Parent of the year contestants!
My cartoons and aphorisms!
===
ISIS in Europe - how deep the penetration and empathy? No one really knows but even assuming the estimates are conservative you are looking at 1 million plus and that does not count the radicals Obama has placed in government positions in our country. (See , 1a and 1b below.)
===
This from a good friend, fellow memo reader and world traveler. He seldom sends me information but when he does I generally post same.
Has Hillary's reset button finally begun to bring advantages - mostly for the Clinton's and their Podesta lackeys?
Stay tuned. (See 2 and 2a below.)
====
Making whitey pay at tax payer expense? Could it possibly be Obama and his minions are racially motivated? Hard to believe! Perhaps they protest too much in order to throw us off their true feelings and trail of tears! (See 3 below.)
====
Bernie seems not too concerned about his "screw up." Does it say something about him? (See 4 below.)
Meanwhile, Obama does seem concerned that he has driven the Saudis away and actually moving in the direction of the Israelis. How is that for a strange twist. (See 4a below.)
Like moles, Hamas continues to dig tunnels and poison minds of children. (Se 4b and 4c below.)
===
Rolland Golden and his wife, Stella and his daughter, have been friends for well over 50 years. Rolland is one of America's finest water colorists and we had the pleasure of visiting them this past summer on our cross country drive which took us to Folsom, La. where they live. Rolland has a new show entitled ""GOLDEN'S AMERICA" and you can see his distinctive work in nearby Augusta, at The Morris Museum which will present a selected part of Rolland's Ogden Museum Exhibition, opening August 11, through Oct 31,2016 . (Also See 5 below.)
====
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)ISIS in Europe: How Deep is the 'Gray Zone'?
Among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22% in Germany to 29% in Spain, 35% in Britain and 42% in France, according to a Pew poll. In the UK, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate. Today more British Muslims join ISIS than the British army. In the Netherlands, a survey shows that the 80% of Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong” in ISIS.
Even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic jihad in Europe and the Middle East. We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding and affinity with the ideology and goals of ISIS.
How many Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone”? The answer will determine our future.
In the 1970s and '80s, Europe was terrorized by a war declared by Communist armed groups, such as the Germany's Baader Meinhof or Italy's Red Brigades. Terrorists seemed determined to undermine democracy and capitalism. They targeted dozens of journalists, public officials, professors, economists and politicians, and in Italy in 1978, even kidnapped and executed Italy's former prime minister, Aldo Moro.
The big question then was: “How deep is the 'gray zone'?” — the sympathizers of terrorism in the industrial factories, labor unions and universities.
In the last year, the Islamic State's henchmen slaughtered hundreds of Europeans and Westerners. Their last assault, in Brussels, struck at the heart of the West: the postmodern mecca of NATO and the European Union.
We should now answer the same question: How deep is the “gray zone” of the Islamic State in Europe?
Peggy Noonan recently tried to give an answer in the Wall Street Journal:
“There are said to be 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. … Let's say only 10% of the 1.6 billion harbor feelings of grievance toward 'the West', or desire to expunge the infidel, or hope to re-establish the caliphate. That 10% is 160 million people. Let's say of that group only 10% would be inclined toward jihad. That's 16 million. Assume that of that group only 10% really means it — would really become jihadis or give them aid and sustenance. That's 1.6 million.”
That is a lot.
According to a ComRes report commissioned by the BBC, 27% of British Muslims have sympathy for the terrorists who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris (12 killed). An ICM poll, released by Newsweek, revealed that 16% of French Muslims support ISIS. The number rises to 27% percent for those aged 18-24. In dozens of French schools, the “minute of silence” to commemorate the murdered Charlie Hebdo's journalists was interrupted by Muslim pupils who protested it.
How deep is ISIS's popularity in Belgium? Very deep. The most accurate study is a report from Voices From the Blogs, which highlights the high degree of pro-ISIS sympathy in Belgium. The report monitored and analyzed more than two million Arabic messages around the world via Twitter, Facebook and blogs regarding ISIS's actions in the Middle East.
The most enthusiastic comments about ISIS come from Qatar at 47%; then Pakistan, at 35%; third overall is Belgium, where 31% of tweets in Arabic on the Islamic State are positive — more than Libya (24%), Oman (25%), Jordan (19%), Saudi Arabia (20%) and Iraq (20%). This shocking data exposes the success of the network and its easy pro-ISIS recruitment in Belgium.
In other European countries, after Belgium, Britain is at 24%, Spain 21%, France 20%.
In the UK, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate. Today more British Muslims join ISIS than the British army.
In the Netherlands, a survey conducted by Motivaction shows that the 80% of Dutch Turks see “nothing wrong” in ISIS.
Among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22% in Germany to 29% in Spain, 35% in Britain and 42% in France, according to a Pew poll.
The level of ISIS's popularity in the Arab world has been exposed by many surveys: the Clarion Project published a report based on multiple sources a March 2015 poll by the Iraqi Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, a November 2014 poll by Zogby Research Services, a November 2014 poll by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, and an October 2014 poll by the Fikra Forum. The result: 42 million people in the Arab world sympathize with ISIS.
After the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, Al-Jazeera conducted a survey asking, “Do you support Isis's victories?” 81% of respondents voted “yes.”
Even if these polls and surveys must be taken with some caution, they all indicate a deep and vibrant “gray zone,” which is feeding the Islamic jihad in Europe and the Middle East. We are talking about millions of Muslims who show sympathy, understanding and affinity with the ideology and goals of ISIS.
Anthony Glees, an English scholar of political radicalism, revealed the “gray zone” of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terror group: “By 1977, the West German Federal Criminal Agency had a terrorist index which contained the names of some 4.7 million suspects and sympathisers, many of them university students.”
The terrorist leaders at that time all came from good German families: Andreas Baader was the son of a professor of history, Ulrike Meinhof was the daughter of a museum director and a famous journalist, Gudrun Ensslin was the daughter of an evangelical pastor, Horst Mahler was the son of a judge.
The Islamic State today has a much deeper gray zone of sympathizers in the Muslim communities of Europe.
In the 1970s and '80s, Europe was terrorized by Communist armed groups, such as the Germany's Baader Meinhof (pictured in black and white), which had a “gray zone” of millions of suspected sympathizers. Today's European jihadists, such as the late Paris attack mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud (right), have a much deeper “gray zone” of sympathizers in the Muslim communities of Europe.
In the 1970s and '80s, Europe was terrorized by Communist armed groups, such as the Germany's Baader Meinhof (pictured in black and white), which had a “gray zone” of millions of suspected sympathizers. Today's European jihadists, such as the late Paris attack mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud (right), have a much deeper “gray zone” of sympathizers in the Muslim communities of Europe.
If Baader-Meinhof was at war with the “schweine” (bourgeois “pigs”) and targeted specific political figures, the Caliphate's volunteers are at war with all the “kuffar” (unbelievers). ISIS loyalists target the patrons of restaurants, theaters and stadiums in Paris; a café in Copenhagen which held a debate on freedom of expression and Islam; Western tourists at a resort in Tunisia; commuters at the Maelbeek metro station and passengers at the Brussels airport.
For ISIS, it is an eternal war in the name of the prophet. As Graeme Wood explained in “What ISIS Really Wants,” ISIS “hungers for genocide … and it considers itself a harbinger of — and headline player in — the imminent end of the world.”
A book just published in French by Ivan Rioufol, a journalist for the newspaper Le Figaro, eloquently titled “The Coming Civil War,” details the dangers posed by the “apocalyptic ideology” of radical Islam in Europe. How many Muslims will this ISIS virus be able to infect in the vast European “gray zone”? The answer will determine our future.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
The freakouts when people raise valid questions over Islamist actions are meant to frighten people into silence so Islamists can continue their attacks.
By M.G Oprea
Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine whose offices Islamists attacked in 2015, published an editorial recently titled “How Did We Get Here?” that has raised some eyebrows. In it, they ask how Europe has become where European-born Muslims have attacked the hearts of Paris and Brussels. Their answer has proved distasteful to many on the Left.
Photo Erica Simone / Shutterstock.com
M. G. Oprea is a writer based in Austin, Texas. She holds a PhD in French linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin.
The terror group has suffered a series of defeats in Syria, but while the prevailing Pentagon view may be that ISIS has weakened, there is debate about just how much.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State has lost at least three Syrian cities and towns in the past six weeks, including one over the weekend, each time by walking away from the fight.
And yet the Pentagon is not sure whether to celebrate ISIS’s losses or brace for even bigger fights against the group than it already anticipated for key ISIS cities like Mosul and Raqqa.
The territorial losses are among the biggest the terror group has suffered in the past two years. And Pentagon officials are watching to see if Assad forces continue advancing toward Deir el Zour, two defense officials explained to The Daily Beast, the biggest potential regime push east into ISIS territory in years.
Either way, ISIS losses, even to regime forces, have spurred a debate among defense officials about the degree to which the terror group is in jeopardy. ISIS appears to be running away from fights for territory, but is that enough for the coalition, the Russians, and the Syrian regime to claim victory against the group?
The prevailing view inside the Pentagon is that the group is in trouble, weakened by attacks by both Assad and U.S.-backed forces. It has lost extensive personnel, after having been beat in places like Palmyra. Where local ground forces once trembled at the first sign of ISIS striking to protect land, the terror group intimidates such forces less and less.
Indeed, some Pentagon officials argue ISIS is so weak, it is time to ramp up the U.S.-led campaign against the terror group through more airstrikes and even more Special Forces on the ground, two officials told The Daily Beast.
A smaller contingent argues that the group, while weaker, is strategically saving its forces to protect its Iraqi and Syrian capitals, Mosul and Raqqa, and the cities that support those capitals.
Moreover, more than once the Pentagon has proved to be overly optimistic about its campaign against ISIS only to discover it is confronting an adaptable group, tempering some officials’ willingness to call recent ISIS losses a win.
“There are still core things they are willing to fight for, and we haven’t seen those fights yet,” one defense official said.
The last major battle ISIS launched in Syria was more than a year ago, for the northern city of Kobani, which it lost to Kurdish forces. And some argue the major lesson ISIS gained from that battle was not to expend resources in conventional clashes unless they are critical to the group’s survival.
“There are towns where ISIS makes select decisions. It shows ISIS’s military prioritization,” said Genevieve Casagrande, Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “I think over the next few weeks, to make assessments, we need to look to places like Aleppo in order to see how ISIS is prioritizing key terrain outside Euphrates River valley.”
While the cities lost in the last few weeks helped ISIS gain revenue through taxation and other resources, what the group really needs to continue terrorizing Iraq, Syria, and the West is Mosul, Raqqa, and the cities that offer them logistical or financial support. Cities like Homs are key potential revenue sources. And Aleppo is a critical route between the self-proclaimed caliphate and the West.
And perhaps because of that, ISIS forces not only retreat but also move toward those strategic cities.
Over the weekend in Qaryatayn, ISIS retreated quickly, allowing the Assad regime, backed with limited Russian air support, to reclaim the central Syrian city. There were early indications that ISIS forces fled Qaryatayn toward the hotly contested Homs, which is home to Syrian oil reserves and a far more valuable city to the terror group, Casagrande said.
Before Qaryatayn, the group lost the cities of Palmyra and Ash Shaddadi. While ISIS once fought aggressively to keep Palmyra, and Ash Shaddadi to a lesser extent, in all three cases, the group eventually purposely retreated from the fight.
The cessation of hostilities has allowed the Assad regime to move troops away from places like Aleppo and expand its grip further east as its foes are hamstrung. The Assad forces, often backed by an aggressive Russian air campaign, reclaimed each of those cities except for Ash Shaddadi, which was taken by U.S.-backed largely Kurdish forces.
The fragility of the cessation of hostilities, which one defense official Monday called “teetering,” could limit the Assad regime’s push east and indeed push regime losses back. Because of that, many are watching to see where ISIS chooses to fight next—or instead decides to leave explosives behind—and what affects its reduced territory has on its ability to fund and recruit.
As with many things in this war, the truth of ISIS’s standing is complicated, mired in uncertainty, experts argue. The loss of cities limits the routes through which ISIS can receive and train foreign fighters, for example, but is not enough to cripple the group.
“It is clear that ISIS is weakening as a fighting force. They have had multiple offensives that have failed to go anywhere,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Loss of territory does weaken the group, but it is not fatal.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection
John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. (Photo: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hide its ill-gotten wealth.
Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO is Tony Podesta, one of the best-connected Democratic "machers" in the country. He founded the firm in 1998 with his brother John, formerly chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, then counselor to President Barack Obama, Mr. Podesta is the very definition of a Democratic insider. Outsiders engage the Podesta's and their well-connected lobbying firm to improve their image and get access to Democratic bigwigs.
Which is exactly what Sberbank, Russia’s biggest financial institution, did this spring. As reported at the end of March, the Podesta Group registered with the U.S. Government as a lobbyist for Sberbank, as required by law, naming three Podesta Group staffers: Tony Podesta plus Stephen Rademaker and David Adams, the last two former assistant secretaries of state. It should be noted that Tony Podesta is a big-money bundler for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign while his brother John is the chairman of that campaign, the chief architect of her plans to take the White House this November.
Since the brothers are destined for very high-level jobs if the Democrats triumph in November, their relationship is something they—and Clinton—need to explain.
Although Sberbank has its origins in the nineteenth century, it was functionally reborn after the Soviet collapse, and it the 1990s it grew to be the dominant bank in the country, today controlling nearly 30 percent of Russia’s aggregate banking assets and employing a quarter-million people. The majority stockholder in Sberbank is Russia’s Central Bank. In other words, Sberbank is functionally an arm of the Kremlin, although it’s ostensibly a private institution.
Certainly Western intelligence is well acquainted with Sberbank, noting its close relationship with Vladimir Putin and his regime. Funds moving through Sberbank are regularly used to support clandestine Russian intelligence operations, while the bank uses its offices abroad as cover for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. A NATO counterintelligence official explained that Sberbank, which has outposts in almost two dozen foreign countries, “functions as a sort of arm of the SVR outside Russia, especially because many of its senior employees are ‘former’ Russian intelligence officers.” Inside the country, Sberbank has an equally cosy relationship with the Federal Security Service or FSB, Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency.
Ukraine has pointed a finger at Sberbank as an instrument of Russia’s aggression against their country. In 2014, Ukraine’s Security Service charged Sberbank with “financing terrorism,” noting that its branches were distributing millions of dollars in illegal aid to Russian-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv’s conclusion, that Sberbank is a witting supporter of Russian aggression against Ukraine, is broadly supported by Western intelligence. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in Eastern Europe.
In addition, Ukrainian intelligence has alleged that the FSB collaborated with Sberbank in the bombings of two of the bank’s branches in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in June 2015. The attacks caused no casualties but got major coverage in Russian state media as “proof” of Ukraine’s instability and violent anti-Russian nature. Although the notion that Russian spies would plant bombs as a provocation, what the Kremlin terms provokatsiya, may sound outlandish to those unacquainted with espionage, in fact Russian spies have been doing such things since tsarist times. What I’ve termed“fake terrorism” is a longstanding Kremlin core competency, and it can only be pulled off with logistical support, including with finances.
Predictably, Sberbank has blown off the Panama Papers revelations as nothing of consequence, but the fact that they are an arm of the Kremlin and they do plenty of shady things in many countries is a matter of record. As is the fact that the Podesta Group is their lobbyist in America.
Among the Sberbank subsidiaries that the Podesta Group also represents are the Cayman Islands-based Troika Dialog Group Limited, the Cyprus-based SBGB Cyprus Limited, and the Luxembourg-based SB International. As reported this week by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a consortium of journalists exploring the Panama Papers leak, Sberbank and Troika Dialog are used by members of Mr. Putin’s inner circle to shift public funds into sometimes questionable private investments. In other words, this is top-level money laundering of a brazen kind. As the OCCRP stated plainly, “Some of these companies were initially connected to the Troika Dialog investment fund, which was controlled and run by Sberbank after the bank bought the Troika Dialog investment bank. Troika and Sberbank declined to comment.”
Adding to shadiness of all this, the Podesta Group is playing along with the useful charade that Sberbank is simply a private financial institution, rather than the state-owned bank that it is, since that would require the lobbyists to register as agents of the Russian government under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
John and Tony Podesta aren’t fooling anyone with this ruse. They are lobbyists for Vladimir Putin’s personal bank of choice, an arm of his Kremlin and its intelligence services. Since the brothers Podesta are presumably destined for very high-level White House jobs next January if the Democrats triumph in November at the polls, their relationship with Sberbank is something they—and Hillary Clinton—need to explain to the public.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story referred imprecisely to the founding of The Podesta Group and to the Podesta brother who registered the firm they founded as a lobbyist for Sberbank. The Observer regrets the errors.
2a)
A Vast Email Conspiracy
Hillary’s biggest problem isn’t Bernie. It’s the Freedom of Information Act.
Hillary Clinton campaigning in Pittsburgh, April 6. PHOTO: REUTERS
Hillary Clinton is good at imagining partisan plots, and to listen to her team, no less than
several inspectors general, the intelligence community, and the entire Republican
ecosphere are colluding to turn her home-brew email system into a fake scandal. To this conspiracy, she must now add the federal judiciary.
In recent weeks, not one, but two, esteemed federal judges have granted an outside group—Judicial Watch—the right to conduct discovery into the origins and handling of her
private email system. It’s a reminder that Mrs. Clinton’s biggest problem this election isn’t
Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Her problem is a 1966 statute known as the Freedom of Information Act, and the judges who enforce it.
The judges have taken unprecedented steps to resolve this case. It is exceedingly rare—
almost unheard of—for a judge to allow discovery in a FOIA proceeding. This is a
testament to how grave Mrs. Clinton’s email problem is. In the usual course of things, an
outside group demands documents, a judge requires a federal department to hand them over, and the public learns something.
In this case—as we all know—the problem is that the State Department doesn’t have the documents. Or rather, it can’t confirm that it has them all, because State left it to Mrs.
Clinton and her aides to possess them, and then to unilaterally decide what to hand over. To Judge Royce Lamberth, this is cut and dry “evidence of government wrong-doing and bad
faith,” and the law demands a full accounting of how this situation came to be, what
records exist, and where they are now.
Speaking of the judge’s words, they too are a testament to Mrs. Clinton’s mess. Judge
Lamberth was unplugged in his order, calling the former secretary of state’s email set up “extraordinary,” and slamming “constantly shifting admissions by the government and
former government officials” about the setup. Judge Emmet Sullivan, the first to allow
discovery, referred in his own hearing to Mrs. Clinton’s “totally atypical system” and
noted that it “boggles the mind that the State Department allowed this circumstance to
arise in the first place. It’s just very, very, very troubling.”
Fueling the judges’ suspicions has been new evidence that Mrs. Clinton didn’t turn
everything over. Judicial Watch recently obtained emails showing that State Department
and National Security Agency personnel had big concerns with Mrs. Clinton’s early
demands that she be allowed to use a BlackBerry for secure correspondence. They wanted
her to sit at a computer in a secure facility—as everyone else does. These documents
include a February 2009 email from then-Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills to her boss,
crowing that State was coming around to Mrs. Clinton’s demands, and a return email the
same day from Mrs. Clinton saying, “That’s good news.”
These are clearly work-related emails. They speak to the question of Mrs. Clinton’s communications while at the State Department. They aren’t about yoga routines. And yet,
guess what? That email chain was not included in the 55,000 pages of documents Mrs.
Clinton turned over. Perhaps it was an oversight, but far more likely, the Clinton team—
knowing the firestorm over a home-brew system—chose to withhold documents showing
that State and NSA considered Mrs. Clinton’s email demands unsafe and unreasonable.
What else did Mrs. Clinton choose to withhold from the public?
One other aspect of these new emails: Mrs. Clinton sent her “good news” email to Ms.
Mills via her private hdr22@clintonemail.com account in February 2009. And yet the
former secretary of state has publicly claimed she didn’t start using that address until
March 2009, well after she was sworn in as secretary of state.
Judicial Watch is hoping to use discovery to interview eight current and former State
Department officials, including Ms. Mills, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, top State
Department official Patrick Kennedy, and former State IT employees Bryan Pagliano (who
is reported to have recently been granted immunity by the FBI). And yet in a hearing this
week in Judge Sullivan’s court, State Department officials were already moving to limit
or shut down what questions Judicial Watch could ask—including those pertaining to how classified information was handled on the system.
Put another way, State wants to put off-limits the questions that are at the heart of the
Clinton email scandal. And no surprise. The Judicial Watch discovery holds the potential to expose the many and varied ways Mrs. Clinton may have skirted the rules, and in turn to
put enormous pressure on the FBI to act. These depositions meanwhile are currently set to
happen this summer, right before the Democratic convention.
The beauty of FOIA is that it is designed to bring things to light. Mrs. Clinton has grown
talented at outfoxing investigators, Congress, inspectors general, the press. But she made
the error this time of playing games with a law that federal judges take seriously, and that
gives outside watchdogs real leverage.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) Obama Administration Sticking it to Whitey
Is the Obama administration, or at least some officials in it, hostile toward whites? This is certainly an awkward, publicly unspeakable question -- and answering it is exceptionally difficult. Not easy to discern the motives of countless Washington bureaucrats.
Nevertheless, recent events outside of Baltimore, MD suggest that enmity toward whites does afflict some Obama administrators and our proof, though short of the smoking gun standard, is probably as good as it gets.
In a nutshell, thanks to Washington’s money and political pressure, thousands of poor blacks will now be re-located from Baltimore’s slums to upgraded housing in the surrounding, nearly all-white suburbs.
Baltimore County will spend $30 million over the next decade to help private developers build 1000 homes for low-income African American families in affluent suburbs. In addition, the country will create 2000 units of subsidized Section 8 housing where residents will have access to better schools and less crime (housing must be built or rented in racially integrated clusters to avoid creating new ghettoes).
To ensure that these new residences are family friendly, 500 units must contain three or more bedrooms. Housing access will be encouraged by requiring landlords to consider all sources of income -- including public welfare -- in assessing tenant creditworthiness. Participants will also receive help with moving expenses and security deposits. And to facilitate integration into new (white) neighborhoods, extensive counseling (called “Mobility Counseling Programs”) will teach newcomers about housekeeping and property maintenance, good neighbor skills, financial management and budgeting.
Government sponsored re-location of poor black city residents into affluent white suburbs is hardly new and rests on a theory positing the malleability of human behavior: pathological behaviors are environmentally determined and so just improve environments and “bad” behavior will vanish. Specifically, moving underclass African Americans to pleasant white, affluent towns will see a notable reduction of crime, illegitimacy, drug and alcohol addiction, welfare dependency, domestic violence and other tribulations currently plaguing black inner-city neighborhoods. In addition, the transformation will succeed absent any prior psychological changes of new arrivals. In effect, an industrious law-abiding African American who autonomously flees to the suburbs to live a better life is identical to his Baltimore neighbor motivated solely by the promise of a more spacious, cheap apartment.
It is also assumed that pathologies will be mitigated by inter-racial, inter-class contact. For example, lower class black youngsters will improve academically if they encounter more studious white classmates. And osmosis will flow only one way -- white youngster will not gravitate toward crime when socializing with black inner city refugees.
It is hard to think of a more incorrect theory of human behavior. Tellingly, when such enterprises are discussed in official reports, the stress overwhelmingly is on the benefits to the recipients and advice on how to overcome (white) public resistance. The unspeakable harsh truth is that these newly relocated inner-city residents will bring their pathologies with them and after a few years the areas surrounding the freshly built homes and Section 8 apartments will resemble dilapidated crime-ridden Baltimore.
If the transformative power of a better physical setting were correct, how do you explain massive white resistance to such enterprises? Are the millions of whites who over countless decades fled the influx of underclass blacks hallucinating or being fooled by racial demagogues? If such population movement worked as advertised, why must Washington impose it by court decrees, fines for non-compliance and other cram-down measures? How can advocates of this alleged panacea explain why busing thousands of academically troubled poor black students to top-flight “white” schools has failed? Is leafy small town America the magic cure for drug addiction and illegitimacy? Recall Ferguson, MO: put troubled black residents of St. Louis into a nice white suburb, and you create a new St. Louis slum.
Now for the near-smoking gun proofs that this enterprise smells of contempt for whites. First, all this draconian coercion is outside federal law regulating discrimination in housing. Legal penalties for housing discrimination have nothing to do with coerced integration and to obscure the non-legal gun-to-the-head power, the consent of whites is officially deemed “voluntary.” No doubt, the hapless whites of Baltimore Country just realize that resistance is futile; you will be absorbed by the federal colossus.
Second, prudence would suggest a modicum of cost/benefit analysis of this enterprise, and this scrutiny is totally absent (see here for a sampling of research on the alleged advantage of such re-locations). Only the supposed benefits for blacks inform calculations, for example, better schools, and experience suggests that these are likely to be transitory. Nor is there any mention of how the new arrivals will find employment in suburban areas with limited public transportation.
Total silence surrounds the inevitable costs for whites: loss of home equity, increased school violence, more crime, and the shredded social cohesion associated with imposed racial diversity and, in the long run, the costs of moving elsewhere. Indeed, HUD is already anticipating white flight and is trying to impose rules that would forbid real estate agents from openly discussing the negative consequences forthcoming racial shift.
Of the utmost importance for this near smoking gun evidence, these benefits provided to blacks need not come at the expense of whites. The same millions could have been spent in the city of Baltimore building nice homes for blacks adjacent to their old residences and if suburban whites were guilty of racial discrimination, just fine them versus (non-legally) imposing unwanted integration. Moreover, inner-city construction could have utilized nearby unemployed African American Baltimore residents who would, as an extra dividend, gain some job training (the model is Habitat for Humanity). Everything would be win/win politics. But, this sensible win-win solution fails to harm whites and so it is politically off limits.
Beyond these immediate problems inflicted on whites will be, in all likelihood, the political costs of changing these once relatively racially homogeneous suburbs. Ferguson, MO is the future: more communal racial strife, yet more whites will flee, civil rights groups demanding more “inclusionary” policies, and, eventually, Department of Justice intervention to remedy alleged race-related injustices -- a “too white” police department, too few black office holders or an excessive expulsion rates of black students, to name but a few possibilities.
One can only wonder why officials cannot foresee this racial-train-wreck-in-the-making. This is punitive policy-making that can only reflect the presence of deeply rooted racial animosities. Helping poor African Americans find decent housing is just the polite cover story. At least some government officials in the Obama administration want to punish suburban whites and given that Uncle Sam will foot the bills, inflicting this damage is irresistible.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4)
| Bernie Sanders Update - Delayed response with terrible reply |
| By Dr. Aaron Lerner 1. As noted in the comment yesterday, Donald Trump's quick handling of his abortion screw-up gives an indication of how quickly politicians in the Twitter/Facebook/etc. age do damage control when they want to. Sanders screwed up and his campaign only saw fit to put out a statement after his screw-up offended so many people that even the ADL got around to getting in on the act (and this well after reporters had repeatedly contacted Bernie Sander's team about the screw-up). The fact that it took so long for Sanders to paper-over his screw-up still speaks volumes. For the Sander press release: https://berniesanders.com/press-release/sanders-statement-israel-gaza-conflict/ 2. Sanders told the Daily News that there were "10,000 innocent people" killed. His correction yesterday " Understanding that his recollection was about the total number of casualties, not the death toll, the senator immediately accepted that correction and the discussion moved on to other topics." But the NUMBER isn't the only problem. One might even say it’s a TECHNICAL problem as he now explains he didn't mean DEAD he meant CASUALTIES. That's not the problem. The problem is that when he talked about Palestinians - he termed them INNOCENT. And now he turns around and explains that he was referring to the TOTAL figures. Simply put, in the world of Bernie Sanders (whose proof that he is a friend of Israel is that he once spent time on a kibbutz and has family in Israel rather than his voting record) ANY Gazan killed or wounded in the course of a war is INNOCENT. According to Bernie Sanders Israel should not kill ANYONE!! Here's what he told the Daily News: Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it's drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them. 4a) U.S. Scrambles to Repair Damaged Saudi Ties
By Josh Rogin
Bloomberg View
U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will soon head to Saudi Arabia to discuss ways to increase cooperation in the war against the Islamic State. But there’s little indication he will be able to restore a vital relationship that's become riven with distrust in the last year, which would require him to reassure the Saudis on the very nature of the U.S. commitment to the kingdom and the region.
Carter is slated to meet on April 20 in Riyadh with Mohammed Bin Salman al Saud, the 30-year-old deputy crown prince and defense minister who is widely believed to be in contention to succeed his father, King Salman. Carter’s visit will come one day ahead of President Barack Obama’s stop there for a leaders’ summit between the U.S. and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a follow-on to their meeting at Camp David last May.
At a speech at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Tuesday, Carter said he wanted to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. “We’ve got to get these guys beaten and as soon as possible,” he said. “We’re looking for opportunities to do more.”
This will be the fifth time Carter has met with Prince Mohammed since the latter became defense minister last year. But despite the number of personal interactions, according to U.S. officials and experts, the U.S.-Saudi relationship at the highest levels hasn’t improved since the Camp David summit, when the Saudi leaders no-so-privately expressed displeasure with the nuclear deal Western countries were striking with Iran.
Many of the arms deals that the U.S. promised the Gulf states at Camp David have been held up, such as sales of F-15 fighters to Qatar and F-18 fighters to Kuwait. With Saudi Arabia, differences over the way forward in Syria have become even starker and the personal relationships seem cooler than ever.
Two U.S. officials told me that after Carter and Prince Mohammed met in February on the sidelines of a counter terrorism meeting Brussels, the prince requested a follow-up conversation on Syria, but couldn’t get Carter on the phone. Carter finally called his Saudi counterpart six weeks later, in what these officials viewed as an unreasonably delayed response.
The Saudi government, through a representative, declined to comment. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told me that Carter and Prince Mohammed “meet and speak at regular intervals, and that matches the closeness of the U.S.-Saudi defense relationship."
If the Saudi government saw the lack of response from Carter as an insult, it was only one in a string of perceived slights. In a recent interview with the Atlantic, President Obama said that Saudi Arabia and Iran “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood” and explained that if the U.S. sided with Saudi Arabia over Iran in every dispute, it would inevitably lead to American military involvement in the Middle East.
Obama’s dim view of the Saudi leadership goes back to at least 2002, when he called Riyadh America’s “so-called” allies, and he has repeatedly criticized the Saudi leadership for a lack of progress on human rights and the treatment of women. But Obama’s most recent comments struck a particular nerve because they seemed to show waning U.S. support for the Saudi effort to curb Iran’s regional influence, which the kingdom regards as its number one threat.
“Obama’s comments on sharing the neighborhood are interpreted very clearly in Saudi Arabia as Iranian power has to increase and Saudi power has to diminish,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at CSIS. “For the Saudis, they see that as they have to continue fighting Iran, just from a weaker position.”
On the surface, Carter's and Obama’s meetings in Riyadh will be about how to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State, primarily in Syria. But the two allies have a fundamental disagreement over the smartest approach. The U.S. government is considering ramping up airstrikes against the jihadists, but it still committed to a larger cease-fire between the Bashar al-Assad regime and the Syrian rebels, even though that deal shows signs of crumbling.
Saudi officials have been telling their U.S. counterparts for months that they want to increase the amount and quality of arms being provided to Syrian rebels, especially in the north near Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The Saudis have even proposed giving rebel groups shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, an idea the White House has repeatedly rejected.
Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me that Saudi distrust of the Obama administration’s Syria policy dates back to 2013, when Obama failed to enforce his “red line” over Assad’s use of chemical weapons. This has grown, he said, into an overall Saudi concern that the U.S. is lessening its commitment to helping Saudi Arabia push back against Iran. Henderson noted that Saudi Arabia declined to send any senior officials to Obama’s final Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last week, another signal of Riyadh's displeasure with the current administration.
“MBS, as far as one can make out, is a supporter of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, but he regards that Washington has failed to live up to what the Saudis expect of the U.S. for years,” he said, referring to the deputy crown prince by his initials. “Both sides are trying to repair the relationship but there are all sorts of indications the split is as wide as ever.”
The U.S.-Saudi relationship is complex, and there’s still robust cooperation on several levels, including in Yemen. But if Carter is serious about improving ties, he should bring more to Riyadh than arms deals; he must square the U.S. and Saudi visions for the region going forward.
According to Israel Radio report, the terrorist organization invests hundreds of thousands of dollars each month in the subterranean digging activities
Hamas employs more than 1,000 operatives to excavate underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported Thursday.
According to the report, the terrorist organization invests hundreds of thousands of dollars each month in the digging activities, paying each operative engaged in the process some 300 to 400 dollars a month.
Hamas also heavily invests in smuggling building materials, including raw materials and excavation machinery from Egypt and Israel.
To prepare for a possible future incursion with Israel, the Palestinian terrorist organization's elite 'Nukhbah' unit carries out drills practicing different scenarios simulating offenses in the tunnels near the border fence with Israel. Several of the members of the unit have been killed in recent months in tunnel collapses in the coastal Palestinian enclave, according to the Israel Radio report.
The report cited Israeli officials as saying that the funds Hamas uses to invest in rebuilding its network of underground passageways could instead be used to construct full neighborhoods in the Strip.
Earlier this week, Israel temporarily suspended the delivery of cement to Gaza’s private sector after it discovered that Hamas was siphoning the material, which is intended to rebuild destroyed houses.
The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) monitors the flow of cement into Gaza to ensure that Hamas has not used it to construct tunnels to attack Israel.
On Friday, COGAT posted on its Arabic Facebook page that it suspended the transfer of cement to Gaza because some deliveries had been diverted by Imad Elbaz, the deputy director-general for Hamas’s economics office.
The Hamas deputy political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, vowed in February that his group will never stop digging tunnels and upgrading rockets in preparation for any possible confrontation with Israel.
During the Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the IDF said it had destroyed all the known terror and infiltration tunnels in Hamas's vast subterranean network .
In March, The Jerusalem Post learned from Palestinian sources that some of the terror operatives digging the tunnels believed Israel was involved in at least some of the various recent tunnel collapses that claimed the lives of several Hamas men.
Official reports from Gaza described the various collapses in recent months as “work accidents” or being caused by flooding from heavy rains; however there are many who believe Israel is responsible.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.
By Khaled Abu Toameh
Hamas has spent years poisoning the hearts and minds of Palestinian children. The Islamist movement is now trying a new brainwashing tactic: exorcism.
The practice, which aims to cast out “demons” that might have wormed their way into the children's souls, has shocked many Palestinians.
This newest Hamas-perpetrated child abuse was exposed in a video that was leaked to Palestinian social media. The cruelty of the behavior has caused an uproar among Palestinians.
The video shows hysterical children in the company of exorcising preachers belonging to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip. This humiliating and invasive rite is being practiced at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City.
Three boys cry as they undergo an exorcism ritual at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City, performed by preachers belonging to the Hamas-controlled Wakf (Islamic trust) Ministry.
The preachers belong to a group called The Ship of Missionary Salvation. They enter schools in the Gaza Strip and ensure, through the exorcism rite, that the children are repentant and faithful to Islam.
The group is managed by the Wakf Ministry's General Administration for Preaching and Guidance.
Thriller movies come to mind as the video unfolds, shedding light on the nature of religious indoctrination performed by Hamas on schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip.
One of the Hamas preachers is heard in the video declaring that, “We did not come to enact a theater scene, but to expel the devil from the hearts and minds and enter the satisfaction of Allah into hearts.”
The video features terrified teenagers kneeling in the school yard, while others are crying out loudly. At the same time, the Hamas preachers hold microphones and shout the Islamic battle cry, “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is Great!”].”
The Hamas abuse of schoolchildren is far from new, and far from a surprise to those who have long been following the Islamist movement in Gaza. These are the children who are later recruited as “warriors” in the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the “infidels.”
Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has been using children as human shields and “soldiers” in the fight against Israel. Children dressed in military uniforms and brandishing automatic rifles and knives have become an integral part of Hamas's military parades and rallies.
Caught on camera, Palestinian children are taught to hate those who are perceived as enemies of Islam. This is how new generations of Palestinians are raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and jihadists.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi expressed revulsion over the video, noting that the preachers' sermons were full of intimidation and horror. This behavior, Ashrawi, stated, demonstrates the “reactionary nature” of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, which would have a negative impact on the development of society and the values of Palestinians. Ashrawi also denounced the practice as a blatant violation of conventions protecting children rights.
Even the Marxist terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has come out against the video. The group voiced outrage at the “inhumane practices” against the children and called for an immediate inquiry into this form of mental torture and degradation. The group also warned against brainwashing the children and indoctrinating them through religious bigotry.
The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders' brainwashing and abuse of their own children.
It also captures the march of Palestinian society towards endorsing the tactics and ideology of radical Islam and groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
5)
No comments:
Post a Comment