Tag Archives: Pakistan

No, It’s Not A Religion Of Peace

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Anyone who has studied Islam understands that it is not a religion of peace. Muslims who truly believe the Quran are taught that it is not a crime to murder a non-Muslim. Hatred of non-Muslims is part of their doctrine.

On Wednesday, One America News posted an article reporting:

According to government officials and local residents, a large mob of Muslim men vandalized eight churches and several homes following accusations of blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab on Wednesday, escalating tensions between local majority Muslim and minority Christian communities.

In an update on Wednesday, the National Commission for Human Rights stated that the number of churches burned “has risen to eight,” calling the situation “sad and shameful.”

A police report obtained by the press said that two Christian men in the town of Jaranwala were charged by local police with allegedly “desecrating the holy Quran and abusing the Prophet Mohammed.” According to the report, the men were charged with “blasphemy” under Pakistani law.

Pakistani Christian communities are routinely persecuted under the country’s strict blasphemy laws, which activists claim have historically been used to persecute minority groups and isolate them from public life.

According to Yasir Talib, who works for the Center for Social Justice, the crowd also vandalized and set fire to the home of one Christian man accused of making blasphemous general comments about Islam.

Talib told the press that multiple churches, including the town’s Catholic Church, Salvation Army Church, Pentecostal Church, and the local Christian colony, had been vandalized and set on fire.

The article concludes:

Pakistan is one country where blasphemy is a capital offense that is punishable by death.

In 2013, angry Muslim men in Lahore’s Badami Bagh community set fire to more than 100 homes of Christians after police arrested a 20-year-old man accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Three years earlier, a mother of five from Punjab was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death for defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed.

Asia Bibi was released from death row in 2018 after successfully appealing her conviction and death sentence.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a video of a young Muslim man explaining that he hates Christians and Jews in the name of Allah. Remember that the planes that hit the World Trade Center were crashed into those buildings in the name of Allah.

More Questions Than Answers

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On Friday, BizPacReview posted an article about the recent arrest of Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Sher-Ali. These two men are U.S. citizens, but also had Pakistani and Iranian visas among their passports. The men have been claiming with admirable audacity that they belonged to the Secret Service.

The article reports:

Among other perks of their con game was living rent-free at The Crossing, a posh, luxury D.C. apartment building; all it took to finagle their extended stay was to convince the management that they were working for the government, which can apparently open many doors in the capital. Not only that, but the pair was able to acquire access to video logs and information on fellow residents, including political staffers and federal agents.

Taherzadeh and Sher-Ali were arrested on Wednesday and arraigned on Thursday. They’re expected to make another court appearance on Friday.

It’s not clear at this time why the pair were impersonating Secret Service agents, but they have a long history of shady financial entanglements and business ventures. What’s even less clear is where the pair got all the money for their expensive lifestyle, which included the many lavish gifts they plied their fellow residents with at The Crossing. Rent-free apartments valued at $40,000 a year, multiple iPhones, a drone, a flat-screen TV, surveillance equipment, and a generator are among the many gifts that Taherzadeh and Sher-Ali allegedly doled out.

The two conmen also reportedly had quite an arsenal in their apartment. Sources told the UK Daily Mail that among the pair’s many firearms was a fully automatic suppressed M4-style rifle, a Glock 19 .9mm with high-capacity magazines, a Sig Sauer handgun, and an AR pistol. Whatever these guys were up to, it involved a lot of heavy weaponry right in the middle of Washington, D.C.

In fact, at one point early last year, the Metro Police searched Taherzadeh’s apartment, after a fellow building resident saw the cache of firearms through an open window. Although such weapons are illegal in the District of Columbia, Taherzadeh apparently produced sufficient credentials to convince the police that he was legally permitted to own them.

Among the other items allegedly recovered from Taherzadeh’s unit was a binder that contained information on other residents at The Crossing—which, as noted, is home to many actual federal agents, along with White House and congressional aides and staffers.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There is a lot about this case that we simply do not know. We need to know who these men were working for and who was paying their bills.

What Is The Role Of The Government In Marriage And Divorce?

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The dilemma I am about to share has not yet been reported in America, but I suspect it is only a matter of time. This story takes place in Denmark. Therefore, I share this article as food for thought as to how much power the government should have over marriage and divorce.

On Thursday, Front Page Magazine reported the following:

One of the many appalling challenges that have confronted Western European authorities since mass Muslim immigration began several decades ago is the arrival of adult – often elderly – men with underaged girls whom they identify as their wives.

Such marriages, of course, are not just permitted but encouraged under Islam. Muslims are taught to look in all things, big and small, to the example of their prophet, and they all know that one of the treasures of Muhammed’s harem – often described as his most beloved wife – was Aisha, whom he wed when she was six and deflowered when she was nine.

Needless to say, the pedofile alliances that are ubiquitous in the Islamic world – and legally sanctioned (or tacitly accepted) in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and elsewhere – are invariably arranged and forced on girls by their parents. They’re also usually cousin marriages. The BBC’s website provides a helpful whitewash – I mean, justification – of such unions: “Arranged marriages ensure that Muslim marriages are based on compatibility rather than lustful feelings.” Yes, because there’s nothing more compatible than a 70-year-old husband and an eight-year-old wife. At least you can be pretty sure that the little girl isn’t feeling a hell of a lot of lust.

The article continues:

Støjberg’s (Inger Støjberg – a Liberal Party member of Parliament who was then serving as Minister of Immigration, Integration, and Housing in Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s center-right government) initiatives, then, offended media hacks and ivory-tower buffoons. But they also made her a national heroine, and arguably the most popular politician in Denmark.

Now, confronted with the child-bride issue, Støjberg didn’t disappoint. At first she decided to offer the girls – 23 in all – the option of divorce. Then, realizing that many of the girls, if offered a choice, would likely be under immense family pressure to stay with their “husbands,” she ordered that all of them – except for five who were between the ages of 15 and 17 – be severed at once from their so-called spouses and granted instant divorces. Between February 10 and March 18, eighteen “couples” were separated.

But Støjberg’s swift action on child brides landed her in hot water. Immigration officials and other government bureaucrats maintained that she had no power to end marriages, even if they involved minors. The European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child were both cited – not, mind you, in favor of saving girls from statutory rape, but in favor of allowing child molesters to keep on molesting.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. A heroine has gone to prison to protect children.

There are two sides to this story–balancing the protection of children and the rights of the government. I don’t ever want the government telling anyone they have to get a divorce, but I don’t want pedophilia allowed either.

I think we are going to have to look carefully at our immigration policies to see if we will permit these pedofile alliances to continue when immigrants enter the country. America has rules regarding pedophilia and the protection of children. Many of the Arab cultures do not. If people want to come to America, I think they need to follow our rules. However, I don’t want to give the government the right to demand a divorce.

Our Pakistani “Allies”

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Jihad Watch reported the following today:

Interrogation of two female suicide bombers named Shifa Haris and Mizha Siddique of the Islamic State’s Kerala module has revealed that around 3200 ISIS sleeper cells are operating in Kerala, India. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) team from Delhi arrested both of the women from a residence at Thana in Kerala’s Kannur in August of this year.

Each of these cells has around 10 members, which translates to the presence of 32000 Islamic jihadis in the state, with at least 40% of these being women. Many of these women have been converted to Islam from other faiths through narcotics jihad or grooming jihad. The charge sheet presented by the NIA states that Mizha Siddique had travelled to Tehran with her accomplices and intended to cross over to Syria illegally, but failed. Mizha was working under the direction of the Kerala ISIS kingpin, Mohammad Ameen, and recruiting Muslim youth for ISIS. Mohammad Ameen is now behind bars. Mizha had recruited her cousins Shifa Harris and Mushab Anwar for jihad and inspired them to join ISIS. Shifa had sent funds to their Kashmir module; they were planning Hijra, Islamic religious migration, to Kashmir. About seven young jihadis were set to migrate to Kashmir from Kerala.

This large-scaled permeation of sleeper cells suggests that the ideologues of the Islamic State are now embedded across Kerala, and its growth is difficult to monitor or check. Most of the members of the ISIS sleeper cells are part of its cyber brigade, are incorrigibly indoctrinated, and could pick up arms at any moment to fight for a caliphate led by the Islamic State.

These jihadis are mostly modern, highly qualified, and adept at using the latest technologies and gadgets. Apart from grooming, many were lured into this cause with promises of sex, money, positions, drugs, or foreign jobs. The Kerala brigade also involves people from the film and media industries, who are working closely with each other.

The article concludes by noting the role that Pakistan played in the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan:

The victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan was impossible without the support of the Pakistani military. In between May and June of this year, Pakistan started to position the Taliban with a renewed image on the international stage. Pakistani federal minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi publically claimed that “the Taliban might wear baggy dresses but they have intelligent brains,” and Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed asserted that the current Taliban leadership is a moderate one compared to the Taliban of 1996 that had publicly displayed the dead bodies of the then-Afghan president Najibullah and his brother. Again, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan denied the US airspace for attacking the Taliban.

The Taliban commanders, on the other hand, were functional in Peshawar and Quetta in Pakistan, much like how Osama bin Laden was operating out of their backyard. They were transferring both their troops and those of Pakistan towards Kabul and other major Afghan cities. The Pakistani agency ISI was overseeing these jihad terror cells, and has provided a fertile breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. When the most opportune time arrives, they may reach out to the jihadis-in-the-making in Kerala’s sleeper cells and order them to carry out massive acts of terror.

Why in the world are we giving Pakistan foreign aid?

Good Questions

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The Daily Wire posted an article today that included some very good observations and questions from Investigative Reporter Lara Logan about Afghanistan.

The article notes:

On Thursday, award-winning investigative journalist Lara Logan fired off a challenge to the mainstream media regarding the United States’ pullout from Afghanistan, stating that the Haqqani network — which according to the United Nations is comprised of “the Taliban’s most combat-ready forces” — had “taken over Afghan intel services,” allowing the Taliban to know “which houses to hit in first 12 hrs, almost imposs in a city w/o exact addresses.”

She continued, “US media needs to ask why US/Intel/NSA allowed sensitive mil equipment to be transported to Pakistan w/o doing anything? Why is the Biden admin not acknowledging the Afghan govt – VP Amrullah Saleh hasn’t surrendered, announced he’s acting Pres under constitution US helped draft.”

Logan began her short Twitter thread by writing, “The real issue in Afghanistan is what happens next because right now Haqqani network/Pakistani ISI has taken over Afghan intel services, can blackmail/target Afghans for years. Taliban knew precisely which houses to hit in first 12 hrs, almost imposs in a city w/o exact addresses.”

She continued, “The greatest gift to the Taliban from US Pres Envoy Khalilzad was US leaving Bagram Air base instantly giving up Afghan air space, signals Intel etc. Nothing you see now would be happening if the US had not done that -demanded by Taliban, opposed by US mil, overruled by State Dep.”

“US media needs to ask why US/Intel/NSA allowed sensitive mil equipment to be transported to Pakistan w/o doing anything?” she asked. “Why is the Biden admin not acknowledging the Afghan govt — VP Amrullah Saleh hasn’t surrendered, announced he’s acting Pres under constitution US helped draft.”

I don’t expect answers from the mainstream media. In fact, I don’t ever expect them to acknowledge the questions.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

All Cultures Are Not Equal

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On Friday, The Christian Post posted an article about Arzoo Raja, a thirteen-year-old girl who was kidnapped and married to a 44-year-old Muslim man.

The article reports:

Arzoo Raja’s parents bowed to touch the feet of Pakistani police officers, begging to see their daughter who was kidnapped by Ali Azhar from their home on Oct. 13, but they refused.

Instead, the high court of Pakistan’s Sindh province changed their daughter’s name to the more Islamic “Arzoo Fatima” and announced that she “understood and realized that Islam is a universal religion,” International Christian Concern reported.

Raja wasn’t able to tell her parents or anyone else what she “understood” about Islam because her abductor, whom the court referred to as her “husband,” has had her locked in a single room after getting her pregnant, International Christian Concern’s South Asia Regional Manager Will Stark told The Christian Post. Azhar has children near Raja’s age.

The article concludes:

Raja was forced to officially convert to Islam by signing a piece of paper, he said. She might have been tortured, threatened, tricked or drugged into signing it. Once she did, the courts could apply Islamic religious law to her case. In Raja’s case, the conversion shouldn’t be legally valid.

“According to Pakistan law, you shouldn’t be able to convert without your parents’ permission until you’re 18,” Stark said. “Arzoo is 13.”

That point probably won’t matter to the court, he said. Although most government officials in Pakistan don’t support Islamic child marriage, they can be bullied by radical Muslim groups. These groups often murder judges when they feel Islam has been shamed.

Pakistan’s signature on U.N. documents that promise to end child marriage means little, Stark said.  

“They know if they inject religion into a case, they can play on religious biases to cover up their crimes or retain custody. It’s a concerning update because two cases from the same court have held this way,” he said.

To fight the radical Islamists who support child marriage, people around the world can sign petitions for Raja’s return. Pakistan’s government depends on international aid to survive, so its government can be responsive to international pressure, he said.

People can sign a petition for Shahbaz and email the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan at ACSIslamabad@state.gov about Raja.

“That sort of outside pressure is helpful,” Stark said. “We need to keep pressure on Pakistan so the scales of justice are even.”

This is not acceptable behavior.

This Would Be Funny If It Weren’t So Sad

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Fox News posted an article about some recently declassified documents today that really makes me wonder about the wisdom of choosing Joe Biden as the Democrat nominee for President.

The article reports:

Usama bin Laden wanted to assassinate then-President Barack Obama so that the “totally unprepared” Joe Biden would take over as president and plunge the United States “into a crisis,” according to documents seized from bin Laden’s Pakistan compound when he was killed in May 2011.

The secretive documents, first reported in 2012 by The Washington Post, outlined a plan to take out Obama and top U.S. military commander David Petraeus as they traveled by plane.

“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency,” bin Laden wrote to a top deputy. “Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour … and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden specifically wanted fellow terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri to shoot down Obama.

“Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to the top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Kashmiri wouldn’t get too far along in the plot, however; he was killed in 2011 in a U.S. drone strike shortly after bin Laden himself was shot to death by Navy SEALs.

I guess Joe Biden’s reputation internationally is not too wonderful.

Misplaced Concern For Human Rights

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CBN News is reporting today that the United Nations has released a list of companies that have businesses in areas Israel captured as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War.

The article reports:

The list was designed to punish more than a hundred companies doing business in east Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights. Israel froze ties with the council’s leader, accusing the office of serving the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction) campaign.

Reaction came quickly after the report’s release and US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) accused the council of persecuting Israel while protecting the world’s worst tyrants. He called on the body to “investigate the crimes of its own members instead of obsessing over the Jewish state.”

The UN has a history of actions against Israel. The United Nations Human Rights Council was created in 2006. Since then, it has issued 45 resolutions against Israel, about 45% of all country-specific resolutions issued. The United Nations Human Rights Council includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Venezuela, and Libya. None of these countries are stellar examples of human rights.

The article notes:

After the release of the database Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to boycott those who boycott Israel, calling the Human Rights Council a “biased body that is devoid of influence.” His political rival, Benny Gantz, also condemned the publication, calling it a “dark day” for human rights.

Jason Greenblatt, one of the architects of President Trump’s Middle East peace plan, told CBN News the public should be pro-active against the boycott movement.

“First of all, shame on them. You know, they were working on this, they held it back and now after a peace plan is launched they go ahead and do that, shame on the Human Rights Council. The UN is a terrible place for Israel. I would actually encourage all of your viewers to write letters to [UN Secretary-General António Guterres] and protest that,” said Greenblatt.

…Ironically, any resulting boycotts would likely hurt Palestinians the most. For example, CBN News has reported how international pressure forced the SodaStream company to leave Mishor Adumim and move to Israel costing many of the 500 Palestinian employees their jobs.

“The Palestinians certainly stand to suffer if these types of measures are put in place. It will harm companies that employ Palestinians; it will harm companies that provide goods and services to Palestinians,” NGO Monitor’s Yona Schiffmiller told CBN News.

He also said the majority of the list’s information came from BDS linked groups.

“I think it’s also important to note that the activities these companies are being targeted for are completely legitimate. There is no international standard that bars business activity in occupied territories or in settlements,” Schiffmiller explained.

“Many of the companies that we’re talking about are conducting activities that are outlined in the Oslo Accords. So, these are internationally recognized agreements between Israel and the Palestinians that the UN is now completely disregarding by putting out this list,” he concluded.

The article concludes with actions that anyone can take to fight this:

Just last year, 600 businessmen and women from more than 50 countries will come to Israel to connect with and invest in Israeli business leaders for the second-annual ARISE conference.

“We’re really tackling some of the greatest crises around the world. And so, we’ve invited them to connect with Israeli businesses and meet face to face and create those connections and transactions that will help bring Israeli innovation to the world,” ARISE Founder and President Adv. Calev Myers told CBN News.

Over the last few years, various states in the US have passed laws against boycotting Israel. Schiffmiller said the international community is within its rights to stop supporting a UN body that’s potentially harming these companies.

STOP THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL! 
Sign the Petition
Text “STOPBDS” to 41-444
VISIT: CBN.COM/STOPBDS

Please do.

This Needed To Be Done

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Yesterday CBN News posted an article about President Trump’s visit to the United Nations.

The article reports:

On Monday, President Donald Trump made history with a big push for the United Nations to truly focus its attention on global religious liberty. 

On the first day of a three-day scheduled visit during the UN’s General Assembly, the President’s big focus was a meeting about the worldwide persecution of religious minorities, especially Christians.

The event called a “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” was attended by key evangelical leaders including Franklin Graham, Paula White, Jentezen Franklin, Tim Clinton, and Cissie Graham Lynch. The president was introduced by Vice President Mike Pence.

President Trump began his remarks by saying, “The United States is founded on the principle that our rights don’t come from government, they come from God.”

He said the facts are clear that 80 percent of the world doesn’t enjoy the same protection for religious freedom that US citizens enjoy.

Trump said it was an “urgent moral duty” for world leaders to stop crimes against faith.

“The United States of America calls upon the nations of the world to end religious persecution, to stop the crimes against prisoners of faith, to release prisoners of conscience,” Trump said.

The Trump administration has hosted annual meetings on the topic in Washington, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced during this year’s event that he would create an international alliance dedicated to the issue.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission includes the following members: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, South Africa, and Pakistan. In most of these countries, religious freedom is an impossible dream. In South Africa, white farmers are being murdered and their land taken. This is the United Nations President Trump is working with. I admire his effort, but I believe that the United Nations has become so corrupt that they are no longer an organization capable of working toward either peace or freedom. They need to be kicked out of New York City and dissolved.

 

Why Immigration Matters

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Immigration with assimilation is a wonderful thing. Immigration without assimilation is a threat to the national sovereignty of the country involved. Massive immigration without assimilation will eventually change the public policies of the country involved. We are currently seeing that change in Britain.

National Review posted an article today about the case of Asia Bibi. The article was written by Douglas Murray.

The article reports:

When I wrote The Strange Death of Europe, I wanted to highlight the sheer scale of change that immigration brings. Some people might be happy with it, others unhappy: but to pretend that the change doesn’t occur, or won’t occur, or isn’t very interesting so please move along has always seemed an error to me. For instance, as I noted then, an internal document from the Ministry of Defence that leaked a few years back said that Britain would no longer be able to engage militarily in a range of foreign countries because of “domestic” factors. It takes a moment to absorb this. We’re used to wondering about how immigration changes domestic politics. But foreign policy as well?

All of this is to say that the latest news from the U.K. is both thoroughly predictable and deeply disturbing. Readers of National Review will be familiar with the case of Asia Bibi. She is the Christian woman from Pakistan who has been in prison on death row for the last eight years. Her “crime” is that a neighbor accused her of “blasphemy.”

Because it is not safe for Ms. Bibi to remain in Pakistan because of her Christian faith, she is seeking asylum in various western countries. Britain has stated that it will deny Ms. Bibi asylum.

The article reports:

But today there are reports that the British government has said that it will not offer asylum to Asia Bibi. The reason being “security concerns” — that weasel term now used by all officialdom whenever it needs one last reason to avoid doing the right thing. According to this report, the government is concerned that if the U.K. offered asylum to Bibi it could cause “unrest among certain sections of the community.” And which sections would that be? Would it be Anglicans or atheists who would be furious that an impoverished and severely traumatized woman should be given shelter in their country? Of course not. The “community” that the British government will be scared of is the community that comes from the same country that has tortured Asia Bibi for the last eight years.

The article concludes:

In any case, if it is true that the British government has declined to offer Asia Bibi asylum for this reason, then it should lead to a huge national and international outcry. Among other things, it suggests that the British government has got its priorities exactly the wrong way around. For it is not Asia Bibi who should not be in Britain. It is anyone from the “communities” who would not accept Asia Bibi being in Britain who should not be in the country. Though I wouldn’t expect any British politician to express that simple truth any time soon.

Immigration without assimilation is not a good thing for any country.

 

When Justice Takes A Vacation

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No, this is not an article about either Paul Manafort or Michael Cohen. This is an article about former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan.

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported:

A federal judge declined to give jail time to former Democratic IT aide Imran Awan Tuesday, saying he has “suffered enough” at the hands of politicians “at the highest levels of government.” In addition, the Department of Justice said it did not find any evidence that supported criminal charges.

…Judge Tanya Chutkin gave Imran three months of supervised release. Imran’s attorney had hoped to avoid the supervision, indicating Imran wanted to go back to Pakistan: “By ending this today, you will allow Hina to build her family wherever she chooses and allow Imran to visit his father’s grave and secure his legacy,” the attorney said.

The lawyer, former Hillary Clinton aide Chris Gowen, said Imran was motivated by love for his father, who was dying in Virginia when Imran flew to Pakistan. Imran, he said, was in a “panic” to get money to urgently build a charity hospital, described in court as a “women’s shelter.” He described the urgent moves as “securing his father’s legacy.”

Well, I guess everyone is entitled to their version of the story.

The article continues:

The story is at odds with a 2009 Pakistani newspaper article, police reports and lawsuits in Pakistan, as well as interviews. Those allege Imran tried to cut others out of a fraud-plagued real estate deal and secure a massive inheritance in the form of a major real estate complex, known as a “colony.”

A dozen farmers accused Imran and his father of stealing their land and subdividing it to build the development. The 2009 article said that Imran used political “muscle” stemming from his job in Congress to attempt to frame his alleged victims. Later, Faisalabad Agricultural University faculty apparently paid for some of those plots, but said that they, too, were ripped off. Dr. Zafar Iqbal, a university professor and president of the faculty association, told TheDCNF that Imran and his father refused to turn over the deeds and that in January 2017, Imran cautioned them that he “has got powerful political connections.”

In addition to two separate groups of victims, the Awans had two partners in this land deal — Rashid Minhas and Shabbir Ahmed — both of whom were allegedly cut out of the partnership. Minhas said that when he went out of town, they seized his share of the proceeds. Ahmed’s widow, Bushra Bibi, said in the 2009 article that, immediately after a car crash killed both Ahmed and the Awans’ mother, Imran threatened her with “dire consequences” to force her to give up her share, and framed her brother-in-law. A support letter submitted by a former aide to Rep. Robert Wexler seemed to contradict the widow’s own statements, claiming “Imran would send money every month to the widow and children of the driver to help take care of them.”

As if that were not enough, let’s look at some of the past antics of Mr. Awan.

In July, The Daily Caller reported the following:

A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”

In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

The July article in The Daily Caller might shed some light on what just happened:

Eighteen months after the evidence was recounted in the urgent memo, prosecution appears to have stalled for reasons not publicly explained. Imran is in court July 3 for a possible plea deal in the bank fraud case. Gohmert said the FBI has refused to accept evidence demonstrating alleged House misconduct, and some witnesses with first-hand knowledge say the bureau has not interviewed them.

Let’s bring a little common sense into this. Mr. Awan had access to a large number of computers of Democrat House members. In some cases he had their passwords. He was aware of everything that went on in their computers and quite likely made copies of much of the information. Might there be some information people high up in our government are keeping from the American public? Is this another example of injustice in the Washington Swamp?

Common Sense Is Slowing Arriving In America Regarding The United Nations

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Yesterday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the United States will be withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council. Some of the current members of the Human Rights Council are Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. The Human Rights Council does not have a history or actually protecting human rights.

The following is from Wikipedia, but still is noteworthy:

Since its creation in 2006—the Council had resolved almost more resolutions condemning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. The 45 resolutions comprised almost half (45.9%) of all country-specific resolutions passed by the Council, not counting those under Agenda Item 10 (countries requiring technical assistance).[1] From 1967 to 1989 the UN Security Council adopted 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab–Israeli conflict. In early Security Council practice, resolutions did not directly invoke Chapter VII. They made an explicit determination of a threat, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, and ordered an action in accordance with Article 39 or 40. Resolution 54 determined that a threat to peace existed within the meaning of Article 39 of the Charter, reiterated the need for a truce, and ordered a cease-fire pursuant to Article 40 of the Charter. Although the phrase “Acting under Chapter VII” was never mentioned as the basis for the action taken, the chapter’s authority was being used.

One thing to consider when looking at how the United Nations began and where it is now is the creation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1969. In 2011, this group was renamed the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. The original charter of the organization emphasized the goal of “revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world.” The group consists of 57 members, including Sunni and Shia states. Its membership is not limited to Arab states. This group has become a major power bloc in the United Nations and bears much of the responsibility for the anti-democratic turn the United Nations has taken. The United Nations no longer supports freedom–it has become a place where dictators can parade as great leaders while their people are starving or imprisoned.

Leaving the United Nations Human Rights Council is the right thing to do. The next step is to leave the United Nations entirely.

Ignoring A Major Story

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article which reveals how biased our mainstream media has become. If you depend on the mainstream media for your news, the following events may come as a surprise to you.

The article lists the timeline on the scandal involving the Information Technology specialists working for many of the Democrats in Congress. This is the timeline (the story has been covered from the beginning by The Daily Caller):

  • August 1 — “GOP Rep: House IT Scandal Among ‘All-Time Congressional Scandals’ Of Last 30 Years.” That time frame would take things back to before the infamous House Bank scandal, which ended the careers of dozens of Congresspersons who routinely wrote checks despite having insufficient funds in their House Bank accounts to cover them. Of the 22 congresspersons singled out for particularly egregious abuse in this scandal (and although, to be clear, many other congresspersons engaged in the practice), 18 were Democrats.
  • August 3 — “Florida Congressman Pays Girlfriend’s Family, Money Launderer For Unexplained Work.” If it involves Florida and political corruption, you almost have to know that the name of Congressman Alcee Hastings, who was one a federal judge until he was impeached and convicted by the House and Senate, respectively, in 1989, will come up. In this instance, Hastings allegedly “used his taxpayer-funded office to pay high salaries to a convicted money launderer, as well as Hastings’s girlfriend and her daughter, and the Florida politician won’t say what kind of work the convicted money launder(er) does.” This is potentially relevant to the Imran Awan case because it “raise(s) questions about how common it is for members of Congress to place ‘ghost employees’ on the payroll” — an allegation which potentially applies to Awan’s vastly overpaid relatives.
  • August 4 — “DWS: Imran Awan Is The Kindest, Bravest, Warmest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known In My Life.” This item by Jim Treacher, whose penetrating sarcasm is a national treasure, isn’t newsworthy by itself, but it does link to a Broward County (FL) Sun Sentinel item where Wasserman Schultz ridicules the notion that Awan was trying to flee the U.S. when he was arrested at Dulles Airport after having transferred about $300,000 to an account or accounts in Pakistan. If a Republican congressman made such a claim about an aide in a similar situation, the late-night leftist activists posing as comedians would be all over it.
  • August 4 — “Wasserman Schultz Says Laptop She Sought To Keep From Police Was Awan’s, Not Hers.” Imagine that: After resisting police efforts to seize the laptop based on issues relating to whether it belongs to a “member” (of Congress), Wasserman Schultz has now totally changed her tune, claiming that, in reporter Luke Rosiak’s words, “it was Imran’s laptop but purchased using taxpayer funds from her office,” and that, in her words, “This was not my laptop. I have never seen that laptop. I don’t know what’s on the laptop.”
  • August 5 — “Jeb Bush Just RIPPED Debbie Wasserman Schultz Over The House IT Scandal.” What Bush said or didn’t say isn’t nearly as important as the should-be-obvious point that if someone like Chuck Schumer or Andrew Cuomo was “ripping” a Republican involved in a scandal like this, you’d have to rent a major hotel meeting room to accommodate the establishment media horde which would be hanging on their every word instead of ignoring the successful governor of one of the nation’s largest states.
  • August 8 — “Grassley Seeks Immigration Files For Pakistani Suspects In House IT Probe.” Yes, “suspects” is plural: “the immigration files were requested for … (Imran Awan’s) wife, Hina Alvi, his brothers Abid and Jamal, sister-in-law Natalia Sova and friend Rao Rabbas. All are suspects in the criminal investigation, which became public in February.”
  • August 17 — “Two Former Wasserman Schultz IT Aides Indicted For Conspiracy Against US.”
  • August 18 — “Media Ignores Indictment Of Wassermann Schultz IT Aide.” How often does the actual indictment of criminal arrested on serious charges while potentially facing far more serious charges relating to a congressional scandal get totally ignored by the establishment press? I’m sorry, I meant to ask how often that happens if the person involved is or is associated with a Republican or conservative. Answer: almost never.
  • August 22 — “Dem Rep Dodges Questions On Arrested House IT Staffer.” New York Congresswoman Yvette Clarke “agreed last year to sign away $120,000 of missing computer equipment for the two former IT aides who authorities now believe stole the gear from Congress,” and “refused to answer questions” from a reporter about Awan.
  • August 24 — “DWS ‘Islamophobia’ Claim Prompts Angered Marine To Go Public On Awans.” Yes, Wasserman Schultz and Awan’s Bill Clinton-connected lawyer are claiming that the matter is of no substance, and that it’s really about “Islamophobia.” It’s really hard to blame the Marine involved for getting extremely angry over this when he sees someone who has sworn to uphold the Constitution and protect this country’s interest so obviously demonstrate that she cares about neither.

Isn’t this story newsworthy?

The Cost Of Political Correctness

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Breitbart is reporting today that Britain is prepared to deport four Pakistani men who hold dual citizenship in the U.K. and Pakistan. The men have fought the deportation claiming that they were the victims of prejudice against Muslims. The truth is very different.

The article reports:

The Rochdale gang to which they belonged was convicted in 2012 of preying on girls as young as 13 in the northern town, plying them with drink and drugs before they were “passed around” for sex.

 Mr. Ahmed is currently serving 22 years for preying on vulnerable teenagers on the street of Rochdale, as well as for 30 child rapes on a young Asian girl he treated as a “possession” for more than a decade. Adil Khan, 47, Abdul Rauf, 48, and Abdul Aziz, 46, have been released on license.

Mr. Justice McCloskey, president of the immigration and asylum chamber of the upper tribunal, said: “The appellants were all many years older than their victims. In some cases girls were raped callously and viciously and in others they were forced to have sex with paying customers.

“The sentencing judge noted that some of the appellants acted to satiate their lust, others did so for financial gain and some had both motivations. All were condemned as having treated their victims as worthless and undeserving of basic respect.”

The judge added: “These offences were shocking, brutal and repulsive.”

As horrible as what they were doing is, it is not the whole story.

In September 2014, I posted an article about the problems with this group of Pakistanis preying on young girls.

That article included the following statements:

The Rotherham scandal and a series of cases in towns including Rochdale highlighted how evidence of Pakistani men targeting white girls for abuse was repeatedly played down for fear of accusations of racism.

Mr Danczuk (Simon Danczuk, who helped expose a pattern of grooming of white teenage girls by men from a Pakistani background in Rochdale, where he is the Labour MP) said the elements of Pakistani political culture itself were partly to blame for the cover-up.

“There are cultural issues around the way politics are done in the Asian community which have to change,” he said.

He said he had personally come under pressure from Asian councillors and members of the community for speaking out as well as being warned by prominent figures in his party.

He pointed to the way in which two Muslim councillors in Rochdale had provided character references for one of the perpetrators of the Rochdale abuse.

“Politics are done differently in Pakistan, it is a cultural difference we have imported some of that into some of these northern towns and cities and I think we have to face up to the fact that we can’t carry on doing politics like that.

“It is not healthy and the direct consequence is that we end up having to tackle issues like has been faced in Rotherham.”

He described it as “a looking after your own” within the Asian community which other politicians had accepted.

So the rape of these teenage girls was played down in the name of sensitivity to another culture. What garbage! The actions of these men continued long past when they should have been stopped–because of racial sensitivity. Does this not perfectly illustrate the folly of political correctness? These young girls were subjected to horrific things because someone was afraid of being labeled racist or culturally insensitive. Have we lost our minds? Western culture does not condone the rape of young girls. In Islam, the marriage to a child was perpetrated by the founder of the religion. There are differences in cultures, and we need to recognize those differences before we find ourselves allowing things that no one should allow.

How Do You Identify A Terrorist?

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The DC Caller posted an article today about the attack on students at Ohio State University this morning. The attacker was Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Somali refugee who came to America (after fleeing to Pakistan from Somalia in 2007) in 2014. As a refugee, he was granted legal permanent status. This morning he drove a car into a group of people and exited the car, attacking people with a knife. He was killed by a police officer during his attack.

The article reports:

Furthermore, “The Lantern” — OSU’s campus newspaper — ran an interview with Artan just a few months ago, in which he criticized the school for not having Muslim prayer rooms on campus.

“I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media,” he stated. “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be.”

“I don’t blame them,” he cotinued. “It’s the media that put that picture in their heads so they’re just going to have it, and it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable.”

How do we vet refugees so that this does not happen again? How many ‘lone wolf’ incidents do we need before we see a pattern? What role should the government play in keeping American citizens safe?

Sometimes You Wonder About The ‘What If’s’

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The U.K. Daily Mail posted a story yesterday (and updated it today) about a Muslim man who was planning to go to Disneyland with his family, but was stopped from boarding his flight and his visa to America revoked. It seems that there was a Facebook page set up by someone who lived as his address claiming links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The article reports:

When asked about the account, Mr Mahmood believed hackers may have been to blame, adding: ‘That could be anything, maybe a mistake.’

He said: ‘It is not my son’s Facebook page. It has a similar name, but not the same as my son’s. 

‘The page is also linked to our home address and that could be coincidence. I don’t know why it is linked there. The name is not even the same. The authorities must have linked it simply because of the name Hamza.’

It was understood that the wives of Mr Mahmood and his brother had stayed at home for the trip because one of them was ill and one of the children did not have a valid passport.

But it is now believed that Mr Mahmood’s wife was in Pakistan at the time.

The family say were given no explanation why their visas, organised six weeks before the flight, were suddenly cancelled at the last minute and have now lost the £11,000 they had saved for the holiday.

It has also been suggested the move by US authorities could be due to Mr Mahmood’s brother having been refused entry to Israel eight years ago, but no official explanation has been given by the US Embassy.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing if the man is actually linked to terrorism or not, but I would rather inconvenience one family than let a terrorist into America. If the Facebook page was a joke done by Mr. Mohmood’s son, it was a joke done in extremely bad taste. It was also a joke that had unintended consequences.

I am sorry for the disappointment that this family experienced, but considering the contents of the Facebook page, I don’t think they should have been allowed to come to America until that was explained.

The Nobel Peace Prize Gets One Right

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The Nobel Peace Prize committee has made some interesting choices in the past. Generally speaking, they have often considered politics rather than substance. This year, however, I think they have gotten it right.

The Washington Post posted a story today about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi.

The article reports:

Malala Yousafzai, who at 17 became the youngest Nobel laureate, won the prize exactly two years and one day after she was nearly killed by a bullet to the head during a Taliban assassination attempt in her native Swat Valley. She was targeted for her outspoken advocacy of female education — a cause she has championed relentlessly ever since, in spite of further threats.

Speaking from the British city of Birmingham on Friday, she reveled in the committee’s decision to share her prize with an Indian, 60-year-old Kailash Satyarthi, who has spent decades crusading against child slavery.

Congratulations to both of these brave women for the causes each one supports.

The Dangers Of Political Correctness

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The story that recently came out of Rotherham England is extremely upsetting. The U.K. Telegraph posted a story on Sunday about the sexual abuse of at least 1,400 children over 16 years. The fact that this continued over a sixteen-year period is horrendous. These children can never buy back their innocence. They will probably never fully recover from the damage that was done when the abuse continued for sixteen years without being addressed. The really scary fact here is that the authorities were hesitant to pursue reports of the abuse because they did not want to be called racists. That is truly sad. People in charge were afraid to stand up for justice because it might not be politically correct.

The article reports:

The Rotherham scandal and a series of cases in towns including Rochdale highlighted how evidence of Pakistani men targeting white girls for abuse was repeatedly played down for fear of accusations of racism.

Mr Danczuk (Simon Danczuk, who helped expose a pattern of grooming of white teenage girls by men from a Pakistani background in Rochdale, where he is the Labour MP) said the elements of Pakistani political culture itself were partly to blame for the cover-up.

“There are cultural issues around the way politics are done in the Asian community which have to change,” he said.

He said he had personally come under pressure from Asian councillors and members of the community for speaking out as well as being warned by prominent figures in his party.

He pointed to the way in which two Muslim councillors in Rochdale had provided character references for one of the perpetrators of the Rochdale abuse.

“Politics are done differently in Pakistan, it is a cultural difference we have imported some of that into some of these northern towns and cities and I think we have to face up to the fact that we can’t carry on doing politics like that.

“It is not healthy and the direct consequence is that we end up having to tackle issues like has been faced in Rotherham.”

He described it as “a looking after your own” within the Asian community which other politicians had accepted.

This is the danger in allowing an immigrant population to settle in a country and not assimilate. We have the same problem in America. I am not opposed to legal immigration, but when you bring in a population and do not teach them how America (or Britain) works, you may find that population doing things that are considered illegal here.

The role of women in Britain and America is very different from the role of women in Muslim countries. We need to make sure that young girls and women who live in America and Britain are treated with the respect the law grants them. In Muslim countries, under Sharia Law, women have no legal standing. Rape is not rape unless a woman has male witnesses to confirm that it was a rape. A women can be jailed or killed for being raped in a Muslim country. We do not need those laws or that attitude here. Immigrants should be welcomed, but they should also be required to understand that all citizens have rights in America and Britain–not just male citizens.

 

Securing The Border Is A National Security Issue

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The Blaze posted an article yesterday reminding us that all of the people rushing across the southern border of the United States are not fleeing violence in South America–some are hoping to create violence here.

The article reports:

“We have limited resources,” said the agent (a Texas Border Patrol agent), who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It’s frustrating for all of us and there’s no doubt that we have OTMs [Other Than Mexicans] coming from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and other parts of the world that we are very concerned with — these guys won’t be turning themselves into Border Patrol like the family units or children. I expect we’ll see more the OTMs of special interest this year and next, now that they know they can get in easier and they won’t be turned back home.”

Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, is also spoken in parts of Afghanistan and India. People coming from these parts of the world are considered persons of special interest because of their potential connections to extremist groups in those regions, the agent said.

“We’ve found Korans, prayer rugs and many other unusual items at the border that certainly raise concern,” the agent said.

How many Americans will die before the current White House does something to close our borders?

My Heartfelt Sympathies For The Families Involved

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My heart goes out to the families and friends of those who were on Flight 370. It just seems as if there is an awful lot we just don’t know.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today that throws a whole new light on the mystery. It seems that the two Rolls Royce engines on the airplane automatically transmitted data to Rolls Royce, on the ground, at 30 minute intervals.

The article reports:

It has now been revealed by American investigators that, according to Rolls Royce, the engines’ transmissions continued for four hours after the airplane disappeared. The pilot(s) or hijackers could have, and apparently did, turn off the plane’s transponder, but they couldn’t turn off, and likely didn’t even know about, the automatic transmission of data from the engines to Rolls Royce.

In four hours, depending on air speed, the plane could have flown just about anywhere–even, potentially, to Pakistan. While the mystery remains impenetrable for the time being, it is no longer a safe assumption that the airplane crashed at all. No one, presumably, would hijack or divert an airplane, fly it for four hours undetected, only to ultimately crash it into the sea. Not on purpose, anyway.

Somewhere there is a deserted airfield with a very large plane sitting on it. However, even that explanation makes no sense. I have no answers–only prayers for friends and family members of those aboard the plane.

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Why We Still Need Guantanamo

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One of the reasons cited for closing the prison at Guantanamo has been that the terrorists held there should be repatriated to their home countries. In theory that is a great idea–why should we pay the kind of money we are paying to provide soccer fields, special food, and flat screen televisions for terrorists? The jails in their home countries are much more in line with the punishment they deserve. Unfortunately, there are some problems with that idea. These problems were illustrated by some recent news stories.

Reuters has posted two stories recently about jailbreaks in Pakistan and Iraq where the Taliban freed terrorists inmates. (July 30, and July 23)

The July 30 story is about a jail break in Pakistan where the Taliban freed 250 prisoners. That article reported:

The attack in the city of Dera Ismail Khan showed the ability of the al Qaeda-linked Pakistani Taliban to strike at the heart of Pakistan’s heavily guarded prison system and walk away with dozens of senior Taliban fighters and commanders.

The overnight assault on the Central Prison took place despite reports that regional officials had received intelligence days, if not weeks, ago suggesting such an attack was imminent.

Officials blamed a combination of negligence and lack of communication among Pakistan’s many security agencies, but some suggested there may have been a degree of insider help.

The July 23 story deals with an attack on two Iraqi prisons that freed 500 inmates. The July 23 story reports:

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, formed earlier this year through a merger of al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria and Iraq, said it had stormed Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail and another, some 20 km (12 miles) north of capital, after months of preparation.

Monday’s attacks came exactly a year after the leader of al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, launched a “Breaking the Walls” campaign that made freeing its imprisoned members a top priority, the group said in a statement.

Sunni Islamist militants have in recent months been regaining momentum in their insurgency against Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government, which came to power after the U.S. invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

The group said it had deployed suicide attackers, rockets, and 12 car bombs, killing 120 Iraqi guards and SWAT forces in the attacks in Taji, north of Baghdad, and Abu Ghraib, the prison made notorious a decade ago by photographs showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

One interesting aspect of the Iraqi prison break is contained in the first sentence of the above quote, “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, formed earlier this year through a merger of al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria and Iraq…” This is what has happened in Iraq because we did not negotiate a withdrawal that included enough American forces to prevent a civil war.

But beyond that, let’s look at what happened. Al Qaeda is reconstructing itself because there is a very limited American presence (and thus, influence) in the areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. Al Qaeda needs foot soldiers–the leaders are somewhat expendable. The foot soldiers carry out the suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks. The leaders of Al Qaeda do not do a lot of the work–they simply generate propaganda and supervise the suicide missions. As long as there are young men and women who are willing to undertake these suicide missions, the missions will continue. Al Qaeda has claimed that the attacks on the prisons in Pakistan and Iraq freed 750 prisoners. In those prison attacks, Al Qaeda just gained 750 foot soldiers. No wonder our embassies in the Middle East are shut down.

How much of this story have you seen in the American media?

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This Really Does Not Sound As If It Were Handled Well

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I will admit to being more than slightly paranoid. I live near Boston, and what happened at the Boston Marathon was a serious wake-up call. With this is mind, I am not happy about the way a recent event was handled.

CBS Boston reported yesterday that seven people were caught trespassing near the Quabbin Reservoir. The Quabbin Reservoir is the water supply for Boston. The trespassers were Pakistani.

The article reports:

State Police say there were no warrants or advisories on any of the individuals and “there was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing.”

All seven were allowed to leave and will be summonsed to court for trespassing. The FBI is investigating and routine checks of public water supplies have been increased following the incident.

I hope that this is not the whole story. Pakistan is a country heavily infiltrated by Al Qaeda–it is known for fomenting terrorism. A Pakistani scientist is probably the person most responsible for Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb. To allow these people to leave and assume that they will show up in court later seems very naive. I would be willing to let them leave if we tapped their phones and cell phones and put ankle bracelets on them. Otherwise, they may somehow disappear between now and the time of their court appearance.

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The History Of An Unfortunate Situation

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On Wednesday I reported on the fate of Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the United States in the raid on Osama Bin Laden, who has been sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring against the state (rightwinggranny.com).

There is some further information on this story. The January 28, 2012, New York Times reported that:

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has confirmed publicly for the first time that an imprisoned doctor in Pakistan was working with the C.I.A. to gain access to Osama bin Laden’s compound in the months before American troops killed Bin Laden last May.  

What was Secretary Panetta thinking? In the past, the United States would have had the decency to get Dr. Afridi out of Pakistan before his cover was blown. The doctor was not allowed to be present in the court that sentenced him or allowed to defend himself.

An article in the American Spectator posted today points out:

A resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council after 9/11 required member states to assist in bringing Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network to justice.

Does either the United States or the United Nations have the character to intervene in this situation?

This is the administration that gave Hollywood unprecedented access to Defense Department information to make a movie about the killing of Osama Bin Laden (which coincidentally will be released shortly before the Presidential election). Someone needs to provide the entire administration with a detailed lecture on the proper handling of classified information.

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Things That Make You Wonder (Although Some Of Us Stopped Wondering A Long Time Ago)

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Fox News is reporting today that Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped the United States in the raid on Osama Bin Laden has been sentenced to 33 years in prison on Wednesday for conspiring against the state.

The article reports:

Shakil Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed the Al Qaeda chief last May in a unilateral raid. The operation outraged Pakistani officials, who portrayed it as an act of treachery by a supposed ally.

Wait a minute. Hasn’t the President been claiming all along that we were never sure that Osama Bin Laden was actually in the compound?

The article at Fox News reminds us:

On Tuesday, a Senate panel approved a foreign aid budget for next year that slashes U.S. assistance to Pakistan by more than half and threatens further reductions if it fails to open the NATO supply routes.

American lawmakers are also frustrated by suspicions that Pakistan is aiding militants who use its territory to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan — allegations Islamabad has rejected. There is also lingering resentment over the fact that bin Laden was found hiding deep inside Pakistan.

But the U.S. cannot afford to turn its back on Pakistan entirely.

Pakistan is seen as vital to negotiating a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban and their allies given the country’s historical ties with the militants.

The Pakistani government is also keen to repair relations with the U.S., partly to receive over a billion dollars in American aid it needs to fill out its budget as it looks ahead to national elections scheduled for 2013. But patching up ties is politically sensitive in a country where anti-American sentiment is rampant.

Aside from the obvious questions surrounding the arrest of Dr. Afridi, why in the world are giving major amounts of money to a country that obviously does not support us? Also, why in the world are we negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban rather than defeating them?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/23/pakistani-doctor-who-helped-us-in-bin-laden-raid-sentenced-to-prison/#ixzz1vhmujw1A

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Sometimes I Just Don’t Like Hearing The Facts

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I am ready to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. If the government doesn’t want us there, why should we stay? I suspect that right now most Americans would agree. But–there are inconvenient things called facts. Marc Thiessen points out a lot of very inconvenient consequences of leaving Afghanistan in a Washington Post article he posted yesterday.

Mr. Thiessen points out five problems with leaving Afghanistan:

1. We cannot conduct the drone war against Al Qaeda in Pakistan without bases in Afghanistan.

2. When American pressure on Al Qaeda in Pakistan is lessened, Al Qaeda can step up its efforts to destabilize Pakistan and gain control of the country’s nuclear weapons.

3. Afghanistan will again become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda.

4. Al Qaeda would claim a victory in Afghanistan and be encouraged to plan further terrorism attacks on America.

5. Iran would be made stronger by our withdrawal.

Please follow the link to the Washington Post to read the entire article. I still don’t like the idea of remaining in Afghanistan, but I don’t like the consequences of leaving either.

 

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