Paris and Washington Send a Message to Moscow: No Sanctions Relief Until Russian Troops Leave Ukraine

The Kremlin’s gambit to secure sanctions relief by redrawing the political landscapes in Europe and the United States has, so far, been a failure.

In 2014, the U.S. and the European Union levied punitive economic sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequent proxy war in eastern Ukraine. New presidential leadership in Washington and Paris have both made clear this year that the sanctions will stay in place until the Kremlin fulfills its commitments in implementing the Ukraine cease-fire, known as the Minsk II agreements.

Those commitments include the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, the return of Ukrainian control over its border with Russia in the Donbas, and unhindered access for international monitors in the conflict area.

“We will not submit to Russia or Mr. Putin’s values, as they are not the same values as ours,” French President-elect Emmanuel Macron said during the campaign, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Macron, a 39-year-old pro-European centrist, was elected president in a May 7 landslide over his pro-Russian, anti-EU rival, Marine Le Pen. Macron is set to enter office on Sunday.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed for the full implementation of the Minsk agreements during a Wednesday meeting in Washington with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement following the meeting.

Consequently, there will be no workaround for the Kremlin to avoid fulfilling its Minsk II commitments. And, so far, neither the EU nor the U.S. has been willing to make concessions about Ukraine for tighter cooperation with Russia in combatting the Islamic State terror group in Syria.

“The [Trump] administration should be wary of getting distracted by Russia and [Bashar] Assad in Syria at the expense of countering Russia’s continued aggression in Europe,” Daniel Kochis, policy analyst in European affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

Setback

Macron’s victory over Le Pen in the May 7 French presidential election was widely perceived to be a setback to Putin’s efforts to influence Europe’s political future through a hybrid campaign of propaganda and cyberattacks.

Macron’s opponent, Le Pen, represented the pro-Russia, anti-EU National Front party.

In November 2014, according to French news reports, the National Front received a 9 million euro ($9.8 million) loan from the Russian-owned First Czech-Russian Bank, part of a larger 40 million euro request.

During the 2017 campaign, Le Pen said she would lift sanctions on Moscow. She praised Putin, criticized U.S. policy regarding Ukraine and Russia, and traveled to Moscow to meet with the Russian leader on March 24.

“Regarding Ukraine, we behave like American lackeys,” Le Pen told the Polish news site Do Rzeczy. “The aim of the Americans is to start a war in Europe to push NATO to the Russian border.”

“I will not accept to have my behavior dictated by Mr. Putin, and that is the difference with Mrs. Le Pen,” Macron said during the campaign.

In the last two days of the campaign, Macron’s campaign said it had been the target of a massive computer hack that dumped internal campaign emails online. Multiple independent investigations cited in news reports claimed the hackers had ties to Russian military intelligence. Moscow denied it was involved.

Without conclusively pinning the Macron campaign hack on Russia, U.S. National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers told Congress on Tuesday that the spy agency had warned French authorities about the threat of a Russian cyberattack before the election.

“If you take a look at the French election … we had become aware of Russian activity,” Rogers told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We had talked to our French counterparts prior to the public announcements of the events publicly attributed this past weekend and gave them a heads-up: ‘Look, we’re watching the Russians, we’re seeing them penetrate some of your infrastructure.’”

On May 8, the day after the French election, Putin made a conciliatory overture to Macron, urging Franco-Russian cooperation on shared security challenges such as combatting terrorism.

“The citizens of France have trusted you with leading the country at a difficult time for Europe and the whole world community,” Putin told Macron in a telegram, according to Russian news reports.

“The growth in threats of terrorism and militant extremism is accompanied by an escalation of local conflicts and the destabilization of whole regions,” Putin said in the message. “In these conditions it is especially important to overcome mutual mistrust and unite efforts to ensure international stability and security.”

Across the Pond

In Washington, the election of President Donald Trump has not resulted in any significant change in U.S. policy regarding sanctions on Moscow.

On Wednesday, Trump met with Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, as well as Ukraine’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, in the Oval Office during separate appointments.

Trump subsequently published pictures of his meetings with both Klimkin and Lavrov on Facebook, along with the message: “Yesterday, on the same day – I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!”

“The United States is ready to be further involved in making Russia implement Minsk agreements,” Klimkin said following the meeting with Trump, according to Ukrainian news reports.

Klimkin also suggested the U.S. might join the Minsk II negotiations, known as the Normandy format, which currently comprises leaders from Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday—one day before Lavrov’s Oval Office meeting with Trump—a Russian fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea, NBC News reported Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Friday, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov blamed the current tensions between Russia and the U.S. on Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

“Naturally, we do not expect that all problems—and there are quite a few of them—will be resolved overnight, because Obama and his team have left the gravest legacy on the Russian track and clearing away these obstructions will be extremely difficult,” Ushakov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“Russia is open for dialogue with the United States in various spheres, including Syria and any other areas where our interests meet or can meet,” Ushakov said.

A History of Violence

Russia’s failure to achieve sanctions relief has not had a cooling effect on the Ukraine war. Overall, the conflict is stuck in a cyclical pattern of waxing and waning violence.

On May 7, the same day that French voters went to the polls to choose their next president, combined Russian-separatist forces fired more than 150 mortars at Ukrainian positions throughout the war zone, according to Ukrainian military officials.

On that day, one Ukrainian soldier was killed in combat; another soldier died in a military hospital due to wounds from a sniper shot on April 30. During the preceding week, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed due to enemy fire, and 40 were wounded.

Ukrainian military forces are engaged in a three-year-old proxy war with Russia in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the Russian border.

Along a 250-mile-long front line, Ukrainian troops are entrenched within a network of trenches and fortified fighting positions. Across no man’s land, they face a combined force of about 35,000 pro-Russian separatists and approximately 5,000 Russian regulars, according to Ukrainian and NATO intelligence estimates.

Artillery and rocket attacks, tank shots, and small arms gunfights are still daily occurrences. As are casualties, both military and civilian, on opposite sides of the conflict. At some places, no man’s land is only a few hundred meters wide—close enough for the enemy camps to hear each other talking.

The Minsk II cease-fire prohibits the use of heavy weapons above certain calibers within prescribed buffer zones around the front lines. The cease-fire also prohibits both sides from taking new ground or using airpower.

However, the war never ended. About one-third of the war’s 10,000 deaths have occurred since Minsk II went into effect in February 2015.

The international organization tasked with monitoring the cease-fire, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, has suspended operations in the war zone after an American paramedic attached to one of its patrols was killed in a landmine blast on April 23 in separatist-controlled territory.

The paramedic, 36-year-old Joseph Stone, was the first OSCE patrol member killed while on duty in eastern Ukraine.

“The restrictions have reduced the geographical scope of our patrols and have entailed a grounding of our mid-range unmanned aerial vehicles,” Alexander Hug, principal deputy chief monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, said during a press briefing in Kyiv.

“All of which means we are unable to monitor and report on facts, including violations, to the extent that we usually do,” Hug said. “The OSCE SMM imposed these restrictions in order to protect our unarmed civilian monitors.”

On Thursday, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian units 28 times, using mortars, small arms, grenade launchers, and heavy armor, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kyiv on Friday.

Lysenko said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six were wounded during Thursday’s attacks.

“We assess that Moscow’s strategic objectives in Ukraine, maintaining long-term influence over Kyiv and frustrating Ukraine’s attempts to integrate into Western institutions, will remain unchanged in 2017,” Director of U.S. National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats told the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Thursday hearing.

“Russia largely controls the level of violence, which it uses to exert pressure on Kyiv and the negotiating process,” Coats said. (For more from “Paris and Washington Send a Message to Moscow: No Sanctions Relief Until Russian Troops Leave Ukraine” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/05/paris-washington-send-message-moscow-no-sanctions-relief-russian-troops-leave-ukraine/

Must Read: Powerline Exposes AP Fake News On Anti-Trump Town Halls

By Tom Borelli / 15 May 2017

The left-wing media has numerous ways to twist the news.

Media bias can indeed come in many styles.

Ignoring stories about the accomplishments of President Trump is perhaps the easiest strategy. After all, it takes no effort.

More difficult, however, is constructing an entire story to mislead the public about the grassroots response to Trump’s agenda.

A story in Powerline deconstructs an AP story exposing how it selectively interviewed individuals and slanted information to fit the media narrative that Trump’s agenda is jeopardizing reelection of House Republicans.

The Associated Press headlines: “In swing districts, voters vent over health care, fear Trump.” A more accurate headline would be, “A handful of rabid Democrats hate President Trump.” But that wouldn’t be news. The AP begins:

Skeleton in hand, retired biology teacher Jeannie Scown delivered a message to her Republican congressman at his office northwest of Chicago.

“Killed by Trumpcare Plague, May 4, 2017,” her poster read.

In a nod to House Republicans’ recent vote to gut the health care law, Scown had no intention of sparing four-term Rep. Randy Hultgren with subtlety.

“He has to understand that sick people vote, too,” Scown said, “and we are going to go get them and take them to the polls if they can’t get there themselves, because we are tired of being used.”

It turns out that Scown is a Democrat activist.

Powerline continues:

AP reporters attend Democratic Party demonstrations, interview one of the participants, and report the interview as news. Who is Jeannie Scown? Judging from her Twitter feed, she is a crackpot left-winger who devotes a good portion of her day to tweeting to her 60 followers.

Is Congressman Hultgren in trouble? It wouldn’t seem so. He was re-elected six months ago by a 59%-41% margin, a whopping 18 points.

The left-wing media is in an all out war to destroy President Trump and is working very hard to achieve that goal.

Democrats Launch New Plan To Impeach Trump – This One Might Work…

Donald Trump has been the man in office for 113 days now, and despite all the success and victories he has brought to our nation, Democrats are still ranting how he is a bad leader and are desperately plotting his impeachment.

Instead of trying to support Trump in his quest to make this country great again, Democrat lawmakers are spending their time working on ways to get him impeached as soon as possible. The Daily Caller compiled some quotes from various top Democrats who are calling for Trump’s impeachment, and what they have to say is disturbing:

Rep. Maxine Waters

Waters has called for Trump’s impeachment loudly and repeatedly since he took office, saying she will “fight every day until he is impeached” and even starting “Impeach 45” chants.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal

After Trump fired the FBI director, Blumenthal told Anderson Cooper “it may well produce another United States vs. Nixon on a subpoena that went to United States Supreme Court.”

“It may well produce impeachment proceedings, although we’re very far from that possibility.”

Rep. Al Green

“This doesn’t look right given that we know now that the FBI is currently looking into this Russia association with the President and some of his associates,” Green said during an interview with a local news station.

“It just doesn’t look right for this to happen essentially about what happened with [Sally] Yates testifying. It just doesn’t look right, it doesn’t smell right. This is something that we have to get to bottom of and it’s starting to become something akin to an impeachable offense.”

Rep. Mark Pocan

“We should maybe have an impeachment clock,” the Wisconsin congressman said this week. “And if we did, I think yesterday moved us about an hour closer to having that need.”

Rep. Jared Huffman

Huffman tweeted: “Impeachment will happen if handful of Republicans in Congress join Dems to put country above party. Or in 2019 after Dems win the House.”

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard has echoed impeachment claims for weeks now, and has said she is doing her homework on it.

“On issue of impeachment, I am doing my homework,” Gabbard said in April. “I am studying more about the impeachment process. I will just say I understand the calls for impeachment, but what I am being cautious about and what I give you food for thought about is that if President Trump is impeached, the problems don’t go away, because then you have a Vice President Pence who becomes President Pence.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries

“Evidence of Trump’s effort to obstruct justice continues to emerge. Lock HIM up?” Jeffries wrote on Twitter with a link to a New York Times report that claims Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty to him.

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXPGPMTulDw

Extraordinary: Presidents don't make speeches like the one above. Or I should say, they didn't

Trump to Liberty U. grads: In this country, we worship God, not government

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives May 15, 2017

If you haven’t seen this, do yourself a favor and take the time to watch it. It’s an extraordinary address for a president to give precisely because it cuts to the heart of something that’s been going on in Washington for far too long: The political class does worship government as if it were a god. They obsess over it. They fight over what it should be like. They demand that everyone pay it as much money as possible. And of course, they fight for control of it.

But most of all, they go to government for the solution of every problem that exists, and they insist that everyone else do the same. The thing you regard in that way has become your god, and Trump, who is not by nature a creature of Washington - and is not widely thought to be a man of deep faith either - has noticed it:

The Huge Unrecognized Mistake We’re Making With Our Kids

May 15, 2017/by Tom Gilso

Growing up is dangerous. Nearly all of us make it through anyway. My daughter, Lisa, sprained her ankle 17 times while she was growing up. A few months ago she ran a half-marathon. She suffered a serious concussion in high school, and an even more serious one during college: it interfered with her cognitive processes for well over a year. Still she graduated from Miami University last December, a semester ahead of her peers. Kids can fight their way through a lot. To see how parents protect them these days, though, you’d think making it all the way to adulthood was a rare event. We do everything in our power to protect them from every possible danger. Too much, on the whole, I’d say. My generation has made its share of mistakes, but I think overprotecting our kids might be one of the worst — and least recognized — errors we’ve committed along the way. We Forgot How We Grew Up We thought it was so important to keep our kids safe, but we forgot how we grew up ourselves. My brother and I used to ride our bikes three times a week to play golf at a small course four or five miles away. It was just the two of us. We were no older than our early teens, as I recall. Once I decided it would be an adventure to walk the seven miles home from junior high school, rather than taking the bus. I told my parents I’d be home late that day, and they said “Fine, enjoy your walk.” My friends and I used to play hide-and-seek with flashlights, long after dark, across our entire neighborhood. Adventures like that could never happen today. I never see kids waiting alone for the school bus in the morning; there’s always a mom or dad watching from inside a car nearby. It’s gotten so bad that not long ago a “concerned citizen” filed a report with Manitoba’s Child and Family Services against a mom who let her kids play inside their own fenced back yard. Kids Need To Face Challenges On Their Own Those who never have problems don’t learn what it’s like to solve problems. Kids who never face challenges on their own don’t get any practice in overcoming them on their own. Granted, school counts as a challenge for most, but it’s a heavily supervised one. The same goes for athletics: there’s always a lot of adults around. I never played Little League ball when I was growing up. I envied the kids who got real uniforms to wear, and had real bases to run around. But that didn’t stop my friends and me. There was a vacant lot on our block; nothing there but tall grass. We got permission from the owner to cut the grass and build a backstop. We made our own ball field there. I was all of nine years old that summer. Some of the other kids might have been as old as 12 or 13. I don’t remember any adults helping us with any of it. We had a problem and our parents let us solve it. I don’t know how my generation lost track of how important that kind of thing was for us when we were kids. I suppose we got badly spooked by stories of strangers stealing children. We forgot that there was a far more likely danger that our kids would grow up stunted in their ability to face real problems, if we kept them protected all the time. I can’t help wondering if that’s a large part of the reason college students today are so shrill in their demand for “safe spaces.” Some of them — many of them, maybe — have always lived inside safe spaces. Someday they’ll graduate, and there won’t be anyone around to enforce that “safety” for them. They won’t be ready for it. Growing Up To Do Something Worthwhile Doctors have discovered a link between having a lot of dirt on your hands as a child, and being free of allergies and asthma as an adult. Even more obvious is the link between facing challenges while young and growing up to do something significant. Our son has a great job, but he went through a lot getting there: two seasonal jobs that lasted only as long as they lasted, three jobs that he genuinely needed to leave because his bosses had seriously misrepresented the pay and working conditions, one job that he wasn’t suited for and was let go from, and another hard-working early morning job he didn’t like very much but persevered in anyway. There wasn’t a lot of “safety” for him on the way to the work he’s doing now. “I Can’t Stand To Watch, and I Can’t Stand Not To Watch” Our daughter’s locker partner in high school, Taylor, was an Olympic hopeful gymnast. She practiced hours every day, and suffered more than one broken bone, getting to the point of competing at level 10. There is no level 11; if you get to that stage you’re on the national team. We went to one of her meets. When she was on the balance beam I watched her dad as closely as I did her. I wanted to know what it felt like to see your daughter doing tumbling routines on a four inch-wide hunk of timber. I asked him afterward, and he told me, “I can’t stand to watch, and I can’t stand not to watch. It’s really hard — but I’m so proud of her.” A few weeks later I saw an old friend of mine whose son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren were serving in Nigeria as medical missionaries. There was considerable violence going on in their region at the time. I asked the dad how it felt. His answer sounded almost exactly like Taylor’s dad: “I really wish they weren’t there, but I know it’s right, and I am so proud of them.” Growing Up To Make A Difference I’m no child psychologist, but I’m pretty sure kids will have a hard time growing up to take great risks to change the world if they haven’t taken risks to play in their neighborhoods. Next week my daughter will be marrying an Army lieutenant. He was assigned to the National Guard after his commissioning, but he’s pulling hard to go on active duty. I know it’s going to be tough on Lisa, if and when he’s deployed to an active battle zone, but I know she’ll make it. As the dad, I know it’s going to be hard on me, too. I’m sure I’ll say “This is so hard to live with. I can’t stand it!” But I will be — as I already am — so proud of them both. (For more from the author of “The Huge Unrecognized Mistake We’re Making With Our Kids” please click HERE)

MUSLIM? After 11 Londoners were stabbed to death in just 16 days, another man dies after brutal stabbing attack in the heavily Muslim area of East London

( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! )

...

A senior detective fighting knife crime in London warned today that police are engaged in the “business of murder suppression” as they battle to contain the rise in the number of stabbings.

Evening Standard  A man has died after being stabbed in broad daylight in east London, the latest in a surge of fatal knife attacks in the capital. Paramedics tried to resuscitate the man, in his 40s, for about an hour after they found him in Eagling Close, in Bow, at 4.31pm on Saturday.

Officers had been called to the street amid reports of an “altercation”, where they found the man suffering from suspected stab injuries, a Met Police spokeswoman said. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 5.37pm.

Two (Muslim?) men were arrested nearby in connection with the incident. It come just a day after the Standard launched an investigation into the capital’s knife crime epidemic, with 11 Londoners killed in just 16 days.

Also in East London, man with meat cleaver ‘threatens Jewish 8-year-old girl’ shouting “you Jews run away from here before I kill you.”

MIRROR  The man was caught on CCTV waving the knife in the street and reportedly threatened an eight-year-old Jewish girl as well as a sho keeper.  He allegedly shouted the threat as he ran out of a Kosher food shop in Hackney, east London last night. The man can be seen in the footage below holding the meat cleaver at arms length and making jabbing motions.

The watchman on the wall sounding the ALARM

Documenting the Islamization of America

Kansas City: Somali Muslim immigrant arrested, held for suspected jihad activities

( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! )

Isse Aweis Mohamud

Another well-vetted refugee?

Source: Kansas City man is target of terrorism investigation | The Kansas City Star

A Kansas City man who was recently detained by authorities in Egypt is the subject of an investigation by FBI counterterrorism agents.

The FBI began investigating Isse Aweis Mohamud on April 25 after his family reported him missing, according to federal prosecutors.

Those family members told the FBI they were concerned that he had gone overseas to “engage in jihadist activities,” a prosecutor said during a court appearance for Mohamud.

Mohamud, 21, was charged with a single count of passport fraud in U.S. District Court in Kansas City last week after he returned to Kansas City from Egypt.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday urged a judge to continue detaining Mohamud without bond in light of the terrorism investigation. He is being held by federal authorities in the Kansas City area.

The judge did not rule.

The passport fraud charge says Mohamud falsely stated in his passport application that he intended to fly to Canada. Instead, he flew to Egypt without telling his family or his employer.

“There is much more to this story than the complaint would indicate on its face,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said in an initial court appearance Friday. “There are serious questions about what in God’s name this defendant was doing leaving his family without notice and his job without notice in the middle of the day and flying to Egypt.”

According to the affidavit from an FBI agent assigned to investigate possible terrorist activity, Mohamud is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Somalia.

He applied for his passport in January at a Gladstone post office. In the space where the application asked which countries he planned to visit, he wrote “Canada.”

Attached to the passport application was a travel itinerary for a round-trip flight from Kansas City to Vancouver, Canada, departing Feb. 8 and returning one week later.

But Mohamud never took that flight, according to the affidavit. Months later, he flew to Egypt on April 24. Shortly after his arrival, Egyptian authorities detained him in a hotel until FBI employees arrived to interview him.

When Mohamud’s family realized he had left, they reported to Kansas City police that he was missing. Police contacted the FBI after the family expressed concerns about why he left, Raskin said in court.

“They were concerned that he’d traveled to Iraq to fight with the fighters and to engage in terrorist activities,” the FBI counterterrorism agent testified in court.

Relatives said that in recent months, Mohamud had cordoned off an area in the family’s home, and behind a locked door, he was heard conversing with unknown people.

He had also “wiped clean” his internet history on several electronic devices, family members told the FBI. He left behind a letter that his mother read and later told FBI agents about while under interrogation.

Agents interviewed the cab driver who took Mohamud to the airport. He told the driver that he was going to Egypt for three months. The driver thought that it was odd because he only had a small backpack with him.

A travel agent told FBI agents that Mohamud was acting suspiciously and the government should consider revoking his passport.

A Kansas City resident told agents that Mohamud had tried to convert him and called Mohamud “the most radical Muslim he has ever met,” the FBI special agent testified in court.

The agent said he did not know why Egyptian authorities had detained Mohamud, but Mohamud was questioned by the FBI on May 1 in Cairo.

He allegedly told the FBI that he had traveled there to meet “the strangers.”

The agent testified that the term “strangers” is sometimes used to describe people who travel from other countries to fight with the Islamic State.

He said that investigators had found a 2014 conversation on a Facebook account they think is linked to Mohamud.

In that conversation, he allegedly said he wanted to travel to Syria to join the Syrian Mujaheddin and wanted to be a sniper, the agent said.

On Thursday, Mohamud flew back to the United States and was met in New York by FBI agents.

In court Tuesday, federal prosecutors told a judge that Mohamud should be detained as a flight risk and a danger to the community.

Mohamud has no driver’s license and no car, defense attorney Allen said, and is willing to surrender his passport so he would have no means to flee the country. Within 24 hours of arriving in Egypt, and learning of the FBI investigation, he booked a flight home. He would have returned then had he not been detained by authorities, Allen said.

Mohamud flew home voluntarily.

Regarding the possible danger to the community, Allen pointed to testimony that the FBI had uncovered no preparations for violent acts in the United States. The 2014 Facebook messages about fighting in Syria could not be linked to any more recent acts by Mohamud, she said.

Allen asked the judge to consider Mohamud’s possible detention or release on bond based on the charge against him and the evidence in court, and not on “radical speculation by the government.”

And…

A Kansas City, Missouri, man born in Somalia has been ordered detained on a passport-fraud charge while the FBI investigates whether he has terrorism links.

Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Hays declined bond Thursday for 21-year-old Isse Mohamud. The judge determined Mohamud could be a flight and public safety risk.

Portland State U: Muslim student says those who leave Islam will be killed in an Islamic state

( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! )

May 13, 2017 4:35 pm By Robert Spencer 15 Comments

The Muslim student is right, and unusually honest. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law. It’s based on the Qur’an: “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (Qur’an 4:89)

Video https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/05/portland-state-u-muslim-student-says-those-who-leav

A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-‘ashriyyah, Al-Ja’fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.”

Qaradawi also once famously said: “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn’t exist today.”

The watchman on the wall sounding the ALARM

Documenting the ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA

Condo tower with Islamic museum and mosque to rise at proposed Ground Zero Mosque site

( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! )

Ground Zero Mosque

“We are still building an Islamic museum and sanctuary,” says the shady developer behind the Ground Zero Mosque scheme, Sharif El-Gamal.

An Islamic sanctuary is a mosque. The article adds: “An Islamic museum ‘is just as much of an insult,’ Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email. ‘It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.’”

This is what I actually told the New York Times: “The 16-story mosque that El-Gamal initially planned to build there has not been built. Our efforts in showing what an insult it was to the American people and to the victims of 9/11, and how many Muslims worldwide would inevitably view it as a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad attack, defeated it. Now El-Gamal plans an Islamic Museum, which is just as much of an insult; it will be like having a Museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor. A genuine Islamic Museum that detailed the 1,400-year history of jihad warfare, cultural annihilation, land appropriation and enslavement would be appropriate at that location, but El-Gamal’s museum is certain to be a whitewash of the doctrine and history of jihad and a paean to imaginary Muslim contributions to various important inventions and achievements.”

“Condo Tower to Rise Where Muslim Community Center Was Proposed,” by Ronda Kaysen, New York Times, May 12, 2017:

The sales gallery for 45 Park Place, a 43-story condominium that will soon rise three blocks from the World Trade Center, is not unlike the galleries for other luxury condos in New York. Oversize photographs showcase the spectacular views that come with living in a 665-foot tower. The mock kitchen and bathroom offer a glimpse of the refined finishes one would expect in a building with a $41 million duplex penthouse.

But unlike other New York City condos, this one is something of a consolation prize for the developer, and one that is opening in a cooling luxury market. The tower replaces the developer’s 2010 plan to build a 15-story Islamic mosque and cultural center on this site, an idea that erupted into a national controversy and cable news network bonanza.

The mosque’s opponents — among them some families of 9/11 victims, politicians and conservative media pundits — balked at the notion of a mosque so close to the site of the largest attack by Islamic terrorists in the nation’s history. Critics called it the Ground Zero Mosque, the Victory Mosque and a “megamosque.”

Its name was Park51, and the project’s developer, Sharif El-Gamal, the founder of Soho Properties, compared it to the 92nd Street Y, a community gathering space where New Yorkers could go for swimming lessons and lectures.

But by 2011, Mr. El-Gamal bowed to public pressure, little of it local, and abandoned the idea for the cultural center.

The new design replaces Mr. El-Gamal’s vision of a vast space for public gatherings with more standard New York City fare: a very expensive glass and steel tower for the very rich. The site, which extends from 43 to 51 Park Place, will open in 2019 with 50 apartments at 45 Park Place and a much smaller, three-story Islamic museum and public plaza, designed by Jean Nouvel, but no mosque, at 49-51 Park Place.

Gone is the name Park51, although a new name for the museum has not been announced. Mr. El-Gamal’s critics have been largely silent since 2011, even though prayers, events and gatherings continued to be held regularly at 49-51 Park Place until the property closed for demolition in 2015.

Looking back on a period of time that he described as “surreal,” Mr. El-Gamal said: “I wouldn’t change anything. What has transpired here has been an absolute blessing.”

Blessing or not, Mr. El-Gamal is entering the luxury real estate market at a difficult time, with the sales office opening on June 1. Sales of trophy apartments have been lackluster since late 2014. The number of sales of new luxury apartments dropped 25 percent in the first quarter of 2017 from the same time a year ago. During that same period, inventory rose almost 20 percent and new condos sat on the market 49 percent longer, according to a Douglas Elliman report that was prepared by Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers and Consultants. With inventory saturating the top of the market, buyers looking to spend $5 million or more have plenty of options.

“This is yet another high-end project coming on in the last innings of the development cycle,” said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel.

One-bedrooms at 45 Park Place start at $1.92 million; two-bedrooms at $3.725 million; three-bedrooms at $4.595 million; and four-bedrooms at $10.5 million. The second duplex penthouse will be listed for about $39 million. Michel Abboud, a founding partner of SOMA Architects, designed the tower; Piero Lissoni designed the interiors.

Asking around $3,400 a square foot, 45 Park Place ranks among the most expensive condos in Manhattan. Only 11 buildings have a higher price per square foot, according to data provided by StreetEasy.

Consider 30 Park Place. The Robert A. M. Stern-designed tower is a block away and has a Four Seasons Hotel beneath it. Apartments there start at the 40th floor and are selling for $3,132 a square foot with 82 percent sold, according to StreetEasy. Thirty Park Place has another advantage: The building is open, so buyers do not have to shop from floor plans and wait two years to move in.

“The idea that 45 Park Place would be able to garner a higher price per square foot a block away seems somewhat far-fetched,” said Grant Long, the senior economist for StreetEasy.

Mr. El-Gamal is confident that 45 Park Place, with 11-foot-high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows, will attract buyers eager to live in a high-rise in a neighborhood he describes as TriBeCa. “If I was anywhere else in New York, I would be nervous,” he said, sitting in the offices of Stribling, which is marketing 45 Park Place.

Although the project is marketed as a TriBeCa tower, the area right around 45 Park Place does not have the lofts and the historic ambience of TriBeCa, nor is it within its boundaries. TriBeCa is bounded by Canal Street to the north, West Street to the west, Broadway to the east and Murray Street to the south — which is one block north of Park Place, according to Community Board 1.

At 44, Mr. El-Gamal does not see the outcome of his project as a defeat, but instead as proof of his grit. “Real estate in New York is a blood sport,” he said. “It’s not for the faint of heart.”

Describing the controversy as “a fabricated issue,” Mr. El-Gamal, who received death threats at the time, insisted that the scaled-down museum would still achieve his original objective. “We are still building an Islamic museum and sanctuary,” he said.

For his opponents, even a small center is too much. An Islamic museum “is just as much of an insult,” Pamela Geller, a blogger and one of the center’s most vocal opponents, wrote in an email. “It will be like having a museum touting the glories of the Japanese Empire at Pearl Harbor.”…

The watchman on the wall sounding the ,ALARM!

DOCUMENTING THE ILAMIZATION OF AMERICA

France ( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! ) Do you know the proverb “Culture is a second nature,” inspired by the French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal? I was born in France, I grew up in France, and I am a 30-year-old French man among French people who has understood one thing with most of the Muslims he has met in his life: “Faced with culture, nature is only a second nature.” Nature is the force that requires you to live the longest time possible. It seems to be a universal reason to avoid death, between all the sensitive beings. To be sure that its mission won’t fail, nature has made eating (the way to survive individually) or copulating (the way to survive collectively) pleasant, and physical injury (the way to die) painful. But the spiritual development of humans inspires means and ends that are able to make them flee the best and desire the worst. A choice that happens in men and women’s minds hasn’t been decided by genes, as has the color of our skin. Suicide is a voluntary behaviour that depends on choices inspired by moral tastes or cultural values into the spirit, and not as a result of an inevitable urge to sneeze. The Islamic faith is a property of mind integrated in the believer’s brain influenced by family education, school education, the sociocultural environment of the society which the believer belongs to… I was Muslim until I was 18. During the time I was a Muslim, I had a second religion I was aware and proud of: a religion without fate, a religion where Paradise and Hell are visible before death, a religion where God never speaks, a religion where God has been created by those who believe in Him, a religion where God is the (living) picture of those who believe in Him. This other religion, now my only religion, is France. I am a French patriot who has always loved this country, his country, his home, and I know what I owe to the teachers and Christian, Atheist or Jewish friends I have met when I was at the school of the “République.” This gave me the ability to put my Muslim life into perspective and to understand why I was who I was (and not another). French culture has incorporated in me some values that the mosque education has never been able to destroy. I was a Muslim but I was mostly a humanist, a lover of freedom of expression and a defender of the freedom of belief. To go to the mosque has always been a duty for me. To learn how to be a good imitator of the Prophet Muhammad was often a constraint. But learning to understand others in order to understand myself and to be confronted with love, reason, music and pleasure of a life where I was not a believer, it was joy and satisfaction. I was a young man who had a lot of dreams; he had never talked to the God he believed in. Not because of shame, but because I considered that what I wanted was insignificant or futile by Him. The God of the Quran knows no other things to do with humans than blame, subject and guilt them. The young man I was decided one day to understand his faith before learning it. It was during the summer holidays before my first year at university. My own experience, both before and after my apostasy from Islam, has made me feel that a majority of Muslims haven’t read entirely the enormous book of the Quran. Most of them prefer to say that the Quran contains this information or this other as such imam or such sheikh have said. And most of them prefer to ask and trust the word of a “more informed believer” than to find the answer by themselves, in front of any difficulty. Did Allah justify in the Quran why He decided to prohibit eating pork? Tell 100 different Muslims from our Western countries if the answer to this question is written in the Quran. The true answer is “No,” but the majority of the believers you will question will tell you “I don’t know,” “Maybe” or “Yes.” The reading of the whole Quran, from the beginning to the end, imposes me three observations: Observation number 1 : there is a moral and intellectual antagonism between the Quran’s legal laws/value judgments and me. This finding doesn’t prove that Allah doesn’t exist. To demonstrate that the laws of the Quran are cruel, unjust or misogynistic doesn’t prove that Allah doesn’t exist or Muhammad was a liar. Either God is good or God doesn’t exist is a wobbly philosophy for me! Why might God not be bad? Why would omniscience or omnipotence force God to do more good than evil? There is no consensus on a single definition of good in the humanity. So nobody can believe in God if he assumes that any human can “kill” (a) God by judging him bad. Observation number 2 : the real Islam wanted by the real author(s) of the Quran is not a religion of peace but a religion of war and enslavement (physical and spiritual), opposed to freedom of thought. But the most powerful press and politicians from Western countries are increasingly dominated by some naive, malicious or ignorant people who don’t do the necessary things to inform citizens against Islamisation and Islam. Consequently, in a country like mine, one day during the 21th century, the Islamic part of the population where I live will become the majority. And because we are in a democracy, the majority defines the dominant cultural force and inspires laws. Observation number 3 (deduced by the first two observations): I have searched for a long time but never found a theological study able to demonstrate the danger of Islam without moralism or Manichaeism. So I have worked for years to create the book I always wanted to be accessible to my fellow countrymen. A study that can prove to Muslims and non-Muslims that Islam is false or illogical before proving that Islam is bad. There are 57 Muslim countries in the world, and many of the oldest are Arab and Muslim countries. The religious melting pot doesn’t exist in countries where the demographic and political Islamisation dominates. Religious minorities live apart in such countries. And freedom of belief is the most mistreated. And individual liberties of women, in order to be considered by law as men are considered, are violated more than elsewhere. In a country where the Quran is the law, a woman is infantilized her lifetime because she still belongs to a man, from her birth to her death. Why won’t Islam, that has always produced the same effects when it dominates politically and demographically, do in France what it has done everywhere, at all times and in all places? I had to carry out a study that shows to my compatriots that Islam is false/incoherent before trying to show that Islam is evil, in the strange Western World where I live and where too many people believe that the moral end justify the immoral means. I have understood that the secret of such a work was hiding in many (falsely) insignificant details in the Quran. I’ll give you an example of my method that has for goal to discredit the Quran by seeking to demonstrate that his official author is far from a perfect God, omniscient and omnipotent (as said in Quran), and seems rather to be created by a 7th century guru with a very indigent scientific and dialectic culture. In surah 5, verse 38, the author of the Quran (officially the God Allah) said “Cut off the hand of the thief, the male and the female, in recompense for what they committed as a deterrent punishment from Allah. And Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.” Most critical scholars of Islam and its sacred texts tell you that this legal order is horrible and that the God Allah supports barbaric methods to solve the problem of theft. In my book, Face to faith with Islam, a book that I have worked on to analyze Muslim texts without value judgments or moralism, this legal text from the Quran inspired me the next observations: – Allah doesn’t say which hand of a thief must be cut, in this verse or anywhere else in Quran. This forces the layman (human) having to fill a sacred indecision by a choice that the divine (Allah) has never done. – Allah doesn’t give a minimum amount of the stolen object for which to cut the hand is imposed. So, for an apple theft, the hand can be cut. – Allah gives no minimum age for which the thief hand cutting is required. So, an apple thief who is only 12 years old will have his hand cut. – Allah says nowhere in the Quran that the guilt, of a person subject to criminal penalties, should be judged by an impartial judge (officially close to none of the parts : accusation, defense) so a man can conduct an investigation as it pleases him, anarchic or informal, and convict a thief by cutting his hand alone. The Quranic world where everyone can take justice by and for themselves is the opposite of our Western countries where, by common sense, it is not allowed for citizens to take justice. – Allah doesn’t define private property, property giving meaning to the criminalization of the act of theft. At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, there was no administration listing of what belonged to people: houses, horses, swords… In many different places, it was up to popular reputation or to word of each to prove that anyone owned a land, an animal or an object. It is difficult to judge situations in such conditions knowing that the award is significant, painful and especially irreversible. – At the time of Prophet Muhammad, there were no video cameras or biometric tools to investigate in order to find out who robbed this house or stole this object. What is a charge of a theft which the Prophet Muhammad has never seen in his time? It is a charge of theft by a person or some persons against one or more persons . So it considers the value of speech, gestures and charisma of the person who is defending or accusing another… The smugness in that one simple narration about how to punish the male or female thief, these indecisions, these imprecisions, jumped out at me and threw in my spirit the way to discredit the legend of a superior intelligence that had sent such legislation, as imprecise and senseless. It was part of an inefficient legal cosmology and whose practice can only ensure the triumph of conspiracy or misunderstanding over the truth. The sketchy background of the Quran and its form (how to describe the text substance) can make an already dangerous Islamic law even more dangerous! The Quran invites more to cut the hand of a 12-year-old apple thief than to refrain from it. Here is my method to discredit the Quran and to prove that its dangerousness is matched only by its (technical) mediocrity. Nowhere had I needed to include value judgments in my analysis to try to prove that this law is barbaric and cruel. My study, a new way to demonstrate that the Quran is impractical, is inspired by the fact that the limited intelligence of the guru who created this text of laws is far from the ambitions of the God for whom he claims to speak. I approach all the most sensitive issues (pedophilia, criminalization of freedom of belief, restriction of the fundamental freedom of women…) and the most interesting in our time for the younger generations (the concept of “scientific miracles”, children’s education…) with this new method which aims at dusting off the philosophical work that leads to analyze the limits of the sacred texts of the Quran. Half the contents of my book is also dedicated to tearing up the best arguments from the best tribunes defending Islam in the Western world. My book is the product of many years of my life dedicated to reading, to studying, to thinking, to debating and to trying to find the right answer against the greatest threat of the 21st century. It is not an artistic challenge. It aims at alerting and mobilizing the patriots of my country with a different way that I suggest, a new method to win the battle of the ideas against a totalitarism without borders nor uniforms, and that we simply call “religion” in our Western World. This original Islam wanted by Allah or Muhammad in the Quran is a reason to live that is so dangerous for our most personal liberties, such as the liberty to think, to be or to love. This reason to live and to die never turned me away from my personal dreams and ambitions, wishes that God Allah never bothered with, and what this innocent child I was has always craved for: to never refrain from believing in anything and to refuse to let death give meaning to his life. Majid Oukacha is a former Muslim, but above all an eternal French patriot. He is the author of Face to faith with Islam

. The watchman on the wall sounding the ALARM

DOCUMENTING THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA

LISTEN: Pamela Geller on Sean Hannity Radio Discussing #CancelSarsour at CUNY Protest

AFDI #CancelSarsour Protest

Sean Hannity had me on his radio show yesterday to discuss our #CancelSarsour at CUNY protest on May 25th at noon. President of Former Muslims United Nonie Darwish joins me.

Listen. http://pamelageller.com/2017/05/listen-pamela-geller-sean-hannity-radio-discussing-cancelsarsour-cuny-protest.html/

Having trouble viewing or listening. Click here.

Hamas-CAIR says it’s UNFAIR that Muslims Are Asked About Terrorism More Than Trump Supporters

( Muslims do not assimilate, they infiltrate! )

CAIR

The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), declared a terror group by the United Arab Emirates, will stop at nothing to demonize President Trump and portray Muslims as victims, no matter how high the jihad body count rises. And now they’re doubling down on their dishonesty: first there are numerous hate crimes faked by leftists and Muslims falsely claiming to have been victimized by Trump supporters, and now Hamas-CAIR is using those fake crimes to claim that Trump supporters deserve as much scrutiny for terror acts as Muslims do. 30,000 deadly jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11. How many by Trump supporters?

“CAIR Says Unfair: Muslims Asked About Terrorism More Than Trump Supporters,” by Ashley Rae Goldenberg, MRCTV, May 9, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

At a press briefing on Tuesday, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia accused the FBI of perpetuating bias incidents against Muslims by questioning more members of the Muslim community about potential violence than supporters of President Trump.

While discussing the findings in the 2017 “Empowerment of Hate” report, co-author Corey Saylor said harassment was the number one kind of bias incident against Muslims. However, according to Saylor, the second most common kind of bias against Muslims was reportedly FBI questioning.

“But you’ll notice, in the number two spot, came the FBI,” Saylor said. “These are incidents in which people in our community were visited by, approached by the FBI and asked questions that, in the assessment of our intake staff, were really not connected to any specific investigation.”

“And one of the things that we document in the report was right before the election, there was a broad sweep of FBI agents across the country, going to members of the Muslim community, asking them things like, ‘Are you aware of any plots?’ That’s not the specific language that they used, but the question itself is in the report. We did not see any similar type of outreach to, say, Trump supporters who were documented as making a number of threats of a violent nature,” Saylor added.

“So that kind of thing to us has more to do with headquarters focused on Islam and Muslims as being more of a perceived threat than any other community. Those other communities didn’t get similar outreach,” he said….

The watchman on the wall ,sounding the ALARM!

Documenting the Islamization of America

Whoopi Goldberg SLAMS Trump For Firing James Comey – IMMEDIATELY Gets Shut Down VIDEO!!!

Whoopi advantageously overlooked the way that she has been calling for Comey to be terminated for a considerable length of time because of the way he treated the examination concerning Hillary Clinton, demonstrating that she will actually favor anybody against Trump.

Prattle Cop detailed that Whoopi called the move a "sharp turn" as she played a clasp of Trump over and again lauding Comey's activity. The last clasp demonstrated Trump saying that is more well known than him, inciting Whoopi to ask, "Is that what separated the entire circumstance?"

"There is no wrath known to man like an orange fanatic disdained," Joy Behar contributed.

Whoopi then asserted that Rudy Giuliani is in thought to supplant Comey.

"Call me insane, yet I thought he was likewise under scrutiny… So I think about whether you-know-who overlooked," Whoopi said.

Twitter clients promptly let her realize that they are tired of seeing her bash Trump.

President Trump: James Comey ‘should have never exonerated’ Hillary Clinton

Clinton Corruption

I believe President Trump got a gander at the mountain of evidence against Hillary Clinton and fired Comey for incompetence and collusion. President Trump should do the right thing and indict Clinton for high crimes.

“Trump declares James Comey ‘should have never exonerated’ Hillary Clinton”

By Bryan Logan, Business Insider, May 13, 2017:

President Donald Trump has offered additional insight into his thinking about former FBI Director James Comey. Trump said in excerpts of an NBC News interview released Friday that Comey “should have never exonerated” Hillary Clinton.

Trump, referring to the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, said that the steady flow of news surrounding that probe helped him as a candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

“I will tell you that what he did, what Comey did, had good moments for me as a candidate. I’m only talking as a candidate, I’m not saying as president,” Trump told NBC News’ Lester Holt, beginning to recount a July 2016 press conference in which Comey announced the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton in the case.

“When he came out with that scathing set of circumstances, the server … the emails, 33,000 emails … Then he gets to the end and he said she’s free as a bird,” Trump said.

Trump fired Comey from the FBI on Tuesday, an action that stunned both Republicans and Democrats, and caught agents at the bureau by surprise because the agency is deep into an investigation to find potentially improper links between Trump associates and Russian operatives.

The president’s original dismissal letter to Comey indicated that he was being fired for his handling of the Clinton email probe. On the campaign trail, Trump often declared that Clinton should have been prosecuted — despite the FBI’s findings that no charges were warranted.

Trump reiterated his displeasure with Comey on NBC News: “He had a lot of pressure put on and he exonerated her. Should have never exonerated her.”