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A very high profile Brazilian construction executive was sentenced to 19 plus years by a judge for money laundering and fraud.
If a Brazilian Jurist can act tough in dispensing justice you would hope our own legal system could rise to the occasion at the appropriate time.
I have no basis for speculating whether Hillarious is guilty of breaking any laws other than her history of having done so under previous circumstances (The cattle future deal comes quickly to mind.). That said, should the FBI investigation conclusively reveal she did, in fact, break laws, that others have paid a severe price for, and she is exonerated in some high handed fashion, the Republican attack, by way of Trump's popularity, on The Establishment, will pale by comparison.
Confidence in government is at the lowest ebb in my life time and it will not take much to rock the ship of state to its very timbers.
If the evidence is conclusive in the minds of most citizens, regardless of their political allegiance, and this administration believes, for the sake of the Demwit Party, she must be allowed to press forward in her campaign bid, I suspect, all hell will break loose.
Perhaps this is what Obama would like to see occur because he might pitch it to ethnic voters, so aligned with his party, that it is all a Right Wing Conspiracy, brought about by Conservative bigots, the same shtick he has used to rile this same constituency, in their angered protest, against police departments.
Yes, my distrust of the man is showing. Time will tell.(See 1 and 1a below.)
Will cooler heads prevail and save the Repubs from doing it again or will rage and revenge drive them over the top? Once more, time will tell. (See 1b below.)
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Our 'Neroic' president has increased the risk of war in The Middle East. Are we about to see a replay of The Cuban Missile Crisis in another region of the world? (See 2 below.)
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Everything thing worked and thus, turned into a disaster: Click here: “Trumped" Starring Matthew Broderick & Nathan Lane - YouTube
Events leading to "Trumpism" have been building for decades.
I have maintained "Trumpism" openly surfaced with Goldwater and was further nurtured by subsequent events caused by negative attitude's toward civility in the '60's and the consequence of frustrations and fears associated with these events allowing those who are reaching divisiveness to surface.
There is much about Trump I find disturbing and unappealing. However, I do believe those like Romney and even my friend Bret Stephens miss what makes him appealing. I believe they are correct to focus on his off the wall, boorish and narcissistic manner but, in my opinion, I believe it causes them to miss his legitimacy.
Trump, I believe, is correct when he emphasizes he is a pragmatist whereas, his detractors interpret this to mean he is not trustworthy and Rubio calls him a fake, a charlatan. Trump is a salesman, he could sell cars and be right at home. He is a huckster. Yes, he is all of these and he is certainly not what we consider presidential but he is also smart, street savvy and probably so off the wall that we cannot relate to this from a person seeking public office.
Obama conducts himself with a bit more style and acceptable demeanor but he also puts his shoed feet on the Oval Office Desk, comes to the office in his shirt sleeves rolled up and without a tie. Reagan had too much respect for the office to ever do this. He is diffident when it comes to his display of patriotism and when he returns a salute but because he is our untouchable president the press and media make no comment. He even fails to show up to ceremonies when he should.
If Trump were to become president would he make mistakes, big ones, oh for sure but all presidents do. After all they are mortal.
I believe Donald is a fast learner, is likely to surround himself with capable people, whom he will listen to, and we will be well served but we will always remain worried and left holding our breath.
Therefore, I believe Establishment Types, who profess they want to beat Hillary, had better swallow their pride and come together like mercury or they will grab defeat, once again, from potential victory.
As for Hillary, her new maudlin shtick is to tell us she is going to be the uniting president, the one who brings us together after she has spent her entire life telling us everything that happens to her is because of the nut cases coming from the Right whose sole reason detre is to conspire against her. Give me a break. Everything about this woman is less than genuine. She is as false as they come.
Her disdain for the domestic coal and energy industry will dis-employ more people than Trump has ever hired.
So it may come down to an old woman in a pant suit who has a horrible personality and a record of few accomplishments versus a man with a hair do that is outrageous, a personality that is grating, a record of achievement in business but untried in politics but it seems to me a large segment of the public are ready for another Tea Revolt but without the tea because they feel they have allowed the theft of the nation they love and they are willing to go with someone who is not mainstream to take it back from those who have been hosing them. (See 3 below.)
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If European women can wear bikinis why can't Muslim women wear burquas? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)A Brazilian federal judge sentences Marcelo Odebrecht, the former president of the country's largest construction company, to more than 19 years in prison on charges of corruption, money laundering and for belonging to a criminal organization, related to the Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) corruption scheme.
Odebrecht is the highest profile executive to be convicted in the "Operation Car Wash" investigations, and one of the central private sector figures in what prosecutors have called a criminal organization.
1a) Hillary to Lose the FBI Primary
An analysis published Sunday in the Washington Post of the emails found on Hillary Clinton’s private server included emails Hillary herself sent that contained classified information. That she should have known the information she herself put in these emails should be classified, and having the power herself to classify them, puts the lie to her claim that she is innocent of wrongdoing because others did not mark them classified. As the Washington Post reported:
Hillary Clinton wrote 104 emails that she sent using her private server while secretary of state that the government has since said contain classified information, according to a new Washington Post analysis of Clinton’s publicly released correspondence.The finding is the first accounting of the Democratic presidential front-runner’s personal role in placing information now considered sensitive into insecure email during her State Department tenure. Clinton’s authorship of dozens of emails now considered classified could complicate her efforts to argue that she never put government secrets at risk.
Roughly three-quarters of those cases, officials have determined that material Clinton herself wrote in the body of email messages is classified. Clinton sometimes initiated the conversations but more often replied to aides or other officials with brief reactions to ongoing discussions.
Hillary forgets that emails are marked because they are classified and not classified because they are marked. It is the content that makes all the difference, not the markings. She put the classified information in these emails and her claim that there were no classified markings is specious because at least one of her emails instructed her staff to remove markings and send classified data via unsecure means. As reported by HotAir.com:
Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary exchanges e-mails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel…“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That’s an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand. Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary’s claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.
Hillary has shown herself not to be an innocent victim but a conniving and manipulative individual who deliberately became the first Secretary of State to have a private server with the premeditated purpose of hiding politically damaging activities and secrets from the American people.
Gen. David Petraeus was prosecuted and convicted of merely mishandling classified material, having it in his house to aid a biographer writing a book. Hillary exposed classified material to foreign hackers and governments on an unsecured server. As Investor’s Business Daily observed:
Scandal: Which is worse -- keeping classified information in a personal journal at home or doing government business and transmitting classified data on a private email account managed from the Clinton family home?This adds a new level of premeditated secrecy and deceit to the actions of the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
It also adds a new level of hypocrisy to the most transparent administration in history’s pursuit of former CIA Director and commander of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus.
Petraeus, who had an extramarital affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, pleaded guilty, after a lengthy government investigation, to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information.
Petraeus had kept in his home a set of eight “Black Books” containing his notes and observations about his experiences, as well as classified information including conversations he had with the president, diplomats, and national security officers. Petraeus provided Broadwell access to these documents but, as far as we know, the information went no further.
That Hillary is whistling past her political graveyard -- and worse -- is seen in the immunity granted to Bryan Pagliano, the IT guy who set up Hillary’s server in her house. He knows the hows and whys and intended purposes and was likely privy to revealing and criminally damning conversations. As the Daily Caller reported:
Judge Andrew Napolitano says Hillary Clinton “should be terrified” her IT technician, Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity by a federal judge.In an interview on Fox Business’ “Varney & Co” on Thursday, Napolitano said that because Pagliano was granted immunity, the Justice Department is “going to seek indictment” of either Clinton or one of her subordinates…
“Hillary should be terrified and I’ll tell you why,” Napolitano said. If Clinton gave Pagliano her “personal Secretary of State password” then “we have an indictment for misconduct in office as well as espionage.”Clinton “should be terrified of the fact that he’s been granted immunity. Now, what does granted immunity mean? Only a federal judge can grant immunity. A federal judge will only grant immunity if a sitting jury is ready to hear testimony from the immunized person. So we know a couple of things. We know the recommendation we were waiting for from the FBI to the Justice Department has already made its way from the FBI to the Justice Department”…
“We know FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors are working in tandem,” Napolitano added. “We know that they went through this lengthy process of interviewing Mr. Pagliano and finding out what he knows and deciding it’s so valuable they need him to say it to a grand jury and the only way he can say it to a grand jury is if they promise not prosecute him and hence he gets immunity and we also know they’re going to seek indictment because they would not be immunizing him and thereby inducing him to spill his guts, unless they wanted to indict someone.
Judge Michael Mikasey, former Attorney General under President George W. Bush, listed the charges that Hillary Clinton likely will face on Fox Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends:”
We are looking at a range of things, everything from the misdemeanor that was charged against General Petraeus, which is putting classified information in an unprotected, classified setting, that’s a misdemeanor. Then there is destroying government records. Then there is taking information related to the national defense and treating it with gross negligence such as it becomes disclosed. And finally, there is obstruction of justice.”
Mukasey observed on Fox Business recently that the Clinton email snowball is reaching critical mass and is rapidly moving downhill towards a criminal referral and indictment:
During an interview with the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he’s not surprised that ex-Clinton staffer Bryan Pagliano was granted immunity for his testimony that could aid in expediting the Hillary Clinton email probe and the investigation overall…
Meanwhile, FBI director James Comey told a House panel Tuesday that he’s “very close” to the investigation.
“What he said was that they were going to carry on the investigation thoroughly and he used a number of other adverbs -- but one of the adverbs he used was promptly. He’s not a man who chooses his words lightly and I think we will know what’s going to happen here sooner rather than later,” Mukasey stated.
Hillary wants to be the first female president. It is looking increasingly likely that her only first will be to be the first presidential candidate, or even nominee, to be under a federal indictment.,
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
1b) Revenge of the 'Bitter Clingers'
Observers of all things political will recall the backlash from voters when President Obama, campaigning for president in 2008, talked about small-town and rural Pennsylvanians in the following way (emphasis added):
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
In a few sentences, Harvard-educated Obama managed to delegitimize just about every concern shared by small-town and rural residents in America by stereotyping them as ignorant rednecks. Obama managed to imply that if Americans were worrying about runaway immigration, loss of jobs due to outsourcing, and deterioration of their communities, they were inherently racist, latently violent gun freaks, and ignorant Bible-thumpers.
They were just bitter clingers.
Then-candidate Obama probably didn't foresee how his policies of the last seven years have enraged the people whose votes he was courting. If small-town and rural Americans, along with other groups despised by the elite of both the Democrat and Republican parties, weren't bitter in 2008, they surely are bitter and angry now.
They are "grab the pitch forks, tear down the ramparts, storm the Bastille, and throw all the bums into the tumbrels" infuriated. They are so angry that they don't care if their own political party burns to the ground.
They want revenge.
It's the stuff of revolutions.
Revolts happen when the political paradigms that once were vital enough to attract millions of people become corrupted, exhausted, and/or so extremist that they no longer have popular support. Millions become essentially disenfranchised because they either feel or actually are no long represented. Meanwhile, those in power continue not only to hold onto power, but to continue to attempt to effectuate change from the top down – change that a huge number of people have neither wanted nor voted for.
Eventually the tension between those in still in power and those who are not being listened to or whose interests are not being represented in any meaningful way becomes so great that patience runs out. The angry response is to want to tear the entire system down to the foundations.
Adding to the frustration and bitterness of citizens, American society, once so flexible that anyone with grit and ambition could climb the social and economic ladder and achieve success, has become increasingly stratified. Onerous regulations have ossified the process of gaining wealth by one's own efforts, and tens of millions are now dependent on the government teat. The economy is still languishing, America is almost 20 trillion dollars in debt, 93 million Americans are basically out of the work force, the nation's borders are unprotected, and there is a rising contempt for law and order.
In the meantime, both parties are seen as colluding with power brokers and serpentine underground sub-governments run by puppeteers who pull strings that leave Joe Average Citizen completely out of the political equation.
Is it any wonder that millions of voters in the United States have come to the conclusion that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are hearing their voices in meaningful ways?
The result?
Both parties now have candidates who embrace extremism that is at least temporarily supported by enraged voters. Extremism is what happens when people perceive, rightly or wrongly, that there are no meaningful channels through which to effectuate reform.
The current situation may share a few similarities with the Bull Moose revolt of 1912, in which Theodore Roosevelt's unhappiness with William Howard Taft's policies led Roosevelt to challenge Taft for the Republican Party's nomination. Party leadership stuck with Taft, and Roosevelt walked out of the convention to form his own Progressive Party in protest. The result was the election of Woodrow Wilson, who won because the Bull Moose Party split the Republican vote.
There are also echoes of the election of 1968. George Wallace, infamous for his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" speech, attracted a huge number of Americans who wanted a tough-talking strong man. As the PBS website relates the story:
Wallace's tirades against hippies, the Supreme Court, and big government, and his ennobling of the white working class – 'this man in the textile mill, this man in the steel mill, this barber, this beautician, the policeman on the beat,' as the candidate said in one speech – traveled better than the pundits had predicted. About a month before the election, polls showed that as much as 23 percent of the electorate supported George Wallace for president.
Wallace hoped to throw the election into the House of Representatives. That didn't happen, but he surely gave Republicans a scare, carrying five states in the Deep South.
Are we seeing history repeat itself?
Perhaps. Certainly the anger is there.
The rage felt by "bitter clingers," many but not all of whom support Donald Trump, will certainly not be ameliorated if Republican leadership attempts to go for a brokered convention. Trump supporters would not tolerate it, and Trump would probably revolt, much as Roosevelt and Wallace did. A political revolution would ensue, one from which the Democrats would reap enormous benefits, such as capturing the presidency and the Senate.
The result? Revenge-motivated "bitter clinger" Republicans, much of whose anger is justified, might get exactly what they do not want. They may get the sort of revolution that happens when anger and "strong man" rhetoric alone dictate policy.
Do Republicans who are (legitimately) angry about the policies of the Obama and, yes, the Bush administrations really want what amounts to the destruction of their own party and conservatism just at the moment they were on the cusp of effectuating a peaceful revolution that could set the compass of this nation for generations to come? Conservatives have worked for over thirty years to gain both houses and the presidency. Now the vengeful, who because rage creates addiction to immediacy are always without foresight, are about to hand victory over to leftists.
How ironic is it that many of the "bitter clingers" are exhibiting characteristics the left has described as inherent to them? How satisfactory must it be for Democrats to feel ratified in their suspicions that a huge number of
Republicans are just as they thought they were all along? How Obama and Hillary must be licking their chops to see at least a third of Republicans champion someone who fits the very worst stereotypes of conservatives. What a triumph for the opposition to think they were right all along. There are few things more satisfying.
If the acutely disaffected among the Republican Party don't get a grip on their rage, if they insist on picking an extremist candidate, things may reach the point where the Republican Party and reformist impulses of conservatism itself go down in flames just at the exact time progressive insanity was about to collapse the Democratic Party.
It would not be the first time conservative Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But if wiser, calmer, and more seasoned voices do not prevail, it may be the last.
True conservatives must step up to take the platform.
To quote – ironically – someone whose policies are inimical to conservatives and who would be overjoyed to see the demolition of conservatism:
"This is not who we are."
Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Her thoughts have appeared in many other online magazines, including National Review, RealClearReligion, CNS, and Fox News. Selected as one of the Delaware GOP's "Winning Women" of 2008, she has discussed her ideas on radio and television talk shows. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.
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2) Israel within range of most Iran missiles: IRGC chief
The chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says Israel is
within the range of most of the Islamic Republic’s missiles.
“Any one bearing greater enmity towards Islamic Iran will naturally be more
fearful of such capabilities and preparednesses,” Major General Mohammad Ali
Jafari said on Tuesday during the final stage of large-scale missile drills,
code-named Eqtedar-e-Velayat.
The IRGC Aerospace Division on Tuesday held the final stage of the exercises
by firing ballistic missiles from silo-based launchers in different
locations across the country.
The maneuvers are aimed at displaying Iran’s “deterrence power” and the
country’s “full readiness to confront all kinds of threats against the
[Islamic] Revolution, establishment and [Iran's] territorial integrity,” the
IRGC division said.
Jafari further said that defense power and national security are Iran’s red
lines which are by no means negotiable.
He added that the firing of ballistic missiles was a crushing response to
the enemies of the Islamic Republic who have imposed sanctions on Iran’s
missile program.
The commander added that sanctions have helped the country boost its missile
power, achieve self-reliance and manufacture all its missiles.
He emphasized that sanctions and enemies’ security pressure have failed to
impact Iran’s missile power, saying the Armed Forces and IRGC have grown
into a unique power in the region.
Jafari said the missile drills were staged to convey a message of security
to the Iranian nation and the neighboring countries.
“Iran’s security is the security of regional countries and our efforts are
in line with establishing security in the region,” he added.
Last October, Iran successfully test-fired its precision-guided long-range
Emad missile.
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3)
Two Trends, One Trigger. The 25 Year Tide That Gave Us Trump
By Bruce Haynes
Many columns and articles have ably traced the rise of Donald Trump. This one from Tom Edsall is particularly outstanding, and Charles Murray’s book, “Coming Apart,” is loaded with data essential to understanding the phenomenon. This epistle today will try to translate Trump’s rise into something more direct and linear.
Trump’s popularity is a direct result of a tsunami of economic and cultural globalism that has flooded the shores of America over the last 25 years. The overwhelming pace of this change has upended both the country and the relationship that working-class voters have with both political parties, but especially the GOP.
As with most movements, a single event turns into a catalyst. In this case, a supertanker full of gasoline has crashed into a smoldering country. Today, we are witnessing an eruption in three stages. I’ll discuss each.
The Impact of Economic Globalism. In Edsall’s terrific column, he cites the government’s own numbers showing the United States has lost seven million manufacturing jobs since 1979 as the population has ballooned by 96 million. Surely not all 96 million people have entered the labor force, but the 89 million difference between those numbers is stunning nonetheless.
There is no question the U.S. commitment to free trade has contributed to a loss of manufacturing jobs. Don’t just believe the data. Hop in your car and take a drive, not on the Interstate, but on our highways and on secondary and farm-to-market roads through the Mid-Atlantic states, the Rust Belt, and, especially, the Deep South. You’ll see bricked-up, locked-down cinder block buildings that did not just serve as textile mills and manufacturing plants but represented jobs, stability, and the industriousness of millions of Americans.Chemistry has replaced cotton, and technology has displaced textiles. Case in point: my wife’s family used to run a small furniture manufacturing plant in Alabama. The business, once the largest manufacturer of cedar furniture in the United States, closed because it could not remain profitable in the face of cheaper Chinese imports supported by pegged currency. So in Walker County, Alabama, where Murphy Furniture Company once employed hundreds but is now shuttered, Trump won 55 percent of the vote. That is no coincidence.
The surge in foreign imports, driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement and by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, has unquestionably hurt job availability and wage growth for the American middle class. The jobs that were supposed to replace them have not come into being or have been replaced by automation or with upper-middle-class jobs in engineering, chemistry, biotechnology or skilled service-sector jobs. A “cut and sew” textile worker can’t easily transition to a biopharmaceutical plant. These lower-skilled workers did not just lose their jobs — they lost their dignity.
These were the policies fought for and advocated by the political and cultural elites of both parties. In the minds of voters, those elites are squarely to blame. Trump holds up a mirror to this and says he’s going to stop it. And that is just one reason they are drawn to him.
The Impact of Cultural Globalism. The changes in American culture over the last 25 years have been sweeping. Murray chronicles the breakdown in traditional American values, citing seismic shifts not just in attitude but also in behavior relating to industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity. Murray’s thesis is that these changes, in combination with economic and educational shifts, have challenged the basis of traditional American civic life. We’ve become more like the advanced welfare states of Europe, driving a “coming apart” of the American community.
Some say Trump’s life manifests few of these values. Maybe he’s worked hard, but his bankruptcies and shady deals don’t say much for honesty. He’s on his third marriage, and both Corinthians would probably agree he’s not a particularly religious man. But these observations, while true, miss the point.
Trump is not about Trump; Trump is a vessel for economic and social angst. By attacking “political correctness,” Trump’s campaign is a safe harbor for traditional societal views on marriage, family, religion and work – whether he lives up to those ideals or not. The backlash against “being more like Europe” is manifest in Trump and his messaging. “Make America Great Again” might as well say, “Stop being like Europe.” Trump is against open borders. He is against gun control. He is for religious freedom. He is against the threat from radical jihadists that Europe has handled all too delicately, and to its detriment. The fact that he is an iconic American cultural figure carrying this message, a true economic and social elite from within the belly of the beast, makes the message all the more appealing.
When these voters turn on their televisions, the stories and images paint a picture of political, economic and cultural elites who respect none of these values. They don’t want to keep up with the Kardashians. Sports heroes dope and cheat and assault women. Political scandals are a dime a dozen. The governor and former attorney general of New York resigns in a disgraceful prostitution scandal. His reward isn’t jail — it’s a paying gig as co-host of a national television show.
The final nail in the coffin is the angst over radical Islam. This is not just a national security issue. Voters have been told not to say the words they believe describe what they see and feel. They see men beheading Christians. They watch innocents being murdered on the streets of San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris. They visit the memorial to the victims of 9/11.
They feel pain. They are threatened. They see evil. The president of our nation tells them not to speak its name.
The economic aspects of this wave have been building most certainly over the last 25 years — and the cultural aspects have been bubbling up, arguably, as Murray contends, since the 1960s. So why now? What is the trigger that has unleashed this “coming apart” so violently onto the political scene?
The Great Recession and the 2008 Wall Street Bailout. Voters perceived the response of those in power to the Great Recession to be the very essence of everything wrong with our political system — clear proof the system is irrevocably broken.
The economy collapses. A government response is needed. What happens?
The big banks, auto companies, and creatures of Wall Street who caused the collapse get “bailed out.” Republicans and Democrats both supported it. Save a precious few, almost no one was held accountable. The wealthy seemed insulated from collapse. It looked like business as usual.
But voters didn’t see a bailout for middle-class America. According to the Institute for Policy Research, “more than eight million Americans lost their jobs, nearly four million homes were foreclosed each year, and 2.5 million businesses were shuttered” during the Great Recession.
Those foreclosed homes were not likely to be in the Hamptons, on the Main Line, or in Georgetown. Middle-class America got crushed. Families lost homes. Workers lost jobs. Housing equity and retirement savings were wiped out, making things like college impossible to borrow for or pay for.
An anvil had been dropped on the head of middle-class America, and it was easy to connect the dots to understand who did it. The big guys blew up the economy, stuck their hands out to Washington, and got bailed out. The little guys lost their jobs and their houses and got nothing.
The belief was and is that the political, cultural and financial elite in America sold the country down the river. They’ve profited from economic globalization, downsizing and outsourcing jobs to Mexico and China. They’ve lectured and hectored us in print and on television and social media about the triviality of our views on traditional societal norms and institutions. Struggling Americans saw the laws they passed in response to the Great Recession as feckless talking points that did nothing to help. Other laws, like the bailout and Obamacare, seemed to help the upscale and downscale, while doing nothing to improve middle America’s economic outlook or, in the case of Obamacare and the subsequent rise in health insurance rates, straining its resources even further.
The prevailing view was that when the anvil came down, the elites used their money, power and influence to raid the U.S. Treasury to protect their wealth. Middle-class Americans got nothing. Worse, they lost overnight what they had fought and worked to build for generations. They worked hard, played by the rules, and got screwed.
And now, they have something to say about it.
It began in 2008 when George Bush and John McCain were soundly rejected in favor of Hope and Change. When Hope and Change did not come, their voices were heard in the midterms of 2010 and 2014. Americans turned to the Republican Party to protect and defend their economic and cultural interests.
But still, nothing changed. Then the prevailing view among these voters was that Republicans, and “establishment” Republicans in particular, failed that calling. Today, those voters don’t want another Bush, another venture capitalist like Mitt Romney, or another creature of Washington like McCain to represent them.
They want an outsider — someone strong enough to take on the system, someone who will not fix it or reform it but break it. Someone who will drop an anvil on the system’s head the way one was dropped on theirs.
This is very complicated and yet incredibly simple. It is surreal but real. I saw this coming, as I wrote in my October blog. And whether Trump wins or loses, the movement he has inspired is not going away any time soon.
The economic pressures will remain. The cultural forces are still at work in our society. It is not just the Republican Party that is in trouble. As Murray says, “the American experiment” is at risk. There are two paths we can take: become more like Europe, or reach back and fight for the things that, as Trump ironically says, made America great.
That fight is now front and center before us in the Republican primary. It will be brutal, as you would expect in a fight for the future of a great nation. It will pervade not only this election but also our politics and culture for many years to come.
Bruce Haynes is a founding partner of Purple Strategies, with offices in Washington, Chicago and Boston. He writes a Blog at RamblingManBlog.com and can be reached via RamblingManBlog@gmail.com or @BrucePurple on Twitter.
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4)The Burqa Challenge to Europe
by Paul Cliteur and Machteld Zee
Middle East Quarterly Spring 2016
In the summer of 2014, the 47 justices of the European Court of Human Rights upheld previously passed French legislation, popularly known as the "burqa ban." While women in Muslim-majority countries had been progressively un-veiling for most of the twentieth century, this practice has reversed due to the Islamist resurgence of the last four decades.
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In the summer of 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld previously passed French legislation, popularly known as the "burqa ban."[1] In doing so, it accepted the argument that the public wearing of this Islamically-connected full-body and face veiling violated a core value of French society, the principle of "living together" (le vivre ensemble). A review of how the court arrived at this conclusion, and what other arguments against the burqa it chose to ignore, may offer clues as to what forebodes for European Union societies and their relations with burgeoning Muslim populations.
To Cover or Not to Cover?
The ECHR's decision originated in an application against the French Republic lodged with the court under Article 34 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms on April 11, 2011.[2]The applicant, known only by her initials, S.A.S., is a Pakistani-born French national, who, according to her testimony, is a devout Muslim and wears the full-body and face veil. She claimed to do so in accordance with her Islamic faith, her culture, and her personal convictions, and she emphasized that neither her husband nor any other member of her family put pressure on her to dress in this manner.[3]
The burqa was virtually unseen in the West before 2000 but now is donned by approximately 1,900 women in France.
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It is in the West that the most outspoken Muslim critics of full-face veiling are active. Sihem Habchi, for example, president of the French feminist movement Ni putes ni soumises (Neither whores nor submissives)[5] has stated passionately and categorically: "As a woman, as a French citizen, and as a Muslim woman, I demand that the Republic protect me from the vilest fanaticism that is infecting our public space."[6]
The most outspoken Muslim critics of full-face veiling are active in the West where the ability to speak one's mind is protected by the state. French Muslim Fadela Amara, a women's rights activist, wrote that it "is a mistake to see the veil as only a religious issue. ... it is first of all a tool of oppression, alienation, discrimination, and an instrument of men's power over women."
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These sentiments were echoed by French Muslim women's rights activist Fadela Amara who wrote that it "is a mistake to see the veil as only a religious issue. We must remember that it is first of all a tool of oppression, alienation, discrimination, and an instrument of men's power over women. It is not an accident that men do not wear the veil."[7] Thus in the eyes of burqa opponents, the state must fulfil its positive obligation to protect human rights: Women should be made safe from severe pressure to cover.
At the same time, women, including many converts, voluntarily choose to cover their faces. When the French burqa prohibition came into force on April 11, 2011, S.A.S. found herself in a dilemma: Either obey the ban and compromise her personal beliefs, or ignore it and risk criminal charges in the form of a €150 fine. Instead, she decided to put her faith in Strasbourg.
"Vivre Ensemble"
When the ECHR rendered its decision, it essentially echoed the reasoning found in the "Gérin report" of 2010. This derived from a June 2009 decision by the conference of presidents of the French National Assembly, which established a parliamentary commission comprising members from various parties and presided over by the left-wing politician André Gérin, with the task of drafting a report on "the wearing of the full-face veil on national territory." In January 2010, the commission published its findings on the topic based on interviews with more than two hundred witnesses and experts.
To establish a social bond, every person must be able to see everyone else's face.
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The bill was supported by the National Assembly's Delegation on the Rights of Women and Equal Opportunities and was formulated in general terms—as the Gérin committee had advised—thereby deflecting a legal debate on religious freedom. What became law no. 2010-1192 was passed by the National Assembly on July 13, 2010, with 335 votes in favor, one against, and three abstentions, and shortly thereafter, by the Senate on September 14 with 246 votes for and one abstention. On October 7, France's Constitutional Council ruled that the ban was compliant with the constitution, and thus the law was enacted on October 11, 2010.
The plaintiff then took her case to the ECHR in the hope of having the bill overturned. On July 1, 2014, the Grand Chamber, the ultimate court within the ECHR released its verdict, supporting the French prohibition.
The court extensively cited past jurisprudence on religious freedom and acknowledged that the ban had indeed a significant negative impact on the lives of those women who had chosen to wear the veil for religious reasons.[12] But it concluded that the ban did not violate the right to respect for private life (Article 8 ECHR), freedom of religion (Article 9 ECHR), or freedom of expression (Article 10 ECHR). The decision hinged on the notion of vivre ensemble as being a sufficient and compelling enough factor to enable the French to ban the burqa without violating the convention.[13] It agreed with the French rationale that the social bond that citizens form with one another is an essential foundation of democracy. To establish that social bond, it is imperative that every person be able to see everyone else's face. This argument is detached from the religious aspect of face veiling and encompasses every form of face concealment in a public setting.
Accusations of "Islamophobia"
Although the final rationale for the burqa ban centered around the secular values that had been an integral part of the French Republic since its inception, both critics and supporters of the ban raised additional arguments to buttress their case, and it is instructive to look at them since they may play a role in future decisions or challenges to the current one.Many critics claimed that the push for a ban was actually a manifestation of "Islamophobia." Coined in the late 1980s, the term gained greater currency after the 1997 publication of a British report, "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All,"[14] and was widely adopted by Muslim advocacy groups after the 9/11 terror attacks in reaction to the worldwide critical focus on Islam and Islamism.
Demonstrators protest against the French ban on burqas. The decisive argument for the ban was that the burqa represented a denial of French fraternité by setting up a significant barrier to contact with others and thus was a flagrant infringement of the French principle of living together (le vivre ensemble).
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There were several submissions by outside parties in the S.A.S. v. Francecase that stated that the French ban was an "Islamophobic" and populist reaction to a minority already facing tough times in an increasingly intolerant Europe. For instance, Thomas Hammarberg, commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, was cited as arguing that the prohibition would lead to further exclusion of the Muslim community and that it had not been proven that burqa-wearers "are victims of more gender repression than others."[15]Likewise, Amnesty International asked the ECHR to examine the case, contending that the debate surrounding the ban and the ban itself reinforced "negative stereotypes and Islamophobia."
[16]
Although the court upheld the ban, it did not ignore this argument altogether. In its own words, "the Court is very concerned by the indications of some of the third-party interveners to the effect that certain Islamophobic remarks marked the debate." Additionally, it claimed that "the debates surrounding the drafting of the bill may have upset part of the Muslim community, including some members who are not in favour of the full-face veil being worn."[17]
While some proponents of the "Islamophobia" charge may be motivated by true concern for anti-Muslim discrimination, there is another, pernicious side to the ledger that the court seemed to ignore, namely, the common use of "Islamophobia" to silence and defame legitimate criticism of Islam and Muslims. There is absolutely no reason why Muslim beliefs should be spared the free and vigorous debate, including abrasive lampooning and ridicule, to which Christians, Jews, atheists, or any other group have long been subjected. In a free society, Muslims and Islam should not be exempted on the grounds of some sense of fear or hostility unless that critique takes the form of incitement to hate and/or violence. Nor does favoring a burqa ban mean ipso facto hostility to Islam. The overwhelming majority of Muslim women do not wear burqas while many abhor it because it gives Islam a bad name. Numerous Muslim intellectuals, men and women, have spoken up in favor of a ban and have done so in Muslim-majority countries as well.[18] One can only wonder whether the court is aware of the implicit message it is sending: first, that "Islamophobia" is a phenomenon deserving recognition by Europe's highest court, and second, that fierce (and at times uncivil) debate can be so upsetting to one bloc of people—which the court has lumped together based on their cultural heritage regardless of individual differences—that the rights of free expression of individuals, who are the actual carriers of the liberties that the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights bestowed upon them, may be trampled upon.
A Threat to Civil Society?
There are two other arguments, cited in the Gérin report and the French bill's accompanying explanatory memorandum, that the ECHR chose to dismiss. The first contention is that Islamist women wear burqas (or Islamist men put women under pressure to wear burqas) as a way of expressing solidarity with and identifying themselves as adherents of a specific, political belief system. This makes the outfit not just an expression of religion but a political statement informed by a totalitarian ideology.
The other anti-veiling argument maintains that such garb is a threat to public safety.
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The other anti-veiling argument, articulated most prominently by American political commentator and historian Daniel Pipes, maintains that such garb is a threat to public safety. Both in his personal writings and in the archives of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, which he heads, Pipes has documented cases worldwide involving crimes committed by
burqa-clad perpetrators. There are more than one hundred cases listed, including incidents of child abduction, robbery, bombings, murder, theft, acid attacks, and suspects evading justice under the cover of this garment (most notably the 1937 flight from Palestine of the notorious Jerusalem mufti, Hajj Amin Husseini).[23]
There is a well-documented concern that the burqa is a threat to public safety. Worldwide, there have been more than one hundred cases of criminals hiding under the burqa to perpetrate murders, child abductions, acid attacks, bombings, and robberies like the one attempted on this British shopkeeper in 2013.
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In the explanatory memorandum accompanying the burqa ban bill, the French government made the case that in certain situations the practice of concealing one's face in a public setting could represent a danger to communal safety.[24] Concealing one's identity would certainly hamper any criminal investigation. The public safety argument is not then tied to any religious aspect of full face-veiling, nor is it relevant whether or not the burqa is worn voluntarily. Everyone needs to show their face, and this would include covering them by means of helmets, masks, theatrical make-up, and so forth. The European Court agreed that freedom of religion would not be unjustly compromised if individuals had to show their faces "in the context of security checks" and on identity photos for official documents. A blanket ban for this reason, however, was deemed overkill and "proportionate only in a context where there is a general threat to public safety."[25]
Yet, as Pipes' database makes eminently clear, security considerations are far from hypothetical, for the simple reason that "one cannot allow faceless and bodyless persons walking the streets, driving cars, and otherwise making use of public places; the dangers are too great."[26] Indeed, the Belgian government seems to fully subscribe to this view. Rather than wait for burqa-donning criminals to strike, it chose public safety as one of the main reasons for its 2012 ban of the burqa, and the Belgian Constitutional Court concurred.[27]
Conclusion
The drafters of the Gérin report, and subsequently French legislators, and ultimately, the ECHR had a difficult task in deciding on the best arguments for banning the burqa. Despite the generalized formulation concerning the covering of one's face used in the laws eventually adopted, it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that the ban is at least occasioned by the appearance of burqa-draped Muslims on the streets of Europe.[28]But despite an acceptance of cultural and religious differences on the part of Europe's elites—an acceptance that may not necessarily be shared by the European "man on the street" who views the burqa as yet one of the foremost manifestations of the continent's growing Islamization—tolerance toward the full-face covering has reached its limit at least in France and Belgium. Vivre ensemble—the principle of "living together"—was the one ground the European Court of Human Rights latched on to as a means of upholding the French burqa ban despite other equally significant arguments. By setting aside other similarly important, yet perhaps more politically sensitive arguments, such as gender equality, human dignity, or the outlawing of Islamist symbols, the court followed the carefully constructed French reasoning, which sought to disentangle the issue from the claims of religious discrimination.
This ruling paves the way for more European countries to ban full-face veiling, as demonstrated by the 2015 banning of face-covering Islamic veils in schools, hospitals, and public transportation in Netherlands.[29] As Western European societies are overwhelmed by a tidal wave of Muslim immigration, it remains to be seen how widespread this ban will become.
Paul Cliteur is professor of jurisprudence at the University of Leiden and visiting professor of philosophical anthropology at the University of Ghent. His book The Secular Outlook (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) is in translation as La visione laica del mondo (Nessun Dogma, 2014). Machteld Zee is a political scientist and legal scholar. She holds a Ph.D. in jurisprudence from the University of Leiden. Her most recent book is Choosing Sharia? Multiculturalism, Islamic Fundamentalism and Sharia Councils(Eleven International Publishing, 2016).
[1] The term burqa is used in this article interchangeably with niqab. The difference between the two veils is that niqab covers the entire face with a small space cut out for the eyes while burka has a mesh over the eye opening.
[2] Law no. 43835/11.
[3] S.A.S. v. France, European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France, July 1, 2014, para. 10-12.
[4] For an overview of burqa bans in Islamic countries, see Phyllis Chesler, "Ban the Burqa? The Argument in Favor," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2010, pp. 33-45.
[5] Fara Amara and Sylvia Zappi, Breaking the Silence: French Women's Voices from the Ghetto, trans. Helen H. Chenut (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), originally published under the title Ni Putes Ni Soumises(Neither Whore nor Submissive).
[6] André Gérin, et al., Rapport d'Information (Paris: Assemblée Nationale, Jan. 2010), p. 324.
[7] Karima Bennoune, "Secularism and Human Rights: A Contextual Analysis of Headscarves, Religious Expression, and Women's Equality under International Law," Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, May-Aug. 2007, pp. 390-1.
[8] Gérin et al., Rapport d'Information.
[9] S.A.S. v. France, para. 17.
[10] Ibid., para. 25 and 141.
[11] Ibid., para. 121.
[12] Ibid., para. 146.
[13] Frances Raday, "Professor Frances Raday Comments on SAS v France," Oxford Human Rights Hub, University of Oxford, Oxford, July 19, 2014.
[14] While the word "phobia" suggests fear, the term has commonly referred to "dread or hatred of Islam—and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims." "Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All," Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, British Runnymede Trust, London, 1997, p. 1.
[15] S.A.S. v. France, para. 37; see, also, Thomas Hammarberg, Human Rights in Europe: No Grounds for Complacency. Viewpoints by Thomas Hammarberg (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2011), pp. 39-43.
[16] S.A.S. v. France, para. 98.
[17] Ibid., para. 148-9.
[18] See, for example, Lydia Girous, Allah est grand la République aussi (Paris: J.C. Lattès, 2014); idem, #Je suis Marianne (Paris: Grasset, 2016); Mona Elthahawy, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015); BBC, July 19, 2010.
[19] Salafism is an ultra-orthodox movement within Sunni Islam that condemns any innovations or changes to the faith that are perceived as deviating from the practices of the prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers.
[20] André Gérin, et al. (Gerin Commission), Mission d'information sur la pratique du port du voile intégral sur le territoire national (Paris: Assemblée Nationale, Sept. 2009); Gérin, et al., Rapport d'Information, p. 104.
[21] Sylvie Tissot, "Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space," Public Culture, Winter 2011, p. 43.
[22] Paul Cliteur and Bastiaan Rijpkema, "The Foundations of Militant Democracy," in Afshin Ellian and Gelijn Molier, eds., The State of Exception and Militant Democracy in a Time of Terror (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, 2012), pp. 227-73.
[23] Daniel Pipes, "Niqabs and Burqas as Security Threats," DanielPipes.org, Mar. 7, 2002, updated Jan. 11, 2015.
[24] S.A.S. v. France, para. 25.
[25] Ibid., para. 139.
[26] Pipes, "Niqabs and Burqas as Security Threats."
[27] Jelle Flo and Jogchum Vrielink, "The constitutionality of the Belgian burqa ban," OpenDemocracy.net(Manchester, N.H.), Jan. 14, 2013.
[28] Koen Lemmens, "Larvatus Prodeo? Why concealing the face can be incompatible with a European conception of Human Rights," European Law Review, Jan.-Feb. 2014, pp. 47-71.
[29] The Guardian (London), May 22, 2015.
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