Reader’s Links, December 22, 2017

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Thank you all for those that take the effort to assist this site in keeping the public informed. Below, typically people can find the latest enemy propaganda, news items of related materials from multiple countries and languages, op-eds from many excellent sites who write on our topics, geopolitics and immigration issues and so on.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

105 Replies to “Reader’s Links, December 22, 2017”

  1. Robert Spencer on the ‘Islamophobia’ Lie
    Freedom fighter discusses the dangerous smear attacks on the foes of jihadi terror at Restoration Weekend.
    December 22, 2017
    Frontpagemag.com

  2. The US Should Pull Out of the UN
    December 22, 2017
    Daniel Greenfield

    President Trump and Ambassador Haley deserve lots of credit for fighting the good fight in the UN. But as this latest vote showed, it’s a dead end. The UN is dominated by a corrupt, left-wing bureaucracy. And by bloc votes of Islamic countries and third world dictatorships whom Western countries strive to appease in a pointless bid for influence. Because we fund them.

    The UN was supposed to be a defense against totalitarian movements. Instead it quickly came to be dominated by them.

    There’s no changing that. Not without changing the dysfunctional relationship between Islam and the rest of the world, and between third world tyrannies and the West. The only sensible thing to do is leave.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/268812/us-should-pull-out-un-daniel-greenfield

  3. 3rd US Imam Preaches Mass Murder of Jews
    December 22, 2017
    Daniel Greenfield

    He’s not actually the third. But this is the third major scandal of this sort this year. And that was only because Memri has been highlighting and translating some of these mosque videos. This is only a fraction of what’s out there.

    In his Friday, December 8, 2017 sermon titled “Our Duties Towards Al-Quds [Jerusalem]” at the Tajweed Institute’s Houston, Texas branch, the institute’s imam and founder, Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan, speaking in a combination of Arabic and English, referenced the widely quoted Hadith stating that on Judgment Day, the Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them, saying:

    “My brothers, the Prophet Muhammad brought the good tidings, when he said: ‘Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Muslims will kill the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, [which] will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him… This is the promise of Allah.” He added: “The hour [i.e. Judgment Day) will not start until Muslims fight the Jews there, in Palestine.”

    According to its Facebook page and its website, the Tajweed Institute, which Sheikh Al-Rousan established in Florida in 2013, with its Houston branch opening in mid-2017, is “a non-profit, 501(c)(3), institute that strives to teach and spread the authentic knowledge of the Glorious Quran. Our goal is to spread the skills of Tajweed [correct recitation of the Koran]to all Muslims, young and old, so they can carry on this knowledge to future generations.?”

    …and not misunderstand Islam.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/268811/3rd-us-imam-preaches-mass-murder-jews-daniel-greenfield

  4. ISRAEL’S LEARNING DISABLED RIGHT
    Why abandoning Netanyahu will not end well for the Israeli Right.
    December 22, 2017
    Caroline Glick

    It is an iron rule of Israeli politics regularly disregarded by the political Right that left-wing parties govern from the Left, not the Right; center-left parties govern from the Left, not from the Center.

    Despite the axiomatic nature of this rule, time after time, politicians and public figures on the Right have ignored it. Periodically, they make light of the distinction between governments run by their political camp and governments run by their leftist opponents.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268805/israels-learning-disabled-right-caroline-glick

  5. Imran Awan’s Expanding Axis of Intrigue
    Iran-backed Hezbollah laundered money through Awan family used-car lot.
    December 22, 2017
    Lloyd Billingsley

    IT man Imran Awan has a problem with women but Democrats have failed to place the Pakistani-born Muslim on their honor roll of abusers with Al Franken and John Conyers. When Awan attempted to flee the country in July, the feds busted him on bank fraud charges. Andrew McCarthy warned it was more likely a serious national security case, and it turns out he was right.

    As the intrepid Luke Rosiak notes in the Daily Caller, Imran’s brother Abid ran a used-car lot in Falls Church, Virginia, called Cars International A. Trouble was, the “CIA” dealership had no inventory and the sales people were fakes. As Rosiak learned, the Awan dealership “took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive” whose financial books were “indecipherable.” And as the DEA was aware, “the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism.” On the other hand, the DEA had trouble going after the terrorists.

    As Josh Meyer reported in Politico, “In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.”

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268799/imran-awans-expanding-axis-intrigue-lloyd-billingsley

  6. Trump Links Immigration Law Enforcement To National Security
    America’s borders are its first and last line of defense.
    December 22, 2017
    Michael Cutler

    On December 18, 2017 two important documents were published that illustrate that President Trump is determined to keep his campaign promises and protect America and Americans.

    First of all, on that day the official White House website posted a document that laid out President Trump’s national security strategy to “advance America’s interests.” His national security strategy includes border security and meaningful enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws from within the interior of the United States. Here is the excerpt from that document:

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268801/trump-links-immigration-law-enforcement-national-michael-cutler

  7. Dems Want Hillary to Help Them Lose in 2018
    December 22, 2017
    Daniel Greenfield

    Just as Hillary’s numbers have hit a new low, some Dems want her to come out and campaign for them. What’s the worst that could happen?

    Hillary Clinton has all but avoided appearing at campaign events since her stunning 2016 loss, but some Democrats believe she would be a welcome voice in the 2018 midterms.

    Despite polling that shows Clinton with low favorability ratings, they say the former secretary of State could help Democratic candidates in congressional districts she won last year.

    It’s not as if Hillary Clinton expanded the electoral map. Instead the opposite happened.

    But win or lose, it’s a silly idea. Hillary Clinton didn’t win districts on personal charisma. Her approval ratings have always been weak. The only thing she could bring with her are donors. And a lot of those donors were burned by her twice.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/268810/dems-want-hillary-help-them-lose-2018-daniel-greenfield

    • I want to think about the article but my first reaction is to say, Kick their a$$ don’t pi$$ on them kick their a$$. We know Kim is dangerous and making limited strikes against him is the surest way to touch off a war that will end up evolving into a war with China.

      Let me think about the article and get back with you after that.

      • We know Kim is dangerous and making limited strikes against him is the surest way to touch off a war that will end up evolving into a war with China.

        That is exactly what I thought.
        I think it’s clear that “sending a message” with limited intervention doesn’t work. Either go big or go home because pin pricks don’t work.

        • I took a lot more words to say the same thing. Among other things (as I said below) a limited strike would be taken as a sign of weakness. A limited strike would be another way of kicking the can down the road.

        • Watch the video of Trump at the UN talking about Korea and little rocketman, he says that if we are forced to use military force we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. He gets it and so do enough of his military leaders to ensure that we do change the paradigm about how to use military force in this nuclear armed world.

    • First let us go back in time to General MacArthur, like him or hate him if you are honest he was a genius who was an expert on war and international relations. His statement that, In war there is no substitute for victory. Is as true now as it was when he first said it.

      Next let us move forward to earlier this year when Victor Davis Hanson pointed out that In the 50s we (the US and our allies) had defeated North Korea and Red China on the battlefield and should have gone on to liberate both North Korea and China. The reason we didn’t do this is that Truman lost his nerve.

      Most of our problems after the Korean War were caused by that failure to win the war in Asia. Truman searched for a substitute for victory and failed to find one, he did manage to throw away our victory and stalled until China and North Korea were once again capable of putting up massive resistance.

      These historical facts must be remembered as we look at the article and what we are going to do about North Korea.

      Allison and others warn that action against North Korea might cause the United States and China to slip into Thucydides’ trap: the idea that war is likely whenever a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one. [viii] This position misses the facts that China is cautious and that it understands it is not yet able to confront the U.S. military directly. Therefore, it is unlikely that Beijing would risk it all by overreacting to limited U.S. strikes on the northern peninsula.

      China’s failure to taper North Korea’s belligerence and Pyongyang’s rapid drive toward nuclear armament and missile deployments suggest  it is time to accept that diplomacy has run its course. Repeated failures to respond to North Korean provocations are only making the situation worse. The moment has come to launch measured preemptive strikes to roll back at least partially North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

      Here I must disagree with the authors, it is not time to launch a limited strike, this is because a limited strike would do nothing but buy time for China so they will have the capabilities of going toe to toe with the US military. They will take our restraint as a sign of weakness (which it is) If we act boldly we have a much lower possibility of a war with China.

      Yes Putin is posturing and moving anti air batteries to the border but he has:
      1) Economic problems at home and doesn’t have the capabilities of fighting a major war right now.
      2) Has internal opposition that are winning elections that are chipping away at his power.
      3) The war in Syria is unpopular in Russia, this is why he is using contractors/mercenaries (the USSR got the west to outlaws using mercenaries so we are now calling them contractors). He doesn’t want to get into a war where there will be a lot of body bags coming home.

      All of the above says that now is the time to remove North Korea, now is the time to make the rest of the world set back and start rethinking their actions because we have shown that the current President isn’t afraid to act decisively. A major attack removing North Korea would last a few months but would buy the US time to rearm and put us in the position to dictate new terms to other wanna be world dictators.

      As I said before my first reaction is Don’t pi$$ on them, kick their A$$. After taking time to think about the article and what was said in it that is still my reaction. Kick their A$$ and win the war, POTUS has said this is the end of the road, a limited strike would be another way to kick the can down the road to some future President who might be like Obama or either of the Clintons. Our survival as a free nation requires we remove this threat while we have a President who will act.

  8. Former Gov’t Officials Warned About Hezbollah Story Months Ago

    WASHINGTON — Former U.S. government officials gave details to the House Foreign Affairs Committee in June about how the previous White House derailed American efforts to counter Hezbollah, which supports recent revelations from a report by Politico.

    Dr. David Asher, a veteran U.S. illicit finance expert sent by the Pentagon to help establish a team to go after Hezbollah’s alleged criminal activities, testified before Congress in June.

    Asher told committee members about the collaborative effort was known as “Project Cassandra.”

    It was composed of individuals from various U.S. agencies who used law enforcement, civil, and financial tools to “deter, disrupt, [and] publicly illuminate the global illicit Hezbollah network.” Asher called it “the most successful operational effort taken against Hezbollah to date by the U.S. government, after many years of inaction.”

    However, he went on to say the Obama administration interrupted the successful operation against Hezbollah in its final years.

    “In the last years of the previous administration, for reasons that most definitely had to do with the Iran deal and concerns of interfering with it – which I thought were totally unfounded, as a former nuclear negotiator with Iran and North Korea – we lost much of the altitude that we had gained in our global effort,” Asher said.

    He continued, “And many aspects – including key personnel who were reassigned, budgets that were slashed – many key elements of the investigations that were underway were undermined and it was a bit of a tragedy and a travesty.”

    Politico’s Josh Meyer explored the accusations that the previous administration intervened into Asher’s task force to battle Hezbollah head on. According to Meyer, Project Cassandra launched in 2008 when it became apparent that Hezbollah went from political/ military organization to international organized crime cartel.

    According to Meyer, 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies investigated cocaine shipments from Latin America to West Africa to Europe, the Middle East, Venezuela, and the United States. Money laundering fronts were used to hide the cash flow which included car dealerships.

    When Asher and his team needed approval for investigations prosecutions, arrests, financial sanctions, authorities at the Department of Justice and Treasury postponed, meddled or outright denied those requests.

    Dr. Matthew Levitt, a former top treasury financial intelligence official and FBI analyst, wrote a book that described Hezbollah and its worldwide activities — in particular drug trafficking. Levitt backed up this claim in his testimony to the Committee.

    “I think there are so many tools here, and we were using some of them as you heard, and then we all but stopped,” Levitt said. “And in order to have a real effect you have to have some continuity. There were prosecutions that were put on ice. There were designations that didn’t happen.”

    Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy & Force Development Mara Karlin described to members of the committee how Hezbollah’s influence and power grew following the nuclear agreement with the United States.

    “Now to be sure, Hezbollah has benefited from its involvement in the Syrian conflict. Ten years ago I was most worried about Hezbollah’s weapons. Now I’m more worried about the experience Hezbollah has gained. Before it was a capable military force, good at a limited number of missions. Its portfolio has expanded dramatically. It has become a hardened force, adept at facilitating Iranian power projection around the Middle East,” Karlin said.

    According to Karlin, the terrorist organization learned to “command and control a complicated conflict in collaboration with numerous actors.”

    “It has acquired substantial experience in diverse environments using increasingly sophisticated weapons. And as the operating space in Syria becomes crowded, and the U.S. military deepens its direct involvement there, we could see inadvertent or deliberate interactions with Hezbollah,” she said.

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/21/former-govt-officials-warned-about-hezbollah-story-months-ago/

  9. U.N. evacuates refugees to Italy from Libya for first time—– BY PLANE

    The United Nations began bringing African refugees to Italy from Libya on Friday, evacuating them from detention centers whose conditions have been condemned by humanitarian groups as inhumane.

    Hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled conflict or poverty at home and are now trapped in Libya, where they had hoped to pay people smugglers for passage to Europe via Italy.

    It is the first time the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Libya has evacuated refugees directly to Europe. An Italian C-130 military plane landed at an airport south the capital carrying 110 women and children, and a second flight is expected to bring more than 50 people later in the day.

    The African migrants, including many small children, were covered in blankets or bundled in coats as they disembarked from the plane on a chilly evening.

    “We really hope other countries will follow the same path,” Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, said in a statement after the first plane arrived.

    “Some of those evacuated suffered tremendously and were held captive in inhumane conditions while in Libya. Five of these women gave birth while in detention, with only the very limited medical assistance,” Cochetel said.

    The UNHCR estimates about 18,000 people are being held in detention centers for immigrants that are controlled by the Tripoli government and it aims to evacuate as many as 10,000 next year.

    Italy’s Catholic Church will house many of the new arrivals in shelters across the country, Church charity Caritas said, as the migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen go through the country’s asylum request process.

    Migrant arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli persuaded human smugglers in the city of Sabratha to stop boats leaving.

    Italy is also bolstering the Libyan coast guard’s ability to turn back boats

    Italy’s move to open a safe corridor for some of the migrants follows criticism by rights groups who have condemned the country’s efforts to block migrants in Libya in exchange for aid, training and equipment to fight smuggling.

    “This should be a point of pride for Italians,” Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters on the tarmac. “This is the just beginning. We will continue to try to open this humanitarian corridor.”

    Migrant smuggling has flourished since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with more than 600,000 making the perilous journey across the central Mediterranean in four years.

    Tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to be detained by smugglers, and the African Union says that as many as 700,000 migrants are in Libya. The UNHCR has registered more than 44,000 as refugees and asylum seekers.

    The UNHCR classifies Friday’s arrivals as “vulnerable” refugees, which means they are children, victims of abuse, women, the elderly or have disabilities.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-italy-libya/u-n-evacuates-refugees-to-italy-from-libya-for-first-time-idUSKBN1EG23T

  10. “Court Jihad”: How the French Justice System Assists Islamists

    by Yves Mamou
    December 22, 2017 at 5:00 am

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11563/france-justice-system-islamists

    When members of a small French far-right nationalist group, Génération Identitaire, occupied a mosque under construction in Poitiers in 2012 and said they were celebrating the anniversary of the battle of Poitiers (732 AD), in which Charles Martel defeated the army of the Ummayad Caliphate, thereby routing the Arab invasion of France, the prosecutor of the Republic of France launched an immediate investigation for “incitement to racial hatred.” Five of the activists were arrested, indicted, and this month, sentenced to one-year suspended prison sentences. The court sentenced four of them to deprivation of their civic rights (such as the right to vote in elections) for the next five years. In addition, the Génération Identitaire organization had to pay a fine of 10,000 euros, and the four activists had to pay a fine of 24,000 euros to the organization “Muslims of France” (“Musulmans de France”), which is the owner of the mosque and the legal representative in France of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement. If the fine is not paid, the activists will go to jail.

    The lawyer for Génération Identitaire, Frederic Pichon, said he was “flabbergasted by the severity of the sentence” and that the decision was “political”. “I cannot help comparing it with the incredible impunity that… Femen received when it burst into the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris,” he said.

    Pichon was referring to a 2013 incident, in which members of the feminist group Femen had burst topless into Notre Dame Cathedral, were accused of damaging a bell, and in 2015, were acquitted by the Paris court of appeals. Two of the security officers who drove the perpetrators received fines.

  11. Sweden: Malmo residents go on night patrol after series of gang rapes

    Concerned citizens in Malmo launched an initiative to patrol the city’s streets on Friday following the gang rape of a teenage girl in the neighbourhood of Sofielund last weekend.

  12. Number of Terror-Related Cases Opened in Germany Up Five-fold in 2017 – Reports (sputniknews, Dec 23, 2017)
    https://sputniknews.com/europe/201712231060272705-terror-cases-germany-fivefold/

    “MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The German Public Prosecutor General opened five times more cases related to terrorism in 2017 than in the previous year, local media reported on Saturday.

    In 2017, a total of 1,200 terror-related cases were opened with some 1,000 of them linked to Islamism. In 2016, the Public Prosecutor General opened only 250 terror-related cases with some 200 of them dealing with Islamism, Die Welt media outlet reported.

    Earlier in December, a spokeswoman for the German Interior Ministry said that there were 710 potentially dangerous Islamists residing in Germany capable of carrying out a terrorist attack.

    Germany has been on a high alert amid a series of terrorist attacks across Europe. Last year, a Daesh member Anis Amri stole a truck and drove it into the crowd at a Christmas market in the German capital of Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others.”