Islamic Decapitation Attack in Nice, France Linked to All Saints Day

Something that is not getting much attention about the Islamic decapitation attack in Notre Dame Church in Nice, France.  It may have been timed to coincide with All Saints Day:

…Several local priests are saying that they were warned about the possibility of an attack days ago.

The timing, they say, is intended to coincide with the Catholic All Saint's Day holiday on Nov. 1. Some in terror circles are making a connection between the Day of the Dead and killing non-believers.

Also, according to eyewitness reports, the attack unfolded inside the church, during morning services, in full view of the priest and clergy. At least two of the three victims were killed inside the church.

Priests said they received threats in the days before the attack.

"We had been warned for two or three days that there might be some additional attacks with the approach of All Saints' Day, since some made a link with the Christian feast of the dead and the fact of increasing the number of dead."

So this year, I will be celebrating All Saints Day with that much more gusto.

And, yes, I may be armed.

BREAKING: Obama Admin Gave Funds to Terror-listed Group . . . After Pressure from World Vision

Overnight, some attention is being given to the breaking story that the Obama Administration granted aid funds to the terror-listed Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA).  ISRA has quite a history.

By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

Lovely.  But what I find most troubling about this story has not yet been given much attention – World Vision’s role in pressuring the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to make the grant to ISRA:

Despite this well-documented history, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in July 2014 awarded $723,405 to World Vision Inc., an international evangelical charity, to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.” Of these funds, $200,000 was to be directed to a sub-grantee: ISRA.

Responding to a Middle East Forum (MEF) inquiry, a USAID official explains that World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list. USAID instructed World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA” and informed the State Department, OFAC, and USAID’s Office of the Inspector General. USAID and World Vision then waited for OFAC to confirm whether ISRA was designated or not.

USAID emails obtained by the Middle East Forum reveal that in January 2015, World Vision was growing unhappy while waiting for OFAC’s assessment. Mark Smith, World Vision’s senior director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, wrote to USAID, stating that the Islamic Relief Agency “had performed excellent work” for World Vision in the past, and that “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” on World Vision’s relationship with the Sudanese regime. Smith also revealed that World Vision had submitted a notice to OFAC indicating its “intention to restart work with [ISRA] and to transact with [ISRA]” if OFAC did not respond within a week.

World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.”

But the grant was eventually made anyway.

Then, incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”

An unnamed World Vision official described the decision as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” 

I don’t want to jump to conclusions. Perhaps ISRA somehow reformed, and World Vision knew that better than bureaucrats up the line?  But World Vision has been at the very least careless about partnerships before, even (apparently without their knowledge) funding Hamas.  This ISRA story, too, is troubling and bears watching.  

If I see a response from World Vision, I will post it.

Multiculturalism Kills

Multiculturalism, the delusion that all cultures are more or less morally equivalent and are to be welcomed, has once again been proven a deadly delusion.

My prayers are with the victims of the Westminster terrorist attack and with their friends and families.

Obama Imports More Terrorists

Obama seems determined to endanger us as much as possible before January 20^th.

In the first 84 days of the 2017 fiscal year (October 1, 2016 - December 23, 2016), the Obama administration has accepted 25,584 refugees into the United States, according to data provided by the State Department.  Per Breitbart, compared to the same period in FY2016, that represents an 86% increase year-over-year.

And, yes…

…per data from the U.S. State Department, the overwhelming majority of refugees admitted into the U.S. over the past couple of months are coming from Syria, Iraq and Somalia...

Whom we know are all such lovely people.

At best, this is inexcusable recklessness that endangers American lives and will tax communities that much more with dangerous invaders.   Yes, that is what too many of them are.

But then the safety and freedom of American citizens has always been rather low on Obama’s list of priorities.

Belgium’s Coddling of Muslims

After an Islamist terrorist attack, there is the usual rubbish that we’ve somehow provoked Muslims to terror.  But really the West has given Muslims far more consideration than they deserve.  In Belgium, as elsewhere in Europe, they have been downright coddled: 

Meantime, [Belgium’s] allowing the construction of massive mosques, including one with a 60-foot minaret that will automatically light up during calls to prayer. Authorities even let Muslim hate-preachers sermonize at the subway stations in Brussels, including one known to approach young Muslims and persuade them to go and fight in Syria.

Heavily subsidized by Belgium’s overgenerous welfare system, North African immigrants have little incentive to integrate. Instead they turn inward, creating Islamic no-go zones divorced from and hostile to Western society.

Sharia4Belgium is one of most popular youth organizations in the country. Its young Muslim bullies go around harassing non-Muslims to comply with Sharia law on the street, banning the smoking of cigarettes, the use of alcohol and the sale of pork. Women who don’t cover up get pawed, or worse, raped.

The problem isn’t intolerance. It’s the multiculturalist socialist paradise that the entire European Union affords Muslim immigrants.

As a result, welfare is abused by Muslims across Europe — some 80% of Muslim immigrants to Europe are on the dole, and more than half are “economically inactive.” Muslims claim disability more than any other group.

In the EU capital of Belgium, as well as neighboring Netherlands, Muslims are roughly 5% of the population yet consume 40% to 60% of the welfare budget. Belgium spends more on unemployment benefits than any other country outside Denmark.

European society isn’t oppressing Muslim immigrants. Far from it. It’s coddling them, providing them a comfortable living. And they return the favor by disemboweling their gracious hosts.

Yes, I do think there is a lesson here.  One is unwise to invite peoples hostile to your culture and then not only allow them to continue to be hostile to your culture but also reward them for leeching off your society.

Yes, that is rather obvious if politically incorrect.  It shows how self-destructive Western societies are today that it even has to be said.

Multiculturalism Kills

Yesterday in Belgium, we got another sad instance of the deadly nature of multiculturalism.

No, the terrorists were most certainly not multiculturalists.  They were/are the polar opposite.  But multiculturalism enabled the terrorists and invited them and people like them into Europe.

Multiculturalism holds that virtually all cultures are valid and good, and that a society is enriched by bringing in people from any number of cultures.  Buttressed by this view and by a mixture of both humanitarian and brazen political impulses (Remember UK’s Labour importing a more Labour-friendly electorate?), British and Europeans imported massive numbers of Muslims beginning in the Eighties.

Now anyone with common sense could have told you this was both literal and societal suicide.  Muslims from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia generally have values that are dead set opposed to Western values of freedom and (real) tolerance, not to mention what remains of Judeo-Christian heritage.  And they have a long history of violence against “infidels,” their lives, and their cultures from the very beginning of Islam.  Letting millions of such into Europe is asking for what has happened in Brussels and Paris and London, and it is asking for worse to come, both in deaths and in attacks on Western society and freedom.

Heck, it took Charles Martel to stop Muslims from subjugating Europe.  But now Europe lets them right on in? That is madness, if not treason.

But, hey, it gets Leftist political parties more votes.

And the madness is chiefly multiculturalism – a madness that considers inviting millions from a hateful, murderous culture into the heart of Western society to be the enlightened thing to do.

Multiculturalism kills.

About That Mosque Our Non-Muslim President is Visiting

President Obama is visiting a mosque today, namely the Islamic Society of Baltimore.  His purpose?  In the White House’s own words, to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

I guess those “contributions” must include support for terrorist groups, because the Islamic Society of Baltimore has a record of that:

An imam who served at ISB for a total of 15 years has also been a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood network and has worked for an Islamic relief group that was designated as a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department in 2004. Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served two stints as ISB’s imam, from 1983 to 1989 and from 1994 to 2003, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan in the 1970s. He also co-founded the Muslim American Society, a Falls Church, Va.-based group that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department says provided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

I will try to be charitable – it’s the Pre-Lent season after all – and say this shows egregious incompetence and sloppiness on the part of the Obama Administration.  After all, there are mosques in the United States that do not support terrorism.  Could the President and his people not find one?

But is it not strange that again and again the decisions of this non-Muslim President enable Islamic terror?  The Obama Administration cheerleaded the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt.  It supported taking Qaddafi out in Libya, creating a power vacuum terrorists walked right into.  It withdrew us completely from Iraq, creating a vacuum ISIS walked right into.  It let right on in the San Bernardino terrorists.  It turned full on the money spigot to Iran.

His visiting a mosque notorious for supporting terrorist groups is just the cherry on top.

Like I said, charity calls for saying this is all just incompetence – horrible, destructive incompetence, but incompetence nonetheless.

But if he had a soft spot for Islamic terrorism, would he be acting any differently?

Refugee of the Day

This commences a series that will focus on the contribution those wonderful Middle Eastern Muslim refugees make to society.  Thanks Obama and Merkel for your wisdom in letting them right on in!

Our first Refugee of the Day is Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, 24.  He already appreciates that quintessential American institution of the shopping mall so much that has been seeking to liven up the American mall experience by bombing the Houston Galleria.  What a creative prankster!

He also pledged his loyalty to that fun-loving gang, ISIS.

Unfortunately, his effort was stopped by law enforcement fuddy-duddies.

His background?

The Houston terror suspect is a Palestinian born in Iraq, but has lived among us since November 2, 2009, when he entered the United States as a refugee.

And now he’s become the Refugee of the Day.  Way to go Omar! . . . Faraj! . . . Saeed Al oh hell!  Just way to go!

Obama let Jihadi Bride Malik right on in even though she openly supported terrorism.

Obama wants us to trust him on vetting those thousands of lovely Muslim “refugees” he’s letting in.  Yet his administration could not be bothered with looking at the social media postings of the Jihadi Bride of San Bernardino infamy, Tashfeen Malik.  Big omission that:

Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

But it gets worse.  Not looking at her social media postings was part of Obama Administration policy:

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.

And Ed Morrissey points to one Janet Napolitano, Obama’s first DHS Secretary as the one who put this policy in place.

But now the Obama Administration is making noises about changing this policy.  I would say better late than never.  But it’s not better for those murdered by Malik and fiancé in San Bernardino.

And, again, we are supposed to trust this administration in vetting Muslim “refugees”?

Obama is Covering Up Immigration Histories of Known Jihadis

Obama is not only willfully averting his eyes from the danger of his de facto open borders policy.  He doesn’t want the rest of us to see it either.

The Obama Administration is covering up the immigration history of 72 known jihadis.

Back in August, Senators Cruz and Session asked for the immigration history of these 72.  The Obama Regime is sitting on the information, and the two Senators have spoke out about it.

Further, they are demanding the immigration history of San Bernardino mass murderer Syed Farook.

I’m sure “the most transparent administration in history” will disclose that as soon as possible.

Leftists Yesterday After the San Bernardino Shooting

I’ve watched the San Bernardino Shooting and its aftermath closely.  I would rather not be proven right again and again about the past and present madness of importing massive Muslim populations to the West, but, sadly, I am once again proven too correct on that.

What did shock me was the behavior of the American Left.  They really should not be able to shock me anymore after the several decades I’ve been watching them.  But somehow they keep on managing so to do. 

The blood was hardly dry and the identity or origin of the shooters was almost completely unknown when the Left tried to pin this on their political enemies.  The loathsome Markos Moulitsas took the lead on this.

Yo GOP, kinda hard to talk about "keeping people safe" when your peeps are shooting up America.

— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) December 2, 2015

Who knew that a Muslim gunman and his Saudi bride were at the heart of the Republican base! 

Of course, he had no idea about the eventual identity of the perps, but he could not resist immediately using the awful event to smear conservatives.  Polite words utterly fail.

And MSNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg News were oh-so-eager to inform us that there was a Planned Parenthood clinic only about a mile away!

And, again well before we knew anything about the perps, Obama (and Hillary) jumped to advocate making it harder for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves against the jihadis he’s importing.

Then Leftists, as if they hadn’t besmirched themselves enough, mocked and ridiculed those offering prayers for the victims.

We have found out the hard way about the nature of Islam and its adherents.  We would do well to open our eyes to the nature of Leftist ideologies and their adherents as well.

Again, Numerous Muslim Refugees to U. S. Have Already Gone Terrorist

I apologize if this post is in part repeating myself.  But I note that otherwise reasonable, intelligent and well-meaning people are all for bringing thousands of Muslim “refugees” to the U. S.  So I find repetition needful.

The question of whether bringing Muslim refugees to the U. S. brings Jihadis to the U. S. has already been answered definitively.  It has already happened on numerous occasions.

And note that the linked examples come from earlier batches of refugees that were much smaller than the number Obama is bringing to our shores.  We are going to vet these any better?

If you would like to focus on a particular past batch of refugees, Scott Johnson has studied the Somali refugees residing in Minnesota.

Excuse me for pounding the virtual table.  But, again, the nature of Islam overseas is such that importing mass numbers of Muslims is importing massive trouble.  The U. K. and France have already found this out the hard way. 

And now so are we.

Hear No Evil. See No Evil… 2

I won’t delve into the details of the growing scandal at the U. S. Central Command.  Others can do that better than I.  But it suffices to say intelligence analysts were pressured not to be so serious in their assessments of ISIS.

Yes, given the events of recent weeks and months, this is no trivial scandal.

And, of course, the question immediately arises: how responsible is Obama for this?  I consider it doubtful he was directly responsible.  But indirectly responsible?  Oh, yes.

I have already noted last week that Obama is not interested in intelligence on terrorism that does not fit his rosy world view.  (And sometimes my timing on posts is amazing if I say so myself.  And I do.)  It is a well known phenomenon that if an executive treats with disdain unpleasant information and those who provide it to him, then those under him will be all the more reluctant to provide him with unpleasant information, no matter how needful it may be.

Whether by intent or by the withering pressure of group think and of trying to avoid displeasing one’s superiors, Obama’s Hear No Evil, See No Evil attitude has resulted in Speak No Evil beneath him in our military intelligence.

And that, in turn, has helped enable ISIS.

Terrorists Already Have Gotten into the U. S. as “Refugees”

Christians and people of good will want to be hospitable, especially to those fleeing bad situations.  So it should not surprise that many of the same well meaning people are allowing those good instincts to overwhelm common sense and oppose efforts to stop or severely restrict bringing Middle Eastern “refugees” into the U. S.  I see this myself in a number of personal friends of mine.  They are good people.  But on this subject, they are mistaken.

I’ve already stated that the very nature of Islam makes allowing the mass migration of Muslims pretty much a death wish.  But, leaving that aside for now, it has become a meme that the U. S. screens refugees so closely that we should not be concerned and let those that pass screening right on in.

But it is already evident that whatever screens we are using, they are not working with Muslim refugees.  Kentucky knows that well:

Of the 31 states that have declared their opposition to taking in Syrian refugees, one state, Kentucky, has a specific reason to be wary of the background check process: previously two Iraqi refugees who settled in Bowling Green turned out to be al Qaeda-linked terrorists with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, an ABC News investigation found. Both pleaded guilty to terror-connected charges after trying to acquire heavy weapons while in America’s heartland.

The 2013 ABC News investigation also revealed that several dozen other suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some who were believed to have targeted U.S. troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the U.S. as Iraq and Afghanistan War refugees, among the tens of thousands of innocent immigrants.

The Obama administration insists now that Syrian refugees are subjected to intense vetting before they’re allowed to settle in the U.S. and that a vast majority of the millions of refugees the U.S. has resettled since the 1970s are normal, peaceful people, but the program has had serious security problems before. In 2009, a flaw in background screening of Iraqi refugees allowed the two al Qaeda-linked terrorists to settle in Bowling Green and led to a temporary suspension of the refugee program, officials told ABC News in a 2013 investigation.

More recently, refugees from Bosnia and Somalia have been caught being involved with Islamic terrorist groups as well.

And now we are supposed to let in tens of thousands of Syrian “refugees” without letting in terrorists or future terrorists?  Why should we trust our screens when they have already failed against lesser numbers?

Should Christians desire to aid refugees who are refugees indeed?  Of course.  But aiding them and allowing masses of them to come to the U. S. even if they have problematic backgrounds (And, again, Middle Eastern Islam is a problematic background if there ever was one.) are two different things.

And I have not mentioned that the behavior of most of the “refugees” is that of economic opportunists rather than that of genuine refugees.  Why must so many of them go to countries with sweet welfare benefits, hmmmm?

I believe in prison ministry and have contributed to it and even been involved in it on occasion.  And many prisoners have good hearts and/or changed hearts.  But I have no plans to let a bunch of prisoners I don’t know move into my house.  Just no.  Sorry. 

I guess I’m xenophobic that way.

Hear no evil. See no evil…

There are certain intelligence reports on terrorism Obama makes a point of ignoring.  And it’s not just laziness or an eagerness to get on the golf course. 

Sharyl Attkisson says he is not interested in intelligence on designated terrorist groups if he does not consider them terrorist.

Attkisson said, “I have talked to people who have worked in the Obama administration who firmly believe he has made up his mind. I would say closed his mind, they say, to their intelligence that they’ve tried to bring him about various groups that he does not consider terrorists, even if they are on the U.S. list of designated terrorists. He has his own ideas, and there are those who’ve known him a long time who say this dates back to law school. He does not necessarily—you may think it’s a good trait you may think it’s a bad trait—he does not necessarily listen to the people with whom he disagrees. He seems to dig in. I would suppose because he thinks he’s right. He is facing formidable opposition on this particular point.”

Attkisson continued, “I don’t know the reason for it. I’ve only been told by those who have allegedly attempted to present him, or have been in the circle that has attempted to present him, with certain intelligence that they said he doesn’t want it. He said he doesn’t want it or he won’t read it, in some instances.”

So a technique of Obama in dealing with terrorism . . . is to stubbornly pretend it doesn’t exist in at least some instances and to ignore it.

Remember the Fort Hood shooting being officially labeled as “workplace violence” by the Obama Regime?

Obscuring Evil

After 9-11, I was appalled by those who were eager to blame the act on us, on U. S. literally, as if we had done something to deserve it.  (Actually, we helped Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  Some thanks we got.)  Instead of denouncing the utter evil of the terrorists, some, particularly callow youth, were eager to make excuses for them and to blame America.  And I saw this attitude even from people who were not particularly radical.

The episode was an eye-opener for me how wedded some are to moral equivalence to the point that that they would makes excuses for the perpetrators and blame the victims even in the case of 9-11.

Fast forward to now, and this crowd is in charge of the White House. And in even in the face of the pure evil of ISIS, they are reluctant to call evil by its name.  Their language instead obscures evil when it distracts from today’s evil from Islamonazis by pointing to alleged past evil by Christians.  (BTW, does it concern that the Obama Administration is a bit eager to blame Christians, far more eager than they are to blame extremist Muslims?)  Not to mention blaming a lack of jobs.  Yes, a jobs fair is the answer to ISIS.

Some may think I am nitpicking diplomatic language.  But one does not have to read 1984 to know that a regime that uses language more to obscure than to explain is not healthy for a society. As Jonah Goldberg just said (during a really good rant, by the way), “Societies get themselves into trouble when language becomes a tool not for describing reality but concealing it.”

Yes, being diplomatic is usually the way to go in foreign affairs.  But one can be diplomatic without being delusional or deceptive.

May I suggest that calling out evil is better way to go?  Whatever happened to saying evil people do evil things because they are evil?

Yes, I am a cranky old man.  Now get off my lawn.

“Embarrassing the Nation He Leads”

I am embarrassed to be an American this morning.  A remarkable number of world leaders join over a million people to march against terrorism in Paris.  . . . And, thanks to Obama, America is AWOL.  The highest official the Obama Regime sends to participate is the U. S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley.

And even her presence is embarrassing:

“The highest U.S. official at the march yesterday over there was the U.S. ambassador over there who was a big Obama donor who got that job in part because of her contributions to President Obama,” New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin observed.

Those appalled include Democrats and even some in the news media.

As for me, I am at a loss.  This is a day of shame for America.

Oh, that quote in the headline?  It is from self-professed Lefty Democrat Rick Ungar.

But I guess everyone is just quibbling.

Truth About Islam From . . . The New Yorker??

Yes, George Packer of The New Yorker, of all publications, gets it:

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France's failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They're not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They're not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West--the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be "understood" as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists.

They are only the latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades. It's the same ideology that sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade under a death sentence for writing a novel, then killed his Japanese translator and tried to kill his Italian translator and Norwegian publisher. The ideology that murdered three thousand people in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The one that butchered Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam, in 2004, for making a film. The one that has brought mass rape and slaughter to the cities and deserts of Syria and Iraq. That massacred a hundred and thirty-two children and thirteen adults in a school in Peshawar last month. That regularly kills so many Nigerians, especially young ones, that hardly anyone pays attention.

Because the ideology is the product of a major world religion, a lot of painstaking pretzel logic goes into trying to explain what the violence does, or doesn't, have to do with Islam. Some well-meaning people tiptoe around the Islamic connection, claiming that the carnage has nothing to do with faith, or that Islam is a religion of peace, or that, at most, the violence represents a "distortion" of a great religion....

A religion is not just a set of texts but the living beliefs and practices of its adherents. Islam today includes a substantial minority of believers who countenance, if they don't actually carry out, a degree of violence in the application of their convictions that is currently unique.

We can argue whether or not the violence is inherent in Islam. (I contend it is.  Look at its history.)  But George Packer is right.  And those still in denial about Islam are engaging in foolishness - deadly foolishness.

----

A big hat tip to Ace.