THE BDS MOVEMENT: Hamas Terrorists Come to America

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MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERATo defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, it is first necessary to understand it.

The BDS campaign is an extraordinary phenomenon.

Activists from US coast to coast robotically parrot the same lies, employ the same tactics of bullying, intimidating and silencing pro-Israel activists and speakers on campus after campus.

Their goals are uniform. They seek to silence pro-Israel voices in US academia as a means to destroy general public support for Israel in America.

And they seek to make Jew-hatred socially acceptable in elite circles in America for the first time since the Holocaust.

This month it was leftist MK Tzipi Livni’s turn to fall victim to BDS bigotry and defamation. During a public appearance at Harvard Law School, one of the heads of BDS movement at the school, Husam el-Qoulaq, asked her why she is “smelly.”

Qoulaq is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Harvard Law School.
SJP is the central engine of the BDS movement.

Its members are the ones who organize the “divest from Israel” resolutions routinely passed by ignorant or intimidated student representatives on college councils.

SJP members are the ones who regularly harass pro-Israel students and riot or otherwise disrupt pro-Israel events on campuses.

They are the ones who willingly and purposely engage in rank anti-Semitic demonization of Jews and Israel to normalize Jew-hatred in America.

Given SJP’s lead role in the campaign against Israel and American Jewry on college campuses, students and Jewish groups trying to combat the racist movement focus their attention on SJP.

But it works out that SJP doesn’t formally exist.

There is no nonprofit group called Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP doesn’t file tax forms. It doesn’t have a paper trail. In other words, SJP is a ghost organization, an illusion.

To bring it down you need to find its controllers.

The Canary Mission (canarymission.org) is a website managed by students and activists. It was formed “to document people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and the Jewish people, particularly on college campuses in North America.”

According to the website, SJP was founded in 2001 by UC Berkeley Prof. Hatem Bazian. Bazian’s organizational pedigree reads like the who’s who of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America.

Bazian fund-raised for a Hamas front group called KindHearts. In 2008, like a number of other Islamic groups that were found guilty of providing material support for terrorism in the framework of the Holy Land Foundation trial, KindHearts was forced to disband. KindHearts was found to have raised money for Hamas.

Another of Bazian’s former employers, the Islamic Association for Palestine, also disbanded after it was found guilty of funding Hamas.

According to the Canary Mission’s findings, Bazian founded SJP to distance the BDS movement from its Islamic masters. His idea was to brand it as a radical group that could easily collaborate with other radical groups on campus and so turn the radical establishment into an engine for anti-Israel activism.

Although Bazian went to great lengths to brand SJP as a non-Islamic movement, he had no intention of ceding control of the BDS movement to non-Islamic forces. To ensure control over SJP, and through it, the BDS movement as a whole, according to the Canary Mission, Bazian formed American Muslims for Palestine.

On April 19, during a hearing before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, American Muslims for Palestine’s nature became clear.

Jonathan Schanzer served as a terrorism finance analyst for the Department of the Treasury from 2004 to 2007. He currently works as the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. In testimony before the subcommittee, Schanzer revealed that the heads of AMP are alumni of three Islamist groups that were banned following their convictions for terrorism financing during the course of the Holy Land Foundation trial that ended in 2008.

AMP’s leadership held key positions at the Holy Land Foundation, KindHearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine. These groups and their employees transferred millions of dollars to al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Although Schanzer could find no indication that AMP is continuing its predecessors’ practice of sending funds to foreign terrorist groups, he demonstrated how the heir of Hamas-USA now direct the BDS movement. Through AMP, they control SJP.

In his words, “AMP is a Chicago-based organization that is a leading driver of the BDS campaign.

AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine, which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States. AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and grants to SJP activists.”

Schanzer added, “AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups across the country.”

The reason that SJP activists utilize the same tactics and rhetoric from sea to shining sea is because officials from the heir to disbanded terrorism funding groups tells them what to say and do. Everything from their “Apartheid Walls” and Die-Ins to their posters and slogans and tactic of shutting down pro-Israel events is dictated to them by AMP.

Whereas SJP doesn’t exist at all on paper, AMP’s existence is eyebrow-raising from a legal perspective.

AMP is not registered as a nonprofit so it is impossible to know its funding sources or the size of its donations, because it is not required to publicize them. As Schanzer explained, funds for AMP are raised through yet another organization called Americans for Justice in Palestine Education Foundation, or AJP, whose nature and behavior are also strange.

AJP’s chairman is Bazian. AJP and AMP share the same office in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hill.

Unlike AMP, AJP is a registered nonprofit. In its 2014 990 tax form, attached to Schanzer’s testimony, it reports raising in excess of $3.2 million between 2010 and 2014. But, in apparent breach of the law, AJP did not report how it spent the money or where it received the funds from.

Like AMP, AJP members worked in the past for the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine and KindHearts. Indeed, most of them are the same people.

Not only do AMP-AFP fail to divulge their financing sources or outlays, they revel in their practice of operating at the edges of the law. At AMP’s 2014 annual conference in Chicago, participants were invited to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”

Given SJP’s raging success, it isn’t a surprise that Bazian isn’t the only one claiming to have founded it. For instance, Senan Shaqdeh claims that he founded SJP. As Schanzer testified, Shaqdeh, who also lives in Chicago, is listed as a terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine by the PLO’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs’ website.

Shaqdeh is also the coordinator of the Chicago- based US Coalition to Boycott Israel. In 2014, Shaqdeh traveled to Ramallah where he met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

The chairman of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel is Ghassan Barakat. According to Schanzer, Barakat is a PLO consular official in Chicago.

Like SJP, the Coalition is not a legal entity. It is not registered with state or local tax authorities. But given Barakat’s and Shaqdeh’s associations with the PLO and the PA, it is likely that it is funded by the US-funded PA.

Perhaps money from the PLO to SJP and other BDS outlets is transferred through an opaque New York state registered nonprofit called Wespac. Currently, a delegation of Palestinian students, organized by Bir Zeit University, paid for by Wespac and managed by SJP is traveling through the US lobbying students to boycott Israel.

Schanzer’s testimony should lead anti-BDS efforts in three directions. Two of them are legal, and one is political.

On the legal front, AMP and AJP’s commingling is curious, to say the least. Their failure to report the sources of their funding or how the funds are used appear, at a minimum, to be a breach of reporting requirements. These irregularities, along with the fact that officers of these organizations were in the past officers of organizations disbanded due to their provision of material support for terrorism, warrant criminal investigations by both tax authorities and counterterrorism investigators.

Unfortunately, shortly after he entered office in 2009, President Barack Obama’s then-attorney- general Eric Holder ordered the Department of Justice to stop investigating Islamist nonprofit groups. Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that any investigation will be conducted by federal agencies in the near future.

This leaves state, local and congressional authorities.

Since AMP and AJP are registered in Palos Hills, both Illinois tax authorities and law enforcement and Palos Hills authorities can open investigations into their operations. Moreover, Congress, which exposed the fact that both groups appear to be a natural continuation of banned terrorism-supporting organizations, is fully empowered to conduct congressional investigations of their operations, replete with the power to subpoena witnesses.

As for the operations of PLO officials in Chicago, their work is arguably in breach of the laws stipulating the permitted conduct of PLO officials in the US. Congress can investigate their behavior as well, and determine whether or not it constitutes a material breach of the PLO’s permitted actions in America, and so requires the US to cut off its relations with the terrorist group. Certainly the involvement of PA/PLO officials in an anti-Semitic hate campaign is grounds for a cut off of US aid to the PA.

On the political front, it is vital that Israel fight BDS as the most widespread form of anti-Semitism in North America. Unlike the situation in Europe, where BDS is largely an economic warfare campaign, in the US its goal is political. Its leaders are not interested in harming the Israeli economy per se. They are interested in cultivating anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel to pave the way for economic warfare and actual war against Israel.

Government ministers involved with the fight against BDS need to provide anti-BDS activists with information about SJP’s links to Hamas and with the PA. American Jewish organizations and activists need to call out college administrators when they say since they refuse to carry out divestment resolutions that they oppose BDS, even as they allow SJP to operate on their campuses and even fund the Hamas front group directly.

Schanzer’s testimony makes clear that the BDS movement is part and parcel of the jihadist war against Israel whose goal is its annihilation.

Both legally and politically, it needs to be fought accordingly. (For more from the author of “THE BDS MOVEMENT: Hamas Terrorists Come to America” please click HERE)

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Democratic Strategist: Trump Will Beat Hillary Like ‘a Baby Seal’

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23679921353_450c0f6497_oDemocratic strategist Dave “Mudcat” Saunders believes Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton like a “baby seal,” and that working class whites who haven’t already left the Democratic Party for cultural reasons will due so now for economic ones.

“I know a ton of Democrats — male, female, black and white — here [in southern Virginia] who are going to vote for Trump. It’s all because of economic reasons. It’s because of his populist message,” Mudcat told The Daily Caller Wednesday.

Saunders has experience working with Jim Webb, helping getting him elected to the U.S Senate in 2006 and advised his failed bid for the presidency in 2016. Saunders was also an advisor to John Edwards in his 2008 presidential bid. The Democrat strategist is renowned for connecting politicians to “Bubbas” — white, working class Southerners.

“Working class whites in the South have already departed the Democratic Party for cultural reasons. Well the working class whites in the North are now deserting the Democrats because of economic reasons,” Mudcat told TheDC. He added, “this is the new age of economic populism, man. This is about survival for a lot of people.”

Hillary Clinton, throughout the Democratic primary, has relied heavily on the black vote, she has struggled to gain support from white men. In the SEC primary, she didn’t win over 60 percent of the white vote in any of the six states. She did however gain over 80 percent of the black vote in all of them. There has been one demographic this cycle that Clinton has lost consistently to Sanders — white men. (Read more from “Democratic Strategist: Trump Will Beat Hillary Like ‘a Baby Seal'” HERE)

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Fetus Cookies Are Just Part of the Left’s Campaign of Terror

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Human_Embryo_-_Approximately_8_weeks_estimated_gestational_ageThere is more than one kind of terrorism. The most obvious variety covers acts of violence that target civilians, which Muslim jihadists commit hundreds of times a year throughout the West. The primary goal of such acts is not so much the murder of those particular concertgoers, co-workers or minority Christians. No, what the terrorist wants is to break down the sense of public order, to show how fragile the status quo really is, and make people doubt how trustworthy are their basic institutions.

As they pick through the rubble and piece together the bodies, solid citizens cannot help but ask themselves a series of radical questions: Can the police even keep us safe? Is our government really in charge? Are we spiraling down into chaos? Must we give in to these extremists’ demands, or else face even more destructive attacks? When ordinary people have to ask those kinds of questions, your society is in very deep trouble indeed. For a deeper understanding of the methods of violent terrorism, see Michael Burleigh’s definitive history, Blood and Rage.

There is another kind of terrorism, which aims at the same outcome via less gory means. It is “verbal” or “cultural” terrorism, which likewise uses fear and outrage to shatter the civic order and make room for a power-grab by radical activists, but without all the maiming and mess. It’s a bloodless method of terrorism, but it’s often much more effective. And it’s exactly what we are seeing in a long list of current political battles, from the “bathroom wars” to campus “safe spaces,” from attacks on suburban home-owners to attempts to target and ruin vocal, public Christians.

The term “verbal terrorism” was coined by my old friend, the intellectual historian Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), who lived through terror of several distinct varieties. He was jailed in a Nazi concentration camp for joining a Catholic Resistance group. Released at the end of the war, he was driven out of his native Hungary by its Soviet-imposed totalitarian regime. He taught at American colleges during the 1960s, and watched as Marxist-sponsored student groups used violence to take control of campuses and silence dissent from their agenda.

In his classic book The Counter-Revolution, Molnar exposes how leftists employ cultural terrorism to attack the three great enemies of progressive ideology, which Karl Marx identified as private property, religion, and the bourgeois family. Also targeted are less fundamental institutions on which these three rely for stability and protection, such as national sovereignty, citizenship, the military, and academic standards.

Leftists identify some vulnerability, a chink in the armor, of one of these institutions — let’s say, the perceived “unfairness” of asking some sincerely deluded “trans” person to use the bathroom that fits his biological sex. They express deep concern about this “cruel” abuse. This attracts the sympathy of kind-hearted sloppy thinkers everywhere, who won’t let themselves see the radical implications of “rectifying” this injustice. Poor Caitlyn, why can’t we just let “her” be happy?

Once the sentimental “moderates” are on board and public opinion is shifting, the radicals launch a campaign of activism designed to outrage the sensibilities of conservative citizens, and goad them into violent reaction. The leftists ratchet up their demands, and when they meet resistance, stigmatize any opponents as hard-hearted bigots infected with “hate” for helpless, marginalized victims.

If this step succeeds, then the witch-hunt begins. The left targets any dissenters as nasty, inhuman extremists and tries to publicly destroy them, through boycotts, pressure campaigns and, where possible, government action. If this step succeeds — and it worked like a charm in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act wars in Indiana, Georgia, and other states — then the battle is all but won: Conservatives are terrified to defend a position that just a few months before was taken for granted as mainstream. We are helpless, frightened, and paralyzed by a futile sense of rage, as we pick through the rubble of one more vital institution of our culture.

Now that we’ve established the pattern, let me pick just the five most recent examples of leftist cultural terrorism, and briefly note how they work. I could do the same next week, and the week after that, and never run short of material — since the left’s campaign is unremitting and tireless, a World War I-style war of attrition whose aim is destruction for its own sake. All leftists need not agree on the shape of a future Utopia that will accommodate all their impossible and incompatible fantasies. It’s enough that they want to smash what now exists. Once it’s flattened, they can hash out how to restack all the rubble.

This Week’s Top Five Terror Attacks, Listed by Target

1) The Family: Bite the Heads Off the Fetuses

Matt Walsh reports on the latest pro-choice outrage, one intended to render the pro-life movement ridiculous and encourage the brazen contempt for unborn human life: Fetus-shaped cookies, which students were invited to consume, while they wrote little pro-choice slogans. As Walsh writes, the display was

put together by the campus atheist club last week at the University of North Georgia. Yes, those are cookies in the shape of babies. … [T]he pro-abortion folks were eating the baby cookies or breaking the heads off and laughing. Another picture … shows a cookie lying next to its severed head over top a sign reading “Abortion should remain legal because it’s constitutionally protected.”

2) Religion: Put Jesus On a Dartboard.

According to Campus Reform:

An alleged “art display” at Rutgers University featuring a figure of Jesus Christ on a dartboard, with darts inserted where He was wounded on the Cross, is being held up as a contradiction of the school’s professed commitment to diversity.

Natalie Caruso, who describes herself as a former Rutgers student, posted a photo to a Facebook group for the Class of 2016 showing the display, which she claimed is currently hanging in the Art Library on College Ave. “It is surprising that a state university would allow this,” she wrote in the post. “I asked them to take it down because I found it disrespectful and they refused. How is this acceptable!?”

Campus Reform is currently awaiting comment from Rutgedartsrs on the matter. This story will be updated to include their reply if and when it is received.

Assuming it’s not a social media hoax, the point of such a stunt is to demonstrate the power-relationships in place at schools like Rutgers. It’s a trial balloon, sent up to see how much Christian-bashing the administration will tolerate. If the school takes action against the display, “free speech advocates” will howl in protest — though they’d stay silent if the school took action against an anti-Muslim display, as it surely would within minutes. If the school does nothing, Christians on campus will get the message: You’re marginal, and our “diversity” protections do not apply to you.

3) Religion and the Family: Publicly Fire a Sportscaster for Expressing Conservative Views.

You probably already know that Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher, has been fired by ESPN for a single social media post that supported North Carolina’s “bathroom law.” The Stream’s Tom Gilson has documented that this is not Schilling’s first “offense” against the unspoken political litmus test in place at ESPN and many other large corporations. In fact, as Gilson noted, Schilling has made a number of conservative statements over the years, which clearly were being compiled in a dossier in some back office at ESPN:

USA Today described him as expressing pattern of opinions that were “appalling, insensitive and nasty, over and over again,” adding, “there was more to this firing than the hatred contained in his words.”

His first error, apparently, was suggesting (“blurting out,” said the AP in a story today) in a TV interview several years ago that people vote for George Bush. Nasty.

Later he compared the firing of General George Petraeus for lax security with confidential information with Hillary Clinton’s email carelessness. … Schilling was a member of the mainstream media who supports conservative views. That was his real crime. So as of this week ESPN, a self-described “inclusive company,” has excluded him.

4) Citizenship: Make Violent Lawbreakers’ Votes Count as Much as Anyone’s.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe evaded existing law and used his executive authority to restore the vote to more than 200,000 convicted felons — boosting likely Democratic vote totals in that vital swing state, and undermining one of the last few shreds of respect for civic virtue: the idea that in order to help make the laws in a community, you not be convicted of flagrantly breaking them. This move was presented, of course, as a blow against racism — since many of the felons happen to be black. Opponents who try to repeal this unilateral act can expect to be compared to Jim Crow politicians who denied the vote to law-abiding black U.S. Army veterans in the 1940s and 50s.

5) Private Property: Force Home-owners to Build New Federal Slums in Their Neighborhoods.

As The Federalist reports, President Obama’s Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is using “de-segregation” as a pretext to force suburban neighborhoods to divert their tax money to nearby, failing Democrat-run cities, or else build massive low-income housing projects with public money. When one local elected official, Rob Astorino, the County Executive of Westchester, N.Y. criticized the federal attack on the taxpayers who elected him, the “federal monitor” in charge of redistributing the wealth asked a judge for a “gag order” to silence Astorino. As The Federalist notes:

We’re not just talking about crippling the ability of local governments to design zoning rules (God forbid you be free from the meddling of a far-off bureaucracy seeking to redistribute people as ethnic units), but the ability of local officials to even criticize the federal government’s intrusion into their local affairs. This is outright censorship.

As next week’s chain of outrages unfolds, understanding the consistent pattern of leftist attacks on sanity, order, and decency might help to steel you in the need to resist. You might as well, since you cannot escape. (For more from the author of “Fetus Cookies Are Just Part of the Left’s Campaign of Terror” please click HERE)

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McCain Fundraiser Faces Felony Drug Charges in Arizona

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John_McCain_-_Guard_Association_of_the_United_States_General_Conference (1)A campaign fundraiser for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was arrested this week after officers found drugs and an active meth lab at her home in Arizona, The Huffington Post reported.

Emily Pitha, who arranged fundraising events for McCain as a subcontractor, faces felony charges stemming from the fact law enforcement officers found “very explosive, very deadly” material at her home on Tuesday.

The McCain campaign has terminated its relationship with Pitha, who previously worked for Republican Sens. Jeff Flake and Jon Kyl, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“We commend the hard work and dedication of our law enforcement officers in their fight to keep our community safe from illegal drugs and associated criminal activity,” McCain spokesman Ryan O’Daniel said in a statement after the incident . . .

Pitha was taken into custody on felony drug charges, including manufacturing of narcotic drugs, possession of dangerous and narcotic drugs, and transportation of dangerous drugs, possession of drug lab equipment, and possession of marijuana. She also faces charges of child endangerment, as two children were living at the home. (Read more from “McCain Fundraiser Faces Felony Drug Charges in Arizona” HERE)

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Jeb Bush: Cruz Naming Fiorina Early as Running Mate Is a ‘Smart Move’

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Jeb_Bush_(8570145056)In his first interview since dropping out of the 2016 race for the White House, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Thursday that Republican candidate Ted Cruz’s unconventional decision to name Carly Fiorina as his running mate was a “smart move.”

“I’m impressed with her,” he said. “[I] thought it was a smart move.”

Bush, who has endorsed Cruz, told CNN reporter Jamie Gangel that choosing Fiorina, who suspended her bid for the GOP nomination in February, will prove helpful when going after Republican rival Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

“Picking a candidate that is talented, tough — she takes on Trump really well, I think, and she takes on Hillary Clinton very well, as well,” Bush said. “[She’s] someone who’s got a proven record, who’s been vetted by a candidate, I thought it was a smart move.”

Though the invincibility of a Trump nomination continues to build, Bush seemed confident it is still possible to block the billionaire businessman from becoming the GOP nominee. (Read more from “Jeb Bush: Cruz Naming Fiorina Early as Running Mate Is a ‘Smart Move'” HERE)

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Three Relatives of San Bernardino Shooter Arrested

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San_Bernardino_shooting_suspect_vehicleThree relatives of the San Bernardino terrorists who killed 14 people in December at a Southern California social services building were arrested Thursday on federal conspiracy, marriage fraud and false statement charges, the FBI announced.

The arrests don’t appear to bear a direct connection to the terror attack, but center on a 2014 marriage-for-citizenship scam allegedly carried out by Enrique Marquez and Mariya Chernykh.

“While investigating the terrorist attack, federal agents obtained official records showing that Marquez, a former neighbor of Syed Rizwan Farook’s, is married to Chernykh,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement. “The investigation determined that Marquez agreed to marry Chernykh so she could obtain immigration benefits that were not available to her because she is a Russian citizen and did not have legal status in the United States” . . .

Marquez is already in jail and awaiting trial for conspiring with one of the San Bernardino attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook, in terror plots that never materialized.

Federal court documents obtained by FoxNews.com tied to Marquez’s case show both he and Farook abruptly halted plans for a dual terror attack in 2012. In that assault, Marquez and Farook allegedly planned to use pipe bombs and two AR-15 rifles “to maximize the number of casualties” at Riverside City College, a nearby institution they attended, and on state Route 91, a busy freeway with few exits where motorists are frequently stuck in heavy gridlock. (Read more from “Three Relatives of San Bernardino Shooter Arrested” HERE)

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Frank Murkowski on Lisa: “Pay Tribute to Caesar”

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Frank Murkowski on Lisa: “Pay Tribute to Caesar”:

And for your reading enjoyment, a few other articles on why Lisa Murkowski should embarrass any self-respecting Republican who supports her 2016 reelection bid:

Planned Parenthood’s Poster Child

The RINO-Traitors

RINO Waffling on Scalia’s Replacement

Murkowsky, Bringing Home the Bacon?

Joe Miller on Obama: “Bad for America”

Army Retains Decorated Green Beret It Planned to Kick out Over Confronting Afghan Child Rapist

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Enduring FreedomIn a stunning reversal, the U.S. Army decided late Thursday to retain a decorated Green Beret it had planned to kick out after he physically confronted a local Afghan commander accused of raping a boy over the course of many days.

Sgt 1st Class Charles Martland, confirmed the Army’s decision to retain him when reached by Fox News, who has been covering the story in depth for the past eight months and first broke the story of the Army’s decision in August to kick out Martland over the incident, which occurred in northern Afghanistan in 2011.

“I am real thankful for being able to continue to serve,” said Martland when reached on the telephone by Fox News. “I appreciate everything Congressman Duncan Hunter and his Chief of Staff, Joe Kasper did for me.”

As first reported by Fox News, while deployed to Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, Martland and his team leader confronted a local police commander in 2011 accused of raping an Afghan boy and beating his mother. When the man laughed off the incident, they shoved him to the ground.

Martland and his team leader were later removed from the base, and eventually sent home from Afghanistan. The U.S. Army has not confirmed the specifics of Martland’s separation from service citing privacy reasons, but a “memorandum of reprimand” from October 2011 obtained by Fox News makes clear that Martland was criticized by the brass for his intervention after the alleged rape. Asked for comment in September 2015, an Army spokesman reiterated, “the U.S. Army is unable to confirm the specifics of his separation due to the Privacy Act.” (Read more from “Army Retains Decorated Green Beret It Planned to Kick out Over Confronting Afghan Child Rapist” HERE)

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Why Do Pro-Choice Catholics Even Exist?

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When a large group of highly educated people who have dedicated themselves to an organization with firm doctrines, strict rules, and stern demands — such as the Catholic Church — lose their faith in those doctrines, rules and demands, what do they do with themselves instead? Shrug and join the Unitarians? Leave their rectories or convents and go find apartments, maybe jobs as high school guidance counselors?

What do families like the Pelosis, the Kennedys or the Bidens — and millions of non-famous Irish and Italian-American clans with strong ethnic and historical connections to the Church — do with themselves when they reject its teaching authority?

The history of the Catholic left gives us the answer: Such people focused on the parts of the Church’s mission that still appealed to them, such as looking out for the poor and rebuking unjust discrimination. And of course the Church has an almost 2,000 year tradition of offering the needy education, health care, and a voice in the face of genuine oppression. Many Catholics had joined the Civil Rights movement and marched for integration.

In the 1960s, there were fresh, exciting causes available for Catholics to join which modeled themselves on the Civil Rights movement’s tactics and rhetoric, whose agendas were not so compatible with traditional Christian teaching as the noble fight against institutionalized racism had been. Feminists, homosexuals, and anti-war activists began to throng the streets and demand radical changes in American law and policy, and many Catholics with left-wing sympathies and deep roots in the Democratic Party began to exert their energies on behalf of these new movements — assuring themselves that they were acting as Jesus had when he denounced the scribes and Pharisees.

Many grandchildren of Catholic immigrants to our overwhelmingly Protestant country still clung to the pretense that they were outsiders — excluded and marginalized victims of the existing American establishment. So they felt bound to make common cause with every other “outside” group, regardless of the justice of its claims. This outsider illusion made it easy for them to be right about Civil Rights … and then poisonously wrong about feminism, gay liberation, and socialist economics.

So Catholics who’d once taken part in Freedom Rides for black Americans got swept up in a “Women’s Liberation” movement that sought to dismantle legal definitions of marriage, laws restricting abortion, and finally the traditional family itself. That movement’s greatest success was Roe v. Wade, which gave the U.S. the laxest abortion laws on earth — outside of Communist countries — and resulted in the deaths of more than a million American unborn children every year since 1973. What most people don’t know is that the Kennedy family had helped lay the groundwork for that decision a decade before. As Philip Lawler reports in The Faithful Departed:

In July 1964, several liberal theologians received invitations to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, for a discussion of how a Catholic politician should handle the abortion issue. Notice now that abortion was not a major political issue in 1964. …

The participants in that Hyannisport meeting composed a Who’s Who of liberal theologians, most of them Jesuits… Father Robert Drinan … Father Charles Curran … Father Joseph Fuchs, a Jesuit professor at Rome’s Gregorian… Jesuits Richard McCormack, Albert Jensen, and Giles Milhaven.

For two days the theologians huddled in the Cape Cod resort town as guests of the Kennedys. Eventually they reached a consensus, which they passed along to their political patrons. Abortion, they agreed, could sometimes be morally acceptable as the lesser of two evils. Lawmakers should certainly not encourage abortion, but a blanket prohibition might be more harmful to the common good… (81).

Nine years before the fact, the financial and intellectual elite of American Catholicism were, in Lawler’s words, “waiting for Roe v. Wade.”

Similar Catholics joined Marxist-organized antiwar marches and demanded an end to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which had been launched in part to protect millions of South Vietnamese Christians from Communist oppression. Some Catholics even joined “gay liberation” movements, which began with attempts to stop police harassment, but quickly evolved into demands that the law make no distinction between heterosexual marriage and homosexual relationships. We have seen that movement culminate in 2015 with the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which has endangered the religious freedom of millions of American Christians.

The Left Wouldn’t Leave the Church, So the People Did

As the Catholic left developed, it became increasingly hard to distinguish from secular progressive movements, except in its use of biblical metaphors and cherry-picked quotes from Church documents to further its agenda. Instead of leaving the priesthood, convent, or bishop’s palace, far too many church leaders instead chose to hollow out the theological core of the Church’s mission, and transform it into an activist social welfare agency. Since the dissidents wouldn’t leave, many of the people did: Mass attendance plummeted, the Catholic Church began bleeding believers to outright secularism, and vibrantly doctrinal evangelical Protestant churches.

The reigns of Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI saw the rise of a devoted faithful Catholic resistance to these toxic trends in the Church. Orthodox Catholic colleges were founded, home-schooling spread through Catholic circles as a means of passing along the integral faith, and the overwhelming majority of new priests and nuns were those who joined conservative orders or dioceses. Those two popes made a conscious effort to choose more reliable bishops, and the Church saw a mini-renaissance.

However, the impact of that resistance was limited in its scope to a self-selecting subculture, as progressives clung to institutional power and retained control over many dioceses and most Catholic colleges. Now with the advent of Pope Francis, that counterrevolution’s future is in question, and previous trends are reasserting themselves.

In 2015, the Pew Study reported that a shocking 41 percent of adult American Catholics leave the church at some point, most never to return:

Both the mainline and historically black Protestant traditions have lost more members than they have gained through religious switching, but within Christianity the greatest net losses, by far, have been experienced by Catholics. Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic. Among that group, fully 41% no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics, while just 2% of U.S. adults have converted to Catholicism from another religious tradition. No other religious group in the survey has such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains.

In other words, the American church is shrinking, and would be diminishing quickly as a share of the U.S. population, were it not for a constant influx of Catholic immigrants. According to a subsequent report by Pew:

[M]ore than a quarter of U.S. Catholic adults (27%) were born outside the country, compared with 15% of U.S. adults overall; most of these Catholic immigrants (22% of all U.S. Catholics) are from elsewhere in the Americas.

As of 2014, an additional 15% of Catholic Americans have at least one foreign-born parent. That leaves 57% of Catholics who were born in the U.S. to two native-born parents. By comparison, nearly three-quarters (74%) of American adults overall were born in the country to two U.S.-born parents….

The median age of Catholic adults in the U.S. is 49 years old – four years older than it was in 2007. Catholics are significantly older than members of non-Christian faiths (40) and people who are not affiliated with any religion (36).

Just 17% of Catholic adults are under the age of 30, compared with 22% of U.S. adults, 35% of religious “nones” and 44% of U.S. Muslims.

Without the mass influx of new Catholics who have not yet been subjected to the acid of our secular culture and the tepidness in many of our local church institutions, the Catholic Church in America would look much more like the Episcopal or Methodist church: a shrinking, aging organization with diminishing influence — and a small but dedicated orthodox protest movement.

Nor are newly imported Catholics by any means certain to continue warming our parish pews. First Things has reported (citing Pew statistics):

Roughly one-third of Catholic adults in the U.S. are Latino, but just over half (55 percent) of Latino adults here are Catholics. As recently as 2010, that figure stood at two-thirds.

Close to one in four Latinos were raised Catholic but have since become (for the most part) Protestant or unaffiliated. Among Hispanics ages eighteen to twenty-nine, just 45 percent are Catholic, and that number could keep dropping as they age: Almost four in ten of these young adults say they “could imagine leaving the Catholic Church someday.”

All these outcomes, you might think, would alarm the Vatican that the Church is shrinking and fading in the world’s most influential nation. Key papal appointments of “social justice” prelates such as Blaise Cupich to the crucial archdiocese of Chicago, and invitations to Rome for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Joseph Biden, suggest that Pope Francis has not gotten the message. (For more from the author of “Why Do Pro-Choice Catholics Even Exist?” please click HERE)

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Despicable Congress Moves to Require Female Draft, Force Our Daughters Into Combat

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Female_Signal_officer_speaks_to_the_future_roles_of_women_in_combat_130313-A-ER359-359By Carlo Munoz. House lawmakers took a large step toward putting female soldiers on the front lines on Wednesday, approving legislation requiring women to register for the draft.

Members of the House Armed Services committee passed the measure as part of the panel’s version of the defense spending bill for fiscal year 2017, according to the Associated Press.

After a lengthy, and at times heated debate, the legislation only passed by a slim two vote margin with the bill’s main sponsor California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter actually voting against the measure during the House defense spending bill markup on Wednesday.

Hunter, along with former SEAL and Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, initially proposed the plan to require women to register for the draft in Feburary, shortly after the Pentagon lifted its ban on female service members from serving in combat infantry units and special operations forces.

“It’s wrong and irresponsible to make wholesale changes to the way America fights its wars without the American people having a say on whether their daughters and sisters will be on the front lines of combat,” Hunter said at the time. (Read more from “Despicable Congress Moves to Require Female Draft, Force Our Daughters Into Combat” HERE)

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House Committee Votes to Draft Women Into Selective Service

By Daniel Horowitz. We have officially lost it as a civil society. All the gender-bending has taken its toll on our political leaders, forcing them to come full circle and endorse a mandatory draft for all young women in this country.

Yesterday, during a marathon markup of the $610 billion annual defense bill (NDAA), the House Armed Services Committee added an amendment including women in the requirement for all young adults to register for the Selective Service. The amendment was originally sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), an opponent of social engineering in the military, in order to jumpstart a discussion of how the ‘women in combat agenda’ has gone too far. You might call it a case study of acting absurd in order to illustrate absurdity. But as it turns out, there is no floor to the politically correct insanity of our political class. Republicans Joe Heck, Martha McSally, and Chris Gibson joined the Democrats in passing this amendment and attaching it to the NDAA. The vote tally was 32-30.

To be clear, this entire exercise was pointless and will not become law. Moreover, the Selective Service is gratuitous and will likely go by the wayside one of these days. But the point is we’ve reached rock bottom in our culture when every Democrat and even some Republicans now believe women should be forcibly drafted into the military. Remember, several months ago during the New Hampshire primary debate when every candidate except for Ted Cruz expressed support for women in combat and women registering for the draft. Last year, Trump said he would absolutely support women in combat.

Add this to the endless list of bedrock principles many Republicans are willing to toss overboard. As John Kasich likes to say, we just need to get over it. (For more from the author of “House Committee Votes to Draft Women Into Selective Service” please click HERE)

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Three Republicans Split Ranks, Allow Measure to Pass

By Scott Maucione. The amendment, which narrowly passed 32-30, made for one of the more drastic votes of the 16 1/2 hour marathon, with the author (Rep. Duncan Hunter) voting against his own provision.

The amendment legally requires women to sign up for the selective service when they become adults. In the case of a draft, those women will be called up to military duty just as men are now. . .

The voting on the amendment was split largely along party lines, however a few Republicans broke rank.

Reps. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) voted to add women to the selective services. (Read more from “Three Republicans Split Ranks, Allow Measure to Pass” HERE)

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