;
Ban all vehicles and take away everyone's license
to drive.. That way no one can vote either.
====
After the work place incident in Nice, Obama has another wedge issue. He can call for the banning of all vehicles and he can also take away everyone's driver's license and there would be four instant benefits, as follows:
1) Eliminates traffic, traffic accidents and no more highway injuries.
2) It eliminates one more method Islamist terrorists use as a weapon of death.
3) There would be no need to issue driver's licenses and thus no personal identification available and Obama could flood the polls with more undocumented and illegal voters.
4) Finally, the police would not be able to get to crime scenes rapidly so there would be less racial attacks.
We have been at war with a radical Islamist Ideology for many years and the only ones who do not recognize this fact are the top people running our nation starting with Obama, and the women he has surrounded himself with like Valerie Jarrett etc. Why? Because they are politically correct, have Muslim backgrounds and cannot bring themselves to attack and/or identify their own.
Many NATO nations have been attacked and NATO sits dumbfounded. NATO is about as feckless as peaceful cowering Muslims. The West has no resolve, no strategy no guts! (See 1 below.)
ISIS turns to be executing its global reach as it loses territory. (See 1a below.)
===
We have finally solved the problem of Americans of faith. (See 2 below.)
===
Obama keeps looking the other way regarding Iran. (See 3 and 3a below.)
===
Justice Ginsburg acknowledges she was wrong but refuses to resign. She will remain an ineffective Jurist from this point forward because she will have to recuse herself from many opinions and hearings of cases unless she has lost all sense of ethics. (See 4 below.)
===
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Where Are the Peaceful Muslims?
Once again, Islamic terrorists attack yet another Western city. This time in France.
A truck crashed into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day in the city of Nice on July 14, 2016. In my opinion, Islam is the problem, because there are Muslims who take its scripture as gospel and carry out its divisive and deadly provisions.
The barbarity and variety of actions of Islamic extremists are seen daily around the globe, committed under the banner of Islam, and have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as part and parcel of a troubled humanity. From time to time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit...and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.
The Islamic State – also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh, has taken credit for a number of unconscionable, brutal attacks. “ISIS has actually killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” noted Democracy Now via Amy Goodman after the Paris attacks. Muslims are the victims of “Between 82 and 97% of Terrorism-Related Fatalities,” according to the U.S. government.
Based on the above premises, a Muslim has a greater chance to become prey of ISIS than to join it, and the huge majority of the group’s victims are fellow members of the belief. This is due to the political motivations behind ISIS rather than religious ones, where it’s receiving arms and funding from nations like Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikhdom. Can the incomparably larger number of Muslims in the world who are so rightly terrified today come together with their own vision – which includes denouncing the extremists? I don’t know.
A common and repeated mantra among experts is that Muslims haven’t bluntly condemned the extremism committed in Islam’s name. How many times we have heard “Where are the moderate and peaceful Muslim voices in condemnation?” “Why aren’t Muslims speaking up against extremists like ISIS?”
If Muslims want to live in peace and harmony with the infidels, they must work together and respect our laws. Let us not forget that religious high authorities play a critical role in steering the masses toward or away from hate. Fatwas – religious decrees – by Islamic muftis and ayatollahs carry considerable weight with their respective followers. Sadly, most decrees and adjudications of these high Islamic authorities are exclusionary and even hostile toward the out-groups.
People are familiar with Islam's classification of the world into the Dar-ul-Solh, the house of peace, meaning the house of Islam, and the Dar-ul-Harb, the house of war, meaning the house of non-Islam. Ironically, the self-proclaimed house of peace, from its early years, has waged war against the house of war.
Also there is a little-known third "house" according to Islam: Dar-ul-Aman, the non-Islam house of safety where Muslims find refuge. We already know which of the three houses America is to al-Qaeda, the Iranian mullahs, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their ilk.
We are posing this question to rank-and-file Muslims, particularly to the arrivals in recent years who are finding refuge in the non-Islamic world, including the United States of America:
Peaceful Muslims: Which house is America, or any Western country, to you?
America and other welcoming and generous non-Islam nations in the Dar-ul-Aman have given you refuge with opportunities for a decent life denied to you in your own Dar-ul-Solh by the ruthless and deceptive holy men of Allah who rule it.
Peaceful Muslims, reciprocity is a high human virtue. The kind people of Dar-ul-Aman deserve your in-kind response. You physically left the Dar-ul-Solh because it was and is an abject failure in delivering its promises about a good life in this world. What guarantee is there that Islam's "pie-in-the-sky" promises about the next world – a world of virgins for the faithful male with rivers of milk and honey to energize him – are any more reliable?
What about Muslim women? Are they going to be compensated for their enslavement by the men of Allah? Do women, even in Allah's paradise, remain in perpetuity "objects" of entertainment for men?
Now that you have seen for yourself the misery of the Islamic system and sought a better life in the Dar-ul-
Aman of the "infidels," you need to take other steps. Bid farewell to the Islamic mindset, abandon Ummehism, and enlist yourself in the ranks of democratic and tolerant people. Once freed from the oppressive and discriminating yoke of fundamentalist Islam, you can lend a hand to the protection and nurturance of democracy – a system of people's rule with a proven record of being the best instrument for the realization of humanity's aspirations.
The democratic rule of Dar-ul-Aman is not a void system invented by the infidels, as your devious, self-serving theocrat leaders claim. Democracy is the best product of humanity's caring and decent people: the rule of the people, by the people, for the people.
Democracy, by its accommodating and benign nature, is susceptible to corruption and even destruction by forces from within and from without. With this realization in mind, the Founding Fathers of the United States enshrined the Constitution to safeguard and protect the rule of the people.
Peaceful Muslims: Being born human comes with a precious gift: the gift to think and decide for yourself. Islam has robbed you of this gift from birth. Parents, aided by relatives and brainwashed by slaveholder imams and mullahs, colluded and did the thinking for you when you were still in no position to exercise your right. They branded you as Muslim, simply because you were born in a Muslim family. Cattle are branded, not humans. Cattle are owned by others. Humans are not. Having branded you "Muslim," those who robbed you of your gift of self-determination dared you to leave their bondage under the threat of death as an apostate.
Peaceful Muslims: You have been intelligent enough to forsake failed Islamic lands for a better life elsewhere. Dar-ul-Aman has given refuge. Now that you are in a free society, you want to reclaim your stolen gift of liberty and freedom of choice. You want to shatter the shackles of Islam that have chained you from birth. You want to take your place in the ranks of the supporters and promoters of liberty that democracy provides and Islam destroys.
Peaceful Muslims: You know full well that it is Islam's dysfunctional doctrine with its stone-age rule of sharia that is responsible for the abominable conditions of Islamic countries.
Contrary to the preachers of hate – the Islamic clergy of vested interests – the "infidels" are not your enemies. They demonstrate their goodwill by giving you refuge. Your deadly enemy is ISIS and the interpretation of the doctrine of Islam that keeps you captive even in freedom.
Given that the formerly vast and largely segregated planet Earth has shrunk into a "global village," the disparate peoples isolated from one another for millennia are now a village community. The thrown together diverse people are in urgent need of adopting a social compact that would allow individuals as well as groups maximum latitude of faith, coupled with responsibility, and free of any practices that infringe on the rights of others or demonize them.
Regrettably, Islam as too often practiced is incompatible with such a harmonious compact. As an article of faith, Islam considers all non-Muslims, even the so-called people of the book, as infidels – people who are to be subjugated or cleansed from Allah's earth.
Peaceful Muslim: You have taken a great step by coming to the Dar-ul-Aman in search of self-betterment. Now you need to take the next step of purging your mind of the psychosocial virus of fundamentalist Islam you contracted unwillingly. Do all you can to give your children their gift of humanity by not doing to them what your parents did to you, so that they can, unencumbered by the dogma of hate, become emancipated human beings.
America or any Western country is not perfect. No human enterprise ever is. Yet these Western countries are the closest countries to a true Dar-ul Aman in the broadest sense. And it is the "infidels," overwhelmingly who make up the Western world. While Western countries open their doors to the poor, the hungry and the oppressed of the world, they also open their hearts to the less fortunate people of various lands by their unsurpassed generosity.
These Western "refuges" are indeed the harbinger of the not too far away world of the future – a future where liberty rules supreme and fascism of all forms, including Islamofascism, will be remembered as horrific impediments to humanity's ever forward march toward the goal of making this presently darksome village earth a reflection of heaven.
1a) Islamic State Shifts Strategy
The latest wave of bombings by Islamic State confirm a pattern long observed. As it continues to lose ground in its heartland and its "provinces," so the organization turns back to an intensified focus on international terrorism. This is in line with previous experience of international Salafi-jihadi organizations.
1a) Islamic State Shifts Strategy
by Jonathan Spyer
The latest wave of bombings by Islamic State confirm a pattern long observed. As it continues to lose ground in its heartland and its "provinces," so the organization turns back to an intensified focus on international terrorism. This is in line with previous experience of international Salafi-jihadi organizations.
Two points need to be noted. First, considerable past experience shows that the destruction of the physical holdings of Salafi-jihadi groups does not mean their eclipse. Second, and more importantly, Salafi-jihadi networks are today part of a broader process – the revival and flourishing of political Islam. To try to understand them otherwise is to misunderstand them. The patterns of survival of earlier networks confirm this.
That the Islamic State "caliphate" is facing eclipse is no longer under serious dispute. It has lost around 47 percent of its territory in Iraq, according to a June 27 statement by Brett McGurk, the US administration's point man in the fight against Islamic State. The latest loss is the city of Falluja.
The destruction of the physical holdings of Salafi-jihadi groups doesn't mean their eclipse.
|
In Syria, Islamic State is also contracting, though at a slower rate. Twenty percent of its territory is gone. The US- supported Syrian Democratic Forces is surrounding the town of Manbij close to the Syrian-Turkish border. Its progress has now slowed in the face of two determined Islamic State counterattacks this week, but the siege on the town has not been
broken.
broken.
In Libya, meanwhile, forces loyal to the UN-appointed Government of National Accord have severely reduced the Islamic State enclave around the city of Sirte. Government forces are now inside Sirte itself, with Islamic State fighters remaining in just three parts of the city.
Western air power and special forces are playing a major, if mainly unannounced, role in the advances against Islamic State in all three countries.
But in the same period, as pretensions to statehood recede, Islamic State is proving its tenacity in a series of terrorist attacks of unprecedented range and ferocity, away from the beleaguered front lines of its territorial holdings.
Western air power and special forces are playing a major role in recent advances against Islamic State.
|
Most notably, the massive terrorist strike on a Shi'a area of Baghdad, in which 220 people died, represents a clear message that Islamic State is far from neutralized. The slaughter of 22 people in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the terrorist attack on Ataturk Airport in Istanbul are similar announcements of the movement's continued vigor.
Add to the roster of Islamic State Ramadan activities the series of attacks in Saudi Arabia – on a US government facility in Jeddah, a Shi'a mosque and a holy site in Medina – and the recent suicide bombings in Aden in which 40 people were killed and for which Islamic State took responsibility.
Finally, the attacks at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and in the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv appear to have been perpetrated by individuals supportive of Islamic State, though not directly controlled and activated by the movement.
Of course, the wave of attacks in Ramadan reflect a longer trend. Islamic State has effectively been in retreat since its moment of highest expansion in late 2014. What has happened in recent weeks is that the pace of retreat has increased.
We have been here before. The global network of al-Qaida remains in existence and is flourishing. It never proclaimed itself as a caliphate or even as a state. But it did have significant territorial holdings in the pre-2001 period. The expulsion of the group from Sudan and the US invasion of Afghanistan ended these. They did not end al-Qaida.
The network survived, adapted and continued. Today, it remains as important a player as Islamic State in the politics of the Arab world. Its Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, is arguably the most effective and sophisticated Salafi-jihadi formation in existence today. Its Yemeni franchise, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, outperforms Islamic State in that area and prevents its gaining a foothold.
Salafi-jihadists have a tendency to overreach and pick fights with enemies too large for them.
|
So any assumption that the physical destruction of Islamic State as a state-type entity will mean the eclipse of the organization should be dismissed. Salafi-jihadi networks have a tendency to overreach themselves and pick fights with enemies too large for them (see September 11, 2001). But the evidence suggests that the reaction this produces leads not to the destruction of the network but to its adaptation to new circumstances and its continuation.
This brings us to the second point.
It is "politically correct" but factually unsustainable to view the networks of Salafi-jihadi Islamism as belonging to a category separate and sealed off from other elements and trends in political Islam. Islamic State grabs the headlines for obvious reasons, but if we broaden the scope of vision a moment, we will discern Salafi-jihadi movements ideologically identical to Islamic State but tactically different from them, movements that enjoy close relations of cooperation with powerful regional states.
Just west of Islamic State's domain in Raqqa province in Syria, the most powerful political-military grouping is Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest). This alliance brings together Jabhat al-Nusra and another al-Qaida offshoot, Ahrar al-Sham. The latter is arguably the most powerful rebel formation in Syria today.
These groupings do not differ in any substantial way from Islamic State in their end goal. And in the case of Nusra, the commitment to and support for international terrorism is identical. Yet Jaish al-Fatah is the recipient of massive aid from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. As a result, far away from the fantasy world of the Geneva talks, Jaish al-Fatah controls a large swathe of northwest Syria. It is a serious player.
The unseen agencies that work for President Erdogan and King Salman (and Sheikh Tamim of Qatar, though the Qataris matter less these days) handle their countries' relations with it.
In this area, in turn, Jaish al-Fatah is doing battle with a conglomeration of Shi'a Islamist militias ostensibly representing the Assad regime. The "regime forces" today are themselves better understood as representing a rival, Shi'a Islamist international network, centered on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
So the turning back of Islamic State, and its consequent morphing into an international terrorist group, should not be confused with a major strategic achievement. Islamic State will remain to murder people and crowd the headlines.
More seriously, the energies of political Islam, which have gripped and shaken the life of the Middle East to its very foundations, remain far from spent. In their many manifestations, they are closer to the centers of "legitimate" power today than at any time in the past.
Jonathan Spyer is director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) The non-religious are now the US's largest religious voting block
By Christopher Ingraham
More American voters than ever say they are not religious, making the religiously unaffiliated the nation's biggest voting bloc by faith for the first time in a presidential election year. This marks a dramatic shift from just eight years ago, when the non-religious were roundly outnumbered by Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and white evangelical Protestants.
These numbers come from a new Pew Research Center survey, which finds that "religious 'nones,' who have been growing rapidly as a share of the U.S. population, now constitute one-fifth of all registered voters and more than a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters." That represents a 50 percent increase in the proportion of non-religious voters compared to eight years ago, when they made up just 14 percent of the overall electorate.
"In 2008, religious 'nones' were outnumbered or at parity with white mainline Protestants and white Catholics," the survey's lead researcher, Greg Smith, said in an interview. "Today, 'nones' outnumber both of those groups."
The growth of the non-religious -- about 54 percent of whom are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared to 23 percent at least leaning Republican -- could provide a political counterweight to white evangelical Protestants, a historically powerful voting bloc for Republicans. In 2016, 35 percent of Republican voters identify as white evangelicals, while 28 percent of Democratic voters say they have no religion at all.
But while the religiously unaffiliated are making up a larger share of American voters, that doesn't necessarily mean that that will translate into actual votes. Exit polls of people who actually cast votes -- as opposed to pre-election polls of registered voters -- have traditionally shown that the unaffiliated underperform at the ballot box relative to their raw numbers.
For instance, in the 2012 election, the unaffiliated made up 18 percent of registered voters in pre-election polls, but only 12 percent of the people who actually voted, as measured in post-election exit polls. Some of this difference may be due to the different ways the two polls ask religious affiliation questions, but Pew's researchers say that the underperformance of the unreligious is a very real phenomenon.
"While the group is growing rapidly in the general public, its growth has been much less dramatic in the electorate," Pew's Greg Smith said. "It could be the 'nones' are not connected, almost by definition, to religious institutions which can play an important role in spurring turnout and interest in politics."
Smith also points out that the unaffiliated tend to be younger than the religious, and that young people tend to vote less than older people.
Still, the Pew study finds other evidence that religion may be becoming a less potent force at the ballot box. In 2008, for instance, 72 percent of voters said it was important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. That number is down to 62 percent today.
Similarly, Americans see religious institutions as playing a smaller role in the public sphere. In 2008, 75 percent said that churches and other houses of worship contributed a great deal to solving social problems. Today, that number has fallen to 58 percent.
3) On One-Year Anniversary of JCPOA: Iranian President Threatens to Withdraw From Nuclear Deal if US Doesn’t Live Up to Commitments
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (left) and President Hassan Rouhani. Photo: Wikipedia.
Iran threatened to withdraw from the nuclear deal it signed last July with world powers, the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Thursday, on the one-year anniversary of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
According to the report, during a ministerial meeting on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that if the United States doesn’t live up to its commitments in the JCPOA, Tehran would consider its conditions void. He specified that Iran was capable of quickly resuming the level of uranium enrichment it was supposed to cut as part of the deal, in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.
As Asharq Al-Awsat reported, under the terms of the JCPOA, which went into effect in January this year, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium; cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium; and reduce the number of its centrifuges for 13 years.
However, also in January, Iran unveiled a set of centrifuges, which, it claimed, are 15 times more powerful than the ones already in its possession. And on Wednesday, as Rouhani was addressing his government, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) announced that the country’s experts are now in the advanced stages of testing these centrifuges.
As The Algemeiner reported, AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi – like Rouhani – underscored Iran’s ability to resume nuclear activity curbed by the JCPOA, signed with China, France, Russia, the UK, the US and Germany, the powers known as the P5+1.
Kamalvandi said, “They have seen how smart our scientists are and we are not therefore concerned about returning to the past conditions and capacities and we are able to develop even more than the past.”
These verbal threats come after months of muscle-flexing from Tehran, in the form of ballistic missile-testing, which it claims, does not constitute a violation of the JCPOA.
Speaking to The Algemeiner last month, a senior official at a Washington, DC-based organization active in the Iran deal debate said the “administration’s earlier dishonesty is being exposed and now they are scrambling to cover it up, and that’s creating its own problems. The Obama administration misled the American people, journalists and lawmakers about the extent of American concessions and about what the Iranians were obligated to do as part of the deal. They overplayed Iranian concessions and underplayed American ones. The administration clearly hoped the Iranians would play along for at least a year or two without pushing the envelope and exposing their dishonesty. However, the Iranians refused to play along because they are actually hardliners who want to undermine American interests.”
Last week, as The Algemeiner reported, the annual findings released by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) revealed that Tehran has been attempting to acquire illicit materials in Germany, “especially goods that can be used in the field of nuclear technology.”
The BfV also pointed to “a further increase in the already considerable procurement efforts in connection with Iran’s ambitious missile technology program which could, among other things, potentially serve to deliver nuclear weapons. Against this backdrop it is safe to expect that Iran will continue its sensitive procurement activities in Germany using clandestine methods to achieve its objectives.”
Earlier this month, during his weekly Friday prayers in Tehran, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp Brigadier General Hossein Salami announced that 100,000 “destructive long-range missiles” in the hands of Tehran’s Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah are at the ready to wipe Israel off the map. He made this declaration on July 1, as mass rallies were held across Iran to mark International Quds Day, with people carrying placards and chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” while burning American and Israeli flags.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported, the predominantly Republican US House of Representatives passed legislation to block the purchase of “heavy water” – a non-radioactive byproduct of nuclear energy and weapons production — from Iran.
According to the report, the White House threatened to veto the bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment