Reader’s links for September 20, 2018

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In order to preserve the flow of conversation about various posted items, and also in order to make it easier for visitors to find the list of related links being shared by other readers, regulars and interested parties in one place, each day a post is automatically created at a minute past midnight ET.

This way, under the various posts of the day, conversation can take place without as much ‘noise’ on the various links and articles and ideas in the main posts and all the news links being submitted can be seen under these auto-posts by clicking on the comments-link right below these ones.

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

107 Replies to “Reader’s links for September 20, 2018”

  1. Juanita Broaddrick: Feinstein had no interest in rape allegation against Bill Clinton

    en. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, has championed Brett Kavanaugh’s #MeToo accuser, but Juanita Broaddrick says the senator never showed any interest in her 1999 rape allegation against President Bill Clinton.

    Ms. Feinstein was elected in 1992, making her one of the few remaining senators who served during independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into Mr. Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

    “It’s absurd,” Ms. Broaddrick said Wednesday on Fox News. “Not one Democrat would look at my deposition with the independent counsel. Oh my gosh, they did not want to know about it.”

    She pointed to the discrepancy between Democratic lack of interest in her case and the party’s outrage over allegations of sexual assault leveled last week against Mr. Kavanaugh.

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=55034?omhide=true

  2. Former FBI assistant director on Kavanaugh allegations: None of this would hold up in court

    Former FBI assistant director Chris Swecker told CNN that the accusation against Brett Kavanaugh would not hold up in court.

    Swecker was asked a series of questions about the scope of potential FBI involvement with the recent sexual misconduct against the Supreme Court nominee. Kavanaugh is facing an allegation of sexual misconduct in the 11th hour of his confirmation process from Christine Blasey Ford, who has publicly accused him of assaulting her 36 years ago when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh has forcefully denied the allegation, as has others who were allegedly present during the sexual misconduct.

    Swecker said that the FBI had no business looking into the 36-year-old allegation. “The FBI has no independent jurisdiction to open up a standalone investigation of rape allegations or assault allegations that may have taken place 36 years ago,” Swecker said, “That is a local crime. Unless it involves a federal official or on federal land or has some federal nexus, there’s just jurisdiction to do it.”

    Host Brooke Baldwin asked about the facts of the case and how law enforcement could prosecute with so few details. “How would you even go about investigating something like this?” Baldwin asked, “Because clearly she remembers what she says specifically happened to her, but she doesn’t remember where it happened. She doesn’t remember when it happened. How do you investigate with so few details available?”

    http://dailycaller.com/2018/09/19/former-fbi-official-swecker-kavanaugh-allegation-court/

  3. Black Lives Matter protests police next day after shooting death of deputy

    One day after a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy was slain by a gunman in Rancho Cordova, Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets of downtown Sacramento Tuesday, blocking traffic, clashing loudly with pro-police demonstrators and marching in the name of Stephon Clark, the 22-year-old unarmed black man killed by Sacramento police exactly six months earlier.

    As many as 200 protesters began gathering outside the Sacramento Convention Center at J and 13th streets in the morning, ostensibly to shut down a meeting of law enforcement officers from around the state gathering for an annual meeting.

    http://www.gopusa.com/?p=55019?omhide=true

  4. Funding UNRWA: Are European Taxpayers Being Taken for a Ride?

    At a meeting in Cairo this month, Arab and Muslim foreign ministers expressed concern about the fate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) after the US administration decided to cut all US aid to the agency. The ministers “underscored the importance of allowing UNRWA to continue playing a pivotal role in providing humanitarian aid” to Palestinian “refugees.” They also warned that “harming” UNRWA will aggravate the crisis in the Middle East.

    If these Arab and Muslim countries are so worried about UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees, why don’t they step in to fill the vacuum and pay for the loss of the US funds? What is keeping them from pulling out their checkbooks and solving this “refugee crisis”?

    The Arabs and Muslims are not as naive as the Europeans, who continue to pay millions of dollars to UNRWA and the Palestinians. European Union leaders and governments are playing their own people for fools by not telling them that even the Arabs and Muslims do not waste their money on a UN agency that has created new generations of fake refugees by allowing second and third generations to inherit UNRWA’s status of “refugee.”

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12996/unrwa-funding

    • Does it occur to you that perhaps the Europeans elect governments that LIKE to give funds to de-stabilize Jews who live near the four holy cities of Judaism, Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias?

  5. The International Criminal Court: A Failed Experiment

    by Ahmed Charai
    September 19, 2018 at 8:00 pm

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13008/international-criminal-court
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    The International Criminal Court (ICC) is “already dead to us” National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Federalist Society recently. The U.S. will, he said, resist the court “by any means necessary.”

    Why would the Trump Administration take such a hard line against “the world’s court of last resort”? Founded in 2002, in the wake of the Rwandan and Yugoslavian genocides and mass rapes, the international body was supposed to try evildoers who would otherwise escape justice due to broken legal systems in failed states.

    Opposing the court is not a new position for the U.S. or Ambassador Bolton. The Bush Administration refused to sign the court’s implementing treaty in 2003, contending that it would lead to trials of U.S. soldiers and spies by a politically turbo-charged body located in Europe. At the time, many European leaders opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq and questioned its actions in the war on terror, including rendition and holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. Ambassador Bolton was even more prescient. He warned, in 1998, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

    Now, U.S. soldiers may face charges for activities in Afghanistan. While the U.S. is not a signatory of the treaty, Afghanistan is, and the court claims jurisdiction over any actions taken there. If the ICC begins prosecuting American “war crimes” abroad, commanders will temper their battle plans, soldiers will become gun-shy and civilians will refuse to serve. America’s sovereign right to defend itself will be weakened. Israel is also expected to be another target, as the Palestinian Authority has agreed to the court’s jurisdiction and has already requested a probe.

    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13008/international-criminal-court

  6. State: Pakistan Continues to Provide ‘Safe Havens’ for Taliban (breitbart, Sep 20, 2018)
    https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/09/20/state-pakistan-safe-havens-taliban/

    “Pakistan remained a safe haven last year for Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network (HQN) jihadis despite the pressure the Trump administration applied on the country to stop harboring terrorist groups, the U.S. State Department reported on Wednesday.

    In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2017 released this week, which cover terrorist activities across the world last year, State noted:

    The Pakistani government pledged support to political reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban but did not restrict the Afghan Taliban and HQN from operating in Pakistan-based safe havens and threatening U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan did not take sufficient action against other externally focused groups such as Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in 2017, which continued to operate, train, organize, and fundraise in Pakistan.

    Trump administration officials have described “reconciliation” between the Afghan Taliban and Kabul as the primary goal of the U.S. strategy to end the 17-year-old Afghan war.

    In recent months, the U.S. has intensified its efforts to convince the Taliban to engage in peace talks with the Afghan government.

    The Pentagon has for years cautioned that Pakistan knowingly serves as a sanctuary for Afghan Taliban and Haqqani terrorists who have killed and maimed U.S. and Afghan troops.

    Taliban ally al-Qaeda is also known to operate along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

    State reported:

    Although Pakistan’s National Action Plan calls to “ensure that no armed militias are allowed to function in the country,” several terrorist groups focused on attacks outside of the country continued to operate from Pakistani soil in 2017. These groups included the Haqqani Network, Lashkar e-Tayyiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Pakistan continued military operations to eradicate terrorist safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, although their impact on all terrorist groups was uneven.

    The Trump administration has suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid to Pakistan over Islamabad’s refusal to take action against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network. However, every assessment following the administration’s move has determined that Pakistan has failed to take decisive action against the terrorist groups.

    The State Department also warned that it is concerned about terrorists smuggling weapons of mass destruction (WMD) across Afghanistan’s porous border with nuclear-armed Pakistan.

    State reported:

    Terrorist and insurgent groups are active in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Government of National Unity (GNU) struggled to assert control over this remote terrain, where the population is largely detached from national institutions … The potential for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) trafficking and proliferation remained a concern … The United States continued to assist the GNU in building capacity to secure potentially dangerous biological materials and infrastructure housed at Afghan facilities, to promote surveillance capabilities to detect and identify possibly catastrophic biological events, and to engage Afghan scientists and engineers that have WMD or WMD-applicable expertise.

    State acknowledged that Pakistan is committed to combatting the trafficking of WMDs and any related items.

    Moreover, State conceded that Pakistan is actively fighting terrorists who operate on its soil, admitting that some of those groups, namely Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), used the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region as a sanctuary.

    “Terrorist groups targeting Pakistan, such as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, exploit ungoverned spaces in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, using them as safe havens to coordinate terrorist attacks inside Pakistan,” State pointed out.

    TTP is a separate entity from the Afghan Taliban.

    Both Afghanistan and Pakistan suffered attacks at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in the region known as the Khorasan Province (ISIS-K).

    Echoing the Pentagon, State noted that al-Qaeda continues to operate along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

    State reported:

    Although al-Qa’ida (AQ) in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been seriously degraded, remnants of AQ’s global leadership, as well as its regional affiliate al-Qa’ida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), continued to operate from remote locations in the region that historically have been exploited as safe havens.

    Afghan and Pakistani forces continued to contest AQ’s presence in the region, and Pakistan’s military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) further degraded the group’s freedom to operate. Pressure on AQ’s traditional safe havens has constrained its leadership’s ability to communicate effectively with affiliate groups outside of South Asia.

    State’s report came more than 17 years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to eliminate the al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

    The report determined that the Taliban is the second deadliest terrorist group in the world, surpassed in lethality only by ISIS. Taliban terrorists carried out 703 attacks last year that killed 3,654 and wounded 3,205.

    Meanwhile, State attributed 857 attacks in 2017 that left 4,350 dead and 3,262 others injured to ISIS.”

  7. Inside Israel’s New Iran Strategy

    Israel has confirmed that it has carried out over 200 air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria over the last two years, indicating a zero tolerance defense posture toward Iran’s military presence in Syria. In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed that “we believe that there is no place for any Iranian military presence, anywhere in Syria.”

    Israel’s security strategy towards Iranian presence in its neighborhood is driven by three major factors:

    First, Israel does not seem to be entirely convinced of the Trump administration’s willingness to take on Iran in Syria, nor can it rely on Russia to keep Iran in check and secure Israeli interests in its backyard.

    Second, the strategy of opposing Iranian military presence anywhere in Syria resonates strongly with the Sunni Arab bloc in the region and can bring Israel closer to Tehran’s other nemeses, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These emerging ties, which Netanyahu calls the silver lining of the “bad” Iran deal, are very important to Israel.

    Third, the Israeli security establishment has a deep-rooted belief that Iranian revisionism and expansionism knows no limits, and that the Islamic Republic is hell-bent on creating an aggressive empire in the Middle East and beyond.

    The apocalyptic rhetoric of Iranian hardliners vowing “annihilation” of Israel, coupled with the much-vaunted tour of Iran-backed paramilitary commanders along Israel’s border with Lebanon and Syria, have stoked these fears.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-behravesh-israel-commentary/commentary-inside-israels-new-iran-strategy-idUSKCN1LX1OF

  8. Prof. Louis René Beres, worthy essay on Jihadi terror in Israel and around the world. (Topnotch scholar, security and nuclear strategy)

    Promising power over death: Seductive appeals of Jihadist terror

    While opposing jihadist terror has become a security obligation in the US, Europe, and Israel, too-little analytic attention has been directed toward focused remedies for such terror, those that could build solidly upon searches for immortality.

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22760

  9. CBC-MPs unanimously declare Myanmar crackdown on Rohingya a ‘genocide’

    MPs from all parties have unanimously adopted a motion condemning the acts of the Myanmar military against Rohingya Muslims as an act of genocide.

    Liberal MP Andrew Leslie, the parliamentary secretary to the foreign affairs minister, stood in the House of Commons today to table the motion that officially endorses the findings of a UN fact finding mission that concluded that crimes against humanity have been committed against the Rohingya Muslims and other ethnic minorities.

    The motion calls for sanctions against the highest levels of the Myanmar military’s chain of command for perpetrating “horrific acts.”

    It also calls on the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court, so that the senior officials can be investigated and prosecuted for genocide.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland — speaking in Washington, where she is engaged in NAFTA negotiations — thanked all parties in the House of Commons for voting in favour of the motion.

    “That’s a very important statement by Canada, the Canadian Parliament and I want to start by noting that,” she said, before “thanking all the members of the House for their hard work on this absolutely tragic issue, on this atrocity.”

    Fareed Khan, a spokesman for the Rohingya Human Rights Network, called the development “wonderful” news, but said the government must take steps to make the motion meaningful.

    He said the government should begin a process to charge Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and military leaders under Canadian and international law using the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for individuals to be charged with international crimes such as genocide.

    Khan said that after the passage of this motion, the Liberal government no longer has an “excuse” to avoid stripping Suu Kyi of her honourary Canadian citizenship.

    “It’s totally incongruous. You can’t have someone hold that kind of honour along with people like Malala Yousafzai, the Dalai Lama and the Aga Khan and then have that person also complicit in genocide,” he said.

    “It’s like giving the key to the city to a mass murderer. It does not compute, and the government needs to revoke that honour and work with other nations to try and move forward on the legal front internationally to make sure those who committed the crimes, and who were complicit in the crimes, are charged and held accountable.”

    ‘Gravest crimes’

    The UN report names six military commanders in Myanmar who should be investigated for genocide in Rakhine state and crimes against humanity in other areas, calling their actions “shocking for their horrifying nature and ubiquity.”

    “Many of these violations undoubtedly amount to the gravest crimes under international law,” it read.

    The report also condemns Suu Kyi for failing to use her power or moral authority to stem or prevent the unfolding events and meet her responsibility to protect the civilian population. Instead, civilian authorities have spread false narratives, allowed hate speech to flourish and blocked independent investigations, the report says.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rohingya-myanmar-military-1.4831956

  10. German intelligence mulls putting largest Turkish-Islamic group under surveillance (DW, Sep 20, 2018)
    https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-mulls-putting-largest-turkish-islamic-group-under-surveillance/a-45586282

    “German intelligence is reportedly examining whether to put the Turkish-Islamic umbrella group DITIB under surveillance. The Turkish-state backed DITIB has been at the center of multiple controversies.

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is deciding whether to put the country’s largest Islamic umbrella group under official surveillance, the Süddeutscher Zeitung newspaper and public broadcasters NDR and WDR reported on Thursday.

    The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has sent a confidential dossier to each of Germany’s 16 states on the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), which has been at the center of a series of controversies.

    The states were reportedly asked to provide material and comments to establish whether DITIB’s activities meet strict requirements to put it under observation. The issue is to be discussed at a meeting between the BfV and its state security agencies in November.

    DITIB runs more than 900 mosques tied to the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, which provides financing and imams to the mosques.

    The possible move against DITIB comes a week before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrives in Germany for an official state visit. During the two-day visit, Erdogan will officially open DITIB’s new central mosque at its headquarters in the western city of Cologne.

    In the wake of the failed 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan, DITIB has been accused of acting as the long arm of the Turkish state in Germany.

    Last year, German authorities investigated 19 imams alleged to have acted on the orders of Turkish diplomatic posts to spy on followers of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for the coup bid.

    In another scandal, DITIB imams in January reportedly called on worshippers to pray for a Turkish military victory during its offensive against Syrian Kurds in Afrin. DITIB again came under fire in April for holding a World War I military re-enactment involving Turkish flags and fake guns handed to child “martyrs.” Last year, DITIB stirred controversy by refusing to take part in an anti-terrorism march in Cologne.

    DITIB has repeatedly stated that it is apolitical and that any errant acts were those of individual imams, not the whole mosque association…”

  11. Iran: Thousands commemorate Ashura on streets of Tehran

    Thousands of Iranians gathered to commemorate Ashura in Tehran on Thursday, joining events held around the world to observe the date.

    A procession can be seen marching through the streets, before gathering in a city square to erect and burn a tent, a common tradition to mark the day in reference to the tents of Hussain ibn Ali being burned.

    Ashura, which takes place on the tenth day of Muharram in the Islamic Hijri calendar, is a day of mourning which commemorates the killing of Hussain ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as his family and companions at the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram, 61 AH (10 October 680 AD).

    • I am going to try to stay up past midnight so this video is first on your list. TR is in a fight for his life. He still looks gaunt and will surely lose his life if he is put in a muslim prison again.
      PLEASE send a fin to Tommy.
      I can’t believe this is happening.

  12. I am going to try to stay up past midnight so this video is first on your list. TR is in a fight for his life. He still looks gaunt and will surely lose his life if he is put in a muslim prison again.
    PLEASE send a fin to Tommy.
    I can’t believe this is happening.