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January 2016

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Ted Cruz’s Surge is Real: Now Leads in California By Michael van der Galien

By on January 6th, 2016

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz not only leads in Iowa, but also in California:

A new Field Poll in California finds Ted Cruz has surged ahead of his GOP presidential rivals with 25%, followed by Donald Trump at 23%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Ben Carson at 9%, Rand Paul at 6%, and Jeb Bush at 4%.

And that isn’t the only good news in this poll for Cruz. It also shows that he’s now twice as likely to be GOP voters’ second choice. This means that he will continue to surge if (or when) some of his rivals get out of the race, which they’ll undoubtedly do once they lose (big-time) in Iowa.

Cruz’s surge comes despite relentless attacks from his rivals for the Republican nomination and establishment-friendly columnists like the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin.

And that proves that 2016 will be different from other years. Until this election season, negative attacks from establishmentarians against real conservatives were always successful, which is how moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney ended up being the Republican nominee. Not anymore. The establishment tried to take out Donald Trump, which only resulted in him rising in the polls. Now they’re going after Cruz, and the results are the same. He’s stronger than ever before and actually seems to be relishing the attacks.

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New ‘Jihadi John’ Threatened to ‘Spill Blood,’ ‘Convert Your Children’ in Washington By Bridget Johnson

By on January 6th, 2016

The new English-speaking face of ISIS threatening Britain in the group’s latest execution video also threatened Washington in a guide this past spring aimed at luring westerners to join the Islamic State.

British sources reportedly have Siddhartha Dhar, aka Abu Rumaysah, atop their list of suspects in identifying the masked spokeskiller who shot an orange-jumpsuited man in the head in the video, accusing him of being a British spy. Four other ISIS members also shot one alleged spy apiece.

And yesterday Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, the underground group of citizen journalists and activists risking and sometimes losing their lives to report from within the ISIS capital, tweeted that they believe the executioner is Abu Rumaysah.

And in 2014, he was in British custody.

Dhar, who’s close to radical cleric Anjem Choudary and marched in his pro-sharia events, was arrested in Britain in September 2014 — his sixth time — on suspicion of encouraging terrorism. He jumped bail and fled to the Islamic State with his pregnant wife, who later gave birth to a boy. British politicians were calling for an inquiry today on how he slipped through the cracks.

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Islamic School Projects By David Solway

By on January 6th, 2016

The Islamization of America is proceeding at speed as the political and educational elites are desperately playing catch-up with Europe’s looming immigration and refugee disaster. We have just learned that Paul Ryan’s “House-passed omnibus [bill] will bring in nearly 300,000 Muslim migrants in the next 12 months alone, including roughly 170,000 who will be permanently resettled…” The political nomenklatura on both sides of the aisle are hastening the ruination of the country. As Roger Simon remarks, “Europe is in a double-bind situation that we are not. As their domestic populations decline, they have to admit a substantial amount of Muslims to support their welfare states. We do not need this.” However, there are no doubt electoral and fiscal considerations that would profit, on the one hand, the political fortunes of the Democrats (as well as “fundamentally transforming” America according to Obama’s sinister intentions), and on the other, the financial prospects of those involved in migrant resettlement programs and of employers seeking a low wage labor force.

The education establishment is no less complicit. Common Core, which has been enthusiastically embraced by both Brahmin and shudra, effectively mandates the study of Islam, which often takes precedence over the traditional focus on American and Western history. As columnist and author Edward Davenport reports for Freedom Outpost, “An astounding 32 pages of the World history textbook are devoted to Muslim cavitation. Students in two Texas schools–Cross Timbers intermediate and Kenneth Davis–will be required to learn Arabic…thanks to a 1.3 million grant from the Department of Education’s Foreign Language Assistantship program.” Much of American political and military history has been airbrushed out of the materials students are expected to master. Qatar has also been lavish in promoting Islamic propaganda at the expense of objective scholarship; indeed, Qatar Foundation International, directed by Islamic apologist Tariq Ramadan, funded the “One World Education” concept from which Common Core originated.

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Uwe Siemon-Netto: Where Muslim Dreams May Lead

By on January 6th, 2016

Uwe Siemon-Netto has been an international journalist for almost sixty years. In 2015 his memoir Triumph of the Absurd: A Reporter’s Love for the Abandoned People of Vietnam appeared in four languages. He and his wife share their time between their homes in southern California and the Charente region of France.

Shortly before ISIS struck Paris in November killing 130 people, I committed what must have been utter idolatry in the eyes of its iconoclastic Muslim exterminators. I drove to Bourges, a medieval city in the centre of France, and spent a few hours in St Etienne’s Cathedral to let its twenty-two thirteenth-century stained-glass windows tell me the story of my Christian faith in a mighty burst of colours.

At first I stood alone that sunny morning in the ambulatory at the east end of this magnificent Gothic sanctuary, but quickly I found myself engaged in a long and daunting dialogue with a cultured Frenchwoman about the looming demise of our common civilisation to which these windows testified. It was a conversation so troubling that I will remember it for the rest of my life.

She seemed to have appeared from nowhere. “How long, monsieur, before this becomes the next Palmyra?” she asked me softly, referring to ISIS’s recent destruction of the Temple of Baal in that ancient Semitic city in Syria, a Unesco World Heritage site just like this church. She went on:

“When will these barbarians be here to raze Chartres cathedral, level our vineyards and smash the vats of Burgundy and Bordeaux? How soon will red wine flow down the street as it did in America during Prohibition, but this time mixed with blood? Will Christians in Europe be enslaved, beheaded or crucified like the Chaldeans in Iraq at this very moment?”

“I was born in Leipzig in Germany, madame,” I answered. “My home church was the Thomaskirche where Johann Sebastian Bach is buried. A few years ago, I sat there in the chancel with my feet resting on Bach’s tomb. The Thomaner, the boys’ choir he headed almost three centuries ago, had just begun the opening chorus of his Christmas Oratorio when I was overcome by a premonition similar to yours. Will the day come when the Muslims will forbid these children to sing, I wondered? Will they rip out the church’s two mighty organs? Will they smelt its bells and replace them with a muezzin? Will they outlaw concerts and art shows? Will they butcher educated women?”

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The sweetheart deal for Bill Clinton’s Orgy Island pal may be exposed and overturned By Thomas Lifson

By on January 6th, 2016

Tick, tick, tick…the highly suspicious deal that gave Bill Clinton’s billionaire buddy Jeffrey Epstein a slap on the wrist for paying underage girls for sex may finally be subjected to pubic scrutiny and even overturned, bringing with it the possibility of bargaining against real punishment in exchange for testimony against a bigger fish. This development is thanks to a court filing on the last day of 2015 that received only limited local publicity. More on that in a moment.

Shockingly, the deal that handed out token punishment to the statutory rapist has been hidden from the public and from the victims themselves:

Federal prosecutors in Florida intentionally kept underage victims of billionaire perv Jeffrey Epstein in the dark about his plea deal, newly unsealed court papers reveal.

The documents also show prosecutors wanted to keep the extent of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes away from a judge reviewing the deal.

“I will include our standard language regarding resolving all criminal liability and I will mention ‘co-conspirators,’ but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all of the other crimes and all of the other persons that we could charge,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana wrote to one Epstein lawyer in September 2007.

Another email shows she agreed to stop sending notifications about the non-prosecution deal to 34 underage girls Epstein allegedly sexually preyed upon after his lawyers complained.

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Islam in our schools By Carol Brown

By on January 6th, 2016

Creeping sharia infiltrates every nook and cranny of America. Including our classrooms. Among other things, the Muslim Brotherhood (as well as the Saudis) wields enormous influence over curriculum that threatens not only public schools, but private and parochial schools as well.

After reporting on Islamic supremacy in our schools a year ago, I thought it worthwhile to see how things have progressed since then, for better or for worse. (Guess which it is.) When last we left off, here’s where things stood. In most cases, information only came to light because parents stumbled upon homework assignments or their child told them something of concern.

Students learned to recite allegiance to Allah along with Muslim prayers and chants. Students were also taught the Five Pillars of Islam, that Muslims pray to the same God as Christians and Jews, that Mohammed was a man with strong moral values, that terrorists are “freedom fighters,” that Muslims treat those they conquer better than America does, along with the taqiyya version of CAIR’s mission. Sharia law was promoted, Qurans were introduced into classrooms, students studied Arabic, female students wore burqas as part of a lesson on Islam, and special courses on Islam prohibited students from wearing a cross or saying the name “Jesus.”

Homework assignments required students to promote the “Golden Age of Islam” while students also had to write about what it would be like to travel to Mecca. All the while, Muslim students were given special privileges that Christian and Jewish students were not afforded, including time off during the day to pray.

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Lessons We Palestinians Can Learn by Bassam Tawil see note please

By on January 6th, 2016

Self contradiction here….if the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support an armed campaign against Israel, it is illusory to pretend there can be a “peaceful demilitarized ” state…rsk
Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians support an armed campaign against Israel, and want to see Israel destroyed and a State of Palestine built on its ruins. The polls also show a troubling increase in popular support in the West Bank for Hamas, and a decrease in support for Mahmoud Abbas.

The greatest tragedy of the Palestinians is not 1948, it is 2015. The only thing the Palestinian leadership and terrorist organizations can agree on is their obsession to destroy the State of Israel.

It is particularly disappointing that we keep trying to defraud the Israelis and Americans with fictitious messages of peace and “two states for two peoples.” We assume they have no intelligence at all, do not understand Arabic and cannot read our Facebook pages.

The time has come to try creating — for the first time — a peaceful and demilitarized Palestinian state, which the Israelis have indicated for decades they would be happy to help us achieve.

This past week, the Israelis arrested 25 Hamas terrorists in the West Bank, most of them students from Al-Quds University in Abu Dis. Not rebels without a cause or the unemployed with a chip on their shoulder, but the finest minds we have, the intellectuals of the future Palestinian academia! The group, which dealt with recruiting and guidance and was being handled by Hamas in Turkey and its terrorist wing the Gaza Strip, was planning to carry out suicide bombing attacks inside Israel.

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Notable & Quotable: Edward Gibbon on Rome’s Downfall ‘They no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence.’

By on January 6th, 2016

From “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, the 18th-century English historian:

It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated. . . . Their personal valour remained, but they no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honour, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army. The posterity of their boldest leaders was contented with the rank of citizens and subjects. The most aspiring spirits resorted to the court or standard of the emperors; and the deserted provinces, deprived of political strength or union, insensibly sunk into the languid indifference of private life.

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Off With His Head Cicero saved the republic from conspirators in 63 B.C., only to lose his own life (and hands) as Rome slid into civil war and dictatorship. By Maxwell Carter

By on January 6th, 2016

‘The history of the world,” wrote Thomas Carlyle in 1841, “is but the biography of great men.” Libertarian polymath Herbert Spencer countered 30 years later: “Before [the great man] can remake his society, his society must make him.” With whom does the novelist Robert Harris’s Cicero Trilogy, which began with “Imperium” (2006) and “Conspirata” (2009) and ends now with “Dictator,” side? Cicero’s lifetime (106-43 B.C.) saw the ambitions, caprices and convictions of the Roman Republic’s leading figures (Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cato, Octavian, Antony and Cicero himself) determine the fate of Western civilization. Were these truly great men or the bitter fruits of an intrinsically corrupting political system?

“Imperium” traces Cicero’s rapid ascent; “Conspirata,” the career-defining stand against Catiline; “Dictator,” his (and the Republic’s) downfall. The middle narrative has hooked many schoolboys, myself included. The year he served as consul (63 B.C.), Cicero inveighed against Catiline, an aristocratic malcontent, gleefully detailing his alleged plot to overthrow the state. Having forced Catiline from Rome and secured Cato’s decisive backing, Cicero pushed through the execution of five conspirators without trial. (Catiline offered battle in 62 B.C., dying, according to the historian Sallust, with conspicuous bravery.) Where Cicero’s consulship was compact and—as he would have it—morally unambiguous, the events that led to his proscription were drawn out and often bewildering.

The challenge for Mr. Harris of maintaining dramatic momentum through 15 years of shifting loyalties and shabby compromises is considerable. Yet as anyone who has read his previous novels, including the riveting alternate history “Fatherland” (1992) and the political thriller “The Ghost” (2007), knows, he is incapable of writing an unenjoyable book.

Told from the perspective of Cicero’s slave-amanuensis, Tiro, who reputedly invented shorthand, “Dictator” picks up the thread in 58 B.C., when fallout from the unlawful Catilinarian executions drove Cicero into exile. Tiro recounts his master’s role in the developments of the first and second triumvirates—the alliances whereby Caesar, Pompey and Crassus and, later, Octavian, Antony and Lepidus divvied up the empire—and ensuing civil wars. Tiro’s viewpoint is partisan but not unquestioning. In “Dictator,” Cicero, whom Tiro served off and on after his manumission in 53 B.C., can be weak and monstrously egotistical.

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How to Build a Better City How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design? By Moshe Sadfie

By on January 6th, 2016

New York is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more.

The flurry of high-rise tower construction now under way in New York will bring about a quantum leap in density, one that will forever change our urban environment. The city is now home to seven of the 100 tallest buildings in the world. The current building campaign will produce five more. They are a reminder that towers have become the dominant building type in most major cities around the world, increasing congestion as they accumulate.

These developments raise fundamental questions: How crowded should or can cities get? What should be driving tower design, be it residential, commercial or mixed use? Are our current planning and zoning regulations adequate in guiding this growth, in mitigating the impact of density? Or do we need new tools for a new era of mega-scale construction? Finally, towers create fundamental questions about the nature and character of the public realm.

Neither the prevailing tower designs nor current planning practice world-wide are able to cope with the new reality. The quality of life within towers is wanting. We still treat them, at best, as sculpture, and at worst, as utilitarian vertical extrusions of space. Many towers are designed from the outside in— elegant forms with decorative skins, hermetically sealed from the outside world. If instead they were designed as living, organic environments—with considerations of orientation, views, light and the capability to connect to the outdoors, creating terraces, gardens and solariums—tower designs would be dramatically transformed. The work space must also be rethought. Natural ventilation, diversity of workspaces and a connection to the exterior are all qualities that would help overcome the oppression of scale and crowding.

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