FOREIGN POLICY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Trust Me’ Doesn’t Cut it on Russian Hacking This one-sided report smells like a political hatchet job. Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

Here’s the real problem with the joint intelligence report on alleged Russian hacking: without the classified details, we ordinary citizens are supposed to take the breathless allegations, presented as “high confidence” intelligence judgments, on faith.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan are crossing their fingers and saying, “Trust us.”

Since both are political appointees – Brennan in particular came directly out of the Obama White House, where he is believed to have orchestrated secret arms smuggling through Libya to Syrian rebels that led directly to the Benghazi disaster – excuse me if I remain skeptical.

Has Russia been engaged in sophisticated disinformation operations in the United States? Well, duh. That’s been going on for decades. During the Cold War, as General Clapper reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, we had a separate United States Information Agency (USIA) at the State Department to combat Soviet intelligence desinformatziya and, to a lesser degree, maskirovka.

The USIA regularly issued bulletins on Soviet deception operations, and traced how they were laundered through predominantly Third World media (India was a big favorite in the 1980s) until they made it into the United States, generally as part of left-wing conspiracy outlets.

A few examples were fabricated stories that the CIA had invented AIDS, or that Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was shot down by Soviet fighters in 1983, had been flying a covert U.S. intelligence mission. The KGB also planted forged documents to smear American politicians and then “leaked” them to (usually) unwitting journalists.

But that’s not what happened here. If we are to believe the unclassified Russian hacking report, released on Friday, Russian intelligence agents hacked into the DNC and into the Hillary Clinton campaign servers and then turned over emails it exfiltrated to DCleaks.com and to Wikileaks.

“Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self- proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries,” the report stated.

IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Muslim Murder Spree in Canada’s Capital Muslim migration carries a heavy price. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

Canada’s capital is a small sleepy city of less than a million. Its average annual murder rate is only 10. That’s a weekend in Chicago. But last year something strange happened to Ottawa’s murder rate.

It shot up to 24 homicides.

The last two murders were of Somali Muslim sisters Asma and Nasiba. Their murderer was their brother, Musab A-Noor. Despite the obvious history of Muslim honor killings of women, often carried out by brothers against their sisters, Musab was found “unfit” to stand trial. A director at the Somali Centre for Family Services insisted that Somali settlers in the city need more mental health funding.

Something certainly seems to be needed.

There were an estimated 66,000 Muslim settlers in the Ottawa – Gatineau metropolitan area. Despite forming some 5 percent of the population, they are startlingly overrepresented in Ottawa’s murders.

2016 in Ottawa ended with a Muslim murder in December and it began with a Muslim murder in January. Mohamed Najdi was killed by five other Muslim men. Mohamed had probably been shot in connection with the 2015 shooting of yet another Muslim man by an accused killer named Mohammad.

And we mustn’t confuse Mohamed with Mohammad.

The other Mohammad, a Kuwaiti immigrant, had been a suspect in multiple shootings the previous year and had spent two years in prison for sexual assault.

At January’s end, Marwan Arab, Ottawa’s second homicide victim, was shot, along with his cousin. Both men were members of the Algonquin Muslim Students Association. One of the Arab cousins allegedly had links to a terror suspect. The shooting led to more arrests of Muslims for plotting another attack.

In March, Christina Voelzing became Ottawa’s sixth murder victim. The 24-year-old Algonquin college student was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Behnam Yaali. Yaali, a drug smuggler, was represented by a lawyer who also specializes in refugee law.

Twenty-four hours after almost being allowed to walk free after pleading guilty to robbery, Idris Abdulgani was arrested for murdering Lonnie Leafloor, a 56-yearold former truck driver, by stabbing him in the back of the neck.

And that was Ottawa’s seventh murder.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Hate Group That Tracks Down ‘Hate Groups’ The despicable Southern Poverty Law Center. John Perazzo

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 by two Alabama attorneys, Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr. The latter served as the Center’s legal director from 1971-76, but it was Dees, who views the U.S. as an irredeemably racist nation, who would emerge as the long-term “face” of the organization.

Identifying itself as a “nonprofit civil rights organization” committed to “fighting hate and bigotry” while “seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society,” SPLC describes the United States as a country “seething with racial violence” and “intolerance against those who are different.” “Hate in America is a dreadful, daily constant,” says the Center, and violent crimes against members of minority groups like blacks, Latinos, homosexuals, and Arabs/Muslims “are not ‘isolated incidents,’” but rather, commonplace. To combat this ugly state of affairs, SPLC dedicates itself to “tracking and exposing the activities of “hate groups and other domestic extremists” throughout the United States. Specifically, the Center’s “Hate & Extremism” initiative publishes its findings in SPLC’s Hatewatch Blog and in its quarterly journal, the Intelligence Report.

SPLC first gained widespread national recognition in 1987, when it won a $7 million verdict in a high-profile civil lawsuit against the United Klans of America (UKA). By the time that lawsuit was filed, UKA was already a destitute, impotent, disintegrating entity that virtually all white Americans emphatically rejected; the SPLC lawsuit merely drove the final nail into the UKA coffin. SPLC boasts that it has likewise won “crushing jury verdicts” that effectively shut down groups like the White Aryan Resistance, the White Patriot Party militia, and the Aryan Nations.

This has been SPLC’s modus operandi since its inception: to initiate lawsuits against prominent hate groups for crimes that their individual members commit. In these suits, declares Morris Dees proudly: “We absolutely take no prisoners. When we get into a legal fight we go all the way.” The leftist writer Ken Silverstein, who in 2000 wrote a penetrating exposé of SPLC for Harper’s magazine, has noted that the targets of these lawsuits tend to be “mediagenic villains” who are “eager to show off their swastikas for the news cameras.” As Dees and SPLC well understand, such figures stand the best chance of triggering an emotional public response that translates, in turn, into financial contributions from donors eager to combat the perceived threat.

SPLC claims that there are currently 892 active “hate groups” in the U.S. Asserting that the vast majority of such organizations are “right wing,” the Center says they include “the Ku Klux Klan,” “the neo-Nazi movement,” “neo-Confederates,” “racist skinheads,” “antigovernment militias,” “Christian Identity adherents,” and a variety of “anti-immigrant,” “anti-LGBT,” “anti-Muslim,” and “alternative Right” organizations. While also identifying a tiny smattering of black separatist entities as hate groups, SPLC takes pains to point out that black organizations must be judged by a different standard than their white counterparts, because “much black racism in America is, at least in part, a response to centuries of white racism.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Terrorist Attack Kills Four IDF Soldiers As Palestinians Celebrate How the Obama administration has emboldened the Palestinian death cult. Joseph Klein

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

A Palestinian terrorist rammed a flatbed truck into a group of Israeli soldiers who had just disembarked from a bus adjacent to a popular promenade in southern Jerusalem on Sunday. They were on a sightseeing tour at the time. The massacre, a copy of the vehicular terrorist attacks in Nice and Berlin last year, resulted in the deaths of four Israelis, including three women, and the wounding of at least fifteen others. The terrorist driver was shot dead before he could inflict even more mayhem. Even so, his attack was one of the deadliest in Israel over the last year.

The terrorist, identified as Fadi al-Qanbar, was believed to have lived in an Arab area of east Jerusalem. He had previously served time in an Israeli jail, but nevertheless reportedly managed to buy the truck he used as a killing machine, which even carried Israeli license plates.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We know the identity of the attacker, and according to all the signs, he is a supporter of Islamic State. We will overcome this terror, just as we overcame other attacks.” Linking this attack to the ones in Nice and Berlin, he added, “We know there is a succession of attacks, and it could well be that there is a connection between those in France and Berlin — and now in Jerusalem.”

As of the writing of this article, ISIS has not claimed responsibility for the attack. Regardless, the Palestinian terrorist could well have been inspired by an Islamic State magazine, which instructed jihadists how to use large trucks to target “large numbers of kuffar” congregating on streets and at public markets. “The target should be on a road that offers the ability to accelerate to a high speed, which allows for inflicting maximum damage on those in the vehicle’s path,” the magazine advised. “It is imperative that one does not exit his vehicle during the attack. Rather he should remain inside, driving over the already harvested kuffar, and continue crushing their remains until it becomes physically impossible to continue by vehicle.” That is precisely what the terrorist driving the truck into the group of Israeli soldiers did. After running some of them over, he put his truck in reverse to crush them even further.

According to a report on Debkafile, some Palestinians standing nearby “clapped and shouted encouragement to the truck driver.”

Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latif Qanou described the latest terrorist slaughter as a “heroic” act which other Palestinians should emulate, although Hamas did not immediately claim responsibility. Palestinian social media were full of congratulations to the terrorist driver for the “feat” he had accomplished. The following is from an official Fatah Twitter account: “perpetrator of the ramming operation in occupied Jerusalem is the martyr Fadi Qunbar.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Islamization of Britain in 2016 “The realistic future for Britain is Islamic.” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

Sharia courts administering Islamic justice in Britain are run by clerics who believe some offenders should have their hands chopped off, according to Muslim scholar Elham Manea. She described the prevailing attitude as “totalitarian” and as more backward than some parts of Pakistan.

Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism,” according to the National Union of Teachers, which wants to replace the concept with one that includes “international rights.”

More than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts, according to a 615-page survey. Only one in three British Muslims (34%) would contact the police if they believed that somebody close to them had become involved with radical Islam. In addition, 23% of British Muslims said Islamic Sharia law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations.

Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London has become “like a jihadi training camp,” according to testimony from a former inmate. The government was accused of burying a report on prison extremism. The report warned that staff have been reluctant to tackle Islamist behavior for fear of being labelled “racist.”

Residents in Manchester received leaflets in their mailboxes, from a Muslim group called “Public Purity,” calling for a public ban on dogs.

Voter fraud has been deliberately overlooked in Muslim communities because of “political correctness,” according to a government report.

Police in Telford — dubbed the child sex capital of Britain — were accused of covering up allegations that hundreds of children in the town were sexually exploited by Pakistani sex gangs.

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2016 to become around 5.5% of the overall population of 64 million, according to figures extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany.

The growth of Britain’s Muslim population can be attributed to immigration, high birth rates and conversions to Islam.

Islam and Islam-related issues, omnipresent in Britain during 2016, can be categorized into five broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria and Iraq; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; 4) Muslim integration into British society; and 5) the failures of British multiculturalism.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Call on All Christians to Defend Their Birthplace and the Homeland of the Jewish People by Petra Heldt

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

We need ensure that the Old City of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism for more than 3,000 years and the seat of Christianity for 2,000 years, will not be allowed to be Islamic as part of what would soon be an Islamic country, and very likely a terrorist one. In such a state, all polls show that the next vote will be to install Hamas.

Based on the Hamas Charter that denies Israel’s right to exist, the vote could complete eliminating Jewish — and Christian — history and replacing it with Islam.

What drives Western politicians to be servants aiding the destruction of Judeo-Christian culture in the Middle East and Europe? Why does the Paris peace conference prepare for the destruction of the Jewish State while Christians are murdered in Muslim countries in historically unparalleled numbers?

Christians will not be silent when all these places will be voted to go to those who will destroy them — as they destroyed Palmyra, Antioch, Nisibis, Niniveh, and in late 2014, Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah, leveled by the Islamic State.

The streets of Paris must hear the protests against the attempted rewriting of history at the peace conference and any subsequent Security Council vote. Such protestors are like “a man who would built up the wall and stand in front of God in the gap on behalf of the Land” (Ezekiel 22:30) — so that the only bastion of democracy, the very defender of Christianity, the last keeper of Judeo-Christian heritage in the Middle East and Europe will continue to prosper.

Christians’ collective consciousness must stop the planned peace conference in Paris on January 15-17, and prevent the presumably intended UN Security Council (UNSC) vote on a Palestinian State as a 22nd Muslim state, in the midst of the one Jewish State. We need to ensure that there will be no capitulation to the Islamization of the Middle East and Europe. We need to ensure that the Old City of Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism for more than 3,000 years and the seat of Christianity for 2,000 years, will not be allowed to be Islamic as part of what would soon be an Islamic state, and very likely a terrorist one. In such a state, all polls show, the next vote will be to install the terrorist group Hamas. That would mean the eventual destruction of all Judeo-Christian heritage, as we have been seeing throughout the Middle East.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peter Smith The Dar al-Islam Demographic

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

The face of failure, according to officialdom, is a Muslim immigrant with a bona fide visa blowing people up. This is a blinkered perception, as it is not explosive Islamists who represent the greatest threat, but the West’s mute acceptance of a culture and mores antithetical to our own.
Said Turkey’s President Erdogan after the New Year Islamic terrorist attack in Istanbul, “They are trying to trying to create terror, to demoralise our people and destabilise our country…we will retain our cool-headedness…and we will never give ground to such dirty games.” After each Islamist terrorist atrocity, in whatever country, we are told by an array of political leaders and men and women in the street that “we” won’t be cowed. The terrorists will win, we are told, if they succeed in their aim of getting us to change our behaviour. What a lot of old rope this all is.

Why does anyone believe the terrorists are so dim-witted that they think their attacks will seriously disrupt the normal business of everyday life? During the Blitz in Britain people got on with their lives. They did keep calm and carry on. Was this heroic? I don’t think so. Exactly what else could people do? It would quickly wear you out if you started running around in a panic, and claustrophobia and hunger would wreak havoc if you remained locked indoors under the bed. And my point is exactly what?

My point is that Islamic terrorist attacks have no ulterior motive. The motive is that they want to kill infidels, as instructed by their scripture. (That is, those parts of it that Western apologists seem not to want to read.) That is it, full stop, end of story. Their end game is to take over. But this, they recognise, will not be accomplished by terrorist attacks. Such attacks, tragic though they are for the victims and their families, are trivial in the scheme of things. They are needle pricks on an elephant.

Hold on, I might be wrong. I am wrong. There is an ulterior motive to terrorist attacks; though I seriously doubt that it is appreciated by suicide bombers and their ilk. Terrorist attacks are a classic diversionary tactic.

Donald Trump talks about “extreme vetting”. What is the purpose of such vetting? When I have heard it being discussed, its purpose, apparently, is to ensure that terrorists are not let in through the front door. Politicians, security services, police forces, and immigration officials are singularly focussed on this objective. The face of failure is a Muslim immigrant, with a bona fide visa, blowing people up. This blinkers our perception of the existential threat which has nothing to do with Islamic nut jobs blowing people up. Al-Hijra (immigration) and fecundity are the real interconnected weapons of mass (cultural) destruction.

Muslims stream into the West and multiply, without the slightest inclination among 99%-plus of them to deliver death with a bomb, gun, knife or truck. In fact, many are fleeing Islamic death dealers. You have to admire the sheer chutzpah and wizardry of it. ‘More Muslims than infidels are killed by Muslim extremists’ is the conventional narrative and therefore must flee in vast numbers to Dar al-Harb (effectively the West), where they erect mosques and don hijabs to embrace the very same creed out of which supremacism, intolerance, hate and terrorism inevitably spew forth.

And all the while this happens, feeble-minded apologists tell us how peaceful and moderate are most Muslims. Sure they are, but they will still be out flag-waving as and when each Western city and country succumbs to the Muslim majority and becomes part of the house of Islam (Dar al-Islam).

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Daryl McCann Jerusalem Bound?

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

The last time Arabs ruled eastern Jerusalem and the Old City all but one of the Jewish Quarter’s 35 synagogues was demolished, a fact John Kerry prefers not to mention. Trump’s pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv would end the prospect of history repeating itself.
As a candidate in the 2016 election season Donald Trump often talked of moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It was easy enough to dismiss. After all, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had made the same promise before winning the White House.

This time around might be different. For a start, David Friedman sounds like a very different kind of U.S. ambassador to Israel. Here’s Friedman responding to Trump endorsing him for the post: “I intend to work tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region, and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Should the United States relocate its embassy to Jerusalem? A lot of opinion in Australia is against it, although Tony Abbott saw merit in the idea. Australia joining a move by President Trump to shift its embassy to Jerusalem could “demonstrate its unswerving support for Israel, as the Middle East’s only liberal, pluralist democracy”. Members of the Turnbull government rebuffed “talkative” Abbott’s latest idea. Shifting the embassy would exacerbate an already problematic situation, especially with regards to the “two-state solution”. Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce referred to Abbott’s comments as “not helpful”, while Foreign Minister Julie Bishop gave her former leader short shrift: “The Australian government does not have any plans to move the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

Greg Barton, professor in global Islamic studies at Deakin University, made this case for retaining the status quo:

“The future of Israel for Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis and for people living on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank depends upon trust and negotiation…If we went ahead and moved our embassy, following suit after the Americans to Jerusalem, we would be closing off doors of opportunity to play that mediating role.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s, not surprisingly, took an even harder line, and warned that changing the US embassy would unleash a “crisis we will not be able to come out from” for “the peace process in the Middle East and even peace in the world”. Departing Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to be reading from the same script, characterising the planned embassy change as dangerous: “You’d have an explosion, an explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank, and perhaps in Israel itself, but throughout the region.”

But so many explosions are already taking place in the Middle East and none have anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Syria’s civil war alone has resulted resulting in as many as 470,000 deaths. Perhaps this outgoing secretary of state might have found better things to do than trying to foist on Mahmoud Abbas a Palestinian mini-state (the West Bank and East Jerusalem) instead of his real goal, a fully-fledged Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Palestinian Authority has played John Kerry for a fool. The latest version of Mahmoud Abbas’ polemic naturally enough features UN Resolution 2334 and its call for East Jerusalem – including the Jewish Quarter in the Old City – to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state. According to Abbas, at any rate, it would now be “hypocritical” of the US government to move its embassy before all Israeli-Palestinian territorial disputes, not least any final agreement on Jerusalem, are resolved. John Kerry – again – is on the same page as Mahmoud Abbas: “If all of a sudden Jerusalem is declared to be the location of our embassy, that has issues of sovereignty, issues of law that would deem to be affected by that move…”

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Theresa May Says Britain Will Make Definitive Break With EU Brexit strategy isn’t ‘muddled,’ British prime minister says By Jenny Gross

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

LONDON—U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said Britain would make a definitive break with the European Union while still seeking to negotiate the best possible access to the bloc’s common market.

“Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the EU, but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership of the EU,” Mrs. May said in an interview with Sky News. “We are leaving. We are coming out,” she said, adding that London still “wants the best possible deal” in terms of trade.

Mrs. May reiterated earlier comments that the U.K. would have control over its borders once outside the EU. She declined to say whether she would prioritize curbing immigration over market access.
EU leaders say the U.K. must allow free movement of people from across the EU if it wants access to the tariff-free single market. Many British lawmakers say membership in the single market is crucial for Britain’s economy.

Mrs. May has faced renewed pressure over the past week from critics who have questioned whether the British government has clear aims in Brexit negotiations, which are due to start by the end of March.

Ivan Rogers, the U.K.’s top diplomat in Brussels, on Tuesday resigned unexpectedly and wrote in a letter to staff that he hoped colleagues would continue to challenge “muddled thinking.”

“Our thinking on this isn’t muddled at all,” Mrs. May said in Sunday’s interview. “We will be outside the European Union but we will get the best possible deal for the U.K. in terms of our trading relationship with the European Union.” CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Truck Plows Into Israeli Soldiers in Jerusalem, Killing Four Israeli authorities call incident a suspected terror attack By Rory Jones

Posted By on January 9th, 2017

TEL AVIV—A Palestinian man rammed a truck into Israeli soldiers on a busy promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four, in what Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a terrorist attack.

The driver targeted a group of Israeli soldiers disembarking from a bus in a popular tourist area overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City and was shot dead at the scene by security forces, police said.

A video published by Israeli media outlets showed the truck driving into the Israelis before attempting to ram them again. The attack killed three female soldiers and one male soldier, all in their 20s, Israeli authorities said. Some 17 other soldiers were wounded and evacuated to hospitals, they said.

“We know the identity of the perpetrator, who by all indications supports the Islamic State,” Mr. Netanyahu said as he visited the scene Sunday evening, according to his office.

Israeli police identified the driver of the truck as 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar. The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, said the driver was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem.

The attack came ahead of a conference France is convening this month with members of the international community in an effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and amid tension over a United Nations resolution last month that deemed Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal.

Mr. Netanyahu compared the Jerusalem attack with Islamic State-claimed truck-rammings last month at a Berlin Christmas market, which left 12 people dead, and in France last July, in which 86 were killed. He provided no evidence of links between Islamic State and Sunday’s attacker.

In the past, the Israeli leader has attempted to link Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians and soldiers with global acts of terrorism committed by Islamic State. But support for the terror group isn’t widespread among Palestinians, according to Israeli security officials.

There was no immediate claim or statement referencing the attack on Islamic State’s official media channels.

Medics and police arriving moments after Sunday’s truck-ramming described a bloody scene, with bodies wedged under the vehicle.

“When we arrived there was chaos,” said Chen Lendi Sharon, a medic who was among the first to arrive on the scene, according to a statement from Israel’s ambulance service. “I saw a truck that rammed youngsters getting off the bus.” CONTINUE AT SITE