WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany’s Dysfunctional Deportation System by Soeren Kern

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12723/germany-deportation-system

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden.

The government in North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed that for years Aidoudi had been receiving €1,168 ($1,400) each month in welfare and child support payments.

“Salafists such as Sami A. have no business in Germany and should be deported. Germany should not be a retirement retreat for jihadists.” — Alexander Dobrindt, Member of the German Bundestag.

A court in Gelsenkirchen has ruled that deporting a self-declared Islamist — suspected of being a bodyguard of the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — was “grossly unlawful” and ordered him returned to Germany.

The case has cast a spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany’s deportation system, as well as on Germany’s politicized judicial system, which on human rights grounds is making it nearly impossible to expel illegal migrants, including those who pose security threats.

The 42-year-old failed asylum seeker from Tunisia — identified by German authorities as Sami A., but known in his native country as Sami Aidoudi — had been living in Germany since 1997. Aidoudi, a Salafist Islamist, is believed by German authorities to have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Since then, he was under surveillance by German intelligence for propagating Islamist teachings and attempting to radicalize young Muslims. He had “far reaching” relationships with Salafist and jihadist networks, according to an official report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Focus.

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden. Aidoudi denied the charges and claimed to have been studying during that time in Karachi, Pakistan.

Despite rejecting Aidoudi’s asylum application, German courts repeatedly blocked his deportation out of fears that he could be tortured or mistreated in his homeland.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How the World Really Views Israel by Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12717/israel-iroquois

The nations of the world want to know what Israel knows and have what Israel has — whether they have formal diplomatic relations with Jerusalem or not.

Israel’s expansive sharing of water, solar and agricultural technology is legendary, as is Israel’s emergency rapid response team. But military cooperation underpins freedom of navigation in the air and on the seas — the source of international prosperity through trade — and secures people in their borders. Security makes everything else possible.

Israel and the Iroquois Nation came together this week — In Israel — at the Lacrosse World Championship. The Iroquois Nation team was subjected to enormous pressure to boycott, but they steadfastly refused to be swayed. The Iroquois, who invented Lacrosse in about 1100 CE, know a thing or two about indigenous peoples reclaiming their land. And they know a thing or two about Israel. Bravo to them.

There are those who insist that Israel is “isolated,” that it lacks friends and allies. Israel’s place in the larger world, however — except, perhaps, in the halls of the UN — is expanding, not only with the Iroquois Nation, but with the nations of the world that want to know what Israel knows and have what Israel has, whether they have formal diplomatic relations with Jerusalem or not.

Israel’s expansive sharing of water, solar and agricultural technology is legendary, as is Israel’s emergency rapid response team. But military cooperation underpins freedom of navigation in the air and on the seas – the source of international prosperity through trade – and secures people in their borders. Security makes everything else possible, and Israel is in the center of the universe of security cooperation.

Late last year, Israel hosted the largest aerial training exercise in its history – Blue Flag in the Negev Desert. There were 70 aircraft from around the world, hundreds of pilots, and air-support team members. Participants included the United States, France, Italy, Greece, Poland, Germany and India. It was the first time French, German and Indian contingents trained in Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

STOP THE PALESTINIAN ARAB CRIMES AGAINST NATURE AND WILDLIFE: VICTOR SHARPE

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

I appeal to all who cherish nature and the protection of wildlife wherever it is.

That is why I must alert the world to the horrific and deliberate destruction by Palestinian Hamas of forests, nature reserves, bee hives, wheat fields, avocado groves and innocent wildlife in southern Israel adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

Gaza is suffering under Hamas occupation, which is the Palestinian junior branch of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. Israel withdrew fully from Gaza in 2005 hoping that the Palestinian Arabs would live in peace. It was not to be.

Hamas has employed fire kites and helium filled balloons, which fly into Israel and explode creating raging firestorms in the fields, meadows, forests and nature reserves. It is a searing tragedy witnessing verdant forests lovingly planted so long ago in what was desert and wasteland now turned into blackened stumps. Once clean and fresh air is now filled with choking ash.

Wildlife, including deer, turtles and birds, have suffered in the most torturous way, burned alive in the terrible fires that have blackened and ruined over 8,500 acres of land in southern Israel. The costs are in the billions and the hapless farmers are trying desperately to bring in whatever produce they can salvage.

Here are pictures. The destruction is monstrous.

But where is the outrage from all the world’s environmental groups and from Peta? Their silence is deafening and reeks of hypocrisy and stark indifference to the destruction of wildlife and restored agriculture that generations of Israeli pioneers, farmers and ecologists have painstakingly redeemed from the desert and wilderness.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Anatomy of the Brexit Crisis By John O’Sullivan

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/theresa-may-covert-third-way-brexit-plan-sparks-backlash-constitutional-crisis/

The prime minister covertly tried to impose a ‘third way’ and now faces a backlash.

A massive political and constitutional crisis is gathering pace in Britain. It began earlier this year, perhaps as early as February, when Prime Minister Theresa May began to run her own private policy on Brexit through officials in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office — a policy that was different from, and arguably opposite to, the Brexit policy that had the approval of the cabinet and the public. But it emerged that something unorthodox might be happening only two weeks ago, when reports began to circulate in Whitehall and Westminster that the prime minister would advise a Chequers cabinet meeting on the next Friday to choose a hitherto unknown “third way” rather than two earlier options for leaving the European Union Customs Union.

When an alarmed David Davis — the secretary of state for exiting the European Union — saw her on the Wednesday before Chequers (interestingly, the Fourth of July), she allegedly denied to him that any such third-way document existed. In the following two days, however, leaks from Downing Street made it clear that a showdown of some kind was in the offing. One aide, apparently thinking he was some kind of hard-nosed White House staffer from the West Wing television series, told the media that if a cabinet minister resigned at Chequers, he would immediately lose his official car and be compelled to stand on principle and take the long walk of shame to pick up a taxi at the gate.

I’ll let an extract from my account in the Australian pick up the story from there:

That didn’t seem the worst of threats — it’s a fifteen minutes stroll through pleasant countryside. But it did set the tone for one of the least agreeable country-house weekends in history — one apparently designed by someone with training in East German psy-ops and hostage psychology management: Isolate them in a remote location, cut off their escape, take away their phones, give them complex bureaucratic papers to read, cut the time for reading short, examine them on their reading, confuse them, mock any mistakes they make, demand they sign the document, threaten them with non-personhood if they refuse, and if they do refuse, tell them the decision has already been made by the Party and that their refusal is meaningless. It was a brilliant technique — call it Applied Stockholm Syndrome — and it worked. Most of those present nodded smilingly and signed; some were reluctant but they signed too in order not to spoil the occasion, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson even proposed a toast to Big Sister. Happy to be still in power, they all got into their cars and returned to London.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When District Judges Try to Run the Country By issuing a ‘nationwide injunction,’ a lone jurist can dictate federal policy far beyond his jurisdiction. By Jason L. Riley

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-district-judges-try-to-run-the-country-1531868155

When a federal district court in Texas issued a nationwide injunction in 2015 that halted the implementation of President Obama’s amnesty program for illegal-alien parents of U.S. citizens, many on the political right cheered. Two years later, when a federal district court in Maryland issued a nationwide injunction that blocked President Trump’s efforts to place restrictions on transgender people serving in the military, it was the left’s turn to celebrate.

In recent years national injunctions have somehow become all the rage, even though it’s not clear they are constitutional. Traditionally, an injunction requires the parties in a case—and only those individuals—to continue or cease particular actions. What makes national injunctions distinct and controversial is that they apply to people who are not parties in the case. And state attorneys general now regularly use them as political cudgels to thwart the implementation of federal policy not just in their respective states, but everywhere.

The Trump administration, for example, has tried to withhold funding from “sanctuary” cities that refuse to assist the federal government with immigration enforcement. After Chicago sued, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois not only issued an injunction but said it applied to other cities all over the country, which are not parties in the case.

The issue here is not the wisdom or silliness of a given federal policy. The bigger concerns are the scope of lower-court judges’ authority and the integrity of the judicial process. Under the Constitution, lower courts are empowered to decide cases for particular parties, not for the whole nation. In his concurrence last month in Trump v. Hawaii, the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the administration’s travel ban, Justice Clarence Thomas expresses skepticism that district courts have the authority to issue national injunctions and urges his colleagues to address this judicial adventurism sooner rather than later.

“These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system—preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch,” Justice Thomas writes. “If their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.” The same concern is echoed by a growing number of legal scholars, who worry that the national-injunction trend will result in the Supreme Court reviewing hastily considered lower court rulings that never had the chance to work their way up the system.

In testimony last year before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Samuel Bray, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, explained that the Supreme Court justices typically wait until there’s a split at the circuit-court level before they decide to hear a case. National injunctions, he said, force the high court “to decide cases faster, with less evidence, with fewer contrary opinions—a recipe for bad judicial decisionmaking.”

As usual, both political parties helped pave the way in getting to this point. Republican state attorneys general obtained nationwide injunctions to stop various Obama administration initiatives. Under President Trump, Democratic attorneys general are using the same playbook. If you’re looking for someone to blame, says Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, try Congress. “Nationwide injunctions didn’t start with Obama and they didn’t start with Trump. They’ve been around for a while,” Mr. Blackman told me in an interview. CONTINUE AT SITE

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

‘Fiddler on The Roof’ Review: A Richer, Deeper Interpretation A thrilling new production in Yiddish, directed by Joel Grey, offers a fuller understanding of Jewish religious life. Edward Rothstein

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fiddler-on-the-roof-review-a-richer-deeper-interpretation-1531865223

“Fidler afn Dakh.” Sounds crazy, no? But at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, that is what is presented: “Fiddler on the Roof,” a classic American musical, entirely performed in a language now rarely heard (Yiddish), neither spoken by its director (the Broadway veteran Joel Grey ) nor by most of the cast (which includes some players from the most recent Broadway production).

Yet the result is thrilling: It is almost as if “Fiddler on the Roof” (1964) were being restored to some primal form. And though Russian and English translations are projected on sides of the stage, they are often unnecessary. When Tevye—the dairyman who regularly argues with God and quotes Scripture—dreams of being a wealthy man and sings “Ven ikh bin a Rotshild,” can anyone doubt the meaning? In fact, so virtuosic is Steven Skybell in that role that he often needs no language at all for us to feel his character swerve from ironic mockery to righteous anger to heartbreak.

The sense of restoration partly arises because “Fiddler” is loosely based on stories by the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem ; the language’s culture, intonation and imagery leave traces throughout the musical. This ancestral influence can even be personal: Mr. Grey is but a generation removed from Yiddish performance culture (his father was the musician and comic Mickey Katz ).

The main force here is the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, which has been reviving Yiddish theatrical and musical traditions under the artistic direction of Zalmen Mlotek. Mr. Mlotek’s taut yet supple conducting of a reduced 12-member orchestra reaches back to the klezmeric spirit and devotional melody that the musical often alludes to, making the results seem more authentic while inspiring Staś Kmieć ‘s homage to the original’s choreography.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Intelligence Community Has Made the U.S. a Blind Giant By William B. Allen

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/18/intelligence-community-has-made

Nations require intelligence to see their way through the dark alleys of international relations. For that reason, and above all in the modern era, they build up intelligence services to maintain up-to-the-moment awareness of initiatives and tendencies in states that can bear on their interests.

Ultimately, however, the intelligence of the head of state must marry the intelligence provided by his lieutenants in order to act prudently in the world. But act he must, with or without intelligence. The measure of prudence will be far more difficult to attain without reliable intelligence. And the magnitude of the difficulty increases exponentially when the nation so afflicted is a giant among nations, the most powerful of all.

The effect of the soft coup attempt by U.S. intelligence officers has been to leave President Trump blinded in the world.

Why should anyone be surprised when the president displays lack of confidence in agencies that have demonstrated the most vigorous and calculated attempts to destroy him and thwart his attempts to govern? The entire possibility of success for the soft coup attempt depends upon blinding him. The deliberate timing of the announcement of the latest Mueller indictments served only to confirm the propriety of President Trump’s diffidence.

But where does that leave the president, and more importantly, the United States? Here we begin to unpack the measure of Trump’s judgment.

BOOKS Comments turned off

ISIS BEGINS, a Novel of the Iraq War Ken Timmerman’s new novel highlights the urgency of saving persecuted Christians. Jamie Glazov

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270741/isis-begins-novel-iraq-war-jamie-glazov

Frontpage’s guest today is Ken Timmerman, author of several New York Times best-sellers and a frequent contributor to Frontpage. His new book is ISIS BEGINS, a novel of the Iraq War.

FP: Ken Timmerman, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Timmerman: Thanks for having me, Jamie. It’s always a pleasure.

FP: Let’s begin with a quick glance at some of your books: Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson, The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Saddam, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, and your two books on Benghazi, Dark Forces, and Deception.

So here’s the first question: what compels an investigative reporter to write a novel, and especially one about persecuted Christians?

Timmerman: Great question, Jamie. Thank you.

I started going on reporting and mission trips to northern Iraq in 2007, and gathered so much material that I thought I should write a book about what my sources were calling the coming “religiocide” of Iraqi Christians. Already then, in 2007, 2008, Christians were leaving Iraq in huge numbers. Jihadi Muslim groups were bombing their churches, murdering their bishops. They kidnapped ordinary Christians, holding them for ransom, and then murdered them when their families couldn’t produce the exorbitant payments they demanded. I was thinking to call such a book, “Blood of the Iraqi Martyrs.” But my agent at the time couldn’t get a single major publisher interested. Not one.

The publishing world just didn’t want to hear about Christian persecution. Even before Obama, when the subject literally became taboo, the notion that Christians were being murdered by Muslims was not popular.

So during one of these trips, Father Keith Roderick, an Anglican priest who then worked for Christian Solidarity International, a terrific group, by the way, convinced me that I should recast this body of material as a novel.

Why? So that ordinary Americans could feel and smell and taste what it is like to be a persecuted Christian, chased by Muslims intent on murder. For that is the reality of Iraq – and of so many other places around the world, such as Nigeria, Sudan, or Iran. He felt a novel would a more emotional impact on readers than a non-fiction book would.

FP: And you’re not new to writing novels, right?

Timmerman: Right, I am not. I have had two novels published. I confess: I actually started my career writing fiction, and studied under avante-garde novelist John Hawkes at the Brown University graduate writing seminar in the early 1970s and went to Paris in 1975 with a novel in my suitcase. I eventually started an expat literary magazine, Paris Voices, that was the center of a whole expat literary scene. But that’s a whole other story.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Ocasio-Cortez: Capitalism ‘Won’t Always Exist’ The Democrats’ new folk hero gives a very revealing interview. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270776/ocasio-cortez-capitalism-wont-always-exist-matthew-vadum

Democrat giant-slayer and soon-to-be Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came close to saying she supports abolishing the free enterprise system and the precious economic freedoms on which it is based that have made America wealthy beyond its founders’ wildest dreams.

The so-called democratic socialist Ocasio-Cortez whom DNC Chairman Tom Perez hails as “the future of our party,” breezily dismissed the current strength of the U.S. economy, claiming unemployment is low only because Americans are working two jobs.

Capitalism is a fleeting phenomenon, she told PBS in an astounding display of historical ignorance that would no doubt endear her to anti-American conspiracy theorist Naomi Klein.

I do think that right now, when we have this no-holds-barred Wild West hypercapitalism, what that means is profit at any cost. Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world. When this country started, we did not operate on a capitalist economy.

Asked if democratic socialism, the system to which Ocasio-Cortez claims allegiance, “calls for an end to capitalism,” the candidate said:

“Ultimately, we are marching towards progress on this issue. I do think that we are going to see an evolution in our economic system of an unprecedented degree, and it’s hard to say what direction that that takes … ”

The interviewer interjected: “It sounds like you are skeptical that capitalism is going to continue to be the right answer.”

“Yeah, I think it’s, um, I think it’s, I think it’s at least a question,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think it’s absolutely a question.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bad day for President Trump but worse day for his critics By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on July 18th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/bad_day_for_president_trump_but_worse_day_for_his_critics.html

Let’s be honest, it was not a good press conference for President Trump. As my friend Barry Casselman said, it “was simply and inexcusably a blunder.”

I was not expecting President Trump to yell at Putin on the world stage. However, he could have expressed himself differently.

It was not the end of the world as we know it. The sky and the stars are not falling. Finally, let’s give this meeting a few months and see what comes out of it.

At the same time, his critics always end up throwing President Trump a lifesaver, as Liz Peek wrote:

Trump’s critics responded with customary vitriol and excess, attacking the president in such extreme terms that his supporters only dig in even deeper.

Democrats and never-Trumpers cannot help themselves; over the past two years, the public has grown weary of the non-stop, five-alarm fires, and they have tuned out.

Trump’s critics fail the most basic of tests. You can’t cry wolf over and over again without making a fool out of yourself.