Displaying posts published in

March 2016

Study: More than 100 Illegal Aliens Charged with Murder After Being Released by DHS By Rick Moran

The Center for Immigration Studies is releasing a report today showing that 124 illegal aliens who were subsequently released over the last five years by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security have been charged with murder.

Washington Times:

In all, some 121 immigrants who were freed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2010 and 2014 went on to be charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes. Another three immigrants were charged with murders in 2015, bringing to 124 the total number of murder suspects the government had, then released.

Two of the immigrants in question had even been convicted of homicide before, but they were released anyway and went on to rack up new murder charges again, the report said. The others had amassed 464 total criminal charges, ranging from drugs to drunken driving, before they landed on the homicide list.

The information was released to Congress by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed the data and said it shows dangerous practices.

“The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes,” Ms. Vaughan wrote.

Latest Survey Finds 25% of French Teenagers Are Muslims By Michel Gurfinkiel

The French see René Descartes, a 17th century philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, as the truest expression of their national mind. I am afraid they are right.

Descartes rejected authority in intellectual life and insisted on reconstructing knowledge on plain sense and strict reasoning, hence his famous motto, cogito ergo sum (“I think and therefore I am”). However, he also disdained experience as long as it could not be boiled down into logical and mathematical terms. This approach, so much at odds with the empirical and pragmatic approach favored in the Anglo-Saxon world, is indeed a hallmark of French culture — including politics.

The French elites relish in abstract, “élégant,” symmetrically organized concepts; they have problems with hard, rough, irregular facts. And should it come to pass that facts do not fit with concepts, they would rather ignore the former than question the latter. Even if major aspects of reality are being denied in the process, and the concepts themselves turned into inert dogmas or voided of any meaning.

Such a tendency was worrisome enough in the past, as some of the greatest French authors or thinkers realized, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Hippolyte Taine to Marc Bloch. It grew into an intractable problem after 1945, when France was reorganized as a statist nation, and a new administrative elite, engineered and trained by meritocratic academic institutions like Sciences Po (Political Science Schools), Ecole Normale Superieure (the Higher School for Education), and above all, Ecole nationale d’Administration (National School of Administration) engulfed the political class. Admission to ENA — through competitive examination — and graduation from ENA depend largely on mastering the required conceptual framework and never departing from it.

European Union Caving to Turkey’s Blackmail? by Burak Bekdil

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger, and said he would not obey the supreme court’s ruling.

Turkish courts, controlled by Erdogan’s government, put the newspaper Zaman, one of the last remaining media critics of Erdogan, under state control. A court actually appointed administrators to run the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Sevgi Akarcesme said that this was effectively the end of media freedom in Turkey.

Turkey ranks 149th amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015.

Quite realistically, Nigel Farage, a British opposition figure, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership.

Turkey has been sliding into an ugly Islamist despotism. Yet its relations with the European Union (EU) which it aspires to join has rarely been better. Some call it a mutually “transactional” improvement: “pragmatism.” Others, in less diplomatic language, call it Turkish blackmailing on the back of the refugee crisis. Even Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogu admitted that his latest round of negotiations with Europe’s leaders was a fine bargaining “a la Kayseri,” a Turkish city famous for its tough-bargaining merchants.

In reality, modern Turkey has never been this galactically distant from the core values enshrined by the European civilization and its institutions, including even the EU.

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger. He said he would not respect or obey the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The journalists had been charged with espionage and terrorism after their secular newspaper, Cumhuriyet, ran photos and a story about Turkish intelligence sending trucks full of arms to jihadists fighting in Syria. Prosecutors demand life sentences for the prominent journalists.

U.S. Policy Made 2015 the Worst Persecution of Christians “in Modern History” by Raymond Ibrahim

In 35 nations Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.

Something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened.

For years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions, including by building more mosques—the very structures, as the Nigerian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said, where Muslims are radicalized and recruited for the jihad.

Globally empowering forces hostile to Christians is synonymous with globally empowering forces hostile to America.

The primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure—

is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.

2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution,” according to Open Doors, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Christians since 1955.

When Trump Blamed Pamela Geller for Inciting Violence By Daniel John Sobieski

Donald Trump, who denies that his provocative and sometimes profane rhetoric (particularly against Muslims_ has anything to do with violence and protests at his University of Illinois-Chicago rally, once blamed conservative activist Pamela Geller for provoking an attempted armed assault by – wait for it – unnecessarily provoking Muslims.

As Gideon Resnick noted last December in the Daily Beast, pre-candidate Trump was not as passionately concerned with Pamela Geller’s First Amendment free speech rights as he now is about his own:

On May 4 of this year, Trump tweeted: “The U.S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death. BE SMART.”

His declaration was in response to the news that two men attempted to shoot up the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, during a “Draw the Prophet” event organized by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI).

Geller and her group, which has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an “anti-Muslim hate group,” defended her First Amendment rights in the face of violence.

“Freedom of speech is under violent assault here,” Geller defiantly said at the time.

Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, would seemingly agree—he’s spoken a great deal about “political correctness” and his belief that free speech is under attack. But pre-candidate Donald Trump apparently felt otherwise.

“It looks like she’s just taunting everybody. What is she doing?” he told Fox & Friends. “Drawing Mohammed and it looks like she’s actually taunting people. You know, I’m one that believes in free speech, probably more than she does. But what’s the purpose of this?”

Pamela Geller “taunted” Muslims, said the man who is himself accused of taunting Muslims by banning all immigration until he figures things out The purpose of the Garland event, Mr., Trump, was to exercise her free speech rights which, under the U.S. Constitution if not Sharia law, are not punishable by death. Trump, who openly and generically mocks Islam and has threatened protesters with physical violence, says he is innocent of incitement while Geller was guilty. Geller merely sponsored a cartoon contest. Her supporter did not punch an African-American at her event nor manhandle a female reporter as his campaign manager is accused of doing to Michelle Fields.

A word from a toxicologist who defected from the federal junk science army By John Dale Dunn

Last week, I discovered Frank Schnell when he wrote a comment on formaldehyde and said it was not a cancer-causing agent and that the EPA had lied about it. His comment was on an American Council on Science and Health posting by Josh Bloom, Ph.D. (organic chemistry), with a 20-year history of pharmaceutical research. Bloom busied himself in the post eviscerating a scare-monger on formaldehyde from the enviro-fanatic group National Resources Defense Council, and did a good job, but in the third or fourth comment, I saw a gem – a brief but insightful discussion by a man who described himself as a Ph.D. toxicologist retired from the Communicable Disease Center – Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) for 20 years.

Katy, bar the door.

In his comment on the formaldehyde issues, Schnell displayed his expertise and his knowledge of EPA misconduct as a view from the belly of the beast. He outlined the science misconduct directed by the EPA and its agency allies, supported by fanatic environmentalists inside and outside the government.

I thought, This is like Whittaker Chambers exposing the ugly underbelly of commie infiltration of the American government, because not only was Schnell a Ph.D. toxicologist, but he knew how to explain how the EPA and other federal agencies promulgate junk science. I told Bloom I needed more from this man, and he asked for a more fleshed out discussion from Dr. Schnell on EPA misconduct. I was not disappointed.

I have a modest archive here at American Thinker that includes essays on EPA misconduct. Steve Milloy, proprietor of JunkScience.com, and I have written some articles on the same subject together for AT. We focus on EPA cheating on air pollution research but also human experimentation with air pollutants.

All of our efforts are intended to show that EPA sponsors scare-monger scientists who promote the idea that small particle and other air pollutants are deadly when they are not. We have written a number of essays about how the EPA cheats on science and creates false scares. Here is a guy who can confirm the nature of the deceit that we saw and understood from the outside, and he knows the how and why and even the motives. What a find.

Read this wonderful man’s explanation in multiple articles that I admire and applaud from his ACSH archive, but also look at his archive at Science 2.0. For those who are interested in the politics, he is lucid; for those who are interested in getting into the scientific weeds, he is plenty smart and easy to understand.

Europe Emasculated By James Lewis

Feminism and multiculturalism held the victim down while Islam wielded the knife.
In Sweden, the headline goes, in the small town of Oestersund, “Women are warned not to go out at night to avoid multiple sex attacks by “foreigners.”

As in most of Europe and a good chunk of America — like the White House — the honest word for Muslim sex attackers cannot be said.

It is taboo.

Jihadist attackers constantly look for signs of weakness, and nothing shows weakness more than failing to protect your women and children. Protecting the in-group may be the most basic role for human families, clans, tribes, and entire civilizations. But after decades of multicult self-indoctrination, Europe has managed to emasculate itself.

This is not just a metaphor. It is real, as you can see if you take a trip over there.

The Oestersund police chief is quoted in the news as saying that the local police simply did not have the resources to cope with roving gangs of Muslim teenagers looking for girls to rape.

But historically there were no police in places where people lived. (“Police” means “man of the city”). There were very few cities, and many villages and lonely farms. You couldn’t call 911, and in any case, organized help had to come from miles away. There was the militia — the one the Founders referred to in the U.S. Constitution. But for everyday purposes there were just male volunteers, the neighbors, who would respond to local dangers by defending the village. They were usually fathers or grown males, but everybody recognized a common duty to fight danger. Farm women were often very strong, and they would join in.

“The police” as an official force did not exist until a few centuries ago. Instead, every citizen, especially strong men and boys, would rush to defend a woman or child in danger. In every civilization before Multicultified Europe, it was the men who defended the women.

Apparently Sweden has totally lost one of the most important roles of men, seduced by PC propaganda.

Male gang attacks are the rule in Jihad warfare, just like the ancient warrior tribes of Mohammed’s Arabia. The Vikings and the Mongols and Cossacks were the same. Go back in history, and that kind of piratical rapine is the norm, as we can see in Homer’s Iliad, which glorifies the war of revenge conducted by the Greeks after the beautiful Helen was raped and kidnapped by the Trojans.

Anti-GMO Students Bruise a Superbanana Research on the vitamin-fortified fruit could help malnourished Africans, but well-fed collegians at Iowa State University want no part. By Julie Kelly

Student activists at Iowa State University are up in arms after researchers offered to pay them almost a thousand bucks to eat some genetically modified banana. The bananas, created by an Australian scientist, contain high levels of beta carotene, which converts to vitamin A when eaten.

Vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness, stunting and even death, is a devastating problem throughout the developing world. In Uganda roughly 40% of children under age 5 are vitamin-A deficient, according to a 2011 health survey.

The hope is that fortified superbananas could help prevent such malnutrition. To test their efficacy, Iowa State students were offered $900 to eat the bananas for four days during three trial periods, then have their blood tested to measure vitamin absorption. The research is led by ISU professor Wendy White, an expert on vitamin A-enriched crops.

But some of the healthy, well-fed college students in America’s heartland were outraged. In February they delivered a petition with more than 57,000 signatures to the university to oppose the so-called human feeding trials. The petition was also delivered to the Seattle headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is investing more than $2 billion to improve agriculture in the developing world, including through the banana project.

“While we can all support the rights of Ugandans to have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, Ugandans have expressed increasing concern that genetically-modifying bananas are not meant to serve that purpose,” a group of students wrote in the Ames Tribune. “Instead, many suspect the GM bananas to be an attempt to corporately capture the domestic seed market.”

They sound like they’re trying to save an organic garden in Berkeley. “Those students are acting out of ignorance,” Jerome Kubiriba, the head of the National Banana Research Program in Uganda, tells me. “It’s one thing to read about malnutrition; it’s another to have a child who is constantly falling sick yet, due to limited resources, the child cannot get immediate and constant medical care. If they knew the truth about the need for vitamin A and other nutrients for children in Uganda and Africa, they’d get a change of heart.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Al Qaeda Turns Sights on Africa Success Story Attack in Ivory Coast by jihadist group’s North African affiliate signals a change in targetsBy Drew Hinshaw

For 12 years, al Qaeda’s franchise in the Sahara has focused its attacks on the continent’s weakest and poorest states. Now it has turned its violence on a new kind of target: an African success story.

For nearly an hour on Sunday, gunmen in bulletproof vests stalked vacationers on a beach in Ivory Coast, Africa’s largest cocoa producer and its fourth-fastest-growing economy.

By the time security forces arrived and killed the three attackers, at least 15 civilians—most of them locals who had been drinking beer and enjoying the surf on a sunny afternoon—and three soldiers were dead.

Among the dead were four French nationals, French President François Hollande said on Monday, along with a German national identified as Henrike Grohs, who had been the director of the Goethe Institute in Ivory Coast since 2013. Ivory Coast Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko added that other victims came from Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Mali.

The commando-style raid confirmed growing fears across West Africa that al Qaeda fighters are turning their attention to the region’s most flourishing states with the aim of exacting the highest possible toll of civilian lives.

With grenades strapped to their waists, the three fighters crept through a parking lot, shooting people standing next to BMW and Peugeot sedans. On the beach, they killed sunbathers reclining next to coolers and beach balls, and fired at swimmers. The nationalities of the attackers remained unclear on Monday.

“They were shooting in the direction of everybody eating along the beach,” said Yves Losseau, a Belgian lawyer who spends several weeks each year in the area.

On Monday, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Saharan affiliate of al Qaeda that claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, said it was a warning to other African countries that cooperate with France in its counterterrorism efforts. Some 18,000 French citizens live in the former French colony.

The attack appears to mark a turning point for Islamist militancy in Africa. Since 2003, AQIM has taken root in Mali, Mauritania, Niger and other desperately poor landlocked countries that have territory forming part of the Sahara. CONTINUE AT SITE

Barack Obama Checks Out A journalist takes a deep dive into the president’s shallow mind. Crises to follow. Bret Stephens

Barack Obama—do you remember him?—will remain in office for another 311 days. But not really. The president has left the presidency. The commander in chief is on sabbatical. He spends his time hanging out at a festival in Austin. And with the cast of “Hamilton,” the musical. And with Justin, the tween sensation from Canada.

In his place, an exact look-alike of Mr. Obama is giving interviews to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, interviews that are so gratuitously damaging to long-standing U.S. alliances, international security and Mr. Obama’s reputation as a serious steward of the American interest that the words could not possibly have sprung from the lips of the president himself.

I was a bit late in reading Mr. Goldberg’s long article, “The Obama Doctrine,” which appeared last week and is based on hours of conversation with the president, along with ancillary interviews with John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Manuel Valls of France, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and other boldface names. Kudos to Mr. Goldberg for his level of access, the breadth of his reporting, the sheer volume of juicy quotes and revealing details.

Still, it’s a deep dive into a shallow mind. Mr. Obama’s recipe for Sunni-Shiite harmony in the Middle East? The two sides, says Mr. Obama, “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood,” sounding like Mr. Rogers. The explanation for the “sh— show” (the president’s words) in Libya? “I had more faith in the Europeans,” he says, sounding like my 12-year-old blaming her 6-year-old sister for chores not done. The recipe for better global governance? “If only everyone could be like the Scandinavians, this would all be easy,” he says, sounding like—Barack Obama.

Then there’s Mr. Obama the political theorist. “Real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence,” the president says in connection to Vladimir Putin’s gambles in Ukraine and Syria. That’s true, in a Yoda sort of way. But isn’t seizing foreign territory without anyone doing much to stop you also a form of “real power”? Is dictatorial power fake because it depends on the threat of force? CONTINUE AT SITE