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February 2016

Silence fails in the face of evil:Andrew Bolt

WHAT will it take for many in the Left to openly condemn the Islamic State? Why this silence in the face of evil?

In January, the Islamic State threw two men off a tall building in Iraq for the “crime” of being gay.

In February, they threw another gay man off a building, this time in Syria and, when he somehow survived, had a crowd stone him to death.

IS is in a war against gays — not just against Jews, Christians and any Muslim thought insufficiently devout.

But what have our main gay representatives — largely Left-leaning — said in response to such savagery against gays?

The NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby? Silent.

Victoria’s Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby? Not one press release.

Labor frontbencher Penny Wong, openly lesbian? Nothing.

Former Greens leader Bob Brown, our first openly gay senator?Also nothing.

Merv Bendle: Progressivism’s Collision With Reality

” To begin with, it is highly unlikely that feminists, gays, etc., are going to flock to the Liberals, Turnbull or not. Even more obviously, it is absurd to claim that there is a powerful global trend against traditional conservative values when the most powerful form of militant political activism on the planet is Islamism, an arch-reactionary creed being systematically imposed on 1.5 billion Muslims (and the rest of the world where possible!). Similarly, both China and India, accounting for nearly 3 billion people, are drawing upon traditional belief systems to sustain their national identities as they undergo accelerated modernization. In Europe, there is an increasing move to the right and far-right as the technocratic progressivism of the central EU powers, such as Germany, France, Italy and the Scandinavian countries, proves to be utterly impotent in the face of the mass Muslim insurgency presently overwhelming their meagre border defences. In America conservatism continues to be an extremely powerful force, as the present presidential campaign is demonstrating. Of the other continents, Africa and Latin America are home to innumerable dictatorships, kleptocracies, and failed or semi-failed states where jihadists and crime syndicates run amok and talk of a conflict between progressivism and conservatism would be not only beside the point but bizarre.”

Philosophically, historically, and economically, progressivism is bankrupt, sustained only by the very capitalist system and productive middle-class it reviles. As the gargantuan costs become utterly unsustainable, it is this chimera in which Turnbull and his supporters invest their hope and rhetoric.

West Ponders Another Libya Intervention As Islamic State gains ground, Europe and U.S. prepare for military action By Yaroslav Trofimov

With Islamic State gaining ground in Libya, another Western intervention there looks increasingly likely. The key question is whether it will happen at the request of a Libyan unity government, once rival factions endorse it, or if the West will be compelled to go to war first.

The U.S. and other Western countries helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 but then turned their attention elsewhere.

By 2014, the country fell into a civil war between an Islamist-led administration in Tripoli and an internationally recognized government based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Local affiliates of Islamic State took advantage of that division to grab the coastal city of Sirte, Gadhafi’s hometown, last year. They later seized some other areas and inched closer to critical oil fields, damaging vital infrastructure.

With lawless Libya also serving as a springboard for migrants to Europe, European nations—particularly Italy and France, but also the U.K.—have long pushed for a stronger effort to stabilize the country. The U.S., too, has come to view continuing mayhem in Libya as a threat.

France Shaken by New Terror Revelation Woman says leader of Paris attacks told her dozens of Islamic State militants entered Europe with him By Matthew Dalton and Inti Landauro

PARIS—The presumed leader of the Islamic State operatives who attacked Paris in November boasted that he slipped into Europe among refugees from Syria as part of a team of dozens of militants, according to a key witness.

If true, the testimony adds urgency to a continentwide effort by security services to track down people with links to the extremist group. Authorities fear that Islamic State smuggled many of its fighters into Europe among the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled Syria and Iraq in recent years, officials say.

The investigation into the Paris attacks has raised questions about Europe’s ability to screen those refugees for potential threats. At least two people involved in the Paris attacks had registered as refugees on a Greek island in the months before they surfaced in Paris.

The latest testimony, which was reported by French media Thursday, came from a woman who provided information that led French police to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian who is believed to have orchestrated the Nov. 13 killing spree in Paris that left 130 dead and hundreds injured.

China’s New Crackdown on Christians Xi Jinping attacks the ‘patriotic’ church that has long co-existed with the government. By Jillian Kay Melchior

Nearly seven years after Warren Bird visited the biggest Protestant church in China, he’s still deeply moved as he recalls its pastor, “Joseph” Gu Yuese, preaching that morning from Psalms.

“His sermon was on how God understands our cares,” says Mr. Bird, an American researcher and expert on global megachurches. “He got very emotional—not in the sense of high emotion carried by his voice tone, but emotional in the sense of affirming, from the Psalms, that God cares about our hearts, and God feels our pain, and God relates to us. It was like, wow.”

Mr. Gu’s sermon in Chongyi Church on that Sunday morning in August 2009 now feels eerie—and prescient. Psalms is a book about finding comfort from God amid hardship and persecution, and this week Mr. Gu disappeared into the hands of the Chinese government. He is reportedly imprisoned in a secretive “black jail,” notorious for deplorable conditions and even torture. Not since the Cultural Revolution has the Chinese government gone after such a high-ranking church leader.

Mr. Gu comes from Zhejiang Province, a region known for both its flourishing Christianity and entrepreneurial spirit. Believers there have long enjoyed relatively good relations with the authorities.

Hillary’s Wall Street Reckoning Clinton struggles to explain why Goldman paid her $675,000.

President Obama has spent seven years denouncing Wall Street and persuading young progressives that the U.S. economy is rigged for the benefit of wealthy financiers. So how will he now persuade them to support Wall Street’s favorite Democrat?

This is the political trap Mr. Obama has sprung on Hillary Clinton, who made it difficult to watch Wednesday’s Democratic town hall on CNN as she squirmed in response to a question about speaking fees she collected from Goldman Sachs. Host Anderson Cooper asked her whether she really had to be paid $675,000 for giving three speeches.

“Well, I don’t know. That’s what they offered,” said Mrs. Clinton—to much audience laughter. She then tried the argument that every Secretary of State does it, and then settled on the unbelievable claim that at the time she took the money she didn’t know she would be running for President again. Mr. Cooper was so startled he asked her to repeat the point.

The laughter likely occurred because the average voter can guess that the traders at Goldman have a keen sense of value. And they’re not trading $675,000 for the entertainment value of Hillary Clinton appearances.

Arab MKs meet with families of terrorists

Members of the Balad faction of the Joint Arab List – Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Basel Ghattas – met the families a day before Palestinian President Abbas did the same. They attempted to hide the fact that the meeting took place.
Ynet reporters

A day before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met the families of terrorists in his Ramallah office, three Knesset members of the Joint Arab List met terrorists’ family members, among them those who have perpetrated deadly attacks as part of the current terror wave.

The three MKs in question are Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalka, and Basel Ghattas. Among the relatives of what the MK’s called “shaheeds” (martyrs) was the father of Baha Aliyan, the terrorist who murdered three in a combined stabbing and shooting attack on a Jerusalem bus, along with his collaborator Bilal Ranem.

Aliyan’s father said in a video that the meeting was “warm and productive.” According to him, “The Palestinian Knesset member brothers listened to the suffering and pain of the shaheed’s families, whose bodies are held in Israel.”

According to the terrorist’s father, “The Knesset members’ hearts were open and they listened to every word we said. They emphasized that they would make every effort to return the bodies by pressuring the government in the Knesset and conducting talks with the security and diplomatic officials in the Israeli government. It was settled that we would continue to meet in order to keep track of the matter in the near future.”

“Islam is Just Christianity Misspelled” Edward Cline

The phrase encapsulates the common notion that Islam “shares” the same humanistic values as Christianity and Judaism.

“Islam is Just Christianity Misspelled”

Daniel Greenfield, writing in his Sultan Knish column on February 2nd, “Will Banning Muslim Migration Ruin the Anti-ISIS Coalition?” noted:

The Muslim world wants to know what to expect from us. It hates Obama because of his unreliability. To them, his political ideology resembles some species of mysticism which they do not share. It much prefers an arrangement based on mutual interests over our misguided mystical attempts to discover shared values by pretending that Islam is just Christianity misspelled. (Italics mine.)

I couldn’t resist using that last part – “Islam is just Christianity misspelled” – as the thematic title for this column. But it is true. The phrase encapsulates the common notion that Islam “shares” the same humanistic values as Christianity and Judaism. The three faiths are alleged to be interchangeable, distinguished only by their traditions and rituals, with no significant or worrisome doctrinal differences. Christian and Jewish clerics who engage in “interfaith dialogue” with Muslims act under the assumption that Islam is just another religion, basically benign, not out to threaten or hurt anyone or force people to act against their religious beliefs by converting “peacefully” to Islam.

But there is no “peaceful” conversion to Islam. Islam tolerates no other religion. It is fundamentally “anti-coexistence.” To paraphrase Henry Ford’s 1909 dictum, Islam’s philosophy of coexistence is, “You can have any religion you want as long as it’s Islam.”*

I discuss the futility of “interfaith dialogue” in my January 2nd Rule of Reason column, “Interfaith Bridges to Islam,” which is based on Stephen Coughlin’s vital critique of our current and absolutely anemic and counter-productive “War on Terror” policies, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad. Coughlin offers a brutal, thorough, but necessary vivisection of the pretentions and fallacies of interfaith dialogue. I noted that:

Postmodernism has allowed Islam unopposed and unparalleled entrée into the minds and values of Westerners. Coughlin discusses how this entrée works and the consequences of Christian and Jewish religionists compromising their own beliefs by agreeing to form a “united front” for peace and coexistence and multi-beliefs with Islam. He correctly identifies the chief culprit and enabler of Muslim Brotherhood-dominated interfaith dialogue as postmodernism. Postmodernism is not incidental to the inroads being made by Islam in the West. It is a key factor.

“Confession Time: We Texans Know About Ted Cruz” By Donna Garner

SIDE NOTE: From Janet Levy- I’m not sure where the candidates stand on ethanol production and its blending with gasoline but there are some SERIOUS negatives involved:

1) Per gallon, ethanol contains about 30% less energy than gasoline.
2) Ethanol production results in higher food prices as land used for food production produces corn for transportation fuel.
3) Ethanol mixtures increase gas prices as oil companies are forced to blend specified amounts of ethanol into their products.
4) Ethanol damages engines – cars, boats, lawn mowers, etc.
5) Burning ethanol increases air pollution adding 22% more hydrocarbons to the atmosphere than burning gasoline.

“In all fairness, we Texans have had a sizeable advantage over the rest of the country because we have followed Ted Cruz’s life and career for many years. What makes many of us Texans value Ted Cruz so highly is because of his proven record to stand for the Constitution even if it means alienating other people.

We Texans well remember the horrible crime committed by illegal immigrant José Ernesto Medellín in 1993. Two innocent girls, 14-year old Jennifer Ertman and 16 year-old Elizabeth Peña, were walking home in Houston and decided they would take a shortcut through a secluded area. José and members of his “Black and White” street gang captured and repeatedly raped and murdered both girls. At José’s trial, the details of his handwritten confession indicated that after the girls were raped, he stomped on the neck of one girl and strangled her with a belt. The other girl was strangled with a shoelace: José held one end of the shoelace while another boy held the other end, watching while it cut into the girl’s throat.

José was convicted and sentenced to death, but that is not the end of the story.

In 2004 while President George W. Bush was in the White House and Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State, the judicial arm of the United Nations (a.k.a., International Court of Justice, World Court) decided that José’s case should be reopened because he had not been informed by the police of his right to contact his consulate even though José had lived as an illegal immigrant in the U. S. almost all of his life!

Gov. Greg Abbott was the Texas Attorney General at the time, and Ted Cruz was his Solicitor General whose job as lawyer for the state of Texas was to defend the laws and the Constitution of the State of Texas and represent Texas in litigation. Both Gov. Abbott and Ted Cruz agreed that the World Court had no right to subject state and federal courts to the authority of the United Nations.

Unfortunately, because of particular political circumstances at the time, President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and the U. S. Solicitor General Paul Clement (all Republicans and all people Ted Cruz respected highly) decided that Texas should obey the World Court’s decision. This would have meant that José Ernesto Medellín, a rapist, torturer, and murderer of two young girls, could have been set free.

Obama and Black Lives Matter Fight for a Violent Slasher The Democratic Party puts criminals first and victims last. Daniel Greenfield

There was never a better candidate for a police bullet in San Francisco than Mario Woods.

Mario Woods, a member of the Oakdale Mob, slashed a man with a knife. Then he threatened cops with a knife, warning them “You’re not taking me today.” SFPD officers hit him with beanbags and pepper spray and he still wouldn’t go down or drop the knife.

He taunted the officers, saying, “You better squeeze that mother___ and kill me.”

Then Woods moved toward a crowd of people while still holding the knife. And cops shot him.

It should have been the most open and shut case in history. This wasn’t Clint Eastwood’s Inspector Harry Callahan drawling, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” while staring at a downed bank robber. It was the prototype for a case in which the SFPD went by the book and tried their best to keep the punk alive.

The officers had done everything possible to stop a violent criminal by using non-lethal methods despite the risk to their own safety. They only opened fire once Mario Woods became a danger to civilians.

Mario Woods was a career criminal and a gang member who had recently gotten out after serving time for armed robbery. Two of the police officers were black. Only one officer out of five was white. There was no possibility of arguing that the shooting of Mario Woods was racially motivated.