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May 2016

Jew-Hatred in Hong Kong: 2016 By Stephen Kruger

Hong Kong is a city of nearly 8 million people. Modern. Good intra-urban railway mass transit. Good bus service. Reasonably good governmental public schools, and a reasonably honest government.

Beneath the surface, there are societal shortcomings. Acceptable housing is in short supply, so flats are dear. Young adults, including those who maintain long-term relationships or marriages, live with their parents. Replacement of run-down housing stock is slow. People in extreme poverty live in cage housing — flats subdivided into small spaces, formed by vertical steel rods. Each space has room for a mattress and some possessions. One toilet for a dozen or more people.

Food is expensive. Many people work long hours in jobs that pay modest salaries.

Add Jew-hatred to the list of societal shortcomings. (I prefer “Jew-hatred” and “Judaism-hatred” to “anti-Semitism”, a misnomer).

There is in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, the Jew-hatred of Mohammedism. That term is accurate, because “Islam” connotes a religion. There is Mohammedism — a militant totalitarianism under the guise of a religion.

Picture a legitimate-seeming business that is a front for a mafia. The benign attributes of the front business do not change the criminality of the behind-the-front capo, his lieutenants, and his button men. In like manner, Islam is a front for Mohammedism. The benign attributes of the front “religion” do not change the behind-the-front pathologies — loathing of Jews, loathing of Judaism, loathing of Zionism, hatred of the West, hatred of Judeo-Christian values, antipathy to modern life, despising of women, and sexual abuse of children — of the imam, his lieutenants, and his terrorists.

In Hong Kong, Mohammedists express their Jew-hatred through insolence. Turning a back to a Jew who walk by. Cutting across the path of a Jew, as he walks down the street. Spitting.

All Mohammedists who hang about on the streets are male. Some are in their late teens. Most are men in their 20s and 30s. No teen-age girls. No women in their 20s and 30s. Necessarily, those males are limited to whoring and furtive same sex liaisons. I don’t know where Mohammedist families live.

Within the past six months, I noticed expressions of Jew-hatred among the general Chinese population. Young people, middle-aged people, old people. Low-income people and middle-class people (judging by their clothing). It was across the board. Perhaps the expressions of Jew-hatred are spillovers from the evil BDS movement.

The expressions are varied. Covering the nose with a hand. Translation: Jews smell. Scratching the torso with a hand, under an arm. Translation: Jews are apes. Grasping the throat with a hand. Translation: We’ll murder you. Putting a finger into a nostril. Translation: ____ you. Putting a finger into an ear. Same translation.

Turkey on the Road to the Precipice By Alex Alexiev

A few days ago, Turkey hosted something called the World Humanitarian Summit, shortly after its parliament passed a bill that would allow its government to lift parliamentary immunity and throw in jail members of parliament whose opinions do not agree with those of its increasingly dictatorial Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This puts paid to any remaining pretensions Turkey had of being a democracy and guarantees that this NATO member is headed for disaster. To understand why this is now inevitable, a closer look at this pernicious bill and the background to it are needed.

After coming to power with a huge majority in 2003, Erdoğan, who never hid his ultimate intentions to pursue the radical Islamization of Turkey, introduced a number of policies that were well received. One of them was to enter into reconciliation talks with the large Kurdish minority and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) representing it, which had been the key factor motivating the bloody Kurdish insurrection that claimed 40,000 victims in the 1980s and 1990s. Two of these policies, the ability to use the Kurdish language and elect their own mayors in the vast Kurd-dominated southeastern part of Turkey, were particularly popular, and the PKK unilaterally declared cease-fire in March 2013 after months of negotiations between Ankara and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

In the meantime, however, the geopolitical circumstances of the large Kurdish minorities in the region had changed dramatically, encouraging greater strivings for autonomy. The Kurds in northern Iraq had de facto become independent and had also distinguished themselves as the only military force capable of standing up to ISIS. Something similar happened in northern Syria, where Bashar Assad withdrew his forces early on and the majority-Kurdish areas also became autonomous, as well as the main opponent of the Islamic State terrorists, who were tacitly or directly supported by Erdoğan.

Erdoğan’s relations with the Kurds took a turn for the worst with the siege of the Kurdish-Syrian town of Kobani and the occupation of 350 Kurdish villages by ISIS terrorists in September 2014. Ankara’s failure to come to the assistance of Kobani triggered violent anti-government riots across the Kurdish areas in Turkey that were brutally put down and poisoned relations further. The end of the efforts at reconciliation came after the parliamentary elections in June of 2015, when the Kurdish party, HDP, received over 13% of the vote and not only entered parliament, but denied parliamentary majority to Erdoğan’s AKP.

Judge Hanen Shows President Obama: We’re All Post-Constitutionalists Now The remedy for lawlessness is not more lawlessness.Andrew McCarthy

Let us stipulate that President Obama’s non-enforcement of the federal immigration laws, coupled with his even more patently lawless decree of positive legal benefits to illegal immigrants (e.g., work permits, reprieves from deportation), is an outrage. In fact, as I argued in Faithless Execution, it qualifies as an impeachable offense.

All that said, the remedy for lawlessness is not lawlessness. The comeuppance for an executive branch that egregiously oversteps its limited constitutional authority is not a judiciary that responds in kind. Thus, I’m at a loss to understand the enthusiastic applause on the right for an opinion and order issued on May 19 by Judge Andrew Hanen of the federal district court in Brownsville, Texas.

The ruling came in connection with a case brought by the governments of 26 states to challenge the validity of two of Obama’s unilaterally decreed immigration non-enforcement programs: Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), and, to a more limited extent, Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA).

Judge Hanen is justifiably outraged by the egregious misconduct of Obama Justice Department lawyers, a pattern of misrepresentations to the court that he found to be “intentional, serious and material.” In a nutshell, beginning in late 2014, Justice Department lawyers repeatedly promised that DAPA and its amendments to DACA were on hold and would not be implemented until mid February 2015. These representations lulled the plaintiff states into forgoing remedies they might otherwise have sought — e.g., restraining orders and a permanent injunction — to limit the damage done by Obama’s lawless conferral of benefits (which trigger various state expenditures) on illegal aliens. In reality, DAPA was proceeding apace, and applications by over 100,000 illegal aliens were granted during the purported suspension.

Hillary has been burying emails since she was First Lady: Paul Sperry

While the State Department’s own internal probe found former Secretary Hillary Clinton violated federal recordkeeping laws, it’s not the first time she and her top aides shielded her e-mail from public disclosure while serving in a government position.

As first lady, Hillary was embroiled in another scheme to bury sensitive White House e-mails, known internally as “Project X.”

In 1999, as investigators looked into Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate and other scandals involving the then-first lady, it was discovered that more than 1 million subpoenaed e-mails were mysteriously “lost” due to a “glitch” in a West Wing computer server.

The massive hole in White House archives covered a critical two-year period — 1996 to 1998 — when Republicans and special prosecutor Ken Starr were subpoenaing White House e-mails.

Despite separate congressional investigations and a federal lawsuit over Project X, high-level e-mails dealing with several scandals were never turned over. And the full scope of Bill and Hillary Clintons’ culpability in the parade of scandals was never known.

To those well-versed in Clinton shenanigans, this all sounds distressingly familiar.

ROGER FRANKLIN: PLAYTIME FOR TEACHER

Way down at the very bottom of the Victorian Education Department’s list of plays deemed suitable for study in HSC classrooms there is Othello, which the teachers’ guide helpfully attributes to William Shakespeare. These are modern teachers we are talking about, remember, and some maybe unaware of the Bard, there being too few hours in the day to grapple with the classics when sexism, racism, gender fluidity and environmental destruction occupy so much of an educator’s time and mind. Those topics certainly rate higher places on the reading list than the tale of a Moor prone to inflicting domestic violence, his wife’s hanky and a typically treacherous white man. That may or may not be how Othello is taught these days, with or without reference to the rampant Islamophobia in the Venice of old, but in the absence of a plot summary on the study list of “texts” such a tack must be deemed a distinct possibility. We can be certain, however, that James Thurber’s depiction (above) of Act V, Scene II’s nasty business in the bedroom will not be an approved illustration.

Other plays are more fulsomely described. For example, consider the modern re-working of Dangerous Liaisons by Christopher Hampton:

This presentation of Dangerous Liaisons utilises cross-gendered performance, bouffon clowning, grotesquery and a high-camp aesthetic. Genders are flipped to emphasise the satirical nature of the text … Hampton’s dissections of sexism, sexuality and the role of gender in warfare are potent as he takes a classic text and brings a super-feminist and contemporary approach … This production acknowledges … the possibility of a post-gendered society, one where the divide between male and female is not so black and white.

Then there is Berthold Brecht’s The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui , whose central Chicago gangster is — or rather was — a burlesque of Hitler. That is no longer the case, apparently, as teachers need to alert children to the fact that the jackboots are today being worn by an entirely new threat to civilised life, conservatives:

Each scene will be its own set piece, demonstrating a particular aspect of Arturo’s rise and highlighting how that moment corresponds with the historical rise of Hitler. This production draws connections between the events of the play, Hitler’s ascension to power, and the current waves of conservative politics spreading across the western world.

Mind you, again according to the notes, this time for The Honey Bees by Caleb Lewis, capitalist depredations have left little of the world not yet ruined:

The ‘colony collapse disorder’ that provides a background for the narrative is a real environmental disaster that has been spreading across the globe since 2007, laying waste to bee populations wherever it strikes and it’s still not known why. In the play, the only country untouched is Australia. This is a vitally important story of human relationships set against a backdrop of an almost invisible worldwide catastrophe happening right now.

Once the HSC kiddies have been exposed to the general rottenness of the West, the same West which hires so many theatre teachers, there is Tales of a City by the Sea by Samah Sabawi. Set in Gaza, it is said to depict the lives and loves of Palestinians who must exist with the thought that a Zionist bomb might come down the chimney at a moment’s notice.

Clinton email headache is about to get worse By Julian Hattem

A scathing inspector general’s report this week was just the first in what is likely to be a series of official actions related to her private server stemming from the FBI, a federal courthouse and Capitol Hill.

Clinton’s presidential campaign has failed to quiet the furor over the issue, which has dogged her for more than a year.

In the next few weeks — just as the likely Democratic presidential nominee hopes to pivot towards a general election — it will face its toughest scrutiny yet.

“All of that feeds into this overarching problem of public distrust of her,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.

“To put it in slang terms, she’s got a pretty deeply held street rep at this point. This fits the street rep,” he added.

The State Department’s watchdog report was especially damaging, given the official nature of its source. The report claimed that Clinton never sought approval for her “homebrew” email setup, that her use of the system violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she brought it up to department officials.

Clinton’s allies attempted to paint the office as partisan in the weeks ahead of the report’s release, but the effort failed to leave a lasting impact.

VIDEO – Israel and the Palestinians: What the media won’t report

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and an expert on Middle East conflicts, discusses what the Palestinian leadership really wants.http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

Christians Beheaded and Slaughtered on Easter Muslim Persecution of Christians, March 2016 by Raymond Ibrahim

In Pakistan, a Muslim suicide bomber murdered 74 people — mostly Christians — and injured nearly 400 more, on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016.

The U.S. and British governments knew the exact location of many of the Nigerian Christian girls captured by Boko Haram, but failed to launch a rescue mission, according to Andrew Pocock, the former British high commissioner to Nigeria.

In Uganda, Amina Napiya’s 13-year-old daughter was raped while fetching firewood near their home. The rapist told the girl, “this is the second warning to your mother for disgracing the faith of the Muslims.” Napiya, a 42-year-old widow, converted to Christianity in 2014.

Approximately 700 Christian girls are kidnapped and forced into Islamic marriages every year in Pakistan.

On Easter Sunday in Pakistan, March 27, a suicide bombing took place near the children’s rides of a public park, where Christians were known to be celebrating the resurrection of their Lord. At least 74 people — mostly women and children — were killed and nearly 400 injured. “There was human flesh on the walls of our house,” a witness recalled.

“We claim responsibility for the attack on Christians as they were celebrating Easter,” said a group affiliated with the Taliban. In a media statement, the group’s spokesman said it had “deliberately targeted the Christian community.” “We had been waiting for this occasion,” he said.

Click here, here, here, here, and here, for more examples of lethal attacks, worldwide, on Christians celebrating their holidays who also “had been waiting for this occasion.” Even “the terror cell that struck in Brussels in March, killing 34 was planning to massacre worshippers at Easter church services across Europe, including Britain, intelligence chiefs believe, according to a report.

In Scotland, a Muslim man stabbed another Muslim man to death for wishing Christians a Happy Easter. Asad Shah had posted messages on Facebook that said “Good Friday and very happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation” and “Let’s follow the real footstep of beloved holy Jesus Christ and get the real success in both worlds.” Police said a 32-year-old Muslim man was arrested in connection with Shah’s death, and confirmed that the attack was “religiously prejudiced.” Islamic law (Qur’an 5:52) forbids Muslims from participating in or congratulating non-Muslims for their religious holidays as doing so implicitly validates other religions.

A Muslim nanny in Russia beheaded a 4-year-old girl, Anastasia, whom she had been taking care of for the last three years. Gulchehra Bobokulova, a Chechen, went to a Moscow metro station and, for 20 minutes, waved the child’s severed head while screaming “Allahu Akbar” [“Allah is Greatest”]. After her arrest, she said the murder “was what Allah ordered.” In the months before the slaughter, Bobokulova was said to have become “more religious.” She began wearing a hijab, and telling her son to pray five times a day and live in accord with Sharia [Islamic law]. Authorities concluded that, as she is “insane,” she will not face a murder trial.

Arabs Using Christians to Fight Israel by Shadi Khalloul

The Middle East has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.

Many Christians in Arab countries and in Palestinian Authority (PA), without a state or anyone else to support them, are still behaving as dhimmis, paying lip service to Muslim Arab “lords” in exchange for protection in their original homelands.

The Palestinians plan activities, pay salaries and fund anti-Israeli Christian dhimmi organizations, in order to make Western Christians believe in the “Palestinian cause” — by which they mean the establishment of another Arab-Islamic dictatorship state with no human rights in it.

Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fear for their own existence — based on the ruthless lack of freedom under the PA, as in all Arab states.

Christians in Holy Land, Judea and Samaria — what today is called the West Bank or the Palestinian Authority (PA) — are, with the Jews and assorted Arabs, the indigenous people of the land. The region has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.

After the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula in 637 AD, the Jews and early followers of Christianity were forced either to convert to Islam or accept the rule of sharia (Islamic religious law) under the Islamic Caliphate, with its dhimmi laws designed to remind you that you are inferior. In Islam, dhimmis are non-Muslims — and therefore second-class, barely tolerated residents — who live under separate, harsher, laws and have to pay protection money (a “tax” called the jizya) to safeguard their lives and property.

Edward Cline; Beyond Satire

Real life too often today puts satire to shame. I shall begin with “Liberal Line Dancing.”

Some years ago in Baltimore I took a stroll through a street festival near the Inner Harbor. One event I encountered was something I hadn’t witnessed in person before: line dancing. I had become immersed in the subject of dancing while researching the Sparrowhawk series, set in 18th century Britain and America. I learned that it was only in the early 19th century that individualized dance between couples was introduced and became popular, preceded by the form of highly formalized and controlled modes such as the minuet and its variants, in which the couples barely touched each other.

Until then, from Medieval times to the present, dance was largely a collective pastime. Line dancing seems to be a hybrid of square dancing, which itself has roots in contra or country dancing preceding even Shakespeare’s time, but without participants even having to touch anyone. I was obliged to square dance in high school, and had to clasp the sweaty palms of dozens of others of either gender I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Personal choice in such affairs of one’s partners was ruled out.

In liberal political, synchronized line dancing, all the players, in unison, wobble, wiggle, gesticulate, kick, turn about, swivel their hips, pantomime, roll their shoulders, and place their hands over their ears, mouths, and ears. The moves are commanded by a dance master, accompanied by a fiddler playing a monotonous tune over and over again, or perhaps with a Karaoke player. The most popular liberal line dances are called “The Shuffle,” “The Dodge,” “Duck and Grovel,” “The Wet Dog,” “The Double Side Step,” “Shake ‘n Bake,” “The Burqa Bop,” “The Muslim Moon,” “The Prayer Rug Stomp,” “The Shadada Shimmy,” “The Cover Your Butt,” “The Twirly,” and “The Hillary Rodham.”