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Germany’s Year Of Jihad 2019 is the new norm for Islamic terror in Germany. Stephen Brown

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/germanys-year-islamic-terrorism-stephen-brown/

Last year, like preceding years, was a busy year for Islamic terrorists in Germany.

Germany’s year of terrorism began in March with a lovely Muslim couple — the husband a Tunisian, the wife a German citizen — arrested for planning a chemical attack. The federal prosecutor’s office said the husband, 30-year-old Sief Allah A., had acquired knowledge of how to turn ricin into a weapon and had ordered 3,300 grams of the poison online.

Arrested in Cologne, the married pair also face charges of planning attacks using metal balls and homemade explosives. They also both had sought membership in the Islamic State (IS). They had started planning their attacks in 2018 after Sief Ali had failed twice to cross over Turkey’s border into Syria.

Also in March, German police raided and arrested 11 Salafists in the Hesse and Rhineland-Pfalz areas, two of whom were brothers. According to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, they “jointly agreed to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack employing a vehicle and firearms in order to kill as many ‘unbelievers’ as possible.”

The men were between 20 and 42 years of age and had contacted weapons dealers, rented a large truck and gathered money for the attack, $22,000 of which was seized in the raid. They had even committed a crime to get money for their evil plan.

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Trump Speaks Directly to the Iranian People It’s impossible to overestimate the power of the president’s words. Michael Ledeen

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/trump-speaks-directly-iranian-people-michael-ledeen/

The Iranian people are demonstrating. You can see the protests on Twitter, and read about the internal ferment online at the Free Iran Herald, which appears on Gateway Pundit.

The current round of demonstrations erupted all over the country after the destruction of the Ukrainian commercial airplane taking off from Tehran. The security forces are reacting with even greater than usual violence, shooting the protesters with live ammunition. At the same time, supporters of deceased General Qassem Soleimani within the Revolutionary Guards are being rounded up in significant numbers, suggesting that there was a power struggle underway within his Quds Force for the succession after the death of the supreme leader—Ali Khamenei—who is now eighty years old.

According to the Free Iran Herald, published in the Gateway Pundit blog,

This news is increasing the speculation that Soleimani, who was known to act on his own initiatives, and who was being seen as a possible future dictator-in-waiting for Tehran, was betrayed to American intelligence by his own colleagues within the regime, who feared that he would deprive them of their power and privileges.

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A Bailout for Criminals New York’s reform is freeing violent offenders who will harm again.

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bailout-for-criminals-11578865016?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Label something “criminal-justice reform” these days and it’s likely to be whisked into law in left-leaning states with little thought to the consequences. Witness the fiasco of New York’s bail reform that took effect Jan. 1 and is already producing ill effects across the state.

The reform that passed last year eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and certain nonviolent felonies. The idea was that people who were no threat to the community were locked up only because they couldn’t afford bail, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo pitched it as a victory for fairness.

It turns out that some of those now going free aren’t as harmless as promised. Strict new timelines for evidence prosecutors must provide defendants means folks who otherwise should be locked up are also going free, especially on drug offenses.

In New York City, a woman was arrested three times in a week after initially assaulting Jews. After the third arrest she was finally detained in a psych ward—but only after the intervention of an embarrassed Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had said when the bail measure passed that he was “thrilled.”

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The Forgotten Failures of the Great Society By Fred Siegel

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/01/27/the-forgotten-failures-of-the-great-society/

Amity Shlaes has written a powerful book. It is the most interesting and substantive account of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s “war on poverty” to date — and just in time. In Great Society: A New History, she notes that “just as the 1960s forgot the failures of the 1930s, we today forget the failures of the 1960s.” Shlaes has written 510 pages of argumentation, with detailed description and telling digression that traces the arc from the unbridled hopes of the early Sixties to the enormous administrative expansion of the “second New Deal” to the missteps in implementing it that became all too apparent in the Seventies.

The book opens with the roles played by socialist author Michael Harrington, famed for writing The Other America, a book on Appalachian poverty, and Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society in forming the ethos of the ’60s. And then, by way of largely but not entirely biographical accounts, it shows how figures such as United Automobile Workers president Walter Reuther, Los Angeles mayor and Great Society critic Sam Yorty, Johnson-administration anti-poverty czar Sargent Shriver, policy intellectual Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and economist Arthur Burns shaped the Great Society and its aftermath. The advantage of such an approach is that it doesn’t neglect the “great men” of the time, while adding depth. Shlaes tells us that LBJ and Nixon conducted themselves as if they were “domestic commanders in chief.” But the book also incorporates the broader social and economic currents that centralized American life.

Walter Reuther was of a then-familiar type that many today find difficult to understand. As the militant leader of the United Automobile Workers, he wanted Scandinavian-style socialism for America, but he was also an ardent anti-Communist. In the early 1960s he hoped for a youth movement to help his cause. To that end he sponsored a conclave at the UAW’s retreat in Port Huron, Mich. It was there, with Michael Harrington in attendance, that Tom Hayden wrote the Port Huron Statement. Inspired by the direct action of the young black integrationists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who courageously insisted on being served at segregated southern lunch counters, the Port Huron Statement made the case for what it called “participatory democracy.” But Hayden’s aim, as he acknowledged, was to advance radicalism by “call[ing] socialism liberalism.”

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Democrats No Longer Dismiss Bernie Sanders’s Odds By John Fund

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/democrats-no-longer-dismiss-bernie-sanderss-odds/

If he won Iowa, the party might unite behind an Anybody But Bernie candidate.

In 2016, insurgent candidates roiled the nomination process of both major parties. Donald Trump, running as a populist, won 44 percent of the primary vote against a divided field and won the GOP nomination. Bernie Sanders, running as an unabashed socialist, also won 44 percent in the Democratic race against Hillary Clinton, despite her success in using the Democratic National Committee to kneecap Sanders. But because Sanders faced only one opponent, he lost.

This year, Sanders is back, and the old saw that one way to win your party’s nomination is to have run for it before may apply. (See Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton).

In 2019, Sanders raised an eye-popping $100 million. The grassroots he cultivated in Iowa and New Hampshire four years ago have vaulted him into first place in both states in the RealClearPolitics average of all polls.

Sanders also has the backing of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is the only candidate offering a full-throated defense of Medicare for All, now that Elizabeth Warren has admitted she wouldn’t push for it during the first two years of her presidency. For a 78-year-old who suffered a heart attack last fall and has always insisted on serving in Congress as an independent, he displays an astounding resilience that rivals that of Trump.

Sanders supporters insist that the only way to beat someone like Trump is with someone who shares with him his authenticity, his disdain for protocol, and, like him, offers a radical break from past policies. Only that will energize a disillusioned, nonvoting army of left-wingers that mirrors the blue-collar voters in the Midwest who turned out for Trump and delivered him the presidency.

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Taiwan Rejects Communist China as Hong Kong Watches By Bryan Preston

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/taiwan-rejects-communist-china-as-hong-kong-watches/

Taiwan’s voters went to the polls Saturday and sent a strong message to Beijing. The island also known as the Republic of China since 1945 re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen in a massive landslide. Tsai earned nearly 58% of the vote with more than 99% of precincts reporting, leaving no hanging doubts or chads in play. This was a clear victory that will ripple across Asia. Tsai’s victory hasn’t stopped the mainland’s state-run media of casting it as “evil” to undermine it.

President Tsai campaigned on taking a hard line against the mainland and in favor of independence. Today she wasted no time in sending another strong signal that Taiwan is not interested in adopting the “one country, two systems” Beijing insists on. Tsai met with the head of the American Institute in Taiwan today.

Fresh from a landslide re-election victory, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met Sunday with the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taipei.

William Brent Christensen, a U.S. diplomat who is director of the American Institute in Taiwan, congratulated Tsai on her victory in Saturday’s election, and she thanked him for his support.

The meeting came as China warned that countries should stick with recognizing communist-ruled Beijing as the rightful government of “one China,” including Taiwan.

This follows a strong statement of support from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, observers from Hong Kong were on hand to witness Taiwan’s vote.

At a raucous election rally for Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, Hong Konger Karen Leung surveyed the huge crowd of excited flag-waving voters as a rap song blasted over the loudspeakers and sighed: “We want to have elections like this.”

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Taiwan president wins landslide victory in stark rebuke to China Yimou Lee, Meg Shen

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-election/taiwan-president-wins-landslide-victory-in-stark-rebuke-to-china-idUSKBN1ZA009

Anti-government unrest in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong took center stage during a campaign in which Tsai held up Taiwan as a beacon of hope for protesters in the former British colony and rejected Beijing’s offer of a “one country, two systems” model.

China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, to be taken by force if needed, a threat President Xi Jinping reiterated a year ago while saying he preferred a peaceful solution.

“One country, two systems,” which gives a high degree of autonomy, much as Beijing uses in Hong Kong, has never been popular in Taiwan and is even less so after months of protests in Hong Kong.

China made itself even more unpopular in Taiwan in the run-up to the election by twice sailing its newest aircraft carrier through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denounced by Taipei as an effort at military intimidation.

“We hope that the Beijing authorities can understand that a democratic Taiwan with a government chosen by the people will not give in to threats and intimidation,” Tsai told reporters.

Beijing needs to understand the will of Taiwan’s people, and that only Taiwan’s people can decide its future, she added, repeating her firm opposition to “one country, two systems”.

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Socialism and Obamanable Policy

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

1.“America’s future has never looked brighter,” so let’s kill it with socialism
M. Dowling, IndependentSentinel.com

“‘As we begin this new year, our economy is booming,’ President Trump told a rally in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday night. ‘Wages are soaring, workers are thriving, and America’s future has never looked brighter,’” CNSNews.com reported.

CAPITALISM, NOT SOCIALISM

“Friday brought more good news, as the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the number of employed Americans — 158,803,000 — set a 25th record under President Trump,” the report continued.

“Year to year — since December 2018 — 1,858,000 more workers have been added to American payrolls.

“The unemployment rate in December remained at its 50-year low of 3.5%.”

In December 2011, Obama was filling the coffers with a nearly $800 billion stimulus and his unemployment rate was at 8.5%.

The U-6 rate, which includes people who have dropped out of the workforce, is down to 6.7% from a high in the last decade of 17.1%, Reuters reported.

2.

www.hudson.org/research/11436-obama-strikes-a-deal-with-qassem-suleimani

Obama Strikes a Deal–With Qassem Suleimani
Lee Smith, Hudson.org – [Originally posted on the now defunct Weekly Standard]

According to the terms of the Iran deal announced in Vienna on Tuesday, U.N. Security Council sanctions regarding nuclear-related issues will be lifted on a number of entities and individuals—from Iranian banks to Lebanese assassins, like Anis Nacacche. The name that most sticks out is IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani. Administration officials counsel calm, and explain that Suleimani is still on the U.S. terror list and will remain on the terror list. But that’s irrelevant. The reality is that Suleimani is the key to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

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How fragile is Iran’s regime? US sanctions are creating extreme economic conditions; birthrate dropping precipitously David Goldman

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/how-fragile-is-irans-regime-2/

Smartphone videos of anti-regime protests in Tehran circulated in global news media this weekend, after the Iranian government admitted it shot down a Ukrainian civilian airliner. The latest demonstrations followed a national wave of protests last November in which up to 1,500 demonstrators were killed. Hard information about the origins and extent of the anti-regime protests is difficult to find. But there is a good deal of evidence of extreme dissatisfaction with the regime due to economic stress.

Iran’s average monthly after-tax wage was US$318.53, according to the website Numbeo, which tallies thousands of user inputs to arrive at wage and price data.

Using Numbeo’s prices I constructed a monthly survival budget in US dollar equivalents:

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The Hatred Whose Name We Dare Not Speak Why the self-censorship when anti-Semitic violence is perpetrated by blacks? Daniel Mandel

Posted By on January 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/hatred-whose-name-we-dare-not-spea

Week after week come new headlines of attacks upon Jews walking the streets of ordinary, traditionally Jewish New York neighborhoods.

Since the beginning of December, there have been eight attacks upon Jews, starting with the shooting assault on a Jersey City Jewish supermarket which left three innocents dead.

Quite simply, even a mere year or two ago, this was not a problem one would have expected to see in the post-Second World War United States. A new menace to Jewish life, a reawakened anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the 1930s, with its Nazi and fascist infection, when Jews were last victimized in American streets, is now with us and a high proportion of this anti-Semitic violence is being perpetrated by African-Americans.

The problem is also large when viewed in the total context of hate crimes in the US: in the third quarter of 2019, anti-Jewish incidents comprised roughly half of all hate crimes recorded by New York City police.

After the Jersey City attacks, some local blacks despicably blamed Jews for living in the neighborhood and thus supposedly causing the attack.