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May 2017

Exclusive: Tillerson declines to host Ramadan event at State Department By Yeganeh Torbati |

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declined a request to host an event to mark Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, two U.S. officials said, apparently breaking with a bipartisan tradition in place with few exceptions for nearly 20 years.

Since 1999, Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have nearly always hosted either an iftar dinner to break the day’s fast during Ramadan or a reception marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month, at the State Department.

Tillerson turned down a request from the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs to host an Eid al-Fitr reception as part of Ramadan celebrations, said two U.S. officials who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

According to an April 6 memo seen by Reuters, the office – which typically initiates such events – recommended that Tillerson hold an Eid al-Fitr reception.

His rejection of the request suggests there are no plans this year for any high-profile Ramadan function at the State Department. The month of fasting and prayer for Muslims gets under way in many countries on Saturday.

When asked by Reuters to comment on Tillerson declining a request to host an Eid al-Fitr event in July for Ramadan, a State Department spokesperson said:

“We are still exploring possible options for observance of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan. U.S. ambassadors are encouraged to celebrate Ramadan through a variety of activities, which are held annually at missions around the world.”

Muslim activists have accused President Donald Trump’s administration of having an unfriendly attitude toward Islam, encapsulated by its attempts to ban citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

The administration says that while it strongly opposes Islamist militants, it has no quarrel with Islam. Aides point to Trump’s visit this month to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam where he addressed the leaders of more than 50 Muslim countries, as evidence of that.

Members of Congress, Muslim civil society and community leaders, diplomats from Muslim countries and senior U.S. officials usually attend the State Department Ramadan event, a symbol of the U.S. government’s diplomatic efforts with Muslim countries and people.

If Tillerson avoids hosting one this year, that could send a message “that it is not as important to this administration to engage with Muslims,” said former U.S. diplomat Farah Pandith, who served in the Bush and Obama administrations and helped plan Ramadan events at the White House and State Department.

How Team Obama tried to hack the election Paul Sperry

New revelations have surfaced that the Obama administration abused intelligence during the election by launching a massive domestic-spy campaign that included snooping on Trump officials.

The irony is mind-boggling: Targeting political opposition is long a technique of police states like Russia, which Team Obama has loudly condemned for allegedly using its own intelligence agencies to hack into our election.

The revelations, as well as testimony this week from former Obama intel officials, show the extent to which the Obama administration politicized and weaponized intelligence against Americans.

Thanks to Circa News, we now know the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama routinely violated privacy protections while snooping through foreign intercepts involving US citizens — and failed to disclose the breaches, prompting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court a month before the election to rebuke administration officials.

The story concerns what’s known as “upstream” data collection under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which the NSA looks at the content of electronic communication. Upstream refers to intel scooped up about third parties: Person A sends Person B an e-mail mentioning Person C. Though Person C isn’t a party to the e-mail, his information will be scooped up and potentially used by the NSA.

Further, the number of NSA data searches about Americans mushroomed after Obama loosened rules for protecting such identities from government officials and thus the reporters they talk to.

The FISA court called it a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” that NSA analysts — in violation of a 2011 rule change prohibiting officials from searching Americans’ information without a warrant — “had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

A number of those searches were made from the White House, and included private citizens working for the Trump campaign, some of whose identities were leaked to the media. The revelations earned a stern rebuke from the ACLU and from civil-liberties champion Sen. Rand Paul.

We also learned this week that Obama intelligence officials really had no good reason attaching a summary of a dossier on Trump to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave to Obama just weeks before Trump took office.

Trump Quietly Slipped Out Of Sight For A Few Hours Overseas – Here’s The Unbelievable Reason Why By Amanda Shea

President Trump and First Lady Melania have been tirelessly traveling for almost an entire week and are nearing the end of their first overseas presidential trip. The couple just landed in Belgium and the president will soon be attending the G7 Summit back in Italy on Friday and Saturday. However, with as busy as he’s been for days, he recently dropped everything and quietly slipped out of sight for a few hours and now we know the unbelievable reason why.

There’s been no shortage of media coverage as the Trumps travel the globe this week. Liberal news outlets wait with baited breath for the first sign of slip up on the president’s first overseas trip and will find anything to judge him for. Despite having cameras following the couple practically around the clock, there’s one outing in Israel that media “conveniently” missed and it’s clear as to why they chose not to cover it.

Practically every second of the president’s 27-hours in Israel was packed and planned out, but he still made time to fulfill a wish of a 14-year-old who heard he was coming to her country. As eager as she was to see him, Trump was reportedly eager to meet this special little girl.

The Yeshiva World reports:

“During his recent visit to Israel, President Donald Trump made a 14-year old girl’s dream come true. Emilee Imbar has been battling cancer for the last seven years, and has dreamed of meeting with the U.S. President.”

“Rachashei Lev is Israel’s national support center for pediatric cancer patients, and among their hundreds of invaluable services, they have helped thousands of pediatric cancer patients to achieve their dreams.”

Emilee’s dream was to meet the President of the United States and she got that wish fulfilled by our incredibly personable leader. Trump truly loves kids as much as the First Lady, who seems to have had a compassionate effect on him. Perhaps not surprising, was that the entire media ignored this incredible story and act of love from our president since it’s counter to their narrative.

You can bet that if Barack Obama had done something as thoughtful as this, there would have been a media entourage in tow. On the contrary, liberals accused Melania of only being interested in the “photo op” at her frequent and lengthy hospital visits, which is far from the truth with the genuine love and concern for kids this couple continually exudes.

Polish PM on Manchester Attack: ‘Europe, Rise from Your Knees or You’ll Be Crying over Your Children Every Day” By Donna rachel Edmunds

The prime minister of Poland has launched a blistering attack on the “political elites” of Europe in the wake of the Manchester terror attack, warning the continent must put in place “strong politicians” willing to tackle the threat or risk “crying over your children”.

Speaking in the Polish Parliament on Wednesday, Beata Szydło seized the moment to launch an excoriating attack on European Union leaders following the Manchester attack which, among others, claimed the lives of a Polish couple, leaving their two daughters as orphans.

“We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite,” she railed. “We want to help people, not the political elites.

“Where are you headed Europe?” she demanded. “Rise from your knees and from your lethargy or you will be crying over your children every day.

“If you can’t see this – if you can’t see that terrorism currently has the potential to hurt every country in Europe, and you think that Poland should not defend itself, you are going hand in hand with those who point this weapon against Europe, against all of us.

“It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions.”

Addressing the people of Europe, she asked: “Do we want politicians who claim we have to get used to the attacks, and who describe terrorist attacks as incidents, or do we want strong politicians who can see the danger and can fight against it efficiently?”

Szydło’s Government is currently locked in a battle with Brussels over Commission plans for every member state who is signed up to the Common European Asylum System to take in a quota of migrants from Greece and Italy as a solidarity measure.

The previous Polish Government agreed in 2015 to take in 4,500-5,000 migrants, the commitment increased by the EU to 6,200, but Szydło’s administration reversed that decision upon taking power and has promised instead to give aid to people in refugee camps in the Middle East.

Brussels has responded by issuing threats of sanctions if no migrants are taken by June. The same threat has been made to Hungary, which also has yet to take any migrants in under the quota system.

Let’s Give the Platitudes Surrounding Terrorism a Rest President Trump’s bracing call for truth. By David Harsanyi

Following the terrorist attack in Manchester that left at least 22 people dead and dozens injured, many of them children, President Donald Trump referred to terrorists as “evil losers in life.” As expected, a number of liberal pundits mocked the president’s unrefined language. So jejune, you know?

Inadvertently or not, Trump landed on a plain-spoken stinging moniker that happens to be true. No matter how many people the next Salman Abedi ends up killing, theocratic dead-enders are losers in every societal, ideological, and historical sense. Perhaps some blunt language will lead to some clearer thinking on the issue.

Now, it’s debatable whether it matters very much to would-be terrorists what unpleasant names Trump has in store for them. How we talk about terrorism, on the other hand, is important. Over the past eight years (at least), the topic has been obscured by clinical euphemisms and feel-good platitudes for the sake of winning hearts and minds. How’s that going?

If unkind words about Islam – Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, for instance — offer “aid and comfort” to the Islamic State group or compel more Muslims to blow up pressure cookers filled with nails to kill infidel children, that illustrates what might be a terrible truth about the state of Islam, not about American society.

Leaders in Western nations have gone out of their way to craft rhetoric that circumvents Islam completely when speaking about terrorism. We’re hooked on platitudes, such as “man-caused disaster,” treating terrorism as some kind of spontaneous criminal event, rather than a tactic used predominantly by one ideology. At the same time, the Left has been transforming tolerance into a creed that means accepting illiberalism. Their overcompensation to imagined backlashes has given real-life excuses to ignore the pervasive violence, misogyny, homophobia, child abuse, tyranny, anti-Semitism, bigotry against Christians, etc., that exist in large parts of Islamic society. Saying, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” as President Obama did, makes every critic a hater.

After every Manchester or Paris or Nice, we are immediately instructed to watch our language and tone. Because love is love. You might remember former attorney general Loretta Lynch telling an LGBT group on the heels of the mass Islamic killing at a gay club in Orlando, Fla., that the “most effective” weapon Americans have to fight terrorism is love.

Exclusive: Manchester suicide bomber used student loan and benefits to fund terror plot BYRobert Mendick, Martin Evans, Victoria Ward

The Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loans and benefits to bankroll the terror plot, police believe.

Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training.

Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp.It comes as Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, said detectives had made “immense progress” in dismantling Abedi’s terror network.

In further developments, a barber shop in Manchester was raided with one theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide – a chemical used in the hairdressing industry but which can also be used to construct bombs – from the salon.

Abedi’s finances are a major ‘theme’ of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing.

One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015.

It is thought he received a further £7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course. Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack.

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester.

Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash.

He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb.

MY SAY: …THAT WHAT AND WHEREFORE OF EVERGREEN COLLEGE

There is much ado about Evergreen State College which hosts an annual event called a “Day of Absence” where, minority students and faculty stay away from the campus for the day to show just how significant their impact is. Additionally, white students attend workshops on racism.

So here’s the scoop on this great institution of learning: Their motto is “omnia extares” roughly translated as “let it all hang out.”

Evergreen State College is an accredited public liberal arts college and a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, located in Olympia, Washington, USA. Founded in 1967, Evergreen was formed to be an experimental and non-traditional college. Full-time students enroll in interdisciplinary academic programs instead of classes. Programs typically offer students the opportunity to study several disciplines in a coordinated manner. Faculty write narrative evaluations of students’ work in place of issuing grades.

Evergreen offers a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Bachelor of Science, Master of Environmental Studies, Master of Public Administration, and Master in Teaching. In 2016, there were 4,089 students, 3,787 of whom were undergraduates, and 229 faculty members.

Student groups include Evergreen Socialist Alternative (Part of the national Socialist Alternative organization), the Giant Robot Appreciation Society (Japanese animation club), a branch of the International Solidarity Movement, The Evergreen Shellfish Club, Evergreen State Permaculture, Freedom First Dance Collective (formerly known as the Evergreen Dance Co-Op), The Evergreen Players’ club (Magic the Gathering), Hip-Hop Congress, The Electronic Music Collective, Abolish Cops and Prisons, and Riot to Follow Theater Productions; Evergreen Young Americans for Liberty, among many others.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot that among the illustrious alums is the late anti- Israel Rachel Corrie ‘peace activists” who was accidentally killed on one of her forays in Israel, and Rep. Dennis Heck(D.Washington District 9) who has a dismal score for legislation and bills passed in Congress: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/denny_heck/412584/report-card/2016.

Another Professor, Another Mob If social-justice warriors can come for a man like Bret Weinstein, they can come for anyone. By Elliot Kaufman

Evergreen State College, a small liberal-arts school in Washington State, has long had an interesting tradition. Each year, there is a “Day of Absence” on which students and faculty members of color meet off campus to hold solidarity-building activities, leaving the remaining community members to recognize the absence — and thus the value — of their peers. Later there is a “Day of Presence,” with similar activities but for the entire campus community.

But this year, the event changed. On the April 12 Day of Absence, minority students and faculty remained on campus, while whites were asked to leave. According to the local student newspaper, the decision reflected concerns following the 2016 election that students of color no longer felt comfortable on campus. This was to be their chance to reassert their right to belong on campus . . . by asking everyone else of a particular skin color to leave.

One liberal biology professor, Bret Weinstein, took issue with this change. Weinstein wrote a powerful e-mail to his colleagues on March 15. Deeply respectful and generous in tone, he made a simple point:

There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles . . . and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.

You may take this letter as a formal protest of this year’s structure, and you may assume I will be on campus on the Day of Absence.

For this fundamentally liberal argument and act of protest, Professor Weinstein has been pilloried. More than that, those words — words forming as reasonable a dissent as any — incited a mob on Tuesday. Students occupied and barricaded the campus library, and accosted Weinstein outside his classroom. As you can see in this video, the mob surrounded him, yelled at him, swore at him, and openly admitted they did not want to allow him to respond.

How Sharia Supremacism and Judicial Imperialism Threaten National Security Having failed to define the real threat — sharia supremacism — Trump walked into a trap of his own making. By Andrew C. McCarthy

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling against President Trump’s so-called travel ban empowers both radical Islam and judicial imperialism. The combination portends lasting damage to the United States.

To rehash, the executive order (EO) proclaimed temporary restrictions (the main one, for 90 days) on travel to the United States by the nationals of six countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Those countries, along with Iraq (cited in Trump’s original executive order, but not the revised EO at issue), had previously been singled out by Congress and President Obama — not because they are Muslim-majority countries, but because a) the presence or promotion of terrorism in their territories makes their nationals suspect and b) their anti-Americanism and/or dysfunctional governments render it impossible to conduct background checks on visa applicants.

This Fourth Circuit’s en banc review of prior invalidations of the EO by “progressive” activists masquerading as jurists produced 205 pages of opinions. The outcome was about as uncertain as Secretariat at Belmont, with ten of the tribunal’s 13 judges joining Chief Judge Roger Gregory’s majority ruling to one degree or another.

Three judges filed compelling dissents that will prove quite useful when, as Trump promises, the case proceeds to the Supreme Court. The continuation of the litigation is an unfortunate outcome, even if conservatives and other rule-of-law types, buoyed by Justice Neil Gorsuch’s appointment, may be right that the EO has a better shot in the High Court.

That’s because the EO doesn’t matter. You may not have noticed, but sharia supremacism has already won, regardless of what the Supreme Court does.

See, the EO was never an end in and of itself. It is a means — a fatally flawed one — to a vital end. That end is a vetting system that enables our security services to distinguish pro-Western Muslims from sharia supremacists. That’s the goal. The EO was conceived as a temporary pause while the vetting system took shape.

From a security perspective, though, the EO was utterly ineffective: applicable to a negligible slice of the global anti-American threat. More significantly, as a strategy, starting with the EO rather than getting to vetting has been a catastrophe.

As we have previously observed, in order to install the vetting system we need, the challenge of Islam must be confronted head-on and without apology. That is unavoidable. You can’t flinch. It is a certainty that the Democrat-media complex — of which Islamist organizations are members in good standing — is going to smear you as a racist “Islamophobe.” (Yes, this is another race-obsessed “progressive” narrative, so Islam gets to be the “race,” so that defenders of the Constitution and Western culture can be cast as “the oppressor.”) You have to be content with knowing that you are not a racist, with knowing that you are defending religious liberty, including the religious liberty of pro-Western Muslims.

There is a single battle that must be won. American culture must be convinced that Islam, while it has plenty of diversity, has a mainstream strain — sharia supremacism — that is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology hiding under a religious veneer.

Police Tell Prof He’s in Danger for Not Participating in Campus ‘No Whites’ Day By Tom Knighton

Evergreen State College hosts an annual event called a “Day of Absence” where, traditionally, minority students and faculty step away from the campus for the day to show just how significant their impact is. Additionally, white students attend workshops on racism.

This year, the school apparently thought it would just be a hoot to change things up and just kick all the white folks off campus instead. Biology professor Bret Weinstein, however, took issue with the event.

Now, students are calling for his head:

Students at Evergreen State College in Olympia, who filmed their exploits and posted the videos on social media, have occupied and barricaded the library, shouting down anyone who disagrees with them or shows insufficient passion for racial justice.

Biology professor Bret Weinstein was berated by dozens of students outside of his classroom Tuesday morning for refusing to participate in an event in which white people were invited to leave campus for a day. Now, he says police have told him to hold his classes off campus due to safety concerns.

Things are “out of control at Evergreen,” he said.

“Police told me protesters stopped cars yesterday, demanding information about occupants,” Mr. Weinstein told The Washington Times. “They believe I was being sought. It appears that the campus has been under the effective control of protesters since 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. Police are on lockdown, hamstrung by the college administration. Students, staff and faculty are not safe.”

A student interviewed denies any knowledge of Weinstein being specifically sought.

Weinstein’s sin is simply thinking that asking white folks to leave the campus was very different than minorities choosing to remove themselves from campus. He has a point. It appears that the original intent of this event is to show just how important minorities are to the proper functioning of the school. So why will demanding 66.7 percent of the student body, as well as Lord only knows how many faculty and staff, accomplish that same purpose?

Weinstein took issue with the change in an email, which led to him being confronted by students who refused to listen to the professor:

When the professor tells the students he will listen to them if they listen to him, one student responds, “We don’t care what terms you want to speak on. This is not about you. We are not speaking on terms — on terms of white privilege. This is not a discussion. You have lost that one.”

Another protester asks the professor whether he believes “black students in sciences are targeted.”

After asking for a clarification, Mr. Weinstein says, “I do not believe that anybody on our faculty, with intent, specially targets students of color.”

That remark prompts shrieks of outrage.

Way to keep those lines of communication open, kids. Way to go.