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When will President Obama tell Muslims to stop clinging to their religion and guns?

December 6, 2015/in Culture War, Featured, Gun Rights, Immigration, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Dr. Rich Swier

President Obama has scheduled a broadcast to the nation to address the recent attacks in Paris, Mali, San Bernardino and today in London. His administration has made it a point to never blame Muslims for their individual actions, nor to blame Islam for its hate of non-Muslims and Muslims alike.

Perhaps it is now time for President Obama to face the reality that Muslims cling to their religion and guns. The difference is they use their guns to further their religion. Christians and Jews do not.

Paul R. Hollrah reports:

On Thursday, Dec. 5, 2015, Attorney General Loretta Lynch threw down the gauntlet in a speech before the Muslim Advocate’s 10th Anniversary dinner in Arlington, Virginia. Speaking just one day after Muslim terrorists, Sayed Rizwan Farook and his Saudi wife, Tashfeen Malik, murdered fourteen innocent people in an unprovoked terror attack on the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, Lynch said, “On behalf of our nation’s Justice Department, I am grateful to count you as partners in our work to promote tolerance, to ensure public safety, and to protect civil rights (emphasis added)…”

This is the official narrative of the Obama administration.

As I pointed out in my column “The neo-Democrat Party: Devout followers of Marx, Mao and Mohammed“:

I believe what President Obama has truly done is fundamentally transformed the Democratic Party of JFK to the Democrat Party of BHO. I use the word Democrat because the Party of Obama is not Democratic, as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. The membership of the neo-Democrat Party are made up primarily of the devout followers of Marx, Mao and Mohammed.

Those who oppose Obama and the neo-Democrat Party, including JFK Democrats, are subject to ridicule, rejection and bullying.

Extremism in the name of the collective is the over riding strategy of the neo-Democrat. Radicalism is the tactic. The more extreme the ideal, the more it is embraced. This leads to what some have labeled a form of political insanity. I call it political suicide. History teaches us that tyrants and tyranny ultimately lose the support of the masses. Why? Because the policies implemented harm the masses.

[ … ]

The ideal of collectivism is alive and well in the neo-Democrat Party. Collectivism is what drives the followers of Marx, Mao and Mohammed, those who make up the core of the neo-Democrat Party.

[ … ]

The Democratic Party of JFK has morphed into the neo-Democrat Party by dint of constant pressure from the radicals and the constant retreat of the Jeffersonian Democrats.

Today the Democrat Party has fundamentally transformed into the party of Marx, Mao and Mohammed.

It is a struggle between the civilized man and the uncivilized man (savage).

I expect President Obama to defend Muslims and Islam in the name of tolerance and civil rights. But whose tolerance and who’s civil rights? Not those of Christians and Jews.

Ayn Rand wrote:

“The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

I expect President Obama will express more absurdities, which have become his administration’s and the Democrat Party’s official ideology.

Obama in Paris on Muslim slaughter: “This just doesn’t happen in other countries”

December 2, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Video/by Jihad Watch

Has he already forgotten the Paris jihad massacre?

Note also what he says at the end about the importance of avoiding “demonizing organizations like Planned Parenthood.” This from a man who has never hesitated to demonize his opponents, among them those who speak the truth about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat.

Video thanks to the Washington Free Beacon.

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Trump under fire for saying “there’s something going on” with Islam

Video: Muslim asylum seekers in Italy approve of Paris jihad attacks

57 Paris airport workers on terror watch list

December 2, 2015/in Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

What could possibly go wrong? It would be “Islamophobic” to deny these jihadis employment, you greasy Islamophobe.

An update on this story. “Dozens of Paris airport workers on terror watch list: report,” by Yaron Steinbuch, New York Post, November 29, 2015:

The security passes of 86,000 workers at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris will be reviewed after it was found that 57 employees with access to airliners were on a terror watch list, according to a report.

Security badges were taken away from dozens of workers at the airport after terror attacks in Paris in January — but others continued working, the Sunday Times of London reported.

Police official Philippe Riffault told the paper that the review of airport passes will begin with 5,000 security personnel.

“It’s a question of verifying what these people might have been doing since they obtained their authorization,” Riffault said.

Police carried out extensive searches of the airport under state-of-emergency powers after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed and 350 injured by Islamic State militants.

Belgium, where several of the Paris attackers had lived, also has pulled security badges from several airport workers after discovering that some had links to jihadis who had traveled to Syria.

Meanwhile, anxiety has been brewing about radicalism among bus, Metro and railroad workers.

Samy Amimour, who blew himself up in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, managed to get a job as a bus driver while on a watch list.
In other developments:

It emerged that Arabic graffiti was spray-painted on four planes belonging to the British carrier EasyJet and a plane from the Spanish airline Vueling at two French airports. Three defaced planes were found in Lyon and two at Charles de Gaulle, AFP reported.

“Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great,” was scrawled on a fuel-tank hatch of one EasyJet plane in Paris. EasyJet said there had been a “small number” of such cases since the Nov. 13 attacks….

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What Do They Want?

December 1, 2015/in Culture War, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Nidra Poller

Our French feminine newscasters are attractive, charming, refined, and fashionably dressed. (Though a few have disfigured themselves with silicone lips that interfere with their ability to speak). Compared to their American and British counterparts, they are stunningly beautiful. And it just might have something to do with French culture, because women on the French channel of Israel’s i24 news are in general better looking than their colleagues on the English channel.

I’m not sure of the appropriate vocabulary for their profession. Some are simple newsreaders, others are full-fledged journalists. They don’t go into the grimy field like the American and British big names that stood up, rain or shine, at Place de la République for hours on end last week. Decades ago they were called “speakerines,” a word that has been dumped, along with “concierge” for custodian and “garcon” for waiter. For some reason that escapes me, our indoor journalists have taken to baring their arms to the shoulder when temperatures drop and normal people are bundled up in sweaters and jackets. In my experience, TV studios are more likely to be cool than overheated. But I was surprised to see a sweet young thing on the 14^th of November dressed in a summery pastel sleeveless top reciting press releases filled with shock and gore. By the end of the day the word had apparently gone out. Since then, it’s jackets or long sleeves, all black for the first week, now varied but still appropriate to a grieving nation.

Since Paris was attacked, these anchors have been asking invited guests, “What do they want?” Well, if they’re terrorists it follows that they want to terrorize us and résistance consists of not being afraid. We’ll go to concerts, restaurants, cafés, and shopping centers. The terrorists will not prevail. Then, since they are all Muslim, it means they want to divide our society, turn us against all Muslims, so we will resist by holding hands, forming human chains, and proclaiming friendship with our Muslim fellow citizens. TV cameras focused on a blindfolded man at Place de la République carrying a sign that said “I’m Muslim, give me a hug.” Of course he got lots of hugs. No one seemed to notice that the blindfold was a keffieh… like the ones worn by the caliphators that brought the jihad flag to the statue of Marianne in the summer of 2014.

What do they want? From time to time, an enlightened Muslim guest responds: they want to establish a caliphate in every corner of the world. That leaves the newspeaker speechless. Of course, if you call them jihadis instead of terrorists, the answer is in the question. Today, words are increasingly calibrated with realities. French citizens demand decisive action, authority, power. They want to fight back individually and collectively, morally and militarily.

Every day there’s a small increase in activity, more human presence, but far from normal. Shops are still empty. Concert halls and movie theaters are deserted as if they were all marked for death. None of the usual bustle in cafés and restaurants. Guards are posted at the entrance to supermarkets and shopping centers. Some have metal detectors. Nothing that could resist a commando armed with Kalashnikovs. The idea is to show their concern for public safety and their hope that business will pick up.

Last Sunday and Monday the weather was clear, crisp, and dry. I spent the day on Sunday at a colloquium organized by Shmuel Trigano, founding director of l’Université Populaire du judaïsme. A welcome relief from the all-day all-night news channels that we cannot bear and cannot escape. Attendance was weak…a handful of people in the morning, 50 or so in the afternoon. Speakers came from Canada, from Israel, from shell shocked Paris to share their deep thoughts with us–the heights of Judaism and its never-ending struggle to reach itself, the path to sovereignty, inner and outer obstacles. Surely a wider audience will catch the lectures on the UP site. [http://www.unipopu.org/] Thought is too precious to waste in these critical times.

Monday afternoon I met Shmuel in a café near la Place de la République. Through the plate glass window we saw riot police coming and going past a long line of police cars parked in front of the café, a reminder that these vital moments of intellectual communion, as early winter darkness gathered, could be engulfed in the smoldering rage that he and I have been chronicling for fifteen years. Is night closing in on people like us who write real books, is it closing in on colleagues that are being hounded by the guard dogs against Islamophobia, are we left with the choice between being ignored or targeted?

On the way home I savored the fresh clear air. It is so good to be alive. Every day, every minute, every gesture is more delicious than ever before. The moon was plump and piercingly bright. The next day at the same hour all métro lines that converge on la République were stopped for an hour or more and the Place was evacuated. For verifications. Brussels was shut down for four days as the police combed through the city looking for the Most Wanted and the Also Rans. Paris had left itself wide open to attack; Brussels closed the metro, schools, shops, restaurants, streets and squares. They ordered a press lockdown too. No news reports or videos of police operations were allowed. A handful of suspects are in custody now, including the pair that drove to Paris after the attacks to bring Salah Abedslam back to Belgium. And the police can’t find out where Salah is? How about some waterboarding, my friends?

PA President-for-life Mahmoud Abbas must be fuming. Not only does he have Hamas and Daesh in that order breathing down his neck, now Daesh has taken over the news cycle and no one cares about the Palestinians. Just before jihad hit Paris, Abbas was on his way to the ICC to accuse Israel of torture because interrogators yelled at a 13 year-old boy who had stabbed a Jewish boy his age nearly to death. On the video of the interrogation you hear one man holler at him in Hebrew, “Why did you do it?” and then another shouts the same question at him in Arabic. That’s torture, in case you don’t understand.

Today, the French population seems to be speaking with one voice. Wherever you turn you hear distress, defiance, and a demand for law and order. It’s all common sense. You talk to repair men, store managers, neighbors, or read comments on newspaper articles. They understand the causes, they know what has to be done. But specialists and politicians are still promising to deliver…without committing evil. They have to round up some of the 10,000 flagged security risks, but “we’re not going to create a Guantanamo.” We’re under a 3-month state of emergency, but “we’re not going to make a Patriot Act.” The police shot 5,000 rounds into the St. Denis hideout of the chief operator of the November 13 assault, Abelhamid Abaaoud, but no one is accusing them of using “excessive force.” When you see the thickly clad Swat teams in France and Belgium you can’t help remembering snide footage of t-shirted Palestinian shababs facing up to armored Israeli soldiers and tanks.

The commentators don’t say “we’re not going to do like the Israelis”— extra-judicial killings, preventive detention, security barriers, and guards at every doorway. They don’t say it because Israel is absent from the debate. Israelis aren’t invited to round tables, no comparisons are made, certainly not to say we have a lot to learn from them, they’ve been dealing with this for decades. Jewish thinkers and leaders aren’t invited to the heated debates that make the screen shake. Unless you read “other” media, you don’t know that Israeli intelligence informed German services that an ambulance filled with explosives was waiting to do its thing outside the stadium in Hanover where the chancellor was attending a life-goes-on soccer game. The stadium was evacuated before the opening play. Maybe the Europeans don’t want to admit they were wrong about Israel but, behind the scenes, everyone with any sense is collaborating with Israeli security.

Update: I’m told that Pierre Servent said (in a C dans l’air TV debate that I missed) it was time we rethought our way of looking at Israel. While at the lowest point in the spectrum, a recently retired France 2 Jerusalem correspondent pissed into the gutter a pox on “racist” Israelis that, unliked dignified Parisians, don’t know how to behave politely after a “terrorist” attack. I couldn’t read past the first paragraph.

Iran, for very different reasons, is also nearly invisible. The idea seems to be “the less said the better.” Who can keep track of our “allies” in the motley crew that is fighting Daesh or defending Assad, or both, while attacking each other? I like to hear or read a variety of commentaries by all sorts of specialists. They are so knowing…especially about the past. Full of hmph, it was obvious we/they shouldn’t have done this/that. You know, the Kurds aren’t interested in liberating the Sunnis from Daesh but the Sunnis will not be happy to see Westerners coming in, accompanied by Shia, to put their house in order. As for the present, they serenely spin new illusions: first we have to smash Daesh, then we’ll have a provisional Syrian government that will organize UN-guaranteed elections open to residents and the Diaspora that will form a democratic pluralistic government, and…

Iran has one foot on the battlefield and the other standing in the shadows ready to pounce once Daesh is undone.

Abaaoud and his surviving team planned, we are told, to blow themselves up at la Défense, the modern business district just across the city line that looks like a cheap imitation of a 5^th rate American downtown. The best bet to catch the crowd would have been the 4 Temps shopping mall. The jihadis would have hauled a lot of banlieue dudes and chicks in their explosive net; the business district is something of a Hebron, where a small minority of well-heeled executives and upper level employees is surrounded by a large population of the relegated disgruntled lower classes. Recent leaks suggest the killers also planned to hit a Jewish target. What else is new?

Paris prosecutor François Molins gave a long detailed update the other day. Every time I see him I am reminded of the press conference after the atrocious murder of Ilan Halimi, where he announced that the crime would not be qualified as anti-Semitic. The error was corrected shortly afterward, but the memory still has a sting. In the present affair, the prosecutor sketched out a polka dot map of cell phone pings with blood- chilling implications—Abaaoud, after mowing down unsuspecting people in cafés and restaurants, abandoned the car, hopped into the metro without paying, and zipped down to the Bataclan where the victims of his co-killers agonized on a carpet of blood and the raid was still underway. The whereabouts of Salah Abedslam are also traced in a macabre hopscotch that night. His unexploded vest was discovered this week on a dead-end street in Montrouge. It wasn’t in a normal garbage bin, where it would have been collected the day after it was chucked; it was on a pile of “objets encombrants,” cumbersome objects like broken furniture and overworked mattresses. And, now, unused suicide vests.

Media coverage is thinning. Two weeks after the jihad outburst, the government organized a tribute to the victims at les Invalides. The ceremony was elegant and moving. The national anthem was honored by a resounding chorus of professional voices. La Marseillaise, composed by revolutionaries from Marseille that came up to Paris to overthrow the king, is so demanding that only a highly trained opera singer can do it justice. The president asked French citizens to adorn their façades with the national flag for the occasion. In neighborhoods I visited, flags are few and far between but the nationalistic fervor is in the air, awakened by the atrocious massacre. A sense of identity and pride that just a few weeks ago was decried as extreme right jingoism is embraced, with predictable exceptions, across the political and intellectual spectrum. The chord has been struck. It would be a mistake to underestimate the transformation of French society. In fact, no, it is not a transformation. It’s a revelation of something that was always present but never recognized at its true value.

Pilgrimages to the murder sites continue. Volunteers clear away wilted flowers and burned out candles, quickly replaced by fresh ones. And the police are at work, searching for weapons, putting people under house arrest, gathering information, deporting imams. The French government informed the Council of Europe that it may have to infringe on human rights during the state of emergency.

Attention has finally turned to the lair of those not so lone wolves that have been spilling blood abundantly, but the glaring evidence of the articulation between “this is Islam” and “this is not Islam,” has hardly been explored. The “white emir,” a 69 year-old naturalized French citizen who goes by the name of Olivier Corel, has been running an Islamic academy in Lanes, a clump of rustic houses in the hamlet of Artigat in the Ariège hills outside of Toulouse. The Syrian Salafist Abdel Ilat Al-Dandachi aka Corel, is a sort of celestial body around which dozens of planets gravitate, wreaking havoc as they explode, immediately replaced by more of the same. Take a look at this graphic illustration of his galaxy:http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2015/11/27/01016-20151127ARTFIG00226-15-jours-apres-les-attentats-le-point-sur-l-enquete.php

This week the emir was given a six month’s suspended sentence for illegal detention of firearms, apparently an old hunting rifle, and allowed to return to his humble abode and chummy neighbors. Since 1987, when the steely-eyed Muslim Brother established his community in Artigat, his disciples have been implementing his spiritual message with Kalachnikovs and other murderous instruments. To mention only a few graduates of the self-styled academy:

Mohamed Merah, his brother Abdelkader, jailed as an accessory to the Toulouse-Montauban murders, and his sister Souad, believed to be in Syria.

Merah’s buddy Sabri Essid, who has joined Daesh and recently appeared in a video with a kid-executioner who shot a man in the head. The victim, an Israeli Arab that had joined the caliphate was accused of being a Mossad spy.

Fabien and Jean-Michel Clain, converts originally from Reunion Island, who recited the text taking credit for the latest Paris attacks. The brothers influence, organize and micro-manage activities from their base in Syria. Fabien was imprisoned in 2009 for his role in recruiting jihadis to fight in Iraq. Last spring the brothers piloted Sid Ahmed Glam’s botched attack on a church in Villejuif. In 2009 Fabien Clain had personally threatened to punish the Bataclan for its Zionism. The Jewish proprietors, who sold the concert hall just a few months ago, hosted an annual gala concert—systematically hounded by raucous demonstrators—for the benefit of Israel’s border police, the Magav.

The Clains, like almost every jihadi mentored by the white emir, have Belgian connections. They were involved with a commando that attacked French lycéens on a school trip to Egypt a few years ago… Corel/al-Dandachi has been detained several times for questioning and always released, because existing law denies the connection between “this is Islam”—self-styled or officially appointed imams preaching real Islam—and “this is not Islam”—the killers who activate their message. The emir doesn’t fire a Kalchnikov and the mass murderers don’t look “religious.” The media and their experts report with a sigh of relief that Abaaoud’s team was composed of petty to middling criminals, known more for taking drugs and womanizing than for praying at the mosque. One-eyed specialists prefer to implicate the Net as the untouchable radicalizer while ignoring one of the major sources of French jihadism.

September 21, 2001, a massive explosion at the AZF chemical plant in Toulouse left 31 dead and thousands maimed or injured. No “chemical” explanation for the blast has ever been found, but the possibility of a terror attack ten days after 9/11 has been stubbornly dismissed. Former anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière drafted a report on elements that were overlooked in the investigation. Without claiming to have found the cause of the accident, or the culprit, the judge details all the reasons why investigators should not have ignored troubling information about Hassan Jandoubi a truck driver killed in the blast. Jandoubi, an interim worker hired by an outside agency, allegedly had contacts with the Artigat Islamic community.

Two weeks after the attacks, Christmas decorations go up, the initial shock is no longer visible in the streets, the media have turned their attention to the COP21, leaving loose threads everywhere. The Green Summit is taking place at Le Bourget, where the UOIF, our Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, holds its annual Congress, a huge event chock full of hijab, inflammatory literature, sharia friendly speakers, and separation between men and women. The UOIF was conspicuously present at a summit meeting of French Islam held the other day to consecrate the fight against radicalization.

It’s simply impossible to close a chapter in this ongoing drama. So much is left to be said: Samy Amimour, one of the 13 November executioners, worked for several years as a bus driver. It seems that Salafists have been ruling over certain depots in the Parisian transportation network. Political figures from all parties are now asking for a thorough review of flagged security threats employed in sensitive fields. Amimour’s passport had been confiscated after he was caught trying to join the Caliphate. But his lawyer persuaded authorities to give it back to him so he could find employment. All of these murderous thugs have lawyers, usually young women with long blonde hair. Not court appointed lawyers, dedicated counsel which has been defending them for years. Why did the three shahids posted outside the soccer stadium jerk off without waiting for the crowd to pour out and get smashed? Who was their prompter? What language were they speaking? I don’t know why they missed their cue, but they illustrate the idiocy of the refugee numbers game. What does it matter what percentage of the intruders are Daesh, when six weeks after the photo-choc of Aylan Shenu hit the screen, three unidentified men who came through Greece with false passports were in position to assassinate the president of France?

The squeaky clean intentions of the ecologists were brutally contested on the eve of the COP21 by another branch of the enemies of decency that, despite countless house arrests and a non-negotiable prohibition against demonstrations, made their contribution to the misery that assails us. Anarchists determined to impose their law, opportunists jumping at a chance to make trouble, extremist ecologists and, who knows, maybe some jihadis too, hiding under the same black hoods gathered at Place de la République Sunday night to fight the police. In the heat of the battle the insurgents attacked the police with rocks, glass bottles, canisters, and candles grabbed from the memorial at the feet of the statue of Marianne. According to one eyewitness they used children’s drawings as wicks to light candles. They even threw bouquets. More, I suppose, as a sign of contempt than with any illusion that the flowers could penetrate the riot policemen’s shields. A dialogue between an assailant and a concerned citizen, possibly an ally in his combat shocked by the means he chose, reportedly went like this:

“How can you do this? [sacking the memorial] How can you disrespect the victims?”

“It happened in my neighborhood. I don’t give a damn. I don’t want a state of emergency, I don’t want a state.”

Like the caliphators of July 2014, the anarchists also took part in anti-Zionist anti-American rampages years ago. I wrote about them at the time-—Pitbulls for Peace—when the mass media pretended they didn’t exist. They were called peace marches back then. And now, the French president is doing his utmost to find allies in the war against Daesh. British forces are in position to strike as soon as the parliament gives the ok to David Cameron who has designated a prime target, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the real mastermind of attacks in Europe.

And our charming newscasters have started alternating the term “Islamic State” with the Arabic acronym Daesh that, though accurate, has been used to avoid linking Islam to atrocities.

EDITORS NOTE: Nidra Poller’s latest book, The Black Flag of Jihad stalks la Républic, is available on Kindle here.

Americans in Paris after the November 13th attack

November 29, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jerry Gordon

This evocative Washington Post Magazine article includes some comments from brave visiting Americans. Among them were my oldest granddaughter Arielle and her father, my son Harold. Arielle, junior at Northwestern University, was in Paris for the fall term attending a joint program run in conjunction with SciPo.

Harold and some members of the extended family had planned a trip over Thanksgiving week to visit her and tour some museums. That was prior to the ISIS shahids murderous massacres and battle with French police. After much discussion the group decided to go, despite State Department travel advisories and warnings from friends and some other family members.

Their visit came just days after the November 13th massacres by ISIS operatives that saw 130 killed, 352 injured, 99 seriously, and the November 18th battle at the St. Denis safe house that saw the shootout with French police resulting in the deaths of the alleged Belgian Moroccan mastermind, his French born female cousin and a third, as yet to be identified jihadi suicide bomber.

Doubtless the Gordon entourage will have anecdotes about what they saw and experienced there on this adventure. They return to the United states tomorrow. Arielle returns the following weekend after what must have been an experience she’ll remember vividly.

Harold and I spent 9/11/2001 together in the company of his law firm partners and associates in Manhattan viewing and experiencing first hand another Islamic jihad slaughter of the innocents by Al Qaeda shahids from Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

These close encounters with Islamic terrorism by the Gordon family was experienced by Arielle’s younger sister Amanda who spent a month in Israel on a teen tour during the summer 2014 Hamas rocket and terror tunnel 50 day war, IDF Operation Protective Edge.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of a building in Paris lit up with the French flag was taken by Harold Gordon.

After calling Islamic State “contained,” Obama now says it poses “serious threat to all of us”

November 27, 2015/in Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jihad Watch

He has no plan. He has no coherent strategy. He doesn’t take the threat from the Islamic State seriously. All he cares about is presenting the appearance of doing something about the Islamic State, so that his party doesn’t suffer electoral losses as a result of his disastrous non-strategy.

“Two Weeks After Calling Islamic State ‘Contained,’ Obama Says It Poses ‘Serious Threat to All of Us,’” by Alyssa Canobbio, Daily Caller, November 24, 2015 12:53 pm

During Thursday’s joint press briefing, President Obama changed his stance on the threat of the Islamic State and said that the terrorist group poses a serious threat.

“This is an important moment for our nations and for the world. This barbaric terrorist group, ISIL or Daesh, and its murderous ideology pose a serious threat to all of us. It cannot be tolerated. It must be destroyed and we must do it together,” Obama said.

A few weeks prior Obama had said in an interview that the terror group was not gaining strength and was contained.

“I don’t think they are gaining strength. What is true is that from the start our goal has been first, to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria they will come in, they leave, but you don’t see the systematic march by ISIL across the terrain,” Obama said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos….

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

The Muslim Parasite and the Western Host

November 23, 2015/in Featured, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Dr. Rich Swier

There has been much discussion about the coordinated Muslim migration from Syria to Europe and the United States. This migration has been called by some a parasitic one, as Muslims become welfare recipients of the host nation while they maintain their sacred duty to remain devout followers of Mohammed.

History shows how the followers of Mohammed cannot by Muslim law (shariah) integrate or assimilate into the host nation’s culture. Rather they feed off the host country until the time when they have sufficient political, financial, social and military power to overthrow the host country and replace it with Islam.

Europe is witnessing a revolution against the Muslim “invasion.”

Columnist Robert Heller in an email titled “Why Christian refugees should be given priority to emigrate to the U.S.” writes:

Christians are earmarked for genocide by the Islamic State. Many have already been beheaded or otherwise slaughtered. When President Obama said there should not be a religious test he omitted the fact that people marked for genocide and extinction should by all human instincts be saved from certain death. These people marked for death happen to be Christian.

If the Islamic State decided all people with blue eyes or black skin should be marked for genocide would President Obama say we don’t recognize their plight over Muslims who wish to emigrate because living in a war torn country is dangerous or difficult.

The issue is not whether a person is Christian; it is that this particular group of people are subject to rape, torture and death above all others. Obama’s effort to make this a Christian or Muslim religious issue is beyond comprehension.

Former Israeli Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, in his column “Second Thought: A U.S.-Israel Initiative”, writes:

Europe has ignored the significant impact on contemporary Islamic geo-strategy by crucial milestones in the life of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, such as the 7th century Hijrah (Islam-driven emigration). Muhammad emigrated/fled from Mecca to Yathrib (Medina) – along with his loyalists – not to be integrated and blend into Medina’s social, economic or political environment, but to advance and spread Islam through conversion, subversion and terrorism, if necessary. Asserting himself over his hosts and rivals in Medina, Muhammad gathered a critical mass of military might to conquer Mecca and launch Islam’s drive to dominate the world.

In 1966, this Hijrah precedent was applied by Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat and the entire Fatah leadership which emigrated/fled from Syria to Jordan, incited the Palestinian population of Jordan, but failed in their attempt to topple the hosting Hashemite regime. In 1976, they failed in their attempt to topple the regime in Beirut, which had hosted them since they emigrated/fled from Jordan in 1970. In 1990, they collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s invasion and plunder of Kuwait, stabbing the back of the Sabah family, which had hosted them, their relatives and PLO associates since they emigrated/fled from Egypt in the mid-1950s.

On Friday morning, November 13, 2015, a few hours before Islamic terrorists launched their offensive against France, French Muslim children studied – and French Muslim adults heard in French mosques – that according to the Quran, humanity must submit to the prophet Muhammad, and the “infidel” must accept Sharia’ laws; “Holy War” (Jihad) must be conducted on behalf of Islam, and the participation in the Jihad rewards one with the benefits of paradise; the abode of the “believers” (Dar al-Islam) must be expanded into the abode of the “infidels” (Dar al-Harb), who are doomed to the sword; prohibiting “believers” to submit themselves to the rule of the “infidel,” except as a temporary tactic; agreements with “infidels” are provisional, as a prelude to subordinating the “infidel;” emigration of the “believers” must serve the historical, supremacist goal of Islam; and shielding the “believers” from “infidels” may require the Quran-sanctioned Taqiyyah – double talk and deception-based statements and agreements to be ignored, contradicted and abrogated once conditions are ripe.

Selwyn Duke in his column “Islamic influx: Why a Religious Test for Immigrants is Moral and Wise” writes:

People believe in things.

Some of those things are good and true, others are bad and false. And if what people believe is bad and false — whatever water-muddying label it wears — there’s every reason not to vote for them. There also may be good reason not to befriend or hire them, depending on the degree and nature of the badness. There may be reason to keep them out of your home.

And there certainly may be reason to keep them out of your national home.

It should be noted that when Charles Martel saved Europe from a Muslim invasion in 732 A.D. and when the responses to Islamic aggression known as the Crusades were launched in 1095, people understood the above well. In fact, the earliest known uses of the terms “religious” and “secular” were, respectively, 1200 and 1300; even so, they didn’t have their current meanings. “Secular” as in “in reference to humanism and the exclusion of belief in God from matters of ethics and morality,” only dates from 1850.

Thus, during Christendom’s formative years, adolescence and rise to dominance, people did in fact view the world more clearly in the most important sense: they understood that there was simply the true and untrue. Maybe now we can understand why Pope Benedict XVI identified the 13th or 14th century as the West’s high water mark.

Read more.

The ultimate question is: Whom do you trust?

Recent events in Paris and Mali must be viewed in a historical perspective. Islam and the followers of Mohammed have a sacred duty to conquer the non-believers. Remember the Middle East was once a Judeo/Christian paradise of prosperity, trade and peace.

It fundamentally began to change when Mohammed migrated (hijrah) from Mecca to Medina. Thus ends today’s lesson.

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Obama Must Go

November 23, 2015/in Commentary, National Security, Politics, Religion/by Paul R. Hollrah

As one who had never felt as though George H.W. Bush was a man of presidential caliber and, if nominated and elected, would be a one-term president, I was more than happy to serve as deputy campaign manager in the presidential exploratory committee of former White House Chief of Staff, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had a far more impressive resume than Bush and was a far more capable, competent, and decisive leader.

Unfortunately, the combined efforts of conservatives were unable to deny Bush the nomination and, as predicted, he was no match for the Democratic congressional leadership. He allowed himself to be lured into a political trap by the Democrats in which he reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge and was defeated for reelection in 1992. His poor performance in office caused me to write what was the first of many “Must Go” columns titled, “George Bush Must Go.”

The “George Bush Must Go” column was followed in subsequent years by columns suggesting that Senator Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor “must go.” However, lest I be accused of rejecting only members of my own party from positions of power and influence, I should point out that I have also called for the resignation or impeachment of former Attorney General Eric Holder. But now it’s Barack Obama’s turn.

In a November 14 column for the New York Post, columnist Michael Goodwin assessed Barack Obama’s approach to the war against radical Islam. He said, “In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest… you win or you lose.” True, but that’s not how Barack Obama sees things. In his childlike world view he sees things not as they really are, but only as he wishes them to be. As Goodwin describes it, “President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, the Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.

“He refuses to say ‘Islamic terrorism,’ as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word ‘war,’ even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world. He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is ‘leading from behind.’ He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and calls the Islamic State the ‘jayvee team,’ even as it was beginning to create a caliphate. Having long ago identified American power as a problem, he continues to slash the military as the enemy expands its reach. In a globalized era, the Obama doctrine smacks of cowardly retreat and fanciful isolation.”

Goodwin reminds us that, in an accident of timing that demonstrates his profound cluelessness, Obama expressed his view of the current status of ISIS in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos just hours before radical Islamists staged a bloody attack on Paris. He said, “I don’t think they’re gaining strength. What is true, from the start our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq and in Syria. They’ll come in, (then) they’ll leave. But you don’t see this systemic march by ISIL across the terrain.”

The interview was aired at approximately 8:00 AM (EST) on Friday, November 13, on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” The first bomb exploded outside the Stade de France, a football stadium north of Paris, at 9:16 PM Paris time (3:16 PM Washington time), followed almost immediately by volleys of gunfire and explosions at the Bataclan Concert Hall, the Le Carillon Restaurant, the Le Petit Cambodge Restaurant, and two other locations in Paris. In a matter of minutes, 132 innocent people were killed and 350 others were wounded by Islamic terrorists.

The coordinated ISIS attacks in Paris began just 7 hours and 16 minutes after Obama declared ISIS to be “contained.” Even as he pontificated for the TV audience, the terrorists were likely pacing the floor in their rented safe-houses, inspecting their AK-47s and their Kalashnikovs, loading ammo clips, and making last minute adjustments to their suicide belts.

It was the most deadly attack on Paris by enemy forces since World War II, prompting French President Francois Hollande to condemn the attacks as an “act of war,” vowing that France will be “merciless toward the barbarians of the Islamic State group.” He said, “We will lead the fight and we will be ruthless.” Sadly, those are the words we expect to hear from Barack Obama.

Goodwin concluded, “The time has run out for half measures and kicking the can down the road. The enemy must be destroyed on the battlefield before there can be any hope of peace. If Obama cannot rise to the challenge of leadership in this historic crisis, then, for the good of humanity, he should resign. Those are the only options and it is his duty to decide.”

Yes, Goodwin is correct in his call for Obama’s resignation. But is it even remotely possible that he… addicted as he is to the narcotic of holding power… would even consider the possibility of resignation? Unlike the Nixon example, wherein Republican congressional leaders… Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA), Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), and House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-AZ)… went to the White House for the purpose of informing Nixon that his support in Congress had all but evaporated and that, if he chose to fight impeachment, there was not sufficient support in the U.S. Senate to avoid conviction and removal.

Is there a man or woman alive who can honestly visualize their Democratic counterparts of today… Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)… going to the White House to tell Obama that his presidency is over and that he must resign to avoid impeachment? Let’s face it. The sort of patriotism that Republican leaders have demonstrated over and over again… i.e. Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc… just does not exist in the Democratic Party. The desire to put the country’s best interests ahead of party interests is just not present in the Democratic DNA.

At the outset of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, every one of the 45 Senate Democrats went to the well of the Senate, raised their right hands, and swore: “I solemnly swear that in all things pertaining to the trial of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, now pending, that I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws. So help me God.” Yet, every one of those 45 Democrats made that solemn promise to God, knowing that they intended to violate that oath. In spite of mountains of irrefutable evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” on Clinton’s part, every one of the 45 Democrat senators voted to acquit. The only member of the U.S. Senate to be seriously punished for voting “not proven,” in spite of irrefutable evidence that Clinton had perjured himself before a federal judge, was Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who was turned out of office in a primary election by Republican voters.

And while impeachment is the most logical solution to the problem presented by Obama, it is clear that, if Republicans had the stomach to impeach Barack Obama, who has to his credit a long list of impeachable offenses, would they not already have done so at some time since January 20, 2009? The fact is, Barack Obama continues to serve for no other reason than the color of his skin. As a black man, he relies on the collective guilt of white liberals to engage in whatever “high crimes and misdemeanors” he feels are necessary to his political agenda. It is indisputable that, if he were a white man, he would have been removed from office long ago.

The one remaining alternative is for the military to remove him… non-violently, if possible; by force, if necessary. The Framers created a constitutional republic in which the military was, by design, made subservient to the civilian branches of government. However, Thomas Jefferson knew that there were no guarantees where governments instituted by men were concerned. In the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, in referring to the right of the people to enjoy the benefits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, he wrote, “… that to secure these rights, governments are institutes among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government…”

Inasmuch as Barack Obama has been, from the first day of his administration, destructive of our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and since he has repeatedly violated his oath of office by failing to “faithfully execute” the office of President of the United States, the American people are left with no alternative but to bring an abrupt end to his presidency, even at this late date. And since congressional Republicans lack the courage to impeach him and leaders of his own party demonstrate insufficient love of country to call for his resignation, it is left to our military leaders to advise him that it is time for him to do the honorable thing.

If the joint chiefs of staff were to request an audience with Obama, accompanied by a delegation of the most highly respected retired flag and general officers… such as General Tommy Franks, General Paul Vallely, General Stanley McChrystal, and General Ray Odierno… to remind him that, inasmuch as he no longer enjoys the loyalty and the respect of members of the military services, from the top generals and admirals down to the lowest of enlisted ranks, he should summon up the courage to do what is in the best interests of the nation and its people.

If we were to judge our 44 presidents by their failures and their accomplishments, several would receive very low grades. Barack Obama would be the only one to receive a grade of less than zero. He has been, by far, the worst president in American history. And if we stop to consider the damage that has been done, globally, by radical Islam in just a matter of months, imagine the damage that an embittered Obama can be expected to do in the remaining 14 months of his presidency. For the good of the people, he should be forced to resign.

Bonjour Tristesse [Hello Sadness]!

November 23, 2015/in Commentary, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Nidra Poller

black flag of jihad stalks la republique

Now available on Amazon.com in book and Kindle versions. See Editors Note [below] for link to order.

Paris 20-21 November 2015

Friday: Steady cold rain is falling as the truth starts to sink in. Rain extinguishes the memorial candles and flattens the bouquets in front of the grieving restaurants and the horrified Bataclan and piled in terraces around the Marianne at Place de la République. The streets of Paris are forlorn, the boutiques are empty, there’s no line waiting for a seat at the falafel joints, Christmas merchandise lies on the shelves, dumbstruck.

There was a brief moment of satisfaction at the news that the “mastermind” of last week’s attacks was indeed dead several times over and beyond recognition after the 7-hour siege of his last hideout. DNA or some other tracer was matched to some shreds or drippings of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, junior Daesh executive in charge of planning jihad attacks in France and the Benelux countries. The so-called mastermind was caught by CCTV at the Croix de Chavaux métro station in Montreuil last Friday night at around 10 PM. The black Seat used by the easy riders who had finished executing people on restaurant and café terraces had been abandoned less than two blocks away. And the Big Chief ducked into the metro and jumped the turnstile. Punk!

I coined the term “punk jihadis” in November of 2005 when the banlieues went on a three-week torching spree. The pretext back then was the death of two youths running from the police; the boys took refuge in an electric power station, and got electrocuted. Last Friday night punk jihadis killed 130 people in Paris, to punish them for being depraved Crusaders who listen to music, eat, drink, and make merry…

…for tomorrow we shall die? The truth sinks in and you assimilate it. In the immediate aftermath people light memorial candles…to forget the dread that has befallen them. They leave bouquets of flowers, hand scrawled notes, ribbons and flags and badges and other signs of life that will not die. After checking to make sure immediate family members are alive and intact, Parisians enlarged the scope and quickly touched the grief of bereaved friends and acquaintances. The media publish unbearable photos and accounts of first responders and survivors. The savagery screams in your ears like the sirens that wailed all night long.

Those columns of intruders marching into Europe on the tails of the Aylan Shenu photo are a living metaphor of our current situation. Savage killers were in fact embedded in the mass. Only a minority, you were reassured, as if that were an acceptable risk to take for the sake of not losing your humanitarian label. And now, and for decades, only a minority of ruthless mass murderers are hiding like squiggles in the wallpaper of Muslim communities in Europe. TV cameras pan the streets of Molenbek, base camp of the recent assault—all the women are in hijab. I am not the kind of journalist who pushes a microphone under someone’s chin and asks a pointed question. What do you think about what happened? Who do you think did it? There is a different way of gathering and processing information. My memories of hundreds of man-in-the-street interviews play back today. I only have to look at the faces. The punks who actually grab the Kalashnikov and go on a killing spree, the punks that cheer them on, the nobodies with garbled minds that deplore the killing but deny its origins… Decent, perceptive, articulate Muslim intellectuals speak out too. These days they are more welcome than usual in the media. They are the real tiny Muslim minority. And most of them say, in measured voices: that’s not the real Islam.

Writing close to the bone, I am overwhelmed by a flood of anecdotes and impressions. Reading distractedly the words of people commenting from a distance, I am close to infuriated by their flippancy. Some are so eager to latch on to a euphemism here, a sidestep there, and declare that the stupid French still haven’t caught on that Islam is what’s going on. Don’t gloat. I happened to be in the United States on 9/11. When I returned to France a week later I was, yes, infuriated by their flippancy.

Countless hours of attention yield a full range of attitudes and analyses that can, however, be summarized. French people specifically and Europeans in general are on a learning curve. It is the difference that is notable, not the hangovers from an opaque recent past. Regional elections are coming up in December. Even though the issues are not technically international or even national, citizens will be voting on the question of Islamic jihad, for or against. That is, resist or fudge. And I still think that Marine Le Pen will not be the one to cash in the chips.

Saturday: The story line last night was: Parisians will not be terrorized. Here they are at Place de la République, lighting new candles to replace the ones that were rained out. Someone brought a piano to the improvised memorial near the Bataclan. People are singing and dancing, they went to the bistrots and had a drink. From screen to screen and one makeshift memorial to the other, correspondents served the plat du jour. “Hundreds are gathered” they said, confident that no one would notice the pitiful irony of it all. “Hundreds” means hardly anyone. So be it. People have to process this reality in their own way. Today a cold wind blowing directly from the North Pole (where there is apparently enough ice to chill us to the bone) is battering the memorial flowers as icy rain smothers the candles.

Last Sunday it was sunny and mild. I decided to jump at an exceptional opportunity to go face to face with CNN. First, I walked around the square twice to get the feel of things. My eye was caught by a small graffiti in the plaque marked 21 septembre 1792. Flics, hors de nos vies[cops, bug out of our lives]. Probably a remnant of the pro-Hamas rallies of the summer of 2014.

At the CNN tent, Hala Gorani said to a colleague, as she munched on a sandwich, “I’ve got to stop eating.” Nice opening. I encouraged her to keep enjoying the best of the Paris… “Like you said this morning in your tribute to our city.” She tells me she grew up here. And I show her a photo of pro-Hamas caliphators waving the black jihad flag right here in the Place de la République, right there on the pedestal of the Marianne, now decorated with flowers, candles, and même pas peur declarations. “Do you know what this is?” She doesn’t know, but aha, she’s no pushover. “This is photoshopped,” she says with a wink of cleverness. “No, it’s a collage. But this Palestinian flag, this Gaza Mon Amour poster, and this black jihad flag are at the same place at the same time. It was a banned demonstration. July 19^th 2014. Israel was defending itself against attacks from Gaza.” She looks uncomfortable. I give her a black & white photo of the cover of my book, The Black Flag of Jihad Stalks la République. And my visiting card. “I’m available if you’d like to talk to me.” The next day and ever since, Hala Gorani and her colleagues, all CNN BigShots, have been serving generous portions of Islamophilia. For example, an interview with someone from the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie, who deplored the wave of house arrests as if it were worse than Guantanamo.

Radio Communauté Juive, one of several Jewish radio stations that share an FM band, could be fairly designated as “leftist, with highbrow aspirations.” On a midday newscast last week, journalist Paule-Henriette Levy, interviewing high ranking military man, apparently wanted to query him on the real impact of air strikes against Daesh positions. “Thirty-three dead,” she remarked, clearly swallowing the word “only” that gave meaning to her question. Then, her humanitarian reflexes kicking in, she blurted: “Of course every life matters…33 dead is 33 too many…”

I-télé aired an excerpt from an interview with the sister and brother of one of the Bataclan killers. They are horrified, simply horrified by what he did. He’s not our brother, he’s a monster, they sob. They repeat their horror, their sorrow, their distress, their stupefaction. And to think it was happening a few blocks away from the théâtre de la Main d’Or where they were watching Dieudonné perform. The interviewer is a bit stupefied himself. “You went to see Dieudonné’s show? He’s very controversial. Are you anti-Semitic?” And they reply, hidden behind the thickest biggest most checkerboard face blur I’ve ever seen, “No, we were just having fun, it’s a comedy show.”

I suppose most readers will have seen footage of the bespectacled guy who lent the apartment in St. Denis where Abaaoud made his last stand. Interviewed by BFM TV during the standoff, he could barely contain his arrogance and contempt for the journalist who dared to ask him how he came to give refuge to the notorious terrorist. “A copain asked me lend the place to some of his potes for a few days. I said ok. I helped him out, monsieur, that’s all, a helping hand.” Of course he didn’t know they came from Belgium, he didn’t know they were terrorists. And perhaps he didn’t see the policemen standing nearby that gently took him by the arm and led him to the paddy wagon. He’s still in custody. According to an article in Libération* the snooty chap subsequently identified as Jawad Bendaoud, is the goon of slum landlords that were renting apartments in the building, officially declared unfit for habitation. Bendaoud reportedly was sentenced to an 8-year term in 2008 for manslaughter. The victim was a friend. So I guess this wasn’t the first time he helped out a copain. The downstairs neighbor of the hideout also told her story to TV cameras. The building was shaking, plaster was raining down from the ceiling. She didn’t need to be blurred. She was in niqab. A cute young flirty looking friend of Bendaoud gives a different version. She says the apartment was abandoned. Her copain just broke in and expropriated it. He lent it to people who needed a place to crash. Is that so? Then how does she explain the fact that the armored door was so strong it resisted the explosive charge used by the SWAT team to break in and surprise the occupants?

Bendaoud was curiously precise in the pre-arrest interview: “I told the copain that there’s nothing in the apartment, no mattresses, he said it’s okay, all they need is water and a place to do their prayers.” A few hours later, pieces of Hasna Aitboulahcen, identified as Abaaoud’s cousin, were blasted out of the apartment, along with a bloody mattress [sic] that fell to the ground for all the eyes of the world to see. Just before Hasna was blasted by the suicide belt of the third fugitive, a policeman shouted up to her “Where is your boyfriend” and she replied “He’s not my boyfriend.” The confused young woman, who was a party girl until a few months ago, revealed in that brief exchange the juvenile stupidity of these mass murderers. She sounds like an 8 year-old girl with a ribbon in her hair meowing at recess. “Gna gna gna, Alhamid likes Hasna,” chant les copines and Hasna stamps her foot and says, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

The enemy says we are racists, but when the savages shoot into the crowd, they murder people of all colors, creeds, and origins. The names of the dead are an international repertoire of contemporary French history. But they, the crazed killers, are all the same.

If going to cafés and bistrots is an act of résistance against the savage murderers, there are still some distinctions to be made. Go into any Muslim neighborhood anywhere in France and you will find men sitting in cafés and bistrots for hours on end.

EDITORS NOTE: Readers may now order Nidra Poller’s new book “The Black Flag of Jihad Stalks la République” on Amazon.com.

What’s wrong with this picture?

November 22, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Reverend Bob Armstrong

Over the past five years of the Saudi-sponsored war in Syria, the United States has admitted a grand total of only 53 Syrian Christian refugees and just one lone Yazidi, despite all the media attention on the Yazidi situation last year.

What’s wrong with this picture?

What shall I tell the Yazidi sheiks when I meet with them in early December?

I will never forget the religious leaders in Lebanon last December saying to me, “We cannot trust the United States government. You are now bombing ISIS, when two or three years ago, you were arming what is now ISIS?!”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Now our president, while at the G20 Summit in Turkey, in reaction to the Paris multiple-terrorist bombings and carnage, tells the world that we will “stay the course” for victory. What???

Obama held a press conference in which he said the terror attacks in Paris that left 130, including one American dead, will not change his policy in regards to ISIS, and that he still will not consider American boots on the ground in Syria or Iraq.

Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff would recommend many boots on the ground, seemingly, they are afraid to contradict the “Commander-in-Chief”.

Reverend Armstrong with Iraqi Christians. Photo by Bob Armstrong.

However, former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani, weighed in on the outrage where every country is against ISIS even more. Guliani said, “I don’t care about public opinion. I care about the national security of the United States. We should have 30,000 or 40,000 troops in Iraq. If we had had them there consistently, ISIS would never have emerged.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

The French military has bombed more of ISIS strongholds in two days, than the United States has bombed in almost six months! Hello??

What’s wrong with this picture?

According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) 19,000 Syrians have been picked straight from “refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan” and given U.N. approval for resettlement in the United States. However, most Christians are NOT in the United Nations refugee camps because of assaults and rapes by Muslims. Most Christians are “urban refugees” living in basements of rundown buildings – and worse – in cities. Virtually all of the 19,000 Syrian “refugees” will be Sunni Muslims who have a hatred for free Western governments.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Former Iraqi General Georges Sada (right) with Reverend Bob Armstrong. Photo courtesy of Bob Armstrong.

According to former Iraqi General Georges Sada, head of Saddam’s Air Force and then a consultant to former President George W. Bush (and even now a consultant to the current Iraqi government on a daily basis) he knew a month ago that President Obama would send a few troops in to fight ISIS, “ONLY because Russia has taken the lead in the region!” I had the privilege of having a private lunch with him.

Although he does not speak to many American audiences, except the United States War College, he reveals that Americans really do not want to hear the truth! He states, “America’s best supposed ‘allies’ in the Middle East are: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. Yet these three countries provide over three-fourths of the money to fund worldwide terrorism!”

What’s wrong with this picture?

The United States is giving BILLIONS of dollars to bonafide terrorists in Iran as a part of the supposed “Iran Nuclear Deal” even while Iran gathers and chants “DEATH TO AMERICA!”

What is wrong with this picture?

Then there are the arguments for and against immigration. Yes, I am for legal immigration. Yes, I am for protecting our borders with a wall or whatever is required. Our 21,444 U. S. Border Patrol agents need our support and backing, regardless of the inaction by our government in reference to enforcement.

I am against illegal immigrants who disobey our laws to gain access to America, regardless of their color or creed or culture. How can I teach my child to obey laws, if the United States government turns a blind eye to people who are disobeying the laws. (Of course we cannot deport 12 million people. How ludicrous!) But something must be done to STOP the illegal flow!

What about a future attack on the United States? A new Islamic State video is pointing toward New York City as a terrorist target. The New York Post reports: “The images of New York City are spliced between disturbing clips of suicide bombers preparing for attacks. A fighter also holds a grenade, pulling the trigger as the camera cuts to black. French President Francois Hollande then appears on screen, giving an address just after the Paris attacks. At the end of his speech, he says, “It’s horrible!” Then words flash on the screen, saying, “And what’s coming next will be far worse and more bitter.”

Obviously, the United States of America is in the “crosshairs” of a future attack by ISIS.

Breitbart News reports: “Two federal agents operating under the umbrella of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are claiming that eight Syrian illegal aliens attempted to enter Texas from Mexico in the Laredo Sector.

A local president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) confirmed that Laredo Border Patrol agents have been officially contacting the organization with concerns over reports from other federal agents about Syrians illegally enter the country in the Laredo Sector. The sources claimed that eight Syrians were apprehended on Monday, November 16, 2015.

Honduran officials have arrested five Syrians who intended to go to the United States with stolen Greek passports.

On and on, the stories continued to multiply.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Our current administration is like a “Trojan Horse” in assisting Terrorism and radical Islam to make it to the shores of the United States of America. Islam is on the verge of accomplishing in half a dozen years what the Ottoman Empire could not do in 600 years – conquer Europe! Our own U. S. President supports the Muslim Brotherhood!

“But Muslims are peace-loving!” contends many people, even former President George W. Bush. I understand there are those who do love peace and their peaceful way of life in America, but if one were to thoroughly read the Qur’an, and act upon every part, there is really no such thing as a “peace-loving” Muslim.

Most Islamists do not understand that their “cult” is disguised as a religion as they “worship” this false god called “Allah” who directs them to torture and kill anyone who does not submit. They even convince many that Allah and God are one in the same!

President Obama and “wanna-be president” Hillary Clinton both continue to defend radical Muslims. But Islam is for sure tied to every ISIS attack.

Just in the last few hours, in Mali, Islamic Jihadists released a number of the hostages unharmed after they proved that they were Muslims by reciting, for the jihadis, verses of the Qur’an.

In the 2008 Mumbai, India terror attacks, the Islamic terrorists from Pakistan released a number of hostages from the hotel. They did this when the hostages in question proved that they were Muslims by reciting passages from the Qur’an.

A little-known fact is during the Mumbai attacks, a Muslim Labour MP who was in the hotel at the time of the attack was allowed to leave unharmed by the Islamic Pakistani terrorists. He never gave any interviews about his experiences but seems to have withdrawn to the margins of obscurity in British politics. Maybe one day France and Great Britain will have a Muslim majority electorate. Dear Lord, help us! A well-known Muslim told me: “We do not need to fire a shot to win control. France and England allow Muslims to practice their religion of having four wives. Considering all the children, one day we will be in the majority in France and England.” Wow.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Much has been said on social media about the refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean, but no one is forcing these people onto unsafe boats. They all do so willingly. President Obama wants to bring 10,000 Syrian refuges (how many are terrorists?) into the United States. However, the number of refugees welcomed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, etc. is ABSOLUTELY ZERO!!

What’s wrong with this picture?

With the backdrop of the Paris terrorist attacks, which left 130 dead including one American, President Obama wants to continue our no-win policy against ISIS. Former GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay urges: “The president in his press conference, what I saw was he all but surrendered. He has surrendered to ISIS! We have a president that’s feckless, that’s incompetent, that has no idea what he is doing. His worldview is the wrong worldview for a war president and Congress has to say it. Congress has to stand up.”

The recent anti-Immigration of Syrians bill voted on this past week had nearly 50 Democrats joining the Republicans, but it falls far short of solving the problem. After this past week’s vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed to kill the bill even though it received overwhelming bipartisan support in the House.

In another immigration bill, President Obama is vowing to veto the bill which would increase the screening for Syrian and Iraqi refugees before they enter the United States. The bill would add FBI background checks. Despite the European terror attacks, President Obama simply does not “get it.”

This invasion of America, which is called immigration, is the biggest threat to your personal safety of our generation. In fact, even before the immigration crisis of the last four months, we faced the biggest immigration crisis since World War II. But this could lead to the “Trojan Horse” of terrorism in the USA!

What is wrong with this picture?

Most Americans understand there may be a major terrorist attack in the United States.

The Washington Post – ABC News survey, finds an unbelievable 83 percent of registered voters believe a terrorist attack in the United States resulting in large casualties is likely in the near future. Forty percent say a major attack is “very likely,” matching the level of concern after the 2005 subway bombings in Britain.

Get this, in spite of what our President says, the survey shows that 59 percent think “The United States is at war with radical Islam.” YET, President Obama and presidential candidate Clinton refuse to use that term as the enemy!

In spite of all the worldwide carnage and the terrorism finger pointed directly at the United States of America, our “Commander in Chief” is hell-bent on making “Gun Control” his legacy in his last year in office. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s advice: “Self-defense is not only our right; it is our duty.”

Please don’t be sucked into the potent videos children being killed by guns. Bad people will always somehow have access to weapons. Americans must cling to their Second Amendment rights: To defend themselves and their families.

It is against this dismal backdrop that I plan on meeting the enemy head-on in December for three weeks.

If you will recall the daily news last August, 2014 about the Iraqi people who were surrounded by ISIS on a mountaintop, the Yazidis. One-half of the men women and children were slaughtered by ISIS (5,000). The USA dropped from the air food, water and blankets, while the Kurds finally rescued the other half. Genocide, on a smaller scale, still continues in that region. I plan to spend one week in December with them: giving them food, encouraging them, and showing them the love of Christ. Yes, it is still considered a “war zone.”

In fact a Kurd offensive was begun earlier this week, as first reported by CNN to rid Sinjar of the 300 ISIS fighters. U. S. Coalition forces bombed strategic regions near there this past week! But my “insiders” tell me they will be rid of by the time I get there! Pray the Kurds eliminate ALL the IEDs! I will be a couple of miles from ISIS territories and within six miles where Turkey last month – and yesterday – bombed the PKK of the Kurds.

Even though God nudged me to do this, and I will be safe because of Him, for three days I will have five armed bodyguards of the Assyrian Christian “Special Forces”. Confidentially, the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit!

In addition, I will spend the day at a special home for 30 Yazidi women where they have been brutally raped by ISIS (and their husbands killed by ISIS)! I need divine guidance on how to encourage these dear women who have sacrificed ALL. It is like a Rehab Center “on steroids.”

Then the second and third week I will be in Iraq, Jordan, and near the Syrian border in Lebanon, partnering with my good friend, Bill Murray, in the Religious Freedom Coalition’s program “Christmas for Refugees.” Thousands of refugee children will be fed, and their parents will receive food for a week for the entire family, as well as a Bible in their own language.

Last year, I was within 100 yards of ISIS tents; and several Muslims came to know Christ. An ISIS sympathizer infiltrated the church. As a result, according to General Georges Sada, former Iraqi general and present consultant with the Iraqi government on a daily basis, he informed me that I have a $300,000 kidnapping bounty on my head by ISIS, if I came to Baghdad region of Iraq!!

I am not “crying wolf” now. This trip is extremely serious…even one of a kind. NO ONE is reaching the Yazidis except a couple of my new friends! I will be within a few miles where the United States just this weekend sent Special Forces into Syria. Russia’s presence is already enormous in Syria!

What is wrong with this picture?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bob Armstrong needs to raise $10,000 before December 3rd for his security-conscience Middle East trip to feed Yazidis and refugee children. If you can assist, financially, thank you. All gifts to Lovelink Ministries are tax-deductible.

Readers who wish may give by check. Please email Bob Armstrong at: bobkimandb@gmail.com. To give online, go to www.LovelinkMinistries.com

Why Muslim Migrants Always = Terrorism

November 19, 2015/in Commentary, Culture War, Immigration, Policy, Politics/by Selwyn Duke

What’s the point in the West sending troops to the Middle East if we bring the Middle East to the West? The preceding is a money line, one that should be used by Islam realists from Germany to Georgia.

The Paris terror attack has inspired much debate, from conservatives saying we need to confront ISIS aggressively overseas to liberals wringing their hands over rising anti-Islam sentiment that they claim will exacerbate the jihadist problem. And while I’m more sympathetic to the former sentiment than the latter, nothing should distract us from what must be our number-one priority: stopping the Muslim influx into the West cold.

Many say this is a cold position. And, unfortunately, their prescription for (misguided) compassion is seldom sufficiently refuted.

In an attempt to salvage a failing multicultural model and strategy for importing left-leaning voters, we hear that the Muslim migrants must be “vetted” better. A practical problem with this notion is that Syria’s and other Middle Eastern countries’ databases are woefully inadequate, making accurate information on many migrants impossible to obtain. This confronts us with a simple matter of probability: if 1 million migrants enter a nation over time and just 1/10^th of 1 percent are terrorists, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists. Is this acceptable? Note that my estimate may be conservative.

Yet there’s also a fundamental problem with vetting that goes unmentioned: even with complete information, it only tells you about the past.

It cannot tell you about the future.

In other words, even if those one million migrants have “clean records,” how many will become terrorists in the future? Again, 1/10th of 1 percent is 1000.

And what of their children? How many of them will become terrorists? No point repeating best-case-scenario percentages.

One response here is that the children will be more integrated and thus the problem should diminish over time. This is logical, but, unfortunately, also apparently untrue.

Studies have shown that young Muslims in Europe are actually more radical than their elders. This certainly is counterintuitive, but only because the average Westerner’s cranial database also doesn’t contain accurate information. For example and related to this, moderns take as a given that religion is declining in our “enlightened times.” Yet religious belief is actually increasing worldwide, a phenomenon poised to continue. Islam’s adherents are growing in number, and Catholicism’s are, too, slightly in excess of the increase in world population. Religious belief is only declining in the West — and, most significantly, among Westerners in the West.

Another common argument was expressed by Charles Grant, director of pro-E.U. think-tank Centre for European Reform. He said that ratcheting up the anti-Islamic rhetoric would serve ISIS’ ends and that “Europe’s game must be to resist that and not repeat the mistakes we made after September 11 which played right into al-Qaeda’s hands. We must hold our nerve and embrace our values of tolerance of faith and religions which we share in common and against the Islamic State,” reported the Telegraph. Many leftists echo this, the idea being that we must not further “alienate” Muslim communities. This overlooks that you can only alienate those who aren’t already alien.

Note again that the pattern evident is for younger Muslim generations to become more alienated from the West, not less. Some would blame this on the West itself, saying that — despite indulging multiculturalism, outlawing anti-Muslim rhetoric and offering generous government benefits — we still aren’t opening our arms and hearts to these newcomers. Kill ‘em with kindness, the thinking (feeling?) goes.

Of such people ask a simple question: can you cite one time in history in which large numbers of Muslims have willingly assimilated into a non-Muslim culture?

Just one?

While there may be some exception, I can’t think of any. Note here a recent poll showing that a slim majority of U.S. Muslims prefer living under Sharia law to American civil law (and how many wouldn’t admit such a thing to pollsters?). The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the historical record informs that “Muslim assimilation” is a contradiction in terms.

In fact, I don’t know of even one instance in which large numbers of Muslims were ever shaken from Islam other than by the sword, and that wasn’t done very much, if at all. There was an attempt by a group of medieval Christian missionaries to peacefully convert Middle Eastern Muslims, but the effort was found futile and abandoned after a short time.

Then there’s the myth of “assimilation.” The term is thrown around thoughtlessly much as is “diversity,” and seldom mentioned is that assimilation is often never complete. For while large groups who immigrate to a nation often do change, they also are agents of change. Did the large waves of Irish, Italian and German immigrants not alter America somewhat? This might have been a good, bad or neutral thing, but it’s assuredly a real thing.

There are also those who don’t assimilate markedly, if at all. Have the Amish or Hasidic Jews assimilated noticeably into the wider culture? Again, I’m not here making a value judgment on their particular different-drummer walk. The point is merely that assimilation is, foolishly and dangerously, taken as a given when there’s great precedent proving it’s not.

And this also is a numbers game. The rare Muslim who contemplated going to the West many years ago had to be a different kind of Muslim, one who understood he was entering a Christian culture that wouldn’t cater to his desires. He and his co-religionists would be so few and far between there’d be no prospect for “Halal” groceries, Islamic interest-free financing or Muslim schools for his children. So he’d be forced to assimilate by having to work within the established institutions of the host nation. But great numbers of Muslims form their own enclaves and their own institutions; this reality not only makes the journey west more inviting to pious Muslims, but also enables them to reinforce each other’s beliefs.

There’s another problem with assimilation: a prerequisite for it is providing something attractive to assimilate into. The communist political activist Willi Munzenberg once reportedly said, “We will make the West so corrupt that it stinks.” This has been accomplished. Decadence is everywhere, and we no longer even know what marriage is or what boys and girls are. French president Francois Hollande recently canceled a dinner meeting with the Iranian president because he refused to bow to a demand to serve Halal meat and no wine. It’s good he took at least that stand, but one could just imagine his hurling accusations of “intolerance” at Christians who refused to refrain from saying the Lord’s Prayer before a meal with Muslims. It’s an example of how Western Europe has been hollowed out, how it has the superficialities of its culture but not the substance. What are foreigners today supposed to assimilate into in today’s France, Italy, Germany and U.S.? Bread and wine; pasta fagioli; Wiener schnitzel; and baseball, hot dogs and reality TV, all lathered in moral relativism? Are they really going to follow the lead of a dying anomaly in a world of growing religiosity? Heck, I’m a Westerner, and as a believing Christian I refuse to assimilate into my country’s wider culture (although I save my cutting off of heads for broccoli). Thus, with assimilation, even if Muslim migrants were buyin’, they wouldn’t be buyin’ what we’re sellin’.

Of course, none of this means we should toss the post-Christian West from the frying pan into the fire. If you want to destroy liberalism, though — both the suicidal modern ideology and the extant remnants of the classical variety — Islamization is a sure way to do it.

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

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VIDEO: The French-Gaza Connection

November 19, 2015/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Video/by Defend The Border

Captain Dan Gordon, a reserve Officer with the Israel Defensive Force explains how the Paris jihadis are using the HAMAS operational battle tactics to launch terror attacks in France and other countries soon to come. Dan has served in Israel for over 40 years and in combat in many wars against Islamic jihad.

Don’t miss this fascinating interview with Dan Gordon, a veritable Renaissance Man, who holds duel citizenship in America and Israel and is a highly acclaimed Hollywood Producer, Screenwriter and Author.

His latest thriller, Day of the Dead: GAZA, predicted these exact type attacks on Western cities, with the United States clearly on the imminent targeting list of ISIS.

After Paris, National Security Issues Lead Democratic Debate

November 18, 2015/in Elections, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Clarion Project

The format of the Democratic debate was altered at the last minute to give each candidate time to give a statement about the Paris terror attacks at the beginning of the debate.

Speaking first, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said that, “Together, leading the world, this country will rid our planet of this barbarous organization called ISIS.” However, it remains to be seen how Sanders would lead this fight since he advocates a non-interventionist approach and says that theU.S. should only have a very limited supporting role in the fight in Syria. Sanders believes that the fight against the Islamic State can only be effectively waged by Muslims.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly identified the enemy as jihadists, rejecting the non-descript terminology used by the Obama Administration who calls them “violent extremists.” Clinton made no sweeping promises as Sanders. Rather she said she would be laying out “in detail what I think we need to do to with our friends and allies — in Europe and elsewhere — to do a better job of coordinating efforts against the scourge of terrorisim.” She stressed that “all the other issues we want to deal with depend on us being secure and strong.”

In his opening statement, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley said that the events in Paris spoke to the new face of “conflict and warfare” in the 21st century, and as such, required “new thinking, fresh approaches.” O’Malley remarked that “we have a lot of work to do to better prepare out nation and to better lead this world into this new century.”

Polling shows that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dominated last night’s Democratic presidential debate, particularly on national security.

Public Policy Polling came out with the first post-debate poll that showed 67% of Democratic primary voters declaring Clinton the overall winner of the second presidential primary debate and 75% saying they most trust her on national security of the three candidates. The following is a summary of the national security positions taken by each candidate during the debate:

Hillary Clinton

She aligned herself closely with President Obama throughout the debate but presented three areas of difference on Islamist extremism: Identification of the enemy; support for Syrian rebels and an implicit criticism of President Obama for suggesting that “containment” of the Islamic State is a sign of success.

Right off the bat, Clinton repeatedly used Islamic terminology to define the enemy as “jihadist.” She also seemed to understand that the root of violent jihad is in the Islamist ideology, which she emphasized is not subscribed to by most Muslims. She described the adversary as “Islamists who are jihadists,” but she did not discuss whether she believes that “moderate Islamists” like the Muslim Brotherhood should be embraced as allies against “jihadists” like the Islamic State.

The second point of difference came when she was asked about President Obama’s claim that the Islamic State is “contained” shortly before the Paris attacks. While Clinton avoided criticizing the president directly, she rejected containment as a measure of success, saying it is impossible to contain a group like the Islamic State and only its defeat is acceptable.

The third point of difference was on Syria. She explained that she urged President Obama to equip moderate Syrian rebels in the beginning of the civil war to prevent jihadists from creating a safe haven. Clinton believes that developing allies on the ground in Syria would have given us a valuable ally today.

Clinton also suggested a tougher approach towards the Gulf states and Turkey. She said it is time for them to “make up their mind about where they stand” on the fight against jihadism.

On the topic of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq that preceded the rise of the Islamic State and the collapse of Iraqi security forces, Clinton said that the withdrawal was in compliance with a U.S.-Iraqi agreement signed by the Bush Administration. After U.S. forces left, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decimated the Iraqi security forces with his sectarianism and cronyism. This, combined with the civil war in Syria and other regional variables, enabled the Islamic State to seize large parts of Iraq.

She defended the NATO military intervention in Libya to topple Gaddafi by pointing out the large amount of American blood he had on his hands from supporting terrorism. Clinton also mentioned how the Libyans elected moderate leaders after he fell. She addressed the civil war in Libya by saying the U.S. should provide more support to the current moderate Libyan government.

On the topic of Syrian refugees, Clinton said she agrees in principle with bringing 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. (as O’Malley advocates) but only if they are completely vetted. Her tough language on vetting suggested that she envisions overhauling the process to become stricter, but she did not present a specific proposal.

Unlike Sanders, she would not commit to cutting the defense budget but promised to closely review military spending. She cited Chinese moves in the South China Sea and the increased aggressiveness of Russia, such as its broadcasting of a new drone submarine that can be equipped with tactical nuclear weapons.

Clinton is currently the frontrunner by a mile. She leads nationally with 55% in an average of polls; leads Iowa with 54%; is in second behind Sanders in New Hampshire with 43% and leads in South Carolina with 65%. You can read our factsheet on Clinton’s positions related to Islamism here.

Bernie Sanders

As we mentioned in our coverage of the recent Democratic forum, Sanders views the threat as being rooted in an Islamic ideology but—unlike Clinton—advocates a non-interventionist approach. His argument is that the U.S. should only have a very limited supporting role because the fight against the Islamic State can only be effectively waged by Muslims. He again stated that the fight with the Islamic State is part of a “war for the soul of Islam.”

Sanders rejected a strategy of pursuing regime change, apparently referring to the Syrian dictatorship and the removal of the Gaddafi regime in Libya when Clinton was Secretary of State. He cited U.S.-backed regime changes in places like Chile and Guatemala as counterproductive mistakes.

He spoke out in favor of cuts to the defense budget. He argued that U.S. military spending is far too high and that much of the excess costs are not even necessary for fighting terrorism.

Sanders is currently in second place overall. He is the runner-up nationally with 33%; is in second place in Iowa with 30%; leads in New Hampshire with 44% and is in second place in South Carolina with 17%. You can read our factsheet on Sanders’ positions related to Islamism here.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley

At the recent Democratic forum, O’Malley embraced the camp that believes Islamic terrorism is a byproduct of political grievances against the U.S. He did not repeat his ludicrous claim that U.S. troops overseas and the operation of Guantanamo Bay are the chief reasons for the strength of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

However, during the Saturday night debate, he acknowledged that the threat comes from an Islamic ideology. Unlike Clinton who defined the enemy as “jihadism,” O’Malley defined it as “radical jihadists”—which begs the question: What is a “non-radical jihadist?”

In describing where the Islamic State threat emerged from, O’Malley pointed to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and especially the disbanding of the Iraqi army. He said that many of ISIS’ current members used to be a part of the Iraqi military until we fired them. There is truth to that statement, but it seems to suggest that O’Malley remains committed to the belief that the “root cause” of the Islamic State and other Islamist terrorists are mistreatment and political grievances, rather than ideology.

O’Malley continued to embrace a non-interventionist strategy, saying that the U.S. should not be trying to overthrow dictators. He then seemed to contradict himself when he said the U.S. should take the lead in fighting “evil.” He said his “new” foreign policy would be one of “engagement” and “identifying threats” as they gather.

On several occasions, O’Malley cited the need for human intelligence sources as part of his strategy—but that’s nothing new and it’s not a strategy. Everyone agrees that more human intelligence is needed.

He reiterated his support for bringing 65,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S., up from the current 10,000 that President Obama plans to bring in. He did not address how they would be vetted and taken care of, especially when a poll of Syrian refugees found that 13% feel positively or somewhat positively towards the Islamic State.

O’Malley is in last place among the three remaining candidates. He is in last with 3% nationally; last in Iowa with 5%; last in New Hampshire with 3% and last in South Carolina with 2%. You can read our factsheet on O’Malley’s positions related to Islamism here.

You can read the Clarion Project‘s comprehensive factsheets on each party’s presidential candidates’ positions related to Islamism by clicking here.

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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Why France?

November 18, 2015/in Commentary, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Clarion Project

In the wake of the terrorist attacks which killed at least 129 in Paris on Friday, people are asking why France in particular was targeted by the Islamic State. The Islamic State detests the entire Western world and seeks to destroy it and replace it with a global Islamist caliphate. Yet it prioritizes which countries to attack and when.

The reasons listed here are by way of explanation from the Islamic State’s point of view, to help our readers understand. They are not to be taken as a justification of the Islamic State’s actions, which ultimately are caused by their hateful extremist ideology.

Here are the top five reasons why the Islamic State attacked France and Paris in particular.

France has been fighting the Islamic State and other Islamists.

French President Francois Hollande led his country into airstrikes against the Islamic State, bombing targets in Syria for the past two months. It was the first country in Europe to join America in bombing ISIS targets in Iraq and has so far been the only European country to join airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.

France also led the fight against Islamists in North Africa, it was French soldiers that liberated Timbuktu from Islamist insurgents belonging to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali.

The Islamic State is therefore fighting those who fight it the most, in an effort to persuade the civilian population of France that the war is about French foreign policy and not about a global Islamist Caliphate and to cow them into submission through terror.

France has specifically named the Islamist ideology as the problem.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the Charlie Hebdo attacks France is at war with radical Islam. The French Ambassador to America clarified afterwards, saying, “We are at war with radical Islam. It means that right now… Islam is breeding radicalism which is quite dangerous for everybody.” Not only has France named the problem but they are taking active steps against the Islamist ideology within France, not just against groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also against groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which promote the ideology of Islamism that leads to violent extremism.

France is standing up for its values and seeking to integrate Muslims

Prime Minister Manuel Valls explicitly stated, “We seek to establish a model of Islam that is fully integrated, fully compatible with the values of the Republic.” This is anathema to ISIS as they cannot countenance an integrated Islam which operates peacefully within a broader society. France is proactively attempting to integrate Muslims, which, if successful, would destroy the “Islam vs the world” narrative peddled by the Islamic State.

Paris represents the Enlightenment values of Western civilization.

The Islamic State decried the city as “the capital of prostitution and vice, the lead carrier of the cross in Europe — Paris.” Paris is at the center of European and Western fashion, culture and literature and one of the great historical cities of European civilization.

France is where much of the enlightenment took place and where modern ideas about citizenship, human rights and the separation between religion and state were first articulated and formed.

For an Islamic State obsessed with symbolism, an attack on Paris is an attack on European/Western enlightenment values.

The Islamic State is obsessed with history and honor.

France is an old country with a long history. The Islamic State has a laundry list of grievances against France going back a thousand years. ISIS also hates Europe in general for its colonial past.

It blames France, in particular, for the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate following the First World War. France was one of the leading countries involved in the crusades in the 11th century, and it is where the early Islamic Caliphate’s advance into Europe was halted by French ruler Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732.

The Islamic State is obsessed with seeing itself as the revived Muslim Caliphate. It is therefore essential to its worldview that Europe’s old colonial powers are defeated. For similar reasons, ISIS has long threatened to conquer Rome, which would represent a symbolic victory over the long defunct Roman Empire.

Without that, the Islamic State cannot claim to avenge the centuries old grievances with which it is obsessed and thus cannot fulfil its claims to restore the ‘lost honor’ of the immah.

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War on Paris

November 17, 2015/in Commentary, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Nidra Poller

It is like the death of a loved one. The death of our city that we love despite its failings, misdeeds, and particular misbehavior that I have been chronicling over the past fifteen years. A city is more than its current events. And today the heart of our city is broken. We do not have the fibre of Israelis who live with miraculous vitality in a permanent state of war & peace, but Parisians are not entirely devoid of courage and sharp instincts in the face of utmost danger. Anecdotes and eyewitness testimony are slowly emerging. The hard facts are at a minimum.

A soft spoken young man in an elegant overcoat describes the scene at the café on Rue de Charonne. He was present, he saw people picked off like sitting ducks. “They didn’t have a chance.” And yet he himself cannot believe what he saw. The Public Prosecutor delivers official information in an appropriately neutral tone. A hundred shell casings are left at each of the cafés attacked. No one was spared. Those who are not dead are in desperate condition.

It was to be expected, but it is shocking, unreal. Friday night it seemed that the whole city was screaming with sirens. As you followed events on television you could hear the broadcast sirens echoing the wails that came from the streets and boulevards. Who doesn’t have a friend who was in the Bataclan music hall or looking down from his apartment at dead bodies that only a short while before had been eating, drinking, laughing, enjoying life?

In the global village, grieving families just a few days ago witnessed the massacre in Beirut or sobbed with the bereaved of the Sharm el Sheik-St. Petersburg flight. And now it is on their doorstep and has ripped apart their lives forever. We don’t have to tell Israelis how it feels. But Europeans must wake up to the kinship they so earnestly tried to ignore. Last week a French jihadi was arrested before going into action. He had ordered an army knife and two face masks from a firm in China. I suppose, in his infinite intelligence, he thought an order from a Chinese company would be undetectable. Or maybe he was attracted by the discount price? Well, the cheap packaging fell apart in transit, or so we are told, and a postal employee informed the police of the delivery of the killer knife. The young man intended to slaughter sailors at the Toulon naval base. A smartass TV commentator, implying that the police had over-reacted, shrugged it off. He said it was la guerre des boutons which, freely translated, means kids playing cops and robbers. “Like what’s happening in Israel right now,” he added.

The knifings, firebombings, car rammings, and rock bashings… child’s play to this snide observer. I honestly can’t remember which anchor or expert it was, there are so many of the same stripe. Plentiful as the punk jihadis that poison our lives. The widespread consistent errors of appreciation on all that touches Israel and the Jews did not cause the November 14^th Paris massacre; it was waiting to happen and nothing could have prevented it or another, similar one. But the massacre may well lead to the long awaited recognition that jihad strikes in Israel and in Europe with same genocidal hatred from the same source. The cold indifference to the wave of knife attacks in Israel this fall, the perverse reverse chronology that made Israeli forces guilty of gunning down Palestinians that (admitted in a whisper) had in fact tried or perhaps in some cases succeeded in stabbing…well, you know, a colon, or ultra-religious deserving victim… The tally of dead Palestinians was brandished with the righteous indignation that has been digging into our souls since the dawn of the 21^st century. No gory details of the suffering inflicted on Jews in Israel were ever given in French media. Nothing that could make you taste the blood and feel the blade digging into your spine, your heart, your guts.

Now blood has been spilled in the streets of Paris. Except for the misfired explosive vests outside the soccer stadium, all the other attacks took place in the 10^th and 11^th arrondissements, on streets and boulevards that converge at Place de la République. Sébastien Selam was slaughtered and mutilated in the 10th arrdt, Ilan Halimi worked in a cell phone shop on boulevard Voltaire in the 11^th arrdt. The first recorded public cries of Death to the Jews were heard in October 2000 at Place de la République in a pro-Palestinian demonstration focused on the “death” of Mohamed al Dura. Last week a small clutch of Salafists shimmied one of those huge parallel-to-the-ground Palestinian flags and chanted “Arms for Hamas, Arms for Jihad.” In the summer of 2014 pro-Hamas caliphators brandishing the black flag of jihad massed around the statue of Marianne in the Place de la République, screaming for Jewish blood and.

Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, was defiled. The way Swedish women and forlorn British girls are defiled. Now, French people doing what French people do on a Friday night were mowed down. The way Jews in the Hyper Cacher were executed. Daesh has proudly signed the massacre of the “Crusaders,” and promised more of the same if France does not cease and desist from meddling in Iraq and Syria. Ha! Sounds familiar. Muslims would stop stabbing Jews to death in Israel if the Zionists ended the Occupation. Don’t bet on it. Cease and desist is the first in a long line of orders that will be barked at us in the coming months. Or years. Until we decide to go on the offensive.

The otherwise ineffectual President Hollande has promised a no holds barred fight against Daesh at home and abroad. French media, as far as I could see, have not dared to dissociate the massacre from the Islam that inspires it. The same media that were gushing over the refugees a few weeks ago are now reporting that one of the shahids who jumped the gun outside the Stade de France was carrying a Syrian passport stamped with a passage through Leros in Greece on October 3rd. Exactly what we expected.

A walk through the Marais early Saturday afternoon. Most of the shops were closed. Shabat, for some, the bloody events for others. So few cars in the streets, so few people strolling where on a normal Saturday afternoon the sidewalks would be overflowing. We had taken to joking about it: looking down the rue des Francs Bourgeois at the never-ending crowd, we would say “the refugees are coming.” It looked so much like the human chain snaking through Slovenian fields. No soldiers, no police in the Marais this Saturday. So strange. Is it ominous? Does it mean there’s no one left to protect the Jews now that the “Crusaders” are targeted?

Sunday morning shopping in an open market is almost a religion in France. This morning, heartbroken television cameras panned the dark empty alleys of the Marché Richard Lenoir where the ordinary cheerful bustle always impresses me as a model of peaceful coexistence. People of all origins and classes mingle and brush up against each other in the narrow aisles, all with the same goal of filling baskets and carts with good things to eat. Whether selling their own produce or stock that comes from the giant wholesale market at Rungis, salt-of-the-earth vendors, up since the break of dawn, exposed to the elements, lugging crates and arranging the merchandise with loving care, sell at a fast clip without a pause and never a complaint. The Richard Lenoir market is located in what we could call the massacre neighborhood, not far from theCharlie Hebdo offices, now vacated, and the modest restaurants targeted Friday night.

Eagles of death Metal, the American band that was playing at the Bataclan, has performed in Israel. The Bataclan was owned by Jews who sold it only two months ago. But let us take the mass murderers at their word: this time they were aiming at the Crusaders, the Christians. Most of the victims will turn out to be young people. Quite a few journalists enjoying a night out found themselves in “civilian garb” at the center of the action. It will change their world view and their discourse.

Though many French journalists (or is it coming directly from the infamous Agence France Presse?) have taken out of mothballs their al Aqsa Intifada misnomer, kamikazes, they are fostering no illusions about the legitimate aspirations of the shahids who have wreaked havoc in Paris. What a pity that it has taken so much bloodshed to ignite the spark that could bring together the decent citizens of the free world. Prime Minister Manuel Valls promises to annihilate, here and abroad, the forces that are attacking us. Public gatherings are prohibited at the moment, because of the security risk, but people come to city squares to light candles, shed tears, leave bouquets and messages of grief and defiance. Handmade signs declare Même pas peur (not even afraid), adding “We are Paris” to the “Je suis Charlie” stickers pasted to the base of the Marianne in January. “Pray for Paris” signs with the same funereal Je suis Charlie graphics are posted on the gates of churches.

The facts, as I said, are still at a minimum. The media have finally pronounced the name of the French shahid identified at the Bataclan by his severed finger: Ismael Omar Mostefai. A petty criminal convicted eight times but never sent to prison. Flagged but obviously not followed by security services. He went to Turkey in 2014 and, presumably, from there to Syria. Three alleged accomplices have been arrested in Molenbek (near Brussels), headquarters of some of our famous Islamic killers, platform of the weapons trade, cornucopia of Kalachnikovs. The thwarted Thalys train shahid set out on his mission with a suitcase full of weapons from his sister’s apartment in Molenbek.

Flagged radicals, networks, cells, Daesh nomads, hate preachers, and manifestos of jihad conquest…it’s all out there, all so familiar, so hotly active, toying with the soft underbelly of our democracies. Barbarians. And why are they getting away with it? We are not a decadent empire that deserves to be destroyed. They are not a daunting invulnerable gigantic monster gobbling us up like peanuts. Much is made today, by experts and commentators, of the military prowess of the three teams that shot up Paris Friday night. They’re not bumbling amateurs like the Thalys jerk whose Kalachnikov jammed (but he managed to do quite a bit of damage with his handgun and box cutter). They’re not clumsy fumblers like Glam who shot himself in the leg and only managed to kill one young woman but never made it to shoot up the Crusaders in the church at Villejuif. These guys were organized! It took planning. Nerves of steel to mow down people having a drink at a sidewalk café and pick off one by one almost a hundred in a concert hall. And the courage to blow themselves up for an encore.

I submit that there is hardly any difference between the bungling fools, the successful mass killers of Friday night in Paris, the Daesh savages spreading their caliphate like an oil spill in the Middle East, and the hordes that followed the enraged medieval prophet of Islam. When this light dawns on Europe the spirit of la résistance will speak its mind. Instead of labeling products from the “colonies” like a snippety schoolteacher giving zeroes, Europe could begin to mobilize its resources and face the challenge intelligently. An enlightened Europe, battered by bitter experience, could draw the United States back into the concert of free nations where its indispensable military resources would finally weigh in the balance.

No, this is not the Third World War. This is the ongoing jihad conquest. And every magnificent European square is the gates of Vienna.

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