HEALTH CARE REPEAL VOTE TO OPEN A POLITICAL YEAR IN CONGRESS
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's been like a long-delayed New Year's resolution for Republicans. But 2016 will finally be the year when they put legislation on President Barack Obama's desk repealing his health care law.
The bill undoing the president's prized overhaul will be the first order of business when the House reconvenes this coming week, marking a sharply partisan start on Capitol Hill to a congressional year in which legislating may take a back seat to politics.
There are few areas of potential compromise between Obama and the GOP majority in the House and Senate in this election year, but plenty of opportunities for political haymaking during the presidential campaign season.
Obama will veto the health law repeal bill, which also would cut money for Planned Parenthood. The measure already has passed the Senate under special rules protecting it from Democratic obstruction. But that's the point for Republicans, who intend to schedule a veto override vote for Jan. 22, when anti-abortion activists hold their annual march in Washington to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in 1973 that legalized abortion.
Despite dozens of past votes to repeal the health law in full or in part, Republicans never before have succeeded in sending a full repeal bill to the White House. They insist that doing so will fulfill promises to their constituents while highlighting the clear choice facing voters in the November presidential election.
Every Republican candidate has pledged to undo the health law. The Democrats running for president would keep it in place.
"You're going to see us put a bill on the president's desk going after Obamacare and Planned Parenthood so we'll finally get a bill on his desk to veto," House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told conservative talk host Bill Bennett over the holidays.
"Then you're going to see the House Republican Conference, working with our senators, coming out with a bold agenda that we're going to lay out for the country, to say how we would do things very differently," Ryan said.
In the Senate, which reconvenes Jan. 11, a week later than the House, early action will include a vote on a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is running for president, for an "audit" of the Federal Reserve. Democrats are likely to block it. But, like the health repeal bill in the House, the vote will answer conservative demands in an election year.
Also expected early in the Senate's year is legislation dealing with Syrian refugees, following House passage of a bill clamping down on the refugee program. Conservatives were angry when the year ended without the bill advancing. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky promised a vote, though without specifying whether it would be the House bill or something else.
The House Benghazi committee will continue its investigation of the attacks that killed four Americans in Libya in 2012, with an interview of former CIA Director David Petraeus on Jan. 6. That comes amid new Democratic accusations of political motives aimed at Hillary Clinton after the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. for president. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, was secretary of state at the time of the Benghazi attacks.
The bold agenda promised by Ryan after succeeding former Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as speaker last fall will begin to take shape at a House-Senate GOP retreat this month in Baltimore. Thus far Ryan has pledged efforts to overhaul the tax system and offer a Republican alternative to the health overhaul.
In the Senate, McConnell's primary focus is protecting the handful of vulnerable Republican senators whose seats are at risk as Democrats fight to regain the Senate majority they lost a year ago. That means weighing the political risks and benefits of every potential vote to endangered incumbents in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
That could determine whether McConnell allows criminal justice overhaul legislation - the one issue cited by Obama and lawmakers of both parties as ripe for compromise - to come to the floor.
McConnell already has suggested that prospects for approval of Obama's long-sought Asia trade pact are dim, and the senator has ruled out major tax overhaul legislation as long as Obama is president.
McConnell could try to put his thumb on the scales of the presidential race with two GOP senators having emerged as leading contenders.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has been a thorn in McConnell's side, once calling the GOP leader a liar, and has frosty relations with his fellow senators. Rubio is on good terms with fellow lawmakers and has been endorsed by several of them. McConnell could schedule debate on an issue with the potential to favor Rubio politically over Cruz, such as National Security Agency wiretapping authority.
But McConnell insists he is staying out of it.
"We all have a big stake in having a nominee for president who can win, and that means carrying purple states, and I'm sure pulling for a nominee who can do that," McConnell told The Associated Press, refusing to elaborate on who might fit that description.
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Saturday, January 2, 2016
The War Between Obama And Congress Begins
ISIS Wins Not Through Warfare But Through Immigration! West Gleefully Welcomes Its Own Destruction
Muslim Immigration is What ISIS Wants
To understand ISIS, you have to understand the difference between terrorists and Islamic terrorists.
Ordinary terrorists have two goals; to compel the enemy to meet their political demands and to rally their supporters to consolidate their class, race or national identity group behind them.
Islamic terrorists are not interested in the “political demands” part. They will occasionally accept concessions and even offer Hudnas, temporary truces, but no permanent separate peace can be achieved with them. It’s why Israel’s peace process with terrorists has gone on failing for decades. It’s why the attempt by Gaddafi to achieve peace with the LIFG ended in a civil war and his death. It’s why Obama’s attempts to negotiate with the “moderate Taliban” failed miserably.
Al Qaeda and ISIS are not “negative” protest movements formed in response to our foreign policy. That’s a foolish self-centered idea held by foolish self-centered Westerners. Al Qaeda and ISIS are “positive” movements that seek to achieve larger religious goals entirely apart from us. Islamic terrorists are not responding to us. They are responding to the Koran and to over a thousand years of history.
Osama bin Laden did not carry out 9/11 to inflict harm on Americans. That was a secondary goal. His primary goal was to rally Muslims to build a Caliphate by encouraging them to attack America.
The ritualistic “Why do they hate us” browbeating favored by the chattering classes is nonsense. Al Qaeda hated us because we were not Muslims. But it was only using us as the hated “other” to consolidate a collective Muslim identity. We are to Islamists what the Jews were to Hitler; a useful scapegoat whose otherness can be used to manufacture a contrasting pure Aryan or Islamic identity.
No dialogue is possible with an ideology whose virtue is premised on seeing you as utterly evil.
You can negotiate with terrorists, though you shouldn’t. But Islamic terrorists rarely even bother to negotiate. Their core focus is on rallying local Muslims and the Ummah behind them. They don’t recognize national borders so any hope for a permanent peace behind recognized borders is wishful thinking. Islam is a transnational movement. Islamic terrorism is a race between terror groups around the world to carve out their own Islamic states and then use them as a springboard to a Caliphate.
ISIS is the end stage of Islamic terrorism. Its leader is a Caliph with all Muslims obliged to submit to him. The Islamic State is not just in Syria and Iraq. It is everywhere that a Muslim outpost swears allegiance to the Caliph. On its own maps the Islamic State encompasses parts of Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Russia. The more local Islamic terror groups pledge allegiance to ISIS, the bigger it becomes.
ISIS doesn’t plan to defeat America through acts of terrorism. The plan for defeating America, like every other country, Muslim or non-Muslim, is to build a domestic Muslim terror movement that will be able to hold territory and swear allegiance to the Islamic State.
The idea of an American Emirate may seem silly but consider Molenbeek, the neighborhood in Brussels known as the Jihadi capital of Europe, deemed a no-go zone by local authorities, right in the capital of the European Union. You can take a taxi from NATO HQ to a Muslim micro-state linked to most of the major recent Islamic terror attacks in Europe including the latest ISIS attack in Paris.
Molenbeek provides ISIS recruits for its war and a gateway for ISIS attacks in Europe. The media is filled with articles about what ISIS wants, but there is no question that Molenbeek is what ISIS wants.
And it’s only Muslim immigration to Europe that makes an ISIS base like Molenbeek possible.
ISIS has short term and long term needs. In the short term, ISIS needs as many recruits as possible. And it is in the West where traditional Muslim ties of kinship and community are so frayed that the transnationalism of heading out to fight for a Caliphate in someone else’s country is most deeply appealing. ISIS aggressively seeks to recruit Muslims in the West because they have the skills, money and naiveté to be useful to the Islamic State. But in the long term, ISIS needs more Muslim immigration to the West to create a steady supply of recruits, collaborators and eventually Western emirates.
If ISIS is serious about making a bid for Italy, it needs a large Muslim population on the ground. It doesn’t even matter if this population comes from refugees fleeing ISIS. The children of these refugees will still be Sunni Muslims in a foreign land where Algerian, Somali, Syrian and Pakistani Muslims discover that they have more in common than they do with the natives. It is this accidental Western multiculturalism that erases tribal Muslim rivalries and makes the ambition of a single Muslim Caliphate appear plausible.
ISIS does not plan to defeat America with terror plots. But those plots will eventually accumulate into an organized domestic terror organization. An Islamic State in America based around a majority Muslim town or neighborhood with its own leader pledging allegiance to the Caliph of the Islamic State.
An American Molenbeek; and there are already plenty of candidates for that horrifying honor.
Any Muslim plans for expanding into the West depend on Muslim immigration. Whether it’s ISIS or its Muslim Brotherhood ancestor, or any of the other Islamist organizations and networks, they all require manpower. Some of that manpower will be provided by high Muslim birth rates, but it won’t be nearly enough, not for a country the size of America, without a large annual flow of Muslim migrants.
We are told that halting Muslim immigration would only encourage Muslim terrorism. But our open door to Muslim immigration certainly hasn’t stopped terrorism. Instead it has increased it by providing reinforcements to the terrorists. If we can’t stop Muslim terrorism with the population we have now, how are we going to manage it if the Islamic population continues doubling and even tripling?
Even if we defeat ISIS tomorrow, Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups descended from the Muslim Brotherhood will continue pursuing the same goals. And they will rely on the Muslim population in the United States to provide them with money, supplies, cover and an infrastructure for terrorism.
ISIS can’t defeat us with terror attacks. The only hope for an enduring Islamic victory over America is through the rise of domestic groups that pledge allegiance to the Caliphate. ISIS can’t invade America. It has to be invited in. That’s what our immigration policy does.
Trump isn’t a threat to national security. Muslim immigration is.
Islamic terrorists can’t defeat us no matter how many planes they fly into buildings. But they can and will defeat us if they continue landing planes at JFK and disembarking thousands and tens of thousands of settlers who will serve as a base population for their war against America.
Muslim immigration is the Islamic State’s only hope for victory over America.
Reprinted with author’s permission from Sultan Knish Blog
Read more at http://sultanknish.blogspot.co.il/2015/12/muslim-immigration-is-what-isis-wants.html#TOrFiuI5GlqoOm5W.99
Sweden Becoming A Most Antisemitic Nation
A Smorgasbord of Swedish Anti-Semitism
Sweden is a country where using the word "mass immigration" usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. Only anti-Semitism does not get criticized. In Sweden, all other forms of racism -- even things that some say could be classified as racism -- are criticized, and ruthlessly.- TV4, one of the most important Swedish media outlets, in 2015 described anti-Semitism as simply a "different opinion."
- "What is history for us is not the history of others. ... When we have other students who have studied other history books, there is no point in discussing facts against facts." — The administration of an adult-education school, in a reprimand to a teacher who said the Holocaust actually took place.
- "The Jews are campaigning against me." — Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström.
- There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone. That is why so few politicians -- who are eager to win the votes of immigrants -- talk about Arab anti-Semitism.
On November 9, an anti-racism demonstration was going to be held in Umeå, Sweden, in commemoration of Kristallnacht (the night in 1938 in which 400 Jews were murdered in Germany, and 30,000 Jewish men arrested and sent to concentration camps). There was just one catch: the Jews in Umeå were not invited to the demonstration. The reason given,according to one of the organizers, Jan Hägglund, was that the demonstration would be "perceived as an unwelcoming or unsafe situation for them."
The path to this surreal situation, in which an anti-racism demonstration in Sweden in commemoration of Kristallnacht could be perceived by Jews as a threat, has long been in the making. This demonstration was of some significance. The people behind it were not extremists. Four of the Swedish Parliament's eight parties were involved in organizing it.
This anti-racist demonstration and the strange events surrounding it represent a process that, sadly, has been going on in Sweden for a long time. A new kind of Swedish anti-Semitism has been growing strong; the city of Malmö has been its flagship.
In January 2009, a pro-Israel demonstration in Malmö was attacked by Arabs who were shouting "f-cking Jews." The police could not protect the pro-Israel demonstrators from the eggs and the bottles being thrown at them. The event had to be temporarily stopped when the Arabs began to shoot fireworks at the pro-Israel demonstrators.
In 2010, for the first time -- but not the last -- the synagogue in Malmö was attacked. The same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center began warning Jews to not visit Malmö, "due to harassment of Jewish citizens,".
Today, Malmö is a city well known for anti-Semitism and characterized by it. Jews in Malmö cannot publicly show that they are Jews without being subjected to harassment. Many Jewish families, there for centuries, have fled. In October 2015, two members of the Swedish parliament were involved in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Malmö, in which people shouted anti-Semitic slogans and praised the current Palestinian knife attacks against Israeli Jews.
The reason a country such as Sweden has suddenly become struck by extreme anti-Semitism is largely due to immigration from the Middle East. The Arab and Muslim world -- and, since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has repeatedly threatened genocide -- continues in its state-run media to demonize the Jews. The Arab and Muslim world probably wants, in part, to justify its conflict with Israel. Also in part, many members of the establishment and citizens in those countries probably believe these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, calumnies repeated every day in their media and mosques.
Many newcomers keep their Middle East background even after they have settled in Sweden. Many, especially in immigrant areas such as Rosengård in Malmö, regularly watch the Arabic media, which convey anti-Semitic messages non-stop.
At the same time, members of this population are welcome to vote in Swedish elections, so Swedish parties focus on the Arab vote. This courtship is merely a matter of demographics. There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone.
In addition, to vote in the important municipal elections, you do not even need to be a citizen of Sweden. This peculiarity is why so few politicians in Sweden even talk about the Arab anti-Semitism, despite several Swedish reports and documentaries showing that the growing anti-Semitism in Sweden has been largely imported from the Middle East.
That is also why most anti-racism organizations in Sweden would rather discuss "Islamophobia." Almost all Swedish anti-racism organizations are funded by taxpayers or are somehow connected to political parties -- meaning there is an all-too-businesslike "understanding" between political parties and anti-racism organizations. Most of the political parties do not exactly favor anti-racism organizations that talk about Arab anti-Semitism. Such organizations will have trouble getting funds, or are defunded, or else see their board members start to resign.
Despite more Muslims coming to Sweden and more Jews fleeing Sweden -- or perhaps because of it -- the majority of the anti-racism activists in Sweden consider "Islamophobia" the more serious problem. The influential anti-racism organization, Expo, has done several mappings of "Islamophobia," but, despite the bigotry, not a single mapping of anti-Semitism.
If you do a mapping of anti-Semitism in Sweden, you see, you also have to discuss immigration from the Middle East. Not many people in Sweden want to do that: those who discuss Arab anti-Semitism are called racists.
Instead of a discussion about the new Swedish anti-Semitism, you get mind-numbing op-ed columns appearing with the message that people should talk less about the Holocaust in Swedish schools, so that Arab youths will not be offended. In criticizing a government proposal to combat anti-Semitism by increasing Holocaust education, Helena Mechlaoui, a high school teacher of history, religion and philosophy, wrote:
In another example, the Swedish TV celebrity Gina Dirawi, of Palestinian origin, wrote in her blog in 2010 that Israel's actions could be compared to Hitler's. Then, in 2012, she advised people, again on her blog, to read a book that questioned the Holocaust. The book's message was that when the Nazis persecuted the Jews, they were acting in self-defense. These were just two of the many anti-Semitic statements she made on her blog. Today, Gina Dirawi hosts several shows on SVT -- the Swedish public broadcasting company -- and she hosted SVT's Christmas show in 2015. As Dirawi is a Muslim, this choice has raised some eyebrows. She is also going to host the 2016 Swedish music competition Melodifestivalen, one of Sweden's most popular music events.
It is, unfortunately, clear that in Sweden, anti-Semitism is not something that harms one's career. The Swedish media, like the government, also is not so interested in Sweden's problems with anti-Semitism. When the Swedish think tank Perspektiv På Israel presented evidence in May 2015 that Islamic Relief's country director in Sweden was spreading anti-Semitic posts on Facebook, no one in the media was interested in writing about it, despite the fact that Islamic Relief is supported by Sida, the Swedish government agency responsible for Sweden's official aid to developing countries.
The Swedish media did not even allow an opinion piece from Perspektiv På Israel to be published on the subject. Nyheter24, one of the Swedish media outlets that did not publishPerspektiv På Israel's information about this scandal, wrote in an email to Perspektiv På Israelthat their "readers are, to say the least, not interested in this particular issue."
As a columnist for the newspaper Samtiden, I mentioned Islamic Relief's racist statements in anop-ed, and the information was also presented in The Jewish Press. Swedish media showed no interest, even though there was evidence that an organization receiving Swedish tax funds was publishing anti-Semitic statements in social media.
It is important to note that all these incidents happened in a country where using the word "mass immigration" usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. It is only anti-Semitism that does not get criticized in Sweden. All other forms of racism -- even things that some say couldbe classified as racism -- are criticized, and ruthlessly.
Although the new anti-Semitism in Sweden has its origin in Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism, to think that anti-Semitism in Sweden today is only Middle Eastern in its nature is a simplification. Anti-Semitism in Sweden has become a smorgasbord consisting of several factors that reinforce each other. Some of these are:
This is an event that occurred in February 2015, in a major Swedish city. It could have happened in any Swedish city where the new Swedish anti-Semitism is rising. A Swedish school no longer knows if the fact that Holocaust actually happened is a fact worth defending. The anti-Semitic smorgasbord normalizes anti-Semitism in Sweden.
When it was reported in mid-November that the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström,said "the Jews are campaigning against me," it did not become major news in Sweden. It was not the first time a famous Swedish politician made anti-Semitic statements and got away with it, and it will not be the last.
So, we return to November 9, 2015 in Umeå, and the anti-racism march for the commemoration of Kristallnacht, to which the Jews were not invited, and to this year's Muslim Christmas hostess, who has several times expressed anti-Semitic views, and to the schools that are not sure whether to say that the Holocaust actually happened or not, and to a country where in general it is business-as-usual not to invite the Jews.
The media does not report it. The politicians do not care. And everyone knows that in Sweden, the anti-Semites get away with anything they like.
The path to this surreal situation, in which an anti-racism demonstration in Sweden in commemoration of Kristallnacht could be perceived by Jews as a threat, has long been in the making. This demonstration was of some significance. The people behind it were not extremists. Four of the Swedish Parliament's eight parties were involved in organizing it.
This anti-racist demonstration and the strange events surrounding it represent a process that, sadly, has been going on in Sweden for a long time. A new kind of Swedish anti-Semitism has been growing strong; the city of Malmö has been its flagship.
In January 2009, a pro-Israel demonstration in Malmö was attacked by Arabs who were shouting "f-cking Jews." The police could not protect the pro-Israel demonstrators from the eggs and the bottles being thrown at them. The event had to be temporarily stopped when the Arabs began to shoot fireworks at the pro-Israel demonstrators.
In January 2009, an Arab mob in Malmö pelted a peaceful Jewish demonstration with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs. The police pushed the Jews, who had a permit for their gathering, into an alley.
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In 2010, for the first time -- but not the last -- the synagogue in Malmö was attacked. The same year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center began warning Jews to not visit Malmö, "due to harassment of Jewish citizens,".
Today, Malmö is a city well known for anti-Semitism and characterized by it. Jews in Malmö cannot publicly show that they are Jews without being subjected to harassment. Many Jewish families, there for centuries, have fled. In October 2015, two members of the Swedish parliament were involved in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Malmö, in which people shouted anti-Semitic slogans and praised the current Palestinian knife attacks against Israeli Jews.
The reason a country such as Sweden has suddenly become struck by extreme anti-Semitism is largely due to immigration from the Middle East. The Arab and Muslim world -- and, since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has repeatedly threatened genocide -- continues in its state-run media to demonize the Jews. The Arab and Muslim world probably wants, in part, to justify its conflict with Israel. Also in part, many members of the establishment and citizens in those countries probably believe these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, calumnies repeated every day in their media and mosques.
Many newcomers keep their Middle East background even after they have settled in Sweden. Many, especially in immigrant areas such as Rosengård in Malmö, regularly watch the Arabic media, which convey anti-Semitic messages non-stop.
At the same time, members of this population are welcome to vote in Swedish elections, so Swedish parties focus on the Arab vote. This courtship is merely a matter of demographics. There are fewer than 20,000 Jews in Sweden; more than 20,000 Syrians received asylum in 2014 alone.
In addition, to vote in the important municipal elections, you do not even need to be a citizen of Sweden. This peculiarity is why so few politicians in Sweden even talk about the Arab anti-Semitism, despite several Swedish reports and documentaries showing that the growing anti-Semitism in Sweden has been largely imported from the Middle East.
That is also why most anti-racism organizations in Sweden would rather discuss "Islamophobia." Almost all Swedish anti-racism organizations are funded by taxpayers or are somehow connected to political parties -- meaning there is an all-too-businesslike "understanding" between political parties and anti-racism organizations. Most of the political parties do not exactly favor anti-racism organizations that talk about Arab anti-Semitism. Such organizations will have trouble getting funds, or are defunded, or else see their board members start to resign.
Despite more Muslims coming to Sweden and more Jews fleeing Sweden -- or perhaps because of it -- the majority of the anti-racism activists in Sweden consider "Islamophobia" the more serious problem. The influential anti-racism organization, Expo, has done several mappings of "Islamophobia," but, despite the bigotry, not a single mapping of anti-Semitism.
If you do a mapping of anti-Semitism in Sweden, you see, you also have to discuss immigration from the Middle East. Not many people in Sweden want to do that: those who discuss Arab anti-Semitism are called racists.
Instead of a discussion about the new Swedish anti-Semitism, you get mind-numbing op-ed columns appearing with the message that people should talk less about the Holocaust in Swedish schools, so that Arab youths will not be offended. In criticizing a government proposal to combat anti-Semitism by increasing Holocaust education, Helena Mechlaoui, a high school teacher of history, religion and philosophy, wrote:
"If we talk about students from the Middle East, it may be because many of them bear the traumatic experiences that are related to either Israeli or American policies. And the two states are often seen as one, which is not entirely wrong. They may have lost one or more siblings, cousins, parents or peers in an Israeli or American bombing. A large proportion are here in Sweden because they have been forced to leave their homes because of occupation, war or the misery in some refugee camp. They may have injured parents who cannot really cope with life, and they may still have family in conflict areas. It is likely that they have encountered hostility in Sweden. In this context, it is perhaps not desirable to start talking about the Holocaust."Immigration from Arab countries has thoroughly affected the way the majority of Swedes view anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is no longer something Swedish society condemns. Several Swedish celebrities have recently made anti-Semitic statements, and their careers have not suffered at all. The Swedish rapper Dani M spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories both on social media and in his songs. After several media outlets in Sweden, at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, reported in detail how Dani M spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, he appeared on a reality TV show in September on one of the biggest and most established Swedish channels, TV4. When TV4 was criticized, the show's executive producer, Christer Andersson, responded:
"TV4's core values are Zero Racism and has always been, as long as I can remember, but we cannot cut off people who do not feel the same way. TV4 is a portal where people with different opinions pass and we must have a broad level of acceptance."Here you have one of the most important Swedish media outlets describing anti-Semitism as simply a "different opinion." During the same period, another of TV4's employees used the "N-word" in a YouTube clip, and she was fired within two months. So, anti-Semitism is acceptable, but not racism against Afro-Swedes.
In another example, the Swedish TV celebrity Gina Dirawi, of Palestinian origin, wrote in her blog in 2010 that Israel's actions could be compared to Hitler's. Then, in 2012, she advised people, again on her blog, to read a book that questioned the Holocaust. The book's message was that when the Nazis persecuted the Jews, they were acting in self-defense. These were just two of the many anti-Semitic statements she made on her blog. Today, Gina Dirawi hosts several shows on SVT -- the Swedish public broadcasting company -- and she hosted SVT's Christmas show in 2015. As Dirawi is a Muslim, this choice has raised some eyebrows. She is also going to host the 2016 Swedish music competition Melodifestivalen, one of Sweden's most popular music events.
It is, unfortunately, clear that in Sweden, anti-Semitism is not something that harms one's career. The Swedish media, like the government, also is not so interested in Sweden's problems with anti-Semitism. When the Swedish think tank Perspektiv På Israel presented evidence in May 2015 that Islamic Relief's country director in Sweden was spreading anti-Semitic posts on Facebook, no one in the media was interested in writing about it, despite the fact that Islamic Relief is supported by Sida, the Swedish government agency responsible for Sweden's official aid to developing countries.
The Swedish media did not even allow an opinion piece from Perspektiv På Israel to be published on the subject. Nyheter24, one of the Swedish media outlets that did not publishPerspektiv På Israel's information about this scandal, wrote in an email to Perspektiv På Israelthat their "readers are, to say the least, not interested in this particular issue."
As a columnist for the newspaper Samtiden, I mentioned Islamic Relief's racist statements in anop-ed, and the information was also presented in The Jewish Press. Swedish media showed no interest, even though there was evidence that an organization receiving Swedish tax funds was publishing anti-Semitic statements in social media.
It is important to note that all these incidents happened in a country where using the word "mass immigration" usually gets criticized just for sounding racist. It is only anti-Semitism that does not get criticized in Sweden. All other forms of racism -- even things that some say couldbe classified as racism -- are criticized, and ruthlessly.
Although the new anti-Semitism in Sweden has its origin in Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism, to think that anti-Semitism in Sweden today is only Middle Eastern in its nature is a simplification. Anti-Semitism in Sweden has become a smorgasbord consisting of several factors that reinforce each other. Some of these are:
- Large-scale immigration from countries where anti-Semitism is normalized.
- A strong pro-Palestinian engagement among Swedish politicians that has resulted in a totally surreal debate about the Israel-Palestine debate, in which Israel is unjustly demonized.
- A desire among political parties in Sweden to win the votes of immigrants.
- A Swedish multiculturalism that is so uncritical of foreign cultures that it cannot differentiate between culture and racism.
- A fear of sounding critical of immigration.
- Important Swedish institutions, such as the Church of Sweden, legitimizing anti-Semitism by endorsing Kairos Palestine document.
This is an event that occurred in February 2015, in a major Swedish city. It could have happened in any Swedish city where the new Swedish anti-Semitism is rising. A Swedish school no longer knows if the fact that Holocaust actually happened is a fact worth defending. The anti-Semitic smorgasbord normalizes anti-Semitism in Sweden.
When it was reported in mid-November that the Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström,said "the Jews are campaigning against me," it did not become major news in Sweden. It was not the first time a famous Swedish politician made anti-Semitic statements and got away with it, and it will not be the last.
So, we return to November 9, 2015 in Umeå, and the anti-racism march for the commemoration of Kristallnacht, to which the Jews were not invited, and to this year's Muslim Christmas hostess, who has several times expressed anti-Semitic views, and to the schools that are not sure whether to say that the Holocaust actually happened or not, and to a country where in general it is business-as-usual not to invite the Jews.
The media does not report it. The politicians do not care. And everyone knows that in Sweden, the anti-Semites get away with anything they like.
Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. Gholam Ali Pour is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute
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How Long Will Obama Protect Hillary?
BREAKING: Obama Protects Hillary, Defies Judge’s Order… This Should Mean PRISON
Hillary Clinton may have left the Obama administration, but she needn’t worry: President Barack Obama’s State Department is perfectly willing to keep lying and covering up for her.
The State Department announced Wednesday that the next batch of Hillary Clinton’s email, which was supposed to be released per a judge’s order, would not be released because — get this — the holidays got in the way.
“We have worked diligently to come as close to the goal as possible, but with the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule we have not met the goal this month. To narrow that gap, the State Department will make another production of former Secretary Clinton’s email sometime next week,” a statement from the State Department read, according to The Washington Times.It’s understandable. After all, you can imagine how long it takes to
cover up information that would implicate Hillary Clinton yet again put up a Christmas tree.
The department also said that it was having trouble processing and sorting the information the judge demanded. They said they would release 5,500 pages of documents on Thursday, however.
On July 16, 1973, Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield revealed that President Nixon had a secret recording device installed in the Oval Office. One year later, on July 24, 1974, after one of the toughest fights in political history and the interjection of the Supreme Court into the matter, Richard Nixon was finally forced to turn over the tapes that proved he was a felon.
Yet, even though she refuses to release all of her email and the Obama administration continues to stall, both claim they’re being perfectly transparent on the matter. Nixon took a year and he had to fire three special prosecutors and lose a Supreme Court case before he did it.
Does this mean Clinton and Obama are less transparent than Richard Nixon? It’s certainly looking that way.
Here’s an idea, Hillary and Barack: why not just turn over all the email to the legal system, as per the court order? Don’t worry about sorting it — there are people who can do that. And, after all, you said there was no classified email on the private server, right? So you should have nothing to worry about.
The answer is becoming increasingly clear: what’s on that hard drive could possibly take down both Clinton and Obama, and it has to be sanitized and obfuscated before it’s released to the courts.
Neither of these people should be president. Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree.
Men Welcome In Female Bathrooms
WASHINGTON STATE OPENS ALL WOMEN'S BATHROOMS TO MEN
Mandate called '1st-of-its-kind' in nation
In Washington state, bathrooms have been opened to both genders.
Thanks to the Human Rights Commission, Washington state’s newest law makes businesses open their bathroom doors to both men and women – meaning, men must be granted equal and unfettered access to the ladies’ restrooms.
“This first-of-its-kind, statewide law is part of the recent push to frame gender-segregated bathrooms as an affront to ‘equality,’” wrote Joseph Backholm in the Family Policy Institute of Washington.
A new rule issued by the state’s HRC just took effect this month – and that’s after the Houston’s lesbian mayor lost her own personal campaign to open women’s restrooms to men, due to voter backlash. Voters in Missouri and Arkansas recently shot down similar proposals, too.
But Washington went a different way, and the HRC, which has rule-making powers, created a new mandate for the entire state to abide.
As The Family Policy Institute pointed, the state’s been battling with the issue for some time.
“School boards throughout Washington state have been wrestling with it. The YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap County recently made headlines when they created a policy allowing transgender men to use the women’s locker room under any and all circumstances,” the organization reported. “However, this is the first statewide mandate that forces businesses to cooperate with a customer’s confusion about his or her gender.”
And the repercussions could prove disastrous, the organization suggested.
“The safety and security of every woman in Washington should not be placed at risk in an attempt to be politically correct,” the post said. “We should be compassionate for the real challenges people face, but we shouldn’t be stupid.”
The new rule “also affects schools,” the policy organization found.
The Family Policy Institute reminded the “legislature has every right to fix this [rule] and they should,” and asked for concerned citizens to call their representatives to press for a striking of the new policy.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/12/washington-state-opens-womens-bathrooms-to-men/#TuxGymWco0FtypvG.99
The West Gets Lucky This New Years Eve
String of Global ISIS New Year’s Eve Attacks Foiled
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:2)
image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1_times_square_night_2013-660x330.jpg
Times Square in New York City. (Photo: Chensiyuan / Wiki Commons)
A string of global ISIS-backed New Year’s Eve terror attacks were foiled by security officials.
In New York, US federal authorities announced a man was arrested and charged with planning an attack on a bar to prove to ISIS that he was worthy of joining up with jihadists in Syria.
25-year-old Emanuel Lutchman was charged by prosecutors with attempting to provide material support to terrorists. He was taken down by officials in an FBI sting.
According to a federal complaint, Lutchman is a self-professed convert to Islam. He claimed to have received instructions from an overseas ISIS member and planned to attack a bar in the Rochester area on Thursday evening. He purchased knives and a machete to carry out the attack.
Court documents obtained by the International Business Times stated that Lutchman planned to “do operations and kill some kuftar.” He was prepared to “give up everything” for ISIS.
The FBI revealed that Lutchman was not acting along. Initially, Lutchman recruited two friends to form a terror cell. One friend dropped out and the second was working with the FBI, unknown to Lutchman.
The report added that Lutchman first considered carrying out a bombing attack and then kidnapping and killing civilians. On Tuesday night, he purchased from a Walmart store masks, knives, gloves, zip ties, duct tape, ammonia and a machete.
On Wednesday, the day of his arrest, Lutchman filmed a video on his phone swearing allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In a separate incident, police in Munich warned of a “serious, imminent threat” by ISIS suicide bombers on New Year’s Eve. Authorities told people to stay away from the city’s main train station as the train station in the Pasing neighborhood.
Munich police president Hubertus Andrae told the media that German authorities were tipped off to the attack by a foreign intelligence service. Police spokesman Werner Kraus told the Associated Press that “after evaluating the situation, we started evacuating the train stations and also asked partygoers to stay away from big crowds outside.”
According to German news agency dpa, ISIS was planning attacks with five to seven suicide bombers. The warning was only handed over to German official’s hours before the new year.
550 security officers were deployed across the city to track down and arrest the suspects, as well as secure the suspected sites.
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/57698/string-global-isis-new-years-eve-attacks-foiled-terror-watch/#uGWSQLIiOjJzRorK.99
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