State, asserting that anyone who refuses to do so lacks the seriousness to be commander-in-chief. Graham’s overall plan calls for increasing U.S. troop levels to 20,000, split between Iraq and Syria.

He argued that the Islamic State grew in Syria and then propelled into Iraq because the Obama Administration rejected his recommendation that the U.S. military establish a no-fly zone in Syria and support the Free Syrian Army rebel force before it became too late.

Graham said there is no one left to train inside Syria, so the only option is a U.S.-backed regional army that includes Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and others. He said the only solution to the refugee crisis is the removal of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

He pointed out that he’s the only candidate who has served in the military (he was in the Air Force for 33 years). Graham has spent 140 days on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of 35 trips to those countries.

Graham is currently in 14^th place nationally (0.3%). He is in 14^thplace in Iowa (0.3%); 12^th place in New Hampshire (0.8%) and 7^thplace in South Carolina (4%).

Florida Senator Marco Rubio

Rubio gave the most detailed and articulate answers about foreign policy during the debate. He argued for a more interventionist U.S. policy that includes supporting democratic activists, such as by meeting with opponents of Putin in Russia.

He argued that the Syrian revolution began as a popular uprising and the Islamist terrorist presence could have been minimized if the U.S. had armed moderate rebels in the beginning of the conflict.

Rubio said that the Russian military movement into Syria is part of an overall strategy to “destroy NATO,” save the Syrian dictatorship and convince countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to ditch the U.S. for Russia.

He is currently in 5th place nationally (5%). He is in 5^th place in Iowa (5%); 8^th place in New Hampshire (3%) and 5^th place in South Carolina (4%).

Rubio explained that he opposed giving President Obama authority to launch airstrikes on the Syrian regime after it used chemical weapons because the plan involved “pinprick” airstrikes. He said that he would only support military action that has victory as an objective.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Christie struck a chord when he spoke about his experience on 9/11 and prosecuting terrorists after the attack when he was the U.S. Attorney for the state of New Jersey. He defended the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks when Carson’s opposition was brought up. He also pledged not to have deals with or meet with leaders like those in Iran who chant “Death to America.”

He is currently in 11^th place nationally (2%). He is in 11^th place in Iowa (2%), 9^th place in New Hampshire (3%) and 12^th place in South Carolina (2%).

Losers

Businessman Donald Trump

Trump failed to show any grasp on foreign policy or to outline a strategy towards Islamist extremists when pressed. When he was asked about an embarrassing interview where he appeared not to know what the Iran-linked Al-Quds Force are and the names of prominent terrorist leaders, he simply stated that he’d hire a strong team that would keep him informed on national security.

He boasted of opposing the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. He said the U.S. should stay out of the Syrian civil war and criticized President Obama for declaring that the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons would be an intolerable “red line.” Trump said that Rubio, Paul and Cruz should have supported President Obama’s request for authority to militarily enforce the “red line.”

Trump also expressed confidence that he could work well with Russian President Putin. Fiorina, on the other hand, said the U.S. should not negotiate with Russia.

He is currently in 1^st place nationally (31%). He is in 1^st place in Iowa (28%), 1^st place in New Hampshire (30%) and 1^st place in South Carolina (34%).

Dr. Ben Carson

Carson did not display an impressive knowledge of foreign affairs and national security. Serious damage may have been done when the moderator asked about his opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. Carson explained that he told President Bush to focus instead on energy independence, which Christie politely took him to task for.

Carson also made sure to point out that he opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He is currently in 2^nd place nationally (20%). He is in 2^nd place in Iowa (23%), 2^nd place in New Hampshire (15%) and 2^nd place in South Carolina (19%).

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul

Paul repeatedly stated his anti-interventionist view and said that U.S. military operations often backfire. A new poll shows that 69% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats and 57% of Independents favor having America active abroad.

Paul boasted that he “made a career” out of opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and argued that the U.S. should not topple secular dictators because they are replaced by radical Islamic forces. Paul and Trump were the only candidates to express opposition to a policy of overthrowing Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. He also said that U.S. backing of Syrian rebels would mean arming enemies of America.

He said it is “absurd” to immediately scrap the nuclear deal with Iran unless the regime violates it. He spoke in favor of continued diplomacy with Iran and Russia, pointing out that President Reagan met with the leaders of the Soviet Union.

Paul also said he opposes using U.S. ground forces in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State, but supports continued airstrikes and arming Kurds.

He is currently in 7^th place nationally (3%). He is in 9^th place in Iowa (4%), 7^th place in New Hampshire (5%) and 11^th place in South Carolina (2%).

Ohio Governor John Kasich

Kasich damaged his chances by refusing to say that he’d scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. He argued that the U.S. should move in coordination with allies and not withdraw from the agreement unilaterally. He said that the U.S. should sanction Iran if they violate the deal or sponsor terrorism. Rand Paul likewise said maintenance of the agreement would depend upon Iranian compliance.

He was also twice criticized by Graham during the undercard debate for supporting the closure of some U.S. military bases. Graham countered that he’d increase the number of bases.

He is currently in 10^th place nationally (3%). He is in 10^th place in Iowa (3%), 3^rd place in New Hampshire (10%) and 8^th place in South Carolina (4%).

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush

Bush criticized rivals who focused on their pledges to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. He would not commit to doing so and said that the discussion needs to be about an Iran strategy rather than a strategy to tear up the deal.

Bush encouraged viewers to review his 9-point plan for fighting the Islamic State and the Syrian regime.

He is currently in 3^rd place nationally (8%). He is in 4^th place in Iowa (5%), 5^th place in New Hampshire (8%) and 3^rd place in South Carolina (7%).

Other Candidates

Texas Senator Ted Cruz

Cruz’s standout moment was when he promised to “rip to shreds” the “catastrophic” nuclear deal with Iran.

Cruz said that he opposed giving President Obama authority for airstrikes on the Syrian regime in response to its use of chemical weapons because vital national security interests were not at stake. He said that the administration could not answer his questions about how Syrian weapons of mass destruction would be prevented from falling into the hands of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

He is currently in 4^th place nationally (7%). He is in 3^rd place in Iowa (8%), 6^th place in New Hampshire (6%) and 4^th place in South Carolina (6%).

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee

Huckabee spoke passionately against the nuclear deal with Iran and said every candidate should announce that, if elected, he or she will not honor it and, as president, will “destroy” it.

He is currently in 6^th place nationally (5%). He is in 8^th place in Iowa (4%), 11^th place in New Hampshire (1%) and 10^th place in South Carolina (3%).

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

Jindal’s standout moment was when he said that Muslim leaders must move beyond generic condemnations of terrorism and condemn terrorists by name. He called on Muslim leaders to preach that these terrorists do not qualify as “martyrs” and are destined for hell.

Jindal said that U.S. policy should be to force Syrian dictator Bashar Assad out of power.

He is currently in 13^th place nationally (1%). He is in 11^th place in Iowa (3%), 14^th place in New Hampshire (0.3%) and 13^th place in South Carolina (1%).

Former New York Governor George Pataki

Pataki said he would immediately scrap the nuclear deal with Iran and provide Israel with Massive Ordinance Penetrators (MOPs). However, he may have damaged himself by refusing to endorse Santorum’s call to target Iranian nuclear scientists. He also gave a vague answer about how he’d fight the Islamic State and expressed disagreement with Graham’s plan for a ground offensive with U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.

He is currently in 15^th place nationally with less than a single percent of support. He is in 15^th place in Iowa with less than one percent, 13^th place in New Hampshire (0.3%) and in 15^th place in South Carolina with less than one percent.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum

Santorum boasted that he authored legislation to sanction Iran and Syria when he was in the Senate. The moderator mentioned his past declaration that the U.S. should target Iranian nuclear scientists, which George Pataki refused to endorse.

He described the Iranian regime as an “apocalyptic death cult” and claimed that two-thirds of Iraqi and Iranian Shiites believe that the end of the world will happen in their lifetime. Santorum was making the point that the Iranian regime exports its radical ideology.

Santorum said he supports increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq to 10,000 to fight against the Islamic State and that he’d support Lindsey Graham’s proposal for 20,000 troops if necessary. He stated that the legitimacy of the caliphate is based on its holding of territory.

He is currently in 12^th place nationally (1%). He is in 12^th place in Iowa (2%) and in 15^th place in both New Hampshire and South Carolina with less than one percent.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Walker’s comments on foreign policy focused on criticizing the nuclear deal with Iran, which he promised to scrap during his first day in office.

He is currently in 9^th place nationally (3%). He is in 7^th place in Iowa (4%), 10^th place in New Hampshire (3%) and 9^th place in South Carolina (3%).

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore

Gilmore failed to make the cut for the debate because he scores less than 1% in national polls. He registers less than a single percent in each of the three early states.

ABOUT RYAN MAURO

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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U.S. Ambassador to UN Samantha Power: Bring more Muslim Syrian refugees to America

September 17, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, Immigration, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Ann Corcoran

This news is a day old, so who knows maybe Obama has already decided the magic number of Syrian (mostly Muslim) refugees he will be dropping into America towns and cities in the coming year.

Obama appointee, UN Ambassador Samantha Power.

Last week we learned that Sec. of State Kerry consulted with key House and Senate committees, as the Refugee Act of 1980 requires, and it seems the number he was bandying about was 10,000 (some say Kerry said 5,000) for FY 2016.

If Obama approves a different number just two weeks before the start of the fiscal year, Kerry is required to go back to the Hill for additional “consultation,” and, in any case, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees are required to hold hearings on the Presidential Determination.

The fact that the lazy (scared?) committees have not held a refugee ‘consultation’ hearing since before 9/11 is no excuse not to have one for this very critical decision!

(The last hearing held on the President’s refugee determination appears to be this one from 1999. Has there been no hearing since then because they didn’t want you to know how many Muslims were being admitted to the US through this program?—ed)

A hearing can’t stop the President, but it sure can help the American people understand what is about to happen to them!

Where are you Reps. Goodlatte and Gowdy? Prove me wrong! Tell us you are doing something and I will apologize!

Here is a bit of interesting news at Bloomberg (hat tip: Joanne). Again, it is a day old, so who knows if Obama has made a decision.

Check out Samantha Power (bff George Soros)! The nerve of this woman. You can credit her, Hillary and Susan Rice with the destabilization of North Africa and the invasion of Europe because she was a driving force behind the ousting of Col. Gaddafi (who was able to hold back the migrant hordes) and the subsequent destruction of Libya.

As Iraqi Refugee Czar in the early days of the Obama White House, Power famously said she was tired of doing ‘rinkey-dink-do-gooder’ stuff like helping Iraqi Christians! See our complete Samantha Power archive here.

Here is Josh Rogin at Bloomberg:

The Obama administration is preparing to announce a plan to admit more refugees over the next two years, but at this point the numbers being proposed are too small to relieve the crisis streaming out of Syria.

Wednesday at the White House, the most senior national security officials will discuss raising the limit on the number of refugees from around the world allowed to enter the United States — from 70,000 this year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in fiscal 2017, three administration officials told me. If members of the National Security Council Principals Committee agree on the plan, it will be sent to President Obama’s desk, and administration sources say he is likely to quickly approve it.

The plan has the strong support of White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, whose priorities often differ on the Syria issue. McDonough is focused on the fight against ISIS. Power wants to confront Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and do more to protect the civilians being killed by both. [So what does confront mean? Does Power want the US military to bring down Assad?—ed]

The throngs of desperate migrants fleeing Syria and the images of children washing up on European shores have spurred the Obama administration into action, officials said.

Continue reading here.

Note that there is much discussion about how long it would take for the flow to get underway. Don’t believe it!

We know that the UNHCR has 17,000 (or more by now) prepped to come to America from their camps which house Muslim Syrians. As soon as October 1 is here, the floodgates will open!

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September 17, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

This article maintains that Abu Omar al Shishani was “radicalized” in a Saudi-funded mosque that challenged the moderate Islam that had hitherto prevailed in that region. Yet despite this supposedly prevailing moderation, its men gained a “reputation as crazy Islamic warriors.”

If this scenario is true, U.S. officials should think very carefully about the implications of the fact that there are hundreds of Saudi-funded mosques in the U.S. But they won’t.

And whether or not it is true that Abu Omar al Shishani was a “moderate” when he was trained by American special forces units, this story should make U.S. officials think carefully about the wisdom of such training, given that there is such a very fine line between “moderation” and “extremism.” But they won’t.

“U.S. training helped mold Islamic State’s top military commander,” by Mitchell Prothero, McClatchy, September 15, 2015:

…Abu Omar al Shishani, as he’s now known, had been born Tarkhan Batirashvili 27 years earlier in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a tiny enclave of ethnic Chechens, known locally as Kists, whose roughly 10,000 residents represent virtually all of the Muslims in predominantly Orthodox Christian Georgia.

But analysts of extremist groups said Batirashvili’s impact has been far greater than the small numbers of Muslims in Georgia would suggest. Since he swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2013, thousands of Muslims from the Caucasus have flocked to Syria to join the extremist cause.

“More than anything else, Batirashvili has legitimized ISIS in the Caucasus by the power of his exploits, which is amplified by slick ISIS propaganda,” said Michael Cecire, an analyst of extremism for the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Batirashvili’s battlefield successes, including orchestrating the capture of Syria’s Menagh Air Base after two years of failed attempts, “helped to legitimize ISIS in militant circles, including in the North Caucasus,” Cecire said.

“Batirashvili’s ability to demonstrate ISIS’ tactical prowess attracted fighters in droves from other factions and tipped the scales in foreign fighter flow and recruitment,” Cecire said. “In the North Caucasus, young people no longer wanted to fight in Syria with the increasingly marginalized Caucasus Emirate (groups), but wanted to fight with the winners – ISIS.”

Batirashvili’s story also was compelling, Cecire said: “A man with a modest background, sickly and impoverished before he went to Syria,” becomes “a great battlefield commander defying the world” . . . a “seemingly emulable, rags-to-riches story.”

Those seeking an explanation for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence on sending military supplies and manpower to Syria to bolster the government of President Bashar Assad would do well to consider Batirashvili. Putin not only personally oversaw the Russian push into Georgia, but he has twice waged war against Islamist-led factions in Chechnya whose cause Batirashvili has supported since he was a teenager. Ethnic Chechens are thought to be the largest group of foreign fighters among Islamic State forces.

Now 30, Batirashvili is a key figure, reportedly a member of the group’s governing council, is said to be the Islamic State’s supreme military leader in northern Syria and Aleppo, and is perhaps the group’s most fearsome ground commander. His current status is an irony for a man once considered a Georgian soldier with a bright future.

“We trained him well, and we had lots of help from America,” said a former Georgian defense official who asked to not be identified because of the sensitivity of Batirashvili’s role in the Islamic State. “In fact, the only reason he didn’t go to Iraq to fight alongside America was that we needed his skills here in Georgia.”

Even before Georgia and Russia came to blows in 2008, Batirashvili had earned a reputation for fighting Russians. While a part of Georgia, the Pankisi Valley’s northern end abuts Chechnya, where separatists fought a brutal war for independence from Russia in the 1990s. Batirashvili’s mother was Chechen, and his father has told local journalists that young Batirashvili had seen a handful of military operations as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgia’s military in 2006 at age 20.

The choice of a military career was natural, say Georgian officials and journalists who knew him and his community. Pankisi is a tiny and isolated sliver of Georgia with little economic activity, and the choices for its youth are narrow: leave home to fight the Russians, become a subsistence farmer, join one of the legendarily nasty Chechen criminal gangs, or join the military.

According to Batirashvili’s ex-comrades in the Georgian military, Batirashvili was tapped immediately upon his enlistment to join Georgia’s U.S.-trained special forces.

“He was a perfect soldier from his first days, and everyone knew he was a star,” said one former comrade, who asked not to be identified because he remains on active duty and has been ordered not to give media interviews about his former colleague. “We were well trained by American special forces units, and he was the star pupil.”

Fighting the Russians in Chechnya would not have disqualified him, the former comrade said. “Having fought the Russians as a Chechen is hardly unusual and not the sort of thing that would have meant you were a bad guy,” he said. “It just means you’re from Pankisi.”

None of the people who knew Batirashvili during his military service noted any sort of dedication to Islam or jihadist tendencies, but that’s not considered particularly unusual in a country where Muslims tend to adhere to a moderate strain of Sufi Islam despite Chechnya’s reputation as a incubator of extremism.

Batirashvili’s exploits in the 2008 war with Russia are the stuff of local legend. Why he left the military isn’t clear.

“Chechens have a reputation as crazy Islamic warriors, but our Islam has always been moderate,” according to one Pankisi community and clan leader who’s been ordered by the government not to talk about the man many Georgians laughingly refer to as “Pankisi’s most famous son.”

That reputation for moderation, however, began to change in the wake of the Chechen wars, which devastated Chechnya, and by the construction in 2000 of a second mosque to serve the valley’s six small villages.

The new mosque, the community leader said, was built with a donation from Saudi Arabia and “preached a kind of alien Wahhabi-style Islam,” not the Sufi-style Islam that had characterized the regions for hundreds of years.

“It told our people that it was wrong to pray at graves of saints and ancestors, as our people have done for hundreds of years, and even to share our religious rites with our Christian brothers,” he said.

By the mid-2000s, multiple residents say, the situation had split the community, mostly by age, with the original Sufi mosque attended by the older members of the community, while the young people were radicalized by the new mosque. This led to significant tensions with police until it was resolved by a revolution almost 1,000 miles away.

“They all started leaving for Syria,” the community elder said. “Things are safer here now because all the radicals – our children – have gone to Syria.”

American and Georgian intelligence estimates put that number at between 150 and 200 young men who have left Pankisi to fight in Syria….

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Abu Omar al Shishani.