Thursday, June 25, 2020
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Ex-Aide Outs Mahmoud Abbas’ Rampant Theft from International Donors
It's not so much that he is stealing from Int'l donors, but he is stealing from Palestinians. Keeping his people in poverty helps keep them angry at Israel, even as the real villain is among them.
Yasser Jadallah, former senior advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, reveals corruption and theft of funds by Abbas himself and other top Palestinian cronies.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
One of the biggest complaints the Palestinians have is actually against the Palestinians.
For years, ordinary Palestinians have complained about official corruption. It started decades ago in Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, where billions of dollars in donated funds disappeared into the PLO-controlled bank accounts. There was no paper trail. There was no accountability.
After the Oslo Accords in 1993 there was hope that the Palestinian Authority that came into office would finally be responsible with money ostensibly destined for the Palestinians. The Europeans and other donor countries kept pushing for transparency while Palestinian leaders always denied there was any corruption, but the Palestinians themselves always knew there was something fishy.
Tens of billions of dollars in donations over the years seemed to be getting them nowhere, and nobody could say for sure where all that money goes.
Lest you think all Palestinians live in poverty, this is the humble abode of Palestinian businessman
Mohamed Abdel-Hadi
That fishy feeling got a big confirmation recently when a whistleblower in Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s office fled to Europe to seek political asylum in Belgium and started revealing what was going on.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs recently published a translation of some of the damning comments from Yasser Jadallah, a senior official in President Mahmoud Abbas’ Political Department, confirming what Palestinians and Israelis have been saying for years: There is major corruption related to the theft of funds given to the PA by international organizations.
In a video released by a Palestinian news agency associated with Hamas, which always loves to poke Abbas in the eye, Jadallah claimed that the funds in the Palestinian Ministry of Finance listed under the heading “EU assistance and Arab states” were mostly transferred to the Palestinian presidency and from there to secret accounts known to only three people: Abbas, his private secretary Mrs. Intesar Abu Amara, and Mahmoud Salameh, Deputy Chief of Staff in the PA chairman’s office.
Jadallah claimed the funds disappeared after entering the PA bank accounts and were transferred to accounts with fictitious names, as well as to accounts with the names of Abbas’s grandchildren.
“We have passed this information onto European MPs,” Jadallah said in the video.
Jadallah said Abbas ordered his office accounts to be destroyed every six months, but in reality, they are destroyed every day for “security reasons.”
Before fleeing to Europe, Jadallah said Palestinian security agents abducted him twice and tried to stop him from revealing the corruption. PA sources denied the allegations and accused Jadallah of being a disgruntled former civil servant trying to settle scores by spreading lies.
Yasser Jadallah’s video was circulated via WhatsApp across the PA-run territories and sparked considerable interest. The PA’s silence on the issue only heightens suspicions that there is substance to the news.
The corruption issue appears to be a key reason why most Palestinians are not interested in a new intifada to fight Israel’s upcoming extension of sovereignty to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Minnesota GOP Lawmaker says Antifa and Muslim Organization Plan to ‘Police Minneapolis Under Muslim Rule’
A couple weeks ago when defunding police became the hashtag of the week, I suggested, half kidding, that it wouldn't be long before someone suggested replacing them with Sharia police.
Well, here it is already!
By Deena Winter, Minnesota Reformer
Rep. Steve Green has some thoughts.
A Minnesota lawmaker said last week Antifa and Muslim organizations plan to “police Minneapolis under Muslim rule,” communism is moving into Minneapolis-St. Paul and the state’s Democratic attorney general would like to “close down all of northern Minnesota.”
The Park Rapids Enterprise quoted Rep. Steve Green, R-Fosston, making the comments during a Hubbard County Board meeting Tuesday. Much of the discussion focused on disbursement of federal pandemic aid, according to the paper’s report.
But Green also weighed in on talk of defunding police in the wake of George Floyd’s death while a cop held his knee on his neck.
After the county board chair questioned whether there was an alternative public safety plan, Green said Antifa and Muslim organizations plan to “police Minneapolis under Muslim rule,” according to the Enterprise. He also claimed some representatives have a bill that would impose eminent domain on every business destroyed during the Floyd protests and “only sell back to people under conditions” imposed by the city.
“What you’re looking at, in my humble opinion, is communism moving into Minneapolis and St. Paul,” Green was quoted saying.
Green declined to comment.
Rep. Mohamud Noor, DFL-Minneapolis, said rather than talk about things that inflame people and create division, Minnesota needs to address the challenge before it.
“Minnesota is awake,” he said. “They understand the challenges; they have been hearing the challenges for far too long. And we can’t wait any longer.”
Green also speculated that Gov. Tim Walz wants to implement mail-in voting “and remove the county and local precincts” and said he’s “never liked mail-in ballots anywhere.”
Minnesota townships and cities outside the metro with fewer than 400 registered voters are allowed to offer mail-in balloting.
A county commissioner lamented the state shutdown’s effect on businesses and school districts, suggesting state officials either didn’t understand the consequences or have “devious intentions.” Green responded that Attorney General Keith Ellison “may try to close down all of northern Minnesota.”
“I don’t think that would bother him a bit,” he was quoted as saying.
The county board then passed a resolution encouraging Walz to let his shutdown order expire, allow churches to reopen and release all federal pandemic-related aid.
Now This Will Open Some Eyes - Darwin and Genocide
What Your Biology Teacher Didn’t Tell You About Charles Darwin
By Phil Moore | Think Theology
Charles Darwin is a great British hero. That's hardly surprising, since he was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers of the past two hundred years. I happened to live in the house opposite Charles Darwin's former lodgings when I was a student at Cambridge University, so I looked out each morning on a blue plaque hailing him as one of the greatest Britons who ever lived. Now I'm not saying that he didn't deserve that commemorative blue plaque on the wall, but I feel I have to point out that he wasn't a British hero but a British villain. You don't have to be a bible-thumping evangelical to question whether Charles Darwin's thinking deserves to be given a bit more thought. Whatever your views on origins and evolution, we can hopefully all agree that, at present, we give far too much honour to the British thinker who justified genocide.
Darwin didn’t hide his view that his evolutionary thinking applied to human races as well as to animal species. The full title of his seminal book in 1859 was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. He followed this up more explicitly in his later book The Descent of Man by spelling out his racial theory:
The western nations of Europe ... now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors [that they] stand at the summit of civilisation ... The civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races through the world.
(Vol II, pp. 796-797)
Today, most British people are, thankfully, pretty embarrassed by the racist rhetoric which undergirded the late-Victorian British Empire. What is astonishing is how little they understand that Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution provided the doctrine behind its white supremacism. Whereas the British Empire of the early nineteenth century had been dominated by Christian reformers such as William Wilberforce who sold badges of black slaves which proclaimed, “Am I not a man and a brother?”, Charles Darwin’s writings converted an empire with a conscience into an empire with a scientific philosophy instead. Four years after Darwin published his Origin of Species, James Hunt turned it into a justification for slavery. He argued in his paper ‘On the Negro’s Place in Nature’, published in 1863, that “Our Bristol and Liverpool merchants, perhaps, helped to benefit the race when they transported some of them to America.” Christian reformers had spent decades in the first half of the nineteenth century teaching Britain to view non-European races as their equals before God. In a matter of years, Darwin not only swept God off the table but also swept the value of people of every race in God’s eyes off the table with him.
Victorian Britain was only too willing to accept Darwinian Evolution as the gospel of its overseas expansion. Darwin is still celebrated on the back of the British £10 note for his discovery of many new species on his visit to Australia, but what has been forgotten is his contemptible attitude towards the Aborigines he also found there due to his beliefs about natural selection. When The Melbourne Review used his teachings to justify the genocide of the indigenous people of Australia in 1876, he didn’t try and stop them. When the Australian newspaper argued that “the inexorable law of natural selection [justifies] exterminating the inferior Australian and Maori races ... The world is better for it” because failure to do so would actually be “promoting the non-survival of the fittest, protecting the propagation of the imprudent, the diseased, the defective and the criminal,” it was Christian missionaries who raised an outcry on behalf of this forgotten genocide. Charles Darwin simply commented that “I do not know of a more striking instance of the comparative rate of increase of a civilised over a savage race” (quoted in Nicholas and Nicholas Charles Darwin in Australia p. 97).
Meanwhile, several thousand miles away, Cecil Rhodes was gleefully embracing Charles Darwin’s thinking as the justification for white expansion across Southern Africa. He was so inspired by the thinking of the Darwinian evolutionist Winwood Reade in his book ‘The Martyrdom of Man’ that he later confessed that “That book has made me what I am.” What it made him was the architect of one of the most brutal and immoral acts of European expansion and genocide in history. He wrote in 1877 that:
I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race ... It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best, the most human, most honourable race the world possesses. (John Flint, Cecil Rhodes p. 24).
I have used British examples in this blog because I am British, and it seems to me to be more polite to point out the errors in my own national worldview than it is in that of other nations. I could have pointed out the way that Charles Darwin’s thinking was used by late-nineteenth-century Americans to justify acts of genocide against Native Americans. I could have pointed out the ways that Hitler and his Nazi philosophers used it to justify wars of expansion and horrific holocaust. I could have pointed out the ways that Communist Russia used Darwinian evolution to justify its liquidation of non-Russian people groups within the Soviet empire. I could have pointed out the way it was used by Serbs to justify their genocide against Croatians and Kosovans.
But I don’t have to. The British example is enough to make us question whether Charles Darwin was truly a British hero at all. At the very least, we should strip him of his place on our £10 banknote and stop protecting his thinking from the scrutiny it deserves to receive in school classrooms, on TV documentaries and in the corridors of power.
Because, whether or not you agree with his thoughts on evolution, you should at the very least want to discover that he was wrong.
Who would you rather discover was right all along?
The Christian reformers of the early nineteenth century, like William Wilberforce and the Earl of Shaftesbury, who argued from belief in divine creation that slaves should be set free and that children should not be forced to work themselves to death in the factories for having been born to the wrong parents?
Or Charles Darwin, who argued from his belief in a godless beginning to the universe that natural selection was a virtue and that, consequently, acts of genocide were part and parcel of the way the world was always supposed to be?
In the words of Jesus Christ himself: “By their fruits you will be able to judge their teaching.”
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
The Two Michaels Have Spent a Year and a Half in a Chinese Prison Because of Trudeau's Hypocrisy
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been in a Chinese prison for more than 1.5 years. They were arrested just days after Canada did something really, really stupid. They arrested Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei, as she landed in Vancouver, on request by the US. She is suspected of violating American sanctions against Iran.
Canada (ie Trudeau) should have told Trump years ago not to expect us to help with prosecuting people suspected of breaking American sanctions. Most American sanctions have to do with economic matters, not strategic matters. Trump has been bullying countries into buying American products, especially weapons systems through such sanctions. There is only one way to handle a bully and that is to stand up to him. Trudeau didn't have the courage. Jean Cretien would have told Trump to get lost, and there would never have been the arrests of the two Michaels.
To my astonishment, the extradition court didn't throw the case out of court because Meng was not accused of violating any Canadian laws. You can't be extradited from Canada for breaking a law that doesn't exist in Canada. Nevertheless, the judge somehow saw it differently. If you have read much of my other blog, you will know how much I think of Canadian judges.
So, now we have Meng leisurely lounging in one of her two Vancouver mansions, and the two Michaels surviving in a Chinese prison that is anything but luxurious. And the Liberal government is doing nothing about it, nothing! The Attorney General has the authority to dismiss Meng's case, whereupon the two Michaels will be sent home, but he won't. Why?
The Great Hypocrisy
Two years ago Trudeau greatly interfered in a case the Attorney General was allowing to go to prosecution despite backroom political maneuvering where the PM and his staff created a law specifically to rescue the company from prosecution. The company, SNC Lavalin, the most corrupt company in Canadian history, would be allowed to buy their way out of prosecution. The AG balked and got her back up the more people from the PMO pushed her. Her courage and backbone got her fired as AG and replaced with someone with a more flexible spinal column, a team player, someone who would protect the PM at the expense of the Canadian people.
The consequence, Trudeau lost two of his best ministers, they quit. Both were women and one is indigenous. As a feminist who stands up for indigenous peoples, his hypocrisy was glaringly obvious. And, it is alarmingly obvious now as he stands before his cottage (remember when we had a parliament?) and pronounces over and over again that Canada is a country of laws and the government will not interfere with the law.
The two Michaels give Trudeau the opportunity to restate that every few days, as if it were true. I think he believes if he says it enough, we Canadians will actually believe it and forget all about the SNC-Lavalin fiasco. Consequently, it has become another fall-out from his corrupt handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair.
My question is, who approved the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in the first place? When the request came in from Washington to arrest her and hold her for extradition, who approved it? Who was the top person to authorize it? Was it a politician? If so, then politics has already interfered with the judicial system. If not, then why did we arrest someone who broke no Canadian laws? As a favour to the USA? How does that fit with politics not interfering with justice?
The Canadian government can intervene to end Meng's extradition trial. Should it?
Extradition Act allows justice minister to intervene at any point during judicial phase
Mark Gollom, Olivia Stefanovich · CBC News
Any decision on the fate of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, currently awaiting a decision on extradition from Canada, is going to have political fallout. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)
While seasoned jurists say the Canadian government has every legal right to intervene to free Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou from her extradition trial to the U.S., some experts warn such an action could have significant political ramifications.
"The question isn't whether the [Canadian government] can, the question is whether they should," said Toronto-based lawyer Brian Greenspan.
In 1999, the Extradition Act was amended to include a specific provision that provides the federal minister of justice the power to intervene in an extradition at any point during the judicial phase.
"The minister has the right to withdraw the authority to proceed and to end the extradition proceeding, and it's totally at the discretion of the minister of justice," Greenspan said.
Extradition proceedings continue in the case against Meng, who was arrested in 2018 in Vancouver on behalf of American justice officials. The United States wants to prosecute Meng for fraud, alleging she lied to banks about her company's connections with Iran, which could possibly violate U.S. sanctions.
The issue of the Canadian government intervening in the case of Meng, the daughter of the Chinese technology giant's founder, was raised recently by the wife of Michael Kovrig, one of two Canadians being held in China on charges of spying.
The Trudeau government has accused China of detaining Kovrig and Michael Spavor in retaliation for the arrest of Meng. Some have suggested Canada could secure their freedom if it put an end to the extradition proceedings against Meng and allowed her to return to China.
Trudeau has said his government continues to work behind the scenes to secure the release of the two Canadians but has ruled out a prisoner exchange.
Still in custody
The Office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, David Lametti, said in a statement Tuesday they are "well aware of the laws and processes governing" the extradition proceedings.
"As Ms. Meng's case remains before the courts, and the Minister of Justice has a direct role in the extradition process, it would not be appropriate to comment further on this matter," the statement said.
Former Supreme Court of Canada justice John Major said while Lametti can intervene at any time in the extradition process, it would be unusual — especially if after a prolonged court hearing, it concluded in favour of extradition.
But Major noted there may be reasons to do it, especially as Kovrig and Spavor languish in Chinese detention.
"I would hope before the attorney general intervenes, [he] would have reasons that convince Canadians he should," Major told CBC News.
"The attorney general has to be very cautious in overruling a trial judge who has conducted a full hearing … You just want [Lametti] to act judiciously, not politically."
'Be very cautious'
Major said Canada is stuck in a difficult position, because if the attorney general quashes the judge's decision in Meng's case, the U.S. could react. Likewise, if the judge turns down extradition, China could retaliate.
"It's a delicate situation where you have the U.S. at odds with China and Canada being caught in the middle," Major said.
Donald Abelson, director of St. Francis Xavier University's Brian Mulroney Institute of Government, said he believes it would be "a very dangerous game for Canada to play in terms of succumbing to pressure" to intervene politically in the case.
"I don't think that's a game that we want to play," said Abelson, who was also a founding director of the Canada-U.S. Institute. "It puts us in a very, very precarious position because we don't want to be seen by the Americans as succumbing to Chinese political pressure."
No, we want to be seen by Americans as succumbing to American political pressure.
Abelson said Canada would be "tempting fate" with the U.S, particularly in the current political climate, where the Chinese government has become the focus of Donald Trump's ire in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic and the countries' trade war.
Abelson said Canada doesn't want to become a "punching bag" for Washington.
David Carment, a professor at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said he believes Canada's intervention would prompt the Trump administration to use it as a rallying cry to undermine Trudeau's leadership and his pursuit for a majority government when he calls an election.
"I think all sort of diplomatic gloves would come off in this case. The United States would come out fighting and work to undermine this current government's mandate," he said.
So, it seems that the AG should not interfere with the judicial system for political reasons???????
WhaaaaaT?
Christopher Sands, director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said that the state department officials who brought the case forward against Meng would be unhappy with Canada's decision to intervene.
But Canada's decision to intervene came when they arrested Meng, in the first place.
Trump would likely be angry, send off a dismissive tweet or give Trudeau the cold shoulder at the next G7 meeting. But Sands doesn't believe it would result in major policy ramifications against Canada.
"Would it be 'Canadians are no longer allowed to cross the border?' No. The relationship between us and Canada is too big and complex for that," he said. "I can't see any lasting damage."
From CTV News:
But Treasury Board president Jean-Yves Duclos emphasized the importance of judicial independence when he was asked about this option to withdraw the extradition during his Tuesday press conference.
"In Canada, we have not only a tradition but a responsibility to work in a manner that is supportive of the integrity and the independence of our justice system," Duclos said.
"This is very important for the way in which our institutions work in Canada, we have a separation between the executive, and the legislative, as well as the judicial systems, and that's exactly what it should be."
Unless, of course, you are talking about SNC-Lavalin!
Sunday, June 21, 2020
‘Cancel Culture Despises Diversity of Opinion’: No Room for Truth, Science, Data, Reality, etc.
Publisher says Amazon suspended paid ads for new book on
‘transgender craze’
© @AbigailShrier / Twitter
The burgeoning ‘cancel culture’ has forced Amazon to ax an ad campaign for a book by a Wall Street Journal author which is critical of liberal views on transgender identity, its publishing company has said.
Regnery Publishing said that Jeff Bezos’ company suspended their paid ad for the book ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters’ by Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier.
Regnery Publishing✔
But if you’re a college fball coach who wears a conservative tshirt, an editor at the @nytimes who runs an opinion piece by a Rep senator, or a respected journalist who writes for @WSJ investigating a serious social issue affecting young women in America, you will be silenced 3/3
Regnery Publishing✔
@Regnery
If you search “transgender” in the books category on the Amazon app right now, you will see a paid ad for LGBT pride month from a prominent publisher and a paid ad for a chest binder. Amazon has told us we are not even allowed to bid on that ad space for “Irreversible Damage.”
According to the author, the book explores the idea that “trans-identification has become a peer contagion among teen girls.”
The ad was removed as it “may not be appropriate for all audiences,” because the ad or the book itself claims to “diagnose, treat, or question sexual orientation,” Fox News reported, citing an email from Amazon’s Advertising Support department to Regnery.
Abigail Shrier
@AbigailShrier
Amazon just blocked my publisher from advertising my book, IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE.
Apparently, you're allowed to promote gender ideology; you're just not allowed to question it.https://www.foxnews.com/media/conservative-publisher-regnery-amazon-transgender …
Conservative publisher claims Amazon blocked paid ads for book on 'Transgender Craze'
A prominent conservative book publisher is alleging that Amazon has suspended its paid ad campaign, claiming that it contains objectionable content about sexual orientation.
The publisher claims the ad contained only a photo of the cover, which features a drawing of a young girl with a hole in her abdomen. The book itself is still available for purchase on Amazon’s website.
Regnery described the situation as a fresh example of so-called ‘cancel culture’, a social movement to silence public figures and hide the products that certain groups find offensive.
The cancel culture has made it clear that it despises diversity of opinion, and it will not tolerate science, data, facts, or anything that contradicts the approved narrative.
Amazon did not comment on Regnery’s allegations.
The e-commerce giant has already been criticized in the past for removing books it deems controversial from its website.
Who is deciding what books we can advertise? #PCMadness is destroying so many young girls with this spectacular insanity.
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