The three nations threatened by North Korea’s nuclear missile program united for a show of force Sunday aimed at reminding Kim Jong-un’s regime that they have dominant air power in the Korean skies.
The United States sent four fighters and two bombers to fly alongside four South Korean fighters over the region near the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas. The U.S. aircraft also joined four Japanese fighters to fly over the waters near Kyushu, a Japanese island in close proximity to the Korean Peninsula.
The American planes included two B-1B Lancer bombers from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, and four Marine Corps F-35B fighters from the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan, according to U.S. Pacific Command.
It is the second time in the past month that B-1Bs and F-35s have been sent over the Korean Peninsula.
The Pacific Command said the jets, which conducted live-fire exercises, were sent up in response to the Sept. 14 launch of a North Korean missile. The missile flew over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The military exercise came as U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley reminded the word that the United States is getting tired of talking about a resolution to the North Korean crisis.
“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed,”Haley said. “And we all know that, and none of us want that.”
Haley said the U.S. has been doing everything it can to find a diplomatic solution for the crisis, while leaving military action as a possible last resort.
“We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first. If that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it,”she said, referencing Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster said time has all but run out.
“This regime is so close now to threatening the United States and others with a nuclear weapon, that we really have to move with a great sense of urgency on sanctions, on diplomacy and preparing, if necessary, a military option,” McMaster told Fox News Sunday.
JERUSALEM — Three Palestinians were reported killed and over 200 were wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and the West Bank as Palestinian leaders urged a day of protest purportedly against Israel’s decision to put metal detectors at entrances to the Temple Mount.
Protest leaders, including top Palestinian officials, claim the metal detectors are part of an Israeli conspiracy to hamper Muslim worship at the Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and a site considered holy in Islam. The activists and Palestinian officials seemingly fail to note that Israel’s new security measures were put into place in direct response to the murderous Palestinian terrorist attack at the Mount last Friday in which three assailants somehow smuggled weapons onto the site. The metal detectors will protect all visitors to the Mount, including Muslim worshipers.
The activists protesting at the Temple Mount ignore that metal detectors have been in place for years for Jewish and Christian worshipers accessing the Western Wall. And Muslims on the Hajj pilgrimage pass through metal detectors at airports and border crossings.
A Palestinian uses a slingshot against Israeli soldiers during violent clashes in the West Bank city of Bethlehem (AP/Nasser Shiyoukhi)
On Friday, Israeli Police cited information that “extremist elements” where planning to “to cause violent disruptions to the public order, and thereby to threaten the public peace, including the [safety] of those coming to pray at the holy sites and other residents of the area.”
As a result, Israeli security forces erected checkpoints at main entrances to Jerusalem and are blocking several roads leading to the Temple Mount area. Some 3,000 police forces were deployed to Jerusalem’s Old City in addition to five Israel Defense Forces battalions that have been put on standby.
The Times of Israelreported on Friday’s ensuing deadly clashes:
The Palestinian Authority’s official Wafa news agency said a 17-year-old was killed in Ras al-Amud outside the Old City after being shot by a “settler,” though no shooter was identified; the term is often used by Palestinians to refer to any Israeli out of uniform. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the teen as Muhammad Mahmoud Sharaf from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
A second person was reportedly shot in the A-Tur area of east Jerusalem and died of his wounds at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. The third death reportedly occurred in Abu Dis in the West Bank, near Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Over 200 people were reported injured in the clashes across Jerusalem and the West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, adding that the injuries were incurred from live bullets, rubber-coated bullets, burning and tear gas inhalation.
There were reports of other clashes between Israeli forces and rioters across eastern sections of Jerusalem and in several West Bank locations, including checkpoints.
Palestinian youths hurl stones towards Israeli police officers during clashes in Jerusalem. (AP/Mahmoud Illean)
Some of those arrested included officials from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
According to Palestinian reports, 10 residents were arrested in east Jerusalem, among them were Fatah officials.
Some 400 Muslims attended the prayer next to the Gate of the Tribes (Bab al-Asbat), the place that sparked the violence earlier this week. Before the prayer, the leader called on the attendees to be patient, and said that “the Jews, that are occupying Palestine, are on their way to hell.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent says 41 Palestinians were taken to hospitals or clinics with injures from live fire, rubber bullets and beatings. About 150 Palestinians were treated for tear gas inhalation.
Four Israeli police officers have been reportedly injured in the clashes after being struck with stones and flares.
The Palestinian charge that Israel is hampering Muslim access to the Temple Mount is contradicted by facts on the ground. Israel allows the Jordanian-controlled Waqf to serve as custodians of the Mount and grants Muslim worshipers access to the site 24 hours per day, seven days a week with the exception of rare instances of security threats.
Jewish and Christian visitors, however, are restricted by the Waqf from visiting the Mount except on small tours for about two hours per day. The Waqf does not allow non-Muslims to pray on the Mount or bring holy objects to the site; whereas Muslim prayer is unrestricted. Waqf representatives closely monitor non-Muslim visitors to the site and are known to boot those engaging in prayer.
Palestinians throw stones against Israeli soldiers during clashes in the West Bank city of Bethlehem (AP/Nasser Shiyoukhi)
Israel on Thursday partially blamed the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for helping to fuel anti-Israel incitement regarding false threats to the Temple Mount.
“UNESCO is a full partner to the false incitement by Palestinians and radical Islam who claim that Al-Aksa [Temple Mount mosque] is in danger,”Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO in Paris Carmel Shama HaCohen said.
Last Friday’s Mount terrorist attack occurred less than two weeks after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed an anti-Israel resolution declaring Jerusalem’s Old City and its ancient walls to be “occupied” sites and listed the areas as Palestinian heritage sites in “danger.”
The Temple Mount is located in Jerusalem’s Old City, and last Friday’s attack occurred near the Lions Gate, part of Jerusalem’s ancient walls singled out by UNESCO.
And the terrorist attack took place one week after UNESCO passed another anti-Israel resolution regarding the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron – considered the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount – claiming the tomb is a “Palestinian” world heritage site in danger.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him onTwitter @AaronKleinShow.Follow him onFacebook.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump, unimpressed by the Afghanistan war options presented to him during a White House meeting with his full national security team Wednesday, suggested they may have to go back to the drawing board to craft a strategy that does not mirror the failed ones employed by his predecessors, said an administration official.
The meeting came as the Pentagon briefed lawmakers about plans to increase the U.S. military footprint in the country.
Contrary to mainstream media claims that the president has taken a completely hands-off approach to the 16-year-old conflict in Afghanistan, Trump presided over Wednesday’s meeting primarily aimed at discussing the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, a Trump administration official familiar with the deliberations told Breitbart News on condition of anonymity.
President Trump indicated that he is not satisfied with the strategy as it currently stands.
The Pentagon and White House National Security Council (NSC) declined to provide specifics about the developing plan.
President Trump demanded that his team go back to square one if necessary and create a realistic plan that ensures Afghanistan is ultimately able to stand on its own as a country, said the administration official, noting that the meeting served as a sort of wake up call for those involved in developing the strategy.
It appears that besides the Pentagon, the NSC has at least some authority in setting the strategy.
Asked about the meeting, the Pentagon did not confirm nor deny that the President asked officials to go back to the drawing board.
“We’re not going to discuss White House meetings or direction,”said Adam Stump, a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman, when Breitbart News asked whether or not it has been forced to start developing the Afghanistan war strategy from scratch and when it expects to present the plan to Trump.
The NSC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters last Friday a decision on the new plan would be unveiled around “mid-July” or “somewhere around there. We are driven by the maturity of the discussion, and where we’re at, we are not going to meet some timeline if we are not ready, but we are pretty close.”
Trump has granted the Pentagon the authority to decide how many additional troops to deploy to the war-ravaged country. Currently, Mattis may increase that number of troops by between 3,000 and 5,000, from the 8,400 already there. Mattis noted on Friday that the number of additional troops has not been “finalized yet,” adding that the Pentagon is waiting from input from the U.S. State Department.
Citing unnamed U.S. officials, CNN reports that as it currently stands, the strategy:
Encompasses a way ahead in Afghanistan, including the possibility of sending more troops, but also a look at new ideas for dealing with Pakistan, which the US believes is supporting or turning a blind eye to a number of terror groups operating inside the country.
The president made it clear he is not interested in any approach that resembles the strategies used by his predecessors and will not accept anything less than a dramatic overhaul, the official told Breitbart News.
Directly dealing with Pakistan’s support for terrorists fighting the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan would mark a significant departure from what America has done in the past.
Most of the 2,255 U.S. military fatalities and 20,245 injury incidents have taken place in provinces that border Pakistan.
The Pentagon spokesman defined what victory in Afghanistan means for the Trump administration, saying it ultimately involves a settlement with the Taliban and terrorists laying down their arms.
Stump told Breitbart News:
The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan remains centered on working with NATO allies, operational partners, and the international community to defeat the remnants of core al Qaeda and to defeat other violent extremist organizations and terrorist groups, such as ISIS-K [Islamic State], to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a safe-haven for groups to plan and execute attacks against the United States, U.S. persons overseas, or allies and partners; and continuing efforts to provide financial and advisory support to the Afghan Government and to enable a well-trained, equipped, and sustainable ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Force] that provides security in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Afghan Governments agree that the best way to ensure lasting peace and security in Afghanistan is through reconciliation and a political settlement with the Taliban. The United States supports an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned reconciliation process and supports any process that includes violent extremist groups laying down their arms.
Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Washington Post (WaPo)reports that the current U.S.-Afghan war is framed around a four-year plan to degrade the Taliban this is unlikely to “yield significant results until its later stages.”
In recently issued reports, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon have accused Pakistan of willingly serving as a safe-haven for the Taliban and its affiliates, including the deadly Haqqani Network.
The Taliban affirmed its relationship with al-Qaeda in December 2016.
Judicial Watch announced that the National Security Council (NSC) informed them via letter that materials regarding the unmasking by Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” were no longer in their possession.
The NSC will not fulfill an April 4 Judicial Watch request for records regarding information relating to people “who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.”
The agency also informed Judicial Watch that it would not turn over communications with any Intelligence Community member or agency concerning the alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election; the hacking of DNC computers; or the suspected communications between Russia and Trump campaign/transition officials. Specifically, the NSC told Judicial Watch:
Documents from the Obama administration have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library. You may send your request to the Obama Library. However, you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, Presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.
The president of the watch-dog group, Tom Fitton, said in a statement regarding the news:
“Prosecutors, Congress, and the public will want to know when the National Security Council shipped off the records about potential intelligence abuses by the Susan Rice and others in the Obama White House to the memory hole of the Obama Presidential Library. We are considering our legal options but we hope that the Special Counsel and Congress also consider their options and get these records.”
While everyone is pointing their fingers at Trump, screaming about obstruction of justice, what is being said about Obama? What is being said about this? Nothing. Not one word…
Three Russian warships armed with long-range cruise missiles have been spotted in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Latvia, in what appeared to be a challenge to President Donald Trump, Europe and NATO. The Latvian Army posted to its Twitter account that the Russian ships Liven 551, Serpukhov 603 and the Morshansk 824 were seen in the sea on Sunday. Newsweek reported that the ships were as close as four nautical miles from country’s coast.
The warships were initially deployed to St. Petersburg, Russia, for a Victory Day celebration marking the end of World War II. But the ships left those waters early — Victory Day is May 9 — and headed toward the Baltic Sea, according to the the U.K. Express, which translated Russian news agency Fontanka.
The purpose for the warships in the region was not immediately clear. However, the paper reported that the presence of the vessels was most likely in response to the arrival of the USS Carney in the Baltic Sea, which is also armed with cruise missiles.
The U.S. Navy posted to its Twitter account on Monday that the Carney had crossed seas near Denmark last week, adding that the vessel was “conducting a patrol in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe.”
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Russian warships suddenly moving into the area — especially after being redirected from a holiday celebration— certainly looks like a response to the U.S. military being there.
Newsweek reported that Mikhail Nenashev, a representative for a Russian naval supporters group, confirmed to Russian news agency RIA Novosti that some deployments were diverted and would not take part in the celebration. He did not elaborate any further.
A Russian source who did not wish to be identified also told Newsweek that fewer ships would participate in the celebration but would not confirm if any changes were related to the presence of the USS Carney.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, no stranger to military provocations, is apparently testing Latvia, which is a member of NATO and the European Union.
Putin would be wise to keep his fleet where it belongs: in port.
The U.S. military is alarmed that the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq is using commercially available drones to drop small bombs with “pinpoint accuracy” in and around Mosul, the jihadist group’s last major stronghold in the country.
“I am aware that ISIL has used commercial-off-the-shelf UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] to drop small explosive weapons,”Air Force Col. John Dorrian, a top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, told the WashingtonTimes. “This capability is dangerous and has propaganda value, but it will not change the fact that the enemy is being defeated in both Iraq and Syria.”
The Times reports:
The new capability raises the specter that the Islamic State one day could attack urban areas from the air, not just on the ground. The U.S. military is alarmed by the terrorist army’s quick technological advances and is evaluating more than 20 systems to detect and destroy its drone air force. Other systems already have been rushed to the war.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon confirmed that ISIS is using small drones carrying grenade-like explosives in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. The drones have caused civilian and military casualties, the Pentagon revealed. A U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive is currently fighting to push ISIS out of Mosul.
In a January 18 letter, then-U.S. Army Secretary Eric K. Fanning reportedly wrote Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a U.S. Marine veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, that the jihadi drone threat is on the rise.
“These advances present our adversaries with opportunities to quickly adjust and improve their tactics, and the Army must remain adaptive and agile to respond to the evolving threat,”declared Fanning.
He revealed that the U.S. military is testing more than 20 government and industry systems “designed to detect, identify and electronically defeat” jihadi drones.
In a propaganda video disseminated on social media Tuesday, ISIS featured aerial footage of a Chinese Skywalker X8 drone that can be purchased on Amazon targeting clusters of Iraqi soldiers, tanks, and buildings. The video captured ISIS’ ability to assemble, arm, deploy, and guide drones to locate and strike specific targets.
Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which obtained the video from an ISIS Internet channel, described the small aircraft as “the first offensive drone able to carry bombs, albeit small ones.”
Echoing the former U.S. Army secretary, the MEMRI chief predicted that ISIS will expand its use of drones.
“They have been using drones for a few years, mainly for their films, but there has been a major increase in usage,”Mr. Stalinsky said, adding that drones “are easily obtainable online, then can be modified. We have seen many drones used by ISIS that can be bought on Amazon.”
ISIS has been employing the use of commercially available drones for reconnaissance and to capture footage for propaganda videos. The jihadist group has also reportedly used drones to drop grenades. The Iraqi military has confirmed, too, that ISIS has weaponized drones.
“Daesh [ISIS] uses drones for surveillance and sometimes it attaches explosives to them and uses to target commanders or headquarters,”Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab al-Saidi of Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service told reporters in November at a military headquarters in a Mosul suburb.
Rep. Hunter told the Times that after a classified briefing on Tuesday, he is confident the U.S. military in Iraq is capable of defeating ISIS drones.
President Barack Obama plans to transfer out at least 22 of the 59 detainees who remain at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by the time he leaves the White House, a move that will liberate jihadists who have threatened to behead and bomb Americans, the Daily Mail has learned.
In recent weeks, the number of detainees who are expected to be set free by the end of Obama’s tenure on January 20 has varied by news agencies from 17 to 19. Earlier this week, the White House responded to incoming President Donald Trump’s urging to stop transferring prisoners out of Guantánamo, saying it plans to liberate more detainees before Obama leaves office.
The Obama administration reportedly told Congress last month that the sitting president would reduce the population of Guantánamo, also known as Gitmo, by 19 to 40 detainees.
Now, the Daily Mail reports:
Image added by WjhatDidYouSay.org
President Obama is planning to transfer at least 22 additional Guantanamo Bay detainees out of the military detention center before he leaves office later this month, DailyMail.com has learned.
The group being released will be drawn from those held at Guantanamo – who include an accused senior al Qaeda bomb-maker, the terror group’s top financial manager, and two intended 9/11 hijackers, who have all been held in the Cuba-based U.S. detention facility for more than a decade
U.S. transfers 15 Guantanamo detainees to United Arab Emirates
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Of the 59 prisoners still held at Gitmo, 22 have been cleared for release by Obama’s multi-agency parole-style board known as the Periodic Review Board (PRB) and nearly half (27) are considered “forever prisoners,”or too dangerous to release.
However, the PRB has made the decision to liberate prisoners who had already been designated too dangerous to release, which means the “forever prisoner” designation has not prevented the Obama administration from transferring out detainees.
According to theMiami Herald, the remaining 10 prisoners are still undergoing war crimes proceedings at military commissions, including six who are facing death penalty tribunals.
The Daily Mail reports:
The list of “recommended for transfer” prisoners includes a number of top al Qaeda operatives and commanders
[…]
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Some of the recommended transfers have also vowed to return to jihad if they are ever released, according to reports from US military officials. They have also threatened to assassinate the U.S. president, kill American citizens, and attack other world leaders who are allied with the West.
At least four countries — including Italy, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia — are expected to take in some of the 19 prisoners who are expected to be transferred by January 20.
On Wednesday, Reuters reports that Obama will transfer four prisoners to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours.
The Daily Mail notes:
Fifty-nine enemy combatants in total still remain at Guantanamo, including terror “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, two of the “20th hijackers” for the 9/11 attacks, and the strategists behind the USS Cole bombing of 2000.
The group includes al Qaeda henchmen from around the world who are trained in lethal military tactics – ranging from sniper assassins and rocket-propelled grenade operators, to explosives and chemical weapons experts.
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
According to the latest estimate by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), three out of every 10 Guantánamo detainees who have been released under both Presidents Obama and George W. Bush are suspected or confirmed to have re-engagedin terrorist activities. Some of the liberated prisoners are believed to have American blood on their hands.
The Daily Mail points out, “Some released detainees have gone back into terrorism. Four of the senior leaders in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) are former Guantanamo Bay detainees that were transferred to Saudi Arabia or Sudan.”
A child with a gun sits in a car on June 09, 1994 with Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) partisans patrolling the streets of Kigali, Rwanda. The UN headquarters came under attack as fierce fighting raged in the capital on June 09. (Photo credit should read ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty Images)
Islamist militants from the Boko Haram terror group are instructing their teenage recruits how to sexually assault women as part of their training, both as a means of terror and an incentive for the young militants. As part of their formation program, the Nigeria-based Jihadi leaders rape women and young girls captured during raids in front of the boys as a visual lesson in how to subdue a struggling victim during sexual assault, according to reports.
One 15-year-old boy known only as Ahmed said that the girls “scream and cry for help,”but the militants don’t care. “Sometimes they’ll be slapped and threatened with guns if they didn’t cooperate,”he said.
According to Ahmed, the jihadists accompany their demonstrations with specific instructions on how to carry out a rape. “They tell us to remember to hold the girl tight on both hands, pinned to the floor,”he said. “They said we shouldn’t let a woman overpower us.”
The young soldier said that before one attack, his superiors told the militants to capture as many women as they could, promising that they would be allowed to “have fun”when they returned to their base.
“At first I didn’t understand what they meant by ‘you are going to have fun’ and nobody thought to explain,”said Ahmed. This was before his training in sexual assault.
According to Ahmed, encouraging young militants to have sex with captives is a relatively new tactic, since previously, the leaders forbade teenage soldiers from doing so, saying that women belonged to men and not boys. The change in policy reportedly reflects a need to incentivize younger soldiers, especially now that a significant number of senior fighters have been killed off by the Nigerian military.
Adding insult to injury, a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released in October documented how many girls who had survived assaults by Boko Haram, then suffered sexual violence at the hands of officials at refugee camps in northern Nigeria. In its study, HRW found that rape, sexual harassment, inducement into sexual activity by promising food, and other such violence against the victims of Boko Haram were shockingly regular occurrences among internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps.
Members of the NGO interviewed 43 women and girls willing to discuss their experience of “sexual abuse, including rape, and exploitation” at the camp. Many of these accused an array of soldiers, police, and militia leaders of sexual violence.
Many of the African girls and women who eventually return home after escaping Boko Haram are stigmatized by their own communities because of the sexual violence they suffered. These women are sometimes labeled as “Boko Haram wives”or even “epidemics” and lack organized services to help them recover from their experiences and reintegrate into their communities.
Many Americans are very excited to know Trump’s Inauguration Day is right around the corner. We’ve had enough of Obama’s policies which have weakened America and our military and made us look weak among nations around the world. Not that Obama could care. Afterall, Obama supported Obamacare and wanted a One World government, just like Hillary.
At one of Obama’s last gatherings with other world leaders at the UN, Obama said this:
“…but we have to put our money where our mouths are. And we can only realize the promise of this institution’s founding — to replace the ravages of war with cooperation — if powerful nations like my own accept constraints,” said Obama. “Sometimes I’m criticized in my own country for professing a belief in international norms and multilateral institutions.”
“But I am convinced that in the long run, giving up some freedom of action — not giving up our ability to protect ourselves or pursue our core interests, but binding ourselves to international rules over the long term — enhances our security. And I think that’s not just true for us.”
WTH!? The United Nations has one goal: Globalization. The UN’s only intention is to bring about new world and economic order and support an international system of governance. The UN doesn’t exist to help the world. We’ve already seen how on many occasions how the UN has failed to protect those that really need protections. It hasn’t stopped genocide or wars.
The UN is about global control. They just want to remove guns and disarm citizens, which is unconstitutional in America. America was founded on the Constitution. In America, citizens have the 2nd Amendment – the right to bear arms, but the UN doesn’t want that. They want “ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT” – no borders. Hence, Obama didn’t care about how many illegals he brought in. He just wanted more. The more the merrier; it makes our country weaker.
Obama is a globalist and wanted Americans to surrender the US to the UN. He wanted America to give up our freedoms to achieve UN GOALS! Seriously!
The UN just wants America to dissolves its sovereignty to create a new world order. Obama wanted America to give up freedoms to become part of this ‘One World” government’!
Thank God! We are not heading down that path any longer! Hillary Clinton would have just continued down that same path to “One World” order and government.
One of our Founding Fathers said:
Aren’t we thankful Americans chose the path of freedom and Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton for President. Clinton would have continued America down Obama’s same path of destruction and “One World” order. Donald Trump will lead us down the path of greatness and help “Make America Great Again”.
Thank you Americans for electing Donald Trump for our next president!
Taliban Video Shows Kidnapped U.S.-Canadian Family / YouTube
A new video from the Taliban features Canadian Joshua Boyle and his American wife Caitlan Coleman, who were kidnapped while hiking through Afghanistan in 2012. The video also includes two young boys who are apparently their children, born during their captivity. Coleman was seven months pregnant at the time of her capture.
“We understand both sides hate us and are content to leave us and our two surviving children in these problems,”Coleman says in the video, as reported by Reuters. “But we can only ask and pray that somebody will recognize the atrocities these men carry out against us as so-called retaliation in their ingratitude and hypocrisy.”
“My children have seen their mother defiled,”she added ominously, as the children sat in Boyle’s lap. Also ominous: she referred to the boys as her “surviving children.”
“They want money, power, friends. You must give them these things before progress can be made,”she said of her captors in the Haqqani Network, a notorious hostage-taking criminal gang allied with the Taliban. Reuters explains that the “friends” she referred to are three senior Haqqani members held by the Afghan government.
The UK Daily Mailadds that Boyle said his captors are “frightened by the idea of further execution” of Taliban and Haqqani prisoners by the government in Kabul.
“Because of their fear they are willing to kill us, willing to kill women, to kill children, to kill whomever, in order to get these policies reversed or take revenge,”Boyle said in the video.
Coleman then buttressed her husband’s remarks by pleading, “I ask if my government can do anything to change the policies of the Afghan government to stop their policy of executing men before these men start executing their prisoners.”
At another point in the video, she more explicitly states that the Haqqanis will “retaliate against our family,” “do us harm,” and “punish us” if their demands are not met.
“We have waited since 2012 for somebody to understand our problems. We can only ask and pray that somebody will recognize the atrocities these men carry out against us as so-called retaliation in their ingratitude and hypocrisy,”Coleman said, evidently reading from a script, as the UK Guardiannotes.
Image added by WhatDidYouSay.org
The New York Timesquotes Coleman appealing directly to President Obama for help before he leaves office: “Please don’t become the next Jimmy Carter. Just give the offenders something so they and you can save face, so we can leave the region permanently.”
As the Daily Mail notes, Coleman is wearing a burka in the video, with the veil pulled back to expose her face. Boyle is described as “pale and tired.” Coleman was forced to wear a burka in previous hostage videos, while her mother also donned a Muslim headscarf in a video appeal for her daughter’s release sent by the family to Taliban leaders last year.
Taliban officials confirmed the authenticity of the video, which they said was recorded several months ago. (Coleman specifically states it is December 3rd at the beginning of the tape, but that might not be accurate.) It was delivered to U.S. and Canadian authorities, as well as uploaded to YouTube for public display on Monday night after one of the Haqqani prisoners was sentenced to death.
According to the Daily Mail, the Canadian government almost had a deal for Boyle’s release in place, but he refused to leave Coleman and the children.The New York Times speculates efforts to secure the couple’s release were harmed by the U.S. drone-strike killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour in May.
“Certainly when Americans are taken captive, this becomes an immediate priority for us. We are paying extraordinarily close attention to that. We always do. I won’t get into too many details with that. But I am satisfied that we are doing everything we can at this juncture to understand who took them and try to bring them back,” said U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, head of Central Command, at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday.
“We are deeply concerned for the safety and wellbeing of Joshua Boyle, Caitlan Coleman and their young children and call for their unconditional release,”said Canadian Department of Global Affairs spokesman Michael O’Shaughnessy.
The Guardian notes that the U.S. State Department “did not respond to a request for comment.”
As for why a man and his pregnant wife would be backpacking through Afghanistan in 2012, the Daily Mail quotes some relatives describing them as “well-intentioned but naive adventure seekers.”They had already trekked through Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan before arriving in Afghanistan.
The Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, has been shot while speaking at an art exhibit in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
Hurriyet quotes the Russian embassy saying it believes “radical Islamists” were behind the attack, and notes that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is due in Moscow tomorrow for talks on the Syrian crisis with Russia and Iran.
CNN Turk is running a photo that appears to show the gunman:
Update, 11:40 EST: Russia’s TASS news agency reports the exhibit Karlov was speaking at was a photo exhibit called “Russia in the Eyes of Turks.”The perpetrator is said to have fired shots in the air and shouted “Get out!”at the crowd.
Hurriyet Daily News had a reporter on the scene who confirmed the crowd ran after the gunman fired in the air, then Karlov was shot.
Update, 11:45 EST: According to Ragip Soylu, a reporter for the generally pro-Erdogan Daily Sabah, the attacker bypassed security by showing a police ID badge, and shouted something about Aleppo and Syria before he opened fire. More specifically, he is said to have shouted, “We die in Aleppo, you die here.”
Soylu also reports Karlov was shot “four or five times.” He has posted a photo that may be of the attacker, although noting this has not been confirmed by the authorities as yet:
The unconfirmed picture of the gunman in Ankara attack who targeted the Russian Ambassador pic.twitter.com/LEkcZdws2c
Update, 11:55 EST: An Associated Press photographer who was in the auidence reports the gunman shouted “Allahu akbar!” before opening fire, as well as saying something in Russian, and fired at least eight shots. Karlow was several minutes into his prepared remarks before the attack began.
Turkish media is reporting that the gunman has been neutralized. CNN Turk is reporting that special forces entered the building and ended a “brief hostage situation.”
Another photo of the gunman in action:
Update, 12:00 EST: The gunman has reportedly been killed by Turkish security forces:
Update, 12:05 EST: Turkish media are reporting that Ambassador Karlov has died of his wounds.
Update, 12:15 EST: Daily Sabah’s Ragip Soylu has posted video of the gunman during the attack:
Although the identity of the shooter has not been confirmed at the time of this writing, there have been claims he really was a plainclothes policeman, and possibly even a member of the Ambassador’s security detail.
Update, 12:20 EST: Russian President Vladimir Putin is meeting with his Foreign Minister and the heads of Russian security services about the attack. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Russians were in contact with Turkish authorities.
Hurriyet Daily News has updated its report to quote the attacker shouting to the crowd, “I will not leave here alive, do not approach me.”
Update, 12:25 EST: Chilling video of the attack as it happened:
Update, 12:45 EST: Turkish media are reporting that the gunman has been identified as 22-year-old Mevlut Mert Altintas, a serving police officer in the Ankara special operations unit.
His cries during the assassination have been translated, according to a report at Business Insider. At first, he shouted in Arabic: “We’ve made an oath to Mohammed to die in martyrdom, [it is] revenge for Syria and Aleppo.”
Altintas then switched to Turkish and shouted, “Don’t forget Aleppo. Don’t forget Syria… You won’t be safe. Only my dead body will leave here.”
He was described as speaking Turkish with an “educated, Istanbul accent” with “no trace of foreign accent, Arab or otherwise.”
Update, 12:55 EST: Below is a better-quality video of the assassin’s rant after shooting the ambassador. More explicit videos capturing the moment of the shooting have also been posted; one such video can be found here. (WARNING: graphic content.)
Update, 13:15 EST: The BBC quotes Turkish security sources who confirmed the assassin was a police officer, but they claimed he was off-duty when he attacked.
“We condemn this act of violence, whatever its source. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family,”said U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby, while U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power took to Twitter to “strongly condemn the savage attack.”
“I condemn in the strongest terms the heinous attack on Ambassador Karlov tonight,”said the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, John Bass.
“Shocked to hear of despicable murder of Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey. My thoughts are with his family. I condemn this cowardly attack,”said British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Update, 13:20 EST: According to a report from Turkey’s Andalou Agency, Andrey Gennadyevich Karlov was born in Moscow in 1954. He graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1976, and then from the Diplomatic Academy in 1992. He has been Russia’s ambassador to Turkey since July 2013. He was married, and has a son.
Update, 13:30 EST: A reporter for Russia Today offers a different account of the jihadi’s status with the Turkish police than what we’ve been hearing until now:
RT.com also reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone after the assassination.
Another remarkable, chilling image from Ankara: Ambassador Karlov looking at a painting in the art gallery, while his killer looms out-of-focus in the background behind him.
Update, 13:45 EST: Statement from the Turkish embassy in Russia, as related by Russia’s TASS news agency: “An inhumane tragedy occurred today with our distinguished colleague Andrey Karlov. There is no person in their right mind who would not condemn this evil act. We grieve with all our hearts. We bring our deepest condolences to the people of Russia. This is our shared pain and loss.”
Some unredacted photos of the dead gunman have emerged. (WARNING: very graphic image of bloodshed at the link.)
Update, 13:50 EST: According to Middle East Monitor, Ambassador Karlov “had been part of discussions between Turkey that led to an evacuation of east Aleppo getting underway late last week.”
Social media accounts linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda are reportedly celebrating the assassination, even though neither organization has formally claimed Altintas as a member.
Update, 14:05 EST: Statement from National Security Council spokesman Ned Price at the White House on the assassination in Ankara:
“The United States condemns in the strongest terms the terrorist attack this morning in Kayseri, Turkey, which killed more than a dozen people and wounded many more. This cowardly attack appears to have targeted off-duty Turkish soldiers who were traveling on a public transit bus that was also transporting civilians. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and loved ones, and to all the people of Turkey. As President Obama told President Erdogan in their phone call on December 15, we stand united with Turkey, our NATO Ally, in our determination to confront and defeat all forms of terrorism.”
Update, 14:30 EST: There have been some accusations in Turkey that Altintas carried out his attack at the behest of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric currently living in Pennsylvania who has been accused of masterminding the July coup attempt against President Erdogan. Turkey has been pressing the United States to extradite Gulen.
Perhaps the most prominent voice to openly accuse Gulen of involvement in the Karlov assassination thus far is Melih Gokcek, the mayor of Ankara.
“Russian Ambassador to Turkey got attacked basely. The only goal of this assassination is to ruin the relationship between Russia and Turkey,”Gokcek said on Twitter, as related by the UK Express. “Turkish and Russian officials will definitely find whoever responsible from this attack. But it is for sure, the ones who were responsible for downing of Russian Jet in the past, are responsible for this attack as well.”
This was a reference to the downing of a Russian warplane along Turkey’s border with Syria last November. Erdogan has accused the Turkish pilots who shot down the Russian plane of being linked to Gulen’s organization.
“Assailant is a policeman. According to what I have heard, he is a FETO member. The slogans of the assailant are just perception management,”Gokcek added. FETO stands for “Fethullah Terrorist Organization,”the Turkish government’s name for Fethullah Gulen’s followers.
The Express notes that Gokcek has a history of floating conspiracy theories, including an accusation that the British BBC news service was complicit in the terrorist bombing of Istanbul earlier this month. However, he’s not the only source for the theory that Altintas was a Gulenist.
Update, 14:45 EST: The mother and sister of gunman Mevlut Mert Altintas have reportedly been detained in the southwestern province of Aydin. Another report from Turkey says Altintas’ home has been searched, and his roommate has also been detained, as well as his father.
Update, 16:15 EST: Reuters quotes a senior security official in Turkey who said there are “very strong signs” the gunman belonged to Gulen’s organization.
Julian Assange, founder of the online leaking platform WikiLeaks, is seen through the eyepeace of a camera as he is displayed on a screen via a live video connection during a press conference on the platform’s 10th anniversary on October 4, 2016 in Berlin.WikiLeaks celebrates its 10th birthday defiantly proud as the pioneer of online leaking platforms, while its controversial founder vows to pursue its work despite widespread criticsm. / AFP / STEFFI LOOS (Photo credit should read STEFFI LOOS/AFP/Getty Images)
PARIS (AP) — WikiLeaks says that founder Julian Assange’s internet access has been cut by an unidentified state actor. Few other details were immediately available.
Assange has been up holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than four years after skipping bail to avoid being extradited over sex crimes allegations. The cramped quarters haven’t prevented the Australian transparency activist from working and WikiLeaks continues to deliver scoops, including revelations that have rattled Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president as the U.S. election enters its final stretch.
Calls, texts and emails left with WikiLeaks weren’t immediately returned Monday. A woman who picked up the phone at the embassy said: “I cannot disclose any information.”An email to Ecuador’s ambassador wasn’t immediately answered. London’s Metropolitan Police declined comment.
A frustrated federal judge ordered the State Department to begin producing within five days hundreds of documents on whether required or recommended security training, briefings or courses were completed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides.
Judge Richard Leon ruled Tuesday in favor of The Daily Caller News Foundation by rejecting the State Department’s motion to dismiss TheDCNF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning production of the documents originally sought under the Freedom of Information Act. But he also denied TheDCNF’s request to depose State Department officials.
The State Department has been unable to produce any records confirming that Clinton and her top aides received mandatory annual security briefings about the proper handling of classified materials and the proper methods for conducting secure communications.
In addition to Clinton, TheDCNF seeks the same records for former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Advisor Jacob Sullivan.
Leon has been impatient with State Department foot-dragging in releasing the documents. He ordered the department to release one third of the 400 documents by Sept. 26 and the rest of them by Oct. 10.
Bradley Moss, one of the attorneys representing TheDCNF, said “Judge Leon’s Order made clear his frustration with the State Department’s continued obstruction of the FOIA process. State will either meet his deadline or face the consequences of failure.”
FBI Director James Comey told reporters in a July 7 news conference he regarded the former secretary of state as a “careless”federal official when she set up a private and unsecured email server in her New York home. Comey did not end up recommending prosecution of the former secretary of state.
National Security Agency officials were aghast to learn early in Clinton’s term that she insisted on using an unsecured personal Blackberry phone within the confines of her State Department office. Unsecured digital devices are banned from the secretary’s office.
State Department officials admitted in a July 29 response to TheDCNF that their failure to produce the requested documents meant the “courses were not completed” by Clinton or her aides.
Department officials balked at searching computer hard drives in Clinton’s executive offices or in security offices where security awareness training is arranged for all of the department’s 45,000 employees and foreign service officers.
In an Aug. 31 hearing, Leon told Justice Department Attorney Jason Lee the documents should be released before the November election.
“I’m sure you can appreciate Mr. Lee, there is a certain time sensitivity on this issue,”Leon said. “We’re looking down the barrel of a presidential election from now in two months.”
The more than 800 immigrants who were mistakenly made citizens were set for deportation!
More than 800 immigrants who came from “counties of concern,” and were supposed to be deported, are instead now citizens of the United States. This bombshell is revealed below at the 2:38 mark.
The U.S. government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders, according to an internal Homeland Security audit released Monday.
The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren’t caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases.
DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.
The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth’s auditors said they were all from “special interest countries” — those that present a national security concern for the United States — or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. The report did not identify those countries.
The report blames reliance on paper records that were never put in digital databases. But that’s obviously because national security has never been a priority. How can we trust a government that fails in such a basic way to properly screen refugees from Syria or anywhere else?
We can’t!
So the Department of Homeland Security spent a massive amount of money to nudie scanners in airports but didn’t bother to give us better immigration security. Of the more than 800 immigrants who are now citizens, how many are sympathetic to ISIS?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joe Scudder
Joe Scudder is the “nom de plume” (or “nom de guerre”) of a fifty-ish-year-old writer and stroke survivor. He lives in St Louis with his wife and still-at-home children. He has been a freelance writer and occasional political activist since the early nineties. He describes his politics as Tolkienesque.
A missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran / AP
The Obama administration is brushing aside new German intelligence reports indicating that Iran has accelerated its efforts to procure key nuclear materials, despite promises to end this behavior as part of last summer’s nuclear accord, according to comments by a U.S. official provided to the Free Beacon.
Germany’s internal intelligence agency concluded in a recent report that sources have witnessed “extensive Iranian attempts” to procure illicit materials, “especially goods that can be used in the field of nuclear technology,” according to the report. The report appears to show that Iran is not upholding its most critical commitments under the nuclear deal.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear this week that the intelligence shows “Iran continued unabated to develop its rocket program in conflict with the relevant provisions of the UN Security Council,” particularly one Security Council resolution that bars Iran from pursuing ballistic missile technology.
The intelligence report and subsequent warnings were met with a tepid response from the Obama administration, which declined to comment on the intelligence and told the Free Beacon that it continues to view Iran as complying with the nuclear accord.
The administration’s response stands in sharp contrast to that of leading GOP lawmakers, who told the Free Beacon that the White House is intentionally ignoring Iran’s bad behavior.
“We believe that Iran is continuing to meet its [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] commitments,”a State Department official authorized only to speak on background told the Free Beacon.
When pressed to explain how this comported with Germany’s warnings, the official said the administration “would refer you to German authorities for any comment about reports attributed to them.”
The administration official would not take a stance on indications that Iran’s procurement activity—which has increased nearly twofold since the nuclear deal—could violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which bans such activity.
“As for UNSCR 2231, we have spoken previously about how Iran’s reported missile launches are clearly inconsistent with the resolution,”the source said when asked if the new intelligence shows that Iran’s behavior constitutes a violation of the resolution.
A CIA official declined to comment on Germany’s findings and whether they comport with U.S. intelligence assessments.
The administration’s response stands in sharp contrast to comments made by many lawmakers who view the German intelligence as proof that Iran is in violation of international accords. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), the House majority leader, told the Free Beacon that the administration is ignoring mounting evidence of Iran’s illicit actions.
“The Obama Administration can’t ignore the sheer weight of evidence showing Iran isn’t upholding its side of the bargain,”McCarthy said. “From illicit procurement for its nuclear program to testing ballistic missiles, Iran is showing that it had no intention of ever following international agreements, even ones that granted them enormous concessions.”
“The administration’s decision to continue implementing the deal and ignore Iran’s actions isn’t just delusional, it’s dangerous,”he added. “Iran must be stopped, which is why we need the sanctions legislation we are voting on this week.”
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House intelligence committee, also said Iran’s behavior indicates that it is not faithfully abiding by the nuclear deal.
“The latest German intelligence report on Iran’s efforts to secure nuclear and missile technology and material is extremely troubling,”Pompeo said.
The German intelligence report’s “naming of more than 1,000 associates of Iranian-backed terrorist groups that are living in Germany should serve as a wake-up call to the U.S. and other European countries who are prefer to ignore Tehran’s active support for entities like Hezbollah and Hamas,”Pompeo said.
One source intimately familiar with the administration’s thinking on Iran told the Free Beacon that Iran’s illicit activity has forced U.S. officials to walk back certain claims made about how the deal would reform Tehran.
“The administration isn’t even sure what to say any more. Sometimes they say that the nuclear deal is so weak Iran can’t violate it even if it illegally imports nuclear technology,” said one senior congressional adviser who works closely on the Iran portfolio. “Other times they say the nuclear deal is really strong, and they just ignore what even they admit are violations, like when Iran accumulated more heavy water than allowed a few months ago.”
Germany’s disclosure is the latest in a series of revelations that appear to show Iran stretching the limits of last summer’s nuclear deal. The issue of ballistic missile technology has emerged as an issue of concern on Capitol Hill in light of the administration’s refusal to describe Iran’s ballistic missile tests as violations of UNSCR 2231.
TEL AVIV – A U.S. government security officer serving at the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi prior to the September 11, 2012 attacks, warned his superiors that lack of adequate security at the compound made serving there a “suicide mission.”
The officer further predicted to his superiors “that there was a very good chance that everybody here was going to die.”
In a devastating indictment, the officer stated that a superior told him “everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi, and nobody cares and nobody is going to care until somebody does die.”
The dramatic testimony was provided to the House Select Committee on Benghazi and contained in a 339-page House Democrat report on Benghazi released on Monday and reviewed in full by Breitbart Jerusalem. The report was issued prior to the release on Tuesday of the Benghazi Committee’s final report.
The Select Committee quoted the officer as “Agent B,”explaining he served in Benghazi from November to December 2011 and was the State Department-provided Regional Security Officer (RSO) there for ten days in December 2011. RSOs are special agents of the State Department’s U.S. Diplomatic Security Service serving overseas.
Agent B says he was getting the “runaround” regarding additional security requests and that he gave his dire prediction to a superior.
When I took over as RSO, I called [the DS Desk Officer], because I was getting the runaround on some physical security requests, complaining to him vigorously, you know, what the problem was.
I told him that, you know—to use frank language, I told him that this was a suicide mission; that there was a very good chance that everybody here was going to die; that there was absolutely no ability here to prevent an attack whatsoever; that we were in a completely vulnerable position, and we needed help fast, we needed it quickly, or we were going to have dire consequences.
Agent B further described the dangerous security conditions and his appeal for what he said were “desperately”needed security upgrades.
Our perimeter security is non-existent, we have walls with lattices that somebody can shoot through; we have walls with footholds people can climb over; we have a 4-foot wall back here; we have no lighting. So all these physical security standards, especially around the perimeter of the building, were completely insufficient, and we needed large amounts of money and this was going to take time, it was going to be expensive, but we needed this desperately to make this place safe.
Agent B said that a superior informed him that DC employees at the State Department expected deaths in Benghazi to such an extent that they were already discussing a security investigation, or Accountability Review Board (ARB), to probe the Benghazi facility following any fatalities there.
[Redacted] told me, he said, [Redacted], everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi, and nobody cares and nobody is going to care until somebody does die. The only thing that you and I can do is save our emails for the ARB that we all know is coming. So this was December of 2011. He made it very clear to me that in DS/IP, in the State Department, and he was speaking very broadly, that everybody knew that deaths in Benghazi were very likely, and that they were already talking about an ARB.
HELP AVAILABLE TO BENGHAZI WHILE UNDER ATTACK
With research by Joshua Klein.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
A red liquid was poured into the Trevi fountain in the center of Rome, 19 October 2007. A substance has colored the water and the gesture was claimed by the artistic group “Action futurist 2007”. AFP PHOTO / CHRISTOPHE SIMON (Photo credit should read CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images)
In a move reminiscent of the first plague of Egypt, the city of Rome will dye its most emblematic fountain blood red in commemoration of the many new martyrs killed in our time for their faith in Jesus Christ.
According to the Catholic News Agency, the Trevi Fountain will be dyed red on the evening of on April 29 “in recognition of all Christians who even today give their life for the faith.”
The Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need has organized the event to “call attention to the drama of anti-Christian persecution.” Vatican Cardinal Mauro Piacenza will introduce the ceremony, which will feature testimony from Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria, as well as other witnesses to Christian massacres in Yemen, Pakistan, Turkey and Kenya.
In a statement posted on their website, the group said they hope this program will create “a long-lasting, concrete reaction everywhere so that the persecuted people of the 21st century can return as soon as possible to fully enjoying their natural right to religious freedom.”
The Italian daily Il Giornale noted that there are 150 million persecuted Christians throughout the world, “a genocide that too often silent Western institutions refuse to recognize.”
The organizers added that “the systematic violation of the right to religious freedom, especially that of Christians, must become the central issue of the public debate.”
The year 2015 saw “the mostviolent and sustained attack on Christian faith in modern history,” according to a watchdog organization that has been monitoring Christian persecution for decades.
Open Doors, an organization founded in 1955 to assist persecuted Christians, publishes an annual “World Watch List,” reporting on attacks against Christians and ranking the most hostile national environments for believers. “The 2016 World Watch List documents an unprecedented escalation of violence against Christians, making this past year the most violent and sustained attack on Christian faith in modern history,” Open Doors CEO David Curry said at the rollout of the list. Persecution in “continuing to increase, intensify and spread across the globe,” he said.
Pope Francis has spoken frequently during his papacy on modern-day martyrs. On April 7, the Pope called martyrs “the lifeblood of the Church.” “It is the witness of our martyrs of today – so many! – chased out of their homeland, driven away, having their throats cut, persecuted: they have the courage to confess Jesus even to the point of death,”he said.
In his Good Friday ceremony of the Stations of the Cross last month, the Pope denounced the global persecution of Christians, who are still “killed, burned alive, throats slit, and beheaded with barbarous blades amid cowardly silence.” The ceremony was held in the iconic setting of the Roman Coliseum, a symbol for many of the earliest Christian persecutions and martyrdom. Francis underscored the evil of these atrocities, carried out in the name of God and religion.
“O Cross of Christ, we still see you today in the fanaticism and terrorism of the followers of a religion who profane the name of God and use it to justify their unprecedented violence,”in evident reference to the Islamist terrorists behind much Christian persecution today.
According to the biblical account of the plagues of Egypt, God commanded Moses and Aaron to turn the Nile and all the waters of Egypt to blood, as a sign to Pharaoh. “Blood will be everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone,” God tells Moses. Yet despite this sign, Pharaoh’s heart was “hardened” and the persecution of God’s people continued.
Masked Islamic Jihad Militants Wear Explosive Belts During A Rally Commemorating Mohammed Irhaem And Saleh Hassouna April 23, 2002 In Gaza City, Gaza Strip. The Two Palestinian Men Were Shot And Killed On Friday, During An Exchange Of Fire With Israeli Troops Near The Jewish Settlement Of Netzarim In The Gaza Strip.
Recovered documents from the Islamic State terror group reveal that more than one in ten of their recruits would like to become suicide bombers.
A group of analysts at West Point who spent many hours sifting through thousands of leaked documents have found that 12 percent of Islamic State recruits are open to making the ultimate sacrifice as suicide bombers.
In March, German intelligence obtained a cache of Islamic State documents, revealing the names of 22,000 ISIS fighters including many foreign recruits hailing from Europe, Australia and the United States. The documents were reportedly leaked by a former Free Syrian Army fighter who switched over to fight for the Islamic State.
The leaked files reveal that some 10 percent of the militants hail from Western countries, with 128 jihadists from France, 80 from Germany and 57 from the UK.
The most common countries of provenance, however, were Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, with 797 and 640 recruits respectively.
Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, confirmed the authenticity of the documents and their usefulness for counterterrorism forces. Maizière said the discovery would facilitate “speedier, clearer investigations and stricter prison sentences” for fighters returning from Syria and Iraq. He also said that the documents help elucidate “the underlying structures of this terrorist organization.”
The files contain the names, nationalities, addresses, telephone numbers and other personal details of jihadists who joined the terrorist network in 2013 and 2014. According to the analysts, two thirds of the ISIS recruits are between the ages 21 and 30, though ages range from the teens all the way to a 70-year-old father of five from Kyrgyzstan.
The analysts said the find was the largest and “most significant” document cache of its kind, and furnished new insight into the terror group’s ambitions, structure and recruitment.
“The largest takeaway from these documents is the massivediversity of the population,” Brian Dodwell, deputy director of the Combating Terrorism Center at U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The only thing all the recruits had in common was their deep attachment to Islam.
“We’re talking about very diverse backgrounds from an education perspective — individuals who list their education as none up to those who listed their educations as PhDs, masters degrees, MBAs … Everything from laborers to doctors and lawyers,”Dodwell said.
Questionnaires filled out by new recruits contained a variety of queries, including whether they wanted to be a regular fighter or a suicide bomber or suicide fighter. Given the options, approximately 12 percent checked the box for martyrdom.
This percentage of willing martyrs is reportedly lower than from among the foreign fighters who joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, more than half of whom volunteered to blow themselves up.
“While they do need some suicide bombers, if all of their troops selected into the suicide category who would be left to fill that conventional army? Who would be left to serve as the Sharia officials, the police or the administrative?”Dodwell said.
“They’re selling this narrative of victory and sustaining… Many of these individuals it would seem are buying into that message and are going into there to live — not die.”
The Department of Homeland Security removed the names of nearly 1,000 individuals suspected of terrorism ties from the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to newly released documents obtained by an advocacy group under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported in 2014 that the Obama administration secretly assembled a terrorist “hands off” list that enabled individuals with terrorist ties unfettered entrance into the United States.
The latest documents, obtained by Judicial Watch and released on Tuesday, appear to confirm these initial reports. They further disclose that at least 1,000 names were scrubbed from the U.S. Terrorist Screening Database as part of an administration effort to protect the civil rights of suspected individuals.
“The documents appear to confirm charges that Obama administration changes created a massive ‘hands off’ list,” Judicial Watch said in a statement. “Removed data from the terrorist watch list could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terrorist attack.”
Lawmakers disclosed in 2014 that the administration has secretly assembled a terrorist “hands off” list that facilitated travel to the United States for those one flagged as a potential terror threat. Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon at the time disclosed that at least one individual, a Canadian Islamist leader tied to Hamas and Hezbollah, had been put on the list.
“These new documents bolster allegations that the Obama administration may have removed information from a terrorist watch list that could have prevented the San Bernardino terrorist attack,”Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement. “Philip Haney risked his career to blow the whistle on how the Obama administration created a ‘hands off” list of over 1,000 foreign nationals with potential terrorist ties. And, once again, it was a Judicial Watch lawsuit—and not Congress or the media—that uncovered the key information about this national security scandal.”
Secure Freedom, an initiative of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), will be launching a new campaign called CounterJihad, an endeavor that hopes to empower readers with the intellectual firepower to fight back against the radical Islamic current that is coming over this nation, and the rest of the world.
CounterJihad’s mission statement, posted on its website, is to educate all Americans regarding the radical Islamist threat the nation faces today. “We are a movement of American citizen-activists dedicated to safeguarding the country from the danger posed by Islamic Supremacists,” it states.
“We are all aware of the barbaric acts of ISIS, al Qaeda and the others flying the Black Flag. Sadly their violence continues to kill innocents around the world and here at home. They fight in the cause of Jihad to impose their totalitarian religion on all people,” a statement on the CounterJihad site reads.
“But they are not the only ones working toward that goal,” the initiative warns. “There are other Islamist groups who seem much less dangerous on the surface, but actually represent an even more insidious threat to free western society. They seek to use our very freedoms as weapons against us.”
The CounterJihad initiative hopes to provide the American people intellectual firepower against the Islamic forces that seek to undermine western values. Moreover, The CounterJihad project hopes that everyday Americans will spread its message far and wide, from the city blocks of Manhattan to the rural backcountry of this nation.
In a world destabilizing rapidly, Islamist radicals have seized power vacuums opened by the West’s unwillingness to stand up to the forces antithetical to freedom. Far-left and anti-free speech totalitarians have empowered these groups by condemning any and all criticism of radical Islam, labeling individuals and groups who do so as ‘racists’ and ‘Islamophobes.’
From the powers fueling the so-called Arab Spring, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s temporary seizure of power in Egypt, to the rise of the Islamic State and the Ayatollah’s theocracy in Iran, radical jihadi outfits have sprung up exponentially in this second decade of the 21st century.
Islamist entities have also secured footing in the United States. Among the more prominent is the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which poses as a Muslim civil rights organization while maintaining ties to Islamist groups worldwide. CAIR operatives have met with White House officials, yet they have previously demanded the silencing of their critics in accordance with Sharia law.
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization in the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation’s Hamas-funding operation. In December, an FBI chart, along with governmental testimony, surfaced that alleged CAIR was a Hamas-related organization.
Jim Hanson, CSP’s executive vice president, tells Breitbart News the new campaign is “a response to the incursion by dangerous Islamist groups and their intolerant ideology into the American way of life. We will educate the public and explain how concerned Americans can help stop this.”
CounterJihad will focus on educating the American people about Sharia; Violent Jihad; Civilization Jihad; the Muslim Brotherhood in America; Slander, Blasphemy and Censorship; Migration; Threats To The Electric Grid; and the Iranian Threat Doctrine.
CounterJihad is not designed in any way, shape, or form to target Muslims, Hanson explained. “We’re not anti-Muslim, but we strongly oppose those Muslims who believe they are divinely called to impose totalitarian sharia doctrine on others.”
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that the administration is essentially sending troops into the “wilderness with a compass, but no map” after it failed to deliver a strategy to defeat the Islamic State by Monday’s deadline.
The fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act required the administration to provide a strategy to counter violent extremism by Monday, a deadline it missed.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said the failure to come through is unsurprising, despite the administration’s repeated assurances that its strategy is “well underway.”
“The committee is working now to shape the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act and the Pentagon has already begun requesting authorities our troops need to defeat this enemy. Without a strategy, this amounts to leaving our troops in the wilderness with a compass, but no map,” Thornberry said in a statement.
“Failing to comply with the report deadline represents more than a failure of strategic vision for the White House. It is a lost opportunity for the administration and Congress to work together on a common approach to face this threat,”he continued.
The executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) asserts that a lifting of the ban on DDT could prevent the spread of the Zika virus, just as it could have wiped out malaria.
Dr. Jane Orient tells Breitbart News the major public health measure required to combat the Zika virus pandemic is mosquito control and says, “DDT was the most effective public health weapon of all time.”
Orient continues:
The ban on DDT was basically the decision of one man, William Ruckelshaus, going against a mountain of evidence on safety and enormous health benefits. It was said that, “If they can ban DDT, they can ban anything.” And that’s how the EPA power grab started. Millions of African babies have died and are still dying of malaria because if it.
“Substitute pesticides are far more toxic and expensive,”she adds. “People are advised to use insect repellents such as DEET — which is absorbed through the skin, and safety in pregnancy is not established.”
Orient’s view is shared by president of Pioneer Energy Dr. Robert Zubrin, who recently wrote at National Review, “The most effective pesticide is DDT. If the Zika catastrophe is to be prevented in time, we need to use it.”
DDT was first employed by the U.S. Army to stop a typhus epidemic in Naples that had been created by the retreating Germans through their destruction of that city’s sanitation system. Subsequently, Allied forces used it in all theaters to save millions of disease-ravaged victims of Axis tyranny, and after the war employed it to wipe out malaria in the American south, southern Europe, and much of south Asia and Latin America. The benefits of these campaigns were unprecedented. As the National Academy of Sciences put it in a 1970 report: To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase of agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable.
Zubrin asserts that environmentalists such as Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 book Silent Spring, propagated the notion that DDT was harmful to bird populations.
“This was false,”he writes. “In fact, by eliminating their insect parasites and infection agents, DDT was helping bird numbers to grow significantly.”
Nevertheless, Zubrin notes environmentalists launched an aggressive “massive propaganda campaign”that would ultimately ban the use of DDT.
According to Orient, Zika is not a new virus, having been first identified in humans in 1947 in Uganda’s Zika Forest. Nevertheless, CDC director Thomas Frieden observes the virus’s association with microcephaly and other fetal harm.
“There is no definitive proof that ZVD has caused birth defects,”Orient notes. “In fact, the evidence is against it. In Colombia, 3000 pregnant women had ZVD — with no microcephaly. In Brazil, only 17 of 404 cases of confirmed microcephaly were positive for ZVD. ZVD has been known since the 1940s as a benign disease, with no reported birth defects.”
Orient also advises against exposing women who may be pregnant to drugs or vaccines that have not been through thorough safety testing. She notes that, last year, Brazil mandated the pertussis vaccine for all pregnant women — without proof of safety during pregnancy.
Regarding the fear that Zika could spread through the United States via illegal immigrants, Orient believes that ZVD is perhaps one of the least important of the kinds of diseases that could be transmitted in that way. A concern she has is that President Obama proposes to spend $1.8 billion on the ZVD threat — which is now being used politically to promote abortion in countries where it is currently illegal— while “other genuine threats proliferate.”
“We could stop transmission now with effective mosquito control in affected areas,”Orient says.
The South Carolina House has passed a bill blocking Islamic sharia law from being recognized or approved in the state, after years of debate over similar legislation.
The legislation voted upon was explained as “A bill to amend the code of laws of South Carolina … so as to prevent a court or other enforcement authority from enforcing foreign law including, but not limited to, Sharia Law in this state from a forum outside of the United States or its territories under certain circumstances.”
On Thursday, the legislation passed with 68 for the bill and 42 opposed.
Sharia law is the legal and political system mandated in the Koran and other Islamic texts. It include laws governing religious practice, such as praying and ritual washing. But sharia also rules what Westerners see as non-government social practices — divorce, child-rearing, free-speech, clothing or sexual behavior, for example — and it also rules government responses to crimes, such as theft and murder.
Sharia law relegates women and non-Muslims to a lesser status, and grants men enormous authority over wives, daughters and sons. It allows for the primitive treatment of women and non-Muslims, and allows fierce punishment — sometimes, “honor killings” by fathers — for refusing to complying with sharia mandates.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Chip Limehouse. He told Breitbart News following the bill’s passage:
“This goes to demonstrate that the South Carolina House of Representatives is committed to preserving and protecting the American way of life here in South Carolina.”
“Sharia Law has been used as a defense in American courtrooms,” he adds. “We are working towards making that defense not an option for radical extremists from any country.”
“In South Carolina, we’ve had cases where people have tried to use [the rules of] Sharia Law as a defense, and we are speaking very clearly from the South Carolina House,” Limehouse said. “Shariah Law can not and will not be used as a legal defense in the state of South Carolina.”
Because the bill was passed at the beginning of the current legislative session, Rep. Limehouse said he was optimistic that the Senate would have enough time to pass the bill. In order for the bill to become law, it must now be passed by the South Carolina State Senate and signed by Governor Nikki Haley.
Tea Party and conservative grassroots organizations are credited with initiating the movement to ban sharia rules through the state legislatures. Conservative leaders Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann have publicly advocated for the need to enact nation-wide legislation against the threat of sharia.
Underground sharia courts operate in Muslim communities throughout Europe and also in the United States. Last year, Breitbart Texas reported that a “voluntary” sharia court had already been established in Texas.
Several countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, have many underground sharia courts within migrant communities. In the U.K, the government has formally deputized at least one sharia court to decide non-criminal issues among people who agree to use the court, even as public concerns rise that immigrant women are socially pressured to accept the courts’ authority
U.S. opponents of sharia courts point to Europe for evidence that western democracies can gradually cede more de-facto legal authority to self-segregating Muslim communities, so enabling the self-segregation of Muslim communities into no-go zones within cities.
Several states–including Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina South Dakota, and Tennessee–have passed “foreign law” bans against sharia. More than a dozen other states are currently considering similar legislation.
North Korea’s claim to have detonated a hydrogen bomb on Wednesday may cause major new problems for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
As Secretary of State in President Barack Obama’s first term, Clinton led a policy that sought new outlets for talks with North Korea while promising “to speak out forcefully” against the regime. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, traveled personally to North Korea to free U.S. journalists in 2009.
In 2007, then-candidate Obama had promised to meet with North Korean leaders, among others, “without preconditions,” saying that “the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them–which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this [Bush] administration–is ridiculous.” In his campaign manifesto, Obama went further, promising to “eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program” through diplomacy.
In his 2010 State of the Union address, delivered while Hillary Clinton was in charge of his administration’s foreign policy, Obama boasted that he was succeeding in diplomacy with North Korea, as well as with Iran–that his diplomatic efforts had “strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons.”He repeated the claim in his 2011 State of the Union Address, stating that his administration continued to “insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.”
In 2013, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on the day President Obama was to give his State of the Union address, putting an atomic stamp on the administration’s failure. In 2014, the administration struggled to respond to North Korean hacks that targeted Sony Pictures and its film, The Interview, that lampooned the regime.
Experts are skeptical that Wednesday’s test was a hydrogen bomb, but agree that it was a nuclear explosion, and not a natural earthquake.
Already, Clinton’s rivals are pouncing. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Fox & Friends Wednesday that “three out of the four nuclear detonations that the North Koreans have done have happened on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s watch, and they have just not acted strongly at all around the world. It’s just another example piling on top of Iran, on top of Syria, on top of Crimea and Ukraine. This is what weak American leadership gets you.”
The fact that Bill Clinton, as well as Hillary Clinton, was involved in recent diplomacy with North Korea may also tempt GOP frontrunner Donald Trump to renew his attack on the former president. Recently, Trump has revived the issue of Bill Clinton’s conduct towards women–and his wife’s alleged enabling behavior.
I have a political crush, but one I couldn’t vote for today – because she ran for office in France.
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is the new deserved “It Girl” of French politics and a clear voice of courage and common sense in a country and continent in need of both.
In 2012, she earned the distinction of being France’s youngest elected Member of Parliament. Last week she handily won the first round of a race for the leadership of a large important region in southeastern France that’s home to the beautiful port city of Marseilles. Unfortunately, she lost the run-off election today because the two establishment Parties joined forces to defeat her.
But despite today’s tough losses, Marion and her aunt Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front (FN) Party, have established themselves and their supporters as a force to be reckoned with in France’s 2017 presidential race, in which Marine is sure to be a contender with her talented niece right behind her.
For some time now, I’ve admired the bold style of Marine Le Pen, who wrestled control of the leadership of her populist party in order to purge it of any trace of anti-Semitism, which it had unfortunately been tainted with in the past. But I’m especially impressed with the courage of her young niece who is a devout Catholic and unapologetically pro-life – not an easy thing for a politician to be in a country that’s aggressively secular.
More importantly, young Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is unashamed to champion France’s Judeo-Christian identity and heritage as something worth preserving and fighting for. She publicly proclaims it, setting an example for even American politicians to be so bold. With France (and indeed all of Europe) caught up in an existential crisis against radical Islam, these are the sentiments they need in their leadership.
The Charlie Hebdo attacks last January and the Paris attacks last month were a tragic wake up call for France. The forces of civilization are engaged in a great war against the Death Cult that is radical Islam. This year the conflict reached the shores of France, which has become the Western Front of this Great War, thanks in part to the migrant crisis overwhelming the European Union.
Was anyone surprised that the mastermind of the Paris attacks entered the country by posing as a Syrian “refugee”? The Islamic State bragged that they were going to exploit Europe’s open borders! Is this not the clearest warning to politically correct pundits and politicians in our own homeland who think we can filter the nefarious out from the future flood of young, strong, able-bodied immigrants claiming “refugee” status? It’s common sense to encourage these young men to stay and fight for their countries and families during this time made tumultuous in part by our utter lack of border security and vetting processes.
The migrant crisis has made a mockery of any idea of national sovereignty. The EU’s open border policy means that all of Europe is now forced to bear the burden of Germany’s insane decision to welcome in those untold millions of mostly fighting age young Muslim men who have zero interest in assimilating to secular western values, as heretofore mentioned.
To this, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen declares that France is not an Islamic land, but Muslims are welcome to become French citizens “only on condition that they bend to the customs and the way of life that Greek, Roman and 16 centuries of Christianity fashioned.”
What she’s saying should not be controversial. It’s common sense. The western values enjoyed by every French citizen regardless of their religion are necessarily rooted in those 16 Christian centuries. Our understanding of human rights and human dignity comes from the Judeo-Christian worldview that shaped modern Europe. If you transplant to your shores a foreign population that’s hostile to the very things your country stands for, you won’t have a country for very long. This is the hard truth. You can’t maintain a peaceful liberal democracy with people who want to impose Sharia law on you.
But for some reason saying this out loud is considered “hate speech” or xenophobia in Europe. They can even press criminal charges against you for it!
We see members of a Death Cult gun down Parisians in a café and concert hall, slaughter cartoonists at their desks, shoot up a Jewish market, sell women and girls into sexual slavery, stone gays to death, crucify and behead Christians, and declare their intention to infiltrate and destroy western countries. But the Left reserves its harshest criticism not for the murderous Death Cult, but for any leader offering commonsense solutions to curtail the terrorists’ ability to wage war on the innocent.
The Left wraps itself in political correctness and multiculturalism like a suicide vest. They’d rather blow up the whole country than admit the stupidity of thinking a nation can remain the same after inviting in millions of people who despise its values.
I guess it’s not surprising really. The Left in Europe and America has always had a self-destructive hatred for the things that make a country great and worth living in: free markets, free speech, a civil society grounded in Judeo-Christian values, a strong national defense, and sovereign borders. They’re constantly attacking every one of these things. That’s undeniable.
But their dangerous ideology is being “mugged by reality.”People are waking up. Young Marion Maréchal-Le Pen built her electoral win last week by going to the rural small business owners – the average French citizens who have been ignored by their elite politicians and have had enough.
We see the same thing happening here in America. Call it the rise of the populists. Pundits are already seeing the similarities between Marion and Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). All are non-establishment candidates taking on corrupt, entrenched, and detached political elites who are more interested in preserving their own power than in defending their countries.
It’s time to wake up, America. Nowhere in Europe or America is safe from this Great War against the Death Cult. San Bernardino wasn’t a one-off phenomenon. ISIS is already here. According to a House Homeland Security report, over 250 people in the U.S. have attempted to join ISIS (that we know about), and 82 have been caught in ISIS plots. Meanwhile, the FBI has nearly 1,000 open cases involving ISIS that we know of.
We don’t have a handle on this situation now, but our insane politicians want to import more so-called “refugees.” Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical about the refugee part. We just learned that ISIS is forging fake Syrian passports, and we already know that two of the Paris attackers entered Europe posing as refugees. We have no way to vet anyone coming to our country. This is why we need to seal the borders.
And we must speak candidly about the need for those coming here to assimilate to our values, as immigrants have always done in the past. Our country isn’t 16 centuries old, but our Founders were under the influence of nearly 18 centuries of Judeo-Christian thought and time-tested truths when they drafted our Constitution. We would do well to remember that our Constitution is incompatible with Sharia, and anyone who wants to live under Sharia should settle elsewhere.
When Marion Maréchal-Le Pen speaks of France’s 16 centuries of Judeo-Christian history and heritage, her rhetoric isn’t about “hate” or xenophobia. It’s about love – that deep love of country we call patriotism.
Mark Twain believed patriotism was personified in the story of a young French woman who “found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless” and led it “from victory to victory” until it was free. “With Joan of Arc love of country was more than a sentiment – it was a passion,” Twain wrote. “She was Patriotism embodied.”
As Marion faces the political battles ahead, I wouldn’t be surprised if she says a prayer to France’s Patron Saint, for Marion is a reminder of her – Joan of Arc.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has been terrorizing the Middle East for almost three years. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and President Barack Obama act as if they want the public to remain ignorant about a radical Islamic group so horrific that al-Qaeda does not want anything to do with them.
These are the facts that every American must know.
1. ISIS IS WINNING THE SOCIAL MEDIA WAR
Facebook. YouTube. Twitter. If it is a social media outlet, ISIS knows how to use it to amp up their recruits and spread their message.
In February, former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett claimed the terrorist group sends out 90,000 social media messages a day.While that seems like a lot, others believe the number is actually double that number.
“My best estimate is something over 200,000 a day, including retweets, but that comes with a lot of caveats,”explained J.M. Berger, a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It is not entirely possible to break down members vs. fanboys and the bulk of accounts don’t visibly differentiate. But a plurality of the accounts we examined for the study appeared to be based in Iraq and Syria.”
Breitbart News regularly reports how militants use social media to recruit Westerners, especially women. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College discovered that the feeling of “sisterhood” was just as much of a draw as finding a mujahid groom for the majority of women from the West.
2. ISIS RAKES IN BETWEEN $25 TO $90 MILLION A MONTH FROM OIL SALES
The squabble between Turkey and Russia pushed the subject of ISIS-controlled oil fields into the headlines. Both countries accuse each other of purchasing oil from ISIS, but how much does that give the group?
In July 2014, experts believedoil earned ISIS at least $3 million a day, or roughly $90 million a month. The group captured numerous oil fields in Syria’s Diar Alzour province, including the Omar oil field. Almost a year later, the U.S. claimed ISIS was weakening, but militants “seized most of the Baiji oil refinery, the largest in Iraq.”
Other analysts said that ISIS only makes $2 million a month from oil, which is around $24 million a year.
3. ISIS CALIPHATE SPANS UP TO 35,000 SQUARE MILES
On, November 17, GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush tweeted out this picture of the caliphate.
The picture shows the state ISIS has formed so far is about the size of Indiana, with over 8 million residents. They established Raqqa, Syria, as the capital of their caliphate. In 2014, one publication said the the caliphate sized at 12,000 square miles while others put it at 35,000 miles. Either way, one thing remains constant: “They would like the entire world to be Muslim, but they want the world to be Muslim in a very, very narrowly defined manner,”said William Beeman, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota. “They are fundamentalist Muslims and their idea of Islam is quite different from the rest of the Islamic world.”
4. FBI RUNNING OVER 900 INVESTIGATIONS OF ISIS OPERATIVES IN THE 50 STATES
In October, FBI Director James Comey told intelligence officials his department is currently running at least 900 investigations against alleged ISIS operatives in America. However, the stats also showed that the majority of Americans are not fleeing to ISIS. That only means the domestic threat rises if they stay in the states.
5. THOSE INVESTIGATIONS SPAN TO ALL 50 STATES
Comey also alerted the nation that ISIS “tentacles” spread to all 50 states. Unfortunately, though, potential recruits and ISIS use encrypted software to communicate.
“ISIS is sending a poisonous message that buzzes in the pockets of troubled souls, unmoored people, all day long,”said Comey. “The challenge we face is finding those needles in a nationwide haystack, assessing where they are on a spectrum between consuming this poison and acting on it, and disrupting them before they act.”
6. 72 DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY EMPLOYEES ON FEDERAL WATCHLIST
The second amendment clearly states that“the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”But Sunday night, President Barack Obama pushed for more gun control at the federal level by urging Congress to make sure people on the federal no-fly list can buy a gun. However, that list is far from perfect.
On December 1,
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) revealed an investigation in August showed 72 employees of the Department of Homeland Security were on the watch list. This led to Lynch and other Democrats voting with Republicans on a bill to “ramp up screening requirements for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.” He said:
Back in August, we did an investigation—the inspector General did—of the Department of Homeland Security, and they had 72 individuals that were on the terrorist watch list that were actually working at the Department of Homeland Security. The director had to resign because of that. Then we went further and did and eight-airport investigation. We had staffers go into eight different airports to test the department of homeland security screening process at major airports. They had a 95 percent failure rate. We had folks—this was a testing exercise, so we had folks going in there with guns on their ankles, and other weapons on their persons, and there was a 95 percent failure rate.
Which leads us to the final fact:
7. ZERO SAN BERNARDINO TERRORISTS WERE ON THAT NO-FLY LIST
The no-fly list mentioned 72 Homeland Security employees. In the past, the name “T. Kennedy” appeared on the list, causing troubles for former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Civil Rights icon
Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) ended up on the list, which caused numerous headaches and travel delays. Babies and toddlers remained on the list.
But Obama and Democrats want to rely on the list, even though San Bernardino terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik never appeared on the list.They slaughtered 14 people in cold blood. Investigators believe Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS. Others said the bombs the couple made mirrored those in al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine. CBS confirmed reports that both of the attackers viewed ISIS propaganda online.
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who killed 14 people and injured dozens more on Wednesday, have connections to radical Islamic groups, officials say. New details related to the Islamic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California have emerged, revealing the possibility that the shooters were in contact with members of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Investigators believe that the female attacker pledged allegiance to the Islamic State as the rampage was ongoing.
During the jihadi attack, Tashfeen Malik posted on Facebook that she was pledging allegiance to Islamic State “caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, officials told CNN. The investigators said she used an account under a different name.
Law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets that the bombs created by the two jihadis resembled models for which instructions were provided in Al Qaeda’s “Inspire” magazine, which was thought to be the creation of deceased Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. One particular issue of “Inspire” printed a guide on “how to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”
Awlaki – who served as the Imam of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia during the 9/11 attacks, then left the country to become a leader in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – has been credited as the inspiration for several other Islamic terror attacks in the United States. The Fort Hood jihadi, Nidal Hasan, had a demonstrated connection to Awlaki, communicating with Al Qaeda’s chief recruiter directly. Additionally, the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, held a collection of propaganda clips from Awlaki.
There is also the possibility that the two terrorists, while in Saudi Arabia, linked up with radical Islamic terrorist organizations.
Fox News reports that “one or both members of the couple made contact with suspected Al Qaeda terrorists,” citing investigators on the case.
Farook and Malik first met on an online dating website. The two united in Saudi Arabia, and Farook brought Malik to the United States in 2014, officials say. Malik slipped through the cracks, passing a Homeland Security counterterrorism screening as part of her receiving a K-1 visa.
Saira Khan, the sister of the male attacker, spoke to CBS Friday morning about her brother’s act of terror.
“I can never imagine my brother or my sister-in-law doing something like this. Especially because they were happily married, they had a beautiful 6-month-old daughter. It’s just mind-boggling why they would do something like this,” she said. “It makes us very upset and angry that how could you leave a 6-month-old daughter.”
The two reportedly scrubbed their social media accounts a day before committing the shootings in San Bernardino, law enforcement officials said.
Update- 2:30 PM: The FBI is officially investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.
Update- 2:00 PM: Farook’s sister, who said earlier today she “can’t fathom” why her brother would commit such a heinous act, is a member of a pro-Caliphate Islamist group.
Update- 12:00 PM: The terrorists’ home, where Farook’s mother also resides, was described as an “IED factory” and a “bomb-making facility.”
Dr. Ben Carson boarded a flight to the Middle Eastern nation of Jordan late on Thanksgiving to embark on a tour of Syrian refugee camps there on Friday, he told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview before the trip. The tour–which Carson is taking so he can learn more about how to solve the refugee crisis by resettling Syrians throughout the Middle East, rather than bringing any refugees to the United States of America or placing more in Europe–means the world-leading neurosurgeon is the first 2016 GOP presidential candidate to tour refugee camps in Jordan.
“I’m going to be visiting some of the refugee camps and some of the hospitals and talking to some of the people,” Carson told Breitbart News in the exclusive phone interview on Thursday afternoon.
“I want to get a really good impression of what’s going on over there with these refugees. There’s a lot of Syrian refugees. There are not nearly as many as they had planned for. But as you may or may not know, the facilities are not conducive to having any refugees stay there—they’re trying to get out of there. Also, I want to get a better impression of why Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, why are they so resistant to integrating Syrians into their populations? What is it, what’s the dynamic between these various groups that makes them not want to help each other? I really want to get to the bottom of that.”
Part of the reason why he’s going is because Carson envisions a future where ISIS is decimated and wants to find solutions for how to proactively deal with large-scale problems in the Middle East before they get out of control again.
“I want us not to give up on the possibilities of peace over there,” Carson told Breitbart News.
“I’m not being unrealistic or saying that we ought to sit down with a peace pipe with ISIS—that’s just absurd. But let’s say we get rid of ISIS: There’s still a lot of work to be done over there. And I think we’re a central part of that. We have been a very big part of that for many decades and the American influence, even though we were taking sort of a back seat and leading from behind, it’s still very powerful. It needs to be cultivated in the right way. And that influence used in the right way not only leads to peace but increased quality of life for people because one of the things that an organization like ISIS springs up is because they appeal to the desperation of people who have no hope. We can help alter that dynamic.”
Carson said he wants to find a solution to resettle the refugees closer to their homelandthroughout the Middle East—and that he doesn’t think the United States should be taking any here.
“For me it’s not so much about taking refugees in here—I just don’t think that’s a good idea from the outset,” Carson said hours before heading to Jordan. “It’s really more about understanding the dynamic over there because I think we need to be working with some of the nations over there in terms of how do you resettle? And in terms of how do we form some kind of a coalition where you have peace and repatriate? That’s what I’m looking for. I just think it’s wrongheaded that the only solution is for us to take them here. That’s not the right solution.”
Jordan is one of the few countries in the ummah (Islamic world) that has aggressively provided for refugees fleeing from war-torn Syria.
The UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, has taken point in providing assistance for refugees from Syria who live in Jordanian refugee camps. By the end of 2015, Jordan will have taken in over one million refugees, over 90% of whom came from Syria, while the rest will have arrived mostly from Iraq, according to UN data.
An aerial view shows the Zaatari refugee camp, near the Jordanian city of Mafraq July 18, 2013. The camp that holds roughly 115,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan about 12 km (eight miles) from the Syrian border. REUTERS/Mandel Ngan/Pool
Carson ripped President Barack Obama for comparing, as the president did in his Thanksgiving address, potential Syrian refugees in the United States to the Pilgrims.
“That’s certainly not the way I see it,” Carson said when asked to respond to Obama’s comments. “If they were Pilgrims, they should be Pilgrims over there, not Pilgrims over here.”
Obama had on Thursday morning compared Syrian refugees to the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts, nearly 400 years ago—who kicked off the tradition of Thanksgiving.
“In 1620, a small band of pilgrims came to this continent, refugees who had fled persecution and violence in their native land,”Obama said. “Nearly 400 years later, we remember their part in the American story – and we honor the men and women who helped them in their time of need.”
Carson told Breitbart News that what would be a truly “humanitarian act,” one of “Christian love,” would be finding ways to reintegrate Syrian refugees into Middle Eastern nations like Jordan—where he’s touring on Friday—and society there, rather than bringing them here.
A picture taken on March 15, 2014 shows children collecting water from a truck at the sprawling desert Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan near the border with Syria which provides shelter to around 100,000 Syrian refugees. AFP PHOTO/KHALIL MAZRAAWI
“But again, we must get back to thinking: exactly what is a humanitarian act? What truly is an act of Christian love? And I think it is not running away from the situation over there,” Carson said.
“It’s trying to ameliorate the situation over there so that people can live in peace. I think there’s been a premature capitulation to violence and evil. And I just don’t think we have to get in and say there’s no hope and no point to try to achieve some fairness over there, that there’s no point in trying to get some of the people who have refugee camps to let the people out of the refugee camps and let them work. Many of them are people with skills—doctors, lawyers, dentists—who could be there helping. Why would you take people with those kinds of skills and just confine them to a refugee camp where they live on $95 a month? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Jordanian government agencies, along with several NGOs and international partners, contribute to the relief efforts for refugees in the country. Amman opened the Zaatari refugee camp, located near the Syrian border, in 2012 to deal with Syrians fleeing the violence and turmoil of the war in their nation.
Documenting the initial surge of Syrians into Zaatari camp, journalist Carla Fibla wrote in 2012: “Every day, thousands of Syrian refugees walk early in the morning to the entrance of Za’atari camp and form a long queue. For hours, they wait for lorry deliveries, fighting for each centimetre of space.”
The refugee population in Zaatari alone is estimated at around 83,000 people. Due to the continuing increase in population, the camp has faces a surge in crime and drug issues. The camp was said to reach maximum capacity when its population totaled 60,000, but its gates remain open.
In this Wednesday, July 29, 2015 photo, a Syrian refugee boy plays with a tire at Zaatari refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh)
The conditions in Zaatari have become so rough for refugees that some now prefer to leave and take their chances in Syria, according to reports.
Majreeb Al Fhood refugee camp, located near Zaatari, has become another popular spot for Syrian refugees. Its current population stands at a little over 4,000, according to estimates from early 2015. The camp was built to deal with the over-population in the Zaatari camp. But 80 percent of the Syrian refugees don’t live in refugee camps. They are dispersed among urban populations in the country’s north–which has become dramatically reshaped, both from a security and a demographic standpoint, due to the war.
Syrian refugee children dressed in new clothes hold the hands of their grandmother while walking back to their shelter on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan at Zaatari refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan, Friday, July 17, 2015. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
Carson, a doctor and world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, also said that he’s planning to visit hospitals there. He compared this fact-finding mission to his August trip to the U.S. border with Mexico in Arizona, a trip on which this reporter accompanied him for Breitbart News and included a helicopter tour of cartel-controlled territory deep inside the United States.
“I’m hoping not only to see the refugees and the refugee camps, but I’m also hoping to be looking at the hospitals and how some of the children who are injured are being taken care of and what other services could potentially be offered to all the people from a physical standpoint,”Carson said.
“I think unless we know those kinds of things we can’t do the right thing in these negotiations. I learned so much last summer when I went down to the border. We all knew that the border is porous but to actually be there and to see it for yourself, to talk to the ranchers down there and hear their horror stories and talk to the sheriffs and the deputy sheriffs and hear what they go through and how they risk their lives protecting these people. You can’t really appreciate it until you see it. That’s what I think will happen here: I actually want to see the conditions, I want to hear from them, where they came from, what would be for them the ideal kind of outcome, what do they think is keeping them from getting there? Who are their friends? Who are their enemies? And I want to hear from a bunch of people. That’s really how you form a solution as opposed to hearing from media outlets who are trying to distort it and be inaccurate.”
Popular NGOs and humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, Save The Children, and dozens of other non-profits have come to Jordan in hopes to better the lives of those in desperate conditions.
Syrian refugees shop at the first hypermarket that is opened in Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees on February 6, 2014 in Jordan. With vouchers refugees can choose from a diverse list of food that are not normally included in conventional food rations. The voucher has a value of JD18 (U.S.$ 25) per person per month and is complemented by a monthly ration of rice, lentils, bulgur wheat, date bars, sugar and salt. (Photo by Salah Malkawi/ Getty Images)
Jordan, a country with a population of only 6.5 million people, will soon reach a point at which they must refuse entry to Syrians fleeing the war between Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces. But the conflict continues to see the mass slaughter of innocents, creating a situation where civilians will continue to do all they can to escape Damascus’s borders.
Meanwhile, their Gulf neighbors–such as Saudi Arabia, which already has in place a tent city that can accommodate millions of people–refuse to take in a single refugee.
Carson compared the false choice Washington, D.C., is presenting–of either letting the Syrian refugees into this country and Europe or seeing them be killed–to the Iranian nuclear deal.
“Which of course is the same kind of thing we get with Iran—which is we either have to go to war with Iran or we have to sign this ridiculous deal when of course there are other choices,” Carson said, adding that this trip will help him understand firsthand choices and solutions that are different from what the mainstream media and permanent political class are putting forward.
“What kind of conditions are there, and what can be done to improve them? But also, what kind of humanitarian help is necessary? We have the ability to do a lot and many other nations have the ability to do a lot too.”
Carson wouldn’t call on the rest of his 2016 competition to take similar tours of refugee camps, but he did say he thinks this puts him at an advantage to have a real solution to the problem.
“I never like to tell other candidates what they should do or what they should think, I just think that when I get to see things and experience them for myself rather than have them filtered through other people it makes a much bigger impression,”Carson told Breitbart News when asked if he thinks everyone running should go. “Maybe the other people don’t need that—I don’t know. But I find it extraordinarily helpful.”
Carson also laid out his strategy to defeat ISIS and how he’d do things differently from President Obama so far.
“First of all, I believe we have to really take the battle to ISIS and the goal has to be to eliminate them, not contain them or push them into one area,”Carson said.
“And in order to do that we have to look at what works and what doesn’t work. What has worked just recently when you look at the gains we’ve had in Syria by associating ourselves with the Kurds and allowing them to cut off supply lines to Sinjar, that city, that weakened it. Then when the Kurdish military forces went in with our special ops supported by air, they were able to topple that fairly quickly. That worked. That’s a strategy that’s very effective. There is no reason that can’t work in some of the other cities, including Mosul.’
“Then, when you use your social media and all your other media to blast—remember how when they took the city, it’s all over the place? It makes them look like the big guy. We need to do the same thing. You take it back from them and make them look like the little guy.’
“We need to do the same thing in the southern part of Iraq. They got a bad rap because in their face-off with ISIS they turned tail and ran and left all the millions of dollars of equipment which ISIS then inherited. Well, we didn’t do it the same way there as we did it with Sinjar. We didn’t have an adequate number of special forces. You have to have those there. You have to have Apache helicopters, and then all of a sudden the tide turns dramatically and you begin to take back the land, their “Caliphate.: And you blast that all over the world, the account that they’re turning tail and running.’
“You try to hurt them, their pride, so their pride makes them come out and fight, and when they do, you wipe them out. And then you take their oil, and then you work with the world monetary systems so they have no ability to move money and so they have no ability to pay people. And you just continue to take the battle to them until they’re gone. I think that’s how you fight a war.”
The worldwide number of annual terrorist deaths has more than quadrupled since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009. Deaths from terrorism increased 80 percent last year to an all-time-record of 32,658 people killed, compared to 18,111 in 2013. The number is up about 426 percentfrom the 7,654 killed by terrorists in 2008 under President Bush, according to the latest report from ‘Vision of Humanity.’
The 2014 economic cost of 13,370 terrorist attacks in 93 countries included property damage, medical costs, lost income for victims, and the indirect costs of preventing and responding to terrorist acts. The annual “Global Terrorism Index” report estimated those costs hit an all-time-high in 2014 of $52.9 billion.
Boko Haram and Islamic State of Iraq and Levant were jointly responsible for 51 percentof all claimed global terrorist fatalities in 2014. About 57 percent of all the attacks and 78 percent of all the deaths occurred in the five nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria.
But the number of nations suffering over 500 or more deaths from terrorism increased in 2014 by approximately 120 percent, to 11 countries.
Nigeria experienced the largest increase in terrorist activity with 7,512 deaths in 2014, a jump of over 300 percentover the prior year. But Iraq continued as the worst place for terrorist attacks in 2014, with 9,929 killed, setting another new all-time-record for a single nation.
The number of countries suffering at least one terrorist fatality spread significantly last year, from 59 in 2013 to 67 in 2014. Advanced Western nations suffering at least one terrorist death included Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada and France.
As the Middle East destabilized from 2011 through 2014, global terrorist attacks set a new record each year. Over the three-year period, the total number of people killed by terrorism was approximately 63,214.
The 2015 year was on track through mid-June (latest data available) to set another all-time record, with the IntelCenter tracking “5,209 terrorist and rebel incidents” that killed a total of 14,193 people.
The rapidly expanding number of terrorist attacks, nations targeted and civilians killed virtually guarantees that terrorism will continue set new records in the years ahead.
It is a long-term and striking characteristic of the American people to show particular devotion to their soldiers and veterans. The famed French observer of American life, Alexis de Tocqueville, understood in the 1830s how the people of a participatory republic like the United States would be both fierce in war and show an uncommon fidelity to those who had served in the military.
Tocqueville described the conditions which would draw Americans into war, certainly applicable to World War I: “When war has at length, by its long continuance, roused the whole community from their peaceful occupations, and ruined their minor undertakings, the same passions which made them attach so much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms…”
Historian Erick L. McKitrick described Tocqueville’s observation of the kind of patriotism that would become a hallmark of the American republic in relation to an “Austrian peasant of 1914 being conscripted into the imperial army”:
“The powers above” he might have said, “tell me that I must go and do my duty; therefore, of course, I must.” This is the tradition of authority, acceptance, and obedience. The same tradition can also be one of revolution and mutiny: there is something removed from the community scene, yet something focused and personified in the heads of the state, that can specifically be resisted… Yet in our own military tradition, such as it is, there are no such themes, either of implicit acquiescence or revolt. The conviction that our military enterprises are just and righteous does not flow automatically from on high…
Where do the convictions of the righteousness of American soldiers and the justice or their cause emanate from?
“…They emanate, in a special sense, from ourselves. Nobody, for instance, wants very much to be drafted for military service, but the sanctions are hard to ‘mutiny’ against; they come not so much from the President as from a ‘local board composed of your neighbors.’”
In keeping with the American tradition of venerating those who serve, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first Armistice Day specifically to commemorate those who had fought in the First World War. The date holds special significance because it marked the end of hostilities in the “war to end all wars” on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.
The poor treatment of returning veterans after the Vietnam War was an outlier to this long-term trend and was a product of the culture war that divided Americans at that time and still does today. However, Americans have mostly doubled down in their devotion to returning veterans since that time, as there are now more generations who have returned home from fighting on our behalf.
There is a common perception that America is becoming more self-obsessed and narcissistic, unable to care about or comprehend such notions as duty or devotion to country. While this is often sadly the case, there is another side to this country that hasn’t lost these defining features.
I recently visited the World War II monument in Washington, DC, which is an appropriate and profound tribute to the generation that fought and won the greatest conflict in world history. Though I came to pay my respects, I was enraged at the large number of tourists who treated the memorial as if it were nothing more than a park for personal amusement. Selfie sticks abounded, and a number of people were wading in the central pool that clearly had a sign “Do not put your feet in the water.”
This spectacle left me feeling despondent about the future of the country and ashamed about what past generations would think of the American people in the 21st century. However, my entire perception changed in an instant as a sudden stream of veterans arrived at the monument as part of the Honor Flight program.
Though seeing these distinguished men and women was special, what was perhaps even more important was the sudden and impromptu outpouring of devotion from the ordinary Americans who witnessed their arrival. Gone were the selfie sticks, and in their place appeared handshakes and personal thanks for the veterans’ service.
On this Veterans Day, it should be the duty of every American who still believes in the principles that this country was founded upon—and in the men and women who fought on its behalf—to make some tribute or gesture of thanks. It was established as a custom and a sign of respect to those who have fought for our country to hold a brief moment of silence at 11:00 AM, a tradition that every American should uphold.
Former Secretary of State and Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, October 22, 2015. AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB/Getty Images
Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that he would not run for president of the United States made it a foregone conclusion that the media would worship at the shrine of Hillary Clinton during her Benghazi testimony on Thursday.
They have no other choice. The precious must be protected at all costs, which means covering up for her lies, her calculated obfuscations, and her charmless faux-gravity. Already the narrative has been set: Hillary Clinton was a victim of a political Benghazi committee dedicated to her destruction. Every Congressional committee in history has entailed some political motivation—would anyone argue that the Watergate investigations were completely apolitical?—but the media myopically focused on the idiotic comments of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) before Hillary’s testimony, crafting the story of her victimization before it had even taken place.
Hillary, as always, is the poor, put-upon victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy.
She set up a private email server and deleted relevant emails from it for purely political reasons;
she pressed for a pointless invasion of Libya for political reasons,
chortled at its conquest for political reasons,
watched it descend into chaos while doing nothing for political reasons,
and then allowed her ambassador to twist in the Libyan tornado without proper security for political reasons;
finally, she covered up that disaster by lying about its causes for political reasons. But those who ask questions about such matters are partisan politicians.
As Charles Krauthammer rightly observed on Thursday evening, “We’re not going to get the facts, we’re not going to get the real story underlying it. We’re living in an age where what you say and its relation with the facts is completely irrelevant.”
But after 11 hours of lying—which is only slightly longer than the hours Hillary and her boss’ administration did virtually nothing as Americans died under fire in Benghazi—we may as well examine Hillary’s most important lies.
Hillary Cared Deeply About the Human Cost.
Hillary kept claiming that she cared deeply about her good friend Chris Stevens. At one point, she whipped out her pre-planned righteous indignation to complain, “I would imagine I’ve thought more about what happened than all of you put together. I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together.”This was salt in the wound, the equivalent of Johnny Cochrane lamenting his worries over the fate of Nicole Brown Simpson.
Hillary admitted in her testimony on Thursday that her good friend Chris Stevens did not have her private email address, and that she could recall no conversations with him after he became ambassador to Libya. The night of his death, she wrote an email with the subject line: “Chris Smith,” conflating his death with that of diplomat Sean Smith. She didn’t bother speaking with survivors of the attacks until days later.
As to the notion that Hillary lost sleep, she apparently didn’t the night of the attack—she went home instead of sticking around at the State Department or heading over to the White House, because, she said, she had to prepare for what would be a rough rest of the week. She didn’t talk to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. We do know that she spent the night alone, a fact which led her to chortle. Hillary may have lost sleep over her failures later—clearly, she spent some time coming up with lies about a YouTube video.
Hillary Thought The Attacks Had Something to Do With a YouTube Video.
Hillary maintained on Thursday that she believed the attack still had something to do with the YouTube video, “The Innocence of Muslims.” But the night of the attack, she emailed Chelsea Clinton and told her that an al-Qaeda-like group had killed the ambassador.As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said to Clinton, “You tell the American people one thing. You tell your family an entirely different story.”
In fact, Hillary told the Egyptian Prime Minister the day after the attacks, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack. Not a protest.”Hillary tried to state that she had actually told people that some people were pinning the attack on the video, but she herself pinned the attacks on the YouTube video in videos released in Pakistan. She lied, because it was obvious that she had failed in her central duty to protect her diplomats in the most dangerous part of the world—a part of the world she had made more dangerous with her favorite invasion.
Hillary Didn’t Use Sidney Blumenthal As an Advisor.
Hillary Clinton had reams of email exchanges with hitman Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal had been banned from the Obama administration for his corruption and Clintonian loyalties. Hillary said that the emails were unsolicited.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) shot that idiocy down easily: “You wrote to him, ‘Thanks and please keep them coming,’ ‘Greetings from Kabul and thanks for keeping this stuff coming, any other info about it?’ ‘What are you hearing now?’” Hillary then tried to amend her statement by saying they began as unsolicited emails. Hillary used Blumenthal as an advisor, and she routinely corresponded with him. Any implication to the contrary is absolutely false.
Hillary Was Transparent About Her Emails.
Hillary insisted again on Thursday that she’d been fully transparent about her emails. Even the State Department has rejected that nonsense repeatedly.The hearings did provide some perspective into just why Hillary might have deleted 30,000 emails, however, she claimed that her correspondence about Libya, which dropped dramatically from 2011 to 2012, was not because she cared less about the country—it was because she had people shuttling documents to her in suitcases. In fact, she said, she didn’t even have a computer in her office. A State Department email address could have confirmed whether any of that was true. Now we will presumably never know.
Chris Stevens Was Responsible for His Own Death.
The most despicable lie of the day came from Hillary’s defense of her own conduct via ripping Chris Stevens, the dead ambassador. She spent virtually the entire day suggesting that Stevens knew the risks of his job, that he accepted those risks, and that he died knowing those risks. She even said that Stevens “felt comfortable” on the ground. If that is true, it’s certainly odd that the State Department team in Libya asked for more security over 600 times.Hillary said she didn’t receive any of those requests and blamed her security team for not granting more security—all the while saying she took responsibility for what had happened.
Then, the capper: Hillary said that when Stevens wrote an email asking about whether the Benghazi compound would be closed, he was just being a sly jokester. She said, “One of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor, and I just see him smiling as he’s typing this because it’s clearly in response to the email down below talking about picking up a few ‘fire sale items from the Brits.’”When told that those “fire sale items” were security barricades, Hillary answered, “Well, I thought it showed their entrepreneurial spirit.”Disgusting.
Hillary Clinton was largely responsible for a pointless invasion of Libya, which promptly turned into a terrorist-run hellhole. She was responsible for the security of her diplomats in Libya, but she didn’t provide for it. She had no correspondence with those diplomats on the ground but plenty of time for Sidney Blumenthal. When those diplomats and those who ran to help them were killed, she blamed a YouTube video. And finally, she used her jerry-rigged email server to selectively edit the material the public would see.
But don’t worry—Hillary’s the victim. Republicans are the perpetrators. And Chris Stevens is just one more bump in the road on her journey to the White House.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and the New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
In a speech delivered on Tuesday at the 37th Zionist Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made waves when he discussed the relationship between Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’he asked. He said, ‘Burn them.’”
The New York Times headline declared, “Netanyahu Draws Broad Criticism After Saying a Palestinian Inspired Holocaust.”
The Guardian published a piece titled, “Anger at Netanyahu claim Palestinian grand mufti inspired Holocaust.”
Countless other mainstream media outlets followed suit, piling on criticism of Netanyahu.
Many media outlets insisted on referring to Husseini as a Palestinian, despite the fact that the leader of the Arabs in British Mandate Palestine would never have been referred to as a Palestinian because that title was sometimes reserved for the Jews living there. In fact, it was PLO leader and Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat who was widely recognized as one of the first leaders of the Palestinian movement, which began as a result of the Arabs’ defeat in the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
A member of the PLO Executive Committee admitted as much in a 1977 interview when he said: “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”
Netanyahu later clarified that his greater point was to say that, far before the concept of an Arab-Muslim Palestinian ever existed or before the modern state of Israel was declared, Islamic leaders in the land still sought to eliminate the Jews.
“My intention was not to absolve Hitler of his responsibility,” he later explained. “But rather to show that the forefathers of the Palestinian nation, without a country and without the so-called occupation, without land and without settlements, even then aspired to systematic incitement to exterminate the Jews.”
“Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to exterminate six million Jews; he made the decision,”a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office added. “It is equally absurd to ignore the role played by the mufti, Haj Amin al -Husseini, a war criminal, for encouraging and urging Hitler.”
The Israeli Prime Minister is speaking of the same Mufti who once said, broadcasting in Arabic from Berlin, “Kill the Jews wherever you find them – this is Allah’s will.”
Whether or not the Mufti actually convinced Hitler to go forward with his plans is a fair topic for debate.
However, the Mufti did support and encourage Hitler in his quest for worldwide Jewish extermination, as proven through historical transcripts provided by the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
In November 1941, the two leaders met in Berlin to discuss the future of the Jewish people living in British Mandate Palestine. Hitler told Husseini that the “struggle against a Jewish homeland in Palestine” would be part of his larger efforts against the Jews. Hitler assured him that when the German army advanced on the Middle East, he would announce to the Arab world that “the hour of liberation is at hand.”Their only goal, Hitler said, “would be the annihilation of Jewry living in Arab space under the protection of British power.”
Moreover, according to the prosecution team during the Nuremberg trials, the Mufti did indeed play a role in facilitating the annihilation of European Jews.
“The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry for the Germans and had been the permanent collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of the plan… According to my opinion, the Grand Mufti, who had been in Berlin since 1941, played a role in the decision of the German government to exterminate the European Jews,”an SS officer admitted during the trials.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a man who is revered by some as the founding father of the Palestinian movement, was undoubtedly a supporter of the extermination of Jews, an uncomfortable fact that the international pro-Palestinian Left has not addressed in its criticism of Netanyahu.
In case you missed it over the weekend, the Islamic State took over another Iraqi city. This time it was Ramadi, a city in which Americans died to capture in the first place years ago and comes after the fall of Mosul. The next major city on the conquer list for ISIS is Baghdad, not to mention the fact Christians have been essentially eliminated from the country.Despite these developments, the White House is calling its strategy against “jayvee” ISIS an overall “success” and touting minimal airstrikes in the region.
Meanwhile, President Obama is focused on the national security threat of…global warming. What’s worse? He’ll be warning about global warming during a speech for the Coast Guard Academy’s commencement ceremony today.
President Barack Obama is framing the challenges of climate change as a matter of national security that threatens to aggravate poverty and political instability around the globe and jeopardize the readiness of U.S. forces.
“Make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” the president says in excerpts of a commencement address prepared for delivery Wednesday at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. “And so we need to act and we need to act now.”
His speech to the cadets, by contrast, is focused on what the Obama administration says are immediate risks to national security, including contributing to more natural disasters that result in humanitarian crises and potential new flows of refugees. Further, the president sees climate change aggravating poverty and social tensions that can fuel instability and foster terrorist activity and other violence.
On Sunday, jihadists attacked a main power line in Pakistani Balochistan’s Naseerabad district.As a result, 140 million Pakistanis were left in the dark and two nuclear power plants were knocked off line. This is but the latest incident in which hostile forces used sabotage to take down parts of an electrical infrastructure.Others include:
In the early hours of the morning on April 16, 2013, a highly professional commando-style assault took place on Pacific Gas & Electric’s Metcalf substation near San Jose, California.As many as twenty-one effectively irreplaceable high-voltage transformers were very nearly destroyed.Had that occurred, Silicon Valley and much of the San Francisco Bay area could have been without power for protracted periods,possibly for years. The yet-to-be-identified attackers got away and must be assumed to be still at large.
On October 27, 2013, the Knights Templar drug gang struck and disrupted the grid of Mexico’s Michoacan State.
On June 9, 2014, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) used mortars and rockets to attack the national grid of Yemen by destroying transmission towers.It was the first time that a terrorist attack resulted in an entire country being blacked-out.
In addition, there have been a number of incidents in which hackers believed to be associated with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have demonstrated the capability to use cyber techniques to penetrate and potentially to exercise destructive control over critical infrastructures like electric grids.
In addition, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) has observed that a recently translated Iranian doctrinal statement makes reference in twenty different places to the use of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to attack that nation’s enemies.The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans similarly regard EMP as simply a type of cyberwarfare, to be employed offensively against their enemies, including this country.
It appears that official Washington has finally begun to pay attention to the vulnerability of the U.S. electric grid. Notably, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cyber-security, Congressman Patrick Meehan (R-PA) hinted that the December 2014 North Korean cyber attack on Sony could portend that the United States’ critical infrastructure could be its next target. He observed:
American businesses, financial networks, government agencies and infrastructure systems like power grids are at continual risk.They’re targeted not just by lone hackers and criminal syndicates, but by well-funded nation-states like North Korea and Iran. A lack of consequences for when nation states carry out cyberattacks has only emboldened these adversaries to do more harm.
Even if no jihadist or other terrorist, hacker or hostile nation tries to disrupt our most critical of critical infrastructures via one technique or another, we still have to “harden” the grid.After all, we are overdue for the sort of intense solar storm that occurs roughly every 150 years.And when it hits, by one estimate issued by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 130 million Americans will be without power for years.Needless to say, most of those affected will perish before the lights come back on.
Fortunately, on December 1, 2014 in what may have been the only laudable action to come out of the lame duck session, the House of Representatives took a small, but important, step to address the vulnerability of the U.S. bulk power distribution system.It unanimously approved the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA), a bill that requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan for protecting the grid against solar weather, cyber attack, EMP and more. Rep. Meehan co-sponsored this legislation, along with its lead sponsors, Reps. Franks and Pete Sessions (R-TX).
With the new Congress, the CIPA bill will have to start from scratch – as would any other legislation designed to achieve grid resiliency on the more accelerated basis that is needed in the face of the aforementioned human-induced and naturally occurring threats to the grid.Still, the elevation of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to the chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and his commitment and that of his House counterpart, Rep. Michael McCaul, to swift action on CIPA is heartening.
Multiple Iraqi and Kurdish media sources have claimed that some Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Mosul, Iraq, have contracted the deadly Ebola virus, Mashable reports.
The Iraqi outlets reportedly claimed that Ebola had started to spread in a Mosul hospital. The city, known as ISIS’s most important strategic stronghold in Iraq, has been under the control of the Islamic State since June.
Christy Feig, the World Health Organization (WHO) director of communications, told Mashable, “We have no official notification from the Iraqi government that it is Ebola.” She said that WHO had reached out to authorities and asked if they needed help investigating the matter.
Kurdish media network Xendan reported that ISIS jihadists’ symptoms were similar to those shown by someone who has contracted Ebola. However, it is highly uncertain whether Mosul health authorities have the means, tools, or skill-set necessary to test for Ebola, given the current hostile environment in the area.
In late December, the Islamic State reportedly executed doctors who refused to treat their militant jihadis. The Washington Post said of the ongoing situation in Mosul, “Services are collapsing, prices are soaring, and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the ‘caliphate’ proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by ISIS.”
Iraq’s pro-government Al Sabaah (The Morning) daily newspaper reported that Ebola made its way into Mosul through Africa-based Islamist “terrorists” who then linked up with ISIS. Mashable notes, however, that the majority of ISIS recruits in Africa have come from countries that have not reported any Ebola cases, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, and others.
Meanwhile, Mosul’s liberation remains a strategic priority for Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition. Mosul has been described as ISIS’s de facto capital in Iraq. While under ISIS control, many of the city’s one million residents have lived under fear of severe punishment or execution should they not comply with the jihadists’ mandates.
On this Memorial Day, we are called to remember and honor our loved ones, friends and others who served and died protecting our country and securing our freedoms. Like so many others, I have family members who served and died and a number who served and lived. I chose to honor them all on this day as they were all willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect you, me and the American way of life.
Sadly, President Barack Obama would rather honor and pay tribute to the millions of illegal aliens rather than to the men and women who fought and served our nation. Undoubtedly, Obama will visit Arlington National Cemetery and pay a fake homage to our fallen heroes, but his real actions as president reveal how he truly feels about those who sacrificed for his freedoms.
Just weigh the difference between what Obama does for our veterans versus what he does for illegal aliens.
As I previously reported on the VA hospital in Phoenix and how dozens of veterans died while waiting for appointments that were intentionally delayed. Now we are hearing that it wasn’t just at the Phoenix VA but at many of the VA facilities around the nation. Hundreds of veterans, perhaps thousands have been denied the medical treatment they are entitled to for serving our country.
In addition, did you know that in Los Angeles, nearly 40,000 diagnostic tests and treatments for veterans suffering from a number of illnesses, including cancer, were intentionally cancelled just to hide their backlog from the Washington bureaucrats? It seems that no one in the Obama administration cares for our veterans as they place their job performance over the lives and health of the veterans.
Men and women who have served in the military are now being discriminated against and targeted for owning guns. TSA agents have treated a number of them as if they were terrorists. Obama has taken away a number of benefits from our military personnel. He has been systematically stripping our military personnel of their rights, especially those that are Christians. Obama goes out of the way to criticized and condemn US military personnel for the disrespectful treatment of dead Taliban terrorists, but he remains silent when those same terrorists beheaded Army Staff Sgt. Matt Maupin, an American taken as a POW.
Now take a look at how Obama and his administration take care of the millions of illegal aliens here in the US.
In New York, doctors are reporting that up to 40% of their kidney dialysis patients are illegals. Worse yet, a survey revealed that 65% of the nephrologists in 44 states indicated they treat illegals with some form of kidney disease.
While veterans are being denied proper medical care, illegals are rapidly depleting state budgets by all of the free medical care they receive. It was reported that illegals cost the state of Arizona around $700 million in 2009 alone. My family and friends have told me about a number of urgent care and emergency centers in the southern part of Arizona that have closed because they can’t afford to treat all of the illegals the feds force them to. Arizona residents in these smaller communities are now forced to travel a lot further for all of their medical emergency needs.
California lawmakers are in the process of extending Obamacare health benefits to 1.5 million illegals at taxpayer expense. In a state that is already facing a budget deficit of billions of dollars, they’re willing to go further in debt to help illegals while denying veterans in the state proper medical treatment.
While more and more veterans are being turned down for gun purchases and ownership by the federal background checks, illegals are being given in-state tuition in 16 states. Three other states have approved tuition benefits for illegals. The University of California at Berkeley, now by former HHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, is offering $5 million in financial aid for illegals to attend the school.
When you add all of this up,
President Barack Obama is guilty of dereliction of duty for failing to secure our borders;
guilty of malpractice for failing to provide proper care for our veterans and active military personnel;
and guilty of treason for putting the well-being of illegal aliens ahead of our veterans and military personnel.
So when you see our ‘Traitor in Chief’ today acting like he cares for our fallen heroes, remember what a liar and hypocrite he is. I do hope that you take time to honor the fallen, the wounded and those still serving our nation. In spite of everything Obama has done to destroy our military, there are still many of them that are worth honoring.
To my Great Uncle Oard Meneese Richardson who died in World War I in Germany on June 11, 1918 – thank you. To my father, Willie E. Jolly who served 6 years in the US Navy from 1940 to 1946; to his brother, Donald B. Jolly who served 4 years in the US Navy during World War 2; to my wife’s brother Robert M. Watson who served during the Korean War; to my older brother Robert C. Jolly who served in the US Air Force during Vietnam; to my wife’s nephews Christopher, Justin and Jason Watson who all served during the conflict in Iraq – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!
Forbidden ad was based on Washington’s own wanted list
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
A federal appeals court is being asked to reverse a lower court decision that banned the American Freedom Defense Initiative from featuring in a bus ad the faces of men already identified by the U.S. government as suspected terrorists.
“This case is a classic articulation of political correctness as a form of tyranny, which violates our fundamental right to freedom [of] speech guaranteed by the First Amendment,” said Robert Muise, co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center, which is working on the AFDI case.
“Simply put, the government’s position is inconsistent with reality – namely, Shariah-adherent jihadists pose a significant threat to our national security.”
The King County, Wash., transit system, in the Seattle area, had rejected AFDI’s ad that featured a most-wanted list of terror suspects compiled by the FBI. The transit agency claimed the ad was “false,” “demeaning” and “objectionable.”
But the transit agency previously had posted essentially the same ad when it was prepared by the government, which generated political pressure from Islamic groups.
Appealing the ruling from Judge Richard Jones to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawyers explained that the ad included “pictures, names and a similar message from an earlier anti-terrorism advertisement sponsored by the U.S. State Department, which was accepted for display on King County buses.”
“The State Department advertisement depicted the ‘Faces of Global Terrorism’ in an effort to ‘stop a terrorist now’ and ‘save lives.’ In addition, the advertisement offered an ‘up to $25 million reward’ for helping to capture one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists,” the appeal explains.
AFLC now is asking the 9th Circuit to reverse the lower court decision and tell King County’s transit operations to run its own ad, which was based on the government promotion.
The lawyers, who have fought similar battles in other cities around the country over the past several years, said that there is nothing materially false about the advertisement. They note the ad says nothing more “than the State Department’s ‘Faces of Global Terrorism’ advertisement, which the county accepted.”
Second, they explain, the idea that identifying terror suspects listed by the federal government as suspects was “demeaning” is entirely subjective.
“What prompted plaintiffs to propose this advertisement in the first instance was the State Department’s willingness to acquiesce to political correctness by accepting the ‘viewpoint’ that it is improper to highlight … (that Islam that is practiced by the jihadis),” the argument explained.
“Indeed, there is ample evidence in the record that these most wanted ‘global terrorists’ are aligned with Islamic terrorist organizations,” the brief explained. “Is it the district court’s viewpoint that those who engage in terrorist acts in the name of al-Shabaab (which is formally aligned with al-Qaida), the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Taliban, or al-Qaida, as examples, are not jihadis? Based on what? As plaintiffs demonstrated below, the use of the term ‘jihadis’ to describe the global terrorists pictured in the advertisement is not only factually accurate, but, more important, it expresses plaintiffs’ viewpoint on the issue of global terrorism.
“It is clear to any reasonable person that the use of the accurate descriptor ‘jihadi’ in the context of global terrorism does not disparage those Muslims engaging in a self-reflective internal struggle. And to further illustrate this point, federal court opinions in cases prosecuting self-described ‘jihadis’ routinely utilize that descriptor.”
The brief said the principle “that has emerged from [Supreme Court] cases is that the First Amendment forbids the government to regulate speech in ways that favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others.”
“When the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant,” the brief said.
“Here, the content of plaintiffs’ message (and thus its subject matter) is permissible in this forum, as evidenced by the fact that the county had previously accepted the same message content that was submitted by the State Department (‘Faces of Global Terrorism’), and the county subsequently accepted another State Department advertisement (‘Stop a terrorist. Save lives.’) that addressed the same subject matter: terrorism.
“Consequently, it is not the subject matter that is being restricted, but plaintiffs’ viewpoint on the subject. This is a classic form of viewpoint discrimination that is prohibited in all forums,” the brief argued.
The ad is one among many that AFDI executives Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have used across America to spread warnings about the threat of Islamic terrorism.
The government’s ad:
The AFDI ad:
The AFDI ad pictured a long list of suspects compiled by the government, including “30 out of the 32 listed terrorists [who] had Muslim names or are wanted for terrorism related to organizations conducting terrorist acts in the name of Islam.”
Geller and Spencer repeatedly have been forced to fight for their speech rights.
The ad stated: “Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get Answers!”
During depositions taken in the case, SMART officials testified that “political,” for purposes of its advertising guidelines, means “any advocacy of a position of any politicized issue.”
But Muise argued there the U.S. Supreme Court has warned “the danger of censorship and of abridgment of our precious First Amendment freedoms is great where officials have unbridled discretion to determine which messages are acceptable and which are not.”
“Indeed, a speech restriction violates the First Amendment when it grants a public official such broad discretion that the official’s decision to limit speech is not constrained by objective criteria, but rests on ambiguous and subjective reasons, as in this case,” he said.
The legal team has pointed out that the Detroit transit system already had accepted political ads, including one from the Detroit Area Coalition of Reason, an atheist organization which, by its own admission, engages in “separation of state and church activism.”
As WND has reported, AFDI has fought other related ad censorship battle in several other locations already.
In each case, efforts to censor the ads have been struck down by courts.
In a commentary on WND, Geller wrote that the original ad was “a publicity campaign sponsored by the Joint Terrorism Task Force for the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, or RFJ.”
“But then the leftists and Islamic supremacists complained that the ads were ‘Islamophobic,’ and they came down – and unbelievably, Seattle is refusing to allow my group, the AFDI, to put them back up.
“We have asked that the ads be put up forthwith, as the county’s refusal to run them is an unconstitutional restriction on our freedom of speech. Moreover, the RFJ program has been successful: Through it, the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security has paid more than $125 million to more than 80 people who offered genuine information that led to jihadis being jailed and prevented acts of jihadist terror. This program was instrumental in leading to the arrest of jihadist Ramzi Yousef, who is now in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center jihad bombing. In short, this program has saved lives,” she wrote.
Geller said the FBI “is putting Americans at risk by submitting to the outrageous demands of Islamic supremacists.”
“It is not the fault of the FBI that the world’s most dangerous terrorists are jihadists. That is the reality. You cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality,” she said.
“Capturing these mass murderers is significantly more important than propping up the fictional narrative of victimhood and the nonsensical hurt feelings. People are being slaughtered every day in jihad attacks,” Geller wrote.
It’s striking how much the media control people’s political opinions without people realizing it. Just a few years ago, only an “isolationist” would be opposed to U.S. military intervention in a foreign country for the sole purpose of “humanitarianism.”
Way back in 2007, this is one of the very few interviews Sean Hannity did with Ron Paul. This particular exchange took place after one of the presidential debates:
Hannity: Are you saying then that the world has no moral obligation, like in the first Gulf War, when an innocent country’s being pillaged, and people are being raped and murdered and slaughtered, or in the case of Saddam, he’s gassing his own people, are you suggesting we have no moral obligation there? Do you stand by and let that immorality happen?
Paul: We have, on numerous occasions.
Hannity: You support that?
Paul: We have, on numerous occasions. If we feel strongly about it, why don’t we declare war —
Hannity: If a woman’s being raped do you stand by and do nothing there either?
Alan Colmes: We’re almost out of time, but the fact is the Reagan administration stood by while the Kurds were being gassed, it happened in 1988, we didn’t do anything —
Hannity: We didn’t do anything about it, for how many years?
Paul: And what did we do with Pol Pot, what did we do with Moscow, what did we do at the time? We stood by while they did it to their people.
Hannity: We got it, Ron, you would stand by and do that, I would not.
Paul: No, you —
Hannity: I think that’s immoral.
Hannity’s of course singing a much different tune nowadays, since being opposed to unconstitutional military interventions is kind of “cool” now. But Ron Paul was opposed to such interventions long before it was cool, and he’s remained steadfast for decades in his opposition.
A couple days ago, on his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website, he wrote that intervening in Syria would be a reckless and immoral use of the military:
“President Obama announced this weekend that he has decided to use military force against Syria and would seek authorization from Congress when it returned from its August break. Every Member ought to vote against this reckless and immoral use of the US military. But even if every single Member and Senator votes for another war, it will not make this terrible idea any better because some sort of nod is given to the Constitution along the way. Besides, the president made it clear that Congressional authorization is superfluous, asserting falsely that he has the authority to act on his own with or without Congress. That Congress allows itself to be treated as window dressing by the imperial president is just astonishing. The President on Saturday claimed that the alleged chemical attack in Syria on August 21 presented ‘a serious danger to our national security.’ I disagree with the idea that every conflict, every dictator, and every insurgency everywhere in the world is somehow critical to our national security. That is the thinking of an empire, not a republic. It is the kind of thinking that this president shares with his predecessor, and it is bankrupting us and destroying our liberties here at home.”
He hasn’t changed one bit. But people’s foreign policy views change depending on what their media channel of choice is feeding them. And the media narratives are written depending on which party holds the White House.
If Bush had decided to attack Syria because the leader was gassing his own people, then conservatives, fed by Fox News, would be all for it; and the liberals, fed by all the other networks, would be denouncing it.
I’m glad that conservatives are coming out in opposition to a war with Syria. What concerns me is that people don’t have any discernment, and that they’ll believe whatever their favorite media network tells them.
What if a Republican becomes president next, and he’s no better than Obama when it comes to foreign policy or the preservation of the 2nd and 4th Amendments (and all the rest) here at home? Will conservatives see through the propaganda that will most certainly be used by the media to sell tyranny to us? They’ll use the same excuses of “security and safety.” And I fear that most people who identify themselves as conservatives will swallow it, hook, line and sinker.
The sooner people get away from this phony “republican vs. democrat” dichotomy, the better off we’ll all be. We should be electing people who want to do the right thing, not the “Republican” thing. Think Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or Justin Amash. Sure, they’re Republicans. But to them, party affiliation is secondary to the Constitution.
Who decided that the United States of America is the world’s police?
If we are going to come to the rescue of a people, what didn’t we go to the aid of the Christians in the Sudan?
The evidence is confirmed many times that those responsible for the gas attack was the accidental mishandling of the chemical weapons give to the Syrian rebels by Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, who also was instrumental in confirming the false evidence of Saddam Hussein‘s weapons of mass destruction? Why can’t we see that Saudi Arabia is culpable in the entire mess in the Mid East?
The Obama Administration is buying into the same lies the were fed to the Bush Administration. Why aren’t we acknowledging that fact? What does Saudi Arabia have on our government that they always end up with “clean-hands”?
Fact: Russia, China and others have stated that they will defend Syria and will retaliate if America uses any military force against the Assad regime. That will cause a larger war American Military is NOT prepared to fight because the Obama Administration has decimated our military.
Fact: The only winner is such a conflict would be Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and China.
Fact: We cannot afford another war.
Fact: 2014 Mid Term Elections are growing in importance every day.
Fact: America is in desperate need of a Spiritual revival that will change the spirits, hearts and minds of the people of the United States to use what means are moral and necessary to rid our country of the evil that has such a death-grip on our Federal, State and Local governments.
This is news that should cause every American, even those who consider themselves apolitical, to cock their heads to the side like a bunch of confused terriers and say, “Holy…,” “What the…,” or some variation thereof.It begins with what is known in Russia as the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defense, Emergencies, and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, or, as it’s known internationally, the Emergency Control Ministry (EMERCOM). It was created in 1994 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and has a whole range of duties, which you can read about on its Wikipedia page or at its own website, but the point is that it is a legitimate agency in Russia and not a fantastical delusion conceived in the overactive imaginations of Internet conspiracy theorists.
Well, a new report by EMERCOM states that Janet Napolitano of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has requested that, according to The European Union Times, “at least 15,000 Russian troops trained in disaster relief and ‘crowd functions’ [i.e. riot control] be pre-positioned to respond to FEMA Region III during an unspecified ‘upcoming’ disaster.” The Russian troops were requested to be reserved to work “directly and jointly” with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is a branch of the DHS. (Here is a map of FEMA Region III. Note that Washington, D.C., the heart of the country, where a lot of protests occur, is a part of that region.)
The DHS, of course, is the agency of the federal government that over the last year has purchased riot gear, armored vehicles, and 2 billion rounds of ammunition, without explanation. Juxtaposed with this news of the DHS’s request for Russian soldiers to be prepared to “help us” in a time of emergency, it kind of makes one come to reason that this stockpiling of bullets and riot gear has been for the Russian troops.
I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, which is probably what a conspiracy theorist would say if he wanted people to listen to him. But EMERCOM is internationally recognized; they are not publishers of tabloids, but an actual division of the Russian government.
I’d love to hear theories, even from the liberals reading this, as to why the Obama administration has requested 15,000 Russian troops to come to D.C. at some point. Whatever the reason is, it is obviously an event that the US government is planning. So what are they preparing for?
The States of Texas can require “proof of citizenship” to apply for or renew your drivers license, but Arizona cannot ask for “proof of citizenship” to register to vote. Yes, I know it sounds as confusing at it is maddening. What else would you expect from this mixed up bunch of lawyers running the country. Furthermore, the US Supreme Court, yesterday ruled in favor of the challengers to the Arizona’ Proposition 200 voter I.D. law and found that the state had overstepped its authority by requiring “proof of citizenship” to register to vote in US elections.
The 1993 “National Voter Registration “Motor Voter” Act” established an honor system for federal voter registration tied to driver license applications and renewals. Federal law provides all applicants for Driver Licenses or renewals—in all states—must be offered a “mail -in” voter registration card. Proper I.D. is required, by law, to do business with all state driver licenses issuing authorities as a pre-requisite for receiving your voter registration card, but federal law does not require “proof of citizenship” to register to vote.
The US Constitution provides the federal government broad authority over states regarding election law.
Federal law allows anyone to register to vote by swearing to be a US citizen—simply checking a box on the federal registration form—under penalty of perjury. Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling upheld that authority.
Unfortunately, perjury is a rarely prosecuted crime at the federal level.
Some states require “proof of citizenship” for D.L. applications and re-newels. Some states do not. In addition, some states (Utah for one) will take a Matricula card issued by the Mexican government as proper ID as they allow non-citizens to drive “conditionally” in their state.
Arizona taxpayers were burned by Arizona lawmakers who failed to perform their due diligence. Federal taxpayers picked up a lot of the cost since the Justice Department had a hand in assisting “The League of Woman voters of Arizona, the “Mexican American Legal Defense Fund” and Arizona Indian Tribes—all tax exempt organizations—in their challenge to Arizona’s “proof of citizenship” voter registration requirement.
Two weeks ago, a sixty something Vietnam veteran was required to show “proof of citizenship” to renew his 30 year old Texas driver license (which has required fingerprint ID for over a decade). He got it all straightened out by bringing his Social Security card, his passport and his DD-14. He also filled out his voter registration card and checked the box on the federal form swearing he was a US citizen eligible to vote. I rather wish I were there to see and hear that.
Arizona could have saved us all a great deal of money and valued Supreme Court Justice hearing and deliberation time if they had simply copied the laws on the books from any number of states that require “proof of citizenship” to be granted the privilege to drive and by law being offered a federal voter registration mail-in card like they do in Texas.
Texas requires “proof of citizenship” as identification in state driver’s license applications and re-newels. According to the Vietnam Veteran, I mentioned earlier Texas “proof of citizenship” requires a valid Social Security Card and a valid Passport.
Justice Scalia, who authored the majority opinion, with Justices Thomas and Alito dissenting, ruled that the states could not add additional voter registration requirements over current federal laws without permission of the federal government or courts. I cannot say for sure what the Arizona State Constitution or statutes allows for drivers license I.D. laws, but Justice Scalia provided its state’s Attorneys with the proper procedure to petition the Federal Election Assistance Commission for a change in Arizona’s voter registration identification standards. According to Scalia, if the commission denies Arizona’s request, the state can take the federal government back to a lower Federal Court to ask for relief.
Here is the rub.
Since 2011—the year the last two commissioners resigned—the Federal Election Assistance Commission (FEAC) has not been able to seat more commissioners. The President is responsible for FEAC commissioner nominations, which the Senate must confirm. Just like Federal Immigration Judgeships that remain vacant and awaiting Obama nominations.
Since there was a Democratic controlled House, Senate and President from 2008 through 2010 my gut tells me that Obama and his allies, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, may have purposely avoided their obligation to staff this election law assistance program provided by the federal government. Now why would they do that?
Perhaps someone should be asking John Boehner and Mitch McConnell this question. After all what is more important election integrity or immigration reform?
I applaud Arizona’s efforts to control voter fraud. Now, could someone call Jan Brewer and tell her Texas already figured it out.
It seems that in the wake of the IRS and NSA scandals that the Benghazi scandal has almost been forgotten. However the recent admission of Martin Dempsey, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, is certain to bring it all back into the limelight.
In the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate grounds in Benghazi, The White House and State Department both said that there were no troops or Special Forces that could have reached the consulate in time to help them, even though there were reports that said otherwise.
Now we learn that both the White House (Obama) and the State Department (Clinton) were again lying to the American people. According to a statement from Dempsey, a highly trained team of Special Forces, C-110, were within a few hours of Benghazi. The consulate reported that they were under attack early on and the attack lasted over 8 hours. If Dempsey is telling the truth, the Special Forces unit could have been there and possibly save the lives of the four Americans.
Dempsey tried to protect the White House and State Department by first saying that the Special Forces unit was more than 6 hours away and that was only if they were setting on the tarmac at the time. He did acknowledge that the unit was training in Croatia. A large commercial jet liner can make the trip in about two and half hours, and sources close to the unit said they could have loaded up and flown to Benghazi in about four to four and half hours.
He also testified that the Special Forces unit had been told to begin preparations to leave Croatia to return to the base in Germany. If that were true, then they would have already been preparing their gear for transport which would have cut their arrival time to Benghazi down.
Dempsey’s testimony before the Senate did verify a report that was aired on Fox News back in April that said there was a Special Forces unit close enough to have responded to the call for help from the consulate. The Fox News report quoted a whistleblower source as saying:
“We had the ability to load out, get on birds and fly there, at a minimum stage. “C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in a matter of about four hours … four to six hours.”
“They would have been there before the second attack. They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfil [sic] out of the problem situation. Nobody knew how it was going to develop. And you hear a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of advisers say hey, we wouldn’t have sent them there because, you know, the security was unknown situation.”
To add more controversy to what was reported and what really happened, Dempsey told the Senate hearing that on the night of the Benghazi attack, the command of the Special Forces unit was unexpectedly transferred from the European Command to the Africa Command. Former Libyan Deputy Ambassador to Libya Gregory Hicks testified earlier that when he got word of the attack, he tried to contact the Africa Command but received no support. He said:
“At about 10:45 or 11 we confer, and I asked the defense attache who had been talking about AFRICOM and with the joint staff, ‘Is anything coming? Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?’ And he answered that, the nearest help was in Aviano, the nearest – where there were fighter planes. He said that it would take two to three hours for them to get onsite, but that there also were no tankers available for them to refuel. And I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and we went on with our work.”
So even in his attempt to support the White House and Statement Department, Dempsey only helped verify the earlier reports that help could have been sent to Benghazi, but it wasn’t. The help could have possibly arrived in time to make a difference, but no attempt or effort was made to save the Americans at the consulate. Our government deserted our ambassador and his staff and just left them there to fend for themselves against nearly 200 hostiles.
Perhaps this needs to be pointed out to anyone interested in pursuing a diplomatic career with the State Department. Once deployed on foreign shores, you’re on your own, especially if you are in a known hostile region and the President and Secretary of State will lie to your families as your body is returned to them. Doesn’t that make you want to sign up?
Dave Jolly makes a good argument. He is a trusted writer and presents his case well. I am not in agreement that President Obama has committed treason, but, Mr. Jolly’s perspective does have merit. – MrB
Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America reads:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
1) Has President Barack Hussein Obama committed treason according to the US Constitution?
Yes he has and is still doing so. Ever since the overthrow of Egypt’s former dictator, President Obama has been a close ally to the Muslim Brotherhood and their Egyptian leaders. Obama has pushed to send billions of dollars in aid to Egypt. At one point, Congress stopped all monies heading to the land of pyramids because of their questionable leadership and ties to terrorism. Obama took it upon himself to override Congress’s blockage of funds and sent them their millions of dollars. Obama has also provided Egypt with fighter jets and other military arms.
Egypt’s leaders have now publicly admitted that America is an enemy like Israel that needs to be battled with. In a closed secret meeting, Egypt’s leadership including President Morsi discussed how they could stop Ethiopia from completing its construction of a dam along the Nile River before it enters into Egypt.
Although the meeting was supposed to be secret, they failed to realize that TV cameras were rolling and that their meeting was being broadcast live on Egyptian television. The broadcast caught a number of the leaders saying that the dam in Ethiopia was a secret plot by both America and Israel to undermine Egypt and that they must figure out how to stop it from being completed.
“I’m very fond of battles. With the enemies, of course, with America and Israel, but this battle must be waged with maximum judiciousness and calm. Even though this is a secret meeting we must all take an oath not to leak anything to the media unless it is done officially by Sister Pakinam. We need an official plan for popular national security, even if we did …”
The Egyptian leaders’ own words identify America as an enemy in the same category as Israel. Therefore, I contend that we have proof that Egypt and President Morsi are our enemies.
2) Do we have the testimony of two or more witnesses to Obama’s crime of treason?
Yes! It’s a matter of public record that Obama bypassed Congress to give aid to our enemies in the form of money and military supplies, some of which may be used against Americans.
I don’t know how to make the case of treason any more clear than it is. Barack Hussein Obama is guilty of treason as defined the Constitution of the United States of America by willfully, and against the consent of Congress, rendering aid and military supplies to a proven enemy of our country. He needs to be charged and tried for his high crimes and punished accordingly.
Obama makes Benedict Arnold look like a loyal patriot compared to his own treachery. Had Arnold not fled to England with the British troops, he would have been caught and hanged for his treachery. I think we should give Obama the same option of fleeing the country or be hanged for high treason.
American Family Association
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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Reported 
It is the second time in the past month that B-1Bs and F-35s have been sent over the Korean Peninsula.
The military exercise came as U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley reminded the word that the United States is getting tired of talking about a resolution to the North Korean crisis.
Reported 
Reported 
Posted by GirlsJustWannaHaveGuns.com | June 19, 2017
by
but Inspector General John Roth’s auditors said they were all from 
When pressed to explain how this comported with Germany’s warnings, the official said the administration 
assessments.
“The administration’s decision to continue implementing the deal and ignore Iran’s actions 
activity has forced U.S. officials to walk back certain claims made about how the deal would reform Tehran.
Germany’s disclosure is the latest in a series of revelations that appear to show Iran stretching the limits of last summer’s nuclear deal. 
Agent B says he was getting the 
eliminate them, not contain them or push them into one area,” 
What Did You Say? 
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