tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86455332460742212152024-03-13T09:54:10.338-04:00MatthewVadum.comMatthew Vadum (matthewvadum.com)
email: matthewvadum (at) gmail.comMatthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.comBlogger743125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-84291568345358571222015-10-07T22:56:00.001-04:002015-10-07T22:56:20.992-04:00Was the Oregon mass shooting an Islamist attempt to assassinate Alek Skarlatos?My article from the Oct. 6, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/was_the_oregon_mass_shooting_an_islamist_attempt_to_assassinate_alek_skarlatos.html">American Thinker</a>:<br />
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Was the Oregon mass shooting an Islamist attempt to assassinate Alek Skarlatos?</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Was last week's massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon a failed attempt to assassinate a Christian American hero for thwarting a Muslim terrorist train attack this summer in France?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">There may simply be a series of unlikely coincidences at play, or there may be circumstantial evidence suggesting that anti-jihadist hero Alek Skarlatos was an intended target of Chris Harper-Mercer, who put several Christians to death in an Umpqua classroom on Thursday, Oct. 1 for being Christian. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Read on and decide for yourself if Harper-Mercer may have wanted to make an example of Skarlatos for the world to see.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">And although no evidence revealed thus far directly indicates Harper-Mercer was influenced by Islamic State, plenty of evidence suggests the shooter was acting in furtherance of the Islamic goal of global jihad. Maybe the massacre was intended as a kind of jihadist payback hit.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) apparently <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/10/chris-mercer-harper-umpqua-college-shooting-roseburg-oregon-isis-islamic-state-news-videos-pictures-photos-attack-influence-terrorism/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">claimed responsibility</a> on Twitter for the killings Harper-Mercer carried out at Umpqua. The tweet states, "Again #Oregon #USA #WashingtonDC #IslamicState #ISIS #USA[,]" and displays a graphic with the words “Slay Americans” in front of an image of a man in the process of being beheaded.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In August the very high-profile Skarlatos, a devout Christian, helped to disarm Ayoub El-Khazzani, a Moroccan with ties to radical Islam, on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The Islamist was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, a Luger pistol, and a box cutter. Skarlatos and his two American friends traveling with him received France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur, from French President François Hollande. Last month they were feted at the White House and the Pentagon. Skarlatos received the U.S. Army's Soldier's Medal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Skarlatos has publicly acknowledged that he is currently a student at Umpqua, near Roseburg, Ore., and that he was supposed to be attending classes there on Thursday when Harper-Mercer went on a bloody rampage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">More specifically, Skarlatos said he was supposed to be present that day in Snyder Hall, the same building where Harper-Mercer carried out his massacre.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">As USA Today <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/02/oregon-college-shooting-french-train-hero-alek-skarlatos/73202860/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reports</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In a taped interview with Ellen DeGeneres on Thursday, Skarlatos said he was supposed to be in the building where Thursday's shooting took place.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">"I had classes in Snyder Hall," said Skarlatos. "It's a fairly small community college, the town in general, everybody knows each other. So with that many deceased, I mean everybody's going to know at least one person." [...]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">"I would have been there today if I didn't agree to do this show," he said. "I had classes picked out and everything."</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">As a famous American and Christian who prevented what could have been a high-casualty terrorist attack in France -- one of the few Western nations that over the objections of President Obama is actually trying to do something about the Islamist peril -- Skarlatos would have been an attractive target for Islamists.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Because America and much of the world holds Skarlatos up as a symbol of heroic Western resolve to defeat Islamism, those who support Muslim expansionism view him as an enemy. There are very few people on the planet who would be a more valuable target than Skarlatos.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Islamists aren't exactly known for forgiving and forgetting. A British supporter of Islamic State <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/isis-extremists-publish-address-navy-6580098" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reportedly published</a> the name and address of the U.S. Navy SEAL soldier who is credited with killing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Islamist identified the serviceman as "a number one target to eventually hunt down and kill."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Islamists view not only Skarlatos, but also his two childhood friends who helped to foil the train attack, as enemies. The three young men have been widely identified in news reports as fervent Christians. Skarlatos attended "an independent Christian middle school," the <em>Sacramento Bee</em> <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article31991493.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reported</a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Over the years the three friends have stayed in touch, united by longtime bonds and their shared religious faith, Alek's brother Peter Skarlatos said. “They’re all Christians. They’re all very religious.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Which brings us to Harper-Mercer, 26 (his age was initially reported as 20) who killed nine people and wounded at least seven at Umpqua Community College last Thursday before being killed by police. Witnesses said that Harper-Mercer wore body armor and entered a classroom where an English and writing class was being conducted. He demanded that those present say if they were Christian.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Those who said yes were fatally shot in the head. He reportedly said "because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second." Those who said no or refused to answer were shot in the legs. No news reports indicate anyone in Snyder Hall identified himself or herself as Muslim.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Singling out Christian hostages for death is the same <em>modus operandi</em> used by Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">As Raymond Ibrahim <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/10/oregon-massacre-singling-out-christians-for-murder-is-standard-practice-among-islamic-jihadis" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reports at Jihad Watch</a>, Al Shabaab did the same thing as Harper-Mercer did when it attacked a school in Kenya:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">For the record, there is a precedent here: Whenever Islamic terrorists raid large centers where Muslims and Christians are intermingled, they routinely separate Muslims from Christians, before massacring the latter.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">For example, last April in Kenya, gunmen from the Somali Islamic group, Al Shabaab—“the youth”—stormed Garissa University, singled out Christian students, and murdered them, some beheaded. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Al Shabaab "has a long history of singling Christians out from among Muslims for slaughter," according to Ibrahim. He <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/muslim-persecution-of-christians/are-you-muslim-or-christian-death-to-christians/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">provides four other recent examples</a> from Kenya:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">June 15, 2014: Approximately 50 militants from Al Shabaab went on a killing spree in Mpeketoni, a predominantly Christian town on Kenya’s coast. They chanted “Allahu Akbar,” killed whoever could not recite verses from the Koran, and went door-to-door asking residents their religion, killing those who answered “Christian.” More than 57 people were killed, including six children of church pastors.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">August 24, 2014: Al Shabaab abducted a group of traders near the island of Lamu. The militants eventually released three of them, because they were Muslims, but beheaded the fourth, a Christian.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">November 22, 2014: Al Shabaab attacked a bus and massacred 28 of its Christian passengers. Again, Muslim passengers were separated and left unharmed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">December 2, 2014: Al Shabaab gunmen launched an early morning raid on quarry workers sleeping in their worksite tents near the city of Mandera, along the Somali border. Christians and Muslims were separated before the Christians, thirty-six of them, were beheaded or shot dead.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Harper-Mercer has been identified in news reports as emotionally disturbed and as anti-organized religion or an atheist.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But unlike double-murderer <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259930/blacklivesmatter-revolution-will-be-televised-matthew-vadum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Vester Lee Flanagan II</a> (a.k.a. Bryce Williams), the gay, black, Black Lives Matter-supporting, and Obama-supporting registered Democrat who shot two white former TV colleagues to death on live television, Harper-Mercer didn't leave an elaborate social media trail behind. (Harper-Mercer did reportedly write online about Flanagan, building him up as a role model. "A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone ... Seems the more people you kill, the more your're [<em>sic</em>] in the limelight.) </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">As Breitbart News </span></span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/02/oregon-shooter-linked-to-man-praising-islamic-terrorism-kill-the-jews/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px;">reports</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px;">Mercer’s MySpace [page] features only two connections, one of which is a man named Mahmoud Ali Ehsani. Ehsani published a photo album titled, “Classic – The Mujahideen Collection LOL,” featuring Islamic terrorists from several countries, including Palestine, Iran, and Pakistan, among others. </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px;">One caption reads: “my brave soldiers keep on fighting for the liberation of Palestine against Israel. fuck israel. Kill the jews. jews are the only infidels.” </span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px;">Mercer wrote on a dating profile he disliked “organized religion,” and considered himself “spiritual” instead of religious. He also described himself as a “teetotaler” and said he “never” did drugs.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Harper-Mercer's MySpace page also contains Irish Republican Army (IRA) propaganda. His online collection of articles, images, and videos was labeled "Ireland's Freedom Fighters." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">At first glance the IRA connection may seem irrelevant but it's not. The IRA has <a href="http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/04/ira_plo_history_cooperation.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">a long history</a> of cooperating with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Islamist groups.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Harper-Mercer had an interest in Nazism, like the Islamic world where Adolf Hitler's autobiographical book, <em>Mein Kampf, </em>remains popular to this day. (Instead of the English-language title, <em>My Struggle</em>, the Arabic translation of the book's name has been rendered as <em>My Jihad</em>.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">No writings by Harper-Mercer revealing an explicit, stated animus towards Jews have yet surfaced but given what we know so far about his beliefs, it is difficult to imagine him having warm feelings for Jewish people. This young man, who had no job and presumably little money, plunked down close to $150 online for SS headwear.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The fanatical SS, or <em>Schutzstaffel</em>, was an elite Praetorian Guard-like organization within the Third Reich that led Hitler's "Final Solution" against the Jews and other hated groups. The leader of the SS, Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/HimmlerPosen.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">told SS officers</a> in a 1943 speech that killing Jews, whom he characterized as a pathogen, was necessary for the health of the Nazi state.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">"We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who would kill us," Himmler said. The Jews' confiscated wealth was forfeit to the Reich and no SS officers should take for themselves even "one Mark" or "one cigarette" because "we don't want, at the end of all of this, to get sick and die from the same bacillus that we have exterminated."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Identifying himself with the user name, ironcross45, Harper-Mercer <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/10/chris-harper-mercer-photos-pictures-roseburg-oregon-umpqua-community-college-shooter-family-facebook-twitter-instagram/6/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">ordered</a> a pricey leather Nazi SS officer's cap from the website iOffer, and praised the site for its excellent "customer service." The stated price was 98.34 British pounds, which was equivalent to US$149.01 at time of writing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">On a dating site Harper-Mercer used the same username, ironcross45, apparently a reference to a German military honor, the Independent (UK) <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/oregon-shooting-shooter-chris-harper-mercer-was-reclusive-26-year-old-with-an-interest-in-ira-and-a6677696.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reports</a>. Long before he seized power in Germany, Hitler served as a lance corporal in the German Imperial Army during World War One. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1915, and the Iron Cross, First Class in 1918 for his military service in the Great War.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">It is worth noting that the very first person to die at Harper-Mercer's hands Thursday was Jewish. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The gunman <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/02/us/oregon-umpqua-community-college-shooting/index.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reportedly walked up</a> to Assistant Professor Lawrence "Larry" Levine and said "I've been waiting to do this for years." He then shot Levine at close range.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Before the shooting began Harper-Mercer <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/umpqua-community-college-shooter-chris-harper-mercer-hate/story?id=34203754" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reportedly</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">... gave a bunch of papers and a thumb drive to someone on campus, multiple sources told ABC News.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">They contain hate-filled writings and material, with the information on the thumb drive found to be more extensive, they said.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The messages in the papers and thumb drive that the suspect left behind can be described as espousing racial and social hatred, one source added.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Even though Harper-Mercer was half-black himself, black men are reportedly singled out in the rants on the thumb drive. Are rants against Jews also on the drive? We'll have to wait to find out what if anything this collector of expensive Nazi paraphernalia had to say about Jewish people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Although you won't hear it from the mainstream media, Nazis and Islamists have much in common. It is fair to say that Islamic terrorists are the last of Hitler's World War Two coalition partners that have yet to be vanquished.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Islamic world aligned with the Third Reich, and this alliance "has largely been whitewashed from the pages of history," Pamela Geller <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2010/12/the-ss-mullah-school-dresden-and-islamic-anti-semitism.html/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">reminds us</a>:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Many Muslims fought on the German side during World War II. The Wehrmacht had six legions with a Muslim majority and the SS had three Muslim divisions, a brigade and a Waffenbrigade. Each Muslim unit got a mullah as an adviser. In November 1944, an SS mullah school was established in Dresden, founded by Himmler.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">So many Muslims volunteered to fight for Nazi Germany that in 1943 Hitler gave them their own division, known as the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian). <em>Handschar</em> means sword in English and in this case refers to the scimitar, a curved sword associated in Arab and other cultures with Islam. A scimitar appears in the flag of Yemen. Two crossed scimitars appear in the Pakistani Army's flag and in the Saudi war flag and in some jihadist flags. A straight stylized version of a scimitar appears in the Saudi national flag but a curved scimitar appeared in a previously version of the same flag. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Harper-Mercer's enthusiasm for Nazis and the killing of Christians is something he shares with the Islamofascist terrorists now wreaking havoc in the Middle East and around the world. As anyone who follows the news knows, Islamic State fighters delight in torturing and killing Christians because they are Christians.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Although it would be an understatement to say that Hitler's views on world religions were complex and at times seemingly contradictory, the leader of the "Thousand-Year Reich" that lasted 12 years despised Christianity and admired Islam and its militarism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Hitler said nice things about Christianity in public, but excoriated it in private. "Christianity is the prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilization by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society," Hitler reportedly said in 1941.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Although some dispute whether Hitler ever said such a thing, it cannot be denied that in the Third Reich the Nazi Party treated the Christian church as something to be bent and twisted to serve National Socialist goals. A movement called "Positive Christianity" was promoted to co-opt the church and inject it with Nazi ideology, including the party's belief in the importance of racial purity. The name itself implies that Christianity is bad.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Official Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg referred to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism as "negative Christianity." He sought to whitewash Christianity's connection to Judaism and "substitute the spirit of the [German Nordic] hero for that of the Crucifixion." And Hitler, as stated above, liked Islam enough to welcome Muslims into the Axis alliance.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Harper-Mercer's murderous actions show that he shared Hitler's contempt for Christianity. This unemployed loser who bought overpriced Nazi paraphernalia may also have resented Skarlatos for all the attention he received. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">So the question then arises, why in his televised address Thursday before many facts were publicly released, did President Obama take it upon himself to lecture the nation on the urgent need for more gun control?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Instead of comforting Americans and bringing them together as a decent, patriotic person would, Obama immediately seized on the opportunity to divide Americans politically. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Obama said nothing about the religious aspect of the killings. This self-professed Christian who studied in a Muslim school and speaks of Islam in reverent tones said nothing about how the killer asked his victims jihadist-style if they were Christian and then blew them away. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Why would the president ignore this shocking fact? Maybe the answer is that to do so would have linked the killer to Islam.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Maybe President Obama knows more about the martyring of Christians at Umpqua Community College than he's letting on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>Investigative reporter Matthew Vadum (</em><a href="http://matthewvadum.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">personal website</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em> under construction) played a supporting role in killing President Obama's favorite community organizing group, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. He is author of the popular ACORN/Obama expose, </em><a href="http://tinyurl.com/vadumbook" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>. Follow him on </em><a href="http://twitter.com/vadum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Twitter</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>. E-mail him at matthewvadum [at] gmail.com.</em></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br />[Note: I have lightly edited this column here. -MV]</span>Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-4668936970115050302015-10-07T22:20:00.003-04:002015-10-07T22:20:31.431-04:00A New Global Police To Fight "Violent Extremism" In The U.S.?My Oct. 6, 2015 article in <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260363/new-global-police-fight-violent-extremism-us-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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A New Global Police To Fight "Violent Extremism" In The U.S.?</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The Obama administration plans to create a global police force that counters “violent extremism” in the United States and elsewhere.</div>
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The problem is that in Obama-speak “violent extremism” refers not only to jihadists wishing to harm Americans but also to conservatives and Tea Party activists. Just ask all the law-abiding right-of-center nonprofit groups targeted by Lois Lerner’s IRS during the Obama presidency.</div>
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Ominously, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/250-americans-left-u-s-join-jihadists-article-1.2378633" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">unveiled</a> the Strong Cities Network last week at the United Nations.</div>
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America's chief executive, who speaks in hushed and reverent tones when discussing the Muslim faith, said the U.S. will use “all of our tools” to fight Islamic State terrorists.</div>
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"This is not an easy task," Obama said. "This is not a conventional battle. This is a long-term campaign — not only against this particular network, but against its ideology." The United States and a coalition of 60 other countries are “pursuing a comprehensive strategy” for dealing with Islamic State, he said.</div>
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Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/launch-strong-cities-network-strengthen-community-resilience-against-violent-extremism" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">teased</a> the Strong Cities Network in a press release:</div>
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Cities are vital partners in international efforts to build social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism. Local communities and authorities are the most credible and persuasive voices to challenge violent extremism in all of its forms and manifestations in their local contexts. While many cities and local authorities are developing innovative responses to address this challenge, no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale.</div>
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“The Strong Cities Network will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration,” Lynch was quoted saying. “As we continue to counter a range of domestic and global terror threats, this innovative platform will enable cities to learn from one another, to develop best practices and to build social cohesion and community resilience here at home and around the world.”</div>
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The media release continues:</div>
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The SCN will include an International Steering Committee of approximately 25 cities and other sub-national entities from different regions that will provide the SCN with its strategic direction. The SCN will also convene an International Advisory Board, which includes representatives from relevant city-focused networks, to help ensure SCN builds upon their work. It will be run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a leading international “think-and-do” tank with a long-standing track record of working to prevent violent extremism …</div>
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Although the European scene is different from the American, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue <a href="http://www.strategicdialogue.org/programmes/counter-extremism/far-right-extremism-and-intolerance" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">doesn’t come across</a> at first glance as a neutral observer.</div>
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Its website, which is filled with left-wing buzzwords, warns</div>
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The tragic attacks in Norway on 22 July, 2011 drew Europe’s gaze to the dangers of the growing presence of far-right extremism across Europe and the increasing legitimisation of anti-immigration and anti-Islamic discourses within mainstream European politics. The blurred relationship between violence from the extreme right and broader trends of Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment poses several challenges for policy makers seeking to address the increasing risk of violent right-wing extremism.</div>
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And although American conservatives might not quibble with a new U.S.-based initiative aimed at “violent extremism” outside America’s borders, they have ample reason to be concerned about one that targets organizations within the United States.</div>
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Conservative champion Pamela Geller <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/10/02/obama-administration-and-un-announce-global-police-force-to-fight-extremism-in-u-s/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">railed against</a> the Strong Cities Network in a column at Breitbart News.</div>
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This plan “amounts to nothing less than the overriding of American laws, up to and including the United States Constitution, in favor of United Nations laws that would henceforth be implemented in the United States itself – without any consultation of Congress at all.”</div>
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Announcing the plan at the United Nations is curious she writes, because the UN “is a sharia-compliant world body, and Obama, speaking there just days ago, insisted that ‘violent extremism’ is not exclusive to Islam (which it is).”</div>
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It is unlikely the new body will be used as a “global police force” to crush counter-jihad forces, she wrote.</div>
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After all, with Obama knowingly aiding al-Qaeda forces in Syria, how likely is it that he will use his “global police force” against actual Islamic jihadists?</div>
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I suspect that instead, this global police force will be used to impose the blasphemy laws under the sharia (Islamic law), and to silence all criticism of Islam for the President who proclaimed that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”</div>
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Geller and other conservatives are painfully aware that in the parlance of the Left, “violent extremism” refers to conservatives and other patriotic Americans.</div>
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If you are opposed to enlarging the redistributive state and spreading the wealth around then by definition you're a potential terrorist. If you're a conservative or a libertarian, if you believe in gun rights or don't support abortion rights or an immigration amnesty, if you don't like high taxes or welfare programs or if you dare to believe that the Constitution actually limits the power of the government, you're at risk of turning to terrorism.</div>
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In 2009, Janet Napolitano, then head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security <a href="http://spectator.org/articles/41776/thoughtcrime-redux" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">gave her blessing</a> to a spurious DHS report titled, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."</div>
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Drawing heavily from so-called research by the loony-left Southern Poverty Law Center, the report lumped Ku Klux Klansmen and violent militias together with good government types and members of the Federalist Society. This law enforcement guidance claimed that large swaths of the nation that did not vote Democratic in the last election were boiling over with hatred and intolerance.</div>
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Anticlimactically, the report noted that there is no actual evidence "that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence." Nonetheless the report speculated, using language that would later be embraced by the violent Occupy Wall Street movement, that "the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president" might help these "rightwing extremists" gain new recruits.</div>
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Guffaws from Republicans and some of her fellow Democrats forced Napolitano to disavow the report but in the intervening years Obama’s DHS has kept up the pressure on patriotic Americans in an attempt to stigmatize and marginalize conservative beliefs.</div>
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As recently as this past February, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">released a report</a> on what CNN called the grave “domestic terror threat from right-wing sovereign citizen extremists.”</div>
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“The government says these are extremists who believe that they can ignore laws and that their individual rights are under attack in routine daily instances such as a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order,” the news network reported.</div>
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To the Obama administration, zealous civil libertarians and ornery old guys in pickup trucks are a much greater threat to the homeland than Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, al Qaeda, and Islamic State combined.</div>
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CNN paraphrased Mark Potok, a senior fellow at -- you guessed it, the Southern Poverty Law Center -- hailing the report.</div>
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“Potok said that by some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 people involved in some way with sovereign citizen extremism. Perhaps 100,000 people form a core of the movement, he said.”</div>
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Around the same time counterinsurgency and counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka <a href="http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/02/21/leaked-dhs-reports-greatest-threat-us-national-security-domestic-right-wing-extremists" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">ridiculed</a> the obviously politicized DHS report for going off the deep end.</div>
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Gorka, a professor who lectures on irregular warfare at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University, said over the last two decades he could not remember right-wing extremists flying jumbo jets into buildings, bombing a marathon, or beheading Christian hostages.</div>
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"It really is the most egregious politicization of national security," Gorka opined. "We're going to be looking for right-wing extremists when ISIS prepares to attack us? It's outrageous."</div>
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"We have tens of thousands of people in the Middle East and elsewhere and here in America who have committed themselves to the destruction of this great nation. And we're going to be focusing on the small cluster of right-wingers here in the United States?" he said. "This could endanger American lives."</div>
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All of this brings to mind the jarringly strange thing then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail in October 2008.</div>
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“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”</div>
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Is the Strong Cities Network the civilian national security force Obama mentioned just once and then never brought up again?</div>
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We’re about to find out.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-51010293790160569842015-10-07T22:12:00.003-04:002015-10-07T22:12:57.430-04:00Russians Tried To Hack Hillary Five TimesMy article from the Oct. 5, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260354/russians-tried-hack-hillary-five-times-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Russians Tried To Hack Hillary Five Times</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Hackers linked to Vladimir Putin's Russia tried to gain access to Hillary Clinton's insecure private email account at least five times while the Democrat presidential candidate served as U.S. secretary of state.</div>
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The disturbing revelation <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/top-spy-hillarys-emails-likely-hacked-china-russia-iran_911707.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">comes months</a> after retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said the chances Clinton's private email account was hacked were "very high." At the time the former top Obama administration intelligence official implied Clinton should have been fired as the nation's top diplomat.</div>
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"As a military officer, if I said I was doing something for convenience's sake to the soldiers that I was leading and it was solely for my convenience instead of their, you know, their welfare, I should be relieved of duty. I would expect to be fired," Flynn said.</div>
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"You know, it's one of those things where if it doesn't feel good it probably isn't. And this one doesn't feel good to me."</div>
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"China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans," were involved in hacking Clinton's email.</div>
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Evidence of the Russian hacking attempts <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-linked-hackers-tried-to-break-in-5-times-into-hillary-clintons-private-server-2015-9" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">came</a> in the form of Clinton emails from four years ago that were made public last week.</div>
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Clinton received the five infected emails which had been made to look like speeding tickets, over a four-hour period on Aug. 3, 2011. The emails asked recipients to print out hard copies of the attached tickets, an act that would have let hackers take control of their computers.</div>
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As some observers have noted, foreign intelligence services pay good money to obtain a target's email address. Although it hasn't been established that these Russian hackers worked for the Russian government, these criminals knew Hillary's email address while information-technology experts at the State Department were left in the dark about the email address by their own boss.</div>
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It is unclear what if any anti-malware software was installed on Clinton's server that she kept in the basement of one of her homes in Chappaqua, N.Y., not too far from a house owned by radical philanthropist and heavy Democrat donor George Soros.</div>
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Security experts who analyzed the malware-infected email in 2011 said that infected computers would send information from victims to at least three Internet servers outside the U.S., including one server in Russia.</div>
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Given Hillary's technological incompetence and the cavalier approach to national security evidenced by her use of an insecure private "home brew" Internet server for her official State Department email, it's anyone's guess whether the nation's then-top diplomat clicked on the malware-infected email attachments.</div>
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Remember that Clinton has worn her lack of tech-savvy as a badge of honor. This is a supposedly smart person <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/01/technology/hillary-clinton-fax-machine/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">who needed</a> instructions to use a fax machine, which isn't exactly a new technology.</div>
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When <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259840/hillary-under-siege-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">she was asked</a> previously if her Internet server, now in Department of Justice custody, had been wiped clean, she mocked the questioner. "Like with a cloth or something?”</div>
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"I don't know how it works digitally at all," she added.</div>
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Clinton also previously made an incredibly insensitive, tone-deaf joke making light of her email improprieties that compromised U.S. national security and for all we know may very well have gotten American operatives abroad or their allies killed.</div>
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At a dinner in Iowa, Clinton quipped: "By the way, you may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account," she said gently shaking her head in an I'm-so-clever kind of way.</div>
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"I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves," she said grinning to hoots and hollers from the adoring crowd of Democrats.</div>
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As I wrote previously, this wisecrack crystallizes the Hillary Clinton approach to everything. She is manipulative and dishonest. She is irredeemably arrogant and regards herself as above the law. She is contemptuous of the critically important high office she held. She is disdainful of the rule of law and doesn't give a farthing's cuss about national security if it stands in the way of her personal advancement.</div>
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Although Mrs. Clinton has long maintained she never received or sent classified information through her hacker-friendly Internet server, mountains of messages have been found to contain classified "top secret" information.</div>
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As part of the State Department document dump of 6,300 additional page of Clinton's emails last week, the agency upgraded the classification level of portions of 215 of Clinton's emails, department spokesman John Kirby said.</div>
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Almost all of the emails were deemed "confidential," the lowest level of classification. Three emails were changed to "secret," a mid-tier level for information that if made public could still result in serious damage to U.S. national security.</div>
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"The information we upgraded today was not marked classified at the time the emails were sent," Kirby said. "It has been subsequently upgraded."</div>
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Many of the new released emails are from the period when the so-called Arab Spring erupted and Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces. The State Department aims to make public all the remaining emails by January.</div>
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With the first Democratic Party primary elections set for January, Hillary better hope something big happens in world news in coming months to take the focus off her various growing scandals.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-33953377019242868362015-10-07T22:04:00.001-04:002015-10-07T22:07:36.724-04:00The United States has an AVERAGE murder rate and rampage killings are JUST ONE PERCENT of U.S. murders<br />
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There are <a href="http://matthewvadum.blogspot.com/2015/10/obama-never-letting-good-mass-shooting.html">some eye-opening statistics</a> that bear repeating in my recent article about President Obama cynically using the Oct. 1 mass-shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon to promote gun control.<br />
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Say them over and over and over again. And then again a few more times for good measure.<br />
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Contrary to gun-grabbing hysterics, <b>the United States of America does NOT have a high murder rate</b>.<br />
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The U.S. has merely an "average" murder rate among the nations of the world.<br />
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According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/GSH_Press_release_-_EN.pdf">global average murder rate</a> (PDF file) is 6.2 per 100,000 human beings. The UN agency defines intentional homicide as "unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person."<br />
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The U.S. (excluding Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands which are reported on individually) is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate">near the middle</a> of 228 "countries" profiled.<br />
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With 4.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the United States ties at 110th place with Latvia and Niger.<br />
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Number one is Honduras with a murder rate of 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. At the very bottom of the list are Liechtenstein and Monaco which reported zero murders in the time period studied. (Note: The UK <i>Daily Mail</i> offers a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3076470/How-does-country-fare-MURDER-MAP-Interactive-graphic-shows-homicide-rates-world.html">user-friendly interactive map</a> breaking down homicide rates around the world.)<br />
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Moreover, Obama's rants about mass-shootings are garbage, unworthy of the supposed leader of the free world (if that phrase still carries any meaning).</div>
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The hubbub about such mass-casualty events is nonsense, <a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf">according to</a> (PDF file) UNODC:<br />
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No other type of homicide generates such public fear or stupefaction at its meaninglessness as that involving multiple victims. Due to its often shocking and sensational nature, particularly of so-called “rampage killings”, mass murder also captures the attention of the public, the media and policymakers the world over, which no doubt colours perceptions of the prevalence and patterns of such events. [...]</blockquote>
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Mass homicides may have a high profile, but they are actually low-frequency events, accounting, for example, for less than 1 per cent of all homicide cases in the United States and less than 3 per cent in Finland and Sweden.</blockquote>
But Obama and the Left rarely let the facts get in the way of their narrative.Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-81017823061708074012015-10-07T21:38:00.001-04:002015-10-07T21:38:59.120-04:00Obama: Never Letting A Good Mass Shooting Go To WasteMy article from the Oct. 2, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260325/obama-never-letting-good-mass-shooting-go-waste-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Obama: Never Letting A Good Mass Shooting Go To Waste</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Mere hours after a young, mixed-race religion-hater fatally shot at least nine apparently Christian victims at an Oregon college, President Obama tried to harangue Americans into supporting fresh restrictions on guns, the most severely regulated consumer goods in America.</div>
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The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer. Police say in mid-morning they received reports of a gunman walking around Umpqua Community College (UCC) near Roseburg, Ore. As is the case in all or perhaps nearly all mass shootings at schools, UCC was a gun-free zone.</div>
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Wearing body armor, the man reportedly entered a classroom where an English and writing class was being conducted and demanded that those present state their religion.</div>
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Those who indicated they were Christian were fatally shot. Those who refused to answer were reportedly shot in the legs. Harper-Mercer apparently died during a shootout with responding police but at time of writing it was unclear if he killed himself or was shot by the officers.</div>
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Viewing every crisis as an opportunity to advance his legislative agenda, Obama placed his crosshairs squarely on the Bill of Rights. Our media-savvy, Saul Alinsky-worshipping president took to the bully pulpit to <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/255723-obama-mass-shootings-should-be-politicized" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">petulantly insist</a> -- even before many facts about the massacre were known -- that last night was exactly the right time to "politicize" gun ownership rights.</div>
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“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America,” Obama said. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”</div>
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In his televised temper tantrum, Obama scolded those opposed to a crackdown on firearms ownership, including people who say the nation needs "more guns" to prevent such mass shootings. He implored those who would gut Second Amendment protections to vote for political candidates who share their visceral contempt for a constitutionally-guaranteed right.</div>
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“Each time this happens I’m going to bring this up,” Obama said. “Each time this happens I am going to say we can actually do something about it.”</div>
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Obama's twelve-and-a-half minute oration was the fifteenth time the president has issued a statement on a mass shooting, CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller wrote on Twitter.</div>
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“Somehow this has become routine,” Obama said. “The reporting is routine, my response here at this podium ends up being routine. And what becomes routine is the response from those who oppose any sort of gun control legislation."</div>
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Indeed Obama's shopworn routine has become all too familiar to Americans. Whenever there is a mass shooting Obama predictably uses it to try to disarm law-abiding gun owners.</div>
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Obama refuses to accept that the primary purpose of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has always been to check governmental power. It was designed to empower citizens to fight back against the kind of despotism that Obama has increasingly come to represent.</div>
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Tench Coxe (1755-1824), a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress and a key ally of James Madison, the principal architect of the Constitution, explained the rationale behind the Second Amendment pseudonymously in the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Philadelphia Federal Gazette</em> on June 18, 1789:</div>
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Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear private arms.</div>
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As Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News Channel after a previous Obama gun-control push:</div>
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We have a 200-year history and culture of gun ownership. And we have a Second Amendment and we have a system that believes that the rights, the Second Amendment, in other words, predate the republic and the point of having a government, as in the Declaration [of Independence], is to secure the rights. In Britain you have no such right, the government will control gun ownership so unless you're willing to confiscate, which would be unconstitutional and that would cause an insurrection in the country -- Australia did -- these things are not going to have an effect, except at the margins and that's the tragedy here.</div>
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But none of this matters to our president whose disdain for gun ownership rights is unparalleled in the modern era. There are never enough restrictions on firearms to satisfy Obama.</div>
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As author David B. Kopel has said, guns are already "the most severely regulated consumer product in the United States — the only product for which FBI permission is required for every single sale."</div>
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Obama <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/01/statement-president-shootings-umpqua-community-college-roseburg-oregon" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">used the rest of his address</a> to regurgitate once again the Left's usual, hysterical anti-gun propaganda.</div>
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He said:</div>
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We don't yet know why this individual did what he did. And it's fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be. But we are not the only country on Earth that has people with mental illnesses or want to do harm to other people. We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.</div>
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Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws -- even in the face of repeated mass killings.” And later that day, there was a mass shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. That day!</div>
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He added, "We've become numb to this."</div>
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"We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence."</div>
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This cherry-picking Chief Executive's statement is at best a half-truth or misleading, or at worst, a lie. The issue is not how many "gun deaths" there are. The issue is how many deaths there are that were a result of murder.</div>
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As Newsmax <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/gun-laws-by-state-most/2014/12/14/id/610952/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">previously reported</a>, some of the states with tough gun laws have lower-than-average homicide rates. Some have higher-than-average homicide rates.</div>
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The news website took the seven states that both <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Guns & Ammo</em> magazine and the gun-grabbing Brady Campaign consider to have the most stringent gun laws. The Brady bunch characterized those states as having the "strongest gun laws," while the pro-gun magazine called them the "worst states for gun owners."</div>
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Cross-referencing those select states with data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for 2011, <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">yields interesting results</a>. According to the federal agency the national, or average, rate of "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" is 4.7 per 100,000 inhabitants.</div>
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Maryland, a state whose constitution, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Guns & Ammo</em> notes, "does not guarantee a right to keep and bear arms," has a murder rate of 6.8 per 100,000 people. California's rate is 4.8 murders.</div>
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Slightly below the national average is New Jersey at 4.3 murders.</div>
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Farther below the 4.7 average rate are New York (4.0), followed by Connecticut (3.6),</div>
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Massachusetts (2.8), and Hawaii (1.2).</div>
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Incidentally, the District of Columbia, which even after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in the celebrated <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Heller</em> case, still has near-draconian gun laws designed to make it very difficult to own or carry a gun, has an appalling murder rate of 17.5 per 100,000 inhabitants.</div>
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So the veracity of Obama's claim that "states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths" is hardly self-evident -- and again, even if he's right, the overall homicide rate, not "gun deaths," is what is actually important.</div>
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Nor is Obama's mass-shootings fetish meaningful.</div>
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<a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">According to</a> the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), all the hubbub about mass-shootings is nonsense:</div>
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No other type of homicide generates such public fear or stupefaction at its meaninglessness as that involving multiple victims. Due to its often shocking and sensational nature, particularly of so-called “rampage killings”, mass murder also captures the attention of the public, the media and policymakers the world over, which no doubt colours perceptions of the prevalence and patterns of such events. [...]</div>
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Mass homicides may have a high profile, but they are actually low-frequency events, accounting, for example, for less than 1 per cent of all homicide cases in the United States and less than 3 per cent in Finland and Sweden.</div>
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And contrary to media-promoted myth, the United States doesn't even have a high murder rate compared to other countries.</div>
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According to the UNODC, <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/GSH_Press_release_-_EN.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">the global average murder rate</a> is 6.2 per 100,000 human beings. The UN agency defines intentional homicide as "unlawful death purposefully inflicted on a person by another person."</div>
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The U.S. (excluding Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands which are reported on individually) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">is near the middle</a> of 228 countries profiled.</div>
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With 4.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, the United States ties at 110th place with Latvia and Niger.</div>
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Number one is Honduras with a murder rate of 90.4 per 100,000 inhabitants. At the very bottom of the list are Liechtenstein and Monaco which reported zero murders in the time period studied. (Note: The UK <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail </em>offers <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3076470/How-does-country-fare-MURDER-MAP-Interactive-graphic-shows-homicide-rates-world.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a user-friendly interactive map</a> breaking down homicide rates around the world.)</div>
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Facts, of course, are malleable playthings for Obama and the Left.</div>
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It was just three years ago after 17-year-old thug Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman in self-defense, that Obama race-baited by throwing out the red herring that "if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."</div>
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Harper-Mercer has quite a lot in common with Obama. They're both angry, hate-filled mixed-race men with warm feelings for terrorists.</div>
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According to news reports, the Oregon shooter was half-white and half-black. His MySpace page contains Irish Republican Army (IRA) propaganda and he reportedly purchased Nazi paraphernalia online. One of his only two friends listed posted pro-Islamist propaganda on his personal page.</div>
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Harper-Mercer also reportedly praised Vester Lee Flanagan II, a failed, black, gay TV reporter and Black Lives Matter supporter who shot two of his white former colleagues to death on live television in August.</div>
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The Oregon shooter wrote:</div>
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I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more your're [<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">sic</em>] in the limelight.</div>
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Barack Obama never praised Flanagan, but if the president had a son, in many ways he'd look a lot like mass-murderer Chris Harper-Mercer.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-47857937844900884132015-10-07T21:30:00.003-04:002015-10-07T21:30:48.146-04:00The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For UsMy article from the Sept. 30, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260284/mushroom-cloud-isis-has-store-us-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<div>
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The Mushroom Cloud ISIS Has In Store For Us</div>
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The totalitarian mass murderers of Islamic State are hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons and using them against their enemies in the West, a reporter who was embedded with the Salafi jihadist fighters in occupied Syria is warning.</div>
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German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, who spent 10 anxious days living in Islamic State-held Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria with the jihadists, wants the world to know that the terrorist group is deadly serious about unleashing a "nuclear tsunami" on those who oppose its efforts to create an Islamic caliphate.</div>
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"This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history," he said.</div>
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The West has "no concept of the threat it faces" from Islamic State and "dramatically" underestimates the threat posed by the group, said the former German politician who was allowed to embed with the group because of his high-profile criticism of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.</div>
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"They are extremely brutal," according to Todenhöfer. "Not just head-cutting. I'm talking about the strategy of religious cleansing. That's their official philosophy. They are talking about 500 million people who have to die."</div>
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He describes his jihadist odyssey in a new book called <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Inside IS - Ten Days In The Islamic State</em>. At time of writing it wasn’t clear if the author plans to release an English-language version. (The German-language book is titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-10-Tage-Islamischen-Staat/dp/3570102769/ref=sr_1_1_twi_har_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443568327&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3AJ%C3%BCrgen+Todenh%C3%B6fer" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Inside IS - 10 Tage im 'Islamischen Staat'</a>.)</div>
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Todenhöfer's disturbing revelations come 20 months after President Obama sat down with David Remnick of the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New Yorker</em> and dismissively likened Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh) as a "jayvee," or junior varsity, team. "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant," Obama said in January last year.</div>
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Congenitally in denial about the threat that Muslim expansionism poses to free nations, Obama said last fall that "ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim."</div>
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Even now as Islamic State continues racking up horrifying, barbaric atrocities, the Appeaser-in-Chief maintains that Islamic State can be vanquished with tough love and social programs.</div>
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At the United Nations yesterday Obama said waging war against such terrorist groups won't accomplish anything.</div>
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"Ideologies are not defeated with guns," Obama told UN delegates. "They are defeated by better ideas -- a more attractive and compelling vision."</div>
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As someone who spent time with the jihadists, Todenhöfer agrees with Obama that Western military intervention against Islamic State would be pointless.</div>
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"I don't see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop [Islamic State]. I came back very pessimistic."</div>
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Islamic State fighters are significantly more "dangerous and organized" than people in Western nations assume and "completely sure they will win this fight," the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> (UK) <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3253789/Isis-planning-nuclear-holocaust-wipe-hundreds-millions-face-earth-claims-reporter-embedded-extremists.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> the 75-year-old veteran war correspondent saying.</div>
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Islamic State "fighters are much smarter and more dangerous than our leaders believe. In the Islamic State, there is an almost palpable enthusiasm and confidence of victory, which I have not seen in many war zones."</div>
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The group uses its gruesome, graphic beheading videos to cow civilian populations into submission before invading an area, he added.</div>
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The newspaper account continued:</div>
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Mr Todenhöfer went on to say that ISIS have plans for mass genocide, with the aim of eradicating all atheists and religions that are not "people of the book" or who do not subscribe to their particular brand of Islam.</div>
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"The IS want to kill... all non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists should be killed," he [wrote separately].</div>
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"Hundreds of millions of people are to be eliminated in the course of this religious 'cleansing.'"</div>
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"All moderate Muslims who promote democracy, should be killed. Because, from the IS perspective, they promote human laws over the laws of God.</div>
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"This also applies to - after a successful conquest - the democratically-minded Muslims in the Western world."</div>
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Todenhöfer covered some of the same ground in January when he spoke to Al Jazeera <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/18/german-embed-reporter-isis-plans-on-killing-hundreds-of-millions-in-religious-cleansing/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">about what he experienced</a> while living with the jihadists.</div>
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“I always asked them about the value of mercy in Islam,” but “I didn’t see any mercy in their behavior,” he said.</div>
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“Something that I don’t understand at all is the enthusiasm in their plan of religious cleansing, planning to kill the non-believers… They also will kill Muslim democrats because they believe that non-ISIL-Muslims put the laws of human beings above the commandments of God.”</div>
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Todenhöfer was appalled at how “willing to kill” the jihadists were. “They were talking about [killing] hundreds of millions. They were enthusiastic about it, and I just cannot understand that."</div>
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According to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em>, when Todenhöfer arrived in Islamic State-controlled territory, the terrorists took away the mobile phones that he and his son, who worked as his cameraman, had brought with them. He had spent months communicating with the group over Skype before it granted him permission to enter its territory.</div>
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As he explained:</div>
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Of course I'd seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left. People there live in shellholes, in barracks, in bombed-out houses. I slept on the floor, if I was lucky on a plastic mattress. I had a suitcase and a backpack, a sleeping bag.</div>
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As one might expect, Todenhöfer isn't exactly a fan of the U.S.-led Global War on Terror, which in the eyes of some gives his words extra weight.</div>
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As an elected member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 1990, he was the Christian Democratic Union's parliamentary spokesman on disarmament, according to German broadcaster <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/our-guest-on-22012012-j%C3%BCrgen-todenh%C3%B6fer-politician-top-executive-and-author/a-6701892" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Deutsche Welle</a> (DW). "In 1980, he paid a visit to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan—the first of what would become many visits to crisis regions. Over time, he became a committed pacifist and critic of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."</div>
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Meanwhile, an American lawmaker <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/rep-babbin-obamas-open-door-policy-will-allow-islamic-state-to-enter-u-s/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">warned</a> that President Obama's cavalier approach to U.S. border security and insistence on importing thousands of Syrian refugees will help Islamic State in its quest to terrorize Americans.</div>
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“I don’t think that the United States needs to have an open-door policy—this Obama policy—that is going to allow ISIS to come into our country, set up bases of operation illegally at the taxpayers’ expense,” U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said.</div>
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Babin also blamed Obama for the bloody mess in Syria.</div>
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“I think that his weak, vacillated foreign policy and his decisions and him drawing the red line and then doing nothing after the red line is crossed by [Syrian dictator Bashar al-] Assad has created this entire situation.”</div>
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Increasing the quota for Syrian refugees beyond Obama's current limit of 10,000 is a “terrible and unwise idea,” the congressman said. Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, the administration's director of national intelligence, has warned that Islamic State operatives are hiding among the millions of Syrian refugees heading to Europe and the U.S.</div>
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And a report from Breitbart News yesterday <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/29/illegal-immigrant-accused-gruesome-executions-burning-corpses-texas/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">served as a unsettling reminder</a> of the consequences of President Obama's refusal to secure America's porous border with Mexico:</div>
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EDINBURG, Texas – One illegal immigrant has been formally charged with capital murder and another is expected to be charged soon in connection with the execution of two men and the burning of the victims’ corpses in Texas. The two jailed illegal immigrants are said to be members of a fearsome gang called the Tri-City Bombers which has been tied to multiple massacres and high profile murders in the past.</div>
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This week, investigators with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office arrested 22-year-old Edwin Adrian Salinas for his suspected role in the case. Authorities had initially arrested him on unrelated drug charges, but once in custody, homicide detectives were able to link him to the double murder.</div>
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Like illegal aliens, Islamic State terrorists don't use official border crossings.</div>
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<i>[Note: In the German language Jürgen Todenhöfer can also be spelled Juergen Todenhoefer. -MV]</i></div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-48069911793850572432015-10-07T21:22:00.000-04:002015-10-07T21:22:00.938-04:00Obama Frees 20th 9/11 HijackerMy article from the Sept. 28, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260269/obama-frees-20th-911-hijacker-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ESkFA_3B8h0/VhXFAMVH7jI/AAAAAAAAAxU/XgnwF77JOs8/s1600/Abdul_Shalabi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ESkFA_3B8h0/VhXFAMVH7jI/AAAAAAAAAxU/XgnwF77JOs8/s320/Abdul_Shalabi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Obama Frees 20th 9/11 Hijacker</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The Obama administration quietly shipped Osama bin Laden's bodyguard back to the Wahhabist Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last week despite warnings that the Muslim terrorist remains a serious threat to the United States.</div>
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The newly released terrorist detainee is Abdul Shalabi, 39, who trained to be the 20th hijacker for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Shalabi was set free even though military officials deemed him too dangerous to be unleashed on the world and too valuable as an intelligence asset to be released from U.S. custody.</div>
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Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said last week that the liberation of Shalabi, whom he referred to as a "dangerous detainee," is "another example of President Obama playing politics with national security and putting campaign promises ahead of U.S. national security interests." Shuttering the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has long been a goal of President Obama, going back at least to the campaign trail in 2008.</div>
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Shalabi's unshackling should have Americans wondering which bloodthirsty jihadist is next to be released by the soft-on-Islamism president of the United States. Could it be the "Blind Sheikh," a.k.a. Omar Abdel-Rahman, who orchestrated the deadly bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993? News reports that the Obama administration is working on releasing the deadly fatwa-issuing cleric linked to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat go back years. The sheikh is a hero to his followers, including deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and a spiritual leader of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.</div>
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The process by which Shalabi won his freedom offers disturbing insights into the system that determines if a terrorist detainee should be held indefinitely in wartime as allowed under the laws of war.</div>
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In May 2008 when George W. Bush was president, Rear Admiral David M. Thomas Jr., then the commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, recommended in <a href="http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/42-abdul-rahman-shalabi" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a since-unclassified memo</a> that Shalabi's detention be continued.</div>
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Spelling the word <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">high</em> in block capitals and boldfacing it for emphasis, Thomas warned that Shalabi was "[a]<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">HIGH</strong> risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies[,]" "[a] <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">HIGH</strong> threat from a detention perspective[,]" and "[o]f <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">HIGH</strong> intelligence value."</div>
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Born Dec. 4, 1975 in the Muslim holy city of Medina, Saudi Arabia, Shalabi is a man of many aliases. He has also been known as Abdul Rahman Shalabi, Abdul Rahman, Abd al Rahman Shalbi Isa Uwaydah, Abdul Haq Rahman, Saqr al-Madani, and Mahmud Abd Aziz al-Mujahid.</div>
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Shalabi, who had been on a hunger strike for years at Guantanamo, is a member of al-Qaeda who began working as one of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards in 1999, the memo stated. Shalabi "received advanced training at multiple al-Qaida camps" and "received specialized close combat training for his role as a suicide operative in an aborted component of the 11 September 2001 al-Qaida attacks."</div>
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"Detainee attended an elite commando course run by al-Qaida operative Salah al-Din Abd al-Halim Zaydan aka (Sayf al-Adl) at the Mes Aynak Training Camp in 1999," Thomas wrote. "This course was offered to select trainees who had already received al-Qaida's basic training."</div>
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Shalabi was involved in "hostilities against U.S. and Coalition forces and was captured with a group referred to as the Dirty 30, which included UBL [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards and an assessed 20th 11 September 2001 hijacker." Shalabi, who has "familial ties" to bin Laden, "will likely reestablish ties to al-Qaida and other extremist elements if released."</div>
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Thomas argued that Shalabi was far from rehabilitated (assuming rehabilitation is even possible for a jihadist). His behavior while confined was atrocious. </div>
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Thomas reported:</div>
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His overall behavior has been mostly noncompliant and hostile to the guard force and staff. He currently has 95 Reports of Disciplinary Infraction listed in DIMS with the most recent occurring on 27 February 2008, when he was reported spitting on the guard force. Detainee has 11 Reports of Disciplinary Infraction for assault with the most recent occurring on 27 February 2008, when he was reported spitting on the guard force. Other incidents for which he has been disciplined include inciting and participating in mass disturbances, failure to follow guard instructions and camp rules, inappropriate use of bodily fluids, unauthorized communications, damage to government property, attempted assaults, assaults, provoking words and gestures, and possession of food and nonweapon type contraband. On 7 August 2005, detainee was reported to be in possession of broken glass (shank).</div>
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"Does that sound like someone who is going to be rehabilitated in Saudi Arabia?" <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Investor's Business Daily</em><a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/092415-772691-obama-releases-high-risk-911-20th-hijacker.htm?p=full" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">editorialized</a>. "Or someone who will be returning to the terrorist battlefield to wage jihad against America?"</div>
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Even if Shalabi does not return to terrorism, his release provides a morale boost for those who support the jihadist cause, the newspaper opined. "He was also on a partial hunger strike for nine years at Gitmo, and will undoubtedly be used in Islamist propaganda against U.S. detention policies once he returns to his home."</div>
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Some commentators accused the Obama administration of releasing Shalabi suddenly and without warning on Sept. 22 while the public and the media were distracted by the first-ever visit of Pope Francis to the United States. </div>
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While the timing of Shalabi's deinstitutionalization may be suspect, the process that led to his repatriation began at least two years ago. </div>
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Following the great American journalistic tradition of undermining U.S. national security to sell newspapers, the<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Miami Herald</em> <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article1952557.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">set in motion</a> the events that led to Shalabi's low-key exfiltration from U.S.-held territory.</div>
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In June 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense released a list of detainees held at Guantanamo in response to a lawsuit filed by the newspaper. The media outlet then reported that Shalabi was one of 48 Guantanamo detainees "deemed too dangerous to release but ineligible for trial."</div>
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An <a href="http://www.prs.mil/Portals/60/Documents/ISN042/150421_U_ISN42_PUBLIC_SESSION_PUBLIC.PDF" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">unclassified transcript</a> of an April 21 hearing of an Obama administration-controlled detention review board indicated its unnamed "presiding member" said Shalabi behaved badly in detention and "has refused to respond to substantive questions." That board, <a href="http://www.prs.mil/AboutthePRB.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">established</a> under Executive Order 13567 (issued March 7, 2011 by President Obama), convened to hear evidence about whether Shalabi's continued detention at Guantanamo "remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States." The panel, according to the U.S. military, "consists of one senior official from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State; the Joint Staff, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."</div>
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In a little-noticed development, the board <a href="http://www.prs.mil/Portals/60/Documents/ISN042/150615_U_ISN42_FINAL_DETERMINATION_PUBLIC.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">determined</a> June 15 that "continued law of war detention of the detainee is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States." The board recommended Shalabi be returned to his native Saudi Arabia.</div>
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At the April hearing, Shalabi's private counsel, Julia Tarver Mason-Wood, told the board that she had "represented Mr. Shalabi on a pro bono basis for almost a decade." She said her client "wants to make clear that he harbors no ill will to the United States, the American people, and non-Muslims."</div>
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The ethically challenged Mason-Wood told the board:</div>
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As he will explain to you, Mr. Shalabi is a teacher of Islam, which he believes is a religion of peace, not war. Mr. Shalabi will tell you that he does not support terrorism or the killing of innocent people; he steadfastly believes that such acts are contrary to the Quran and to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. </div>
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Manhattan-based Mason-Wood <a href="http://www.paulweiss.com/professionals/partners-and-counsel/julia-tm-wood.aspx" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">is a partner</a> in the Paul, Weiss law firm, which represents many Muslim terrorist detainees. She clerked for leftist U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor when the jurist sat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.</div>
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Richard Pollock <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/gitmo-lawyer-julia-tarver-mason-aiding-abetting-and-not-talking/?singlepage=true#undefined" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">previously reported</a> at PJ Media that Mason-Wood was banned from the Guantanamo facility by the base commander and the U.S. Department of Justice in 2006 "for secretly passing on anti-American propaganda and operational detention details to her 'client.'"</div>
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The detainee was Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi, a Saudi who belonged to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In 2004 a status review tribunal heard that he was “was captured with al-Qaeda surveillance evasion reports and after-action reports.”</div>
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Pollock continued:</div>
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The anti-American propaganda Mason secretly passed on to Mr. Al Joudi was a slick, inflammatory 18-page color brochure — written entirely in Arabic — that slammed American detention policy as “that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.” It was filled with pictures of masked, bound, and kneeling prisoners, and according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em>, “included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq.”</div>
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Mason-Wood had been surreptitiously forwarding "incendiary materials to her client through a system called 'legal mail,' which is supposed to be strictly legal correspondence between a lawyer and the enemy combatant." This appears to contravene "a 2004 protective order by federal Judge Joyce Hens Green [that] forbids the lawyers to give out any information on political news, current events, or the names of U.S. government personnel."</div>
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Mason-Wood brings to mind <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=861" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Lynne Stewart</a>, the since-disbarred radical lawyer who was briefly imprisoned for providing material support for terrorism by illegally passing on a message from her client, Omar Abdel-Rahman. The communiqué was “the blessing of a return to violence from a terrorist leader,” prosecutor Anthony Barkow said during Stewart’s 2006 trial. In it, the sheikh urged disciples to abandon a ceasefire with the government of Egypt and resume terrorist operations.</div>
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According to Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn, Mason-Wood is one of several legal counsel to Guantanamo detainees who "went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients." (Burlingame, a former attorney, is the sister of the late Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)</div>
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Mason-Wood, Burlingame and Joscelyn <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704131404575117611125872740" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">wrote</a> in the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em>,</div>
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inflamed tensions with the hunger strikers during a visit to Guantanamo in October 2005. She told one of the detainees, Yousef Al Sherhri, that the U.S. Government had no court authority to feed him using a nasal tube, according to Justice Department documents. As a result Al Sherhri pulled out his feeding tube, persuaded detainees in his cell block to do the same and exhorted them to physically resist. [Department of Justice] lawyers would later argue that Ms. Mason’s advocacy “resulted in a disruption of camp security and a potential threat to the health of eight hunger-striker detainees.”</div>
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After being banned from Guantanamo for breaking the rules, attorneys sued the government to regain access to detainees. The ban on Paul, Weiss lawyers that was enforced for part of 2006, was later rescinded "as part of a private settlement containing a variety of stipulations." </div>
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Mason-Wood's client, Majeed Abdullah Al Joudi, was sent back to Saudi Arabia in February 2007. In 2009 the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed Joudi had “reengaged in terrorism.”</div>
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Freeing Omar Abdel-Rahman would be a logical enough choice for the Obama administration which has shown a willingness to release the worst of the worst among Muslim terrorists. </div>
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Remember that Obama freed five Islamist generals in exchange for Taliban collaborator U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. </div>
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Releasing the Blind Sheikh, whose list of U.S. targets overlapped with the targets Obama pal Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground Organization bombed or plotted to bomb in the 1970s, would delight the president's Islamist allies.</div>
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From the time since-overthrown Egyptian President Morsi took office, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/omar-abdel-rahman-the-push-to-free-the-imprisoned-islamist-extremist/2013/01/26/1741189a-6646-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">he promised to pressure</a> the U.S. government to free the sheikh, the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em> reported in early 2013</div>
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In October 2012 al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Egyptians to kidnap Americans to force the sheikh's release. Muslim terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who attacked U.S. and European oil workers in January 2013, put the sheikh's freedom on his list of political demands.</div>
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The sheikh "was the godfather of all Islamic movements," Zawahiri's younger brother, Mohamed al-Zawahiri has said. "Maybe if he was not going through such injustice, 9/11 would not have happened. [The sheikh's imprisonment] was one of the reasons that the people felt so strongly about the American offenses against the Islamic people."</div>
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The sheikh has long been a revered figure is Islamism but after Hosni Mubarak, who kept Egypt's Islamist problem under control, was ousted as the Arab republic's president, demands for the sheikh to be returned to Egypt have grown progressively louder.</div>
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In 2001 before the 9/11 attacks Osama bin Laden himself reportedly demanded the sheikh's release from U.S. custody. Author Peter Bergen described the sheikh as the "spiritual guide of 9/11" because he wrote an edict in prisons requiring Muslims to take up arms against their enemies and "kill them in the sea, on land and in the air."</div>
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The sheikh is reportedly very popular among Egyptian Salafists who view him as a legitimate religious and political leader railroaded by the U.S. justice system. Some call him the “Emir of Jihad."</div>
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Militants who attacked the In Amenas gas facility in southeastern Algeria offered to swap American hostages for the sheikh. Algerian authorities didn't pursue the offer and instead conducted a raid that left at least 29 terrorists and 37 captives dead.</div>
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A Libyan group known as the Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman Brigade took responsibility for assaults on Western targets in Libya in 2012, including the Sept. 11 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that left four Americans dead including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The sheikh's son, Abdallah, said the killers "were acting in the name of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman."</div>
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In <a href="http://www.memrijttm.org/al-qaeda-leader-al-zawahiri-rejects-isis-caliphate-predicts-imminent-islamic-spring.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a video message</a> earlier this month, al-Qaeda's Zawahiri reminded his followers that the sheikh and his brethren remain in custody and, according to MEMRI, "urged all groups to include them in their deals when negotiating for the release of any of their hostages."</div>
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In recent years media outlets <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/144602/releasing-blind-sheikh-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">have reported</a> that the U.S. Department of State “is actively considering negotiations with the Egyptian government for the transfer of custody of Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as ‘the Blind Sheikh,’ for humanitarian and health reasons.” Obama administration officials deny that there have been any such negotiations but the administration isn't exactly known for its honesty.</div>
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The Arabic language newspaper <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">al-Arabiya</em> reported previously that the Obama administration offered to send Abdel-Rahman to Egypt as part a prisoner swap. Now well into his seventies, Abdel-Rahman was convicted of “seditious conspiracy” in 1995 in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.</div>
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Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization, Jamaa Islamiya (Islamic Group), is a “radical offshoot” of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Jamaa Islamiya also tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. To try to force the release of Abdel-Rahman from the U.S., Jamaa Islamiya murdered 62 people in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.</div>
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Shalabi's lawyer, Julia Tarver Mason-Wood, should be getting a telephone call from the Blind Sheikh's people any day now.</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Correction: This article has been updated to remove a statement that asserted that President Obama has the authority to pardon Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur. </em></div>
<br />Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-24621704198149705612015-10-07T20:51:00.000-04:002015-10-07T21:04:38.644-04:00BuzzFeed and those "fake" quotations used by eeevil Mike HuckabeeBuzzFeed <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/mike-huckabees-1998-book-is-full-of-fake-quotes-from-america?#.usDZdPXP4">reports</a> that "Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 1998 book <i>Kids Who Kill</i> is full of spurious quotations from leading American political figures, mostly the country’s founding fathers."<br />
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The article continues:<br />
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A number of the quotations, such as those from Washington and Jefferson, have been routinely debunked by libraries of the past presidents but still regularly find their way into books from conservative figures. Other quotes, debunked by prominent historians, seem to be used for the first time in the book.</blockquote>
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<i>Kids Who Kill</i> links a mass shooting in Arkansas "to the decline in America’s moral culture," according to the article. Quotations from Founding Fathers like George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson "are often used to reinforce Huckabee’s moral viewpoint."</div>
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Huckabee, like many politicians in both major parties, has used apocryphal quotations (and lousy paraphrases) from revered American figures.</div>
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So far so good. I don't carry water for Huckabee. He's too liberal for me though <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/us/politics/mike-huckabee-on-the-issues.html?_r=0">he has been sounding</a> conservative lately. Go ahead and scrutinize him (along with all the candidates). This is the time to do it.</div>
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That said, the very first example BuzzFeed provides gives me pause.</div>
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Yes, it is inaccurate but it isn't exactly breathtakingly, blood-curdingly off in terms of semantics. Sure, different words were used, and Huckabee shouldn't have done it, but the ideas represented in the first "fake quote" attributed to Jefferson, happen to accurately express thoughts that the principal author of the Declaration of Independence had in real life. My guess is the inaccurate quotation gained wide currency because it mirrors what Jefferson actually thought.</div>
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Let's look at Huckabee's Jefferson quotation. From the article:</div>
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“Thomas Jefferson asserted that the ‘chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all,’” writes Huckabee in one part of the book on abortion.</blockquote>
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However, <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/first-duty-government-protection-lifequotation">according to the</a> Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “this quotation has not been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.”</blockquote>
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(Pro tip, BuzzFeed: "writes Huckabee in one part of the book on abortion" is bad writing, and in my view, ambiguous. Is the book about abortion? Or is just one part of the book about abortion? I thought <i>Kids Who Kill</i> was about homicidal children.)</div>
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A statement that Jefferson actually wrote, contains different words but they still express the same idea.</div>
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According to <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/73/778.html">Bartleby</a>, a reputable resource, Jefferson wrote this [emphasis added below]: </div>
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If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. <b>The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government</b>.</blockquote>
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This quotation comes, according to Bartleby, from a March 31, 1809 letter Jefferson wrote to "the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland[.]" It appears in volume 8 of <i>The Writings of Thomas Jefferson</i>, edited by H. A. Washington (1871).</div>
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Interestingly, the real quotation is stronger than the one used by Huckabee which asserts only that protecting life is "the chief purpose of government."</div>
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The actual Jefferson quotation makes protecting life the <i>singular</i> purpose of government, not merely an <i>overarching</i> purpose of government.</div>
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So again, Huckabee shouldn't have done it, it's not okay, but the quotation he used isn't crazily far afield from something Jefferson actually wrote. The bogus sentences, which have been <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/first-duty-government-protection-lifequotation">traced back</a> to at least 1989 in a work by his co-author George Grant, were good enough to trick at least a generation of Americans. (Maybe BuzzFeed should have gone after Grant.)</div>
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In at least this one case BuzzFeed was a bit too hard on Huckabee.</div>
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I regret I don't have time to go through the whole article tonight. Oh, the gems that likely await.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-89728553567575275512015-10-07T18:14:00.002-04:002015-10-07T21:01:53.984-04:00BREAKING: Hillary is "bitchy"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FNr0b5s21A0/VTF5zVYvz1I/AAAAAAAAAeQ/MyeHvAI-vAs/s1600/hillary-clinton-bad-word.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FNr0b5s21A0/VTF5zVYvz1I/AAAAAAAAAeQ/MyeHvAI-vAs/s1600/hillary-clinton-bad-word.jpg" /></a></div>
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Well, <i>duh</i>.<br />
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It was a female focus group member in the early primary voting state of New Hampshire who <a href="http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-female-voter-calls-hillary-bitchy-during-msnbc-focus-group/">on MSNBC</a> described Democrat Dowager Hillary Clinton as "bitchy."<br />
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The woman, wearing a sticker marked "Shannon," told moderator Mark Halperin that the “scorned” tone of her Her Majesty can be “off-putting.”<br />
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“Tell me what it’s like, what are you seeing,” Halperin said.<br />
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Shannon sighed, saying “You know, when she’s — I don’t want to use the word.” She whispered “bitchy.”<br />
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Here is the video clip of this honest woman speaking truth to power:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1eXyePlaWxY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1eXyePlaWxY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Any minute now MSNBC will be filing a copyright infringement claim with YouTube.Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-52187586884888348682015-09-25T13:47:00.003-04:002015-09-25T13:52:26.297-04:00Radical PopeMy article in today's <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260239/radical-pope-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Radical Pope</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Pope Francis chided Americans yesterday for their supposed intolerance and xenophobia, the same thing President Obama does every day, in his historic address to the U.S. Congress.</div>
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Although Francis toned down his sometimes in-your-face rhetoric for his congressional speech, it was still a politically tone-deaf lecture on America's failings, past and present. </div>
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It bore more than a passing resemblance to the many speeches President Obama has given around the globe apologizing for America's history and greatness. The pope delivered this address standing on the dais in front of Vice President Joe Biden (D) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Both are Catholics. Boehner made this major debacle, which amounts to a propaganda boost for the Obama agenda, possible by inviting the pope to address Congress. (A full transcript of the pope's address <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/full-transcript-pope-francis-video-speech-congress-376017" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">is available here</a>.)</div>
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It may be significant that only four members of the nine-member Roman Catholic-dominated Supreme Court showed up for the Holy Father's address. The attendees were Chief John Roberts (Catholic), Anthony Kennedy (Catholic), Sonia Sotomayor (Catholic), and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jewish). Absent were Samuel Alito (Catholic), Antonin Scalia (Catholic), Clarence Thomas (Catholic), Stephen Breyer (Jewish), and Elena Kagan (Jewish).</div>
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The Left loves the pope's message. Although the Left vindictively led the charge against the Catholic church during the various sexual abuse scandals, it now has the current pope's back because, except for abortion, he agrees with leftists. For example, in recent days the Salon website, a hotbed of hostility to organized religion (except Islam), has switched sides. Salon has been running stories sympathetic to the pope with titles like "The transcendent compassion of Pope Francis" (by leftist mud-hurler Joan Walsh, no less), "Twitter tells the tale: Pope Francis' speech does not sit well with the conservative 'intelligentsia,'" "Conservatives who hate the pope rush to his defense," "5 new ways Pope Francis is sticking it to the Christian right," and "The GOP's venomous Pope tirades are the ultimate example of hypocritical rage."</div>
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President Obama, of course, adores Pope Francis, but not because he is the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world. Obama views Francis as a partner fundamental transformation. Obama benefited early in his community organizing career from assistance from the Roman Catholic church. Obama has ties to the extreme-left <a href="http://www.capitalresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/pubs/pdf/v1251490843.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Catholic Campaign for Human Development</a> (CCHD) which has underwritten the rabble-rousing efforts of the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, Midwest Academy, Gamaliel Foundation, People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), and Direct Action and Research Training Institute (DART).</div>
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Francis is solidly plugged in to the American Left. This summer community organizers from PICO and SEIU thugs flew to Rome to collaborate with Vatican officials in advance of the pope's visit, as the <a href="http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/organizers-union-leaders-seek-influence-francis-us-visit-through-vatican-meetings" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">National Catholic Reporter</a> reported.</div>
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No wonder President Obama took the unusual step earlier this week of greeting this man who is technically a foreign head of state at the airport when his airplane landed. The president warmly welcomed his ideological soulmate on the tarmac after his Alitalia jet arrived at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Tuesday afternoon. At the president's side were First Lady Michelle Obama, their two daughters Sasha and Malia, Vice President Joe Biden, and a phalanx of church officials.</div>
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Yesterday, in what was the first oration any pope has given to Congress, the pope strangely invoked the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but didn't mention abortion, which his church vigorously opposes. "The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development," he said, missing a golden opportunity to condemn Planned Parenthood for trafficking in human body parts, a practice that disgusts Americans of all political stripes. Instead he focused on a non-issue, calling for "the global abolition of the death penalty ... since every life is sacred."</div>
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Francis also implied that the United States, the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world, treats immigrants badly. The pope dubiously connected American "sins and the errors of the past" against American Indians with the treatment of immigrants today, imploring the nation not to repeat these "sins" in current dealings with immigrants. </div>
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Rolling out the tired, old "we're all immigrants" mantra, the pope said:</div>
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In recent centuries, millions of people came to this land to pursue their dream of building a future in freedom. We, the people of this continent, are not fearful of foreigners, because most of us were once foreigners. I say this to you as the son of immigrants, knowing that so many of you are also descended from immigrants. Tragically, the rights of those who were here long before us were not always respected. ... Those first contacts were often turbulent and violent, but it is difficult to judge the past by the criteria of the present. Nonetheless, when the stranger in our midst appeals to us, we must not repeat the sins and the errors of the past. We must resolve now to live as nobly and as justly as possible, as we educate new generations not to turn their back on our "neighbors" and everything around us. </div>
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The suggestion that America is anti-immigrant or is not profusely kind to immigrants is a baseless smear. The quantity of immigrants the U.S. admits has long been completely in line with or higher than other Western nations. The U.S. Department of State even claims this country "accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than the rest of the world combined."</div>
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In 2013 alone the U.S. took in 990,553 "permanent" migrants and almost 1.8 million "temporary" migrants, according to an August 6 analysis by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Second on the list of "Inflows of foreign population into selected OECD countries and the Russian Federation" was Germany (1.1 million), followed by Russia (482,241), United Kingdom (406,000), Spain (307,036), South Korea (369,267), Japan (306,742), Italy (279,021), and Canada (258,480). (The excel spreadsheet cannot be linked to. To read it go to <a href="http://www.oecd.org/els/mig/keystat.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">www.oecd.org/els/mig/keystat.htm</a> and click on "Inflows of foreign population.")</div>
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America selflessly takes in armies of immigrants even when its own economy is weak. Based on U.S. Census Bureau data, CIS reported in 2010 that 13.9 million immigrants settled in the U.S. from 2000 to 2010. It was "the highest decade of immigration in American history, even though there was a net loss of jobs during the decade."</div>
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America has endless compassion for immigrants. The U.S. makes it easy -- some would say too easy -- for immigrants. Affirmative action and other policies make many immigrants the beneficiaries of race preferences in hiring and higher-education admissions. </div>
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The U.S. lavishes welfare benefits on immigrants. A veritable minefield of welfare programs awaits immigrants, and not surprisingly, most immigrant households in this country are on welfare. Immigrants are eligible for many programs including Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, and school lunches. Immigrant use of welfare dramatically outstrips native-born use of welfare.</div>
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Americans don't need to be lectured by a pope who is trying to guilt-trip the U.S. into accepting pro-jihad refugees from the civil war in Syria and other Muslim hotspots.</div>
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From fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2013 <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260091/immigrant-welfare-addiction%25C2%25A0-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">the United States took in</a> 115,617 refugees from the Middle East and granted asylum to another 10,026. The U.S. government also provided green cards to 308,805 immigrants from those Middle Eastern countries which makes them eligible to seek U.S. citizenship in five years and petition to have family members admitted to the country as immigrants. </div>
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In fiscal 2013, an astounding 91.4 percent of Middle Eastern refugees admitted to the U.S. between 2008 and 2013 received food stamps. Another 71.3 percent were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68.3 percent took in cash welfare, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.</div>
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But it's not just illegal aliens feeding at the trough. A recent Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report concluded that "[l]egal immigration is supposed to benefit the country, yet so many legal immigrants are not able to support themselves or their children."</div>
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So the idea that the United States is mean to immigrants is only so much blatherskite. The pope and other leftists try to keep this lie alive because it is an essential part of the Left's anti-American narrative.</div>
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As usual, Francis seemed unconcerned that Muslims are slaughtering Christians around the world while Christianity itself seems on the verge of being eclipsed globally by Islam. </div>
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His Holiness saw fit to lecture Americans on their attitudes toward religions other than Christianity. The pope presented a false equivalency between Islam, an inherently violent, intolerant, imperialistic faith and other major world religions that don't punish apostates with death.</div>
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The pope tritely observed:</div>
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All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. </div>
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In the speech, after his throwaway line that "every life is sacred," the pope failed once again to rally the faithful to demand action in light of the killing of Christians around the world by Muslims in countries like Bangladesh, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Uganda. (The Religion of Peace website <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/christianattacks.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">documents</a> these killings that "have nothing to do with war, combat, or insurgency. The victims are innocent Christians who were specifically targeted and abuses solely on account of their faith by those who claim their own religion as a motive.")</div>
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Although he did not mention Islam by name in his address, he is a fierce defender of the Muslim faith. "Islam is a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence," he said in 2014. He has also said "authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence."</div>
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Francis believes people should not mock Islam and those who do ought to expect violent retaliation from those who are offended. In January this year, not long after members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula stormed the Paris offices of the left-wing satirical magazine <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Charlie Hebdo</em>, murdering 12 and wounding 11, the pope <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-pope-francis-says-those-who-ridicule-others-religions-should-expect-a-punch-9980192.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">expressed sympathy</a> for the terrorists.</div>
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Although Francis said at the time it was an “aberration” to kill in the name of God and that religion should never be used to justify violence, he then contradicted himself. “If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch,” Francis said as he pretended to throw a punch in the direction of Alberto Gasparri, his travel coordinator.</div>
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“It’s normal," the pope said. "You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”</div>
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Evan Harris, a former member of the United Kingdom's parliament, condemned the pope's remarks, the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Independent</em> (UK) reported at the time:</div>
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He noted on Twitter that the pontiff was speaking on the same day that funerals for some of the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff took place, questioning whether this was in accordance with the idea of turning the other cheek.</div>
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“The Pope said ‘people's faith must not be insulted’. Or else what, your holiness? Burning at the stake? Astonishing outburst from Pope,” he said.</div>
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Yet the pope does not seem troubled by the "fundamentalism" of Communist Cuba.</div>
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When the Holy Father visited Cuba earlier this week, he had very few bad things to say about that island hellhole. In a public mass in Havana's Revolution Square, Francis praised Cuba for its "vocation of grandeur."</div>
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He did this even though, as Daniel Greenfield <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260231/popes-misguided-defense-islam-daniel-greenfield" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">writes</a>,</div>
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Unlike Communist Cuba, America hasn't seized and nationalized Catholic churches and schools. It hasn't locked up Catholic clergy or installed surveillance equipment in their homes. It hasn't denounced the Catholic church as "exploiters" and "fascists." </div>
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The 78-year-old Argentinian, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, a Jesuit who took the chair of St. Peter in March 2013 following the abdication of the more conservative Pope Benedict XVI, appears to be a fan of Fidel Castro and his politics.</div>
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During his Cuban visit, Pope Francis praised the "spirit of poverty" and called poverty "the wall and the mother of consecrated life. Affluence "impoverishes" making "us poor in the only wealth that is worth having, to put our safety in other things."</div>
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It could be said that the pope was certainly in the right place to be praising poverty. </div>
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After a half-century of estrangement between the U.S. and that totalitarian state, Francis helped to bring about a diplomatic thaw this past December. Since then Cuba has opened an embassy in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. opened an embassy in Havana.</div>
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Returning to the congressional address, the pope decried the arms trade.</div>
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Being at the service of dialogue and peace also means being truly determined to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed conflicts throughout our world. Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.</div>
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The Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Chicagoland ally of President Obama's anti-American preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, attended the address and was delighted by it, dutifully regurgitating the papal talking points, according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Chicago Tribune</em>. "Why are we selling deadly weapons? He was very clear: It is money. It is money drenched in blood."</div>
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Only the leftist mind can reconcile the pope's condemnation of the arms trade with his gung-ho support of President Obama's nuclear nonproliferation agreement with Iran. That porous pact guarantees the "fundamentalist" Islamic dictatorship will start a nuclear and conventional arms race in the Middle East.</div>
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The U.S. sanctions regime that took over 30 years to create was a peaceful way of dealing with Iran, but Obama and the pope threw those sanctions away while piously prattling on about the need for peace. Now it is just a matter of time before war breaks out.</div>
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During his address, the pope mentioned four Americans he considers worthy of high praise. He lauded Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and left-wing Catholics Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. </div>
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Of Day, who embraced anarchism, he said:</div>
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In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.</div>
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Francis described Merton, a Cistercian monk, as "a source of spiritual inspiration and a guide for many people." Merton "was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions."</div>
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Although many Catholics, even non-radical Catholics, admire Day and Merton today, the pope didn't mention that both were radicals, extreme pacifists, and admirers of Fidel Castro. But unlike Catholic Mercedes Marxists such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and actor-activist Martin Sheen, Day and Merton weren't hypocrites or political hacks. They lived what they believed in, shunning luxury and worldly possessions. Day said she didn't like the welfare state; she thought there was a better way to help the poor.</div>
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No one in the Capitol complex <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/24/the-pope-name-dropped-a-radical-catholic-activist-and-bernie-sanders-couldnt-be-happier/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">was more excited</a> about the pope's speech than Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-Vermont), himself a self-described socialist. He acted as if the pope's observations about Day in particular constituted a kind of political endorsement of his candidacy.</div>
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"The name Dorothy Day has not been used in the United States Congress terribly often," Sanders told the<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em>. "She was a valiant fighter for workers, was very strong in her belief for social justice, and I think it was extraordinary that he cited her as one of the most important people in recent American history. This would be one of the very, very few times that somebody as radical as Dorothy Day was mentioned."</div>
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"We need to change the system," Day wrote in the 1950s. "We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists 'of conspiring to teach [us] to do,' but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York."</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Post</em> account continued:</div>
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Recent support for Day's possible canonization has angered some conservatives. "Vatican archives are filled with reports of Christians martyred under the regimes that Dorothy Day supported," wrote Virginia State Senator Dick Black in a 2013 letter to Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict. "I am revolted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ support for the canonization of a woman whose views supported the violent extermination of Christians throughout the world."</div>
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Sanders continued to heap praise on Pope Francis for lauding Day, a socialist and an extreme pacifist who, before becoming a devout Catholic, had an abortion.</div>
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The pope "is willing to identify with an extraordinarily courageous woman whose life was about standing with the poorest people in America, and having the courage to stand up to the very powerful," he said. "You know, her newspaper was the Catholic Worker, and she stood with the workers of America and fought for justice."</div>
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"His calling out for social justice, his talking about income and wealth inequality, his talking about creating an economy and a culture that works for everybody, not just a few, is a very, very powerful message."</div>
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Although Day, who died in 1980, did have <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-dorothy-day-few-of-us-know" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">some libertarian tendencies</a> and was far from being the most extreme of left-wing Catholic activists, the Catholic Worker Movement she founded is radically left-wing. As Discover The Networks <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7703" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">advises</a>, the movement attacks capitalism in Marxist terms. Capitalism is considered to be a “bourgeois” economic system whose underlying “profit motive” and its “prevailing concern for acquisition and material interests” renders it “far from God's justice.” Under capitalism, says the organization, “those in power” constitute “a non-producing class” of exploiters who “systematically rob” every laborer of “that wealth which he produces over and above what is need[ed] for his bare maintenance.”</div>
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The movement advocates “a complete rejection of the present social order”; “a withdrawal from the capitalist system so far as each one is able to do so”; and “a non-violent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values.” The movement wants society reorganized into a series of “decentralized cooperatives” in which the “widespread and universal ownership by all men of property” functions as “a stepping stone to a communism that will be in accord with the Christian teaching of detachment from material goods.”</div>
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Merton, a poet-priest who died in 1968, protested the Vietnam War and <a href="http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-12-20/page/73/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">briefly belonged</a> to the Young Communist League. Like Day, he embraced the half-baked semi-utopian philosophy of "distributism," which was promoted as a middle path between capitalism and communism. The philosophy rejects both capitalist factories and socialist welfare dependency. </div>
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Pope Francis mentioned the two activists because he is walking in their footsteps. </div>
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So is President Obama.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-64811775877095535742015-09-25T13:42:00.001-04:002015-09-25T13:42:07.283-04:00FBI Carries Hillary's Water in Email ScandalMy Sept. 23, 2015 article in <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260221/fbi-carries-hillarys-water-email-scandal-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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FBI Carries Hillary's Water in Email Scandal</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The FBI's bizarre and shocking refusal earlier this week to cooperate with legal efforts to force the public release of emails from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's hacker-friendly private Internet server is yet more proof that the Obama administration is continuing to provide political cover for the 2016 presidential hopeful.</div>
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This strange behavior comes as Republican lawmakers escalate their criticism of Mrs. Clinton's unusual emailing habits. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) is demanding that U.S. Attorney General and Obama lackey Loretta Lynch appoint a special counsel to investigate the case. Other lawmakers want hearings to consider compelling testimony from Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton staffer who installed the server in her private residence.</div>
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The Department of State is also dragging its heels in processing the electronic correspondence, Citizens United President David Bossie said. The agency is "slow walking" the Freedom of Information Act requests for the almost-certainly damning emails to prevent their release before key Democratic primary elections next year, he said.</div>
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The server is at the heart of the growing scandal over Clinton's mishandling of an Islamic terrorist attack in militant-infested Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that left four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. Even now, three years after the assault, the Obama administration has failed to provide an autopsy report about Stevens who was initially reported to have been ritualistically sodomized before being murdered by Muslim terrorists.</div>
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There is already convincing evidence that Obama administration officials at the highest levels were long aware of Clinton's cloak-and-dagger email infrastructure. The congenitally corrupt Clintons created the system to frustrate Freedom of Information Act requesters, shield Hillary's correspondence from congressional oversight, and steer money to the international cash-for-future-presidential-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which, amazingly enough, still enjoys tax-exempt status.</div>
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At a federal court hearing Monday it was revealed that the long-respected Federal Bureau of Investigation is openly defying Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. The judge ordered the agency to work with the U.S. Department of State to devise a method for making public the emails from the mysterious server which Mrs. Clinton delivered to the U.S. Department of Justice this past summer. While serving at Foggy Bottom from 2009 to 2013, Clinton kept the server at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., which happens to be a short drive from Katonah, N.Y., where leftist billionaire and Clinton donor George Soros maintains a home.</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> (UK) <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3244890/Why-won-t-FBI-come-clean-s-going-Hillary-s-emails-Mystery-G-men-s-refusal-tell-court-s-happening.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that</div>
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James A. Baker, a general counsel attorney for the FBI, sent a letter to the Justice Department -- its own parent agency - that wouldn't even confirm that the agency was involved in the matter, despite weeks of multiple news reports to the contrary. "We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation, nor are we in a position to provide additional information at this time," Baker wrote Sullivan.</div>
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Baker's letter was dated Monday, a week beyond the deadline imposed on the FBI by the Justice Department.</div>
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At the hearing Sullivan issued <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/09/22/judge-orders-quicker-review-of-emails-from-clinton-aides" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a new order requiring</a> the State Department to accelerate its national security-related vetting of emails from Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills to then-Secretary Clinton and report back on Oct. 5. The department said the records won't be ready until the end of this year or some time in 2016.</div>
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"How long does it take to conduct a computer search?" the judge said. "You push a button."</div>
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Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Shapiro protested that "The State Department is being crushed with obligations" and that staffers there are working overtime to comply. "Every effort is being made," she said.</div>
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Conservative activists are angry at the government for stonewalling.</div>
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"The State Department acts as if Ms. Abedin’s and Ms. [Clinton lawyer Cheryl] Mills’ documents fell from the sky on the eve of the State Department’s production deadline, but that is not remotely the case," Citizens United, which is also suing for the emails, stated in a court filing last week.</div>
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Watchdog group Judicial Watch protested the government's noncompliance with the investigation in a court filing Monday.</div>
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"We still do not know whether the FBI - or any other government agency for that matter - has possession of the email server that was used by Mrs. Clinton and [Clinton aide] Ms. [Huma] Abedin to conduct official government business during their four years of employment at the State Department."</div>
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In a document dump, Judicial Watch advised that Huma Abedin, a longtime aide with familial ties to the world of Islamic terrorism, sent at least 50 pages of emails through the Benghazi bungler's so-called home-brew email server that "openly discussed sensitive topics such as specific hotels where Clinton was staying on overseas trips," the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> reports.</div>
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At the hearing State Department counsel told Judge Sullivan that the agency is having difficulty complying with the court's orders because it is working its way through 100 separate lawsuits seeking the emails. "At other points, the department has been unable to comply because it hasn't been given a complete set of returned emails from aides such as Abedin," according to the newspaper.</div>
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Meanwhile, the trickle of bad news for Hillary is turning into a flood.</div>
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A <a href="http://nypost.com/2015/09/22/hillary-is-dealing-with-mounting-health-issues-new-book-claims/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">soon-to-be-published book</a> says 67-year-old Clinton has "mounting health issues" that could make it difficult for her to serve as president. Despite this, her personal physician gave her a more or less clean bill of health over the summer.</div>
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According to <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary</em>, by Edward Klein, Clinton has suffered a series of strokes and is "frequently plagued" by "blinding headaches." In 2012 Clinton experienced a life-threatening concussion-related blood clot of her brain that made her "constantly worried" she would develop a new clot. On the campaign trail she has "felt faint and nearly swooned," but "[t]hose incidents were kept secret." </div>
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Clinton has also been experiencing insomnia but the condition hasn't been ameliorated by medication. The sleeplessness has "worried her, because it sapped her energy just when she needed it most for the campaign," Klein reportedly writes. </div>
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"For the first time I've known her, she's showing self-doubt about her strength and vitality," a Clinton friend reportedly told Klein. "She is exhausted and depressed a lot of the time."</div>
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The tabloid scandal-sheet <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Enquirer</em> reported on Clinton's strokes last month but added that she also "is suffering from the early stages of the debilitating disease MS." Multiple sclerosis, known as MS, damages the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spine, interfering with the ability of the nervous system to communicate. The incurable disease can lead to severe physical and psychiatric problems. </div>
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Although the newspaper has a reputation for sensational, outrageous-sounding, often thinly-sourced stories, that has begun to change. It broke the true story in 2004 about the love child vice presidential candidate John Edwards (D), then a married man, fathered with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. In 2010 the Pulitzer Prize Board, the gatekeeper of the most coveted prize in journalism, lifted its ban on accepting nominations from the<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Enquirer</em>.</div>
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Clinton campaign staffers have been <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/22/james-okeefe-video-hillary-campaign-workers-run-questions-election-law-violations/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">dodging inconvenient questions</a> from ACORN-slayer and <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> bestselling author James O'Keefe III who now heads Project Veritas, a nonprofit devoted to investigative video-based journalism.</div>
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Breitbart News reports that</div>
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O’Keefe recently captured Clinton campaign worker and Nevada immigration lawyer Christina Gupana appearing to condone and encourage what appear to be Clinton volunteers and staffers to ignore and knowingly violate Nevada’s voter registration laws. She tells them, “Do whatever you can. Whatever you can get away with, just do it, until you get kicked out like totally.”</div>
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The follow-up video from O’Keefe’s Project Veritas shows a Hillary Clinton campaign worker, identified as Don Andres, acknowledging the existence of a “viral video” but maintaining that the campaign did nothing to violate election laws.</div>
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Investigators for Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske (R) are reportedly looking into the Gupana case and O'Keefe is promising more sting videos damaging to to the Clinton campaign.</div>
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Contrary to propaganda spewed by Democrats and their left-wing activist allies, voter fraud is not a myth. It happens and can affect outcomes in close races.</div>
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In 2011 in Nevada, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the nonprofit group famous for turning graveyards across the nation into Democratic strongholds, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/102114/sentencing-acorn-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">pleaded guilty</a> to unlawful compensation for registration of voters, a felony in that state. Significantly, the secretary of state at the time whose office pushed the prosecution was Ross Miller, a Democrat. It was also the only time ACORN itself, as opposed to its individual workers and their associates, had been convicted of a crime. The court fined ACORN $5,000, the maximum allowed. </div>
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Prosecutors said the higher-ups in the group knew two senior ACORN executives were involved in a criminal conspiracy in which voter registration canvassers were illegally offered cash bonuses upon reaching the magic number of 21 registrations in a day. In what appears to be an inside joke, ACORN officials in the gambling capital of America called the incentive program “Blackjack.”</div>
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During the sentencing hearing, Las Vegas Judge Donald Mosley said the misdeeds of ACORN, which had close ties to both Clinton and President Obama, filed bankruptcy in 2010, made "a mockery of our election process.” The judge added, “This is the kind of thing you see in some banana republic, Uruguay or someplace, not in the United States.”</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Post</em> reported this week that for the first time ever Clinton is underwater in a poll in her home state. In New York State, 51 percent of voters view her unfavorably, according to a Siena College poll. Only 46 percent of that state's voters view her favorably. Despite the bad stats, she is still leading her two nearest rivals. Among Democratic voters in New York, she garners 45 percent, far ahead of yet undeclared candidate Vice President Joe Biden (D) at 24 percent, and self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) who trails with 23 percent.</div>
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As the torrent of bad news keeps flowing, the Democrats' supposedly inevitable nominee is becoming not so inevitable. </div>
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And Hillary Clinton better start praying that the next president is from her own party.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-8051125146324657642015-09-25T13:37:00.002-04:002015-09-25T13:37:32.359-04:00BlackLivesMatter Goes to the White HouseMy Sept. 18, 2015 article on <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260161/blacklivesmatter-goes-white-house-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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BlackLivesMatter Goes to the White House</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The Obama White House rolled out the red carpet this week for leaders of the racist revolutionary Black Lives Matter movement, providing yet more confirmation that the Obama administration supports its members' increasingly violent activism.</div>
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News of the meeting comes after a Southern police chief was given the boot for posting a note critical of Black Lives Matter and of President Obama's incessant race-baiting.</div>
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Black Lives Matter is animated not only by anti-white racism but by a hatred of normal American values, including law and order. Its members denounce the U.S. for imagined institutional racism and discrimination against African-Americans. Members idolize convicted, unrepentant cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal, both of whom are black, and have declared "war" on law enforcement. Its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated.</div>
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Black Lives Matter activist Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, murdered 31-year-old white Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder last Sunday night. Johnson-Shanks apparently committed suicide-by-cop when troopers caught up with him the next morning. The convicted felon pointed a gun at police and they shot him in self-defense. </div>
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The White House love fest Wednesday came after several high-profile attacks on law enforcement across America.</div>
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Activists enjoyed an audience with President Obama. Brittany Packnett, a highly influential Black Lives Matter leader, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/17/valerie-jarrett-meets-black-lives-matter-leaders-white-house/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">told reporters</a> that Obama personally supports the movement that has inspired violence against police officers and spurred civil unrest.</div>
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“He offered us a lot of encouragement with his background as a community organizer, and told us that even incremental changes were progress,” she told reporters following the event. “He didn’t want us to get discouraged. He said, ‘Keep speaking truth to power.’”</div>
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President Obama’s senior adviser from Chicagoland, Valerie Jarrett, also met with the activists during the visit.</div>
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Jarrett met with Black Lives Matter leaders Packnett, Johnetta Elzie, DeRay Mckesson, Phillip Agnew, and Jamye Wooten. Mckesson has obliquely <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/256918/leaders-lynch-mob-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">endorsed</a> the use of violence to effect political change.</div>
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Packnett took to Twitter to pose a selfie photo with Jarrett with this text: "honest and action oriented. thank you [for] continuing to engage w[ith] the movement, Valerie."</div>
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In reply, Jarrett tweeted, “Great meeting, Brittany. Truly appreciate your leadership!!” </div>
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According to Breitbart News: </div>
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Packnett has six recorded entries of visiting the complex long before the protests in Ferguson. She also was among the select group of Ferguson activists that met with Obama in December 2014. “I could tell he is taking this very personally,” Packnett explained after the 45 minute meeting with the president in the Oval Office. “He wants to see some clear, thoughtful action come from this.” </div>
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Jarrett, like Obama, has a long history of consorting with black militants and leftist radicals like former green jobs czar Van Jones who was forced out of his job after it was shown he had signed a 9/11 truther petition accusing the Bush administration or orchestrating terrorist attacks.</div>
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At this late stage in Obama's presidency the administration doesn't mind revealing its ties to radicals and unsavory individuals. The president doesn't care if the American people see how profoundly anti-American he really is.</div>
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White House attendee Phillip Agnew is executive director of a group called Dream Defenders. Kentucky cop killer Johnson-Shanks <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/infiltrating_the_blacklivesmatter_cult.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">put a video</a> on his Facebook page that features an appearance Agnew made on PBS last year. (Agnew also visited the White House this past December for a meeting with President Obama.)</div>
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"I'm mad at a system every day that stakes its claim on saying that there's a certain segment of society that is a criminal element," Agnew says in the video, spewing the stuff of paranoid leftist fantasy.</div>
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The Dream Defenders website describes the group as "an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing." Its mission statement calls for "the destruction of the political and economic systems of Capitalism and Imperialism as well as Patriarchy," and for "an immediate end to the police state and murder of Black people, other people of color, and other oppressed peoples in the United States, the immediate release of the 2.5 million prisoners of the United States' War on the Poor, and trials by juries of our peers."</div>
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Meanwhile, newly unemployed Police Chief Mike Halstead of Surf City, North Carolina <a href="http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2015/09/16/police-chief-black-lives-matter/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">says he was forced out</a>of his position for (accurately) speaking truth to power regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. </div>
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This constructive dismissal came after he wrote a Facebook post in which he called the movement a “terrorist group” and argued that President Obama has created a race problem in America.</div>
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“He put that information out, that was intended for his friends and colleagues and peers, but it was a public statement and there are people that were offended,” Surf City Town Manager Larry Bergman told the media.</div>
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Halstead's September 3 Facebook post read:</div>
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[T]his Black Lives Matter group is nothing more than an American born terrorist group brought on by the lie of the hands up don’t shoot during the criminal thug Michael Brown incident. The FBI and other Government Law Enforcement groups need to step up and put a stop to this. ... When a black thug is killed by police they are all over it as is Mr. Barack Obama. However when a police officer white, black or any race is murdered for doing his job the media is short with its reporting or not at all. When a white person is killed by a black officer you hear nothing. Has our so called President spoke publicly about these murders of police officers by blacks, HELL NO he has not. Step up Mr. President, or step down because we do not need you.</div>
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Halstead said the cops under him wouldn't be intimidated. </div>
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I have instructed my officers to be vigilant, if threatened take appropriate action. If that means shoot a thug, then do it and answer for it while you are still alive and not dead. Law enforcement is fed up with this murderous society who want to take out those who protect and serve.</div>
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Under pressure from officials Halstead took down the post but that wasn't good enough for Mayor Zander Guy who called an emergency meeting on Tuesday after he learned of the post.</div>
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After being given the choice of quitting or being fired Halstead retired. </div>
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“I had to beg for a 60 day severance to feed my family,” Halstead wrote in a new Facebook post. “That was the thanks that I got from those I thought were family, I was thrown under the bus for expressing my 1st amendment rights and speaking the truth and concerns for law enforcement.”</div>
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It is unclear if Halstead will file a civil rights lawsuit for discrimination and dismissal for exercising his free speech rights under the First Amendment. </div>
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Of course the man who gave Halstead the ultimatum is both a pardoned felon and a big donor to Democrats, Civitas Review <a href="http://civitasreview.com/politicians/perdue-choice-abc-board/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reported previously</a>.</div>
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Mayor Zander Guy was in the news in 2009 when then-North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (D) appointed him to the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Commission. </div>
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It was revealed at the time that Guy was an insurance agent until he was convicted of defrauding clients and given a three-year prison term. He had served just three months of the three years before then-Gov. Jim Martin (R) commuted his sentence. Martin later pardoned him.</div>
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The report continues:</div>
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According to records from the State Board of Elections, Guy has given in excess of $222,000 in donations to Democratic candidates or the state party over the past two decades (including $25,000 to the NC Democratic Party just last year.) Between him, his wife and son, the Guy family has given $27,600 to Gov. Bev Perdue's campaigns.</div>
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The termination of Halstead comes as the Obama administration is ramping up the pressure it places on local police forces to adopt policies that toe the politically correct line on race.</div>
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It also comes weeks after hundreds of delegates to a Democratic National Committee convention in Minneapolis <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259982/dems-officially-endorse-anti-cop-blacklivesmatter-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">voted to adopt</a> a disturbing, demonstrably false resolution that "accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children."</div>
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The DNC resolution also states that the American Dream "is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy[.]" </div>
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Delegates okayed the statement the same day a black male suspect allegedly shot and killed Darren Goforth, a white sheriff's deputy in Houston, in an unprovoked attack. The next day Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched near the Minnesota state fair chanting violent anti-police slogans and carrying signs reading "End White Supremacy." Activists shouted “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” while walking (protected by police) on a highway south of the fair grounds.</div>
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No matter how much violence and mayhem supporters of Black Lives Matter generate, President Obama refuses to condemn the movement. When cops are murdered by those who support the movement, Obama is silent. Apart from some perfunctory, generalized denunciations of violence in general, Obama doesn't reach out to the public to ask for calm or to deplore the killings.</div>
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And if inviting violence-advocating black militants into the White House, especially in the current climate, doesn't prove that Barack Hussein Obama hates America, nothing will.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-78971049706818382152015-09-17T11:26:00.002-04:002015-09-17T11:26:40.658-04:00Infiltrating the #BlackLivesMatter CultMy new in-depth feature article, which is the lead story today, at <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/09/infiltrating_the_blacklivesmatter_cult.html">American Thinker</a>:<br />
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Infiltrating the #BlackLivesMatter Cult</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">It is wrong to think of the Black Lives Matter movement as merely a movement, a racist insurgency that embraces violent attacks on police and white Americans.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">It is so much more.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">It's a Marxist, anti-American, revolutionary cult whose members aim to unleash a reign of terror on American society. It is <em>religious</em> in the limited sense that the late anti-PC intellectual Christopher Hitchens used that adjective to describe the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. After visiting barren, Stalinist North Korea, where people eat grass clippings and tree bark to survive, Hitchens <a href="http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com/2011/06/hitchens-authors-google.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">remarked</a> that it was "the most religious state I've ever been to."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">But North Korea doesn't embrace a religion in the sense we in the civilized world use the word. At risk of oversimplifying the politics and culture of the hermetically sealed, oversized gulag run by Kim Jong-un, that country's religion is socialism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The religion of socialism is a faith utterly impervious to facts and logic. Socialist failure is irrelevant, because only intentions count when you're on the side of the angels. No amount of evidence can pierce the force fields that surround the socialist mind. These people insist they are enlightened, but they are invincibly ignorant.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The Black Lives Matter cult is animated by a hatred of normal American values. Its members idolize convicted, unrepentant black militants and cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal and have declared "war" on law enforcement. While its members openly call for police officers to be assassinated, its leaders, wishing to seem more respectable before the TV cameras, downplay the insurrectionary rhetoric whenever a member kills a cop.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Black Lives Matter disciple Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, murdered 31-year-old white Kentucky State Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder on Sunday night.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The perpetrator, subsequently shot dead by police, reportedly lived in Florissant, Missouri, near race riot-torn Ferguson, and his (suddenly unavailable) Facebook page indicates that <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260126/blacklivesmatter-activist-murders-kentucky-cop-matthew-vadum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">he participated in demonstrations</a> protesting the death last year of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he tried to take the officer's handgun. There is evidence that Johnson-Shanks, a convicted felon, was so preoccupied with the Brown case that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service. Of course, Obama advisor Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the funeral. (The Daily Caller made copies of some of <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/14/kentucky-cop-killer-attended-michael-browns-funeral-took-pictures-of-al-sharpton-photos/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">the photos</a> before they disappeared down the Memory Hole. Infowars screen-grabbed many of <a href="http://www.infowars.com/kentucky-cop-shot-dead-suspect-lives-near-ferguson/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">the photos</a> as well.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Among the notable items on Johnson-Shanks's Facebook page is a post that buys into the myth that there is such a thing as white privilege and that black Americans suffer because of it. The post, from a website called Atlanta Black Star, is titled "Watch This Young Black Man Give A Near Perfect Response To A White Male Who's Ignorant About The Systematic Oppression of Black People[.]" <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/10/02/watch-this-young-black-man-give-a-near-perfect-response-to-a-white-male-whos-ignorant-about-the-systematic-oppression-of-black-people/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">It features</a> a video from PBS last year in which a Black Lives Matter leader named Phillip Agnew lectures white American Spectator contributor and talk radio host Ross Kaminsky about white privilege.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">"I'm mad at a system every day that stakes its claim on saying that there's a certain segment of society that is a criminal element," says Agnew, executive director of a neo-communist black nationalist group called Dream Defenders. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Agnew <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/05/obama-ferguson-movement-oval-office-meeting" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">has met with</a> President Obama in the White House. Not surprisingly, this fake civil rights leader was warmly embraced by the president, a fellow community organizer. Agnew described those at the meeting as "representatives from a community in <em>active</em> struggle against state sanctioned killing, violence and repression" (italics in original).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">"When my fellow young leaders and I walked into the Oval Office this week, we felt empowered and powerless at the same time," Agnew wrote in a December 2014 op-ed. "The president said we shouldn't demand too much, too soon." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><em>Rules for Radicals</em> author Saul Alinsky, an incrementalist guiding light to both Obama and Hillary Clinton, couldn't have said it better. (And Alinsky, an atheist, specialized in infiltrating religious congregations, especially Roman Catholic ones.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Dream Defenders isn't merely a <em>liberal</em> group. It toes the radical socialist line, just as Obama more openly toed that line in college and early in his political career. Its website <a href="http://www.dreamdefenders.org/about" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">describes the group</a> as "an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing." Its mission statement calls for "the destruction of the political and economic systems of Capitalism and Imperialism as well as Patriarchy" and for "an immediate end to the police state and murder of Black people, other people of color, and other oppressed peoples in the United States, the immediate release of the 2.5 million prisoners of the United States' War on the Poor, and trials by juries of our peers."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The Black Lives Matter cult has the support not just of Obama, but of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which has <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259982/dems-officially-endorse-anti-cop-blacklivesmatter-matthew-vadum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">officially endorsed</a> it. Hundreds of delegates at a recent DNC meeting approved a resolution that accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">In other words, it is now official Democratic Party policy that across America, there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children. Police in the United States today, according to the DNC, are no better than the <em>Sturmabteilung</em> and <em>Einsatzgruppen</em> of Nazi Germany, the Soviet-era Cheka and NKVD, and the (Democrat-led) Ku Klux Klan, all of which used extrajudicial killings for political repression.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The DNC resolution uses the same kind of inflammatory, dishonest wording Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades used to promote the Black Power movement and condemn the U.S. during their bombing sprees that wreaked havoc on American society in the Vietnam War era. It contains leftist boilerplate like that the American Dream "is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy[.]"</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The DNC okayed the resolution on the same day Darren Goforth, a white sheriff's deputy in Houston, was shot to death allegedly by a black suspect in an unprovoked attack. The next day, Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched near the Minnesota state fair chanting violent anti-police slogans and carrying signs reading "End White Supremacy." Activists shouted "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" while walking (protected by police) on a highway south of the fairgrounds.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The Black Lives Matter cult is also embraced by the high-octane left-wing think-tank in Washington, D.C. known as the Center for American Progress (CAP). Founded by Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign chairman John Podesta and funded by hedge fund manager George Soros, CAP is a Democrat government-in-waiting whenever the party is out of the White House.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The cult held a service at CAP on May 28 this year titled "Toward a More Perfect Union: Bringing Criminal Justice Reform to Our Communities," at which black activists blamed the rising tide of black violence against police and whites on everyone except the perpetrators. It was a smorgasbord of untruths, cant, and intellectual junk food as co-religionists hurled Alinsky-inspired slogans like "power perceived is power achieved" across the conference room.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">No people of color are responsible for their actions, panelists said or implied. It's society's fault. It's capitalism's fault. It's the fault of white privilege. There are too many laws. There are too many cops. Corporations are too powerful, and they are definitely not <em>persons</em>. Campaign finance reform would level the playing field. Everything would be better if tax rates were raised.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The fast-talking, social justice-peddling Rev. Heber Brown III of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in North Baltimore spewed the same politically correct pap heard in universities across the nation. He used tedious religious phrases like "building power," "the institutional racism that is manifested in local communities," "moving out of spaces of privilege," and "rendering space to others."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The problem with Baltimore and the rest of America is that "the system" is evil. By "the system," he meant American norms and the nation's free institutions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The civil disturbances in his hometown happened because "young people in Baltimore said that enough is enough," Brown said. "No more will we rely on the benevolence of a system that has an appetite for our destruction to decide our destiny. No more."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Stopping homicidal cops, as opposed to criminals, would be a step in the right direction, Brown argued. "With this question of how do we improve relationships between the police and the community, stop killing black people. Stop killing brown people. Stop killing trans – stop killing marginalized and oppressed people and let's start right there and continue."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Separately, black commentator Roland Martin of TV One has proposed <a href="http://newsone.com/3110961/roland-martin-baltimore-unrest/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">stuffing juries</a> with activists in order to guarantee that police officers are exposed to the wrath of the lynch mob. "You can't try a police officer on a jury if you're not registered to vote," he said. Martin urged pastors to encourage their African-American flocks to register to vote so they can get into jury pools. "But not just that, but you have to actually vote and once you vote for somebody you have to hold them accountable as well," he said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The Black Lives Matter cult met for a synod at a Washington hotel in April this year. Its official name was Populism 2015. The gathering was sponsored by National People's Action, Campaign for America's Future, US Action, and Alliance for a Just Society.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">It was a best practices seminar for aspiring arsonists, looters, and riot-inciters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">This freak show was dominated by the usual radical left-wing activists of all skin colors and a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. It was a mixture of retirees, college students, professional agitators, union goons, and the dregs of society – the same sort of deadbeats, welfare recipients, and down-and-outers that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) preyed upon and conned into paying $120 annual membership dues they couldn't afford to pay. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Many of these people are what Karl Marx might have called an American version of the <em>Lumpenproletariat</em>. They are so hopelessly inept at life that they need to explain away their failures. Their list of scapegoats is long. They blame imaginary systemic racial discrimination, markets, white people, police, corporations, Republicans, insufficiently generous welfare programs, and whatever else trickles down day to day from their intellectual betters in the academy. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">They need something to believe in. They need something to explain why their lives <em>suck</em>. They hate America, and they want to burn it down. These are Obama's people. They're the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's people. They're Minister Louis Farrakhan's people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The atmosphere at Populism 2015 was a cross among a rock concert, a Nuremberg rally, and a prayer session at Jim Jones's People's Temple colony in Jonestown, Guyana. It was filled with the same hypnotic, brainwashing call-and-response chanting used by the ultra-violent, similarly religious Occupy Wall Street movement. There was incendiary scapegoating like that employed by the leaders of France's Reign of Terror and Russia's Bolsheviks. There was a palpable hatred of America in the shrieks of the speakers and the audience. (A video of the event <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rjPibqcKCY" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">is available here</a>.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">There were bands and dancing to keep emotions running high, because without emotion it all falls apart. People collected donations from the audience to a New Orleans-style rendition of "Down by the Riverside." Examined in the light of day, the ideas advanced were worthy of ridicule. Vicious bigoted venom that seeks to tear down society in order to rebuild it along collectivist lines is more compelling when set to music. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">At times it was surreal, even comical. With all the chanting and calling and responding, the environment resembled the "you're all individuals ... you're all different" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">scene from</a> Monty Python's classic movie <em>Life of Brian</em>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">At one point, five young black women took to the stage, pumping their fists in the air in the Black Power salute amid deafening chants of "black lives matter!"</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Rian Brown and Malina Kane introduced themselves to the mob as members of the Kalamazoo, Michigan chapter of Black Lives Matter. Wearing a "Black Lives Matter" tee shirt, Kandace Montgomery explained that she was with the Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter. In a loud, husky voice, Lourdes Ashley Hunter introduced herself, explaining she was part of the leadership team of Black Lives Matter and the DMV (D.C.-Maryland-Virginia) chapter of Black Lives Matter. Erica Cotton said she was a co-leader of the DMV chapter. </span></span><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">"We are part of the team who shut down [Interstate] 395 and snatched the mic from Al Sharpton," Cotton said. </span></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14px;">"We did not agree with co-opting. Shut it down."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The women slowly led the audience in a call-and-response recitation of the Black Lives Matter guiding principles document that was posted on a screen like a church hymn.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">We are committed to ending all violence against black bodies. We are committed to acknowledging, respecting, and celebrating differences. We see ourselves as part of the global black family and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as black folks who exist in different parts of the world. We are a movement that honors the leadership and engagement of our trans- and gender-nonconforming comrades. We are guided by the fact that black lives matter, all black lives regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity or gender expression, economic status, ability or disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status or location. We are committed to ensuring that the Black Lives Matter network is a black woman-affirming space, free from sexism, misogyny, and male-centeredness. We are committed to practicing empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their context. We are committed to fostering a trans- and queer-affirming network and when we gather we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or rather the belief that all in the world are heterosexuals unless she, he, or they disclose otherwise.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Kandace Montgomery broke in, irritated that not everyone was chanting. She taunted white men in order to shame them into chanting.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">"I want to make sure everyone is saying these with them," she said. "I see some white dudes in the crowd, especially in the front who aren't saying these. I just want to put you on black and make sure you're working with us."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The calling and responding continued.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">We are committed to fostering an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, shows [<em>sic</em>] up with capacity to lead and to learn. We are committed to embodying and practicing justice, liberation, and peace in our engagement with others.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">The service <a href="http://youtu.be/znlFu_lemsU" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">ended with</a> "Family Affair," by hip hop artist Mary J. Blige, blaring over loudspeakers as dancing broke out in the meeting hall.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">But before that musical interlude, Hunter announced that attendees were invited to move to a nearby park for "a healing circle" at which "we will hear spoken word and we will honor the land that belongs to our ancestors. We will honor the fight of black people who have built this nation."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">There is no photographic evidence that the healing circle participants smoked peace pipes or sang "Kumbaya," but there was a lot of hugging and fist-in-the-air Black Power saluting. (National People's Action posted photos of the encounter at its Facebook page: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalPeoplesAction/photos/a.10153265037899111.1073741845.46582164110/10153267598764111/?type=3&theater" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">photo 1</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalPeoplesAction/photos/a.10153265037899111.1073741845.46582164110/10153267597324111/?type=3&theater" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">photo 2</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalPeoplesAction/photos/a.10153265037899111.1073741845.46582164110/10153267597934111/?type=3&theater" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">photo 3</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalPeoplesAction/photos/a.10153265037899111.1073741845.46582164110/10153267599869111/?type=3&theater" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">photo 4</a>. The entire series from the conference, healing circle, rallies, and marches may be viewed <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153265037899111.1073741845.46582164110&type=3" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">here</a>.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">An emaciated, young-looking white man named George Goehl also addressed the crowd. Goehl is executive director of Chicago-based National People's Action.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Goehl condemned "trigger-happy cops" and said "banks stole a generation of wealth from African-American families." Turning his attention to next year's presidential election, he preached:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">We're looking for the candidate that has a plan to address structural racism in America. I've not heard that plan but everybody in this room knows for too long for communities of color the words "serve and protect" have really meant "kill and deport" and that must stop now. We need a candidate for president who will name how they're going to use the power of the presidency to end racial bias in police departments and if they don't do it they should have all federal funding and support cut immediately. There's a new populism emerging in this country but this time we're going to get it right and this new populism has to be equally committed to class, race, and gender. Everybody in; nobody out.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a black Muslim with ties to Islamic terrorist groups, brought down the house with a sermon that electrified the mob. Ellison, who is co-chairman of the hard-left Congressional Progressive Caucus, urged his audience to fight the "Fergusonization of our whole country" by turning out the vote.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">People want to vote, "but there is a well-financed, well-organized group of people who are systematically trying to exclude people from the vote, and I just want to tell you these people are not playing around." He said:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">If you think that when the Supreme Court struck section 5 in the <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/194598/victory-election-integrity-matthew-vadum" style="background: transparent;">Shelby County</a> case of the Voting Rights Act, this wasn't just some Shelby County residents who sued. This was a movement right-wing law firm trolling the country to exclude people, looking for a case to take up and challenge the Voting Rights Act. And the day after they won that case with their right-wing packed Supreme Court they went and had photo ID bills introduced all over so they got a state program. And then they always runnin' around talking about fraud, fraud, fraud. You heard that right? Fraud. Everywhere fraud. Well let me just tell you, the only fraud is, they say there's fraud. </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Criminals, who are a natural Democrat constituency, need to have their right to vote restored, Ellison declared.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">We have got to have a program in every city, every municipality, every state attacking felon disenfranchisement, attacking, attacking, these forms, these employment forms that always want to know what your criminal record is. You know we call it ban the box.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;">Clearly, for the cult's members, Ellison is doing the Lord's work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>Matthew Vadum (</em><a href="http://matthewvadum.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">personal website</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em> under construction) is a senior editor at Capital Research Center (</em><a href="http://capitalresearch.org/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Capital Research Center</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>), a think-tank in Washington, D.C. that studies the politics of philanthropy. He is also an investigative reporter and author of the ACORN/Obama expos</em></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>é</em></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>, </em><a href="http://tinyurl.com/vadumbook" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Subversion Inc.: How Obama's ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>. Follow him on </em><a href="http://twitter.com/vadum" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Twitter</a></span><span style="font-weight: 700;"><em>. E-mail him at matthewvadum [at] gmail.com.</em></span></span></span></div>
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<br />Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-29231130828868166082015-09-16T14:51:00.002-04:002015-09-16T14:51:40.922-04:00Bernie Edges Hillary in New HampshireMy <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260141/bernie-edges-hillary-new-hampshire-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a> article today:<br />
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Bernie Edges Hillary in New Hampshire</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Insurgent radical Bernie Sanders' passionate anti-American campaign is eating away at the once-commanding lead of frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary race, according to new polling.</div>
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Although Hillary is still edging out Bernie at the national level, according to a new Monmouth University poll for the first time Bernie <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/15/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-new-hampshire-poll/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">is now leading</a> Hillary by 7 points in New Hampshire, the first state to vote in 2016. New Hampshire allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the primary of their choice.</div>
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Clinton still clings to a small lead among Democrats in the state. She has 43 percent support among Democrats, compared to Sanders' 39 percent support. Sanders enjoys 49 percent support from registered Independents and new voters, way ahead of Clinton's 26 percent.</div>
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Vice President Joe Biden, who is pondering joining the race, has 13 percent. A mere 2 percent back Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee, Larry Lessig, and Jim Webb each receive 1 percent.</div>
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Karen Tumulty of the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-sharp-erosion-in-clinton-support-among-democratic-women/2015/09/14/6406e2a0-58c3-11e5-b8c9-944725fcd3b9_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> with apparent alarm that Hillary "is suffering a rapid erosion of support among Democratic women — the voters long presumed to be the bedrock in her bid to become the nation’s first female president."</div>
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that while in July 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters expressed support for Clinton, only 42 percent do at the moment, a dramatic 29 percentage point collapse in eight weeks. Tumulty blames Hillary's slide on continuing adverse media coverage of the disappearing emails scandal and a focus on the Clintons' perfidious behavior in the 1990s in the White House.</div>
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That Sanders is beating Clinton in New Hampshire and nipping at her heels nearly everywhere else is seeming proof that his hate-filled blame-America-first rhetoric is turning on the radical left-wingers who make up the Democratic Party's political base. Sanders has been getting away for years with describing himself as a "socialist," sometimes a "democratic socialist," <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259477/bernie-sanders-communist-and-ignoramus-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">when in reality</a> he is an outright America-loathing communist. Clinton, of course, isn't much better with her communitarian-sounding "it takes a village" rhetoric and her close ties to the late radical organizing guru Saul Alinsky.</div>
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Sanders' belief in communism is reflected in his platform, which the actual Communist Party USA <a href="http://www.cpusa.org/bernie-sanders-political-revolution" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">is openly praising</a>. Even a brief glance reveals his plan to be hopelessly utopian. It will extinguish freedom and shutter businesses and cause widespread suffering especially among the poor people he claims to want to help. It is a program for exporting the best and the brightest to places that appreciate them.</div>
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But from a conservative's perspective at least, most of Clinton's policy platform doesn't seem much different from Sanders'. Both want to cripple the United States internally and externally. Both want to go after the so-called 1 percent and tax them aggressively. Both are pandering to the ugly, racist Black Lives Matter movement.</div>
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On Monday <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/09/14/bernie-u-s-born-on-racist-principles.html?via=twitter_page" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Bernie said</a> the U.S. was founded on “racist principles” and that police shootings of unarmed black men constitute proof the country hasn't evolved from the days of slavery. “We have got to stand up and say, in America you’re not going to do that. Racism is unacceptable."</div>
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The Democratic Party establishment, uncomfortable at the prospect of a Sanders presidency, is now attacking the rising Independent from Vermont.</div>
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The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-isnt-as-progressive-as-you-think/2015/09/15/a0e8917c-5b26-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;"><i>Washington Post</i></a> editorial board weighed in with a fatuous, nitpicking editorial titled "Bernie Sanders isn’t as progressive as you think." It's the kind of treatment a Republican candidate, especially a conservative, gets from the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Post</em>.</div>
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The newspaper acknowledged that Sanders "delivered a forceful message in a speech at Liberty University on Monday: Inequality is too high, the wealth gap is immoral and rich people have rigged the economy."</div>
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Sanders' message, the newspaper asserts, seems to resonate with voters who are anxious about the nation's economic prospects even though it is "hyperbolic." <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hyperbolic</em> isn't exactly an adjective the newspaper routinely uses whenever Polarizer-in-Chief Obama exaggerates the so-called wealth gap and how much racism there is in the country.</div>
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"Beyond the hyperbole, however, must be real policy," continues the yawn-worthy journalistic pontification. You get the picture.</div>
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Although Hillary's campaign apparatchiks have been saying for a while that they won't attack Sanders, she is letting a pro-Clinton super PAC headed by one of her lapdogs do her dirty work.</div>
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Correct the Record <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-jeremy-corbyn_55f73339e4b00e2cd5e79e11" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">has been sending</a> emails trying to hit Sanders from the right by tying him to controversial remarks by Jeremy Corbyn, the radical new leader of Britain's Labour Party. Corbyn lauded Hugo Chavez, the dead Marxist dictator of Venezuela who gave Vermonters low-cost fuel oil as part of a program backed by Sanders. He also has said that Chavez's "electoral democratic credentials are beyond reproach."</div>
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Correct the Record tried to get the Huffington Post to associate Sanders with Corbyn's assertion that the assassination of Osama bin Laden was "a tragedy." Corbyn also said he would invite his "friends" from Hezbollah to visit the United Kingdom to talk about Middle East peace. Correct the Record flagged an opinion piece Corbyn wrote that claimed NATO's "attempt to encircle Russia is one of the big threats of our time."</div>
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Sanders mouthpiece Michael Briggs accuses Correct the Record of "distorting the record." Briggs said:</div>
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it is disappointing that Secretary Clinton's super PAC is spreading disinformation about Bernie. This is exactly the kind of politics that Bernie is trying to change. To equate bringing home heating oil to low-income Vermonters with support for the Chavez government is dishonest.</div>
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It is no secret that Corbyn and Sanders are ideological soulmates. Corbyn said he is tracking Sanders' campaign "with great interest." When Corbyn won his new post Sanders he was "delighted" at that result. The Correct the Record email also points out that both men have tried to scuttle the nuclear weapons programs of their respective nations.</div>
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Correct the Record is controlled by longtime Clinton supplicant David Brock who also heads the George Soros-funded propaganda machine, Media Matters for America. The mentally unstable Brock, a left-wing character assassin <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414985/why-david-brock-will-say-anything-clintons-ian-tuttle" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">who has complained</a> that right-wing "snipers" are trying to kill him, has been <a href="http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/09/10/david-brock-on-coverage-of-hillary-clinton-ther/205488" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">whining a great deal</a> lately about the media's coverage of Hillary's campaign and the fact that media outlets are daring to actually report on the multiple scandals that have sprung from her time as secretary of state.</div>
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Right now Clinton and Sanders are tripping over each other in an effort to pander to the most hardcore progressives.</div>
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Given the intensity of the Democratic establishment's attacks on Sanders so far and the growing anti-incumbent feelings of voters, it is far from clear who will ultimately capture the Democratic nomination.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-23820825011524559312015-09-16T14:42:00.001-04:002015-09-16T14:42:05.241-04:00#BlackLivesMatter Activist Murders Kentucky CopMy <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260126/blacklivesmatter-activist-murders-kentucky-cop-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a> article from Sept. 15, 2015:<br />
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#BlackLivesMatter Activist Murders Kentucky Cop</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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A Black Lives Matter supporter was killed by police yesterday after he shot a rookie Kentucky State Trooper to death following a high speed chase.</div>
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This murder is the latest in a series of cop-killings nationwide committed by aggrieved African-Americans who falsely claim blacks are perennial victims of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. The virulently racist Black Lives Movement, which formed after the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012, has been promoted by President Obama who has gone out of his way to foment race-based resentment and cop-hatred. The movement's members, who idolize convicted, unrepentant cop-killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal, have declared "war" on law enforcement and openly call for police officers to be assassinated.</div>
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Following Obama's lead, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259982/dems-officially-endorse-anti-cop-blacklivesmatter-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">officially endorsed</a> the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement whose unhinged radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and of extrajudicially executing black Americans. In other words, it is now official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America. </div>
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The man who killed Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/09/trooper-joseph-cameron-ponder-kentucky-state-police-officer-cop-killed-suspect-arrested-manhunt-chase-photo-joseph-thomas-johnson-shanks-missouri-mugshot-charges-memorial-funeral-family/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">has been identified</a> as convicted felon Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks. The perpetrator reportedly lived in Florissant, Missouri, near race riot-torn Ferguson, and apparently participated in local demonstrations protesting the death last year of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he tried to take the officer's handgun. There is evidence that Johnson-Shanks was so preoccupied with the Brown case that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service.</div>
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Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old black man, earned his infamy late Sunday when Trooper Ponder, a 31-year-old white man, pulled his vehicle over on Interstate 24.</div>
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Johnson-Shanks fled from the stop and was pursued by Ponder. The officer's vehicle collided with the back of the perpetrator's car after he stopped abruptly following a nine-mile chase. Johnson-Shanks opened fire on Ponder who succumbed to his injuries about an hour and 20 minutes later at Caldwell Medical Center in Princeton, Kentucky. </div>
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Around 7 a.m. Monday troopers caught up with Johnson-Shanks in a wooded area near the interstate. He reportedly pointed a gun at them, ignored demands to drop the weapon, and was fired on by police. About an hour and 20 minutes later Johnson-Shanks died at the same hospital where Ponder had passed away almost nine hours earlier.</div>
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Ponder, who joined the state police force earlier this year after graduating from a police academy, was a U.S. Navy veteran and a former SEAL. He was offered a track scholarship to Western Kentucky University but turned it down to serve his country.</div>
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He was also a track star in high school who stayed in touch his track coach, James Webb, and babysat his children, WHAS-TV in Louisville reports. Webb, a black man, said "I care about all my athletes, it was just a special relationship from the times he was in Hawaii and stationed everywhere, he always kept me abreast on what's going on."</div>
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But how do we know Johnson-Shanks was a Black Lives Matter supporter?</div>
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Because <a href="http://www.infowars.com/kentucky-cop-shot-dead-suspect-lives-near-ferguson/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">he made it abundantly clear</a> on Facebook.</div>
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On Johnson-Shanks's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JCardinalxxMHC" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Facebook page</a>, which is registered under the pseudonym Jay MileHigh, offers insights into what he believed.</div>
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The final visible post, dated Oct. 30, 2014, protests the death of three young black men at the hands of police in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Under the heading "Justice for Mike Brown," it reads, "Why is it taking so long to arrest those officers[?] All We Want Is Justice!!!!!" </div>
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Brown refers to convenience store robber Michael Brown, whom white then-police officer Darren Wilson shot in self-defense in Ferguson in August 2014.</div>
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Johnson-Shanks posted mountains of photos on his Facebook page showing he attended Brown's funeral at which racial arsonist Al Sharpton delivered a fiery eulogy. There are also scads of photos posted of protests around Ferguson. There is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202733879131497&set=a.10202733867851215.1073741828.1335036702&type=3&theater" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">at least one</a> "selfie" photo of Johnson-Shanks at protests. In <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202733887731712&set=a.10202733867851215.1073741828.1335036702&type=3&theater" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">another photo</a> Johnson-Shanks poses, perhaps ironically, with police.</div>
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Another decedent referenced in the post is VonDerrit Myers Jr., <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/243035/would-be-cop-killer-new-ferguson-hero-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">who was shot</a> by police in Shaw, Missouri, in October 2014. Myers was shot after reportedly firing upon a police officer three times during a chase. At the time Myers was wearing a monitoring ankle bracelet as a condition of bail from a recent gun case.</div>
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The final decedent is Kajieme Powell, an apparently mentally disturbed man <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/video-st-louis-police-kill-kajieme-powell-near-ferguson.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">whom police said</a> committed "suicide by cop." In St. Louis not far from Ferguson, police responding to a shoplifting report. Upon arriving they encountered a knife-wielding Powell who shouted "Shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me now, motherfucker!" at them. As he moved toward the policemen he ignored commands to stop and drop the knife and officers shot him.</div>
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One of the re-posts Johnson-Shanks put on his Facebook page buys into the myth that there is such a thing as white privilege and that black Americans suffer because of it. The post is titled, "Watch This Young Black Man Give A Near Perfect Response To A White Male Who’s Ignorant About The Systematic Oppression of Black People[.]" It <a href="http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/10/02/watch-this-young-black-man-give-a-near-perfect-response-to-a-white-male-whos-ignorant-about-the-systematic-oppression-of-black-people/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">features</a> a video from PBS last year in which black, Marxist, community organizer Phillip Agnew of Dream Defenders lectures white <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">American Spectator</em> contributor and talk radio host Ross Kaminsky about white privilege. </div>
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"I'm mad at a system every day that stakes its claim on saying that there's a certain segment of society that is a criminal element," Agnew says, spewing the stuff of paranoid leftist fantasy.</div>
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The Dream Defenders website describes the group as "an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing." Its mission statement calls for "the destruction of the political and economic systems of Capitalism and Imperialism as well as Patriarchy," and for "an immediate end to the police state and murder of Black people, other people of color, and other oppressed peoples in the United States, the immediate release of the 2.5 million prisoners of the United States' War on the Poor, and trials by juries of our peers."</div>
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And as Heavy <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/09/joseph-thomas-johnson-shanks-trooper-joseph-cameron-ponder-st-louis-florrisant-ferguson-missouri-criminal-record-facebook/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a></div>
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Johnson-Shanks had a criminal record in his native Missouri. In August 2014, he was arrested for interfering with an officer. Then in January 2014, Johnson-Shanks was arrested for destruction of property. That same month, Johnson-Shanks was the recipient of $1,000 from the Missouri State Lottery. The St. Louis Police Department later said that in May 2015, Johnson-Shanks stole lottery tickets from a gas station in the city. He won $385 in prizes.</div>
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In addition, criminal convictions for a "Joseph T. Shanks" of Florissant, Missouri, born February 1990, appear in public records. According to Nexis, this individual pled guilty in St. Louis in November 2007 to burglary in the second degree, a class C felony. On the same date he also pled guilty to "theft/stealing," also a class C felony. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment. It is unclear if he actually served time.</div>
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Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks will be remembered for what he was: a cop-killing hood who seized an opportunity to strike a blow for an evil, racist, anti-American cause.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-47832811120347307322015-09-11T17:35:00.001-04:002015-09-11T17:35:32.737-04:00Immigrant Welfare AddictionThis is my article in today's <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260091/immigrant-welfare-addiction%C2%A0-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Immigrant Welfare Addiction</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Non-citizens in the U.S. -- and especially recent Middle Eastern refugees -- are addicted to welfare programs, two newly released studies suggest.</div>
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Although open-borders propaganda typically claims that illegal aliens are hardworking and industrious, one of the reports unveiled yesterday showed that among illegal alien households with children, a shocking 87 percent accept benefits from one or more welfare programs, compared to just 52 percent of native households.</div>
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The reports come as a rancorous debate rages in American society over what immigration policies best serve the economic, cultural, and national security interests of the United States. Americans on both sides of the partisan divide are becoming increasingly angry that the nation's borders are porous and that illegal aliens are able to access generous government benefits upon arrival. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has rocketed to the top of the GOP field largely by opposing amnesty and pushing for the enforcement of existing laws, including the removal of millions of illegals.</div>
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Although illegal aliens impose a heavy burden on taxpayers, legal permanent residents are even more likely to be enamored of public welfare programs, according to Steven Camarota, the author of one of the reports and director of research at the respected nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).</div>
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"Welfare use by illegal immigrant households is certainly a concern, but the bigger issue is welfare use by legal immigrants," said Camarota.</div>
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Legal immigrant households make extensive use of most welfare programs, while illegal alien households primarily benefit from food programs and Medicaid through U.S.-born children. According to the report, low levels of education, as opposed to a refusal to work, help to explain this higher use of welfare by legal aliens, who are also known as lawful permanent residents (green card holders). The report states:</div>
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The most extensive use of welfare is by less-educated immigrants who are in the country legally. Of households headed by legal immigrants without a high school diploma, 75 percent use one or more welfare programs, as do 64 percent of households headed by legal immigrants with only a high school education.</div>
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In other words, it's not that these immigrants don't want to work -- many are simply unemployable because they don't have the skills needed for the jobs available.</div>
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"All of this means that President George W. Bush was wrong when he argued that all that matters is matching a willing worker with a willing employer," Camarota <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423780/-immigrants-welfare-use-legal" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">wrote separately</a> at National Review Online. "It’s time to give preference to immigrants who are unlikely to use welfare programs."</div>
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Worker skill levels dropped after the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965 which began the flood of immigrants from countries hostile to the traditional American values of limited government, individualism, and a healthy respect for markets and civil society. When the INA was overhauled, a "national origins" formula calculated to maintain the existing population demographic in the nation as of 1924, was dumped in favor of one based on immigrants' skills and family relationships with U.S. citizens or residents. </div>
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This means that instead of competing in the marketplace of ideas, Democrats rigged the game by changing immigration law in order to import Democrat voters. The tsunami of immigrants from authoritarian Third World countries over the past half century helped Democrats grow their political base. According to some experts, it takes generations for immigrant families to back away from collectivism and big government as solutions to life's problems and become Republicans. Continued high immigration rates benefit Democrats and virtually guarantee endless growth in the size and scope of government.</div>
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Camarota's study also asserts that regularizing the status of illegal aliens would increase welfare burdens. Because the overwhelming majority of illegals have only modest levels of education, the heavy reliance on welfare associated with less-educated lawful immigrants "indicates that legalization would likely increase welfare costs, particularly for cash and housing programs."</div>
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Rules curtailing lawful immigrants' use of welfare "have not prevented them from accessing programs at high rates because restrictions often apply to only a modest share of immigrants at any one time." </div>
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"Some programs are not restricted, there are numerous exceptions and exemptions, and some provisions are entirely unenforced. Equally important, immigrants, including those illegally in the country, can receive welfare on behalf of their U.S.-born children."</div>
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Like his Republican predecessor, President Obama has little, if any, interest in enforcing the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act dealing with so-called <a href="http://www.uscis.gov/news/fact-sheets/public-charge-fact-sheet" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">public charges</a>. Such individuals, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), can be rejected as immigrants to the U.S. if they are considered likely to become “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance, or institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.” </div>
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Despite the law public charges don't get turned away nowadays and as a result three quarters of immigrant households receiving welfare assistance are headed by legal immigrants, who are also known as lawful permanent residents (green card holders).</div>
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"Legal immigration is supposed to benefit the country, yet so many legal immigrants are not able to support themselves or their children," according to the <a href="http://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Legal-Illegal-Immigrant-Households" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">CIS report</a>.</div>
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Of legal immigrant households with children, 72 percent access one or more welfare programs, compared to 52 percent of native households. Of households headed by illegal aliens, 62 percent used one or more welfare programs in 2012, compared to 30 percent of native households. Around 49 percent of households headed by lawfully present aliens used one or more welfare programs in 2012, versus 30 percent of households headed by natives.</div>
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Of legal immigrant households with children, 72 percent access one or more welfare programs, compared to 52 percent of native households. Of households headed by lawful immigrants, 62 percent used one or more welfare programs in 2012, compared to 30 percent of native households. Of illegal alien households with children, 87 percent access one or more welfare programs, versus 52 percent of native households.</div>
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Under the current immigration system another 20 to 25 million new legal immigrants will arrive in the U.S. in the next two decades, according to Camarota.</div>
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The overwhelming majority will come because they have a relative here, not because of their skills. If we want to avoid high immigrant welfare use in the future, we will have to move to a highly selective legal-immigration system that admits primarily skilled immigrants who are unlikely to use these programs. If we choose not to make such changes, we must accept without complaint the welfare costs created by the current system.</div>
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The other new study, from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), stated that in fiscal 2013, an astounding 91.4 percent of Middle Eastern refugees admitted to the U.S. between 2008 and 2013 received food stamps. Another 73.1 percent were on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance and 68.3 percent received cash welfare, according to <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/10/more-than-90-percent-of-middle-eastern-refugees-on-food-stamps/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">data provided</a> to Breitbart News by congressional committee staffers working for conservative champion Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).</div>
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Upwards of 90 percent of recent refugees from Middle Eastern countries receive food stamp benefit and close to 70 percent take in cash assistance, according to the government report. For the purposes of the study the ORR defines the Middle East as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen.</div>
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From fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2013 the U.S. took in 115,617 refugees from the Middle East and granted asylum to another 10,026. The U.S. government also provided green cards to 308,805 immigrants from those Middle Eastern countries which makes them eligible to seek U.S. citizenship in five years and petition to have family members admitted to the country as immigrants. The top 10 source countries for refugees coming to the U.S. were identified by Sessions staffers as Iraq, Burma, Bhutan, Somalia, Cuba, Iran, Congo, Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.</div>
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The two reports come as the Obama administration moves forward with plans to accept 10,000 refugees from Syria in the coming fiscal year which begins Oct. 1. This represents a 567 percent increase over the 1,500 Syrian refugees that have received permission to resettle in the U.S. since civil war broke out in that terrorist-besieged Muslim country four years ago.</div>
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The reports also come as the leader of the U.S. Border Patrol agents' labor union <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/9/20-pct-illegals-caught-border-have-criminal-record/print/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">told a congressional oversight committee</a> that the Obama administration is painting an unjustifiably rosy picture about border security. </div>
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Most of the U.S.-Mexico border is unsecured and 20 percent of illegal aliens apprehended at that border have criminal records, said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. </div>
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Based on what his members have told him, "we would be lucky if we're [at] 40 percent" operational control of the border, he said. Operational control "is deemed to be when agents have a good chance of deterring or catching almost all illegal crossers," according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Times</em>. </div>
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If President Obama and his allies in the open-borders movement get their way, that 40 percent figure will drop to zero.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-495974752548874502015-09-09T18:17:00.002-04:002015-09-09T18:18:38.449-04:00Ferguson Bombers SentencedMy article in today's <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260066/ferguson-bombers-sentenced-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Ferguson Bombers Sentenced</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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A foiled plot to use bombs to assassinate the police chief, county prosecutor, and other officials in troubled Ferguson, Mo., and also blow up the iconic Gateway Arch in nearby St. Louis, has ended in federal prison terms for two New Black Panther Party members.</div>
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In a sweetheart plea bargain deal, Olajuwon Davis and Brandon Orlando Baldwin, both radical black Muslim men in their twenties, <a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao-edmo/pr/two-local-men-sentenced-federal-explosives-and-weapons-charges" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">received mere</a> seven-year custodial sentences last week from U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey when they could have been sent to prison for decades. The men were sentenced "on charges of planning and conspiring to ignite explosive devices during the Ferguson protests and procuring firearms for convicted felons," according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.</div>
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U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan congratulated law enforcement for preventing what might have been a major disaster. "The disruption of this plot ... undoubtedly saved lives. Luckily for all of us, we’ll never know just how many," he said.</div>
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Davis and Baldwin met when they participated in the protests in Ferguson that followed the Aug. 9, 2014 death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man. Brown was killed by white then-police officer Darren Wilson when he charged Wilson after trying to wrest his service weapon from him. Brown's death sparked riots in Ferguson and across America. Soon after meeting, Davis and Baldwin began plotting to arm fellow demonstrators and destroy the Gateway Arch.</div>
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The sentencing comes as black nationalists and members of the Black Lives Matter movement escalate calls for violent attacks on police, while the Obama administration responds by sitting on its hands. Last month Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan called for "10,000 fearless men" to come forward and slaughter white Americans. Black-supremacist King Noble is calling on blacks to murder whites and police. "It's not safe no more to be white in America," Noble announced in a viral YouTube video. "Lurking behind any corner could be an angry black man ready to take yo ass out."</div>
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It also comes as the terrorist-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/03/cair-joins-black-lives-matter-movement/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">throws its lot in</a> with the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement. Breitbart News reports that "CAIR leaders and members joined Black Lives Matter in a march on the California State Capitol on [Sept. 2], targeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s office over a new bill that, in part, would expand bans on racial profiling to include perceived ethnicity." The fact that CAIR is siding with violent activists against police "creates a serious problem for CAIR’s defenders, which argue that its associations with Islamic extremism can be overlooked because it helps law enforcement work with, and within, the Muslim community."</div>
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Davis and Baldwin were arrested in November last year during a federal sting operation that concluded days before St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch, a white Democrat, broke the news that a local grand jury refused to indict Wilson in the shooting death of Brown. McCulloch was already disliked by local activists and black Democratic lawmakers who accused him of being too close to the police. McCulloch comes from a law enforcement family and his father, a police officer, was fatally shot in the line of duty by a black man when McCulloch was 12 years old.</div>
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When Davis and Baldwin <a href="http://wreg.com/2015/06/03/two-men-plead-guilty-ferguson-bomb-plot/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">entered guilty pleas</a> this past June, they admitted their plan to acquire explosives that were to be used against the Gateway Arch, McCulloch, then-Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson (a white man), a police station, and an armed vehicle the police used during anti-police protests.</div>
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Tihen said the two men were arrested after buying what they thought were three functional pipe bombs from a federal agent. No bombs were detonated and none of the would-be targets suffered harm. The two men also unlawfully straw-purchased three handguns for two convicted felons at a sporting goods store where Baldwin worked. The felons, who were urged to sell the guns on the street, were working undercover for the government, Tihen said.</div>
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Davis left evidence of his state of mind on social media two days before he was arrested. He <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/28/st-louis-gateway-arch-plot/19611167/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">signaled</a> in a Facebook post Nov. 19, 2014, that he was being followed:</div>
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Family and Friends, everyday I got Caucasians following me in SUV trucks. Please be advised that if you show any signs of noncompliance with this Devil they will try to assasinate [<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">sic</em>] you. Lord smite my enemies and anyone who intends to bring me harm. Ashe! In the spirit of Ogun! Protect me. Ashe!</div>
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Later in the comments thread Davis indicated he turned off the GPS tracking function on his phone.</div>
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Thanks family! Love you all. My phone keep trying to do GPS when I disabled it. Funny...smh [shaking my head] All weapons formed against shall NEVER prosper. God got US. All is for the greater good. Know that.</div>
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In a separate, factually-challenged, semi-coherent Facebook post the same day, Davis <a href="http://matthewvadum.blogspot.com/2015/09/why-would-be-bomber-olajuwon-davis.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">offered some insights</a> into why he wanted to destroy the Gateway Arch, which he described as "the Shackle of Oppression." He wrote:</div>
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"Saint Louis" is a Slave Capital in a Slave State! Look what Picture of History I discovered in McDonald's lobby. Notice the hooded Clansman [<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">sic</em>] !!?? Notice the crucifix[e]s and Arch!? Fireworks?!! What is being celebrated or honored!!??</div>
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St. Louis, the Christian European Conqueror ... and this City was founded as a milestone of Westward expansion aka "take the land from the Native Aboriginals".</div>
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The Arch is the Shackle of Oppression. </div>
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My theory is, if you want to Control the New World then you Chain it at its Heart, which is Mound City/Midwest/St. Louis. ...</div>
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White Supremacy has the World/Planet around its Neck link a Jesus Piece and it is linked at the Arch. Think about it, if one wanted to wear the World on a Chain or keep it Chained up, the Arch would be the place where one would connect the Links. Yet, we worship and reverence a structure that was built as a Symbol of Our destruction and demise.</div>
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Of course the main injustice Davis and Baldwin sought to make a statement about was no injustice at all. The late Michael Brown was no "gentle giant," as the media portrayed him (and continues to portray him).</div>
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Contrary to early media reports, Brown attacked Wilson and did not put his arms in the air in an attempt to surrender to the officer. That Brown attacked Wilson was confirmed by all official investigations and by the three separate autopsies performed on Brown's body. Minutes before the attack, the hulking Brown had committed a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store where he roughed up a diminutive store clerk who emigrated to the U.S. from India.</div>
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Context-free media reports that Brown was shot by a white cop while unarmed led to a firestorm that boosted the Black Lives Matter movement and the false Internet meme, "hands up, don't shoot," that was quickly adopted by left-wing activists across America. Egged on by President Obama and then-Attorney General Eric Holder who treated Brown's death as an self-evident racial injustice riots followed in Ferguson and across America.</div>
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Holder sent community organizers from the Justice Department's Community Relations Service (CRS) to Ferguson presumably to agitate against local authorities as they did in Sanford, Fla. following the death of Trayvon Martin, a young black man who attacked neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012.</div>
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Obama fanned the flames of racial unrest in Ferguson and elsewhere throughout the fall of 2014.</div>
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For example, after saying he wouldn't comment on the then-ongoing investigation into the shooting, Obama told a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner on Sept. 28, 2014 that the American justice system was biased against black people and that it "stains the heart of black children who feel as if no matter what he does, he will always be under suspicion." Of Brown's death, Obama said, "the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement." Of course Obama omitted the role that he played in whipping up anti-police hysteria.</div>
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Four days before, Obama did his best to turn Brown's death into even more of an international media spectacle that it already was at the time. The president criticized his own country in a speech at the United Nations, saying "I know the world took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri -- where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So, yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions." Again, the Community Organizer-in-Chief failed to mention the role he played in ratcheting up those racial and ethnic tensions.</div>
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Racial arsonist Al Sharpton, a close advisor to Obama, delivered a fiery eulogy at Brown's funeral, which Obama sent three federal officials to attend. Sharpton said the response to Brown's death, which included information on what the decedent was really like, showed that "something is wrong in America."</div>
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Sharpton is right. Something is wrong in America.</div>
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All he need do is look in a mirror.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-24128822047391655812015-09-08T17:31:00.000-04:002015-09-08T17:44:55.245-04:00Why would-be bomber Olajuwon Davis wanted to destroy the Gateway ArchThe Facebook page of Olajuwon Davis, one of the two New Black Panther Party members <a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao-edmo/pr/two-local-men-sentenced-federal-explosives-and-weapons-charges">recently sentenced</a> for planning to use bombs to assassinate officials in Ferguson, Missouri, is revealing.<br />
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Davis and his co-conspirator, Brandon Orlando Baldwin, also <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/28/st-louis-gateway-arch-plot/19611167/">wanted to blow up</a> the iconic Gateway Arch in nearby St. Louis.<br />
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In a rambling post dated Nov. 19, 2014, that is littered with inaccuracies, Davis makes his case:<br />
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"Saint Louis" is a Slave Capital in a Slave State! Look what Picture of History I discovered in McDonald's lobby. Notice the hooded Clansman!!?? Notice the crucifixs and Arch!? Fireworks?!! What is being celebrated or honored!!??<br />
St. Louis, the Christian European Conqueror, was a member of the Knights of Columbus (KKK) and this City was founded as a milestone of Westward expansion aka "take the land from the Native Aboriginals".<br />
The Arch is the Shackle of Oppression. We wond<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">er why St. Louis (historically called Mound City) seems so Miserable (Missouri=Misery). My theory is, if you want to Control the New World then you Chain it at its Heart, which is Mound City/Midwest/St. Louis. This is exactly what has happen here.</span>Dred Scott case that was heard here set the precedent that ALL those of African Descent (aka ANY trace of Melanin) could NEVER be Citizens of this US (Union States) System.<br />
White Supremacy has the World/Planet around its Neck link a Jesus Piece and it is linked at the Arch. Think about it, if one wanted to wear the World on a Chain or keep it Chained up, the Arch would be the place where one would connect the Links. Yet, we worship and reverence a structure that was built as a Symbol of Our destruction and demise.<br />
Think and Free yourself!!!</blockquote>
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I made a screen grab of the page in case it goes down the Memory Hole. It is posted immediately below:<br />
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<br />Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-71488744673565955242015-09-03T22:20:00.002-04:002015-09-03T22:20:46.710-04:00Dems Officially Endorse Anti-Cop BlackLivesMatter MovementThis is my article from the Sept. 2, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259982/dems-officially-endorse-anti-cop-blacklivesmatter-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Dems Officially Endorse Anti-Cop BlackLivesMatter Movement</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The Democratic National Committee has officially endorsed the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement whose paranoid radical left-wing members accuse police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against black suspects.</div>
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Throwing their lot in with black racists and radical Black Power militants who have openly expressed support for the murder of police officers, Democrats <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/war-black-lives-matter-slams-dems-party-stops-black-peoples-efforts-to-liberate-ourselves/article/2571100" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">embraced a statement</a> that slams the U.S. for allegedly systemic police violence against African-Americans. The statement is not extreme enough for the Black Lives Matter movement whose leaders quickly rejected it. Last month members of the movement <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/black-lives-matter-policy-demands_55d7392ae4b0a40aa3aa9443" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">unveiled</a> a list of policy proposals they claim will help to bring about "a world where the police don't kill people."</div>
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What's especially interesting about the resolution that hundreds of delegates at the DNC meeting in Minneapolis on Friday approved is that it accuses American police of "extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children."</div>
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In other words, it is now official Democratic Party policy that there are roving death squads manned by police officers who specifically stalk and execute without trial black men, women, and children across America. Police in the United States today, says the DNC, are no better than the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sturmabteilung</em> and <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Einsatzgruppen</em> of Nazi Germany, the Soviet-era <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Cheka</em> and NKVD, and the (Democrat-led) Ku Klux Klan, all of which used extrajudicial killings for political repression.</div>
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A copy of the draft resolution <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/darrensands/dnc-to-vote-on-resolution-supporting-black-lives-matter#.niWKX9z9x" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">obtained</a> by BuzzFeed News before the grotesque anti-American pander-fest Friday uses the same kind of inflammatory, dishonest wording Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades used to endorse the Black Power movement and condemn the U.S. during their bombing sprees that wreaked havoc on American society.</div>
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The full wording of the resolution as approved by DNC delegates does not appear to have surfaced online but the draft states:</div>
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WHEREAS, the Democratic Party believes in the American Dream and the promise of liberty and justice for all, and we know that this dream is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy; and</div>
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WHEREAS, we, the Democratic National Committee, have repeatedly called for race and justice – demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities — after Trayvon Martin, after Michael Brown, after Tamir Rice, after Freddie Gray, after Sandra Bland, after Christian Taylor, after too many others lost in the unacceptable epidemic of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of police ...</div>
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WHEREAS, without systemic reform this state of unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation;</div>
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THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the DNC joins with Americans across the country in affirming “Black lives matter” and the “say her name” efforts to make visible the pain of our fellow and sister Americans as they condemn extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children ...</div>
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(The Say Her Name campaign is an offshoot of Black Lives Matter that claims not enough attention is being paid to black female victims of police brutality.)</div>
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In the document the DNC also "renews our previous calls to action and urges Congress to adopt systemic reforms at state, local, and federal levels to prohibit law enforcement from profiling based on race, nationality, ethnicity, or religion, to minimize the transfer of excess equipment (like the military-grade vehicles and weapons that were used to police peaceful civilians in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri) to federal and state law enforcement; and to support prevention programs that give young people alternatives to incarceration."</div>
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The DNC delegates approved the resolution on the same day a white sheriff's deputy in Texas was shot to death allegedly by a black suspect in an unprovoked attack. The next day Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched near the Minnesota state fair chanting violent anti-police slogans and carrying signs reading "End White Supremacy." Activists shouted “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” while walking (protected by police) on a highway south of the fair grounds.</div>
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The Black Lives Matter Network released a statement with a distinctly Leninist flavor pooh-poohing the DNC resolution of support:</div>
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A resolution signaling the Democratic National Committee's endorsement that Black lives matter, in no way implies an endorsement of the DNC by the Black Lives Matter Network, nor was it done in consultation with us. We do not now, nor have we ever, endorsed or affiliated with the Democratic Party, or with any party. The Democratic Party, like the Republican and all political parties, have historically attempted to control or contain Black people's efforts to liberate ourselves. True change requires real struggle, and that struggle will be in the streets and led by the people, not by a political party.</div>
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Some conservatives have loudly criticized the movement saying it is based on anti-American lies and that it fuels violence against police officers.</div>
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On Fox News Channel Monday, outspoken law-and-order advocate Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., a black man elected as a Democrat, blamed President Obama for the rise of Black Lives Matter.</div>
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Look, President Obama has breathed life into this ugly movement and it is time now for good law-abiding Americans to rise up like they did [at a memorial] in Houston around that Chevron station [where a white sheriff's deputy was shot], an outpouring, but it can't just be symbolic. We now have to counter this slime, this filth coming out of these cop-haters.</div>
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Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Channel, responded, "Well, Sheriff, a lot of people listening right now will say, no, President Obama has shed light on a problem and that's the way blacks are treated by law enforcement in this country for too long."</div>
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That is a lie. President Obama didn't shed light on anything. This is nothing more than an attempt to weaken the institution of policing. If there's anything that needs to be straightened out in this country it is the subculture that has risen out of the underclass in the American ghetto. Fix the ghetto and then you'll see a lesser need for assertive policing in these areas and then you'll see less confrontation. Stop trying to fix the police. Fix the ghetto.</div>
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Kilmeade asked, "So, Sheriff, what is it like on the street for the cop? ... Are things changed right now for a cop at any level when they go to do their job?"</div>
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Sure, they're beleaguered right now and they're beleaguered not out of fear of what's going on on the street. Look, we take this on willingly. We volunteer for this service here. But what we're beleaguered by is the fact that we don't have any support from the political class. We don't have the resources. Most of these agencies, I know mine is, I'm a hundred and fifty deputies short. The City of Milwaukee Police Department is about 300 officers short, so they send the law enforcement officer into these untenable, impossible environments and they ask them to work miracles and it just doesn't work like that. We will see support when we start getting the resources we need to deal with these situations. But again, Brian, and I'm not going to stay off of this and I'm not going to leave it alone and stick my head in the sand about it. The problem isn't the American police officer. Barack Obama won't admit that these failed liberal urban policies have destroyed these great cities.</div>
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To recap, the DNC resolution was approved the same day sheriff's deputy Darren H. Goforth, a 47-year-old white man, was gunned down near Houston, Texas, allegedly by 30-year-old Shannon J. Miles, a black man. Miles was apprehended the next day and is now charged with capital murder.</div>
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Miles, who is being held without bond, appeared in court in Houston Monday for his arraignment but did not enter a plea, according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Times Record</em> of Fort Smith, Arkansas.</div>
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Fifteen 40-caliber shell casings were found around Goforth's broken body. "He unloaded the entire weapon into Deputy Goforth," District Attorney Devon Anderson said. She added that a witness has positively identified Miles as the shooter in a lineup. Deputies searched Miles's garage and retrieved a load 40-caliber handgun and the identical brand of ammunition as the casings located at the crime scene. Forensic tests indicate the gun was the same weapon used to kill Goforth.</div>
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As FrontPage previously <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259967/cop-execution-texas-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reported</a>, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman (R), described the killing as "senseless and cowardly" and said that his deputy was targeted "because he wore a uniform." He pointed to Black Lives Matter for ramping up rhetoric "to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers" happens.</div>
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Miles allegedly killed Goforth execution-style, shooting him first in the back of the head and then standing over him and shooting him repeatedly. This is the same way two black heroes of the Black Lives Matter movement murdered cops. Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Wesley Cook, shot white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner to death in 1981 as he tried to arrest the perpetrator's brother during a traffic stop. Abu-Jamal shot the policeman once in the back and then stood over him and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face. Assata Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1973 killing of Werner Foerster, a white New Jersey State Trooper. During a traffic stop, Shakur shot Foerster once, and then as he lay helpless on the ground, shot him twice in the head with his own gun. She escaped from prison in 1979 and was granted political asylum in Communist Cuba where she remains to this day.</div>
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A rally by the New Black Panther Party in Texas two weeks before Deputy Goforth was murdered may have emboldened Miles to target the deputy.</div>
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Breitbart News <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/08/31/armed-black-panthers-to-texas-cops-we-will-start-creeping-up-on-you-in-the-darkness/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that armed Black Panthers stood outside the Waller County jail where troubled young black woman Sandra Bland committed suicide this summer after being arrested for erratic driving and assaulting a police officer.</div>
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The leader of the rally yelled at Harris County deputies through a megaphone. “You think we’re not pissed off a bunch about y’all killing our sisters? You think it’s okay? [We’re] the wrong n***ers to mess with. You’re gonna stop doing what you’re doing, or we will start creeping up on you in the darkness.”</div>
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Breitbart recorded several other statements threatening law enforcement personnel. “The revolution is on… Off the pigs,” and “Oink Oink… Bang Bang!”</div>
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Cop hatred, threats to kill police, the deterioration of law and order and the rule of law, and black nationalism: This is the new normal in Obama's America. And it's now officially endorsed by the Democratic Party.</div>
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And things are bound to get worse before Barack Obama leaves the presidency at Noon on January 20, 2017.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-48421294996949783322015-09-01T20:59:00.004-04:002015-09-01T20:59:29.760-04:00Cop Execution in TexasMy article in the August 31, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259967/cop-execution-texas-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Cop Execution in Texas</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Cops in Houston, Texas are blaming the increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement for the unprovoked killing Friday of a uniformed white sheriff's deputy allegedly committed by a black man who snuck up on the officer without saying a word and fired a gun repeatedly into his body until he was dead.</div>
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This murder appears to be the latest in a series of cop-killings nationwide committed by African-Americans who claim blacks are perennial victims of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement. President Barack Hussein Obama has been at the forefront of ramping up hostility to police officers throughout his time in office. From early in his presidency when he jumped to conclusions accusing Cambridge, Massachusetts police of acting "stupidly" for daring to arrest his black Harvard professor friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr., on suspicion of burglary, Obama has gone out of his way to foment race-based resentment and cop-hatred. His Saul Alinsky-style agitation encouraged the formation of the virulently racist Black Lives Matter movement whose members have declared "war" against police.</div>
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Houston law enforcement officials say it's time for this war to end.</div>
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At a <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-sheriffs-deputy-darren-h-goforth-killed-houston-gas-station-n418131" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">press conference</a> Saturday, an angry Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman (R), described the killing as "senseless and cowardly" and said that his deputy was targeted "because he wore a uniform." Hickman told reporters:</div>
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Our system of justice absolutely requires law enforcement be present to protect our community so any point when the rhetoric ramps up to the point where calculated, cold-blooded assassination of police officers happen this rhetoric has gotten out of control. We've heard black lives matter -- all lives matter -- well, cops' lives matter too. So why don't we just drop the qualifier and just say lives matter and take that to the bank.</div>
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An impassioned Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson (R) weighed in, saying:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">It is time for the silent majority in this country to support law enforcement. There are a few bad apples in every profession. That does not mean that there should be open warfare declared on law enforcement. The vast majority of officers are there to do the right thing, are there because they care about their community and want to make it a safer place. What happened last night is an assault on the very fabric of society. It is not anything that we can tolerate. It is time to come forward and support law enforcement and condemn this atrocious act.</em></div>
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Saturday that "heinous and deliberate crimes against law enforcement will not be tolerated in the State of Texas." He added, "Texas reveres the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day to protect and serve their communities."</div>
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Although the act of brazenly sneaking up on a cop and gunning him down for no apparent reason isn't anything close to an everyday occurrence in the U.S., predictably the mainstream media are scratching their collective head. The media are refusing to ascribe or even speculate about a motive for the execution-style slaughter of deputy Darren H. Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, while he refueled his patrol car at a gas station. The alleged gunman, 30-year-old Shannon J. Miles, was soon apprehended and now faces a capital murder charge. He does not appear to have explained why he did what he is accused of doing.</div>
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How Miles allegedly killed Goforth resembles how two heroes of the Black Lives Matter movement murdered cops.</div>
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Born Wesley Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal shot white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner to death in 1981 as he tried to arrest the perpetrator's brother during a traffic stop. Abu-Jamal shot the policeman once in the back and then stood over him and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face. Abu-Jamal is now black leftist folk hero who has parlayed his crime into a career behind bars. The former Black Panther often referred to affectionately in radical circles simply as Mumia, enjoys celebrity status on the Left and through the wonder of modern technology is a frequent guest speaker at college commencement ceremonies. Originally sentenced to death, his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.</div>
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Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1973 killing of Werner Foerster, a New Jersey State Trooper. Shakur had been part of a Black Panther spinoff group known as the Black Liberation Army. During a traffic stop, Shakur shot Foerster once, and then as he lay helpless on the ground, shot him twice in the head with his own gun. Shakur escaped from custody but was captured in 1977. She was convicted of murder and received a prison term of life plus 33 years. She broke out of prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba which granted her political asylum. During the recent negotiations that restored diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Obama administration did not seek her extradition even though she remains on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List.</div>
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Miles has a long arrest record. The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Los Angeles Times </em><a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-houston-sheriff-deputy-shot-20150828-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that</div>
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According to public records, Miles had dozens of encounters with law enforcement. He was charged on New Year’s Eve 2006 with displaying or discharging a firearm, and was sentenced to 15 days in jail. In 2007 and again in 2009, he was convicted of resisting arrest, and University of Houston police twice charged him with giving false or fictitious information to a police officer.</div>
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One commenter at the newspaper's website wrote, "I wonder if Obama is going to send 75 FBI agents, to Texas, to find out if this was a race related crime. Oh, wait, the victim was white, never mind."</div>
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Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/29/black-lives-matter-protesters-chant-pigs-in-a-blanket-fry-em-like-bacon-video/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that news of Goforth's murder didn't dampen the spirits of radical black anti-police demonstrators in Minnesota:</div>
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Black Lives Matter protesters marching on the Minnesota state fair on Saturday spewed violent anti-cop rhetoric just hours after a Harris County, Tex. sheriff’s deputy was ambushed and executed at a Houston-area gas station.</div>
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“Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” activists with the St. Paul, Minn. branch of Black Lives Matter chanted while marching behind a group of police officers down a highway just south of the state fair grounds.</div>
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Accused killer Miles attended Prairie View A&M University, studying business administration, according to his Facebook page, the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Los Angeles Times </em>also <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-houston-sheriff-deputy-shot-20150828-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a>. This is the school where Sandra Bland, a troubled young black woman, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3215006/Sheriffs-deputy-fatally-shot-Houston-pumping-gas.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">was arrested</a> after exhibiting erratic behavior during a traffic stop and allegedly assaulting a police officer. Bland tragically committed suicide in jail. Her case has become a cause celebre for the conspiracy theorists of Black Lives Matter who in the complete absence of evidence accuse the police of murdering her.</div>
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Houston-based Texas state representative, Garnet F. Coleman, a black Democrat, whined over the weekend that law enforcement was using Goforth's brutal killing to push a racist political agenda.</div>
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“It strikes me as politicizing a death that, I don’t know that anyone knows what was in the mind of the shooter,” Coleman said. “I think black lives matter. I think deputy sheriffs’ lives matter. But I think the statement shows a lack of understanding of what is occurring in this country when it comes to the singling out of African-Americans.”</div>
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Coleman is in charge of a legislative inquiry into the death of Bland, who was found hanging in a Waller County, Texas jail cell in July.</div>
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There is evidence suggesting that Coleman, like the late double-murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II, is a race-obsessed over-sensitive person who easily takes offense. After the lead-footed Texan was pulled over for speeding in July, he made up a tall tale, accusing the investigating sheriff's deputy of condescension.</div>
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"He talked to me like I was a child," Coleman said during a legislative committee hearing. "He was so rude and nasty. Even when he found out I was a legislator, he became more rude and nasty. And I didn't understand why this guy was continuing to go on and on and treat me like a child. And basically like I'm saying is treat me like a boy. I want to be very clear about that."</div>
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A <a href="http://www.khou.com/story/news/2015/08/04/dash-cam-video-released-of-state-reps-traffic-stop/31143361/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">video of the traffic stop</a> shows no such rude behavior by the deputy. On the contrary, it shows the deputy was polite but firm and spoke to Coleman as any cop would with a speeder, telling him he must slow down. The deputy said it was especially important for Coleman to slow down because he was driving with special state lawmaker license plates, presumably trying to get the point across that as an elected official he should be setting a good example for others to follow.</div>
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The murder of Deputy Goforth comes soon after failed TV reporter <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259930/blacklivesmatter-revolution-will-be-televised-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Vester Lee Flanagan II</a>, who used the name Bryce Williams professionally, a gay, black Obama-supporting Democrat, murdered two of his former white colleagues on-camera during a live broadcast near Roanoke, Virginia. Flanagan, apparently a paranoid narcissist, had a long history of imagining racial slights and filing meritless lawsuits against employers. He indicated that the shootings were racial payback for white-supremacist Dylann Storm Roof's June 17 attack in Charleston, S.C. that left nine black churchgoers dead. Both Flanagan and Roof, who reportedly confessed after he was caught by police, said they wanted to start a race war by committing acts of violence. Flanagan committed suicide after a car chase. Roof was taken into custody without incident and later reportedly said he had intended to kill himself after the church atrocities but had run out of ammunition.</div>
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Last week Louisiana cop Henry Nelson died in a hail of gunfire during a domestic violence investigation. In the same state Steven Vincent, a state trooper, was killed as he tried to arrest a driver suspected of driving while intoxicated. Carl Howell, a sheriff's deputy in Carson City, Nevada, was gunned down responding to a report of domestic violence.</div>
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Late last year a black Muslim named Ismaaiyl Brinsley gunned down two New York City police officers who were in their patrol car in Brooklyn. Brinsley made statements on social media showing anger at police killings of blacks.</div>
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On Saturday afternoon more than a thousand people held a vigil at the Houston area gas station where Goforth was cut down.</div>
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Local resident Wes Tarpley was quoted saying:</div>
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You can’t make sense of evil. Evil is evil. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t know what was going on in that young man’s life. Whatever it was, it was dark.</div>
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Goforth <a href="http://nytimes.com/2015/08/30/us/shooting-of-texas-deputy-is-called-coldblooded-execution.html?" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">leaves behind</a> a wife and two children, aged 5 and 12.</div>
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Deputy Robert Goerlitz, president of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization, said of Goforth, “I’ve seen some dedicated folks, but he was above and beyond." Goforth refused to allow injuries he sustained during training to prevent his progress. “He wouldn’t give up."</div>
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He added the late deputy was a “wonderful family man” who often talked of his family. “He was an extremely hard worker,” said Goerlitz, who served as Goforth’s patrol instructor at the sheriff’s academy and had known him since 2008.</div>
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If the racist, cop-hating community organizers of Black Lives Matter get their way, tributes and eulogies like that for fallen police officers are going to become an everyday occurrence.</div>
Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-37131134805298195672015-08-29T00:03:00.005-04:002015-08-29T00:03:49.046-04:00Hillary Takes "Responsibility" for Email AbusesMy article from the August 28, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259947/hillary-takes-responsibility-email-abuses-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<div>
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Hillary Takes "Responsibility" for Email Abuses</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Now that her presidential campaign is taking on water, a disingenuous former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week that she was accepting "responsibility" for illegally using an insecure private Internet server to transmit emails containing top-secret classified U.S. government documents.</div>
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Whatever that means in Clinton-speak.</div>
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Hillary claimed previously that she was taking responsibility for the Benghazi fiasco in 2012 that left four Americans dead. Nothing happened to her. We still don't even have an official cause of death for Ambassador Chris Stevens who was initially reported to have been ritualistically sodomized and murdered by Islamic terrorists.</div>
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Although Clinton has tried in recent months to treat her self-created email scandal as much ado about nothing, her admission that she actually did <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">something</em> wrong is new after the endless pious-sounding pronouncements about how carefully she followed applicable laws to ensure she safeguarded U.S. national security. Her new statement smells like a focus group-tested throwaway line, an empty gesture that might be accepted by people who haven't been following the email scandal closely.</div>
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What Hillary is doing is pretending to take responsibility for her behavior and piling on legalisms, while at the same time trying to deflect attention from her criminal behavior and wanton disregard for national security, misdeeds that ought to disqualify her from high office.</div>
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So don't give much credence to this phony <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">mea culpa</em> tendered by a devious political operator who has been playing the press like a fiddle for decades. Clinton's newfound seeming earnestness about her email predicament may appear refreshing to some, but there is no reason to believe the admission is offered in good faith. This is yet another attempt at misdirection aimed at keeping her floundering campaign for the White House alive. And she's good at lying and distracting, having managed to stay out of the hoosegow through a litany of scandals and improprieties including Whitewater and Travelgate.</div>
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Everything is always political with Hillary, the Saul Alinsky disciple, and she never tires of churning out excuses. She has an answer for everything and there are always journalists and other useful idiots willing to believe her.</div>
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With that said, Hillary is in a weaker position than before. It would be an understatement to say the ground is shifting under Mrs. Clinton's feet: it's more like a major earthquake. What was supposed to be The Summer of Hillary turned into The Summer of Bernie as the Democratic Party began desperately reaching out to its geriatric farm team in hopes of saving 2016.</div>
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Bernie Sanders will be 74 years old on Sept. 8. Al Gore (67) has been floated as a candidate. Vice President Joe Biden (72), the undisputed master of the malapropism, is being boosted by the Obama White House which has decided to stab the Clintons in the back. Elizabeth Warren (66) is mentioned as a presidential candidate or as a vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Biden. A theory gaining steam in the nation's capital is that there is a deal between Biden and Warren in which Joe serves one term, doesn't seek reelection, and Elizabeth runs and becomes the 46th president of the United States.</div>
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The timing of her new statement is also suspect. She happened to make this new admission late Wednesday as Americans <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259930/blacklivesmatter-revolution-will-be-televised-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">were transfixed</a> by the lurid details emerging about Obama-loving social justice warrior Vester Lee Flanagan II, a black, gay, former TV reporter, model and prostitute, who murdered two journalists in cold blood on live television earlier in the day in hopes of starting a "race war" and then killed himself after using social media to squeeze every last bit of publicity out of his murder spree. So who knows if a significant percentage of the electorate actually caught Clinton's statement.</div>
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Here is what she actually said.</div>
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“I know people have raised questions about my email use as secretary of state, and I understand why,” Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/08/26/hillary-clinton-takes-responsibility-for-email-use-saying-it-wasnt-the-best-choice/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">said Wednesday</a> according to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> First Draft blog.</div>
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“I get it. So here’s what I want the American people to know: My use of personal email was allowed by the State Department. It clearly wasn’t the best choice. I should’ve used two emails: one personal, one for work.”</div>
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Clinton added: “I take responsibility for that decision, and I want to be as transparent as possible, which is why I turned over 55,000 pages, why I’ve turned over my server, why I’ve agreed to — in fact, been asking to — and have finally gotten a date to testify before a congressional committee in October.”</div>
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“I’m confident that this process will prove that I never sent, nor received, any email that was marked classified,” she said.</div>
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There are so many problems with Hillary's statement that a good lawyer in a criminal prosecution might have to churn out tens of thousands of words in legal briefs explaining the half-truths, conspicuous omissions, and red herrings.</div>
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Hillary knew from her first days running Foggy Bottom what the rules regarding official email were. She knowingly conspired with others to evade them. Evidence strongly suggests that Obama administration officials at the highest levels were long aware of Clinton's cloak-and-dagger email infrastructure. The congenitally corrupt Clintons created the system to frustrate Freedom of Information Act requesters, shield Hillary's correspondence from congressional oversight, and steer money to the international cash-for-future-presidential-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which, amazingly enough, still enjoys tax-exempt status.</div>
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Whether Hillary "turned over" her Internet server or the FBI seized the machine is linguistic hair-splitting and likely irrelevant. Unless FBI technologists can retrieve the data that Clinton almost certainly had deleted by computer experts skilled in data destruction, the server will be useless to investigators. It may very well have no evidentiary value. Then there's Clinton's second server, reportedly stored insecurely in somebody's bathroom, to worry about.</div>
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Hillary didn't "ask" to appear before Rep. Trey Gowdy's (R-S.C.) Benghazi Select Committee. Gowdy had to force her attendance, which, for the record, hasn't happened yet. Clinton is an expert at stonewalling and stalling and no one should be surprised if she gets the October 22 hearing date put off into the future.</div>
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Clinton's assertion that she "never sent, nor received, any email that was marked classified,” is also problematic. If the emails contained classified documents that didn't display classification marks, Hillary isn't necessarily off the hook. She was the head of America's diplomatic service. If classified documents were mishandled or tampered with at the Department of State, it's still her fault, at least in a political sense, because she was in charge. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Respondeat superior</em>, as lawyers say.</div>
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To remove classification marks -- the cryptic intelligence classifications people have been talking about like SCI, TK, and NOFORN -- from classified documents is in itself a serious federal offense.</div>
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So if Clinton received the documents with classification marks intact, she knew the documents were classified. If she emailed them to any unauthorized person, she broke the law. If she received them with the marks stripped then someone, presumably a person or persons under her authority, committed a felony, and the crime was compounded when the documents were further emailed.</div>
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Keeping classified documents in an insecure place is also a felony and under federal law, a lawyer well-versed in intelligence-related law explained to me, the fact that a person didn't know with certainty the documents were classified is no excuse. When a person accepts a security clearance from the U.S. government, he or she gives up certain rights that ordinary citizens possess. In other words, certain responsibilities, including to protect the classified information, go with the clearance.</div>
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Hillary Clinton had the second-highest security clearance in the land, lower only than President Obama himself. She has no excuses and presumably no legal defenses available to her. Her only hope is to throw a wrench in the investigation, gamble that Republican lawmakers will continue to be spineless weaklings, or make sure that she or someone who wants to protect her becomes the next U.S. president.</div>
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The fact that Clinton allegedly gave a thumb drive of her emails to her lawyer, David Kendall, is also a problem. It is unclear if he had the security clearance needed to examine the documents which were reportedly kept insecurely at his law office. Muslim Brotherhood-linked Huma Abedin, Clinton's perennial aide who follows her from job to job, may have seen classified documents.</div>
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Remember that retired Gen. David Petraeus got into legal hot water for keeping classified files in his home office and for sharing them with his lover who apparently had a security clearance. You are not allowed to just share classified documents with another person who has clearance; you have to have a legally valid reason to do so.</div>
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And the fact that Mrs. Clinton destroyed email evidence -- evidence subject to a congressional subpoena, no less -- is already evidence in itself that she obstructed justice through spoliation of evidence. Spoliation means you can take as evidence the fact that evidence has been destroyed. Courts are entitled to draw spoliation inferences and convict an accused person on that basis alone.</div>
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Meanwhile, Clinton will continue campaigning as if she weren't the American Left's answer to Mata Hari.</div>
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Clinton said Wednesday that she was “going to keep talking about what the American people talk to me about, what’s on their minds, and to lay out my plans for what I would do as president to make the economy work for everybody, to make college affordable, to get the cost of drugs down, to get equal pay for equal work for women, and the whole suite of issues that I think are really at the core of this presidential campaign.”</div>
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Except that Hillary Clinton has made her own malfeasance a major issue in the 2016 presidential contest.</div>
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As damning evidence continues to accumulate, it is not going to be easy for her to explain it all away.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-17059744065181009412015-08-28T23:59:00.000-04:002015-08-28T23:59:31.808-04:00The #BlackLivesMatter Revolution Will Be TelevisedMy article in the August 27, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259930/blacklivesmatter-revolution-will-be-televised-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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The #BlackLivesMatter Revolution Will Be Televised</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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Hoping to start a bloody "race war," a black, gay, in-your-face Obama-supporting former TV reporter horrified Southwest Virginia TV viewers yesterday when he stalked and coolly murdered two white former TV station colleagues and wounded a white interview subject during a live broadcast.</div>
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The shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, apparently a registered Democrat and former prostitute, said he attacked the three white people during the "standup" report about local tourism from the marina at Smith Mountain Lake as racial payback for white-supremacist Dylann Storm Roof's June 17 attack in Charleston, S.C. that left nine black churchgoers dead. Roof, who reportedly confessed, also said he wanted to start a race war by committing acts of violence.</div>
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Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams professionally, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-alleged-gunman-details-grievances-suicide-notes/story?id=33336339" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">left behind</a> a lengthy, rambling, written rant explaining his explicitly race-based motive for the murders. Although the full document was sent to ABC News, it has not yet found its way online. Media outlets have provided highlights. ABC News reports that "A man claiming to be Bryce Williams called ABC News over the last few weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and wanted to fax information. He never told ABC News what the story was."</div>
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Well, now we know.</div>
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Using online accounts created only recently, Flanagan promoted the political murders he committed as well as any team of seasoned, high-priced publicists could have. In the process he demonstrated his diabolical mastery of social media for the world to see. He shot his victims early in the morning and made the morning news. He sent out a horrifying video of the cold-blooded killings and caught the noonday news. He died in the afternoon in time to make the evening news. All the saturation coverage on cable TV news and news-on-dead-tree exposure is a bonus, a sort of contribution-in-kind that media outlets are providing to his cause.</div>
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Emulating the cost-conscious Muslim terrorists who flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, Flanagan got perhaps tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in free media worldwide for his evil cause on what must have been a shoestring budget. Perhaps radical leftist public relations outfits Fenton Communications or SKDKnickerbocker of Anita Dunn fame will teach Flanagan's techniques to incoming employees.</div>
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In the empowering age of the Internet, fomenting civil unrest and violent revolution is becoming more affordable. Not that the George Soros-funded Black Lives Matter movement needs the money.</div>
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The black-nationalist mobs and leftover Occupy Wall Street goons wreaking havoc in Baltimore and other big cities with the encouragement of the Obama administration believe now is the time for decisive action against the country they hate. The desire to concoct a massive racial conflagration in America has been on the Left's laundry list for decades.</div>
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Starting a race war in which blacks violently rise up against whites has long been the goal of unrepentant terrorist and Obama pal Bill Ayers and was the reason mass-murderer <a href="https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/charles_mansons_race_war_the_beatles_and_helter_skelter" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Charles Manson</a> and his followers went on a homicidal rampage in 1969. Leaders of the racist and increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement nowadays are also calling for "war." President Obama hasn't called for race-based hostilities specifically but he has helped to craft the Left's false narrative that racist whites kill innocent blacks all the time. Obama, a Marxist community organizer by profession, wants racial groups and everyone else to be at each other's throats because, as the familiar leftist adage goes, "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste."</div>
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Flanagan can be seen in his own homemade video he later posted online holding a handgun in front of him as he walked unnoticed towards reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, and interviewee Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Regional Chamber of Commerce.</div>
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Ward's video camera recorded the 6:45 a.m. attack and captured the shooter's image after Ward dropped the still-functioning machine and the live feed from it made it to the airwaves. The perpetrator's hand can be seen <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2015/08/vester-lee-flanagan-bryce-williams-pov-shooting-murder-video-twitter-tweet-youtube-video/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">in his own video</a> as he takes his time aiming at Parker and then opening fire. Parker, who can be heard screaming in both videos, and Ward succumbed to their wounds at the site of the shooting. Ward was engaged to be married and yesterday was to be his final day at Roanoke-based WDBJ-7 before he started a new job in Charlotte, N.C. Parker had recently moved in with her boyfriend, an anchor at the station. Gardner was in stable condition in hospital at press time.</div>
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Flanagan <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/08/26/tv-camera-crew-caught-in-active-shooter-situation-in-southwest-virginia/?tid=pm_local_pop_b" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">fled the scene</a> and shortly before 8:30 a.m. reportedly faxed a hateful 23-page manifesto to ABC News. He reportedly told ABC that the police are “after me” and “all over the place,” before hurriedly ending the telephone call. Tweeting as Bryce Williams, Flanagan complained "Adam went to hr [human resources] on me after working with me one time!!!" and "Alison made racist comments[.]" He also boasted "I filmed the shooting see Facebook[.]"</div>
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His rental vehicle was later spotted by Virginia State Police who gave chase. Flanagan's car ran off the road on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County and he shot himself at 11:30 a.m. He died in hospital about two hours later.</div>
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NBC-4 in the national's capital <a href="http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/3-Shot-During-Live-Television-Report-in-SW-Virginia-322941481.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that employees of WDBJ-7 were cautioned about Flanagan two years ago when his employment was terminated. Management was so concerned about his behavior that employees were reportedly made to clear the room as he cleaned out his desk. After he left workers were instructed to "call 911 immediately" if they spotted the former employee on company property.</div>
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Flanagan, Parker, and Ward had worked together at the CBS affiliate "[b]ut when Flanagan was fired in February 2013, a 911 call summoned police to remove him from the premises." The report continues:</div>
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According to WDBJ documents, Flanagan said, "You better call police because I'm going to make a big stink. This is not right." According to station files, he had to be physically lifted by his chair by management and threw a ball cap at a station employee. The 2013 incident was recorded by Adam Ward, one of the victims.</div>
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Evidence suggests that he was a grievance-junkie who blamed his own personal failures on others. In his manifesto Flanagan complained about experiencing "racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work." He also wrote that “he has been attacked by black men and white females” because he was “a gay, black man.”</div>
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But station general manager Jeff Marks said Flanagan was fired for bad behavior. Although Flanagan had some talent he was "an unhappy man" who "quickly gathered a reputation somewhat of being difficult to work with."</div>
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"He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to," Marks said on WDBJ-7. "And eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. And he did not take that well. We had to call the police to escort him from the building."</div>
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The litigious Flanagan <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/08/26/alleged_manifesto_from_virginia_tv_journalists_killer_cites_charleston_church_massacre/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">filed a complaint</a> seeking $15,000 in damages with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after WDBJ-7 gave him the boot. The case was dismissed. </div>
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He also sued WTWC in Tallahassee, Fla., in 2000 alleging his co-workers and supervisors discriminated against him. Flanagan claimed a producer called him a "monkey" and that a black colleague was told to “stop talking ebonics.” TMZ <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2015/08/26/bryce-williams-vester-flanagan-history-of-racial-allegations-sued-tv-network-called-me-monkey/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">reports</a> that he also claimed "an 'official' joked about a black murder suspect with gold and green grillz, saying he had 'collared [<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">sic</em>] greens' stuck in his teeth[.]" Flanagan claimed he was fired for complaining about this behavior. "WTWC adamantly DENIED race had anything to do with his termination -- claiming he was a crappy employee who often used profanity in the workplace." That case was settled out of court in 2001.</div>
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Flanagan also <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gunman-posts-video-showing-fatal-shooting-tv-reporter-article-1.2337769" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">seemed to brag</a> about being a prostitute in a social media post. He claimed to have worked as a model and "high-paid companion" and posted photos of earlier days when he was in top physical shape.</div>
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In his manifesto Flanagan admitted he had been planning the assault for more than two months.</div>
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"Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15,” Flanagan wrote. “What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them.”</div>
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“As for Dylann Roof? You (deleted)! You want a race war (deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE (deleted)!!!” [Redactions in news report.]</div>
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Continuing to describe the contents of Flanagan's lengthy diatribe, NBC-4 reports:</div>
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"The church shooting was the tipping point ... but my anger has been building steadily ... I've been a human powder keg for a while ... just waiting to go BOOM!!!!" the document said in part, according to ABC News.</div>
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Flanagan <a href="http://mic.com/articles/124462/vester-flanagan-manifesto-read-excerpts-from-virginia-gunman-s-racially-charged-manifesto" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">hailed other mass-murderers</a>. He expressed satisfaction at the body count that Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho generated in 2007, which far surpassed the number of dead victims from the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre.</div>
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"Also, I was influenced by Seung-Hui Cho. That's my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got... just sayin," he wrote. "Yes, it will sound like I am angry ... I am. And I have every right to be. But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace ...</div>
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Oddly, Black Lives Matter wasn't on the agenda yesterday in the corridors of power.</div>
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On cue the ghouls of the Left, who want law-abiding Americans to be vulnerable to violent criminals, a significant Democratic Party constituency, immediately seized on the double-murder as an opportunity to advance their ongoing assault on Americans' Second Amendment rights.</div>
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Instead of discussing the racist killer's stated desire to foment race-based civil unrest, while the broken bodies of Alison Parker and Adam Ward were still warm left-wingers predictably reverted to their tired old talking points, cliches, and lies about guns.</div>
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President Obama said "it breaks my heart every time you read or hear about these kinds of incidents." The man who is salivating at the prospect of helping the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons, added "What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism."</div>
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Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest complained "this is another example of gun violence that is becoming all too common in communities large and small all across the United States." He admitted "there is no piece of legislation that will end all violence in this country" but urged Congress to do something anyway. Earnest said Congress should pass "some common sense things" to "have a tangible impact in reducing gun violence in this country."</div>
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Ignoring the fact that Virginia already has strict laws governing the purchase of firearms, including mandatory background checks, the unfailingly corrupt Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) grandstanded about how the Republican-controlled General Assembly has refused to launch a crackdown on lawful gun ownership. "I will continue to push [gun control] as I have in two legislative sessions so far. I put it up again last year. It never sees the light of day."</div>
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McAuliffe's longtime puppet-master, Hillary Clinton, said on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa yesterday, "we have got to do something about gun violence in America and I will take it on." Clinton said "I hope ... that this is, -- maybe for the media, for the public, for elected officials, for every American, what it hopefully will finally take for us to act."</div>
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Last year Clinton characterized lawful gun owners as terrorists. "We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people."</div>
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Like Obama, McAuliffe, and Clinton, Flanagan was also apparently a man of the Left.</div>
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During his tenure at WDBJ-7 in Roanoke, the social justice warrior "was written up in November 2012 for wearing a Barack Obama sticker," the Huffington Post reported late yesterday.</div>
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A Nexis search showed a "Vester Lee Flanagan" was registered as a Democrat as of Aug. 29, 2002, in Greenville, N.C. Flanagan's LinkedIn profile, now offline, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/26/heres-what-we-know-about-vester-lee-flanagan-video/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">indicated</a> he worked as a news anchor and reporter at WNCT in Greenville from August 2002 to November 2004. A "Vester L. Flanagan" was also registered as a Democrat in Tallahassee, Fla., as of March 6, 2000. At stated above, Flanagan previously worked at WTWC in Tallahassee. The voter registrations have not been independently verified.</div>
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It seems the Democratic politicians weighing in on Flanagan's crimes found it politically inconvenient to acknowledge the blunt, eloquent message he sought to send to Americans.</div>
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Instead they want to take guns away from Americans who need them to defend against people like Flanagan and those he sought to inspire.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-1821322746848263592015-08-28T23:55:00.003-04:002015-08-28T23:55:29.220-04:00The 'Ferguson Effect' SpreadsMy article from the August 26, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259911/ferguson-effect-spreads-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<div>
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The 'Ferguson Effect' Spreads</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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A white police officer in the South who was recently beaten bloody and unconscious by a black suspect now admits he failed to defend himself properly because he was afraid if he used force he would have been accused of racism.</div>
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This is poignant testimony to the tremendous damage that the racist Black Lives Matter movement has inflicted on the American psyche. Nowadays police all over the country are increasingly reluctant, or in some cases outright unwilling, to perform their duties as law enforcement personnel. They know that government officials, eager to pander to loud, angry lynch mobs in the street, don't have their back. The mainstream media has been playing a supporting role, turning every police shooting of a person of color into a cause célèbre, regardless of the circumstances leading to the shooting. So cops are taking unnecessary chances, ignoring police safety protocols and giving suspects the benefit of the doubt when it is not warranted.</div>
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This is the war on police that President Obama, Al Sharpton, and other racial agitators have carefully brought to a crescendo since the Trayvon Martin saga and the case of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black thug, who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, last year as he tried to murder white cop Darren Wilson. There has never been any credible evidence that race was a factor in the shooting yet the Black Lives Matter crowd and the rest of the activist Left continue to lie every single day about Brown's death. Brown tried to seize Wilson's handgun and the officer shot him in self-defense. The popular "hands up, don't shoot" meme was based on a lie a witness told in which it was claimed Brown tried to surrender to Wilson and was mercilessly shot in cold blood. Brown's body was autopsied three separate times to satisfy the angry mob and legions of left-wing conspiracy theorists. Wilson has been been vindicated in every official investigation. The local grand jury refused to indict him. Even Obama's race-obsessed, highly politicized Department of Justice cleared him. </div>
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Yet left-wingers continue to portray Brown as an angel, and Wilson as a villain. Not surprisingly, many Americans of all colors are swallowing this leftist propaganda. Manipulated by the Community-Organizer-in-Chief, many black Americans falsely view themselves as victims of systemic discrimination. They no longer respect police and are willing to beat them senseless on a whim. The Black Lives Matter movement is there on the sidelines demanding "war" against police everywhere.</div>
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The drama in this specific case began August 7 when a plainclothes officer in Birmingham, Alabama, who has since decided to remain anonymous to protect his family, pulled 34-year-old Jenard Shamar Cunningham over for erratic driving. The detective reportedly ordered Cunningham, a felon with robbery and assault convictions, to remain inside his vehicle. Instead, the man got out of his car and became belligerent. He grabbed the officer's handgun and pistol-whipped him with it. Cunningham fled the scene but was later arrested and charged with attempted murder. The officer was hospitalized for head and neck injuries and then sent home to recover with his family.</div>
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The officer explained to CNN his irresolute actions when dealing with the suspect.</div>
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“A lot of officers are being too cautious because of what’s going on in the media,” he said. “I hesitated because I didn’t want to be in the media like I am right now.”</div>
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Heath Boackle, a sergeant with the Birmingham Police Department, <a href="http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2015/08/birmingham_police_officer_marc.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">sympathizes</a> with his colleague. Cops are “walking on eggshells because of how they’re scrutinized in the media.”</div>
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Boackle, who is also president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 1, told Fox News Channel that the situation is getting worse:</div>
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Across the country local law enforcement – state, county, municipalities – the boots-on-the-ground officers are the ones dealing with these people in day-to-day operations,' and they're hesitant because they're always portrayed in the media here lately as the criminals, and the criminals are like the victims and the media is just taking it and running with it.</div>
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But the attack itself was not the only indignity the policeman suffered. As the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422605/Birmingham-cop-beaten-unconscious-feared-racism-charge" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">writes</a> at National Review Online:</div>
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Several witnesses to the beating posted photos of the bloodied, inert, and prostrate detective on social media, accompanied by celebratory gloating similar to the social-media triumphalism after two New York City police officers were assassinated last December. A typical post read: “Pistol whipped his ass to sleep,” under the hashtag #FckDaPolice.</div>
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Boackle said the cop's wife and children saw the unofficial crime scene photos on the Internet "before the department was ever able to notify the family that [the attack] had taken place."</div>
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The police officer's reluctance to use reasonable force or even to make efforts to defend himself in this case is an example of what St. Louis, Missouri, police chief Sam Dotson quite properly calls the "Ferguson effect." Police officers, particularly Caucasians, are becoming increasingly reluctant to do their jobs and follow proper police procedure when dealing with blacks because they fear their actions will be characterized as examples of race-driven police brutality. This bestows on some black Americans a kind of immunity from legal accountability, a condition David Horowitz calls "black skin privilege." (See my recent FrontPage article, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259621/black-skin-privilege-be-above-law-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Black Skin Privilege: To Be Above the Law</a>.)</div>
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Police officers are laying off of discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Dotson said.</div>
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Virtually everything police do is now characterized as racist as police are routinely vilified and violent attacks on them are cheered on by the Left. Police are responding by doing less policing and avoiding neighborhoods perceived as hostile to law enforcement.</div>
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As Mac Donald observes:</div>
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In Baltimore, following anti-cop riots and the indictment of six officers for the death of drug dealer Freddie Gray, arrests dropped 60 percent in May compared with arrests the previous year. In New York City, criminal summonses, a powerful gauge of proactive enforcement, were down 24 percent through July, compared with the same period the previous year; total arrests were down 16.5 percent. Arrests in Los Angeles are down 8 percent city-wide, and even further in some of the highest-crime areas. In the LAPD’s Central Division, home to the chaotic, squalid Skid Row, arrests are down 13 percent, while violent crime is up 57 percent. </div>
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In some cities, government officials have essentially ordered police to let black criminals run wild.</div>
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During the rioting that followed the suspicious April 19 death of career criminal Freddie Gray in police custody, Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) ordered police not to enforce the law against black looters. The mayor infamously admitted after riots began that she gave space "to those who wished to destroy."</div>
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Of course, this police slowdown is going to hurt the poor and blacks the most.</div>
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If a cop knows politicians are ready to throw him to the wolves at the first sign of trouble, and he has a choice between patrolling a crime-infested inner-city neighborhood and an a relative tranquil suburban area, guess which area won't get patrolled.</div>
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Police are also justifiably "fearful of being caught on a cell phone video that will not show the full engagement with a resisting suspect," Mac Donald wrote previously. "And I think that they may be backing off on discretionary policing, the low-level misdemeanor offenses. They're still responding to 9-1-1 calls for violent felonies, but they're backing off, and criminals are getting emboldened."</div>
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“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City cop confided in Mac Donald. </div>
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When America's police officers are afraid of doing their jobs, the country is in deep trouble.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-77804664302561337012015-08-28T23:50:00.001-04:002015-08-28T23:50:55.111-04:00Black Skin Privilege: The Media's Love of Black Racism & ViolenceMy article from the August 21, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259862/black-skin-privilege-medias-love-black-racism-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<div>
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Black Skin Privilege: The Media's Love of Black Racism & Violence</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Editor's note: Below is the fourth article in the FrontPage series "Black Skin Privilege," based on the Freedom Center pamphlet "<a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenterstore.org/collections/frontpage/products/black-skin-privilege" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream</a>" by David Horowitz and John Perazzo. (Click the following for <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259613/black-skin-privilege-be-wedge-totalitarian-future-john-perazzo" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Part I</a>, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259621/black-skin-privilege-be-above-law-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Part II</a> and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259688/black-skin-privilege-tax-arnold-ahlert" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Part III</a>.)</em></div>
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It is a sad commentary on our nation that the mainstream media refuses to take a critical look at the increasingly violent, racist Black Lives Matter movement, and often promotes those activists' depraved view of America, the least racist nation on the face of the earth.</div>
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The outrageous, even genocidal, statements issued every day now by hate-filled black nationalists and their radical allies who are part of what is becoming an African-American "Occupy Wall Street" movement, are barely examined at all. In a case of defining deviancy down, these antisocial, anti-white sentiments are accepted by the media as normal, even admirable.</div>
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Black Lives Matter rabble rousers didn't say a peep in protest when the New Black Panther Party offered a cash reward for Wilson "dead or alive." The same group also offered a $10,000 cash bounty for so-called white Hispanic George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot young black man Trayvon Martin in self-defense. Zimmerman too was cleared by the courts and the Justice Department. <span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6;">This is not an exhaustive list of black criminals these activists claim are the real victims. </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6;">Brown and Martin are far from alone. </span></div>
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The Wilson and Zimmerman cases are as dead as a doornail, yet these people keep lying about the facts in order to energize their dangerous supporters. To them, Brown and Martin were innocent young, college-bound angels, not vicious thugs.</div>
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Let's look at some of the psychotic statements some black radicals routinely get away with in the media.</div>
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Take the comments <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/18/black-lives-matter-protestors-all-lives-matter-is-a-violent-statement-video/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">earlier this week</a> by Black Lives Matter protester Julius Jones. Jones made the astonishingly absurd claim Tuesday that the phrase “all lives matter” is “actually a violent statement.”</div>
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Jones said:</div>
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I would say temper your perspective with the urgency that black lives are actively under attack and we are in a terrible war with our own country, African-Americans are Americans and we are not treated like that. We are not treated as if black lives matter and when people say “all lives matter” it’s actually a violent statement because the only time that people say “all lives matter” is in opposition to black lives matter and it’s the most violent statement of love that you can do. It’s like “all lives matter!” yes, we understand that, it’s true, but in this country for the long time the United States acts like black lives don’t matter.</div>
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CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who, has challenged some of these activists, made no attempt to challenge these bald-face lies. Nonetheless Jones' statement is a helpful reminder that the Black Lives Matter is actually the Only Black Lives Matter movement.</div>
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Jones' comments may just as well have come out of the mouth of unrepentant terrorist and Obama pal Bill Ayers. People seem to forget that Ayers' Weather Underground terror group was part of the Black Power movement and dedicated to overthrowing so-called white privilege. Jones ought to be wearing a cape and pointy hood and burning crosses. He's no different morally than a Klansmen and yet he gets taken seriously.</div>
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Other extremist blacks are handled with kid-gloves by the media.</div>
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The media barely raised an eyebrow when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a black Democrat, welcomed criminal gangs and radical groups into city government. Rawlings-Blake received hardly any media coverage earlier this year when she allied herself with race rioters. She's the one who proudly boasted that she protected the First Amendment right to protest by providing space to those who "wished to destroy" local businesses.</div>
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Racial arsonist Al Sharpton is treated with admiration and respect. He even has a talk show on MSNBC that he uses to spread his racist venom.</div>
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In 2009 the media didn't care much about Van Jones, Obama's green jobs czar and self-described "rowdy black nationalist" and "communist." Reporters only cared when Jones was revealed to have signed a 9/11 Truther petition and was forced out of the administration. Like Sharpton he was rewarded by the left-wing media with a talk show.</div>
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The media has only been barely interested over the years in President Obama's 20-year membership in white-hating, America-hating, Jew-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church in Chicago that is more or less a Christian version of the Nation of Islam. Wright and his ilk are no big deal the media assure us. They just speak in a different idiom that the rest of America is too ignorant and stupid to understand. In other words, white people can never "get" it because they're not black.</div>
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Holding black people who do terrible things and hold repugnant views accountable isn't fair, according to the media.</div>
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Racist black American radicals get a pass because bad things were done to their ancestors 150 years ago by people who are long dead and have faded into the mist of history. This line of thinking ignores the fact that slavery, in its various iterations, has been around perhaps 4,000 years or more and was widely accepted nearly everywhere in the world. Slavery <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/07/slavery-in-muslim-majority-countries" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">still exists</a> today in various forms in the Muslim countries of Afghanistan, Mali, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen.</div>
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But America long ago atoned for its original sin of slavery. Following an enlightened trend, Vermont abolished slavery in 1777 and the United States prohibited the importation of slaves in 1808. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and at the end of a bloody civil war in which as many as 750,000 soldiers perished -- <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17604991" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">proportionately equivalent</a> to 7.5 million U.S. deaths given America's current population -- slavery was abolished in the U.S. in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment (although Democrats and their terrorist wing, the Ku Klux Klan, resisted this by murdering blacks and their supporters and enacting the odious Jim Crow laws).</div>
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To these radicals who seem intent on resurrecting the profoundly ugly Black Power movement, it is as if the Civil War never happened. They refuse to accept that the United States has changed dramatically over the years and that many of those who sold Africans into slavery were Africans themselves. Their loud demands continue as they dishonestly try to appropriate the mantle of noble anti-slavery campaigners like Frederick Douglass.</div>
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This colossal double-standard in the media is a function of what David Horowitz terms "black skin privilege."</div>
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This preferential race-based treatment of African-Americans fuels violence and social media-driven reigns of terror. It encourages today's race-baiting lynch mobs to troll the Internet to satisfy their desire to be offended and outraged. When the cranks and low-rent bigots of the so-called Black Lives Matter movement target an enemy, they get plenty of support from the media, and in many cases, from politicians.</div>
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Horowitz explained that he "coined this term because it encapsulated the facts that are indispensable to understanding our national crisis over race ... [that has it origins in] the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s [which] outlawed racial categories in governmental regulations and laws." The civil rights left "began to reverse this historic victory by reintroducing racial categories and privileges into every aspect of public life from job applications to college admissions, to presumptions of innocence and conclusions of guilt."</div>
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Horowitz continued:</div>
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The term “black skin privilege” -- which is an indubitable fact of our social life -- hoists the racial hypocrites on their own petard. You want to talk about racism? Let’s talk about the racist attitudes and policies of progressives and lynch mobs of color that they inspire.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 28px;">(Horowitz and John Perazzo co-authored the David Horowitz Freedom Center pamphlet, "Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream." The PDF version of the pamphlet is </span><a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/03/black-skin-privilege.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 28px; word-break: break-word;">available here</a><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 28px;">.)</span></div>
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There is no limit to the accolades heaped on racist black radicals and to the excuses their defenders in the media will manufacture.</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times Magazine</em> published <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/256918/leaders-lynch-mob-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a long puff piece</a> about young Black Lives Matter micro-bloggers DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie who endorse killing cops and rioting as legitimate forms of political activism. Both activists refuse to condemn violent activism.</div>
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Mckesson and Elzie believe that the legacy of the Martin Luther King Jr. has been distorted. "He is held up as an avatar of genteel protest," the magazine author writes, "invoked by conservative politicians and leaders in the black community as a way to discredit their movement."</div>
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But they "frequently point out that King was in fact a revolutionary who believed in the power of confrontation, and that it’s a crime against American history to confuse the real King with an appealingly passive one," the article states.</div>
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"If you bring up nonviolence as the only civilized way to effect change, they will recite King’s words: 'A riot is the language of the unheard,' or they will say they don’t condone rioting, but they understand it," the article continues.</div>
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The article notes, almost in passing, that black activist Ashley Yates "created T-shirts and hoodies that read 'ASSATA TAUGHT ME' — a reference to the former Black Panther Party member Assata Shakur — and that became part of the protest iconography." It leaves out the fact that Shakur is a fugitive who murdered a New Jersey State Trooper.</div>
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Today's media fawns over the vile meanderings of black racist and fabulist Ta-Nehisi Coates. A professional whiner and race-baiter, Coates hasn't done much worthwhile in his life. Despite not having a college degree, he somehow blundered his way into a visiting professor gig at MIT.</div>
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His fawned-over new memoir, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Between the World and Me</em>, is a wealth of "pseudo-Marxist legalisms in which 'black bodies' are the engines of commerce and culture on which a vast evil white conspiracy squats," <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259590/ta-nehisi-coates-americas-next-top-victim-daniel-greenfield" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">according to</a> Daniel Greenfield. The book is "bad poetry" and "a racist screed that masks its hatred in self-pity."</div>
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"If it weren’t for the self-pity and the fake black preacher rhythm, you could easily imagine that Ta-Nehisi Coates just picked up some of Goebbels’ greatest hits and swapped out Aryan for Black," Greenfield writes.</div>
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Coates, who fancies himself some kind of intellectual, writes in his book that the police officers and firefighters who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks “were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”</div>
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Coates writes "America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist ... One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error. I propose to take our countrymen's claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard."</div>
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His predictable answer to this invented dilemma is forcing U.S. taxpayers to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves. He'd prefer that laws not be enforced against African-Americans instead of risking the horrors of so-called racial profiling. He claims the popular backlash against New York City's small-c communist mayor Bill de Blasio is happening because the mayor has two (half) black children. He dismisses the threat posed by Islamists as irrelevant, claiming America has no right to judge terrorists "in a country built on theft, blood and slavery."</div>
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Coates is richly rewarded for this racist, anti-American pabulum. He is "the beneficiary of big liberal media privileges," Greenfield opines. "He turned down a <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> column while getting paid to blog about his thoughts on Spider-Man for <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Atlantic</em>. His only struggle is deciding which frustration with a taxi, waiter or butler to turn into a column about racism this week."</div>
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In a book review, the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> hails Coates as a courageous soul who "speaks, unpopular, unconventional and sometimes even radical truths in his own voice, unfiltered." Acclaimed author Toni Morrison lauds the book for filling the "intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died." A <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Guardian</em> (UK) reviewer slobbers, "I am in near-total agreement with Coates's view of this world we share." Slate drools that the book "is a monumental work about being black in America that every American urgently needs to read." U.S. News & World Report declares that Coates "writes in the tradition of black writers who have held the American dream up to the light and exposed its barrenness: Frederick Douglass asking, 'What to the slave is the Fourth of July?', Malcolm X proclaiming, 'I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.'" The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Christian Science Monitor</em> calls the memoir "a highly provocative, thoughtfully presented, and beautifully written narrative about the ongoing racial struggle in America."</div>
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And so on and so on.</div>
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Then there is Salon which is in a league of its own. As <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259789/salon-mouthpiece-racist-left-matthew-vadum" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">I wrote at FrontPage</a> recently, the far-left commentary website Salon publishes morally reprehensible full-throated defenses of the Black Lives Matter movement whose supporters now openly endorse murdering cops and waging "war" against America. Salon cheered on the rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., accepting as gospel the idea that blacks like Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin were murdered by racist white people running wild. Black violence is routinely dismissed at Salon because it doesn't fit the Left's narrative. Black people are always victims and white people are always evildoers.</div>
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Its writers embrace genocide against whites, claim the troubled Sandra Bland was murdered by the police, ignore black racism, claim Americans' supposed racism "can literally make black people ill," and claim white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof is receiving preferential treatment in police custody because he benefits from "a textbook example of White Privilege."</div>
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Its writers lie about almost all of the high-profile deaths of black Americans at the hands of police in recent years.</div>
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It is worth noting that there are some black Americans who recognize the danger inherent in racializing everything.</div>
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The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson <a href="http://capitalresearch.org/2009/07/rev-jesse-lee-peterson-talks-about-the-racism-industry-on-the-g-gordon-liddy-show/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">warned of the dangers</a> of applying double-standards to black Americans and coddling black leftists years ago.</div>
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I’ve been saying to white Americans for years now that they need to start speaking up, they need to get over this fear of being called a racist, because they have allowed this to happen for 50 years and they have trained other young blacks that Jesse Jackson and others can get away with intimidating us and you can do the same thing and now we have a far-left liberal socialist black Democrat who believes in the redistribution of wealth, he wants to take it from the white man and give it to those who are not earning their way because they’re trying to destroy the white man and that’s what this is about and if white people don’t get over the fear of being called racist it’s over for America.</div>
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So far not too many people are listening.</div>
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If they don't start paying attention soon, America in the not-too-distant future will become unrecognizable as a country, assuming the nation doesn't disintegrate before then.</div>
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Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8645533246074221215.post-71092851707924096992015-08-28T23:44:00.003-04:002015-08-28T23:44:44.048-04:00Hillary Under SiegeMy article from the August 19, 2015 issue of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/259840/hillary-under-siege-matthew-vadum">FrontPageMag</a>:<br />
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Hillary Under Siege</div>
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By Matthew Vadum</div>
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The raging controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's illegal use of an insecure private Internet server to transmit emails containing top-secret classified U.S. government documents continues to put the would-be president's political future in doubt.</div>
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Even elements in the Democratic Party establishment are tiring of Hillary's never-ending antics and scandals.</div>
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"Clinton is in the midst of a full-scale Democratic freakout due to her faltering poll numbers and ongoing questions about how she has handled her private e-mail server," Chris Cillizza of the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em> blogged.</div>
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"[Vice President[ Joe Biden is considering running. [Former Vice President] Al Gore's name -- yes, Al Gore -- was even floated!"</div>
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Cillizza quoted "one senior Democratic consultant granted anonymity" saying Mrs. Clinton "has always been awkward and uninspiring on the stump. Hillary has Bill's baggage and now her own as secretary of state -- without Bill's personality, eloquence or warmth."</div>
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And things just keep getting worse for the anointed Democratic candidate whose digital malfeasance continues to haunt her sputtering presidential campaign.</div>
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Intelligence officials asked to review emails from Hillary's private Internet server <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/17/politics/hillary-clinton-server-referred-for-further-review/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">have recommended</a> that 305 documents be given to agencies for further examination. The FBI says <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/18/fbi-might-be-able-to-recover-data-from-clinton-email-server-despite-attempt-to-wipe-it-report/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">it may be able to recover</a> some of the information from the server, which it seized last week, despite an "attempt" to wipe it. The FBI “will try to figure what’s there, how it got there and who put it there,” a source told NBC.</div>
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Clinton demonstrated once again that she isn't ready for prime time yesterday when testily <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/251413-clinton-pulls-plug-on-testy-presser-over-server-questions" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">pulled the plug</a> on a disastrous press conference in Las Vegas as soon as she found herself under siege by pesky reporters doing their jobs. Clinton angrily blew off the growing furor surrounding her use of private email server for official government business and claimed she did nothing wrong during her time at the Department of State.</div>
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"What I did was legally permitted, number one, first and foremost," the thin-skinned former first lady declared. "We turned over everything that was work related. Every single thing. Personal stuff -- we did not. I had no obligation to do so and did not."</div>
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"I regret that this has become a cause celebre. But that does not change the facts and no matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are stubborn," she said. "I know there is a certain level of anxiety or interest in this, but the facts are the facts." </div>
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When asked if the server, which is now in Department of Justice custody, had been wiped clean, she mocked the questioner. "Like with a cloth or something?” </div>
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"I don't know how it works digitally at all," she added.</div>
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That may be the only true thing Clinton has said recently about the email scandal.</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> (UK) published <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3201367/Hillary-s-email-firm-run-loft-apartment-servers-BATHROOM-raising-new-questions-security-sensitive-messages-held.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a damning report</a> stating that Hillary's email firm was operated out of a loft apartment that located its servers in a bathroom closet, which raises new questions about how secure the email messages she sent and received were. The firm, Platte River Networks of Denver, Colo., took care of her so-called "home brew" server. (The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> article includes <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3201367/Hillary-s-email-firm-run-loft-apartment-servers-BATHROOM-raising-new-questions-security-sensitive-messages-held.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">a useful timeline</a> of the Clinton email saga at the bottom of the page.)</div>
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On the campaign trail recently Clinton made an incredibly insensitive, tone-deaf joke making light of her email improprieties that compromised U.S. national security and for all we know may very well have gotten American operatives abroad or their allies killed.</div>
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At the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding dinner last weekend <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/08/17/hillary_clinton_jokes_about_snapchat_those_messages_disappear_all_by_themselves.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">Hillary quipped</a>: "By the way, you may have seen that I recently launched a Snapchat account," she said gently shaking her head in an I'm-so-clever kind of way.</div>
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"I love it. I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves," she said grinning to hoots and hollers from the adoring crowd of leftist lackeys.</div>
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This wisecrack crystallizes the Hillary Clinton approach to everything. She is manipulative and dishonest. She is irredeemably arrogant and regards herself as above the law. She is contemptuous of the critically important high office she held. She is disdainful of the rule of law and doesn't give a farthing's cuss about national security if it stands in the way of her personal advancement.</div>
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The joke brings to mind Obama's astonishingly callous, <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/06/13/obama-jokes-jobs-council-shovel-ready-was-not-shovel-ready-we-expected" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">flatfooted one-liner</a> from 2011 in which he laughed off the failed nearly $1 trillion stimulus package that did little more than stimulate the economies of Obama's corporate and labor movement allies.</div>
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It was at a meeting in North Carolina of Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness that had recommended streamlining the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects. An individual off-camera pointed out to the president that the red tape involved in the permitting process can delays projects for "months to years ... and in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned ... I'm sure that when you implemented the Recovery Act your staff briefed you on many of these challenges."</div>
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A grinning Obama broke in saying, "Shovel-ready was not as ... uh .. shovel-ready as we expected," to the unseemly guffawing of his crony-capitalist ally GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt.</div>
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At least this particular Obama monkeyshine didn't have a possible American body count associated with it.</div>
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Conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/08/17/krauthammer_hillary_clintons_snapchat_joke_was_cringe-worthy_shows_how_ham-handed_she_is.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #631312; font-weight: 700; word-break: break-word;">lambasted Hillary</a> for her meager witticism:</div>
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Well, it shows you once again, if you needed repetition, how bad a candidate she is. That attempt at self-deprecation about Snapchat is groan-worthy, cringe-worthy, it doesn't work, and it shows how ham-handed she is.</div>
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The Joke That Wasn't has had wider repercussions.</div>
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The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Post'</em>s Cillizza conveyed the discomfort players in the Democratic fold are feeling.</div>
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"[O]ne unaligned senior Democratic operative," was quoted saying, "The combination of messy facts, messy campaign operation and an awkward candidate reading terrible lines or worse jokes from a prompter is very scary," </div>
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Evidence strongly suggests that Obama administration officials at the highest levels were long aware of Clinton's cloak-and-dagger email infrastructure. The irretrievably corrupt Clintons created the system to frustrate Freedom of Information Act requesters, shield Hillary's correspondence from congressional oversight, and steer money to the international cash-for-future-presidential-favors clearinghouse known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. </div>
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Clinton has admitted that tens of thousands of the emails she sent that happened to be U.S. government property were deleted. Emails were scrubbed while subject to a subpoena from the House Select Committee that is investigating the terrorist attack on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that took place on Sept. 11, 2012. </div>
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She is supposed to appear before that committee in October.</div>
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If her campaign lasts that long.</div>
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<br />Matthew Vadumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06681040127002240202noreply@blogger.com0