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Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
This latest broadcast about CAIR’s Muslim Culture fest has the TV station KXAN in Austin, Texas eating out of the hand of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“A lot of great food there,” says news anchor Mike Rush. The problem with this broadcast is not CAIR serving food. It is that there is no context. If CAIR were an organization that just threw parties, that would be great. But of course, the reality is much different.
Six years ago, this same station, KXAN, ran a segment that had CAIR’s San Antonio executive director Sarwat Husain in high dudgeon about the Muslim Brotherhood receiving criticism. The Brotherhood is an insurgency wherever they are, and got kicked out of its home country, Egypt, in one of the largest popular protests in recorded history. It was its support for the Brotherhood that was one reason that CAIR was designated as a terrorist group in the U.A.E. CAIR feigned surprise at this designation, calling it “bizarre.”
Also, here is a CAIR rep upset that someone was criticizing the terror organization, Hamas.
Again, here is the head of CAIR, Nihad Awad, referring to Israel as the occupation, while CAIR’s Deputy Executive Director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, refers to Hamas as a foreign organization.
Just a few weeks ago, CAIR was defending a deadly terrorist organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on social media.
The fact that a Texas TV station such as KXAN would be promoting CAIR is dismaying. Because the same man beaming with pride over his culture fest is the same Faizan Syed who stood outside the prison that is holding Aafia Siddiqui, shouting into a bullhorn “Let her go!”
Why is CAIR trying to free an al Qaeda agent? Why are they partnering with pro-Taliban organizations such as the Aafia Foundation? Why has there been no follow-up on CAIR’s role in what was an international news story live streamed on social media?
According to Islam Expert, former DHS investigator Philip Haney, “The current AMJA leadership structure includes six members of the Leadership Council (aka Majlis Al-Shura, or the Shura Council), nearly all of whom are graduates of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, plus eight Scholars, 46 Experts and 41 Members. Combined together, this roster of 100 Islamic scholars is a Who’s Who of prominent Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Salafi Muslims affiliated with the Global Islamic Movement.””
No. I don’t want fries with that.
All the network affiliates are continuing to sell us the idea that CAIR is something legitimate, authoritative, benign, and appetizing.
But at this point, it is just too much to swallow.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
DHS, however, did not do so. It’s clear that there is heavy Muslim Brotherhood influence in this administration, but the administration itself refuses to acknowledge it, and may not even be aware of it. State and DHS could have and should have known that the ISNA convention would be full of pro-jihad, pro-Sharia, and pro-caliphate rhetoric, and not had any administration officials attend. But that would have angered the Muslim part of the ruling coalition. So they went.
And of course, no one cares. It isn’t as if two administration officials attend the conference of an organization that is opposed to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. That would have been a scandal.
“Exclusive: State Department Distances Itself from ISNA’s Islamist Agenda, Homeland Security Stays Quiet,” by Susannah Johnston, Focus on Western Islamism, September 22, 2022:
The U.S. State Department has distanced itself from the Islamist agenda promoted by speakers who appeared at a convention held earlier this month by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
The agency issued its statement on September 21 in response to a query from FWI about the appearance of Rashad Hussain Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom at ISNA’s annual convention. A spokesperson declared that the ambassador “rejects the use of rhetoric that promotes discrimination, harassment, and violence against people of all faiths and backgrounds.”
Hussain, who was appointed to his post by the Biden Administration in January 2021, spoke at the ISNA event in Rosemont, Illinois over Labor Day weekend. The convention featured speakers who have promoted anti-Hindu rhetoric, called for the release of convicted terror supporters and for the establishment of a caliphate.
At this year’s ISNA convention, some speakers presented progressive visions while others painted an Islamist future for the United States. One activist who spoke at the convention called convicted Hamas terror supporters, “the finest men.”
ISNA was founded in the 1980s as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. It grew into one of the largest American-Muslim organizations in the U.S., attracting thousands of attendees to its annual conventions.In the early 2000s the U.S. government listed ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial regarding the Holy Land Foundation’s funding of Hamas. This led to an initial chilling of relations between ISNA and U.S. government officials. Time passed, and the current administration appears to have forgotten ISNA’s Islamist roots.
President Biden, who spoke at ISNA’s virtual conference in 2020, sent a letter to this year’s convention, thanking the organization for inviting him to participate. In his letter, Biden reminded attendees of all the Muslim appointees in his administration.
“When I came into office, I pledged that my Administration would reflect the diversity of the United States—and that’s what we have done, including appointing the first Muslim American to the federal bench and the first Muslim American to serve as the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom,” he wrote, referring to Hussain.
Another Biden appointee, Brenda Abdelall spoke at the convention. Abdelall works as Assistant Secretary of Partnership and Engagement for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Abdelall spoke at the convention on Friday afternoon with very few people in attendance. (The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to an inquiry about Abdelall’s presence at the convention.)
The appearance of Hussain and Abdelall at ISNA’s convention is troubling given the radical agenda promoted by other speakers at the event….
Speaker Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew who supports boycotts against the country, called for the release of convicted terror supporters. Peled begged for the release of five men convicted in the U.S. for supporting the designated terror group, Hamas, saying “Five of the finest men you will ever meet received long, tortuous prison sentences in federal prison for being Muslim and Palestinian.”
In another session, Muqtedar Khan, a University of Delaware professor, implied establishing a caliphate is a given, “When we talk of establishing khilafah, justice is not enough.”…
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Biden’s handlers would never dream of appointing someone who actually opposes jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. If they did, there would be a huge outcry over “Islamophobia,” and the appointment would be withdrawn. But these guys? No problem.
“Biden Appoints Three Islamists to DHS Panel,” by Ryan Mauro, Focus on Western Islamism, October 4, 2022:
The Biden Administration has appointed three Muslim leaders with Islamist backgrounds as advisors to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
On September 19, DHS announced the 25 members of its “reinvigorated” Faith-Based Security Advisory Council, which will provide “strategic, timely, specific and actionable advice to the Secretary on diverse homeland security matters.”
One of the objectives of the Council is to build trust between American Muslims and law security officials. However, three appointees have a history of promoting suspicion of law enforcement in the U.S.
Magid’s offices at the ADAMS mosque were raided on March 20, 2002 as part of an investigation into the SAAR network, a collection of around 100 nonprofits and corporations accused of a conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Magid was an advisor to one of the Islamist entities—the Sterling Charitable Gift Fund—alongside other Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders. No arrests were made.
Magid’s previous organization, ISNA, was designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation in 2007. The Justice Department also listed ISNA as an “entity” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, a federal judge upheld the designation because of “ample” evidence linking ISNA to the Hamas-financing network.
Magid fanned the flames during the Holy Land investigation by stating that elements of the U.S. government were acting with “intent on dismantling Muslim organizations and bringing them down.”
Magid spoke at a fundraiser for the rabidly anti-American imam Jabil Abdullah Al-Amin (previously known as H. Rap Brown), who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 2008. Al-Amin is the spiritual leader of a violent extremist group called Ummah that, according to the FBI, is a “nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group” whose “primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law.”
Magid’s appointment is particularly troubling given his role in hindering discussion of the Islamist political motives of jihadist terrorism while serving on the Obama Administration’s working group dedicated to Countering Violent Extremism program said Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy. Under pressure from Magid and others, this group “totally erased any discussion of the Islamist political motives of jihadist terrorism,” he said.
Magid has worked to burnish his reputation as a moderate by embracing a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The efforts have paid off with his recent appointment to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and his status as Chairman of International Interfaith Peace Corps.
Biden also appointed Salam al-Marayati, co-founder and President of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) to the advisory panel. In 1999 he called Hezbollah attacks as “legitimate resistance.” Marayati suggested that Israel perpetrated 9/11 to distract attention away from its actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
His involvement with MPAC is remarkable because the organization was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and has a history of concerning rhetoric. For example, the organization has claimed that the War on Terror was actually a “war on Islam” perpetuated by a conspiracy of anti-Muslim “special interest groups” working with U.S. government officials to promote “Islamophobic” policies in the aftermath of 9/11.
In 2010, a MPAC policy paper argued that the Muslim Brotherhood’s “peaceful activism” is an asset to the U.S.’s efforts to fight Al-Qaeda. Three years later, it changed its tune, siding with those protesting the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Marayati has also been very critical of American law enforcement agencies charged with apprehending and prosecuting terrorists. In 2003, he accused the FBI of racial profiling after 9/11, declaring, “That’s what they’ve been doing since the attacks, and we don’t know of any case that has resulted in the arrest, indictment or prosecution of a terrorist.”…
Taken together, the appointments are a demonstration of “how the Biden administration is really just a continuation of the two Obama terms,” said Shideler. “We can expect that these appointments will continue to mean a de-emphasizing of jihadist threats and an over-emphasis on targeting the Biden Administration’s political opponents (such as school board protestors) as their primary counterterrorism focus.”
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Mahmoud Abbas met with a group of Palestinian-Americans on September 22, a week before making his Israel-bashing speech at the U.N., and offered them an intimate look at his recent meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It was quite a performance by Abbas, that revealed his special house blend of arrogance, rancor, and sheer miscomprehension. Abbas’ self-satisfied recounting of his phone conversation with Blinken can be found here: “‘You little boy’: Abbas says he scolded Blinken for not pressuring Israel,” by Jacob Magid, Times of Israel, September 29, 2022:
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of Palestinian Americans last week that he scolded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to pressure Israel to make peace.…
Mahmoud Abbas is in no position to scold Blinken or any other American official. The P.A. is deeply dependent on aid from the U.S. Without the $330 million that it now receives each year from the Bidenites, its economy would collapse.
In a recording of the September 22 meeting obtained by The Times of Israel, the PA leader recalled a recent phone conversation with Blinken during which Abbas said he grew frustrated with what he called a recurring US practice of claiming that Israel is not interested in peace, while refusing to use the American bully pulpit to pressure Jerusalem into moving in that direction.
“I told Blinken, ‘You little boy, don’t do that,’” Abbas told the Palestinian Americans, speaking in Arabic. Some details of the meeting were first published by the Haya Washington Arabic news site.
Abbas said he then recalled to Blinken how during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip after US president Dwight Eisenhower ordered prime minister David Ben Gurion to do so.
“I know your history,” Abbas said he told Blinken, detailing a string of phone calls that Eisenhower held with Ben Gurion at the time. In one of those conversations, the PA leader said the US president called the Israeli prime minister and asked, “David, have you gotten out of [Sinai]? Tonight, you’ll withdraw and you’ll tell me yourself that you’ve done so.’”
“Ben Gurion wrote in his memoirs that he withdrew that same night,” Abbas said, seeking to prove that the US has the power to press Israel when it wants to.
This is, of course, absurd. First, as to the actual withdrawal: Eisenhower threatened to withhold $100 million in aid to Israel in February 1957. Ben Gurion did not rush to withdraw overnight, as Abbas claims, but took a month to complete an orderly pullout. Second, and much more important, Abbas appears not to realize that Israel in 2022 is not the Israel of 1956. In 1956, Israel’s population was 1.6 million. Today it is over 9 million. Israel’s GDP in 1956 was $1.8 billion. Today it is $410 billion. Israel’s exports in 1956 of manufactured commodities were worth $34.3 million. In 2022, Israel’s exports reached $165 billion. In 1956 Israel was almost completely dependent for weaponry on outside suppliers, mainly France. In 2022, Israel is itself one of the top ten exporters of weapons in the world and has been so for five years running. It exports weapons to European countries and since 2020, to Arab members of the Abraham Accords; its top three export markets for weapons are India, Azerbaijan, and Vietnam. It also exports weapons to the United States. The American military has a deep appreciation for Israeli advances in weaponry, including, recently, both the Iron Dome and Iron Beam anti-missile defensive systems. In Operation Breaking Dawn, the Israelis achieved a successful interception rate of 97% using the Iron Dome. The Americans have benefited, too, from Israel’s advanced drones, its avionics (including improvements Israeli scientists made to the top-of-the-line F-35 that both air forces rely on), and its cyberwarfare and cyber defense capabilities, which are on a par with those of the U.S. and Russia. Israeli intelligence in the Middle East, especially about Iran and Islamic terror groups, is freely shared with the Americans.
Israel in 1956 could not say no to Washington. In 2022, though Abbas apparently does not realize it, Israel could manage, if it had to, without the $3 billion in aid it receives annually from the U.S. But could the U.S. do without Israeli advances in so many types of weapons, without its cyberwarfare capability, or without the intelligence gathered by its satellites and by Mossad agents? Israel is not just an ally, but arguably, is America’s most valuable military ally.
Abbas seems to think that Israel today can be pressured by Washington as it was in 1956-57. He’s wrong.
Commenting on the testy conversation with the US secretary of state, the PA president said he told Blinken: “The lesson [from this] is not to say, ‘My beloved, do this or don’t do that,’” when dealing with Israel, but rather to use the “red phone” and the authority of the president’s office to strong-arm Israel into changing its policies. He claimed the US deals with “190 countries” in this manner, but not Israel.
It is not true that the US strong-arms “190 countries.” The President cannot “pick up the red phone” and get Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Cuba, to do what he wants, nor can he do that with the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, or the rest of the European countries. He can’t even get the recipients of large amounts of American aid, such as Egypt and Jordan, to change their policies on human rights. And even though the Americans gave the P.A. $330 million in aid so far in 2020, they have been unable to get Abbas to shut down his “Pay-For-Slay” program. The days of diktats by the major powers are over.
Abbas told the meeting’s attendees that he used to believe the US administrations that claimed that Israel does not want peace. However, he now realizes that “it’s not that the Israelis don’t want peace but the Americans don’t want peace.”
Nothing makes sense here. No administration would have said Israel “doesn’t want peace.” They likely have said – but this distinction escaped Abbas – that Israel was unwilling to agree to start negotiations for peace “based on the 1967 lines” (that is, the 1949 armistice lines), which is what the 2002 Saudi peace initiative demanded, and what Abbas still demands. That is a different thing from not “wanting peace.” Israel has made great sacrifices for peace – giving up fully 95% of the territory it won in the Six-Day War in order to have a peace treaty with Egypt – as much as, or perhaps more than, any nation.
And when Abbas says that the “Americans don’t want peace,” it’s hard to fathom what he means, given the enormous amount of time and attention successive administrations in Washington have devoted to that ever-receding will-o’-the-wisp, a “two-state solution.”
Asked for comment on Abbas’s remarks, a State Department spokesperson said that Blinken “has maintained a respectful dialogue with President Abbas. Beyond that, we’ll decline to comment on the content of their conversations.”
A separate source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel: “This is not an accurate characterization of their discussions.”
Abbas was all swagger and swank before his friendly audience of Palestinian-Americans. He proudly described how he had told off Blinken, or so he says: addressing him condescendingly as “you little boy.” I doubt if he ever said that to Blinken. But he’d like others to believe that he did. “See, I put the Jewish Blinken Boy in his place.”
Fundamentally, Abbas cannot face the awful truth: that the American government is not willing, and even more importantly, is not able, to pressure the Israeli government as it did in 1956-57. Israel is six times more populous, hundreds of times richer, and infinitely more advanced in its military capability than it was 65 years ago. The Jewish state cannot be pressured, not by the UN, not by the EU, not even by the United States, to do what Israelis think would endanger their existence. And Washington, in any case, despite the squawks of assorted squadlettes, continues to stand with its plucky, brave, infinitely resourceful little ally.
Abbas Claims He Called Blinken “You Little Boy”; Berates Him For Not Making Israel Yield To U.S. Demands
Mahmoud Abbas met with a group of Palestinian-Americans on September 22, a week before making his Israel-bashing speech at the U.N., and offered them an intimate look at his recent m with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. It was quite a performance by Abbas, that revealed his special house blend of arrogance, rancor, and sheer miscomprehension. Abbas’ self-satisfied recounting of his phone conversation with Blinken can be found here https://www.timesofisrael.com/you-little-boy-abbas-says-he-scolded-blinken-for-not-pressuring-israel/
“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of Palestinian Americans last week that he scolded US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for failing to pressure Israel to make peace.
Comment:
Mahmoud Abbas is in no position to scold Blinken or any other American official. . The P.A. is deeply dependent on aid from the U.S. Without the $330 million that it now receives each year from the Bidenites, its economy would collapse.
“While Abbas has not shied away from publicly vocalizing his frustration with the Biden administration over the past year, his remarks during a private meeting with representatives of the Palestinian diaspora on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York appeared to go further and included the belittling of the United States’s top diplomat.
“In a recording of the September 22 meeting obtained by The Times of Israel, the PA leader recalled a recent phone conversation with Blinken during which Abbas said he grew frustrated with what he called a recurring US practice of claiming that Israel is not interested in peace while refusing to use the American bully pulpit to pressure Jerusalem into moving in that direction.
“I told Blinken, ‘You little boy, don’t do that,’” Abbas told the Palestinian Americans, speaking in Arabic. Some details of the meeting were first published by the Haya Washington Arabic news site.
“Abbas said he then recalled to Blinken how during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip after US president Dwight Eisenhower ordered prime minister David Ben Gurion to do so.
“I know your history,” Abbas said he told Blinken, detailing a string of phone calls that Eisenhower held with Ben Gurion at the time. In one of those conversations, the PA leader said the US president called the Israeli prime minister and asked, “David, have you gotten out of [Sinai]? Tonight, you’ll withdraw and you’ll tell me yourself that you’ve done so.’”
“Ben Gurion wrote in his memoirs that he withdrew that same night,” Abbas said, seeking to prove that the US has the power to press Israel when it wants to.
Comment:
This is of course absurd. First, as to the actual withdrawal: Eisenhower threatened to withhold $100 million in aid to Israel in February 1957. Ben Gurion did not rush to withdraw overnight, as Abbas claims, but took a month to complete an orderly pullout. Second, and much more important, Abbas appears not to realize that Israel in 2022 is not the Israel of 1956. In 1956, Israel’s population was 1.6 million. Today it is over 9 million. Israel’s GDP in 1956 was $1.8 billion. Today it is $410 billion. Israel’s exports in 1956 of manufactured commodities were worth $34.3 million. In 2022 Israel’s exports reached $165 billion. In 1956 Israel was almost completely dependent for weaponry on outside suppliers, mainly France. In 2022 Israel is itself one of the top ten exporters of weapons in the world and has been so for five years running. It exports weapons to European countries and since 2020, to Arab members of the Abraham Accords; its top three export markets for weapons are India, Azerbaijan, and Vietnam. It also exports weapons to the United States. The American military has a deep appreciation for Israeli advances in weaponry, including, recently, both the Iron Dome and Iron Beam anti-missile defensive systems. In Operation Breaking Dawn, the Israelis achieved a successful interception rate of 97% using the Iron Dome. The Americans have benefited, too, from Israel’s advanced drones, its avionics (including improvements Israeli scientists made to the top-of-the-line F-35 that both air forces rely on), and its cyberwarfare and cyber defense capabilities, which are on a par with those of the U.S. and Russia. Israeli intelligence in the Middle East, especially about Iran and Islamic terror groups, is freely shared with the Americans.
Israel in 1956 could not say no to Washington. In 2022, though Abbas apparently does not realize it, Israel could manage, if it had to, without the $3 billion in aid it receives annually from the U.S. But could the U.S. do without Israeli advances in so many types of weapons, or without its cyberwarfare capability, or without the intelligence gathered by its satellites and by Mossad agents? Israel is not just an ally, but arguably, is America’s most valuable military ally.
Abbas seems to think that Israel today can be pressured by Washington as it was in 1956-57. He’s wrong.
“Commenting on the testy conversation with the US secretary of state, the PA president said he told Blinken: “The lesson [from this] is not to say, ‘My beloved, do this or don’t do that,’” when dealing with Israel, but rather to use the “red phone” and the authority of the president’s office to strong-arm Israel into changing its policies. He claimed the US deals with “190 countries” in this manner, but not Israel.
Comment:
It is not true that the US strong-arms “190 countries.” The President cannot “pick up the red phone” and get Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Cuba, to do what he wants, nor can he do that with the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, or the rest of the European countries. He can’t even get the recipients of large amounts of American aid, like Egypt and Jordan, to change their policies on human rights. And even though the Americans gave the P.A. $330 million in aid so far in 2020, they have been unable to get Abbas to shut down his “Pay-For-Slay” program. The days of diktats by the major powers are over.
“Abbas told the meeting’s attendees that he used to believe the US administrations that claimed that Israel does not want peace. However, he now realizes that “it’s not that the Israelis don’t want peace but the Americans don’t want peace.”
Comment:
Nothing makes sense here. No administration would have said Israel “doesn’t want peace.” They likely have said – but this distinction escaped Abbas – that Israel was unwilling to agree to start negotiations for peace “based on the 1967 lines” (that is, the 1949 armistice lines) which is what the 2002 Saudi peace initiative demanded, and what Abbas still demands. That is a different thing from not “wanting peace.” Israel has made great sacrifices for peace – giving up fully 95% of the territory it won in the Six-Day War in order to have a peace treaty with Egypt– as much as, or perhaps more than, any nation.
And when Abbas says that the “Americans don’t want peace” it’s hard to fathom what he. means, given the enormous amount of time and attention successive administrations in Washington, have devoted to that ever-receding will-o’-the-wisp, a “two-state solution.”
“Asked for comment on Abbas’s remarks, a State Department spokesperson said that Blinken “has maintained a respectful dialogue with President Abbas. Beyond that, we’ll decline to comment on the content of their conversations.”
“A separate source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel: “This is not an accurate characterization of their discussions.”
Comment:
Abbas was all swagger and swank before his friendly audience of Palestinian-Americans. He proudly described how he had told off Blinken, or so he says: addressing him condescendingly as “you little boy.” I doubt if he ever said that to Blinken. But he’d like others to believe that he did. “See, I put the Jewish Blinken Boy in his place.”
Fundamentally, Abbas cannot face the awful truth: that the American government is not willing, and even more importantly, is not able, to pressure the Israeli government as it did in 1956-57. Israel is six times more populous, hundreds of times richer, and infinitely more advanced in its military capability than it was 65 years ago. The Jewish state cannot be pressured, not by the UN, not by the EU, not even by the United States, to do what Israelis think would endanger their existence. And Washington, in any case, despite the squawks of assorted squadlettes, continues to stand with its plucky, brave, infinitely resourceful little ally.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
What’s happening in Iran is the biggest women’s rights protest ever in the Islamic world. Yet the response from some of the leading feminists in the United States, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, has been strikingly muted. Each one has made what can be characterized at best as a tepid, pro forma response, one that contrasts sharply with their statements and actions during the Trump administration. It looks as if each one of these women regards Donald Trump as a far greater threat to women than the Islamic Republic of Iran is.
AOC tweeted on September 23: “Solidarity with the courageous women and allies in Iran protesting for their freedom. Mahsa Amini was senselessly murdered by the same patriarchal and autocratic forces repressing women the world over. The right to choose belongs to us all, from hijabs to reproductive care.” She also retweeted a tweet from Yassmin Abdel-Magid, a hijab-wearing Muslim writer in Australia: “To be (hijabi) or not be (hijabi) is the business of no state or man. Solidarity with women resisting patriarchal control, the world over.” Tlaib, meanwhile, retweeted AOC’s statement, and Omar retweeted Abdel-Magid’s. That’s it in terms of the public reactions of this trio to the uprising for women’s rights in Iran.
Neither AOC nor Abdel-Magid was going to come close to saying something about Islamic law, although that’s exactly what the protests in Iran are all about: women there don’t want to live under Islamic law anymore. But both are far too committed to the fictional concept of “Islamophobia,” and so they both made it all about patriarchy. That’s a much safer target for them, as patriarchy exists all over, not just in Iran, and not just among Muslims. So the very publicly practicing Muslims Omar and Tlaib could retweet their statements without fearing that they would be accused of criticizing Islam.
AOC also went further, equating the mullahs of Tehran with the pro-lifers in the United States. They’re “the same patriarchal and autocratic forces repressing women the world over,” daring to interfere with “the right to choose” in the fields of both “hijabs” and “reproductive care.” It’s a spectacular feat of illogic to equate a regime that is mowing down its own people in the streets with a Supreme Court decision that allows the individual states to determine whether to legalize or outlaw abortion, but that sort of incendiary rhetoric is how AOC keeps her rabid Left base ginned up with the requisite outrage that will drive these drug-addled slackers to the polls and to take other “social action.”
Yet AOC’s comparison, as you would expect, falls apart upon a moment’s thought. Pro-lifers, or at least the Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, are just like the Supreme Leader and his cohorts in the Islamic Republic. They’re both “patriarchal and autocratic forces,” you see. But from what ideological wellsprings does Iran’s patriarchal autocracy spring? AOC doesn’t dare get close to that question, for it is one of her most cherished dogmas that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism and Muslims are victims of “Islamophobia” who must accordingly be given special consideration and accommodation. And allowing restrictions on access to abortion in some localities is, as far as AOC is concerned, equivalent to shooting women to death for daring to uncover their heads? The mind reels.
This is the same Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who in October 2020 took umbrage at then-President Trump referring to her as AOC in one of his debates with Old Joe Biden. “I wonder,” she wrote at the time, “if Republicans understand how much they advertise their disrespect of women in debates when they consistently call women members of Congress by nicknames or first names while using titles & last names when referring to men of = stature. Women notice. It conveys a lot. AOC is a name given to me by [the] community & the people. Y’all can call me AOC.”
So the “community & the people,” i.e., Leftists, can call her AOC, but if Republicans do so, they “advertise their disrespect of women.” AOC didn’t even say that the mullahs were displaying any “disrespect of women.” You may recall Tlaib, meanwhile, back in 2016 screaming and yelling at a Trump rally until she had to be escorted out. Has she ever gotten so enraged and emotional at the mullahs? Not publicly and likely not privately, either. For her part, Ilhan Omar claimed that Trump’s criticism of her was an attack on all women. Has she said that the murder of Mahsa Amini was an attack on all women? No.
Do Omar, Tlaib, and AOC just want the Iran protests to go away because Iran’s repressive and bloodthirsty regime interferes with their “Islamophobia” narrative? Sure looks like it.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
“Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed…” (Qur’an 9:111)
“100 children killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul school: Report,” India Today, September 30, 2022:
At least 100 children died in a suicide bombing at an education centre in Kabul, according to reports. As per a local journalist, students, mostly Hazaras and Shias, were killed in the incident. The Hazaras are Afghanistan’s third largest ethnic group.
The blast took place at the Kaaj education centre in the Dasht-e-Barchi area in the west of the city, BBC reported.
A local journalist, Bilal Sarwary, tweeted, “We have so far counted 100 dead bodies of our students. The number of students killed is much higher. Classroom was packed. This was a mock university entrance exam, so students could prepare for the real one.”…
Dashte Barche in West Kabul have been constantly the target of deadly ISKP attacks. Hazaras and Shias murdered inside their classrooms, his tweet read further.
“Students were preparing for an exam when a suicide bomber struck at this educational centre. police spokesman Khalid Zadran had said….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Disaster averted, at least this one, apparently, for now.
“Iran Nuclear Deal Talks at Dead End, Biden Admin Tells Congress in Classified Briefing,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, September 28, 2022:
The Biden administration’s negotiations with Iran over a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal have hit a dead end, jeopardizing the likelihood of a new agreement, senior U.S. officials informed Congress during a classified briefing.
A deal seemed within reach earlier this month as U.S. officials presented Iran with a proposal that would significantly unwind economic sanctions and provide the regime with somewhere near one trillion dollars over the lifetime of the agreement. Iran, however, balked and negotiations are at a standstill, according to Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who participated in the closed-door briefing held two weeks ago for members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Two weeks ago, they thought they had a deal, and now they know they don’t have a deal, and are stymied about how they get to a deal because they’ve negotiated all there was to negotiate, and, at the end of the day, Iran doesn’t want the deal that was negotiated,” Issa told the Washington Free Beacon. Those details were also relayed by other congressional sources familiar with the briefing.
Biden administration officials were not optimistic about the prospects for a new deal. Officials told lawmakers, “We’ve negotiated for a year and a half through our good friend and honest broker Russia and we got the same thing that we should have expected, which is, they want a better deal than they had before, and if you don’t give them a better deal, then they don’t want a deal,” according to Issa. “They’re basically on the eve of getting a nuclear weapon and don’t want to be talked out of it.”…
The estimated 15,000-20,000 Christians who remain in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover “face routine torture and persecution from both the government and their own friends, families, and communities,” a new report finds.
This is not a new development. From the start, matters significantly worsened for Christians on August 15, 2021, following the Biden administration’s abrupt and poorly-planned withdrawal of U.S. troops, which caused the Central Asian nation to fall right back into the grips of the Taliban, an Islamic terrorist group complicit in the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.
During the chaos of withdrawal, there were even reports that the Biden administration was actively preventing the rescue of Christian minorities from what has since become the sharia-enforcing Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Once U.S. withdrawal was complete, reports indicated that “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians.” Any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone was reportedly executed. “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghan reported on the condition of anonymity. “But we are tired of all the death around us.”
According to the World Watch List 2022, which ranks the 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith, Afghanistan is now the worst nation in the entire world in which to be Christian.
Similarly, Voice of the Martyrs, an international humanitarian nonprofit, offers the following about the 99.8 percent Muslim nation:
Beatings, torture and kidnappings are routine for Christians in Afghanistan. … Christians are martyred every year in Afghanistan, but their deaths generally occur without public knowledge. A few are also in prison… Christian converts from Islam are often killed by family members or other radicalized Muslims before any legal proceedings can begin.
Rather tellingly, immediate family members are most prone to persecute and murder converts to Christianity. As Todd Nettleton of Voice of the Martyrs recently explained, although conditions for Christians have “certainly worsened” since the Taliban takeover, “the first line of persecution is your family members, it’s your neighbors.” He explained how converts arouse suspicion when they fail to appear for prayers at their mosques. In just the first eight months of the Taliban’s resumption of power, one clandestine Christian man had to relocate his family three times due to the threat of discovery.
It is worth noting that, while Afghanistan was always bad for Christians, it became significantly worse in response to the U.S. invasion of 2001 (which, over twenty years later, and after spilling much blood and treasure, produced nil). Because Muslims tend to conflate Christians with the West in general, and America in particular—based on the popular but erroneous belief among Muslims that the West and America are still Christian—Afghan Christians were especially targeted after the U.S. invasion as a form of “collective punishment.”
In neighboring Pakistan, as usual (here, here and here) , Christian minorities were also attacked:
Life on any given day for Pakistani Christians is difficult. But members of Pakistan’s Christian community say now they’re being persecuted for U.S. drone attacks on Islamic militants hiding on the border with Afghanistan. The minority, which accounts for an estimated one percent of the country’s 170 million [mostly Muslim] population, says because its faith is strongly associated with America, it is targeted by Muslims.
“When America does a drone strike, they come and blame us,” said one Christian. “They think we belong to America. It’s a simple mentality.”
On the other hand, Western leadership is very careful not to show any concern for Christian minorities—a sentiment that goes hand in hand with Western acquiescence to Islamic sensibilities. If anything, Western leaders are more prone to turn a blind eye to, if not actively discriminate against, already persecuted Christians—as was the case with the UN and the UK, and during the Obama administration.
There is a final aspect to the plight of Christians in Afghanistan, one that more “pragmatic” observers will, no doubt, cite to blame the persecuted themselves. Apparently, many of the few thousand Christians that remain in Afghanistan are there on the same rationale that motivated the earliest Christians. According to David Curry, of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom:
Many Christians did flee Afghanistan when the Taliban took over. Some did stay because they want to be ‘salt and light’ [Matt. 5:13-16 Matt] in a theological sense in that country, even though it became more hostile. So, they want to be part of the community. They love their country. It’s totally understandable why many fled, but there is an embattled Christian community there in Afghanistan still today.
[Those remaining Christians] made the incredible bold decision to stay in the country. And their attitude was, ‘Listen, if all the Christians flee the country, who’s going to be here to share the gospel, who’s going to be here to be the church?’ And so they made that courageous decision to stay, even knowing that the Taliban would be taking over; knowing it was a very risky thing.
However one wishes to interpret this, here are the weak and vulnerable altruistically risking their lives for what they at least believe is the good of their fellow man, while many of the world’s rich and powerful, who habitually preach about “human rights” and “religious freedom”—at least when it suits their agendas, for example, to create racial divisions in the U.S., demonize Israel, or cover up for Islamist radicalization—have seemingly done everything possible to exacerbate their situation.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The outrage over the beating death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for her improperly wearing her hijab represents “the first big show of opposition on Iran’s streets since authorities crushed protests against a rise in gasoline prices in 2019,” according to Reuters. Revolution beckons.
One would hope that America, which the Iranian mullahs regard as Iran’s chief enemy — the Great Satan — would increase sanctions upon this regime which abuses women, murders dissidents, and destabilizes regional security, not to mention international security, given its far-reaching proxies. Hezbollah’s external operations group, known as Unit 910, is reported to be “even more active in Canada than they were in the United States.”
So what have Joe Biden’s handlers done? They announced “sanctions on Iran’s morality police” in response to Amini’s murder. Whatever that means. Biden’s handlers instead should be sanctioning the regime as a whole, and decisively rejecting the prospect of another disastrous Iran deal.
According to Gabriel Noronha, who served as Special Advisor for Iran in the U.S. State Department in 2019-2020, the Iran deal will mean a cash windfall for the regime, with “$90 billion in access to foreign exchange reserves, and then a further $50-$55 billion in extra revenue each year from higher oil and petrochemical exports, with no restrictions on how or where the money can be spent. Personally, the most troubling transfer of funds will be the $7 billion ransom payment the United States is preparing to pay for the release of four Americans from an Iranian jail.” All this is reminiscent of the $33.6 billion in secret payments facilitated by the Obama administration.
Iran is well on its way to completing a nuclear bomb (if not already there) while the sanctioning of the morality police only makes it appear to the world as if the Biden administration was doing something, a tired old strategy of the Left. How much does the Biden administration really care about women’s rights in Iran? Biden’s outrageous ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Rashad Hussain, slammed India for not allowing Muslim women the so-called “right” to wear a hijab, stating: “The Indian state of Karnataka should not determine permissibility of religious clothing. Hijab bans in schools violate religious freedom and stigmatize and marginalize women and girls.”
The hijab is a paramount expression of women’s inferiority and ownership by men according to the Sharia. It is commanded in the Quran that women be fully covered save for their eyes, lest she be “abused” (Quran 24:31, 33:59). Female coverings have no place in free countries, especially full coverings such as the burqa and niqab, for obvious security reasons. A coalition of Iranian dissidents, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, “who are challenging the regime of President Ebrahim Raisi, should have a seat at the UN to counter the government’s lies and support of terrorism,” according to pro-democracy activist Dr. Ramesh Sepehrrad.
In a case of one fool makes many, Justin Trudeau followed suit and also sanctioned Iran’s morality police. Canada’s notoriously incompetent Foreign Minister Melanie Joly promised an explanation in “due course.” In 2016, a year after Trudeau came to power, Liberal Montreal mayor Denis Coderre quietly traveled to Iran, where he signed a groundbreaking agreement with the terrorist-funding rogue regime to “boost mutual cooperation in various fields.” That same year, a big celebration for Hijab Solidarity Day took place “under the auspices of the City of Ottawa.” Woke hypocrisy and manipulation of “diversity” is breathtaking.
The people of Iran, particularly the dissidents who risk their lives to advocate for real freedoms, know better. So far, in the wake of Amini’s murder, at least 41 people have died. Iran now finds itself unable to control anti-regime protests which have spread like wildfire far beyond the borders of Iran, while the regime’s judiciary now warns of “decisive action without leniency.”
Despite a growing death toll and a fierce crackdown by authorities, videos posted on Twitter showed demonstrators calling for the fall of the clerical establishment while clashing with security forces in Tehran, Tabriz, Karaj, Qom, Yazd and many other Iranian cities.
The out-of-control protests have the Iranian regime lashing out at foreign governments. Iran’s “Butcher of Baghdad” President Ebrahim Raisi stated: “We will not allow people’s security to be put at risk under any circumstances,” and stressed that Iran’s “enemies wanted to exploit the unrest.” We hope the disastrous Iran deal will not be concluded as Iran grapples with the unrest and a growing threat of revolution; it would amount to Biden bailing out the regime.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
While increasing numbers of Americans are wondering how they’re going to pay for both gas and groceries this month, the Biden administration is busy concentrating on what’s really important: celebrating diversity. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reported Thursday that “recently released State Department estimates indicate that a majority of those coming to the U.S. via the Diversity Visa Lottery during the next fiscal year (2023) will be Muslims, despite the fact that adherents of that faith account for less than a quarter of the world’s population.” What could possibly go wrong? Surely you don’t object to this, do you? Biden’s handlers are no doubt standing ready to brand anyone who dares utter a murmur of dissent as “racist” and “Islamophobic.”
There are other reasons why Americans may look askance at the prospect of bringing large numbers of Muslims into the country. While there is no doubt whatsoever that the overwhelming majority of Muslims will never become terrorists, there is no reliable way to determine, among those wishing to enter the country, which hold jihadist sentiments and which do not. The consequences in this case could be lethal.
One of the key elements of the Left’s rap sheet on me is that I supposedly fail to distinguish between “extremist” and “moderate” Muslims, but the real problem is that Muslims all too often don’t do so, either. Ibrahim Simpson and Nadir Soofi, the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadis who came to kill us all at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest I co-sponsored with Pamela Geller in Garland, Texas in 2015, were members in good standing of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. In January 2016, Abdul Shaheed (formerly Edward Archer) shot Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett multiple times at close range. He was a member of Philadelphia’s Mujahideen Mosque. The Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, were members of the Islamic Society of Boston, as were many other jihadists.
The CIS explained that “given our government’s reluctance to gather data along religious lines, this information is teased out of statistics dealing with the country of origin of the diversity visa holders. A more precise statement would be that, out of 43,129 expected diversity visas, 21,000 will come from five Muslim-majority nations (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Uzbekistan), while 22,129 will come from the rest of the world, or so the most recent State Department Visa Bulletin tells us.” Iran? Yes, you read that right. And what efforts will be made to ensure that those coming from Iran aren’t going to engage in, say, kidnapping plots aimed at silencing Iranian dissidents? No such efforts will be made at all. They would be “Islamophobic.”
CIS added that “since there are 43 Muslim-majority nations in the balance of the world, most sending us diversity visa holders — and not counted among the five — it is clear that a majority of the lottery visas will go to people living in Muslim nations. These 43 nations sent us 5,746 lottery visa holders in 2020 and include Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria.” Meanwhile, “two heavily Muslim nations, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which used to provide large numbers of Diversity Visa Lottery winners, no longer do so as they have joined the list of major migrant-sending countries and are no longer eligible for the program.”
Aside from the possibility of admitting jihad terrorists, there will also be societal upheaval resulting from the admission of people among whom are many who have a vastly different idea of how societies ought to work from the one that Americans generally hold. The Qur’an calls for the beating of women “from whom you fear disobedience” (4:34). It allows a man to have as many as four wives (4:3), and these wives may be prepubescent (65:4). It allows for the sexual enslavement of infidel women (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). Will every last Muslim who enters the U.S. next year believe in and act upon those beliefs? Of course not. But some will. And the people who set these immigration policies will not be among those who will be forced to pay the price for them.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
There are some frauds so massively insane that Americans won’t do them. Someone has to.
I covered this story back in the winter, relying on the important work of local reporters like Bill Glahn at the American Experiment. The story is mind-blowing for the sheer scale of the fraud.
In 2019, Feeding Our Future distributed $3.4 million in taxpayer food aid funds to the non-profits it was sponsoring, In 2020, that shot up to $42 million and then up to $197 million in 2021.
These were impressive numbers for a charity that seemed to focus on Somalis in Minnesota.
Glahn in American Experiment found that, “Feeding Our Future had 312 authorized sites for the program, approved for a maximum of 126,000 children.” That’s a lot of hungry Somali kids.
And I really mean impressive.
Safari Restaurant, which boasts “traditional Somali cuisine” like french fries and safari chicken quesadilla, where Rep. Ilhan Omar had celebrated her victory party, applied to participate in the Federal Child Nutrition program.
When the money was denied, Feeding Our Future complained that “minority-owned businesses serving almost exclusively economically disadvantaged children of color” were being denied the right to serve “culturally relevant foods” to “youth” during a “national emergency”.
Crying racism worked and at its peak, Safari claimed to be feeding 6,000 children a day. That’s a lot of children. Documents note that the Somali eatery claimed to be serving a comparable number of meals to “the entire St. Paul public school district.”
Safari was just one of the many providers who claimed to be feeding thousands of children.
There’s an Ilhan Omar angle and a Mecca angle.
The Feds staked out various Feeding Our Future meal sites and found no one at the places that were supposed to be feeding 50,000 children. According to the FBI, the money being stolen wasn’t used to feed children, it went into various shell companies and fronts operated by Somalis and was used to buy everything from a Porsche to African properties.
According to theTwin Cities Pioneer Press, S&S Catering led by Qamar Ahmed Hassan received $13.8 million in federal funds. The FBI warrants note that, “Qamar Ahmed Hassan wrote approximately $27,000 in checks from S&S Catering bank accounts… to Amax Travel, a travel agency that specializes in Haji travel packages.”
Now the official federal indictments of 47 people are in: 46 of them Somalis.
The Department of Justice announced today federal criminal charges against 47 defendants for their alleged roles in a $250 million fraud scheme that exploited a federally-funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A key element in the fraud was crying racism. Some politicians came forward to back them up. And there are questions as to what extent politicians, especially those catering to Somalis, helped enable it.
The accused Somalis donated to a variety of politicians, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, State Senator Omar Fateh, Shukri Olow, running for state representative, State Rep. Hodan Hassan, a Keith Ellison crony, and others.
Rep. Ilhan Omar has made government meals for children one of her signature issues.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
For years, conservative pundits have been warning about the red-green axis, i.e. the Leftist/Marxist alliance with Islam.
The Left collaborated with Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives to infiltrate North America, despite the documented MB stratagem of infiltration. Throughout the UK and EU, the same pattern can be noted.
Internationally, the red-green axis has significantly strengthened since Biden came to power, as the world realigns in America’s absence. Eight months ago, “Iran, Russia, and China were holding their third joint naval drill in the northern Indian Ocean.” Now the emergence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a major development.
Most significant is that Turkey, a NATO member although Erdogan’s ambitions for a revived Ottoman Empire are no secret, is seeking full membership in the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The new global shift in alliances not only excludes America but also has an impact on Israel’s security, particularly with Russia tightening relations with Iran via the SCO. Also, the two countries have been cementing a trade alliance with grain, drones, and satellites. Yet “Israel has found itself at odds with Russia as it increasingly supports Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion.” The Israeli population is divided almost half and half on whether to see Russia as an enemy; 20,500 of Russia’s estimated Jewish population of 165,000 Jews have left Russia to live in Israel since March.
On Sunday, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla brazenly condemned “constant Israeli incursions into Syrian territory,” calling them a violation of international law. Cuba’s foreign minister showed no interest in Israel’s need to defend itself by targeting hostile Iran-backed militias in Syria.
Now Putin is being advised by TV presenter and highly influential propagandist Vladimir Solovyov “to create an international coalition’ with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran and North Korea to avoid defeat.”
“Russia, Turkey, Iran, China showcase growing ties at confab,” by Seth Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, September 18, 2022:
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) showcased the rise of China, Russia, Turkey and Iran as an emerging bloc of countries. While the SCO is ostensibly a group of states that includes most of the countries of Central Asia; the role of Turkey and Iran this year was of greater importance than in the Past. Turkish social media was full of posts showing Turkey’s President meeting with Russia’s leader; as well as speaking with other authoritarian leaders at the SCO summit in Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile, CGTN media reported that “Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday urged Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states to keep the SCO on the right course, deepen cooperation in various fields, and continue to foster a favorable environment for the development and rejuvenation of member states.”
What does the Chinese leader have to say?
The Chinese leader stressed the need for states to work toward security and stability. He spoke after clashes had taken place between Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan; and as Russia continues its war in Ukraine. It appears that this chaos could undermine China’s push for economic success. The Chinese leader said that it’s important for SCO member states to pursue inclusiveness and shared benefits in promoting development cooperation. “Member states should actively promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, ensure the stable and smooth functioning of industrial and supply chains, and encourage the orderly flow of resources and factors of production, so as to realize greater economic integration and development in the region…..
“Turkey Seeks to Be First NATO Member to Join China-led SCO,” by Baris Balci and Selcan Hacaoglu, Bloomberg, September 17, 2022:
Turkey is seeking membership to the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attempts to forge alliances with friendly countries in the East.
Erdogan made the announcement after attending the SCO summit in Uzbekistan on Friday where he held talks with leaders including China’s President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. A successful bid would make Turkey the first member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to join the bloc.
“Our relationship with these countries will be moved to a much different position with this step,” Erdogan said about the SCO when he spoke with reporters in the city of Samarkand where the summit was held, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu.
His remarks on Turkey’s potential bid to join the SCO came as Erdogan sought, but could not yet secure, a one-on-one meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington after this week’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, according to people familiar with the matter. The two may still meet during the UN meeting in NY….
Italian politician Giorgia Meloni: “I don’t believe we ought to hide our identity, in order to respect others. Which is what leftists believe. It is paradoxical to remove crucifixes from our classrooms while accepting that entire European neighborhoods have been taken over by Islamic sharia. I don’t get it, honestly.”
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
BY AMY MEK
“Fatherland is fundamental, Family is fundamental, and religious identity is also fundamental.”
During a debate on an Italian talk show, the leader of the anti-mass immigration party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) and a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Giorgia Meloni, defended her party’s support of the famous motto, God, Country, and Family. Italy’s former left-wing Prime Minster, Enrico Letta, believes the concept is outdated. Meloni, however, stressed, “Fatherland is fundamental, Family is fundamental, and religious identity is also fundamental.”
“Look, I consider myself a conservative. Let’s not forget that the motto “God, Fatherland, and Family” was thought up by Mazzini. I don’t think it clashes with modernity. What does that mean? It means to defend an identity, which is the identity of our society, a European identity,” explained Meloni.
She continued, “It means that the family is the founding core of our society, the most important social safety net we have. It means that the fatherland is the identity that brings us together.”
Meloni also spoke of the importance of Christians being proud and open about their identities:
I don’t believe we ought to hide our identity, in order to respect others. Which is what leftists believe. It is paradoxical to remove crucifixes from our classrooms, while accepting that entire European neighborhoods have been taken over by Islamic sharia. I don’t get it, honestly.
The leader, predicted to become Italy’s next prime minister under a new conservative coalition government, reminded the audience that “Christian values have molded our civilization.”
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
In many ways it’s true: it’s Syria, not Vienna anymore, thanks to the Left’s pursuit of mass Muslim migration. And that will have consequences far more severe than oriental folk dances on Kärtnerstrasse.
“‘Syrian Nights’: groups of migrants dance through downtown Vienna,” translated from “”Syrische Nächte”: Migrantengruppen tanzen durch die Wiener Innenstadt,” Exxpress, September 12, 2022 (thanks to Medforth):
These scenes take place in the center of Vienna: videos show a dozen men performing oriental folk dances on Kärntnerstrasse and partially blocking the pedestrian zone. “This isn’t Vienna anymore,” and “What happened to Austria?” comment users.
“Mashalla” commented numerous users under a video that is currently going viral on the social media platform “TikTok.” It shows a dozen young men of Arab descent dancing on Vienna’s Kärntnerstrasse. They largely block the pedestrian zone, hundreds of people have gathered and are watching the performance.
The video now has 230,000 views and is said to have been recorded in downtown Vienna in the past few days. In addition to many Arabic comments praising the dances of the compatriots, there are also dismayed comments in German. “This is no longer Vienna,” writes a user. “I swear I think I’m in Syria not in Vienna,” commented another.
Crowds of this kind can also pose a security risk – the eXXpress has already reported on sexual harassment of migrant men in German and Austrian cities, so-called “encirclements”.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
In the late 1930s Catholic historian Hillaire Belloc wrote:
It [Islam] is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past…
It seemed an unlikely prediction. At the time, the Islamic world was practically moribund. A comeback did not seem to be in the cards. Yet, Belloc was proved right. Within four decades, Islam was once again a power to be reckoned with.
Had he lived, however, even Belloc would have been surprised to find that one of the chief agents of Islam’s resuscitation was his own beloved Catholic Church. Although Belloc referred to Islam as a “formidable and persistent enemy,” by the end of the century, practically no “respectable” Catholic would have described Islam as an “enemy.” On the contrary, Islam had become a “fellow Abrahamic faith” which, we were told, shared much in common with Catholicism.
At one time, the Catholic Church had defended the West against Islam, but by the beginning of the 21st century, the Church had become a reliable defender of Islam against its critics.
Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, Catholic leaders and educators assured the world that Islam had nothing to do with violence. They also insisted that “Islam” means “peace” and that “jihad” is an “interior struggle.” If you disagreed with any of this you were dismissed as an “Islamophobe.”
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Church’s mission to fight “Islamophobia” came later. First came the Second Vatican Council and the 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate. NostraAetate was intended to examine the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions. In particular, it sought to consider “what men have in common.”
What do Muslims and Christians have in common? Here’s the key passage:
They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value moral life and worship God, especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.
In short, Islam was just like Catholicism…except it wasn’t. The Council fathers had come up with a list of surface similarities between Islam and Catholicism but had ignored the deep differences.
For example, Catholics and Muslims supposedly worship the same God. And sure enough, the God adored by Catholics is “merciful and all-powerful”—just like the Muslim God. But unlike the Muslim God, He is also a Trinity—something that Muslims vehemently deny. He is also, from the Catholic point of view, a Father. Again, this is vehemently rejected by Muslims. In fact, to say that God is a father is, from the Muslim point of view the height of blasphemy. Moreover, in Islamic scripture, Allah is always associated with the Prophet Muhammad. In fact, when a Muslim avows that “there is no God but Allah,” he is obliged to add “And Muhammad is the prophet of Allah.” Unfortunately for the “same God” thesis, the name “Muhammad” does not appear anywhere in the Bible.
Strike one! The pious belief that Muslims and Catholics worship the same God does not hold water. The “common-ground” thesis is built on very shoddy scholarship.
But wait! There is a man named “Jesus” in the Koran, and he is considered a great prophet. So, you can at least say that Muslims and Catholics both “revere” Jesus. Perhaps the common-ground thesis is intact, after all. The only problem is, it’s not the same Jesus. On the one hand, you have Jesus of Nazareth, on the other hand, you have the Jesus of the Koran, who does not resemble the former in any way, shape, or form.
Jesus of Nazareth is a recognizable human being, who eats and drinks and converses with his disciples in a recognizably human way. He also says things of startling and profound originality, causing many to say with wonderment, “no man has ever spoken like this before.”
The Koran, on the other hand, provides no details on the life of the Koranic Jesus. He has no substance, and practically nothing of interest to say. He is little more than a cardboard cutout. If you think I exaggerate, then read the Koran for yourself. In doing so, you may well find yourself wondering if the Council fathers and their “expert” advisers ever bothered to do the same.
Strike two! The pious belief that the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of the Koran share anything in common other than the same name is completely untenable.
But how about the final point? —the one in which the Council fathers assure us that “they [Muslims] value the moral life”? This is particularly misleading because the Council fathers must certainly have known that the Muslim moral code differs markedly in many respects from the Catholic moral code. The Muslim moral code allows for polygamy, child brides, wife beating, stoning for adultery, and execution for apostasy.
Oh! There’s one more thing. In the last sentence of the first paragraph of the section “on the Moslems,” the Council fathers mention that “[Muslims] worship God, especially through prayers, almsgiving, and fasting.” But they forgot to mention “jihad,” even though the Koran explicitly states that jihad is more pleasing to God than prayer and almsgiving.
How could they have forgotten to mention the thing that is most pleasing to God– namely, jihad? It’s difficult to avoid the impression that the authors of the Muslim section had been deliberately dishonest.
And the deception continued. In the wake of the Council, the Church set up numerous Muslim-Catholic dialogues, Centers for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and Abrahamic faith initiatives of various kinds. And all of them presented a Pollyannish portrait of Islam.
When the English edition of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church appeared in 1994 it didn’t say much about the Muslims—only that “together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.” It wasn’t much to go on, but it did seem to suggest that Muslims were on the side of the angels. So, when Muslims struck New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, it seemed safe to assume as so many in government and media were saying that “this has nothing to do with Islam.” Moreover, once it became known that Muslims revered Jesus and honored Mary, all subsequent Islamic attacks could be dismissed as the work of a tiny minority of extremists who had misunderstood the peaceful tenets of the Islamic faith. And when Muslims began migrating into Europe by the millions, Catholic prelates only had to remind their flocks that “in the face of the migrant we see the face of Jesus.”
On the other hand, it didn’t pay to see the face of Jesus in the face of persecuted Christians. When Pope Benedict XVI asked for greater protection of persecuted Christians in Egypt, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar University cut-off the dialogue with the Vatican and wouldn’t resume it until Benedict’s successor, Francis, agreed not to criticize Islamic persecutions of Christians. Francis, of course, thought this was a good deal: the dialogue was his pet project—one that must be preserved at all costs.
The Church had for all intents and purposes become an enabler of Islam. But it wasn’t like the aiding and abetting of yore. In those days, some traitor or other would open the gates of the city to the enemy. In the modern era, the Pope simply warns the Christian population that if they don’t open the borders of Europe to the Muslim horde, they are guilty of closing the door of the inn on the Holy Family.
Belloc was right about Islam. It would return as a formidable enemy of Western Civilization. But Western Civilization—including the Catholic Church—couldn’t accept the fact of enmity and it invented all sorts of reasons why Islam and the West were really the best of friends. The Church which once had a well-deserved reputation for being both a Church of faith and reason even mistook Islam for a religion of peace.
Ayatollah Khomeini could have set them straight on that. The man who overthrew the Shah of Iran once declared:
Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword…People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for Holy warriors.
Despite the Ayatollah’s warning, there still seems to be a constant supply of “witless” ones in the Church who “pretend that Islam counsels against war.” Chief among them is Francis who in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, asserted that “authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”
It’s a remarkable statement, and also provably false. Moreover, it puts Christians in danger by misleading them about the nature of Islam. Catholic apologists for Islam have been repeating similar lies about Islam ever since the mid-sixties. Will they ever be held to account? One sincerely hopes so.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Of course. Hatred of Israel is increasingly not just taken for granted, but required on the Left. The Fetterman camp was probably hoping that no one would notice the inconsistency.
“Fetterman Says He’s a Friend of Israel. His Art Gallery Raises Questions.” By Chuck Ross, Washington Free Beacon, September 13, 2022:
On the campaign trail, Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman touts his “unwavering” support for Israel. But the Senate hopeful operates a nonprofit that hosted an anti-Israel art exhibit that demonized Israel as an “apartheid state” and spread slanderous falsehoods about the Jewish State.
Fetterman’s gallery, UnSmoke Systems, hosted an exhibit in 2012 titled “I Am Palestine,” featuring a so-called apartheid wall that condemns the 440-mile Israeli-built barrier separating Israel from the West Bank following a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings launched from the territory that left roughly 700 Israeli civilians dead.
The artists featured in the exhibit claimed in a statement accompanying the project that Israel built the wall “under the guise of security while stealing more Palestinian land and resources.”…
Fetterman’s campaign defended the gallery exhibit and his views on Israel, telling the Washington Free Beacon that Fetterman “is and always has been a pro-Israel Democrat.”…
Fetterman’s gallery, which is supported by his nonprofit Braddock Redux, also commissioned a mural in 2008 entitled “Three Boys Living in the Shadow of the Separation Wall” from an artist, Swoon, who is a prominent anti-Israel activist and has called for a cultural boycott of the Jewish state.
One of the artists featured in the 2012 exhibit, Karina Goulordava, served at the time as vice president of the University of Pittsburgh chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that “disseminates anti-Israel propaganda often laced with inflammatory and at times combative rhetoric,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. The student group often uses apartheid walls at its anti-Israel rallies “depicting Israel alone as responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the ADL says….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
After all these years, one of the principal masterminds of the 9/11 jihad attacks has still not faced trial, indicating the government’s ongoing indecision about how to treat such people: are they enemy combatants or civilian criminals? And so now KSM may avoid the death penalty. The fact that he has not been punished yet is symptomatic of the failure of the American system today.
“US prosecutors may negotiate a plea deal with 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, other conspirators: Report,” by Anders Hagstrom, Fox News, September 11, 2022:
U.S. military prosecutors are reportedly negotiating potential plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other conspirators imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
The plea deals may allow the five dependents to escape a potential death penalty, according to CBS. Mohammed is widely credited with being the architect of the 9/11 terror attacks. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi.
Attorneys for the defendants reportedly say they would be willing to enter a guilty plea in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, as well as for getting treatment for alleged torture they experienced while in CIA custody….
The trial for the five men has been bogged down in legal challenges for years. Prosecutors attempted to advance via pre-trial hearings in late 2021, but there remains no end in sight.
Each of the defendants has been assigned a military lawyer, a civilian lawyer and a human rights lawyer. The case has come before seven different judges, with the latest being Air Force Lt. Col. Matthew McCall.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The idea of the hijab in Islamic theology is to prevent men from being tempted to sin by the appearance of women. So putting a hijab on a kindergartener is tantamount to saying that she is a legitimate object of sexual desire. Celebrate diversity! All who oppose this are racist, bigoted “Islamophobes”!
“Minnesota School Offers ‘School Spirit Hijabs’ to Elementary Students,” by Frankie Stockes, National File, September 8, 2022:
A Minnesota elementary school is offering “school spirit hijabs” for sale to its students, claiming that donning the symbol of the Sharia Law oppression of women is a wonderful sign of diversity.
Burnsville, Minnesota’s Byrne Elementary School is offering “school spirit hijabs” to its students under the guidance of the school’s “Somali cultural liaison,” who has been brought in to cater to the area’s burgeoning migrant population. The hijab, which is forcibly worn by Muslim women oftentimes under the penalty of death in Islamic countries like Somalia, has been a much-promoted item of “diversity” for the left in the United States and the Western World….
According to a local news broadcast celebrating the school spirit hijab program, the Islamic headgear will be offered by the public school for $6 a piece through its parent-teacher program and are produced in school colors. They also don the school’s “Buster the Bulldog” mascot logo.
In addition to being sold at school events, the school spirit hijabs are being offered online, through the school’s Parent Teacher Organization website.
“Every student deserves the opportunity to express their school identity and have that feeling of belonging,” parent volunteer Carla Valadez told the local news. Offering the school spirit hijabs, Valadez says, “really makes this work meaningful.”
Interestingly, Minnesota news reports have neglected to mention anything regarding the “separation of church and state” as it relates to the school-sanctioned hijab sales, something that becomes a frequent left-wing talking point whenever a Bible or public Christian prayer is held in or around a school – or any other government property for that matter….
A whopping 15% of Burnsville schoolchildren reportedly speak Somali – not English – at home. While just a couple of decades ago the district educated a supermajority of White American students, now, two-thirds of the district’s pupils identify as “people of color.” Those students descend largely from foreign migrant backgrounds….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
I spent a month this summer in a city in southern France, where I had the occasion to study the effect of its Muslim Arab population on the tenor of life. Muslims were present on the streets, in the cafes, and in the parks. I had not remembered them being out in public in such numbers when I last visited the city two years ago. I noted several new mosques that hadn’t existed two years ago. Streets here are filled with hijabbed women, always with several children in tow — by my count, at a minimum each Muslim family had at least three children. By contrast, I almost never saw a French family with more than two children.
The Muslim women were striding confidently along, not making way, out of simple politeness, for anyone walking towards them in the crowded city streets. I encountered from time to time groups of Arabs, usually young men, sitting on sidewalks and stoops – did they not have any work to go to? – refusing to move for any Frenchman (or a visitor like myself), instead requiring the French pedestrians to make a detour around them by walking in the street. Micro-aggression, a maddening sign of triumphalism (“you must give way to us”), an assertion of their power, as Arabs, as Muslims, the “best of peoples,” over the French who, as Infidels, are the “most vile of created beings.”
Graffiti in Arabic can now be found in many parts of the city, no longer confined to the suburbs where the Arabs live and congregate. These graffiti proclaim god knows what — Allahu akbar? — but I doubt if any of it would please the native French if they understood it. There were also antisemitic graffiti in bad French, clearly written by Arabs, but not confined to Arab neighborhoods of the city. These scrawls included “Kreve les Juifs” – “Kreve” being a subliterate rendering of “creve” from “crever,” “to die.” The meaning of this graffito is “Let the Jews die.” Other signs were directed at the French. These include “Niquez les Français,” meaning, roughly, “F**k the French.” These graffiti have been allowed to stand, not painted over, possibly because the authorities believe that removing them would not be worth the time or money, as they would only be instantly replaced.
The Prefecture has, from last year to this, decided to more than double the number of gendarmes in the city. Everyone knows why: it’s to deal with the rise in violent street robberies and in-house burglaries by the Arabs and Muslim Africans. Muslim young men in groups can be found not just sitting on sidewalks, but relaxing in outdoor cafes, where they sit for hours nursing a bottle of water, which gives them the right to remain at the cafe as long as they want. And so they do. Their idleness offends me. Do none of these people work? And just how much is the French government spending on them that they can indulge in such idleness?
The number of shisha shops, where Arabs can use the hubble-bubble pipes, has noticeably increased in the last two years. Several new ones that did not exist two years ago when I last visited have now been opened just on the street where I was staying. It’s one way for Arabs to pass their time, secure in the knowledge that the generous French government will provide for their every basic need: housing, medical care, schooling, and even family allowances that were originally meant as pro-natalist measures, intended to encourage the French to have larger families. Instead, the French government now finds itself supporting not French families, but the much larger Muslim families. In the city, many Arabs, judging by their presence on café terrasses, park benches, and city sidewalks and stoops, manage to while away the hours, day after day. Perhaps their wives are hard at work; I don’t understand these hours of idleness.
Some graffiti by the Arabs vandalize existing signs. Posters of Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who was a former French Minister of Health and President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, have frequently been defaced, with swastikas painted over her face. Wall graffiti attacks on Macron’s posters read “Macron Jew Bitch.” In the 18th arrondissement in Paris, according to a friend, the words “Truie Juive” – “Jewish sow” – have been painted on shopfronts of what, I presume, are Jewish-owned stores.
At the main entrance to the city of Avignon, a gigantic fresco was painted on a wall this summer. It shows Macron as a puppet, dangling from the strings held by the puppeteer, depicted as the well-known Jewish economist and former adviser to Mitterand, Jacques Attali, his “Jewish features” distinctly exaggerated. It took a while, but Jewish organizations finally got the city to cover up the fresco for its obviously antisemitic content. Other antisemitic visuals have shown Macron placed in the center of a circle of advisers, many of them clearly Jewish.
In Paris, the façade of the prestigious Sciences Po, one of the “grandes écoles,” was defaced with graffiti, including “Mort à Israel” (Death To Israel) and “Koufar” (Kuffar, or Infidel), a word that is aimed not at Jews alone, but at all non-Muslims.
The “Gilets Jaunes” are groups of leftist protesters who for almost a year have been appearing for weekend protests in many French cities, manifesting their rage against the state, and proclaiming a variety of free-floating grievances. One of their posters reads “Contre Racket Fiscal Judeo-Bolshevique Sur Les Carburants” – blaming “Jewish Bolsheviks” for the rise in the price of gasoline and heating oil. While the Gilets Jaunes are not a Muslim group, a number of Muslims have hitched their wagon to the left-wing Gilets Jaunes, showing up to join their protests. Some Jewish shops in France have had “JUDEN” written on their storefront windows, which brings up terrible memories of Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938.
The groups of Arabs sitting on sidewalks and stoops, and instead of getting out of the way, force French people to get off the sidewalks and walk in the streets, are malevolently exercising their dominance. Perhaps the more than doubling of the local force of gendarmes will be sufficient to discourage such bullying thugs. Perhaps those caught painting antisemitic or anti-French graffiti can be given serious sentences, instead of the slap on the wrist that they currently receive. Perhaps street robberies will go down, house burglaries will decrease, and the drug trade that North Africans control dealt a mortal blow by this sudden increase in the numbers of police.
The growing Muslim population in the French city I lived in during August created an under hum of menace, where Muslim toughs were intent on making life difficult for the French whose city they were treating as their property, which, if current demographic trends continue, it eventually will be. The indigenous French with whom I spoke all agreed, without exception, that there was a profound “problem with Muslims,” and they were hoping for politicians in Paris to do something. But what? Shutting down mosques where Muslims have been “radicalized” or expelling “extremist” imams back to North Africa won’t be enough. They are hoping that the government will eventually realize it must put a halt to all further Muslim immigration, and will be prepared to expel Muslims to their countries of origin if they break the law, rather than paying for their upkeep in French jails, and then releasing them back into France where they committed their original crime and, where, we know, their level of recidivism is very high.
It’s the daily disruption of life, the menace in the air, and the graffiti meant to insult and frighten both “the Jews” and “the French,” that chips away at the collective sense of wellbeing. The Arabs who run the drug trade, who conduct street robberies, commit house burglaries or steal cars (another favorite activity) have all contributed to the sense of insecurity that is now palpable. In the French family I was visiting, the husband has now armed himself, and his wife, too, with pepper spray, for he lives in the city center where he says matter-of-factly, it is simply “no longer safe at night.” He was born in and grew up in, this city that was always considered one of the safest in France. Thanks to the Muslim immigrants whom a succession of French governments have allowed in, all of them criminally negligent in not sufficiently investigating what the arrival of so many millions of Muslims would inevitably mean for the native French and the future of France, it is no longer so safe.
What I observed in my month in southern France was nothing so obviously alarming as jihadi attacks. Instead, what one sees is a slow degringolade, where the quality of life for the French goes steadily, inexorably down pari passu with the increase in the Muslim population. Those immigrants have been responsible for more street muggings, more robberies, more home burglaries, more aggressive behavior on the street toward the Infidels, more hideous graffiti against Jews and the “Français de souche” on the walls of buildings, more drug trafficking, more of everything that unsettles and frightens those French people who sense that they are gradually losing control of their own country. Macron is no Eric Zemmour, but he cannot continue to turn away from confronting the malign effects resulting from millions of Muslim immigrants who cannot, and do not want to, integrate into the society of the French Infidels. I think – I hope – that in his second, and final, five-year term as President, Macron will surprise us all by backing to the hilt his no-nonsense Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, who has a good understanding of the Muslim menace, and is prepared to act aggressively for the benefit of the indigenous people of France.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
While the U.S. pursues appeasement of Iran at the negotiating table, it has carried out an intimidation maneuver, with “a pair of nuclear-capable B-52 long-distance bombers over the Middle East in a show of force.” Even more galling to the mullahs, Israeli “F-16 fighter jets accompanied the American bombers through Israel’s skies on their way to the (Persian) Gulf.”
The mixed signals are unlikely to accomplish anything. Biden has completely failed regarding Iran. The Shia doomsday regime is emboldened and tensions are rising.
“U.S. B-52 bombers fly over Middle East amid tensions with Iran,” by Isabel Debre, Associated Press, September 5, 2022:
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – The United States military said Monday it flew a pair of nuclear-capable B-52 long-distance bombers over the Middle East in a show of force, the latest such mission in the region as tensions remain high between Washington and Tehran.
The bombers took off from the Royal Air Force base at Fairford, England, and flew over the eastern Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea on Sunday in training missions together with Kuwaiti and Saudi warplanes, before departing the region.
“Threats to the U.S. and our partners will not go unanswered.,” Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the top U.S. Air Force officer in the Middle East said in a statement. “Missions like this … showcase our ability to combine forces to deter and, if necessary, defeat our adversaries.”
Although the U.S. military’s Central Command did not mention Iran, Washington has frequently dispatched B-52 bombers to the region as hostilities simmered between the U.S. and Iran. The last such flyover was in June.
Iran’s regional foe, Israel, also joined in the multinational mission. Though unacknowledged by the U.S., three Israeli F-16 fighter jets accompanied the American bombers “through Israel’s skies on their way to the (Persian) Gulf,” the Israeli military said, describing the country’s cooperation with the U.S. military as key to “maintaining aerial security in Israel and the Middle East.”…
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Iran’s desperation to achieve a nuclear deal that will enable it to become a nuclear power was evident anew as the regime dangled a carrot to the sinking EU as the latter scrambles in the face of an energy crisis due to Russian gas cuts. Iran reminded the EU that “winter is coming” as it urges a quick resolution to achieve a nuke deal on its own terms.
While Europe now looks ahead to a winter of energy rationing, it’s described as being in “the red zone.” According to Fortune Magazine, “unthinkable moves will likely be considered.” Let’s hope it won’t be accepting the carrot from Iran.
On September 3, Jihad Watch reported that the Iran nuke deal could be revived “in the coming days,” amid Iran’s demand for “stronger guarantees.” That was the hope that the European Union’s policy chief Josep Borell expressed. But negotiations have dragged on, with an emboldened Iran now making outrageous demands, including demanding that the UN nuclear watchdog drop the critical issue of three unreported uranium locations.
Now comes the revelation that Israel has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to “thwart the Iran Nuclear Deal.” Israel’s primary focus now, with Biden’s America an unreliable ally, is nothing less than to save its country from obliteration. Brigadier General Amir Avivi “says the emerging deal will allow Iran to become a nuclear ‘superpower.’” Prime Minister Yair Lapid states that Israel “will act to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.”
So now, in efforts to speed up its attainment of its nuclear goals, Iran is “needling European nations over the prospect of cold temperatures, strained heating-gas supplies, and the ensuing political fallout.”
“‘Winter is coming’: Iran tempts Europe with promise of cheaper gas in exchange for nuclear deal”, by Borzou Daragahi, Independent, September 5, 2022:
Tehran teased a Europe agonising over an impending winter without access to Russian energy with the prospect of Iranian gas exports should Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers be restored and sanctions lifted.
“Winter is coming,” Iran’s state-backed Mehr news agency has proclaimed, needling European nations over the prospect of cold temperatures, strained heating-gas supplies, and the ensuing political fallout.
Tehran’s offer came as fears continued to grow across Europe of a desperate winter ahead, as Moscow uses its control of gas supplies to exert pressure on capitals across the continent in retaliation for sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, energy giant Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas company, announced it was closing its Nord Stream 1 pipeline indefinitely because of “oil leaks”. That move was criticised, but it also meant that gas prices surged again on Monday, with benchmark prices shooting up 31 per cent, prompting further predictions of energy rationing and blackouts across Europe this winter.
Though getting more Iranian gas into world markets could help to lower prices, experts have countered that Iran cannot meet Europe’s energy needs any time soon, regardless of sanctions.
Iran and the US, along with other world powers, are at stalemate on talks to restore a nuclear deal, which would remove restrictions on business with Iran and allow consumers to purchase its gas….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Our NATO ally:
“Suleiman Soylu: ‘Without the USA, the terrorist organization PKK would not exist,’” NewsBeezer, September 3, 2022 (thanks to Joshua):
The United States has been targeted by Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who said his country’s goal is to drive Americans out of the Middle East.
The Turkish minister made the controversial remarks while addressing rebel families who claim their children have been kidnapped by the Kurdish PKK organization and have been protesting for three years outside the headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Party of the Republic of Turkey (HDP), in Diyarbakir im Southeast Turkey.
“We want to tear America apart”
“The terrorist organization will end soon in Turkey, don’t worry. But that’s not enough for us, we have to drive it out of the area too,” Soylu said, addressing the audience watching him.
And he characteristically remarked, “By rooting out the terrorist organization, we want to root out America.” I say this with all sincerity: for years they have rocked this geography with coups. Alevi-Sunnis, Turkish-Kurds, they made us fight each other.”
“They tried to alienate us from each other. They don’t want the world to know the truths of our religion and culture,” Suleiman Soylu said.
As he actually claimed, “If America weren’t here today, the terrorist organization you call the PKK/PYD wouldn’t exist. The creator of PKK and PYD is America. You are her servants.”
And he added: “The political party called HDP, along with the PKK, is a servant of the Americans. I say it openly. If America doesn’t secure the PKK and PYD, it can’t even go half a meter in the Middle East. He can’t even be kept in a cave.”
“Süleyman Soylu: HDP is a servant of the USA along with the PKK,” translated from “Süleyman Soylu: HDP, PKK ile beraber ABD’nin uşağıdır,” by Haber Merkezi, En Son Haber, September 3, 2022:
…Speaking here, Minister Soylu used the following expressions;
“In the last 3 years, the American senate has provided 2 billion dollars in aid to the PKK/PYD. The HDP is a servant of the USA along with the PKK. If we do not have security, is it possible for us to go from one place to another at night? If the USA does not ensure the security of the PKK/PYD, There would be no PKK/PYD without the USA.
We don’t need the USA. We do not need a Europe that is unaware of our religion, culture and belief. As Diyarbakir finds peace, the region finds peace. They come up with all kinds of scenarios to tear us apart from each other….
As we dismantle the terrorist organization, you should know that we are also dismantling the USA. For years, they set us against each other for this.
Terrorist organization will end soon. We must uproot it from the geography around us. We must dismantle the USA. I’m telling you frankly, there is no front or back. Alevi, Sunni, Kurdish, Turkish… That’s why they tried to set us against each other. They tried to alienate us from each other….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The unspeakable betrayal over Afghanistan continues.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
White House Democrats have a history of fighting against terror victims suing Islamic terrorists. The Obama administration battled American terror victims suing the PLO. In 2015, after they won a $218 million judgement against the terror group, Blinken, then only a deputy secretary of state, intervened claiming that the lawsuit threatened “several decades of US foreign policy.”
But now Biden is fighting 9/11 victims on behalf of the Taliban. At stake are billions being held by the Afghan central bank fund in the United States.
A decade ago, 9/11 families sued the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Iran. The court found that the Islamic terrorists were responsible and a judgement of $6 billion was handed down.
The verdict was described as “symbolic” at the time. CBS News commented that “it would be near impossible to collect any damages, especially from the Taliban or al Qaeda.” But that was before Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban. Since Afghanistan has assets in this country, including $7 billion in bank funds, it’s now entirely possible to collect that money.
Or it would be if the guy who let the Taliban take over wasn’t also in the White House.
Biden officially announced that he was splitting the $7 billion between the families of the victims and a “trust fund” to provide “humanitarian aid” for the people of Afghanistan.
But that was just another one of his many lies and double-crosses involving Afghanistan.
The $3.5 billion was placed in a separate trust that would be “separate and distinct” from the around $800 million the Biden administration has already spent on aid to Afghanistan. Officials admitted that the money could actually be used for matters other than “humanitarian aid”.
The media headlined it, “Biden frees frozen Afghan billions for relief, 9/11 victims”. But a Biden official admitted that it was done to stop 9/11 families from getting access to the money.
“Absent action by us, these funds were likely to be tied up in courts for years, while the action we have taken stands the best chance of more quickly freeing up a large portion for humanitarian support,” the official argued. As a Lawfare blog post noted, “the administration’s plan would insulate nearly half of the Afghan assets at issue from these attachment efforts.”
What Biden actually did was take the money off the table for 9/11 victims. And it got worse.
Secretary of State Blinken claimed that the administration “will continue to support these victims and their families, recognizing the enduring pain they have suffered at the hands of terrorists, including those who operated from Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks. These victims and their families should have a full opportunity to set forth their arguments in court.”
Blinken, like his boss, lied.
While the 9/11 families would have their claims “heard in court”, neither Biden nor Blinken mentioned that the administration would be advocating against them.
On the same day as Biden’s executive order reserving $3.5 billion for the terrorists, his Justice Department filed a statement of interest in court arguing that the judgement for the victims of terrorism was too large and that actually turning over the money to them would interfere with the Biden administration’s foreign policy in Afghanistan.
Now a magistrate judge has repeated back most of the DOJ’s arguments, ruling against the 9/11 families who were laying claim to the other half of the money. Judge Sarah Netburn’s arguments closely mirror the contradictory positions of Biden and the DOJ. And they reveal the underlying corruption behind the ambiguous status of Afghanistan’s central bank.
Netburn, like the Biden administration, contends that the Afghanistan bank enjoys “sovereign immunity” because the country itself was not sanctioned as a terrorist state, only the Taliban were. And that the Taliban once again control Afghanistan is irrelevant, according to the judge, because Biden hasn’t recognized the reality that this is actually the case.
Banks don’t enjoy “sovereign immunity” and neither do the Taliban. Netburn and Biden act as if there were some entity representing Afghanistan that is not the Taliban. That position might make sense if they were backing a resistance movement to the Taliban. But they’re not.
Instead, the Biden administration has maintained a deliberately ambiguous position for Afghanistan’s central bank as being both under and not under Taliban control. This is convenient because it allows the Biden administration to use the financial institution as a vehicle and to restrict its access at the same time. The bank’s leadership, a mixture of terrorists and wonks linked to the former government, maintains that same calculated ambiguity.
The deputy governor of the bank is Noor Ahmad Agha, a Taliban leader listed as a specially designated global terrorist. Shah Mohammad Mehrabi, a member of the board of governors of the bank, lives near Washington D.C. and teaches at Montgomery College, has made his own media tour demanding that the United States release funds to the bank.
Biden is unable to do that until he thoroughly defeats the 9/11 families in court.
If Biden releases the money to the Afghanistan bank before that happens, the 9/11 families will be able to argue that the administration is contradicting its own position. Biden wants to reserve all $7 billion for the terrorists and so he has to hold off long enough to defeat the terror victims.
The level of betrayal here is worse than even the Obama administration.
The Biden administration claims that the money will be used for “humanitarian aid” and will not go to the terrorists. That’s another lie and it’s been disproved by its publicly stated policies.
The Biden administration has issued global licenses authorizing financial transactions with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda-allied Haqqani Network that include, in the Treasury Department’s own words, “delivery and provision of humanitarian aid or shipments”, “administrative issues”, “donor coordination meetings”, “sharing descriptions of projects”, “coordination with regard to travel”, “participation in technical working groups” and “sharing of office space”. Not to mention the “payments of taxes, fees, or import duties to, or the purchase or receipt of permits, licenses, or public utility services from, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network.”
While Biden and his corrupt cronies insist that they don’t recognize the Taliban, that’s purely a formality. Not only do they recognize the Taliban as the government, but they’ve been extensively coordinating with the Islamic terrorists and helping to fund them.
At the end of July, Biden’s representative met with “senior Taliban representatives” to discuss “ongoing efforts to enable the $3.5 billion in licensed Afghan central bank reserves to be used for the benefit of the Afghan people”.
Even while the Biden administration and its allies insist that the other $3.5 billion set aside to meet the claims of terror victims can’t be released to them because that would “implicitly” mean that the Taliban are being recognized as the government, Biden’s diplomatic representatives can meet with them and conduct negotiations about giving them the other $3.5 billion.
Releasing money to 9/11 terror victims would “implicitly” recognize the Taliban, but engaging in sustained diplomatic negotiations with them as the governing authority somehow does not.
The Taliban privately understand that Biden can’t release the $3.5 billion to them until he beats the 9/11 families in court. And then they’ll potentially get access to the whole $7 billion. This corrupt charade is being played out for the benefit of the equally complicit judiciary and media which is cheering the downfall of the 9/11 families and waiting for the cash to go to the Taliban.
Reuters headlined its story, “Afghans outraged as 9/11 families lay claim to frozen billions”. There’s no real ambiguity as to which side Reuters, the media, and Joe Biden are on.
In October 2001, Biden proposed that “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” He’s managed to send much more money than that to the Islamic terror state since, but now he’s preparing to send a $7 billion check to the Taliban.
All he had to do to get that money was lie and cheat 9/11 families.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Lutheran Social Services is one of the biggest players in the refugee resettlement space. And refugee resettlement is one of the biggest players in the migration and terrorism space. Opponents of national demographic transformation have been regular critics of Lutheran Social Services. But now the Afghans that LSS is supposed to be resettling are also coming forward with some interesting allegations about how the actual organization distributes its resources and services.
More than two dozen interviews with Afghan clients of the agency, current and former employees and volunteers who work closely with the organization uncovered stories about multiple failures to perform services.
Some employees, sources say, have provided inadequate food, housing and other services to refugees and played favorites among clients. They also say some staff have failed to securely store sensitive documents, falsified case notes, skimmed funds from petty cash and paid questionable bonuses to employees.
What US News can’t quite come out and say in its voluminous article is that LSS hired Afghans to do the grunt work of social services and they’re doing what most in a tribal society do, skimming money and helping out their family members.
“You just scratch your head going, ‘Is anybody watching this office? Is anybody auditing them?’” says Ted Vinatieri, a pastor at Pillar Church in Stafford, Virginia, and one of several volunteers who expressed apprehension about the treatment of Afghan refugees by Lutheran Social Services.
Concerns about the agency have already made their way to the federal government, where the Department of State monitors refugee resettlement during the first few months after their arrival. Individuals close to Lutheran Social Services have reached out to the State Department, which is now investigating claims about client mistreatment.
One of those individuals reached out to the FBI with concerns, and the law enforcement agency has contacted at least one former and one current employee to discuss their experiences. The FBI would not confirm whether there is an official investigation.
There has to be some bad stuff going on to justify this level of involvement. The article doesn’t quite justify that. But what it lays out is a familiar story.
In late June, Amir, a Lutheran Social Services client and former member of the Afghan special forces, is sitting behind his coffee table in his sparsely furnished apartment in Hyattsville, Maryland. As his toddler darts in and out the room, he holds up his phone and shows his text message exchanges with his caseworker.
“Hello brother,” he starts out each text, before asking for help with things like rent, a bus card and English-language classes. The caseworker doesn’t always respond, but when he does, it’s with phrases like, “in a meeting” or “will call you back.” The problem, according to Amir, is that he never does.
“Hello, brother” would suggest he’s talking to a fellow Muslim and/or Afghan.
One current employee says they saw a caseworker give a family of seven $200 in cash, had them sign a receipt and later wrote on it that the family had been given $700.
Another current employee says they have gone through several audits, including annual financial audits and monitoring by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the parent organization. In the weeks before each audit, which they tell U.S. News are “very easy to pass,” they say some staff members forged client signatures on receipts and other documents to be compliant. Whether or not the services were actually provided to refugees, the employee says, was unclear.
“What they do is they quickly call the families and see what they are missing. They sometimes provide it right before the audit – a day before. … I, myself, dropped off furniture almost in the middle of the night – at 10 p.m. – because the auditor was coming at 8 a.m. to see and check the furniture.”
Whether or not a family receives something as basic as a couch can come down to their position on a hierarchy determined by Lutheran Social Services staff, sources say. Refugees and volunteers say some staff members, who are mostly well-educated Afghans, can be dismissive of Afghan refugees who struggle to read and write or who speak a different first language. Sources say refugees with strong U.S. ties, and those savvy enough to leverage them, are often the ones who get the most attention: prompt responses to their questions, rent paid beyond the required three months, new furniture, funds from the petty cash box.
Current staff members said there’s another factor that can give refugees an advantage: sharing the same last names as staff.
“Some clients who are relatives are getting better services,” one current employee says plainly. They reported seeing relatives get more rent, more cash, better furniture, more job assistance and more Uber trips for transportation.
A member of another organization helping Afghan refugees says they saw nepotism firsthand. Their organization was working with Lutheran Social Services to do home setups, using private donations to ensure families had furniture, basic house supplies, food and other necessities they needed when they first arrived. Lutheran Social Services would flag needy homes for them, but half of the time, they say, the group would show up to find that homes flagged as needy often had more than enough supplies.
“A handful of times, that person would turn out to be a relative of a case manager or employee,” they say. (Lutheran Social Services declined to comment on some of these claims, but said its legal investigators did not find evidence to sustain allegations that its case management team treats clients differently based on their ethnic backgrounds.)
While sources say well-connected Afghans see their complaints addressed quickly, others are said to be ignored, dismissed or even threatened if they share their concerns.
Two refugee families told U.S. News they’d been instructed by the same caseworker not to complain to the media about their treatment by Lutheran Social Services. A father with a young child was so worried during his interview with U.S. News that he closed his window blinds, nervously peeking outside to see if anyone was watching. One of the families said the caseworker also told them they would be deported by the State Department if they complained.
I don’t know what anyone else expected. This is Afghanistan. And most of the Muslim world where everything operates around clan/tribe/family. Corruption and theft are routine. We couldn’t run anything in Afghanistan because of this sort of thing. Why did anyone think that putting a lot of money into the hands of Afghans to resettle Afghans would work any differently?
Beyond Afghans being Afghans, Lutheran Social Services was enthusiastically throwing a lot of taxpayer money around.
It was, in fact, common for staff to receive thousands of dollars in bonuses, even in a single two-week pay period, Floyd says. She says she processed one paycheck in which a single employee earned a $9,000 bonus. Over three months, she says she processed more than $100,000 in the surge stipends. She recalls an employee who was so confused by her pay bump that she called HR just to make sure there hadn’t been an error.
Floyd also expressed concern about an issue several other current and former staff members mentioned to U.S. News: insufficient accounting of community donations, which, like refugees, were flowing in at levels not seen in decades.
“Everybody wanted to be a part of the cause, and not just with the money, but with the physical donations,” she says. “They had everything: cribs, laptops, iPads, gift cards of $5,000.”
The problem, she says, was that there were no records of how many donations were received, or who ended up receiving them. Theoretically, in other words, anyone could have taken the items home.
One employee of Lutheran Social Services says that they did indeed see theft, albeit on a small scale. A handful of employees, they say, sometimes took home donations meant for refugees, including gift cards, backpacks, toys, home items and hygiene supplies. They say some staff used the Uber account meant for refugee transportation for personal errands.
The same employee says a senior staff member in one office treated the petty cash box like his own “personal cash box,” taking money out to pay for his wife’s shoes.
Don’t worry, they’re just modeling the behavior that they learned from the best.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is led by Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, a Washington insider who previously served as policy director for Michelle Obama and as senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Hillary Clinton is the best role model that anyone could ask for.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Just so you know who is in charge, the Iranian navy is now issuing warnings to Old Joe Biden’s woke, fey (DOOMED) maritime corps. This will only increase when Joe’s handlers finally conclude their disastrous new appeasement deal with the mullahs.
“Iran briefly seizes 2 US sea drones in Red Sea amid tensions,” by Jon Gambrell, Associated Press, September 2, 2022:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s navy seized two American sea drones in the Red Sea before letting them go Friday as U.S. warships neared, officials said, in the latest maritime incident involving the Navy’s new drone fleet in the Mideast.
Iranian state television aired footage it said came from the deck of the Iranian navy’s Jamaran destroyer, where lifejacket-wearing sailors examined two Saildrone Explorers. They tossed one overboard as another warship could be seen in the distance.
Iran has no coastline along the Red Sea, a crucial international waterway lying between the Arabian Peninsula and northeastern Africa.
State TV said the Iranian navy found “several unmanned spying vessels abandoned in the international maritime routes” on Thursday.
“After two warnings to an American destroyer to prevent possible incidents, Jamaran seized the two vessels,” state TV said. “After securing the international shipping waterway, the Naval Squadron No. 84 released the vessels in a safe area.”
It added: “The U.S Navy was warned to avoid repeating similar incidents in future.”…
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Federal law enforcement authorities have been tracking a disturbing recent trend that could be a significant security threat. The Department of Homeland Security believes that up to 30,000 individuals with Middle Eastern names are traveling on Mexican passports that they may have obtained fraudulently.
The 30,000 individuals are undergoing “additional investigation,” says DHS. The government is trying to determine if any of the 30,000 Mexican passport holders traveled to the United States and whether there were any patterns in their travel.
Given the porousness of our Southern border, even the usually quiescent DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appears a little worried. He said that the United States risks losing its “first line of defense” because of the “unsustainable” amount of illegal immigration at the border.
There are fears that terror groups such as al Qaeda could take advantage of the strained immigration system. Last April, for example, two Yemeni nationals on the terrorist watch list were apprehended at the southern border. Law enforcement officials appear concerned that bad actors could abuse the legal travel system to enter the country with passports obtained from Mexico, and enter the United States legally. Roughly 20 million Mexican citizens easily travel to the United States as tourists each year, according to the U.S. Travel Association.
“This investigation highlights that criminals often use legal travel to facilitate criminal activity,” the senior DHS official told the Free Beacon. “The nexus to Mexico should cause the public and lawmakers to reflect on how a porous border can be even more dangerous.”
Indeed, the bulk of the investigations is left to a little-known but vital piece of our first line of defense against attack. Since 2001, Custom and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center in Sterling, Va., has worked nonstop to catch travelers and detect cargo that threatens U.S. security.
The concerning passports were identified by the agency’s National Targeting Center, the memo states. The lesser known subagency, created shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, “works quickly and quietly to identify people and products that pose potential threats to our Nation’s security, and to stop them from entering the United States,” according to a 2014 public memo.
The National Targeting Center also assists Immigration and Customs Enforcement with deporting money launderers and child predators, the senior DHS official said. The National Targeting Center regularly partners with other agencies on investigations involving terrorism or global criminal networks.
Obviously, not all 30,000 fraudulent passports are from terrorists. But a false passport is a necessity if the holder wants to engage in criminal activity. The ease with which criminals can cross the border to conduct their business should make breaking any fraud ring responsible for creating false identification a priority.
