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A Bad Iran Investment The Obama administration’s promotion of Iran’s economy has prompted no change in Iranian behavior. by Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

Stretching appeasement to the breaking point, Washington is working overtime to convince global institutions, nations, banks and companies to dismiss their well-founded concerns and do business with the America-hating, terror-sponsoring, nuclear weapons-pursuing regime in Tehran.

Washington’s efforts – which are coming despite no discernable change in Iranian behavior – extend a familiar script of recent years, in which the Obama administration kowtows to the regime, ignores the concerns of America’s regional allies and breaks its promises to monitor Iranian activities closely and act accordingly.

It’s an embarrassing spectacle that diminishes U.S. leadership and credibility in the region and beyond.

Nevertheless, the U.S. effort is having an impact. The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, which sets global standards for fighting money laundering and terror financing, responded to U.S. pressure by deciding last week to suspend for a year its measures to combat Iranian terror sponsorship because Iran has adopted a plan to address the problem – even though Tehran hasn’t actually implemented it. And the plan is meaningless to begin with because it excludes from “terrorism” any group that Iran says is “attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism, and racism,” as Iran surely would say of its terrorist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

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Egyptian author Sayyid Al-Qemany: Islam in Its Present Form Is a Threat to the World, All Scorpions Sting See video

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/5542.htm
Egyptian author Sayyid Al-Qemany, speaking at the first convention of the
Adhoc organization, a London-based “secularist, modernist, pluralist”
international NGO, warned about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism,
saying: “Any Muslim who believes that his religion is suited to all times
and places is a terrorist by definition.” Al-Qemany said that “all scorpions
sting” and that the only difference is that some have not yet had the chance
to perform “the best act that brings you close to Allah” by carrying out the
duty of Jihad. The convention, titled “The Roots and Causes of Islamic
Violence,” was held in Brussels on May 22, and Al-Qemany’s address was
posted on the YouTube account of the “I Think” Magazine.

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APPARENTLY BREXIT ISN’T THE “RIGHT” KIND OF REVOLUTION : BEN WEINGARTEN

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

Popular democratic revolutions are all the rage, until they aren’t.

Remember the (inherently) progressive Establishment’s glee around the globe at the prospect of the Arab Spring?

Contrast its favorable reaction to the “democratic” jihadist takeover of the Middle East with the chaos and cringing that has ensued in the wake of Brexit.

What is clear is that regardless of the substantive impact of Great Britain’s referendum, its symbolic effect has been extraordinary.

Irrespective of #Leave’s implications on economics, immigration and national security, #Brexit is a direct rebuke to the bipartisan Establishment’s most cherished values and principles, and an indictment of its rule.

Too, by challenging the progressive status quo, Brexit has exposed some delicious double standards.

Here are just a few of them:
National Sovereignty and Self-Determination

As mentioned, recall that the Arab Spring was viewed by the global political class as an unalloyed good. Further, the political class always claims to be against meddling in the affairs of other nations, lest the West creates a 21st century wave of neo-colonialist blowback. And anyway, we are supposed to be non-judgmental. Who are we to tell others what is right and wrong?

The angered reaction of Western elites to #Brexit shows that the above is a farce. The Establishment believes in forcing its values and principles on others when it is in its political interest, in particular when it gives the Establishment more power and control. It is highly judgmental of those who do not toe its line and submit, as reflected in the stern warnings of Democrats and Republicans who lobbied for Brexit, and the talking heads exploding today.

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DAVID GOLDMAN: DEMOGRAPHICS AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE BREXIT VOTE

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

Britain’s “Leave” camp argues that the deciding issue in the Brexit vote was sovereignty, not immigration. The two issues, though, inevitably will become linked. The continental members of the European Community, especially Germany, are on a slippery slope which will lead to mass absorption of migrants and eventually the free movement of many of those migrants within the European Community. Britain’s interests in the matter of migration differ markedly from Germany’s, and that divergence is the most pressing reason for Britain to leave the EC.

There are many differences between the UK and Germany, but the most important difference is that at present fertility rates the UK will be there at the end of the present century and Germany will not. That does not mean that Germany will disappear: it means that Germany requires many millions of immigrants to compensate for the fact that German women average 1.3 to 1.4 births over their lifetime. The chart below (from UN Population Program data) shows that during the present century, the number of German women in their childbearing years will fall by half to two-thirds, while the number of British women of childbearing age will remain stable or decline about 20%.

In my view, the best comparison is between the UK medium fertility scenario and the German low fertility scenario, because German fertility has consistently undershot the “Low” scenario in the United Nations forecasts.

The UK, in short, can cherry-pick immigrants by whatever criteria it adopts (education, professional qualifications, wealth), the way Australia’s point system does. It has time and leisure to decide what sort of immigration population it needs. Germany needs 5 to 10 million females of childbearing age, which implies an overall immigration of 10 to 20 million individuals. Where will they come from? Most of the immigrants to Germany during the past fifty years have come from Southern and Eastern Europe and Turkey. But those sources are drying up, for southern Europe suffers from fertility rates about the same as Germany’s, and Eastern European fertility is even lower.

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Guess who’s coming to Iftar? Offensive Islamic views are not personal, they are religious Mark Durie

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

A widely-publicised Iftar dinner, intended to show that Malcolm Turnbull gets what it means to be inclusive, ended badly after he was advised that one of his guests, Sheikh Shady Alsuleiman, had taught that Islam prescribes death for adulterers, and homosexuals spread diseases. No rogue maverick, Australian-born Alsuleiman is the elected national president of the Australian National Imams Council.

Although insisting that ‘mutual respect is absolutely critical’, Turnbull subjected this prominent Muslim leader to public humiliation. He regretted inviting him to dinner and counselled the sheikh ‘to reflect on what he has said and recant’. In the middle of an election, wanting to limit fallout from the dinner-gone-wrong, held only days after the Orlando massacre, Turnbull stated that his no-longer-welcome guest’s views are ‘wrong, unacceptable and I condemn them’.

Well may Mr Turnbull deplore Alsuleiman’s teachings, but the real challenge is that these were not merely his personal views. The sheikh’s teachings on homosexuality and adultery reflect the mainstream position of Islam, preached by many a Muslim scholar around the world today, and telling a sheikh to reject the sharia is like telling a pope to get over the virgin birth.

Many Australian Muslims will be disappointed at the treatment meted out to Sheikh Alsuleiman. An event designed to honour the Muslim community ended up providing a platform to denigrate one of their most respected leaders for promoting Islamic doctrines. Several Australian Muslim leaders have since dug in their heels to affirm support for the sharia position on homosexuals. So much for recanting.

While Turnbull refused to pass judgement on Islam itself, saying ‘there are different views of different issues, as there are in all religions’, he also sent a message that he is prepared to disparage Australian Muslims’ religious beliefs. It was a bitter pill for Muslims to swallow that this came in the form of a humiliating invite-to-disavow game of bait-and-switch, conducted during a pre-election media storm.

The cognitive dissonance is startling.

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MARILYN PENN: A REVIEW OF “THE SEPTEMBERS OF SHIRAZ”

Posted By on July 1st, 2016

The Septembers of Shiraz is not only a compelling movie but an important one to see. Based on the book by Dalia Sofer which recreated the experiences of her own family, the film is the only one I can recall dealing with the plight of Iranian Jews after the fall of the Shah and the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini. Its contemporary importance is heightened by the recent agreement between the US and Iran and the threat that this poses to Israel and to the many middle-eastern Jews persecuted by Muslims in countries that were formerly hospitable to them. They all learned first-hand how brutal that persecution was – confiscation of wealth and property, imprisonment, torture, expulsion or death.

In a searing performance by Adrien Brody, the character of Isaac goes from that of a successful gemologist and jeweler to the Empress to a bewildered man imprisoned summarily and beaten into submission in an attempt to force him to divulge the whereabouts of his shady brother and his own fortune. His family is never told of his whereabouts or whether he is still alive and part of the story concerns their own travails. The faithful housekeeper who has been with them for many years begins to be influenced by her militant son who believes the propaganda that anyone with money has gotten it by stealing what rightfully belongs to the common, less fortunate man. In this case, forgetting the paternal kindness exhibited by Isaac when the housekeeper and her son were homeless and poverty-stricken, the son steals the jewels and furnishings of the business and threatens to further blackmail Isaac in a way that could prove fatal.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Judge Expands Investigation into Hillary Clinton’s Dealings with Foundation Donors E-mails ordered released Wednesday could contain evidence that Clinton kept a secret, off-the-books schedule of meetings with foreign foundation donors as secretary of state. By Brendan Bordelon

Posted By on June 30th, 2016

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the State Department to produce the e-mail records of Hillary Clinton’s scheduler during her tenure as secretary of state, expanding an investigation being pursued by conservative nonprofit Citizens United into the overlap between Clinton’s official travel and her meetings with foreign Clinton Foundation donors.

Citizens United is slated to receive all e-mails sent to and from Lona Valmoro, Clinton’s State Department scheduler, in the two-week periods before each of 14 international trips Clinton took during her four years in office. David Bossie, president of Citizens United, hopes to confirm suspicions that Clinton maintained an off-the-books schedule, meeting with Clinton Foundation donors on the taxpayer’s dime. “Citizens United wants to know how many overseas dinners Secretary Clinton attended with Clinton Foundation donors that didn’t make it on her schedule,” he says.

Judge Rosemary Collyer, the federal judge presiding over a public-records case brought by Citizens United, was initially hesitant to allow the release of Valmoro’s e-mails, and asked the group to provide one example of an off-the-books meeting with Clinton Foundation donors. As part of a joint filing with the State Department on Monday, Citizens United presented the judge with several pieces of evidence suggesting Valmoro deliberately struck from the official schedule a December 6, 2012, dinner in Dublin, Ireland, with several Clinton Foundation and Clinton campaign donors, organized by Teneo co-founder Declan Kelly. Though Valmoro was made aware of the Dublin meeting through an earlier e-mail chain, neither Clinton’s archived daily calendar nor her detailed official schedule make any note of it.

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Mother: Cops Called on My Third-Grade Son over Racism Concerns for Talking About Brownies Yes, as in the baked good. By Katherine Timpf —

Posted By on June 30th, 2016

An elementary school in New Jersey allegedly called the police on a third grader for talking about brownies — yes, as in the baked good — over concerns that the word “brownies” may have been a racial slur.

According to the student’s mother, her nine-year-old son was participating in a conversation about the bakery treat during his end-of-the-year class party at William P. Tatem Elementary School on June 16 when another student remarked that his comment was racist. Rather than explain to the accusing student that the name of the baked good is a generally accepted term and not racially charged whatsoever, the school actually called the police.

Yes — the police.

“He was intimidated, obviously,” the mother, Stacy dos Santos, said, according to Philly.com.

“There was a police officer with a gun in the holster talking to my son, saying, ‘Tell me what you said,’” she continued. “He didn’t have anybody on his side.”

According to Philly.com, the police department also contacted the boy’s father, and the incident was referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency — because after all, hearing a nine-year-old talking about snacks definitely makes you wonder how he could possibly be safe living in a home with people who raised him to behave that way.

According to dos Santos, her son spent his last day of third grade at home because of the incident, and he feels so “traumatized” over it that they’re hoping to send him to a different public school in the fall.

Unfortunately, another school in the same district may just be more of the same. After all, according to both school officials and police, they were told during a May 25 meeting with representatives from the county prosecutor’s office that every little thing that could maybe potentially be considered criminal – even things that Police Chief Kevin Carey called “as minor as a simple name-calling incident” — should be reported to the cops. What’s more, Carey also said that “just about every incident” should be reported to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. According to Philly.com, Superintendent Scott Oswald estimated that the cops may have been called to as many as five incidents per day in the district of 1,875 students over the last month.

Not surprisingly, Philly.com reports that parents are not big fans of the policy — and that they have written letters and taken to social media to express this. Hopefully, it can make a difference. After all, what good can come from involving law enforcement anytime some kid talks about snacks is really not clear — but the potential for harm is.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.

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Anti-Brexit Elites Aren’t the Ones Who Suffer from Their Policies By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 30th, 2016

Following the Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent.

The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies. The bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg too often lectures European voters on climate change, immigration, politically correct attitudes about diversity, and the constant need for more bureaucracy, more regulations, and more redistributive taxes.

But Euro-managers are able to navigate around their own injunctions, enjoying private schools for their children; generous public pay, retirement packages and perks; frequent carbon-spewing jet travel; homes in non-diverse neighborhoods; and profitable revolving-door careers between government and business.

The Western elite classes, both professedly liberal and conservative, square the circle of their privilege with politically correct sermonizing. They romanticize the distant “other” — usually immigrants and minorities — while condescendingly lecturing the middle and working classes, often the losers in globalization, about their lack of sensitivity.

On this side of the Atlantic, President Obama has developed a curious habit of talking down to Americans about their supposedly reactionary opposition to rampant immigration, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and political correctness — most notably in his caricatures of the purported “clingers” of Pennsylvania.

Yet Obama seems uncomfortable when confronted with the prospect of living out what he envisions for others. He prefers golfing with celebrities to bowling. He vacations in tony Martha’s Vineyard rather than returning home to his Chicago mansion. His travel entourage is royal and hardly green. And he insists on private prep schools for his children rather than enrolling them in the public schools of Washington, D.C., whose educators he so often shields from long-needed reform.

In similar fashion, grandees such as Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos do not live what they profess. They often lecture supposedly less sophisticated Americans on their backward opposition to illegal immigration. But both live in communities segregated from those they champion in the abstract.

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Helen Mirren rejects efforts to boycott Israel In Jerusalem to host Genesis Prize award ceremony, Oscar-winning actress says she’s a ‘believer’ in the Jewish state

Posted By on June 30th, 2016

http://www.timesofisrael.com/actress-helen-mirren-rejects-efforts-to-boycott-israel/Helen Mirren rejects efforts to boycott Israel | The Times of Israel

Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren says she is a “believer” in Israel and rejects efforts to boycott it.

Mirren showered Israeli artists with praise Wednesday and said she opposed efforts by pro-Palestinian groups to boycott them.

Mirren is in Israel to host the Genesis Prize, an award known as “the Jewish Nobel.” The $1 million prize is being awarded to Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman for his accomplishments as a musician, teacher and advocate for the disabled.

Mirren, who first visited as a volunteer in the 1960s, says she has a strong connection to Israel.

Mirren is one of the few actors to have won the so-called Triple Crown — an Oscar, Tony and Emmy. She received her Academy Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 film “The Queen.”