Anti-Defamation
A disrupter, say his partisans, a purposeful provocateur. C’mon, knock it off. You know that’s not what I’m getting at.
A raging narcissist, say his foes, a serial violator of decency and law. No, that’s not where I’m trying to go here, either. Read more…
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — Addressing an audience of Jewish Americans on Saturday, President Donald Trump clearly relished the chants of “four more years” and the peppering of red “Make America Great Again” hats throughout the crowded ballroom.
“The Jewish state has never had a better friend in the White House than your president, Donald J. Trump,” he proudly told thousands gathered at the Israeli-American Council National Summit before lashing Hillary Clinton, Democrats and the previous administration. Read more…
Donald Trump arrives in London next week for a two-day Nato summit which will see him greeted on Tuesday evening by doctors, nurses and other NHS workers leading a protest of tens of thousands outside Buckingham Palace.
The protesters – aiming to highlight potential risks to the NHS in a future US-UK trade deal – will march from Trafalgar Square up the Mall, and gather at Canada Gate when Trump and other Nato leaders meet the Queen at a 6pm drinks reception.
It will mark the formal beginning of a short summit that has been in the diary for 18 months, but has ended up occurring at the closing stages of an election campaign, prompting jitters in No 10 – and making for Labour’s best hope of a comeback. Read more…
A new Reuters report based on testimonies by Iranian officials reveals how the Iranian government orchestrated the September 14 drone strikes that targeted two Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, disrupting about half of the kingdom’s oil capacity. While the attack was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and various other countries have accused Iran of plotting the operation.
According to the report, the attack was devised by leading officials of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in May, and was intended to send a message to Saudi Arabia’s ally the United States over its decision to pull out from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Tehran.
Read more: ‘Time to take out our swords’ – Inside Iran’s plot to attack Saudi Arabia
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, of which I’m a member, released a report yesterday entitled “In the Name of Hate: Examining the Federal Government’s Role in Response to Hate Crimes.” The report appears to lend credence to the Left’s narrative that the U.S. is enduring a wave of white supremacist hate crimes spurred by the election of Donald Trump. The practical effect of the report is to malign supporters of the president as violent extremists and portray the nation as a whole as intrinsically racist. The proposed solution, unsurprisingly, is greater federal involvement in local law enforcement, increased classification of crimes as “hate crimes” subject to federal prosecution, and curtailment of First Amendment freedoms.
The report is grievously flawed.
As I noted earlier this year when Jussie Smollett captivated the nation with his valiant tale of fighting two Nigerian white supremacists without losing hold of his Subway sandwich, the actual statistics about hate crimes in this country confound the Left’s narrative. Last year we were told that an increase of 1,000 reported hate crimes in 2017 versus 2016 was evidence of a “wave of hate” sweeping the country. But as journalist Robby Soave pointed out at the Commission’s hearing, the increase is likely due to the fact that 1,000 more law enforcement agencies began reporting hate crimes to the FBI in 2017. If each new agency reported just one hate crime, that alone would account for the increase. Read more…
Democratic presidential candidates in South Carolina on Saturday accused President Donald Trump of stoking racism as they vied for the state’s black vote in its strategically important early primary.
Seven Democrats participated in a forum at historically black Benedict College a day after Trump was presented an award there for his work on criminal justice, sparking outrage among candidates and temporarily prompting Senator Kamala Harris to pull out.
Harris, a former district attorney and state attorney general in California, spoke at the event on Saturday after the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center, which sponsored Trump’s award, was removed as a sponsor, her campaign said.
A spokeswoman for the nonprofit group did not comment.
“I said I would not come because I just couldn’t believe that Donald Trump would be given an award as it relates to criminal justice reform,” Harris told the audience. Read more…
Judy Shepard, co-founder of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, was invited to speak at the ADL’s youth leadership conference Tuesday. Her son, Mathew, was beaten to death in Wyoming in 1998 by two men for being gay.
She told students and faculty who gathered at the Pennsylvania Convention Center that hatred is learned and it’s up to you make that change.
“It’s a generational thing for sure. A familial thing,” she said. “They can spend all the time in school, all of the time doing these kinds of things, but when they go home and if they get the reverse message, they don’t have the wherewithal to challenge that message at home, yet. We can just give them the tools to maybe someday do that.” Read more…
The US military has published the first footage of the raid in northern Syria that resulted in the death of the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group.
Grainy video showed troops firing at militants on the ground as they flew towards the compound where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding before they moved in on the ground.
Baghdadi fled into a tunnel and killed himself by detonating a suicide vest.
After the raid the compound was destroyed with munitions.
The head of US Central Command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, said the destroyed buildings were left looking like “a parking lot with large potholes”.
Gen McKenzie said two children had died with Baghdadi in the tunnel – not three as previously reported.
He also could not confirm President Donald Trump’s graphic description of Baghdadi whimpering and crying as he died.
SEMALKA, Syria/ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Made homeless when Turkish shells slammed into his house in northern Syria, Kurdish day labourer Suleiman Mohamed and his family spent 10 days in desperate search of shelter nearby.
Now all they want is to reach neighbouring Iraq.
They are among at least 160,000 Syrian Kurds that the United Nations says fled their homes following the start of a Turkish assault on northeastern Syria. His hometown of Ras al-Ain was one of the targets hit in Turkish air strikes.
The advance began shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his forces were withdrawing from the area, giving Ankara more room to pursue its Syrian Kurdish militia enemies without the risk of clashing directly with the Americans.
Mohammed has been moving from town to town in the northeast, sleeping in schools packed with other displaced people. At one point he tried to rent a house before giving up and heading to the border with Iraq.
Some 5,000 have made it across the border in the past week, aid groups said on Monday. Many use smugglers paying up to $1,500 per family, some of those who made to camps on the Iraqi side of the border told Reuters last week.
Kurt, a Canadian Citizen, formerly a citizen of Iran, who has some disabilities, and due to some political activities regarding to supporting non-Persian peoples’ ethnic, lingual and cultural rights in Iran, had to escape from Iran and found refuge in Canada. He’s been in love with Mina, since April 2016, then the two got engaged in Sept 2016 and finally they got married in Turkey in May 2017 because Kurt can’t go back to Iran. The had wedding ceremonies in both Turkey and Iran. Due to having some concerns of his life, and also being against the inequality between men and women in Iran under sharia rules, Kurt couldn’t register his marriage in Iran. He submitted all required documents to Canadian Immigration officials to bring his wife to their home in Canada.
Despite requesting a South Azerbaijani interpreter for Mina, the immigration officer, Suna Berki, in Ankara Visa Office, intimidated and gave no chance to Mina to speak in Just Farsi because of being a citizen of Iran where non-Persian languages are banned. The Persian interpreter mistranslated Mina’s words in the interview and caused a rejection of our file. In favour of Persian chauvinism, and under her colleague influence, the immigration officer lied in her notes and refused the case unethically, unfair and biased. After 30 months of getting married Canadian immigration officials don’t give Visa to Mina to come her home in Canada while Kurt also Can’t go back to Iran to live with his wife. Canadian Immigration officials must give Visa to Mina to come her home and punish the officer, Suna Berki and the persian interpreter for using Canadian immigration system against non-Persian citizens of Iran.
