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May 2017

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Anonymous Sources of Washington Post and CNN Fake News How fake news gets made. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 18th, 2017

Media fake news is everywhere.

No, the new health care bill does not treat rape as a pre-existing condition and Republicans did not celebrate its passage with beer.

The latest media outrage is driven by a Washington Post story about intelligence disclosures based on claims by anonymous sources. The Post’s big hit pieces are mainly based on anonymous sources.

Its latest hit piece runs a quote from, “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” That’s an anonymous source quoting hearsay from other anonymous sources.

This isn’t journalism. It’s a joke.

Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a story based on “the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House.” The fake news story falsely claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign.

Rod had a simple answer when asked about that piece of fake news. “No.”

So much for 30 anonymous sources and for the Washington Post’s credibility. But the media keeps shoveling out pieces based on anonymous sources and confirmed by anonymous sources while ignoring the disavowals by those public officials who are willing to go on the record.

The Comey memo story is based on, according to the New York Times, “two people who read the memo.” And then “one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.”

And his dog.

The supposed memo contradicts Comey’s own testimony to Congress under oath.

The Times hasn’t seen the memo. No one has seen the memo except the anonymous sources that may or may not exist. The media’s fake news infrastructure relies heavily on anonymous sources. And anonymous sources are the media’s way of saying, “Just trust us.”

The question is why would anyone trust the media?

Comey fake news is popular on the left because it is convinced that he is the key to reversing their election defeat. Recently CNN got its fake news fingers burned with a story claiming that the former FBI Director had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation before he was fired.

Where did CNN get its story from? Anonymous sources. Or, as the story put it, “two sources familiar with the discussion.”

Sources “familiar with the discussion” is up there with “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” And their neighbor’s dog who barks exclusively to CNN.

Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe both shot down CNN’s fake news. CNN’s headline was, “New Acting FBI Director Contradicts White House on Comey.” Its fake news was referenced only as, “Amid reports that Comey had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation, McCabe testified that he believed the bureau had adequate resources to complete the job.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How a Changing American Liberalism Is Pulling American Jews away From Israel American Jews, following American liberalism, have abandoned belief in the nation-state, non-voluntary communities, and religion in the public square. Evelyn Gordon *****

By on May 18th, 2017

In his essay “Why Many American Jews are Becoming Indifferent or Even Hostile to Israel,” Daniel Gordis lists, as key sources of tension, four major differences between the American and the Israeli political projects. His analysis strikes me as largely accurate, yet I think he misses something important by treating the differences as longstanding and perhaps even inherent. In fact, most are of recent vintage, and there is nothing inevitable or intractable about them. They are the product, first, of dramatic changes in the tenets of political liberalism, and second, of a collective decision by many American Jews to follow the new liberalism wherever it leads—even when it contradicts longstanding axioms of both American politics and traditional Judaism.https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2017/05/how-a-changing-american-liberalism-is-pulling-american-jews-away-from-israel/

Take, for instance, the issue of universalism versus particularism. It’s true, as Gordis notes, that unlike Israel, America was not founded to serve a particular ethnic group. Nevertheless, throughout most of its history, America has viewed itself and functioned as a nation-state. Thus, despite promoting supranational projects like the European Union, which entail forfeitures of sovereignty, America has shunned any such project for itself, preferring jealously to preserve its own sovereignty. This preference traces straight back to the founders’ distrust of “entangling alliances.” Even today, there is bipartisan agreement that America’s first responsibility is to itself, whether or not the “international community” agrees; that’s why even a thoroughly liberal president like Barack Obama didn’t hesitate to launch strikes against anti-American terrorists worldwide without waiting for UN approval—something few European countries would deem thinkable.

Of course, the agreement isn’t wall-to-wall. In recent decades a vocal subset of American liberals, mostly housed in the left wing of the Democratic party, has come to believe that—in the words of Walter Hallstein, first president of the European Commission—”the system of sovereign nation-states has failed.” As perhaps inevitable corollaries of this belief, they argue that national decisions require “global legitimacy,” and that one’s fellow citizens have no more claim on one’s allegiance than do citizens of other countries.

Princeton University, my alma mater, exemplifies this evolution. When I graduated in 1987, the university’s motto was “Princeton in the nation’s service,” which nobody considered problematic. A decade later, the idea that a university should dedicate itself to serving its own country in particular had become unacceptable in advanced liberal circles. And so, in 1996, the motto was changed to “Princeton in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations.” Two decades later, even this was deemed too particularistic; last year, the university’s trustees recommended a new version: “Princeton in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.”

The change is hardly trivial. Americans who view their country as a nation-state, even if not the state of a particular ethnic group, have no trouble understanding why, when Israeli and Palestinian interests clash, Israel puts its own interests first: why it is reluctant to cede more territory to Palestinians when every previous such cession has massively increased terror, or ready to fight wars to stop rocket fire on its civilian population. Only for liberals who believe that countries have no right to prioritize their own citizens over other human beings are such decisions unacceptable.

Yet, even today, this latter view, however dogmatically held in elite circles and by American Jews, is a minority one in America at large. That’s precisely why polls consistently show that most Americans still strongly support Israel.

The same goesfor a second difference highlighted by Gordis: namely, the place of religion in the public square. A few decades ago, few Americans thought twice about crèche scenes in public venues at Christmastime or public-school choirs singing Christmas carols. Nor has the legal situation changed since then. In a series of rulings in the 1980s and 1990s, the Supreme Court largely upheld the constitutionality of public displays of crèches and other religious symbols, only occasionally nixing them due to very specific circumstances. As recently as 2014, it also upheld a decision by a town in upstate New York to have volunteer chaplains open local board meetings with a sectarian prayer. To this day, politicians from across the political spectrum, including the last three Democratic presidents, continue to speak openly about their own faith.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Dallas County Whistleblower Tapes Democrat Campaign Worker Describing Voter Fraud Schemes By Debra Heine

By on May 18th, 2017

What is being described as one of the biggest voter fraud investigations in Texas history is currently unfolding in Dallas.

For the past couple of months prosecutors in the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office have been looking into allegations of voter fraud. Their investigation accelerated last week when more criminal and voter fraud allegations stemming from the May 6 election emerged. The D.A.’s office last week filed a notice of investigation of criminal conduct which reads in part:

The Dallas County Elections Department has in excess of 700 “Mail-In Ballots” that are directly linked to applications assisted by “Jose Rodriguez,” or are suspicious in nature.

Workers say the volume of complaints about questionable mail-in ballots has been “off the charts.”

“It’s totally frustrating,” said Dr. Pat Stephens of West Dallas. “You know, we all feel violated.”

Stephens is speaking out. She is still bothered about her signature being forged on an mail-in ballot application.

She’s among the 60 to 90 Dallas residents who investigators say have come forward over the past month, saying they received mail-in ballots which they did not request.

Stephens says red flags were raised when a suspicious man came to her home, saying he worked for Dallas County and wanted to pick up the ballot.

“I got a knock on my door and the guy was saying that he was coming to pick up the mail-in ballots and I told him, ‘Well I didn’t order one,'” she tells WFAA.

“Our forefathers fought for us to have this privilege, and for somebody to come along at take it away from us,” she continued.

The probe is beyond frustrating, not only for residents. It’s also keeping District Attorney Faith Johnson’s staff busy.

“There have been persistent rumors of voter fraud and messing around with mail-in ballots for years. But to the extent that I’ve been involved in Dallas County, this is off the charts,” Assistant District Attorney Andy Chatham said.

Dallas County prosecutors have been trying to discover the identity of the man who signed perhaps hundreds of the mail-in ballots, the mysterious “Jose Rodriguez.” Now a whistleblower has come forward, saying he knows who the culprit is.

Before the election, Sidney Williams, 33, made secret audio recordings of his interactions with Jose Barrientos, a campaign worker who suggested on tape that he pay off someone inside the county elections office to find out when mail-in ballots get sent out. “He’s not supposed to but yeah,” Barrientos told Williams. “But then you’ve got to drop a hundred or two or three. Whatever it is. He can’t do it for free.”

Barrientos also suggested in a phone call with Williams that he was the mysterious Jose Rodriguez, admitting that the signatures on the absentee ballots look just like his own. “You’re talking to the master, bro,” he boasted.

Williams shared the tape with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and WFAA ABC. According to his Facebook page, Williams also had an interview with the FBI.

Barrientos back-pedaled furiously when asked for comment: “I don’t do that stuff. I know that looks bad, me and Sidney talking s*** or trash. That looks bad. And I know it does, but that’s just talk,” he told WFAA.

Williams explained how he thinks Barrientos does it:

“He goes in there. He speaks to this county employee. The county employee tips him off by ZIP code, lets him know which precincts are dropping,” explained Williams. “Either he’s stealing them from the mailbox, yanking them from a little old lady who probably has them, says he’s going to assist her in a specific way for a specific candidate.”

In the secret recordings, Barrientos gave county prosecutors a lot to work with:

Williams: What do we do, chase the mailman or how does that work?

Barrientos: Your homeboy that’s at the elections office. He tells you when the f*****g ZIP codes are dropping. He’ll tell you like 75221 fixing to hit. Today. They’re going out.

Williams: He tells you that?

Barrientos: He’s not supposed to, but yeah. But then you’ve got to drop a hundred or two or three. Whatever it is. He can’t do it for free.

Barrientos also strongly suggested he has forged applications for mail-in or absentee ballots.

Williams: Where did you get this from?

Barrientos: Umm. You ask too many questions. What are you trying to be a cop or something?

Williams: No.

Barrientos: I just got a copy of it. That’s the first absentee ballot that was filed as a fraudulent absentee. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gloria Steinem: The Patriarchy Caused Climate Change By Forcing Women to Have Kids By Tyler O’Neil

By on May 18th, 2017

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem recently suggested that the “patriarchy” is responsible for climate change, by suppressing abortion and forcing women to have children.

“Listen, what causes climate deprivation is population,” Steinem told Refinery29 in an interview last week. “If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don’t want or can’t care for over the 500 years of patriarchy, we wouldn’t have the climate problems that we have. That’s the fundamental cause of climate change.”

Steinem’s comments reveal the classic liberal Malthusian lie — that increasing population will doom humanity. Thomas Malthus warned that population grows faster than the food supply, and that overpopulation will be the worst issue humans face. But human ingenuity launched multiple revolutions in food production, and made the modern world’s record population sustainable.

Even so, liberals cannot accept that the market solved this fundamental problem, and they constantly warn about overpopulation, despite evidence that underpopulation — especially in developed countries, but birth rates are falling even in undeveloped countries — is a bigger threat, as people age with fewer young people to replace them. Birth control and abortion are hailed as the solution to overpopulation, even as birth rates across the world are falling.

There is (or at least should be) a robust debate about whether or not humans are causing catastrophic climate change. Climate prediction models have failed time and time again, and the Democrats’ push to silence climate “denial” suggests that the alarmists are afraid of real challenge and debate. When climatologists are choosing “career suicide” to keep their “scientific integrity,” there’s clearly a problem.

Finally, Steinem’s tenuous claim is the worst justification for abortion imaginable. She essentially defended killing babies on the questionable premise that a smaller population will avoid an undefined impending future catastrophe. Imagine someone defending infanticide on this basis, or forced sterilization. Add a little racism, and voila! There are the arguments of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Menendez: Disclosing Corporate Political Spending Would Help Shareholders By Nicholas Ballasy

By on May 18th, 2017

“Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance political agendas.”

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said the disclosure of corporate political spending would have “obvious value” for America’s democracy.

“It adds transparency – cleans up campaign finance and it keeps the election process fair and free of super-funded outside influences here in the United States or from elsewhere. But even setting aside the benefits to democracy, the case for disclosure is clear and convincing, purely as a matter of corporate governance and investor protection,” Menendez said on a conference call briefing last week that focused on attempts to require the “largest mutual fund companies” to disclose political spending records.

“This information is material to how shareholders decide where to invest their money and how to vote in corporate elections. As it currently stands, corporations can funnel shareholders’ money to organizations that do not have to disclose their political contributions, and investors have no way of knowing whether executives are spending their money on political causes that may be directly adverse to the shareholders’ interests,” he said. “Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance their personal political agendas without any oversight from shareholders.”

For the last six years, Menendez said he’s been “pushing” the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin working on a rule to require public companies to disclose all of their political spending to shareholders.

“Some corporations have stridently fought this initiative. They’ve sounded the alarm bell and called upon their allies in Congress to fight common sense disclosure,” he said.

Menendez said new SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has not provided any “assurances” that he would take public support for a disclosure rule seriously. Menendez voted against Clayton’s confirmation.

“He wouldn’t commit to holding an innocuous public roundtable on the issue. He wouldn’t comment on whether he believes this disclosure is material to shareholders and I find that to be entirely inadequate when so many investors, both retail and institutional, are demanding this information,” he said. “Investors can’t rely on the shareholders’ proposal process alone to affect corporate change on this issue.”

Menendez, a member of the Senate Finance and Banking Committees, said the nation needs an SEC that will truly “stand up for investors and corporate governance principles and finally require this disclosure.”

“At the end of the day, those that choose not to support such a disclosure are working to silence the voices of hardworking Americans in favor of amplifying the speech and magnifying the influence of corporations in our politics, and that just simply can’t be the case,” he said.

Menendez said the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision “opened the floodgates” for unlimited, unchecked and “often undisclosed” corporate spending on campaign advertisements, federal and state advocacy efforts and other political communication methods. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Young Lochinvar, asylum seeker : Roger Franklin

By on May 18th, 2017

As university students and recent graduates protest the abhorrent notion of contributing a little more and a little sooner to the cost of their educations, S.L. writes to update fellow Quadrant readers on one of the things the taxpayer dollar is buying. The memo below went out this week to University of Technology Sydney students.

…I’m writing to invite you to contribute to the Empathy Poems, a new project in support of the asylum seeker and refugee crisis that affects Australia and its humanitarian responsibilities, as well as other parts of the world.

The idea is simple: choose a poem that you love — it might be a classic, a childhood favourite, or by a contemporary poet — and rewrite it using the themes of refuge, dispossession, and seeking asylum. That poem and its original (or a link to it) will be included in the Empathy Poems website, to raise awareness and foster understanding amongst readers.

The idea for this project came from Ian Syson’s moving poem ‘Beach Collection’, inspired by Kenneth Slessor’s famous ‘Beach Burial’. You don’t need to be a poet, simply someone who supports this idea. Other poems of inspiration so far have included ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, Primo Levi’s ‘If This is a Man’, a Shakespeare sonnet, and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’…..

…. I look forward to hearing from you and reading your poem!

best wishes,
Debra Adelaide

While it is true that the literary height achieved by The Owl and the Pussycat is a daunting prospect to emulate, empathetically or otherwise, let it not be said that supporters of open-border immigration policies are the only folk capable of going from bad to verse.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Indonesia gives men 85 lashes for homosexual acts…and no wedding cake By Ed Straker

By on May 18th, 2017

Two men in Indonesia caught “in the act” were sentenced to 85 lashes by a sharia law court.

Two men accused of having sex with each other were each sentenced on Wednesday to 85 lashes in public, the first case of people being punished for homosexuality in the Indonesian province of Aceh under a strict version of Shariah law. News reports said that vigilantes had caught the two men naked in bed, and that the two had pleaded not to be reported to the Shariah police.

You have to wonder how they were caught. Do the police have roving vans equipped with “gaydar” that picked them up on sensor sweeps? Or did the police have a man “on the inside”?

Homosexuality has been illegal in the highly conservative province since 2014, but this is the first time citizens have been punished for it. The maximum sentence for the crime is 100 lashes, but the court sentenced the men to 85 each after they apologized for their actions.

See, sharia law has plea bargaining, just like American law!

Although the timing of the sentencing appears to be a coincidence, Wednesday is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

What big words! “Transphobia” sounds like fear of vampires or people from Transylvania, and “biphobia” sounds like a fear of bipeds. But missing from the list is Islamophobia. Shouldn’t gays have been fighting that as well? The two whipped men certainly must have been!

According to an annual report on state-sponsored homophobia, compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, homosexuality is effectively a crime in 72 countries.

Intersex? I can’t keep up! This article needs subtitles!

In three – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – it is codified as a crime punishable by death, though executions are rare. In five other countries – Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – a death penalty for homosexuality is codified under Shariah law, but it has not been put into practice.

It’s ironic that the left is more incensed about the refusal of Christian bakers to bake a cake for two men claiming to marry each other than about the whipping and execution of gays in Islamic countries. I guess the left has more tolerance for some kinds of intolerance.

What we are talking about here is the difference between tolerance and acceptance. No Christian bakers want to see people whipped. They tolerate people who are attracted to members of the same sex. They would be happy to sell cookies to Anderson Cooper or Shepard Smith. But what they don’t want to do is be forced to approve of homosexual behavior, in this case by making a cake. That distinction is what is lost on the left. The left is more outraged by Americans’ lack of approval for homosexual behavior than it is by Islam’s lack of tolerance for those who engage in it. I wonder why.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The President Goes to Israel By Shoshana Bryen

By on May 18th, 2017

It is worth getting out of the weeds of Washington on occasion and looking at the big picture. This is one of those occasions.

President Trump is going to Israel, visiting the one stable, prosperous, multiethnic, multicultural, democratic ally the United States has in a region marked by war, repression, and corruption. When he visits the Western Wall, he will be the first sitting president to do so — Barack Obama came as a candidate, George W. Bush as governor of Texas, George H.W. Bush as vice president, and Bill Clinton both before and after his presidency.

The fact that he will visit during the week of the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem is a potent symbol of American support for Israel’s determination to keep the city open to all religious faiths – and specifically open to Jewish worship. There is no forgetting that only for the past 50 years, only under Israeli control, have Jews been able to study, visit, and pray at Judaism’s holiest sites. During Jordanian occupation of the eastern side of the city, and for the 500 years of Ottoman rule before that, Jews were restricted or banned entirely from their heritage.

The President’s visit to the holiest site in the Jewish world — accessible to Jews for less than his lifetime – is an exclamation point.

The reunification of Jerusalem was, of course, accomplished in the context of the Six-Day War, and the presidential visit comes in that context as well. The war was waged by Arab States unreconciled to Jewish sovereignty in any part of the historic Jewish homeland. Visiting on the eve of the commemoration of Israel’s defense of its place and defense of its rights, Mr. Trump has chosen a time ripe with symbolism to assert America’s longstanding — and newly recovered — shoulder-to-shoulder defense of Israel’s legitimacy and right to sovereign security.

But the visit is not only about symbols; certainly security is never only about symbols.

Mr. Trump was preceded in Israel by Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. Their visits were aimed at deepening U.S.-Israeli security cooperation and reversing the previous administration’s plan to enhance the role of Iran in the region and decrease American influence. Mr. Trump can be expected to praise the first and find additional ways to work with Israel to constrain Iran’s freedom of action in both missile and nuclear development, and in military activity in Syria, Yemen and the Persian Gulf.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s a Coup! By Shari Goodman

By on May 18th, 2017

During the last eight years, the far left and their cohorts in the Democratic Party were successfully on their way to transforming our Constitutional Republic from a country of laws into a country of men. They arrogantly believed the last election was theirs to be had with Hillary Clinton at the helm to continue Obama’s legacy of “leading from behind.” Their mission is the “transformation of our free market, our sovereignty, and our culture to a Socialist/Communist New World Order. They didn’t count on billionaire Donald Trump, who had never before held office, to throw a wrench into their radical agenda by injecting himself into our body politic, and in return they are waging a relentless coup to have him removed from office.

They have termed this coup “The Resistance” and with the aid of our activist judicial system, educational institutions, Hollywood, the press, and social media; they are leading a full blown war against President Trump on various fronts. With the aid of the propaganda media establishment, akin to the old Soviet Union’s Pravda, they proudly obstruct President Trump’s every move. Their aim is impeachment, but to impeach they need to have grounds; thus, they have concocted a conspiracy theory of Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians without a shred of evidence to support that theory.

Not a day goes by without an accusation by Democrats in search of a crime. When President Trump used an Executive Order to initiate his travel ban from countries known to be hotbeds of Islamic terrorism, the Left used the courts to stop his ban from taking effect. Although President Trump had the statutory authority to execute the ban pursuant to section 1182(f) and 1185 (a) of Title 8, they succeeded in halting the ban by filing their lawsuits in Federal District Court within the far left 9th Circuit (the most overturned court in the country), dominated by Clinton and Obama appointed judges, well known for its judicial activism and disregard of Constitutional principles. Consequently, Muslim refugees who cannot be vetted for lack of documentation continue to stream onto our shores and increase the risk of terror attacks on the mainland.

Currently the left is up in arms over the firing of former FBI Director, James Comey. The ACLU recently announced they will lead an investigation into the firing; yet not a word was heard from the ACLU when Bill Clinton fired FBI Director, William Sessions in 1993. It was only a few months ago when the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid called for Comey’s resignation. Socialist Maxine Waters from the left leaning state of California stated just a few days ago ” I don’t support Trump firing Comey, I would support Hillary Clinton firing Comey.” What we are witnessing is a schizophrenic narrative and a Democratic Party meltdown.

And if that isn’t enough, our college campuses are actively silencing those who support President Trump with physical assaults, threats, and intimidation. Institutions of learning should provide an environment for the free exchange of ideas, but instead, young Conservatives are threatened with poor grades should they express support for President Trump and his conservative agenda. There is no diversity of thought on today’s college campuses. It is fascism and group think that has taken root and those who differ are singled out as outcasts to be ridiculed and shunned at best or physically and verbally assaulted at worst.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sudan’s President to Attend Summit With Trump, Khartoum Officials Say Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other war crimes By Nicholas Bariyo in Kampala, Uganda, and Margherita Stancati in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

By on May 18th, 2017

Sudanese officials said President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other war crimes, will participate in a summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia that is to be attended by President Donald Trump.

A foreign ministry official in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Wednesday said Mr. Bashir would attend the Riyadh summit, convened by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to mark Mr. Trump’s two-day visit to the kingdom, which starts on Saturday and inaugurates his first overseas trip as U.S. president.

The U.S. isn’t a member of the ICC, but in response to reports that Mr. Bashir will attend the summit, the State Department voiced its opposition.

“The United States has made its position with respect to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s travel clear. We oppose invitations, facilitation, or support for travel by any person subject to outstanding ICC arrest warrants, including President Bashir,” a department official said in Washington.

Mr. Bashir’s attendance at the summit could pose a diplomatic challenge for Mr. Trump, whose visit to Saudi Arabia is aimed at reassuring America’s most important ally in the Arab world and sending a conciliatory message to Muslims in Middle East and beyond. After visiting Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump is to travel to Israel, the Vatican and Brussels.

Rabie Abdelaty, a top official in Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, said Mr. Bashir would arrive on Saturday in the Saudi capital, adding that it wasn’t clear whether he would meet Mr. Trump.

“The final program isn’t yet out, and arrangements are still under way, but President Bashir would welcome such a meeting,” Mr. Abdelaty said.

In Saudi Arabia, the status of Mr. Bashir’s attendance at the summit was unclear.

An official said Sudan was among the countries invited to attend the gathering but didn’t say whether Mr. Bashir would represent Khartoum.

So far, Mr. Bashir hasn’t been included on the official list of invited officials. The kingdom began sending invitations to Muslim leaders last week and has been announcing the names of likely attendees in the official Saudi Press Agency.

Mr. Bashir, who has ruled Sudan since 1989, is the first person to be charged by the ICC for the crime of genocide in connection with his government’s efforts from 2003 to 2008 to put down an insurgency in the southwestern region of Darfur.

In addition to three counts of genocide, Mr. Bashir also faces five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes. CONTINUE AT SITE

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