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January 2016

Germany’s 21st-century descent into hell By Carol Brown

Merkel once again exposed her seemingly incurable madness when she made a series of asinine, stupid, absurd, ridiculous, insulting, threatening, idiotic, dangerous, misguided, off-the-mark, lying, crazy remarks

More and more news is pouring out of Germany on the coordinated violence that Muslims perpetrated on New Year’s Eve, as the scale of what unfolded slowly comes to light. (For prior coverage see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

The number of cases that have been reported in Cologne has passed 500 and is climbing by the hour. Nearly half of the reports are for sexual assault. The police have confirmed the focus of their investigation is on people from North African countries and that the majority are “asylum seekers” and people who are in Germany illegally.

Information continues to emerge regarding the coordination of these attacks that brought colonizers from outside Germany to partake in the violence. Jihad Watch, reporting on an AFP article, writes:

Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas said Sunday that the shocking spate of sexual assaults during New Year festivities in Cologne was organised.

“For such a horde of people to meet and commit such crimes, it has to have been planned somehow,” he told Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

“No one can tell me that this was not coordinated or planned. The suspicion is that a specific date and an expected crowd was picked,” he said, adding that if confirmed, that would “take on a new dimension”.

Quoting confidential police reports, Bild am Sonntag said some North Africans had sent out calls using social networks for people to gather in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

Young men not only from Cologne, but as far as France and Belgium responded to the call to travel to the western German city, the newspaper said.

The enemy that’s out of sight By Carol Brown

ISIS is a threat, but the Muslim Brotherhood is an even greater threat, moving among us and transforming America bit-by-bit, cut-by-cut.

The threat of Islamic terror is constant. Violence may erupt anywhere. Unexpectedly. That’s the nature of terror. And it’s happening more and more, with less and less time between events. Most recently, as AT readers know, a Philadelphia police officer was shot by a Muslim barbarian who pledged his allegiance to ISIS. And now it appears he may be linked to a terror cell. Reuters reports:

Philadelphia police said on Sunday they were seriously pursuing a tip that the man suspected of shooting and wounding a police officer had ties to a group with “radical beliefs.” (snip)

The Philadelphia Inquirer and television station NBC10 in Philadelphia quoted police sources on Sunday as saying that according to the tip-off Archer was associated with three other men and was not the most extreme of the group. The sources said police were warned the threat to them was not over, the two media outlets said. (snip)

People who knew the gunman told Reuters he was a devout, quiet Muslim who became more “combative” after trips to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The Israeli Left Scrambles in the Wake of A Stunning Video By Steven Plaut

Israel has been rocked by sort of a Middle Eastern Bizarro version of the Dred Scott decision. In that famous American Supreme Court case from1857, it was decided to send black escaped slave Dred Scott back to slavery in the South. This triggered enormous public outrage and paved the way for Lincoln’s election. In the Israeli analogue, Jewish leftists are collaborating with the Palestinian Authority of the PLO and turning over to it innocent Arab Dred Scotts, who have done business with Jews, so that the PLO will torture and murder them.

The “star” of the story is a leftist extremist named Ezra Nawi, who has become something of a poster boy for the radical Left. “Nawi” is a well-known and ordinarily distinguished surname among Jews who came from Iraq. Most of these are patriotic Zionists, but a small minority of them were communists back in Iraq in the 1940s/1950s and have remained such. A few of these Iraqi Jews continue to embrace communism, like the radical anti-Zionist sociologist from Tel Aviv University, Yehouda Shenhav.

Nawi famously was convicted of pedophilia and rape of a minor boy some years ago. Later he was also convicted of violently attacking police as part of a riot of violent Palestinians he helped lead. He speaks Arabic and likes to dress as an Arab. He is active in small far-leftist anti-Israel NGOs operating in Israel that pretend to be “human rights groups,” including B’tselem and Taayoush. These are foreign-funded subversive groups that have never heard of any human right for Jews worthy of being defended and certainly not the right of self-defense against genocidal terror and Islamofascist aggression. They are also notoriously indifferent to violations of free speech rights of anyone not from the far Left.

In Foreign Policy, a Grim State of the Union By Aaron David Miller

Presidential rhetoric is much less effective in a final year, after a leader’s statements and approach have become rooted in reality. And in his final State of the Union address, Barack Obama will have a tough time persuading a skeptical nation that the world he inherited eight years ago is somehow more manageable and secure as a result of his efforts.

In his speech Tuesday, Mr. Obama is likely to claim success on a number of issues. He has reached out to Cuba, concluded an agreement to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and negotiated a trade accord with Pacific nations as well as a historic framework on climate change. But all of these accomplishments are works in progress; the first two depend on changes in the behavior of authoritarian regimes; the latter on (uncertain) congressional approval and the compliance of numerous international actors. The success or failure of these endeavors won’t be determined until long after Mr. Obama leaves the White House, and a Republican successor might well try to undermine, delay, or alter some or all of them.

When it comes to terror attacks at home, Mr. Obama will seek to reassure but it’s going to be a heavy lift. Two-thirds of the public disapproves of his approach to Islamic State. Mr. Obama can point to recent successes by the Iraqi army against ISIS in Ramadi, but that victory is less a turning point than a successful turn in a long and winding road. The image of a president who underestimated the rise of ISIS and has been reluctant to use more military muscle is increasingly criticized by the many Republicans running for president. Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has sought to distance herself from the president on the issue of a “no-fly zone” for Syria. Fair or not, more San Bernardino-style attacks, a Paris-like assault, or the downing of a U.S. commercial airliner could undermine Mr. Obama’s foreign-policy legacy.

Donald Trump Vows to Slash Funding for Education, EPA In interview at local diner, Trump pledges ‘tremendous cutting’ if elected By Heather Haddon

MANCHESTER, N.H.—Republican front-runner Donald Trump said Monday he would slash funding for the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency if he is elected president.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal and New Hampshire’s WMUR at a local diner here, the businessman said he would do “tremendous cutting” of the federal government. Education policy, he said, should be returned to the states, and he said he would end the Common Core education standards, which conservatives view as federal overreach.

“Education should be local and locally managed,” said Mr. Trump, who also attacked the administration’s environmental policies. “The Environmental Protection Agency is the laughingstock of the world.”

Mr. Trump’s focus on domestic budgetary issues is a new plank in his presidential policy proposals. It is also one likely to appeal in New Hampshire, where voters have long rewarded candidates who promise fiscal restraint and to reduce federal government spending.

Obama’s Empty Chair The State of the Union and the president’s taste for the grand but futile gesture. By Willilam McGurn

As Barack Obama puts the finishing touches on his final State of the Union address, a White House teaser reveals one of his planned props for the evening: “We leave one seat empty in the First Lady’s State of the Union Guest Box for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.”

Blame Woodrow Wilson.

Until Wilson, presidents stretching back to Jefferson had been content to fulfill their constitutional requirement to inform Congress about the state of the union in writing. In 1913, alas, Wilson elected to deliver his assessment in person. Speechwriters of both parties (I served my time in the George W. Bush years) have been embellishing ever since.

The spectacle is made for President Obama. After all, this is the man who strode out on a stage of foam Greek columns when he accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency. How appropriate that in his last State of the Union he now opts for the empty chair routine used to such derision by Clint Eastwood at the last Republican National Convention.

Then again, for Mr. Obama the maneuver has always been the message. From his 2008 campaign appearance before the Berlin Wall (where he declared himself “a fellow citizen of the world”) to his decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize before he had in fact done anything, the stage has always upstaged the substance. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s penchant for the beau geste carries a high price for Americans, not to mention other, less fortunate citizens of the world.

Start with foreign policy. Though Candidate Obama inveighed mightily against the U.S. intervention in Iraq, he also campaigned on the idea that Iraq had distracted us from winning “the necessary war” in Afghanistan. When he announced to the American people his own surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in December 2009, the cadets at West Point were drafted to serve as the dramatic backdrop.

The Cologne Portent In the spirit of Christian charity, Merkel has imported Muslim misogyny.By Bret Stephens

Among the hard lessons of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, surely one of them is that it’s foolish to expect that backward and often barbaric societies can be transformed into functioning liberal democracies. So why do liberals seem so surprised that so many people from these societies behave in barbaric ways after they’ve shoved their way into the West?

As I write, 516 criminal complaints have been filed in Germany against men of mainly North African or Arab origin who went on a New Year’s Eve sexual-assault rampage in the city of Cologne.

“Twenty or 30 men, foreign men, surrounded us and we couldn’t even move anymore,” a woman identified as Michelle told the BBC. “They just grabbed our arms and tried to tear us apart and pushed our clothes away and tried to get between our legs.”
Similar events also took place in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Berlin. In Sweden, a scandal erupted after it emerged that police had suppressed a report of mass groping by Middle East migrants at a festival last summer. In September, Soeren Kern of the Gatestone Institute chronicled some 30 cases of rape and sexual assault perpetrated by migrants against German and migrant women alike.

“In Bavaria, women and girls housed at a refugee shelter. . . are subject to rape and forced prostitution on a daily basis,” Mr. Kern writes, citing reports from women’s rights groups. “The price for sex with female asylum seekers is 10 euros.”

For anyone even minimally acquainted with Mideast mores, none of this is news. Mob sexual assaults in Egypt became notorious after the 2011 attack on reporter Lara Logan, but they have become a staple of Egyptian life. “Suddenly I was in the middle, surrounded by hundreds of men in a circle that was getting smaller and smaller around me,” one Egyptian woman wrote of a 2013 attack in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “They were touching and groping me everywhere.”

Denying the Obvious About Islamist Terror After another ISIS-inspired shooting, Philadelphia’s mayor joins the chorus: It’s not about religion, no sir. Dorothy Rabinowitz

It required only half a minute for the mayor of Philadelphia, Democrat Jim Kenney, to achieve national fame. On Friday, an already sensation-crowded day, it fell to the mayor to take part in the official pronouncements on the attempted murder of city police officer Jesse Hartnett, shot and severely wounded as he sat in his patrol car when a would-be assassin emptied his gun at him—13 shots in all.

Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr., appointed just three days earlier, delivered the details with noteworthy eloquence: The wounded officer, bleeding heavily from three wounds, one arm useless, had gotten himself out of the car, chased the attacker and shot him.

The drama of this recital needed no amplification, but there it was anyway: Clear security video images showed the assailant in his flowing white dishdasha—a robe favored by Muslim men—running toward the patrol car, shooting, sticking his hand in the window, and racing speedily away. Pictures too of the police officer lurching out of the car to give chase.

“The Case For Incrementalism” Sydney M. Williams

The case for incrementalism is based on the observation that extremism – whether from the right or the left – does not work in a country that prizes freedom. A democracy, by definition, is not efficient. It is not meant to be. It cannot totally satisfy all people with their myriad opinions, but it should satisfy most and be representative of the people.

Unfortunately, extremism has characterized politics for the past seven years and perhaps longer. Mr. Obama came to the White House promising to heal the wounds caused by an election in 2000 that many Democrats felt was illegal and from two wars that had grown increasingly unpopular. Instead, rifts deepened.

Immediately following the election in 2008, compromise went the way of the Dodo bird. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank – all passed with no (or minimal) support from the opposition. This “my way, or the highway” attitude on the part of the imperious Barack Obama has also led to deteriorating relations with Israel, an aggressive Russia, a rogue North Korea and a confrontational China. It brought about a premature troop withdrawal from Iraq, “leading from behind” in Libya, the abandonment of principle in Syria and a nuclear deal with Iran, perhaps conceived with good intentions, but executed in such a manner that it could turn the Middle East into a nuclear maelstrom. And, it has led to re-establishing relations with the most repressive Communist regime in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba.

Islamophobia & Political Correctness By Herbert London

“Progressive elites have accused those who condemn Muslim extremism of being extremists themselves – claiming that censure of radical Islam is an indiscriminate criticism of all Muslims. Here is an example of what progressives would call “Islamophobia,” dubbed appropriately by Andrew Cummins as a word “created by fascists, used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

In accordance with a ten year plan of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to implement United Nations’ Resolution 16:18 which criminalizes all criticism of Islam worldwide, the U.S. House of Representatives issued H. Res. 569 condemning violence, bigotry and “hateful rhetoric” toward Muslims in the United States.

This proposal comes on the heels of Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s post San Bernardino promise to prosecute anyone guilty of anti-Muslim speech. It is clear that Ms. Lynch is firing a canon at a fly. According to FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, there were 1014 hate crime incidents motivated by religious bias in 2014. Of those, 154 – 15.2 percent – were anti-Islamic. More than half were anti-Jewish incidents. Not only is this yet another example of the Obama administration exaggerating minor threats, but it suggests as well an ignorance or callous avoidance of the First Amendment.