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March 2017

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sanctuary Cities Choose Criminals Over Citizens City governments vow to protect even violent predators in defiance of Trump administration. March 29, 2017 Joseph Klein

By on March 29th, 2017

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266260/sanctuary-cities-choose-criminals-over-citizens-joseph-klein

Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned on Monday that sanctuary jurisdictions risked losing federal grants if they persisted in obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Billions of dollars in federal law enforcement funding are at stake. “I urge the nation’s states and cities to carefully consider the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws,” Attorney General Sessions said. “Countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended.”

Instead of heeding the Attorney General’s sound advice and taking care of their own citizens, city officials around the country are planning to sabotage federal law enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.

“We are going to become this administration’s worst nightmare,” said New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. On the same day that Attorney General Sessions issued his warning, she hosted a meeting with like-minded officials from other sanctuary cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and Philadelphia, who prioritize the welfare of illegal immigrants over their own citizens. Ms. Mark-Viverito and her comrades threatened to block access by federal immigration authorities to city property and to city records that could help with the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. They are acting in the spirit of Alabama’s late Governor George Wallace, who stood in the schoolhouse door to defy federal enforcement of desegregation.

“The Trump Administration is pushing an unrealistic and mean spirited executive order,” tweeted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Spare us the tears, Mr. Mayor. We are not talking about innocent children caught up in vindictive mass deportation sweeps. Rather, President Trump’s so-called “mean-spirited executive order” is intended to rid this country of fiends like Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, a gang member from El Salvador with a criminal record, who was released from Rikers Island this year onto the streets of New York before U.S. officers from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit could pick him up for deportation proceedings. And there is Luis Alejandro Villegas, 31, who was released from local custody on Dec. 31, 2016, despite a detainer request from ICE. Villegas had previously been removed from the United States and has a prior conviction for forcible theft armed with a deadly weapon.

“Villegas is a criminal alien who was released back into our New York communities, posing an increased and unnecessary risk to those who live in this great city,” said Thomas R. Decker, field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York.

Fortunately, ICE agents were able to catch up with both Velasquez and Villegas on their own and place them into federal custody. If de Blasio has his way, we may not be so lucky next time. In the New York City suburb of Hempstead, two women and a 2-year old girl ran out of luck. A MS-13 street gang member, who had been deported back to El Salvador from the U.S. four times and had a number of prior arrests, stabbed the women and sexually assaulted the little girl.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrat Filibuster of Judge Gorsuch Democrats planning a likely futile gesture to send a message to Trump. Matthew Vadum

By on March 29th, 2017

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266261/democrat-filibuster-judge-gorsuch-matthew-vadum

Desperate to placate their increasingly rabid far left-wing base, ethically-flexible Senate Democrats are planning to launch a filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee for the first time in a half-century and only the second time in American history.

Their insistence on this course of action could very well lead to the abolition of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) said a few days ago that his Senate colleagues will not allow President Trump’s nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia to be voted on because he’s not a left-winger who views the Constitution as an endlessly malleable social-justice plaything.

“After careful deliberation I have concluded that I cannot support Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court,” Schumer said on the Senate floor after Gorsuch’s marathon confirmation hearing wrapped up.

“Judge Gorsuch was unable to sufficiently convince me that he’d be an independent check on a president who has shown almost no restraint from executive overreach,” Schumer said with a straight face after compiling a near-perfect record of supporting President Obama’s overreaches over the last eight years.

“Second, he was unable to convince me that he would be a mainstream justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology,” added the senior senator from New York.

It was just four years ago that Schumer voted to exercise the so-called nuclear option by changing the rules of the Senate by a simple majority vote instead of the usual supermajority. The rule approved at that time banned the use of the filibuster against all judicial nominees below the Supreme Court.

But that was then and this is now. Schumer is now opposed to changing the rules by a simple majority vote.

“The answer isn’t to change the rules, it’s to change the nominee,” he said last week.

As part of their strategy, Democrats are now trying to convince Americans that Gorsuch cannot be confirmed unless he garners 60 votes in the Senate, as opposed to a simple majority.

Gorsuch “should have a hearing and he should meet the voting standard that Supreme Court nominees are held to of 60 votes, a standard that was met by Elena Kagan as well as Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s choices,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said last month.

This idea that a Supreme Court nominee must receive 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster is both passé and pure fantasy.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs the Muslimas Downunder By Olivia Pierson (Posted by Ed Cline)

By on March 29th, 2017

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2017/03/ayaan-hirsi-ali.html

It is with pleasure that I publish here another guest column by Olivia Pierson. I have retained the original spellings and syntax in her column.E.C.

The beautiful Somali born ex Muslim, ex right-wing-Dutch-politician-come-American, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is coming to speak to Australians and New Zealanders.

Being a much ruder culture than we Kiwis, Ozzies have already started to protest Hirsi Ali’s arrival using Australian Muslim women academics, business owners (and of course Diversity Peddlers) as spokeswomen. They even have a little on-line petition. You can read it here.

The message of this petition is laughable. Its dishonesty and hypocrisy are so palpably “on the page” I almost cringed on their behalf. The powerful Hirsi Ali is just so intellectually superior to these women that I don’t think she has anything much to worry about – except for the usual death threats, but then, as an ex Muslim female with a very persuasive voice, she’s used to those.

The group claim that their disappointment in having Hirsi Ali come to speak in Australia is “reflective of the huge diversity of opinion amongst Australian Muslim women. Although we are not a homogenous group, we are united in our condemnation of Hirsi-Ali’s discourse which is grounded in hate-mongering and bigotry.”

The petition has 348 signatories so far – in a country of 23 million people where about half a million identify as Muslim, they can’t even rustle up 0.1% from their “huge diversity of opinion amongst Australian Muslim women.” Not that I’m complaining.

Really Lovees, just go home and be quiet. Hirsi Ali is coming and she is going to blow your backward religion verbally to kingdom-not-coming-for-you. The most enjoyable part is that she will do this as she always does, eloquently, prettily, cleverly, without ever raising her beautiful, sonorous voice. She will crisply slice your 7th Century superstition to pieces – just as her Muslim family members once held her down and sliced off her genitals with scissors and no anaesthetic.

Like all Muslim-flavoured protestors, this group are supremely anti the great Western value of free-speech – unheard of in their own (or their parents’) countries of origin. This value is the only reason that these autocratic little Jezebels are allowed to speak. The petition states:

“Hirsi-Ali’s sheer presence in Australia undermines both intra and inter-community efforts toward social cohesion and in providing platforms for Muslim women to champion their own causes.”

Take a note of that (within all the intra, inter, social cohesion, platform weasel wordery) – they view Hirsi Ali’s “sheer presence in Australia” as a threat. Never mind that we have to breathe the very same planetary air as the likes of these sneaky vixens, who want the benefits of our cultural gifts, like capitalism & freedom, yet seek to culturally destroy our values as they set about thriving off them.

Not on my watch – nor Hirsi Ali’s obviously. And why do Muslim women need to champion their own causes in Western lands – the lands of freedom and tolerance? In this multicultural day and age, who stops them from doing anything they want to do? Nobody. Only their co-religionists would aggress them enough to warrant this nonsense about “championing their own causes.” They are pointing their irrelevant fingers at fake oppressors. It is either a twisted psychological projection inflicted via Stockholm Syndrome, or it’s a blatant deception.

Either way, they are not telling the truth.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli Scientists Find Mechanism That Causes Cancer Cells to Self-Destruct Hana Levi Julian

By on March 29th, 2017

Israeli scientists have made an enormous discovery that can help lead
to a new treatment for at least two of the most resistant cancers that
exist: pancreatic and triple negative breast cancer.

Many cancer patients struggle with the adverse effects of
chemotherapy, still the most prescribed cancer treatment. For patients
with pancreatic cancer and other aggressive cancers, the forecast is
more grim: there is no known effective therapy.

A new Tel Aviv University study published last month in Oncotarget
discloses the role of three proteins in killing fast-duplicating
cancer cells while they’re dividing. The research, led by Prof. Malka
Cohen-Armon of TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine, finds that these
proteins can be specifically modified during the division process —
mitosis — to unleash an inherent “death mechanism” that
self-eradicates duplicating cancer cells.

“The discovery of an exclusive mechanism that kills cancer cells
without impairing healthy cells, and the fact that this mechanism
works on a variety of rapidly proliferating human cancer cells, is
very exciting,” Prof. Cohen-Armon said. “According to the mechanism we
discovered, the faster cancer cells proliferate, the faster and more
efficiently they will be eradicated. The mechanism unleashed during
mitosis may be suitable for treating aggressive cancers that are
unaffected by traditional chemotherapy.

“Our experiments in cell cultures tested a variety of incurable human
cancer types — breast, lung, ovary, colon, pancreas, blood, brain,”
Prof. Cohen-Armon continued. “This discovery impacts existing cancer
research by identifying a new specific target mechanism that
exclusively and rapidly eradicates cancer cells without damaging
normally proliferating human cells.”

The research was conducted in collaboration with Prof. Shai Izraeli
and Dr. Talia Golan of the Cancer Research Center at Sheba Medical
Center, Tel Hashomer, and Prof. Tamar Peretz, head of the Sharett
Institute of Oncology at Hadassah Medical Center, Ein Kerem.

A new target for cancer research

The newly-discovered mechanism involves the modification of specific
proteins that affect the construction and stability of the spindle,
the microtubular structure that prepares duplicated chromosomes for
segregation into “daughter” cells during cell division.

The researchers found that certain compounds called Phenanthridine
derivatives were able to impair the activity of these proteins, which
can distort the spindle structure and prevent the segregation of
chromosomes. Once the proteins were modified, the cell was prevented
from splitting, and this induced the cell’s rapid self-destruction.

“The mechanism we identified during the mitosis of cancer cells is
specifically targeted by the Phenanthridine derivatives we tested,”
Prof. Cohen-Armon said. “However, a variety of additional drugs that
also modify these specific proteins may now be developed for cancer
cell self-destruction during cell division. The faster the cancer
cells proliferate, the more quickly they are expected to die.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Terrorism Trend Setters – The Palestinians By Rachel Ehrenfeld

By on March 29th, 2017

http://acdemocracy.org/terrorism-trend-setters-theRight: Hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for Al-Aqsa,” urges the Palestinian “Run over Organization” calling on Palestinians to use their cars to kill Jews. [Facebook, “Fatah – The Main Page” Nov. 6, 2014]” Source: Palestinian Media Watch. –

Plowing into crowds in speeding cars to kill large numbers of people and stabbing more when the car is forced to stop, is becoming the rage among jihadists operating in Europe. Most counter-terrorism experts in major media outlets claim these are signs of a new trend of terrorism by individuals “inspired” to commit such heinous crimes by ISIS but decline to mention radical Political Islam as the origin.

The Palestinian loving Europeans are now shocked by jihadist attacks the like Israelis had to cope with for many decades.

Israeli civilians have been terrorized for years by speeding car and knife attacks by Palestinians who are inspired by the same jihadist ideology as the London, Brussels, Paris, Munich and Nice attackers. While ISIS followers receive some funding and help from local supporters, the Palestinian terrorists are encouraged to launch such attacks by the Palestinian Authority and are guaranteed a national hero status, large financial rewards and special benefits to their families.

The flow of funds rewarding Palestinian terrorists’ atrocities using cars, knives, guns and explosives against Israelis have been steadily on the rise since the establishment of the PA in 1993. The more incitement by the Palestinian leadership, the more funds to the PA coffers. Some originated in the Gulf-States and Iran, but most of the money have been flowing from the European Union, the United Nations, and the United States. It was not designated for terrorist activities but for “Humanitarian Aid” in the spirit of the PA, the PLO and HAMAS’s support of future orphans and widows. No amount evidence provided by Israelis of the PA ongoing incitement and payments for terrorists stopped the money flow. To the contrary, funding of the Palestinians increased over the years. Moreover, the international donor community increased funding to Palestinian murderers who claimed they are forced to commit such crimes by the occupying Israelis. This has been going on since the establishment of the PA in 1993.

No amount evidence provided by Israelis of the PA ongoing incitement and payments for terrorists stopped the money flow. To the contrary. The louder the Palestinian murderers claimed to be victims, forced to terrorism by the occupying Israelis, the more sympathy and funds from their donors, especially the EU.

Last week attack near the British Parliament was not the first jihadist attack in the United Kingdom. But successive British government and apparently the security services have turned a blind eye to the evolving terrorist tactics used by the Palestinian against Israelis. And until Theresa May became Prime Minster last year, they have also paid no attention to ever-growing, public and often violent Palestinian anti-Israeli incitement and activities, including BDS, everywhere in the U.K. The Kafiya clad Palestinians have been setting the global jihadist terrorist trend for many decades. Ignoring that was a mistake many Britons, and other infidels will be paying for with their lives.

As a reminder, here are a few examples of widely publicized Palestinian terror incitement:

Palestinians encouraged for vehicular terrorist attacks against Jews. PA Twitter

Zahran Barbah, A Gazan writing under the Facebook hashtag “Stab,” posted the anatomical chart showing how to make attacks as deadly as possible. October 16, 2015

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In the Nunes Affair, Don’t Lose Sight of the Unanswered Questions Aspects of the FBI’s handling of the Flynn case deserve further scrutiny. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on March 29th, 2017

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446210/devin-nunes-investigation-chairman-house-intel-committee-michael-flynn

Let us stipulate that it would be difficult for House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) and the Trump White House to have handled a critical intelligence matter any worse.

Still, the questions Nunes has raised are more important than the fact that he shot himself in the foot while pursuing the answers.

The chairman says he was invited by an unidentified intelligence official to review classified documents on the White House grounds — at the Old Executive Office Building, it appears, where the National Security Council has secure facilities for that purpose. These documents purportedly show that communications from Trump transition officials, and perhaps Trump himself, were intercepted during intelligence-agency monitoring of foreign powers; and Nunes says the monitoring in question appears unrelated to Russia’s meddling in the U.S. election.

Nunes reports that the documents he was shown suggest that the Obama administration may have been using its foreign-intelligence powers to shadow the incoming Trump team. Though the communications in question were lawfully intercepted, Nunes suggests that the identities of Trump officials should have been “masked” (i.e., concealed) under standard minimization rules that guide the dissemination of classified foreign intelligence throughout the “community” of U.S. intelligence agencies. Instead, the identities of the Trump officials were revealed and widely transmitted to people with no apparent need to know about the officials’ communications — some of which, in Nunes’s description, had “little or no apparent foreign-intelligence value.”

Nunes’s account cannot be verified because the documents he reviewed have not been disclosed, nor reviewed by anyone else who is talking. Meanwhile, rather than first sharing what he learned with members of the important committee he chairs, Nunes went to the White House to brief President Trump.

This is bizarre for two reasons. First, the classified information Nunes reviewed belongs to the executive branch, which the president leads. Trump does not need to be briefed by a member of Congress; he can direct the appropriate intelligence officials to brief him — and could then declassify and publicize any information he believes the public should have (redacting any information that could compromise critical intelligence secrets, methods and sources). Second, Nunes, who served on the Trump transition team, leads a committee responsible for getting to the bottom of both alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and the executive branch’s potential abuse of its foreign-intelligence collection power. By opening himself up to the charge that his first loyalty is to the White House rather than to his committee’s investigation, Nunes damages both his own credibility and the perception that his committee can conduct a reliable investigation.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Weighing Aspirations, Trump Argues for Increased Defense Spending : Herbert London

By on March 28th, 2017

Dr. Herbert I. London is the President of the London Center for Policy Research and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written or contributed to 30 books and as a social critic, his work has been published in many prominent publications.

The post-Cold War ‘military industrial complex’ isn’t applicable to today’s terrorist enemies

During President Trump’s recent address to Congress, he said we must add $54 billion of spending to the defense budget in order to bolster the nation’s defense capabilities. Considering the $1 trillion in defense sequestration during the Obama years, this number may be relatively modest. The problem is making an assessment of what’s adequate and necessary.
Defense spending in the age of advanced military hardware is an exercise in reading tea leaves. The number of variables in any equation often overwhelms the serious analyst.
Take the F-35 as an example. The head of the program said that the cost of the aircraft will be reduced to $85 million by 2018. But that number has significance only if seen against a backdrop of lifetime use. An aircraft with an 8,000 to 10,000 flight hour cycle is more expensive than one with a 5,000 hour life.
Then, there’s the question of mission. An aircraft designed to perform a single mission—e.g. the A-10 Warthog—is cheaper to build than an aircraft capable of multiple missions. However, single mission planes will necessitate a larger than anticipated force and arguably a budget increase.
In today’s environment, it’s also appropriate to ask whether the aircraft is manned or unmanned. Perhaps it’s wise to spend more on anti-air weapons and less on fighters and interceptors. Could stand-off platforms be less expensive in the long term than fighters and interceptors? Could stand-off weapons render Russian and Chinese airplanes irrelevant?