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December 2015

Sweden, Israel, and the Law By Jack Golbert

Israel’s relations with Sweden, problematic for some time, took a downward turn last week when something Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, said was interpreted by the Israeli government to mean that Israel was carrying out extrajudicial executions on Palestinians in the latest “Knife Intifada” by Palestinians against random Israelis.

The Swedish prime minister said that Wallstrom’s comments had been misunderstood. “The Minister for Foreign Affairs did not, as alleged, say that extrajudicial executions occur in Israel,” Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Wallstrom said in a statement.

Let’s look back and see what Foreign Minister Wallstrom actually said. Addressing Swedish lawmakers on Friday, Wallstrom denounced the almost daily Palestinian knife, gun, or car-ramming attacks, but urged Israel to avoid excessive force. According to the official English translation of her statement provided by the Swedish Foreign Ministry,

And likewise, the response must not be of the kind — and this is what I say in other situations where the response is such that it results in extrajudicial executions or is disproportionate in that the number of people killed on that side exceeds the original number of deaths many times over.

Sanctuary City Mayors Condemning Trump Should be Arrested By Daniel John Sobieski

Well, not for criticizing Trump, but for breaking the law and recklessly endangering their citizens by harboring and shielding from scrutiny illegal aliens among whose number may include assorted Islamic State agents, sympathizers and potential lone wolf recruits, along with assorted criminals like the one charged with the murder of Kate Steinle in the sanctuary city of San Francisco. They are accomplices in crime.

That is the suggestion of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who followed the righteous indignation of those condemning Trump for suggesting Muslim immigration be curtailed until we get our terrorist act together, a suggestion not unlike President Jimmy Carter’s halt to Iranian immigration during the hostage crisis. Jindal made the case on Monday on Boston Herald Radio:

“Absolutely, I would hold them as an accomplice. Make them criminally culpable,” the Republican presidential candidate said when asked if he’d arrest mayors of sanctuary cities. “I’d also make them civilly liable so that families, victim’s families could sue. Especially if the prosecutor isn’t taking action or the mayor’s not changing their ways, I’d allow the families to go to court as well to recover damages.”

THE JIHAD LOVE STORY: THE SAN BERNARDINO KILLERS

Jihad Matchmaking? FBI Director Says San Bernardino Killers Radicalized Before Meeting By Bridget Johnson

FBI Director James Comey acknowledged at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today that it will be “very, very important” to know if terrorist organizations are setting up jihadi marriages.

A week after the massacre at a holiday party of San Bernardino County health department employees, authorities have determined that health inspector Syed Farook had been planning jihad for many years — even plotting an attack with an unidentified co-conspirator three years ago that wasn’t carried out. That information came from his longtime friend and former neighbor Enrique Marquez, whose Russian bride is the sister of Farook’s brother’s Russian bride.

Marquez, a convert to Islam and Walmart employee, purchased two AR-15 rifles that were used in the attack. He checked himself into a mental institution afterward, and is now cooperating with investigators. Marquez reportedly says he knew nothing about the attack.

Farook reportedly met Tashfeen Malik in 2013. He brought her back from Saudi Arabia in 2014 on a fiancee visa, and the pair were married in Southern California.

After Jihadist Mass Murder, CAIR’s Sharia Agenda Rolls On By Andrew C. McCarthy

You may see this as Islamist audacity – even, dare we say, chutzpah. Actually, it is business as usual.

In San Bernardino, heartbroken families are preparing to bury the 14 innocent people murdered last week by Islamic jihadists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. They are tending to another 21 wounded by the married terrorists. Meanwhile the Los Angeles chapter of CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) is pressing child custody authorities in California to comply with Islamic law – sharia – in the placement of the six-month-old infant the terrorist couple left behind.

They may not be saying that that is what they are doing, but that is what they are doing.

In the long term, CAIR-LA is pushing to have the child placed with Farook’s sister, Saira Khan. This is going on, mind you, even as FBI Director James Comey told a Senate committee today that the Islamic supremacist couple had been discussing jihad and martyrdom for the last two years (i.e., beginning before Malik immigrated to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 2014). Farook may even have plotted a terrorist attack in 2012.

Even before Director Comey’s testimony, we knew Farook’s mother was living with the couple in what was a bomb factory teeming with ammunition, and that his father was well aware that Farook was an admirer of the Islamic State (ISIS). One might figure, oh I don’t know, maybe CAIR would want to think twice before asking the authorities to place the infant with members of this family.

‘NY Daily News’: San Bernardino Victim Just as Bigoted as His Murderer By Robert Spencer

The mainstream media has for years been in the business of justifying jihad terror and demonizing those who oppose it, but now it has reached an appalling new low.

Linda Stasi in the New York Daily News last Saturday portrayed jihad murderer Syed Rizwan Farook and his victim Nicholas Thalasinos as two sides of the same coin:

They were two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees interacting in one department. Now 13 innocent people are dead in unspeakable carnage. … Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot.

Her equivalence founders, of course, on the simple and titanic fact that Farook was a mass murderer, while Thalasinos was never going to kill anyone.

But in her madness to justify the San Bernardino jihad murders, Stasi doesn’t bother to mention that.

Stasi is also too fastidious to provide the murderers’ names:

One man, the Muslim, was a loser who had to travel all the way to Pakistan to get himself an email bride. (I refuse to add to their fame by using the killer and his murderous wife’s names.)

But she doesn’t hesitate to defecate on the memory of the man Farook murdered.

House Armed Services Committee: Obama Violated Federal Law with Bergdahl Exchange By Stephen Kruiser

The Obama administration hits just keep on coming…

A House Armed Services Committee report set to be released Thursday accuses the Obama administration of misleading Congress and violating federal law during a controversial prisoner exchange.

The report compiled by the GOP majority charges that the administration did so when it bypassed Congress in negotiating the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was being held in Afghanistan. They suggested that the White House had put politics and expediency ahead of proper procedure in making the deal.

This is the same administration that put politics and expediency ahead of common sense when “ending” the war in Iraq, so this is really no surprise. This president puts politics ahead of everything. If the Republicans are against it, national security be damned. The quickest way to get rid of Obamacare may be to have every Republican in Congress embrace it.

As this entire weird story played out, it always did seem that the administration’s interest in Bergdahl was motivated solely by a need to stick it to Republicans. The timing and the rush to get it done never made sense. It was almost as if the president got bored.

Senate Democrat Bill Would Allow Easier Immigration for Muslims By Michael Walsh

It’s always good to keep in mind that half of the job of “lawmaking” is proposing dead-end bills or amendments designed to score political points against your opposition. Today, Sen. Patrick Leahy steps up to the plate with a “sense of the Senate” exercise in moral preening:

Congress is set to vote on Thursday on what some have called an “unprecedented” right that would allow immigrants easier access to relocate to the United States, according to new legislation offered by a Democratic senator. The legislation, which is being offered by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) as an amendment to a larger bill governing nuclear safety, would prohibit the U.S. government from barring any individual from entering the country based on their religion.

The bill comes amid a fierce national debate about immigration to America, particularly for individuals coming from Muslim-majority nations. Critics of the Obama administration’s refugee plan, which would permit up to 10,000 Syrians into the country, maintain that there are not enough oversight measures in place to ensure that immigrants are not linked to terrorists or various terror organizations, such as the Islamic State.

Why Does Obama Call ISIS ‘ISIL’? By Amil Imani

Many who closely follow the dueling Islamic terror narratives emanating from the White House are mystified by Mr. Obama’s inability (or deliberate unwillingness) to utter the phrase “Islamic terrorists.” Many are curious, too, about why he refuses to call ISIS “ISIS,” steadfastly insisting instead that everybody in his administration call the terror group “ISIL.” What’s the difference, and why is it important? The agendas behind each diverge widely. In fact, the variance between the two is elephantine in scale.

ISIS stands for the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” a terror group controlling a large swath of both Iraq and Syria in which the terrorists claim to have established a “caliphate,” a state in which Islamic sharia law is imposed upon all living in the area, anyone who fails to adhere to strict Muslim guidelines has his head removed. Obama’s contrary assertions aside, ISIS is by no means contained. In fact, the savage group (which prefers to be called the “Islamic State” or “IS”) has metastasized on maps like immense pools of blood covering the ancient borders that once divided parts of Syria and Iraq.

Mark Durie Turnbull’s Islamic Howlers

Agility and innovation? The PM’s version of history is all that and more. Leaping facts in a single bound, he ducks and weaves though a thicket of politically correct cliches to land effortlessly upon the desired conclusion: the West owes everything to Mohammad
Back in 2011, on 28 February, Malcolm Turnbull, now Australia’s Prime Minister, had this to say about Islam on Q&A:

Islam is an ancient religion, of great scholarship. I mean — for heavens sake — much of our learning and culture came to us from the Muslims, just like, you know, our whole system of numbers and much of the learning of the ancient Greeks only survived because of the Arab scholars and the Islamic scholars.

So, you know, the idea that Islam is antithetical to learning or culture or scholarship is absurd. Now, you know, it’s a great tradition. It is important for us that we promote and encourage Islam and Islamic traditions which are moderate, which support freedom, which support democracy and which support Australian values — not in the sense of “Aussie values” — but in the sense of democracy, rule of law, tolerance, freedom. That’s what we’re talking about and they are universal values.

Turnbull made this statement in order to dismiss a suggestion he considered absurd, namely that Islamic schools in Australia promote extremism. He intended the argument he put forward to be evidence for the inherent moderation of Islam.

Pete Mulherin The Conversation That Isn’t

Islam-is-violence or Islam-is-peace? Take your pick because there is no third option available to those who would like to see debate and policy based on a rational, informed and unbiased approach to Islam’s history and interpretations.
As attacks inspired by Islamist ideology continue to erupt around the globe — Paris, San Bernardino, Africa, stick a pin the map and stayed tuned– the tourniquet on the Islam-and-terrorism conversation is tight and getting tighter. The popularity of #YouAintNoMuslimBruv, in response to the London Underground stabbings, bolstered by President Obama’s latest glib insistence that ‘ISIL does not speak for Islam’, highlight just how, since 9/11 and earlier, the West has imposed tacit and active restrictions on what can and cannot be said about Islam and its multiple interpretations.

Browsing the web for perspectives, I came across an article on The Conversation which, at first glance, appeared to promise a refreshing view. Entitled “Yes, let’s have a frank and open discussion about the causes of extremism and terrorism“, the conversation-provoking headline quickly inspired a deep sense of frustration as the limits on that “frank and open discussion” were revealed in the very article itself.