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France Cracks Down on Everyone to Avoid Singling Out Islamic Terrorism By Michael Curtis

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/france_cracks_down_on_everyone_to_avoid_singling_out_islamic_terrorism.html

On September 2, 2020 a trial, postponed because of COVID-19, openedin Paris concerning those alleged to have been involved in the deadly attack in 2015 on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly magazine.  Besides recounting the gruesome account of the details of terrorist activity, the trial implicitly invokes the conflict in France between freedom of speech and freedom of thought and religion and hate speech in the context of terrorist activity that has caused deaths of innocent people.  Freedom of conscience like freedom of speech is protected by the 1789 Declaration of Human and Civil Rights and by the Constitution.  In France, as in all democratic countries, free communication of ideas and opinions is vital.  However, the law also prohibits hate speech, and laws protect individuals and groups from being defamed or insulted concerning identification with ethnic, national, racial, religious, sexual, gender orientations.  Inherent in the present French issue is whether blasphemy, specifically against Islam, is a crime.

Accusation of blasphemy was the alleged basis for terrorist activity in France.  In September 2005, the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published twelve satirical cartoons about Islam.  The one considered most offensive by Muslims was the cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.  The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, C.H., in a special issue republished the cartoons on February 9, 2006. As a result, criminal proceedings for insulting the prophet on grounds of religion were brought against the chief editor, Philip Val, but he was acquitted in a trial in March 2007.  C.H. published other satirical cartoons of Mohammed in September 2012.

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Italy: Defend National Borders, End Up on Trial by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16613/italy-immigration-borders

This is the first time that a court of justice in Europe has been called upon to try a governmental minister — who is actually supposed to responsible for the security of a country — for holding migrants at a port pending a redistribution of newcomers across Europe…. Until then, Europe had never offered Italy the slightest help.

Italy’s political ruling class, which for years has adopted as its migration policy the total surrender to illegal floods of immigrants — often organized by criminal traffickers — has now decided to turn Salvini over to the judges for doing what they did not have the courage to do: defend Europe’s borders.

There seems to exist an assumption that tens of thousands of people can take boats from Libya to Italy without controls, without deterrence, and without a country being able to exercise its right to self-defense from an epochal migratory tsunami.

Italy is now sending a disturbing message to Europe and the rest of the free world: anyone who, by governing the country, defends national borders and tries to stop mass illegal immigration can end up on trial and in prison.

The real horror in this charade is that Italy is still turning away ships carrying migrants, so why is Salvini being set up to take the fall?

“My only regret from this situation is that I will have to explain to my two kids that their father is going on trial not because he is a criminal, but because he defended his country”, Matteo Salvini said as Italy’s Parliament stripped him of immunity to open the way for his trial.

For years, Italy’s political ruling class has had a migration policy of surrendering to floods of illegal immigrants — who have usually been organized by criminal traffickers. Europe has never offered Italy a jot of help. Now these “elites” — politicians, opinion makers, journalists — have decided to turn Salvini over to the judges for doing what they did not have the courage to do: defend the Italy’s borders.

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Kidnapped, Raped, and Forced into Islam: The Plight of Christian Girls in Pakistan by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16609/kidnapped-raped-christians-pakistan

“A Christian 6 year old girl was beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight…. the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)….” — Report; British Pakistani Christian Association, September 16, 2020.

“Another Christian girl aged 14 was recently abducted and gang-raped by some Muslim youths… The victim is a student of grade nine and was abducted by four or five boys on her way to a local tuition center on Jan. 16, 2020. The abductors not only raped her but also obtained her signatures and thumb impressions on some papers.” — Morningstar News, February 12, 2020.

“Christian girls are only meant for the pleasure of Muslim men” — to quote a group of Muslim men, seconds before they rammed their car into three young Christian girls, who had ignored their sexual advances while walking home from work; one died. — British Pakistani Christian Association, January 20, 2016.

Christian girls are being abducted, sexually abused, and forced into Islam with increasing frequency all throughout Pakistan. Moreover, everyone — including local police, court officials, and Islamic clerics — seem bent on facilitating this human rights tragedy.

Most recently, according to a September 16 report:

“A Christian 6 year old girl was beaten and raped after being forcibly taken to the home of a Muslim rapist in broad daylight. In a sickening twist the local Muslim community are threatening the Christian parents with violence, the rape of their other daughters and financial ruin if they proceed with a legal case against paedophile Muhammad Waqas (18 yrs)… Tabitha [the raped child] had been verbally abused, shouted at, slapped and beaten and forced to do a number of sex acts with Waqas. She had been stripped of her clothes and had described her terror that she would be killed by Waqas…”

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Yes it Hurts, No it Doesn’t by Amir Taheri

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16620/yes-it-hurts-no-it-doesnt

General Hussein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is equally sanguine about his claim that, far from hurting, the Islamic Republic is on course to become a global power. “We have already reached the Mediterranean and prepare to go even further,” he said in a recent speech. “We are now in a position to occupy and set on fire all military bases of the United States in the region and beyond.”

One audience consists of the Democrat Party in the US, with which part of the Islamic regime hopes to make a deal based on the one offered by Obama.

The other audience is the people in Iran, who feel they are poorer than they were six years ago and blame the leadership for its ineptitude, corruption and failure to develop a better foreign policy and stop using resources on foreign adventures. However, there may be a subtext in that: preparing public opinion for yet another climb-down in the fight against the “Great Satan”. After all, if people are convinced that making a deal with Washington is the key to all problems they would welcome what Khamenei calls “a heroic flexibility.”

While Tehran leaders have turned relations with the United States into the central issue of Iranian politics, they still seem unable to decide whether the present tension between the two sides hurts or helps their regime.

One group within the establishment claims that the sanctions re-imposed by President Donald Trump actually helps the regime and hurts the US. In his recent talks to various US think tanks and media, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has defended that thesis with his usual panache. According to him, Trump has “isolated” the US while the Islamic Republic has earned “worldwide sympathy and support.”

General Hussein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is equally sanguine about his claim that, far from hurting, the Islamic Republic is on course to become a global power.

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Biden: Voters have no right to know his position on court-packing By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

http://Biden: Voters have no right to know his position on court-packing By Andrea Widburg

But that’s not the only bad and stupid thing he said on Saturday.

On Saturday, Joe Biden angrily insisted that voters don’t deserve to know whether he intends to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Further, according to Biden, the timing of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is unconstitutional because it was done “after voting has already begun.” This statement shows appalling historical and constitutional ignorance.

Biden announced what he thinks voters are entitled to know during an interview with Ross DiMattei, of KTNV Action News in Las Vegas. DiMattei almost apologetically said, “Sir, I’ve got to ask you about packing the courts, and I know that….”

An apparently relaxed Biden interjected, “Sure.”

DiMattei continued, “You said yesterday you aren’t going to answer the question until after the election. But this is the number one thing that I’ve been asked about from viewers in the past couple of days.”

“Well,” said Biden, ready to place the blame, “you’ve been asked by the viewers who are probably Republicans, who don’t want me continuing to talk about what they’re doing to the court right now.”

DiMattei was not intimidated. “But, sir, don’t the voters deserve to know….”

Biden aggressively cut him off. “No, they don’t de….”

It sounds as if Biden was going to say, “No, they don’t deserve to know.” However, some residual common sense kicked in, and he stopped himself. Instead, Biden angrily said, “I’m not gonna play his game.” Presumably, Biden was referring to President Trump.

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Cancel Culture in Bayonne, New Jersey By Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

http://Cancel culture reaches working-class America.

From the organized campaign vilifying Harry Potter author JK Rowling for standing up for women’s actual biological experience to decades of Democrat attempts to paint Republicans as every type of bigot; cancel culture, the totalitarian leftist movement to destroy those with whom they disagree, isn’t just international or national. In Bayonne, NJ, it’s local. Making matters worse in the following chain of deplorable events is the fact that the online mob driving it, safe behind blocked phone numbers, closed social media groups (magnifying the worst impulses of already bad agents), and anonymous emails, has targeted local businesses already on life support due to COVID-19 and the resultant economic restrictions. The decomposing cherry on this putrid pie is both the silence from the only people with anything to gain from fueling the hate and the rotten stink of a possible coverup. 

Our story begins with Michael Shatravka, a Bayonne resident with a checkered teenage and young adult past who, after a literally bone-shattering motorcycle accident, made the decision to do better. Shatravka, stuck in physical therapy for over a year, chose not to hate the world for his past bad decisions. After relearning how to walk and talk, Shatravka entered the world of acting for three years and then created his own videography and photography company as well as obtaining his real-estate license. Along the way, he met and married the love of his life and decided he didn’t like the direction in which Bayonne’s public schools were heading because they were, according to his observation, leaving too many kids behind who might fall into the same bad decisions he himself almost succumbed to.

Shatravka’s business life, his entrepreneurial and community minded can-do attitude, and the business life of Buon Appetito, the charming old-world style Italian restaurant on Bayonne’s main drag, came under fire late this September. Shatravka, through his videography and editing business, was contracted by the community eatery to make a commercial. Little did Buon Appetito (beloved by so much of Bayonne for their tasty and large portions) or Shatravka know that the mere existence of his 2020 virgin Board of Education run would set the brave soldiers of the couch-potato keyboard brigade on their cancel culture crusade. Locked in their sights were two targets — Shatravka’s videography business and Buon Appetito, whose ownership may not have even know of Shatravka’s BoE run and who may not even share his perspective. For Shatravka and other businesses like Buon Appetito, the only thing that matters is having a vibrant home town where people can agree or disagree over good food and enjoy each other’s company.

Not so for Bayonne’s cancel culture crusaders who began calling, emailing, and posting on social media to boycott Buon Appetito unless the eatery disavowed all connections for Shatravka and withdrew the commercial his business made them. The message was sent – associate with anyone on the Make Bayonne Great Again ticket, the slate of three BoE candidates including Shatravka and one of the two main municipal Board of Education slates, even in ways that has nothing to do with the BoE election, or people, possibly from Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis’s political camp would come after your businesses.

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Trump-Hating Journalists Write Fiction, Not News Itxu Diaz *****

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://spectator.org/trump-hating-journalists-write-fiction-not-news/

Hardly any journalists get scoops anymore because almost everybody already knows everything. A couple of afternoons ago, in the fruit shop, the lady who has worked there for as long as I can remember greeted me with arched eyebrows and arms locked in pre-election campaign position: “So you’re the one who writes all these fascist articles?” My answer was almost as stupid as her question: “Give me six ripe tomatoes too, if you please.” Information travels faster than my reflexes. And I’m starting to get used to the idea of journalists storming into newsrooms, sweating, bursting with some big exclusive, only to sit down, start writing it up, and discover, crushed, that someone has already been dancing to it for three days on TikToc.
 

The era of the journalism we saw in The Front Page has passed. Walter Burns was a scoundrel, but at least he did it to sell newspapers. These days, the most exciting thing that comes out of any of those old newspaper offices is the tweet of an intern who has published some personal obscenity by mistake on the newspaper’s Twitter feed. And the worst thing is that most of the followers won’t notice the difference. Without a doubt, authorial and analytical journalism is an honorable and pertinent way out of the eternal crisis that long ago left our business looking like Wile E. Coyote, right after the stick of dynamite went off in his face.

Unfortunately, not all the press has chosen to find an honorable way out. I’ve discovered these days, with certain surprise, that fiction-journalism is back, although in a much more tedious version. No, it is not the gonzo journalism of the great Hunter S. Thompson. For that you need talent. No, this is prophetical news. We didn’t see that coming. I would never have imagined that this prolonged crisis of journalism would lead to the horoscopes jumping out of the back pages onto the very front page. The new section chiefs will be witches!

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5 Major Ways America Will Fundamentally Change If Biden Packs The Court By David Marcus

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/09/5-major-ways-america-will-fundamentally-change-if-biden-packs-the-court/

Joe Biden refuses to say whether he will support packing or expanding the Supreme Court to ensure a progressive majority if he is elected president. Given that such a move would be the most significant change in how America is governed in recent memory, and a break with 150 years of precedent, it is fair to conclude that his refusal to reject the option means he is open to it.

But the idea of “packing the court” is somewhat esoteric for many Americans not glued to the machinations of our federal government. Should the Democrats choose to expand the court by at least four members to provide for a 7-6 majority assuming Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, it is important for Americans to understand how this drastic maneuver will change their lives and their country.

Let’s lay out five potentially major changes to American life and society that court packing would result in.

1. Gun Rights

“The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.” This was written in an amicus brief from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and four other Democrats in a 2019 case involving the NRA and the State of New York. It was an implicit threat to pack the court if it refused to side with Democrats on restrictive measures that would not even allow people to transport unloaded guns to a gun range. So in this case, we have a very good idea of what Democrats have in mind.

A 7-6 progressive majority on the court would very likely overturn decades of precedent that have protected gun owners from both state and federal attempts to deny them their Second Amendment rights. Millions of American gun owners would be subject to these changes and the laws, which Democrats, some of whom are committed to confiscating guns, would impose.

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Is Great Barrington Declaration a Solution to Endless COVID Lockdowns?By Alex Berezow, PhD

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/10/07/great-barrington-declaration-solution-endless-covid-lockdowns-15074

The proposal in the Declaration is certainly worth considering. If I was a policymaker, I would investigate how to implement it. As COVID cases spike in Europe, which once had the coronavirus under control, it’s becoming clear that our current on-again, off-again approach to containment isn’t working as intended. It may be time to try something new. 

Let’s be honest. As we approach late autumn and then winter in the northern hemisphere, nobody knows what’s going to happen. We may see another surge in coronavirus cases, or we may not. We may see flu season exacerbate the effects of COVID, or we may not. We just don’t know.

Making the situation worse is that this uncertainty is absolutely killing the economy. Go downtown in any major American city. It’s a ghost town. We can’t live like this indefinitely. Is there some other approach that we can take as a society to minimize the harm of COVID while maximizing productivity and happiness? A group of successful and respected infectious disease experts says yes, and they have written a statement that they have called the Great Barrington Declaration.

The authors refer to their approach as “Focused Protection,” the gist of which is “to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.” Not that this really matters (because public health policy shouldn’t be a popularity contest), but more than 10,000 scientists and medical practitioners have signed it.

Are the authors right? I certainly think so. Back in May, we reported on a Swedish epidemiologist who believed that lockdowns did nothing other than delay the inevitable; i.e., they simply push new infections down the timeline. Therefore, while lockdowns can be useful to avoid overwhelming hospital bed capacity, they may not lower the overall number of cases. In other words, we’re destroying the economy while essentially accomplishing nothing.

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Yes, Hillary Clinton Ordered the Russia-Collusion Farce  By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on October 11th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/hillary-clinton-orchestrated-russia-collusion-farce/

The Clinton campaign dreamed up, paid for, and peddled the Trump-Russia collusion farce.

Did she or didn’t she?

Of course she did. In late July 2016, Hillary Clinton, in an effort to divert attention from the email scandal that was haunting her presidential bid, directed her campaign to peddle a political narrative that Russia’s suspected hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails was in furtherance of a conspiracy between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to swing the election to Trump.

That is, as I argued in Ball of Collusion, the Clinton campaign dreamed up, paid for, and peddled the Trump–Russia collusion farce. And in promoting it, President Obama’s former secretary of state had a willing and able partner in the Obama administration — very much including its intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus.

Democrats Change Their Tune

It was amazing to watch Democrats play Twister this week, as National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe added documentary corroboration to the disclosure he’d made the week before. In that first revelation, via letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ratcliffe explained that, because our spy agencies have very effective foreign-intelligence-gathering methods, they were able to “obtain insight” into a Russian intelligence analysis that concluded Clinton orchestrated the damaging political narrative. That is, Clinton actually did what she accused Trump of doing: She colluded with Russians (through yet another foreigner she recruited to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign: the ludicrous former British spy Christopher Steele) in order to damage Trump’s campaign and cinch the election for herself.