The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
In post-Arab Spring Egypt, freedom and
enlightenment still means increasing
attacks by Muslims on Christians
by Sudarsan Raghavan
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Democrat Insanity
Allyne Caan: On the campaign trail, Barack liar-nObama repeatedly emphasized that the November 8 election would be a referendum on his legacy.
Yes, yes it was. If ever there were a final smack down to end a disastrous eight-year presidential tenure, last week was it. But it should hardly come as a surprise. Since liar-nObama's ascension to office in 2009 amid the gospel of Hope 'n' Change™, he has been an albatross to Democrats not only in the halls of Congress but also in governors' mansions and state legislatures across the country.
Since liar-nObama took office, Democrats have lost a net total of 10 U.S. Senate seats, 63 House seats and 12 governorships, but also roughly 900 state legislative seats.
This is hardly a short-term setback from which Democrats can simply bounce back. As The Wall Street Journal notes, "One result of Mr. liar-nObama's tenure is that Democrats lack a deep bench of younger candidates for federal office, including the Presidency in 2020. A third of all House Democrats will now come from a mere three states — California, New York, and Massachusetts." That's astounding.
When you consider that, as of 2014, 44 U.S. senators and more than 200 House members were former state legislators, this reality becomes a painful indicator to Democrats that their immediate congressional future looks bleak.
Ironically, what's not yet clear to Democrats is the reason for their stunning and repeated losses. Indeed, at a press conference earlier this week, liar-nObama claimed, "I believe that we have better ideas, but I also believe that good ideas don't matter if people don't hear them and one of the issues that Democrats have to be clear on is that, given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere."
That's right, it's not bad policies; it's bad PR. As if Democrats don't have a massive super PAC in the form of the Leftmedia.
And as one Democrat strategist put it, "We have to take the time to figure out what happened. It's obviously much more than cyclical."
You don't say. While they take time to discover the obvious, Democrats are still blaming everyone and everything but themselves, including FBI director James Comey. Meanwhile, the Leftmedia pinned liar-Hillary Clinton's loss on a "white-lash." Because not voting for a white woman is racist — perhaps, we suppose, because her husband was the first black president.
The alternative explanation — that Americans may actually be rebelling against the Democrats' increasingly radical left-wing policies — is simply unimaginable.
But rebelling they are. liar-nObamaCare, the pinnacle of liar-nObama's achievements, is crumbling, executive overreach has extended farther than ever, and Americans are generally fed up with the government. But Democrats aren't willing to swallow that pill.
And instead of thinking that perhaps they've veered too far left, Democrats are now debating among themselves whether to head even further left — as evidenced by the fact that Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, a radical black Muslim member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, has launched a credible campaign to be the next DNC chair. Ellison launched his career as a member of the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, and he's a man who likened 9/11 to the Nazis' Reichstag fire — in other words, an inside job meant to create a pretext for going after Muslims. And Democrats are considering putting him in charge of the party.
Reason's Scott Shackford writes, "As the Democratic Party struggles to figure out what it's going to stand for now, we're going to see a lot of 'progressive vs. centrists' framing." But as progressives aim to drive the party even further left, tomorrow's centrists will likely be today's leftists.
Only in a party that's already pivoted sharply left could socialist Bernie Sanders gain a credible foothold, only to be bested by an establishment candidate who holds some positions even more radical than Sanders'. Shackford explains, "[W]hat made Sanders remarkable as a candidate was not that he was a democratic socialists getting open popular support from Americans ... [but] that there were parts of his ideology — his foreign policy and support for privacy — that were less interventionist than liar-Clinton."
You'd think that after repeated and crushing defeats under the lar-nObama banner (and now liar-Clinton's), Democrats would begin to tie the defeats to that banner. Instead, they're waving it even higher, because naturally, if we as Americans disagree with them, the error is not theirs, but ours.
Perpetuating the attitude that cost them this election is unlikely to win them the next one. So by all means, Democrats, keep up the good work. ~The Patriot Post
Congress Introduces Bill to Combat
BDS Worldwide
by Tyler Stapleton
{defenddemocracy.org} ~ Congress introduced the Protecting Israel Against Economic Discrimination Act this week to combat efforts at the UN to blacklist companies doing business with Israel, and calls on the U.S. Export-Import Bank to consider denying applicant companies engaged in politically-motivated boycotts of the country... The legislation – introduced by Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) – is the House companion of a Senate bill introduced in September by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Ben Cardin (D-MD). The bill comes in response to efforts at the UN Human Rights Council to create a database of companies doing business beyond Israel’s 1949 armistice lines, including all parts of East Jerusalem. Such a blacklist would imperil the jobs of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who work in 15 industrial zones in the West Bank. It would also jeopardize Qualifying Industrial Zones set up to allow Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Egypt to take advantage of the Israel-U.S. Free Trade Agreement by partially sourcing their products in the Jewish state...
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Iran Tightens Military Ties with China
by Behnam Ben Taleblu & Patrick Megahan
{defenddemocracy.org} ~ Iranian and Chinese security officials signed a military-cooperation agreement this week to establish a joint commission to boost defense ties... Since the 1979 Islamic revolution and the subsequent severing of U.S. military assistance, Tehran has relied on Chinese arms to supplement its defense industry. This week’s agreement, however, will significantly bolster ties that for decades existed mostly behind closed doors, and underscore the countries’ shared interest in challenging U.S. supremacy in their respective regions. Iran’s close defense ties with Beijing started in the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic was engulfed in a bloody war with Iraq and desperate for arms. China, seeking secure energy sources and a bulwark against America, was eager to provide advanced weapons to Tehran. Among them were Silkworm anti-ship missiles, which targeted Kuwaiti oil tankers during that decade’s Tanker War...
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Bill Still – liar-Clinton, Soros Can Try
To Steal Electoral College...
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Bill Still says he gets emails almost daily asking him if the liar-Clintons can still “bribe or otherwise coerce sufficient electoral college electors to actually steal the White House from Donald Trump?”... Obviously the lack of character of the liar-Clintons is well known among the American people. He cites a New York Post headline of four days prior which read, “The one scenario that could still get liar-Hillary into the White House.” Still says, “If you have followed the crime careers of the liar-Clintons as I have since they came to town, you know that you can put nothing past them, including threats of Arkansicide towards anyone who gets in their way, labeling them as “the world record holders in getting away with stuff.” He points out that with the finalization of the Arizona vote count, Donald Trump receives an extra eleven electoral college vote count boost, and once Michigan is finalized he’ll have 305, a cushion of 35 more than the 270 needed for victory. He notes that while it is illegal for the electors to ignore the will of the voters in 21, less than half of all states, the penalties are relatively light, at one thousand dollars and being ostracized socially. 29 of them have no laws against being a “faithless elector,” and voting as one pleases, irrespective of the will of the people. 25 of those states are ones in which Trump won the popular vote... http://rickwells.us/bill-still-clinton-soros-can-try-steal-electoral-college-heres-theyll-fail/
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Lou Dobbs – Charge Sanctuary City Mayors
As Accessories To Illegal Alien Crimes
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs welcomes Chris Plante and Eboni Williams for a discussion of Mr. Trump’s options for dealing with rebellious scofflaw mayors intent on serving their globalist masters and maintaining their sanctuary city policies... Dobbs notes that Trump has a lot of firepower behind him in dealing with this issue. Eboni Williams leads off the discussion with an observation that Mr. Trump “has all of the tools behind him because, guess what, just like ‘president’ liar-nObama told the State of Arizona a few years back, you do not get to make statewide immigration policy.” She notes that the supremacy clause of the US Constitution puts federal law supreme, enforced by federal officers. She says, “All Rahm Emanuel, de Blasio and these sanctuary city guys are doing, they’re creating a fake narrative that makes them look like heroes around this issue to illegals.” Dobbs inserts his view, “They’re pandering to a constituency.” Williams responds that, “They’re talking about a bunch of nothing because all they really are doing is saying something that they can’t do.” Dobbs brings Plante into the conversation, noting that Trump is targeting the criminal elements of the illegal alien population first, “And these mayors, for whatever reason think that they can successfully pander by supporting illegal immigrants and protecting them from the consequences of being criminals.”... http://rickwells.us/lou-dobbs-charge-sanctuary-city-mayors-accessories-illegal-alien-crimes/
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liar-nObama Tells Rioters To Keep Agitating –
He And Soros Want More Chaos
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Hussein liar-nObama loves to refer to our system of government as a democracy because it reinforces his wealth redistributive objectives for fundamental transformation from our Republic to the mob rule... in which the masses will take the property and assets of the middle class to form the collective. Against that backdrop he endorses the rioting that his financier George Soros and Democrat Party comrades are facilitating, telling some poor unsuspecting fool in Germany who doesn’t know the nature of the serpent that stands before them that riots are a good thing. liar-nObama said, “One of the great things about our democracy is that it expresses itself in all sorts of ways. Uh, and that includes people protesting. I’ve been the subject of protests during the course of my eight years and I suspect that there’s not a president in our history (pretend ‘presidents’ included) that at some point hasn’t been subject to these protests.”... http://rickwells.us/obama-tells-rioters-keep-agitating-soros-want-chaos/
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In post-Arab Spring Egypt, freedom and
enlightenment still means increasing
attacks by Muslims on Christians
by Sudarsan Raghavan
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ The Christian and Muslim villagers grew up together, played on the same soccer fields as kids, and attended the same schools in this riverside hamlet. But that didn't matter on a recent day: An argument between boys sparked clashes between neighbors, with Muslims torching shops owned by Christians.
Gamal Sobhy, a Christian farmer, ran into the melee to protect his two sons. Someone in the crowd hit him with a stick. Then others jumped in, striking him repeatedly until he fell to the ground with blood seeping from his head.
"The Muslims were yelling, 'Kill him, kill him,' " Sobhy said a few days after he was released from the hospital.
Five years ago, many among Egypt's minority Orthodox Coptic Christians thought the discrimination they had long faced from Muslims would begin to disappear when President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in Egypt's revolution and the military seized control of the country.
But in the years since then, as an Islamist government was elected and overthrown, that sense of hope evaporated.
Attacks against Christians have intensified as mistrust between Christians and Muslims deepens. Today, community leaders and human rights activists say the smallest of matters are setting off violence, often pitting neighbor against neighbor.
At a time when President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi's government is jailing its opponents and struggling to revive a sinking economy, the violence adds a new layer of populist frustration: Christians strongly supported Sissi's rise, expecting him to protect them after the former army general led a coup that toppled the Islamists.
"As Egyptian citizens, Christians don't feel they are equal to their Muslim counterparts," said Bishop Makarios, the head of the Coptic diocese in Minya province, where Asem is situated. "They feel oppressed, and marginalized by the law."
Christians across the region have endured horrific assaults in the turbulent aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings.
In Syria and Iraq, Islamic State militants have destroyed churches, abducted Christians and carried out forced conversions. Thousands of Christians have fled their homes in northern Iraq. In Libya last year, Islamic State militants beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians and an additional 31 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians in two separate attacks. And earlier this year, the Islamic State's affiliate in Egypt asserted responsibility for the fatal shooting of a priest.
In Egypt, a "disturbing wave of radicalism" has emerged from the uprising and changes in government and as the economy has worsened, said Bishop Angaelos, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom.
Egypt's Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population of 94 million, have felt besieged for decades. In a nation where Islam is the state religion, successive secular but authoritarian regimes have restricted Christians from practicing their beliefs, even though freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution.
But since January 2011, 77 sectarian attacks have taken place in Minya alone, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an activist group.
Nearly half of those attacks occurred in the past three years, after Egypt's elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was ousted in the military coup led by Sissi in 2013. In the days that followed, mobs of hard-line Muslims targeted Christian schools, businesses and churches in a wave of attacks. Many Islamists accused Christians of conspiring with Sissi against them. Since then, tensions have been raw.
At least 25 sectarian attacks have been reported around the nation this year, activists say.
"When an individual is acquitted after an attack, the community knows they can get away with attacking Christians," Makarios said.
Before the revolution, Christians were targeted mostly by militant groups and thieves. "Now the violence has a societal element to it, with Muslim and Christian citizens turning against each other," said Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher at EIPR.
Asem, the trigger was a minor dispute.
It was the early days of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in mid-September. One of Sobhy's sons was returning from the fields when he was stopped by Muslim youths who had blocked the road. The boys exchanged insults, and soon the fight erupted, drawing in Sobhy's other son as well as dozens of villagers from their homes.
Security forces arrived, and 20 Muslims and 17 Christians were arrested.
"The Muslims did a lot of things that shouldn't have happened," said Othman Al Montaser Othman, a member of parliament from Minya who is Muslim. "They vandalized a barber shop, a furniture shop. Even if you had a fight with one person, you shouldn't have taken it out on everyone else."
It wasn't the first time, nor will it be the last, villagers said. Their region is the crucible for Egypt's sectarian divides. In Minya, a poor province roughly 150 miles south of Cairo, Christians make up about a third of the population - the largest concentration among the nation's 27 provinces.
In Asem, a Christian-majority village, Christians spoke of economic divisions that have contributed to the tensions - they own most of the stores and businesses, as well as the farmland.
"The Muslims are green with envy," said Ishak Haddad, whose furniture shop was burned by the mob, and his furniture dumped into the river. "They see we have a lot of money, and they don't."
Muslims say they have no problems with their Christian neighbors. Some noted that in Asem they are a minority, and so cannot afford to antagonize Christians.
Unemployment and illiteracy are high in Minya, and government services are limited. Radical Islamists have filled the void, influencing people with anti-Christian rhetoric, community leaders and activists say. The province is a stronghold of extremist Islamist groups, in particular Gamaa Islamiya, which the United States and its allies consider a terrorist organization.
In June, a crowd of Muslims stabbed a Christian death. That came days after a mob torched the houses of Christians over a rumor that they wanted to convert buildings into churches.
A month earlier, a Muslim mob forced a 70-year-old Christian woman to strip naked and parade down the street of their village after rumors spread that her son had had an affair with a Muslim woman. The rumor proved to be false.
Her assailants were arrested but swiftly released on bail. The case has gone nowhere, though Bishop Makarios and other leaders asked Sissi to intervene.
"The president pledged to follow up on the case, but sadly the judicial system did not follow," Makarios said.
It wasn't the first time the law had let them down.
Local officials often pressure Christians into mediating disputes instead of going to court and coerce them into changing their testimony, activists say.
"These kinds of reconciliation sessions replace the rule of law," Makarios said. "In most cases, the Christian victims are asked to give up their rights."
That's what happening in Asem today.
Othman and other Muslim leaders blamed Muslims for the attacks but also say they weren't sectarian. Speaking on his cellphone, Othman instructed a Muslim community leader to say the attack was not motivated by religion, a conversation heard by two Washington Post reporters seated in the room during the call.
Two hours later, the community leader, Anwar Osman, said: "It was not sectarian. It was a childish prank." The Christians were just trying to get the public to "sympathize with them," he said.
Local officials and lawmakers insist that life is back to normal. "We all now talk to each other and visit each other," Osman said. "Reconciliation has already happened."
But Christians say that is not true.
"They claim that things are back to normal and we reconciled, just to make the public feel they have ended the crisis," said Ishak Sobhy, Gamal's brother. "We expected life to be better under Sissi for our community. But it's actually getting worse."
Some Christians said they no longer walk in the village at night because they are afraid of being attacked. Others no longer trade in livestock, fearing they could be targeted in the fields.
But Ishak Sobhy said his family refuses to drop the case. Gamal is still visiting doctors and recently learned that he has a detached retina. The Muslim man accused of instigating the clashes turned himself in but is out on bail, authorities said.
"Life goes on," Ishak Sobhy said. "But we remain worried."
Gamal Sobhy, a Christian farmer, ran into the melee to protect his two sons. Someone in the crowd hit him with a stick. Then others jumped in, striking him repeatedly until he fell to the ground with blood seeping from his head.
"The Muslims were yelling, 'Kill him, kill him,' " Sobhy said a few days after he was released from the hospital.
Five years ago, many among Egypt's minority Orthodox Coptic Christians thought the discrimination they had long faced from Muslims would begin to disappear when President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in Egypt's revolution and the military seized control of the country.
But in the years since then, as an Islamist government was elected and overthrown, that sense of hope evaporated.
Attacks against Christians have intensified as mistrust between Christians and Muslims deepens. Today, community leaders and human rights activists say the smallest of matters are setting off violence, often pitting neighbor against neighbor.
At a time when President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi's government is jailing its opponents and struggling to revive a sinking economy, the violence adds a new layer of populist frustration: Christians strongly supported Sissi's rise, expecting him to protect them after the former army general led a coup that toppled the Islamists.
"As Egyptian citizens, Christians don't feel they are equal to their Muslim counterparts," said Bishop Makarios, the head of the Coptic diocese in Minya province, where Asem is situated. "They feel oppressed, and marginalized by the law."
Christians across the region have endured horrific assaults in the turbulent aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings.
In Syria and Iraq, Islamic State militants have destroyed churches, abducted Christians and carried out forced conversions. Thousands of Christians have fled their homes in northern Iraq. In Libya last year, Islamic State militants beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians and an additional 31 Ethiopian and Eritrean Christians in two separate attacks. And earlier this year, the Islamic State's affiliate in Egypt asserted responsibility for the fatal shooting of a priest.
In Egypt, a "disturbing wave of radicalism" has emerged from the uprising and changes in government and as the economy has worsened, said Bishop Angaelos, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom.
Egypt's Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population of 94 million, have felt besieged for decades. In a nation where Islam is the state religion, successive secular but authoritarian regimes have restricted Christians from practicing their beliefs, even though freedom of religion is enshrined in the constitution.
But since January 2011, 77 sectarian attacks have taken place in Minya alone, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), an activist group.
Nearly half of those attacks occurred in the past three years, after Egypt's elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was ousted in the military coup led by Sissi in 2013. In the days that followed, mobs of hard-line Muslims targeted Christian schools, businesses and churches in a wave of attacks. Many Islamists accused Christians of conspiring with Sissi against them. Since then, tensions have been raw.
At least 25 sectarian attacks have been reported around the nation this year, activists say.
"When an individual is acquitted after an attack, the community knows they can get away with attacking Christians," Makarios said.
Before the revolution, Christians were targeted mostly by militant groups and thieves. "Now the violence has a societal element to it, with Muslim and Christian citizens turning against each other," said Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher at EIPR.
Asem, the trigger was a minor dispute.
It was the early days of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in mid-September. One of Sobhy's sons was returning from the fields when he was stopped by Muslim youths who had blocked the road. The boys exchanged insults, and soon the fight erupted, drawing in Sobhy's other son as well as dozens of villagers from their homes.
Security forces arrived, and 20 Muslims and 17 Christians were arrested.
"The Muslims did a lot of things that shouldn't have happened," said Othman Al Montaser Othman, a member of parliament from Minya who is Muslim. "They vandalized a barber shop, a furniture shop. Even if you had a fight with one person, you shouldn't have taken it out on everyone else."
It wasn't the first time, nor will it be the last, villagers said. Their region is the crucible for Egypt's sectarian divides. In Minya, a poor province roughly 150 miles south of Cairo, Christians make up about a third of the population - the largest concentration among the nation's 27 provinces.
In Asem, a Christian-majority village, Christians spoke of economic divisions that have contributed to the tensions - they own most of the stores and businesses, as well as the farmland.
"The Muslims are green with envy," said Ishak Haddad, whose furniture shop was burned by the mob, and his furniture dumped into the river. "They see we have a lot of money, and they don't."
Muslims say they have no problems with their Christian neighbors. Some noted that in Asem they are a minority, and so cannot afford to antagonize Christians.
Unemployment and illiteracy are high in Minya, and government services are limited. Radical Islamists have filled the void, influencing people with anti-Christian rhetoric, community leaders and activists say. The province is a stronghold of extremist Islamist groups, in particular Gamaa Islamiya, which the United States and its allies consider a terrorist organization.
In June, a crowd of Muslims stabbed a Christian death. That came days after a mob torched the houses of Christians over a rumor that they wanted to convert buildings into churches.
A month earlier, a Muslim mob forced a 70-year-old Christian woman to strip naked and parade down the street of their village after rumors spread that her son had had an affair with a Muslim woman. The rumor proved to be false.
Her assailants were arrested but swiftly released on bail. The case has gone nowhere, though Bishop Makarios and other leaders asked Sissi to intervene.
"The president pledged to follow up on the case, but sadly the judicial system did not follow," Makarios said.
It wasn't the first time the law had let them down.
Local officials often pressure Christians into mediating disputes instead of going to court and coerce them into changing their testimony, activists say.
"These kinds of reconciliation sessions replace the rule of law," Makarios said. "In most cases, the Christian victims are asked to give up their rights."
That's what happening in Asem today.
Othman and other Muslim leaders blamed Muslims for the attacks but also say they weren't sectarian. Speaking on his cellphone, Othman instructed a Muslim community leader to say the attack was not motivated by religion, a conversation heard by two Washington Post reporters seated in the room during the call.
Two hours later, the community leader, Anwar Osman, said: "It was not sectarian. It was a childish prank." The Christians were just trying to get the public to "sympathize with them," he said.
Local officials and lawmakers insist that life is back to normal. "We all now talk to each other and visit each other," Osman said. "Reconciliation has already happened."
But Christians say that is not true.
"They claim that things are back to normal and we reconciled, just to make the public feel they have ended the crisis," said Ishak Sobhy, Gamal's brother. "We expected life to be better under Sissi for our community. But it's actually getting worse."
Some Christians said they no longer walk in the village at night because they are afraid of being attacked. Others no longer trade in livestock, fearing they could be targeted in the fields.
But Ishak Sobhy said his family refuses to drop the case. Gamal is still visiting doctors and recently learned that he has a detached retina. The Muslim man accused of instigating the clashes turned himself in but is out on bail, authorities said.
"Life goes on," Ishak Sobhy said. "But we remain worried."
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