Displaying posts published in

August 2018

Spain: New Gateway to Europe for Mass-Migration by Thomas Paul Wiederholen

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12792/spain-mass-migration

Spain’s socialist government, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has promised free healthcare to migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually.

“[A] majority of irregular migrants rescued in the Central Mediterranean are most likely not refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention, given that some 70 % come from countries or regions not suffering from violent conflicts or oppressive regimes.” — From a 2017 report by the European Commission.

“We have created refugee shelters for tens of thousands of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants in our country. This has heavily impaired the security situation. They include terrorists, criminals, and human traffickers who do not care about human rights. It’s horrible.” — Libyan leader Fayez al-Sarraj.

On July 26, some 800 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently stormed the border fence between Morocco, where they were living illegally, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to Spanish authorities:

“In an attempt to stop the Guardia Civil getting close to the break-in area, the migrants … [pelted] officers with plastic containers of excrement and quicklime, sticks and stones, as well as using aerosols as flame-throwers.”

Many people were wounded in the clash, and 602 migrants succeeded in entering Spanish territory.

Two weeks earlier, the rescue ship Aquarius, operated by the French NGO Sos Méditerranée, picked up 629 Sub-Saharan migrants off the coast of Libya. After both Italy and Malta refused to take in the migrants, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini declaring, “No to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration,” Spain welcomed the ship, and two other vessels carrying illegal migrants, at the port of Valencia.

Former EDL leader Tommy Robinson freed as judges quash contempt ruling *****By Gareth Davies

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/01/former-edl-leader-tommy-robinson-freed-judges-quash-contempt/

Former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson has been freed on bail by leading judges after winning his challenge against a contempt of court finding.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett and two other judges in London quashed a finding of contempt made against Robinson at Leeds Crown Court in May when he was sentenced to 13 months in jail.

Announcing the decision on Wednesday, Lord Burnett said the court was allowing his appeal “in respect of the committal for contempt at Leeds Crown Court”.

He added: “The appellant is granted bail and the matter of contempt at Leeds Crown Court is remitted to be heard again.”

The judges had been urged to overturn two contempt of court findings against Robinson, 35, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon – made at Leeds Crown Court and at Canterbury Crown Court.

Supporters in the packed courtroom broke into a round of applause as Lord Burnett announced the decision.

Robinson was not present for the ruling and is expected to be released later from prison. A date for a new hearing has yet to be announced.

Trump in Florida: ‘The Time Has Come for Photo ID’ for Voting By Paula Bolyard

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-in-florida-the-time-has-come-for-photo-id-for-voting/

President Trump, speaking at a rally in Tampa, Fla., resurrected the issue of photo ID at the polls, suggesting that all voters should be required to show ID when they vote for president, senator, governor, or congressman.
“The time has come for voter ID, like everything else,” the president told supporters, “voter ID.”

“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” said Trump. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID. And you need your picture.”

“In this country the only time you don’t need it in many cases is when you want to vote for a president, when you want to vote for a senator, when you want to vote for a governor or a congressman,” Trump continued. “It’s crazy. It’s crazy. But we are turning it around.”

While many were quick to brand Trump as out of touch for not knowing that you don’t need a photo ID to buy groceries, his underlying premise — that we need better election security — was on point.

For years Democrats have fought every effort to secure our elections, crying “racism” in response to even the most minor changes to state voting laws.
PJM’s Roger Simon wrote last week that he was pleasantly surprised to learn that his new home state of Tennessee requires voters to present a photo ID at the polls — unlike his former home state of California, where he wasn’t asked to show any identification.

In fact, Tennesee is one of only a handful of states that require a photo ID to vote.

Peter Smith: Enemies of the People

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/enemies-people/

MAGA – Make Australia Great Again.

It is time for Australia to bring forth a political leader who will unashamedly put Australia and Australians first. This person won’t give away our advantage in cheap power, for starters, and will recognise immigration policy as the Ponzi scheme it is, a scam from which no long-term good can come.

According to last Friday’s issue of the Daily Telegraph, NSW Roads and Marine Time Services have a software contract for tender which specifies that 30% of the workforce must be based offshore within two years. And more thereafter. “Three-hundred jobs are expected to go overseas in the first three years alone,” the paper reports. What a complete sell-out of Australian workers by government bureaucrats safely ensconced in cushy jobs.

Workers unite, you have nothing to lose but the sanctimonious imposition of job-killing regimes by well-heeled elites – the modern-day bourgeoise. People who worry themselves about Donald Trump’s personality might do better to concentrate on what led to his rise. Working people – enough of them at any rate – were fed up.

I was fed up the other day. I contacted by power supplier by phone to say that I couldn’t seem to get its website to change my billing from paper to email. The computer kept saying ‘no’. I used the opportunity to ask about various bewildering discount plans which seemed to be on offer. I queried why his employer didn’t simply give me an appropriate discount on my inflated bill rather than present various obscure alternatives on its website. Knowledge of which I discovered only serendipitously. Tout de suite he gave me a discount of 28%, provided I listened to a banal two-minute message. I complied and apparently will now incur lower power bills. What a lark! In the course of our conversation I made it clear that I was unwilling to pay a cent for ‘carbon neutrality’, which the website was relentlessly pushing.

However, other people, working people, do pay for carbon neutrality – through the nose. Those working in coal-power stations pay with their jobs. Those in industries dependent for their competitiveness on cheap reliable power pay with their jobs. The small businesses in the communities within which they live pay with their livelihoods. The people in those communities pay with immiseration.

Persecution of Christians and the Left’s Willful Blindness The social justice crowd turns its back to the abuse of women in Muslim countries. Jack Kerwick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270871/persecution-christians-and-lefts-willful-blindness-jack-kerwick

“Islamophobia” now belongs to the left’s Politically Correct catalog of unpardonable transgressions.

Christophobia, however, still hasn’t made the cut.

While no one should be mistreated because of their religion, to see that the left’s is a grossly twisted moral vision, that they are as guilty as sin itself of straining out the gnat while letting in the camel, we need only juxtapose the experience of Christians vis-à-vis persecution with that of Muslims.

It’s true indeed that there are many Muslims throughout the world that have been made to suffer. Yet this has nothing to do with any so-called “Islamophobia,” for it is other Muslims, the corrupt leaders under which they live or the adherents of rival tribes and Islamic sects, from which their suffering stems.

And as far as Muslims in the West are concerned, the only “suffering” that they can be said to experience is the discomfort or inconvenience of supposedly being viewed with suspicion by their hosts.

This is what passes for “Islamophobia” throughout the contemporary Western world.

Never, though, do we hear from either native-born leftists or indignant Islamic immigrants about Christophobia.

Never do they utter a peep about the unimaginably brutal, relentless, and horrific oppression suffered by legions of Christian men, women, and children around the planet.

Never do they say a thing about the fact that to a far greater extent than the adherents of any other religion, Christians face persecution the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the days of the early Church when Christ’s disciples were fed to lions and burned alive.

There are two reasons for the deafening silence of the international left on this issue.

First, that Christians suffer any persecution, much less persecution that exceeds in both scope and horror any sustained by the members of any other religion, is a fact that threatens to undercut the left’s narrative of Christian oppressors and non-Christian victims.

Second, the one group that’s more responsible for perpetrating the oppression of Christians is the group that the left’s narrative of choice unfailingly depicts as victims. Though Muslims are not the only purveyors of Christian persecution around the globe, in the vast majority of instances, they are the perpetrators.

Not So Rotten in Denmark? They’re not turning things around, but at least they’re trying to slow down the decline. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270880/not-so-rotten-denmark-bruce-bawer

On July 1, the New York Times ran a long article by Ellen Barry and Martin Selsoe Sorensen headlined “In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos.’” How harsh? Henceforth, starting at the age of one, children living in designated “ghettos” – in other words, “low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves” – have to spend at least 25 hours a week receiving instruction in Danish values, “including the traditions of Christmas and Easter, and Danish language.” Parents who refuse to obey may lose their welfare payments.

Given the proven failure (over decades) of innumerable Muslim immigrants in Denmark to learn Danish, find jobs, and otherwise integrate into Danish society – not to mention the tendency of young people who’ve grown up in those “enclaves” to join gangs, commit violence, and express open hostility to native Danes and their culture – these laws sound eminently reasonable. In fact, anyone aware of the scale of the problem might well pronounce them tame and insufficient. But not the Times. Barry and Sorensen describe the new laws not as a responsible attempt to prevent the kind of social and economic collapse looming in next-door Sweden, and to preserve a free, safe, and solvent Denmark for future generations of ethnic Danes and the descendants of immigrants, but rather as a “tough” and “sinister” expression of the Danish government’s “ire.”

One law that the Times writers single out for disdain “would impose a four-year prison sentence on immigrant parents who force their children to make extended visits to their country of origin…in that way damaging their ‘schooling, language and well-being.’” Barry and Sorensen plainly find this law unspeakably severe. One wonders if they know what they’re talking about. The fact is that countless Muslim parents in Europe send their kids “back home” for years at a time – it’s called “dumping” – so that they can attend Koran schools, soak up Islamic codes of conduct, and (most important) be shielded from such abhorrent Western phenomena as individual liberty and sexual equality.

NAS Files Amicus Brief in Support of Students For Fair Admissions vs, Harvard

https://www.nas.org/

NEW YORK, NY, July 30, 2018 – The National Association of Scholars has filed an amicus brief in support of Students for Fair Admissions’ (SFFA) motion for summary judgment against the President and Fellows of Harvard College. SFFA’s motion documents Harvard’s racially motivated admissions policies and calls on the college to release admissions data and to adopt race-blind admissions policies.

“NAS supports the principle that students should be admitted to colleges on the basis of academic achievement, proven ability, ambition, and commitment to learning,” said NAS President Peter Wood. “Racial identity should play no role in determining who should or should not be admitted, and the same standards should be applied to all individuals. Judgments about good character may be appropriate, but not when they serve as subterfuges to favor or disfavor whole categories of students. Harvard is guilty of racially stereotyping Asian students as lacking ‘positive personality,’ likeability, courage, and kindness, and not being ‘widely respected.’ These are not true judgments of character, but ways of disguising an animus against Asian students.”

The National Association of Scholars has opposed racial preferences in admissions policies since its founding in 1988. NAS members wrote the text of California Proposition 209, which made race-based admissions policies such as Harvard’s illegal in 1996. NAS previously urged legislation, not litigation, to end race-based preferences, and still desires such an outcome. Transparency in admissions policies is an important step toward that goal.

Wood noted: “By filing this amicus brief, we hope to throw the weight of evidence behind SFFA and sway the court toward transparency so that the public may decide if race-based admissions are for the greater good.”

NAS is a network of scholars and citizens united by a commitment to academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education. Membership in NAS is open to all who share a commitment to these broad principles. NAS publishes a journal and has state and regional affiliates. Visit NAS at www.nas.org.

Trump Vows Border Wall Showdown But jelly-spined Republicans don’t have the president’s back. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270901/trump-vows-border-wall-showdown-matthew-vadum

President Trump raised the specter of a federal government shutdown Sept. 30 if Congress refuses to hand over money to build the southern border wall that the American people have been demanding for decades.

Trump seems aware that, contrary to perceived wisdom, furloughing feds for a few days is smart politics that almost invariably benefits the Republican Party. Recent history shows that when Republicans shutter the government in Washington, they win elections.

“If we don’t get border security after many, many years of talk within the United States, I would have no problem doing a shutdown,” Trump said at the White House Monday during a joint presser with Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s new prime minister who has already gained a reputation as an immigration hardliner.

Trump praised Conte’s stance on immigration and called U.S. immigration laws a “laughingstock” and the “worst” in the world.

“And I agree very much what you’re doing with respect to migration and illegal immigration, and even legal immigration,” Trump told the Italian premier. “Italy has taken a very firm stance on the border, a stance a few countries have taken. And, frankly, you’re doing the right thing, in my opinion. And a lot of other countries in Europe should be doing it also.”

Trump urged Congress to get to work on revamping the nation’s immigration system and said he would “certainly be willing to close it down to get it done.” In addition to wall construction funding, the Trump administration wants to end chain migration and abolish the diversity green card lottery.

Ever the dealmaker, Trump refused to be pinned down by pushy reporters. Although the government will run out of money at the end of September, the president did not promise to veto a spending bill that would avert a shutdown unless it contained “full” funding for a wall with Mexico, but added, “I’ll always leave room for negotiation.”

The Unmasking of The Weekly Standard By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/31/the-unmasking-of-the-weekly-

Barack Obama really owes Bill Kristol—big time.

First, had Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives not pushed for a deadly, prolonged war in Iraq after September 11, there would be no President Obama. The first-term senator’s premature candidacy for president was based largely on his vocal opposition to the Iraq War, which had been supported by his primary opponent, Senator Hillary Clinton.

“Most of you know I opposed this war from the start,” Obama said in his announcement speech in February 2007. “America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.”

Second, Kristol’s magazine, The Weekly Standard, just gave political cover to Obama’s most unforgivable scandal: The weaponization of our law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to target Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and violate the constitutional rights of private U.S. citizens.

In a flawed, dishonest, and truly contemptible cover article by April Doss, The Weekly Standard crossed the line from Trump foe to Obama defender; in the process, the allegedly “conservative” publication gave voice to a hyperpartisan Democrat who briefly worked for a disgraced Senate committee so she could smear a man who has been a real hero these past 18 months: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).

The article, “What We Can Learn About Carter Page, the FBI, and Devin Nunes’ Conspiracy Theory,” reflects the kind of willful ignorance and deceitfulness employed by pundits on the Left and the NeverTrump Right to make Nunes—and not the dozens of unelected bureaucrats who orchestrated this travesty—the real villain. It is straight-up, Adam Schiff-style propaganda.

Unreasonable and Belligerent
Ever since the Justice Department on July 21released a heavily redacted version of the application (along with three renewals) submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 seeking authority to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, the anti-Trump media mob has focused its wrath on Nunes, whose committee authored the bombshell memo that first outlined the misconduct behind the FISA application. Kristol and the Standard have aided #TheResistance in attacking Nunes since his memo was issued last February. Kristol objected to the memo’s release, then ridiculously warned that “when the history of the degradation of the Republican Party is written, the Nunes memo will be a significant moment.”

What Are the FBI and CIA Hiding? The agency might have led the bureau down a rabbit hole in the 2016 Trump counterintelligence probe. By Thomas J. Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-are-the-fbi-and-cia-hiding-1533078662

Did the Central Intelligence Agency lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation down a rabbit hole in the counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign?

Although the FBI’s case officially began July 31, 2016, there had been investigative activity before that date. John Brennan’s CIA might have directed activity in Britain, which could be a problem because of longstanding agreements that the U.S. will not conduct intelligence operations there. It would explain why the FBI continues to stonewall Congress as to the inquiry’s origin.

Further, what we know about the case’s origin does not meet the threshold required by the attorney general guidelines for opening a counterintelligence case. That standard requires “predicate information,” or “articulable facts.”

From what has been made public, all that passes for predicate information in this matter originated in Britain. Stefan Halper, an American who ran the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge, had been a CIA source in the past. Recent press reports describe him as an FBI informant. Joseph Mifsud, another U.K.-based academic with ties to Western intelligence, met with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016. Mr. Mifsud reportedly mentioned “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Then, on May 10, Mr. Papadopoulos met with Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer in London, to whom he relayed the claim about “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton.

Peter Strzok, the FBI’s deputy assistant director, went to London Aug. 2, 2016, two days after the case was opened, ostensibly to interview Mr. Downer about his conversation with Mr. Papadopoulos. But what about the earlier investigative activity? The FBI would not usually maintain an informant in England. It is far likelier that in the spring of 2016 Mr. Halper was providing information to British intelligence or directly to the CIA, where Mr. Brennan was already pushing the collusion narrative.

James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, has acknowledged that “intelligence agencies” were looking into the collusion allegations in spring 2016. The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that British intelligence had been suspicious about contacts between associates of Mr. Trump’s campaign and possible Russian agents. That prompted Robert Hannigan, then head of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, to pass information to Mr. Brennan. With only these suspicions, Mr. Brennan pressured the FBI into launching its counterintelligence probe. CONTINUE AT SITE