Month: November 2018

We are extremely fortunate at this time to have a moderate leader as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Can you imagine what would happen if some hard line goon like former President Mahmoud Amadinejad was in charge? Both the US and Israel would be threatened with annilhation, the people of Iran would be subject to the draconian religious laws in the Iranian constitution, and Iran would be looking to expand its influence throughout the region.

But, thankfully, we are truly blessed that the moderate leader, Hassan Rouhani is president.

Oh…wait.

Fox News:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called on the world’s Muslims to unite against the United States, as his country grapples with another round of sanctions recently reimposed by the Trump administration.

“Submitting to the West headed by America would be treason against our religion … and against the future generations of this region,” Rouhani said at the Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, in a speech broadcast live on state television, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran that cover the country’s shipping, financial and energy sectors months after pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.

The U.S. has said the sanctions are intended to prevent Iran from supporting militant groups and its development of long-range ballistic missiles.

In addition to the U.S., Rouhani also criticized Israel, calling it a “cancerous tumor” established by Western nations to advance their interests in the Middle East. Iranian leaders have pledged support to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that are committed to Israel’s destruction.

I suppose it’s “moderate” that Rouhani wants to kill Jews a little more slowly than his predecessor. There is also talk of Rouhani being in favor of modernizing the severe dress code in the country. Perhaps he will allow women to show their ankles.

And the “moderate” Rouhani is reportedly ending the practice of throwing gay people off of roofs and instead, simply hanging them from piano wire in the public square. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a much more “moderate” and humane way to deal with homosexuals.

How did this Iranian thug get the moniker “moderate”? He still leads chants of “death to America” every Friday after mosque services. He still wants to destroy Israel. He still believes in the strictest interpretation of sharia law. And he still has the messianic belief that Iran should dominate the region.

Repeat after me: There is no such thing as a “moderate” Iranian leader. 

 

 

We are extremely fortunate at this time to have a moderate leader as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Can you imagine what would happen if some hard line goon like former President Mahmoud Amadinejad was in charge? Both the US and Israel would be threatened with annilhation, the people of Iran would be subject to the draconian religious laws in the Iranian constitution, and Iran would be looking to expand its influence throughout the region.

But, thankfully, we are truly blessed that the moderate leader, Hassan Rouhani is president.

Oh…wait.

Fox News:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday called on the world’s Muslims to unite against the United States, as his country grapples with another round of sanctions recently reimposed by the Trump administration.

“Submitting to the West headed by America would be treason against our religion … and against the future generations of this region,” Rouhani said at the Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran, in a speech broadcast live on state television, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran that cover the country’s shipping, financial and energy sectors months after pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.

The U.S. has said the sanctions are intended to prevent Iran from supporting militant groups and its development of long-range ballistic missiles.

In addition to the U.S., Rouhani also criticized Israel, calling it a “cancerous tumor” established by Western nations to advance their interests in the Middle East. Iranian leaders have pledged support to groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that are committed to Israel’s destruction.

I suppose it’s “moderate” that Rouhani wants to kill Jews a little more slowly than his predecessor. There is also talk of Rouhani being in favor of modernizing the severe dress code in the country. Perhaps he will allow women to show their ankles.

And the “moderate” Rouhani is reportedly ending the practice of throwing gay people off of roofs and instead, simply hanging them from piano wire in the public square. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a much more “moderate” and humane way to deal with homosexuals.

How did this Iranian thug get the moniker “moderate”? He still leads chants of “death to America” every Friday after mosque services. He still wants to destroy Israel. He still believes in the strictest interpretation of sharia law. And he still has the messianic belief that Iran should dominate the region.

Repeat after me: There is no such thing as a “moderate” Iranian leader. 

 

 

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if a city or county government were more like a Home Owner’s Association, look no further than Arlington, VA. Apparently, it’s okay for a city to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a giant corporation and give them cover in case anyone goes snooping into their affairs, but God forbid a restaurant in that city paint a mural on its wall.

Goody’s pizzeria in Clarendon (which is part of Arlington County), tried to attract new customers to its humble storefront by painting images of food and ingredients on its outside walls. But the restaurant didn’t get the necessary county approval before painting the mural, and was issued a warning by Arlington’s Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development.

A spokeswoman for the Department, Helen Duong, told Arlington news outlet ARLnow that zoning inspectors “concluded that the artwork is considered a sign under Arlington County’s zoning ordinance because the artwork relates to the advertisement of a business and its services.”

This means, according to ARLnow, that Goody’s had to get a permit before painting the mural. Duong told the outlet that the restaurant “did not receive prior approvals from the county.” She also said the County has so far only issued the restaurant a “courtesy notice” about the mural, which included how Goody’s could square itself with Arlington officials (which no doubt include some form of payment to the County).

Arlnow spoke to Glenda Alvarez, who owns Goody’s. Alvarez says, as of Nov. 20, that she had not sought county approval for the mural yet and did not know she needed a permit before adding the mural. She said she commissioned the painting because the outside of her restaurant “was not attractive enough.”

“We just wanted to get a little more attention from people walking by,” she said.

Arlington has previously gone after Wag More Dogs, a dog daycare that painted a mural of puppies chasing bones on the side of its wall back in 2010. As with Goody’s, Wag More Dogs was found to have violated Arlington’s onerous “sign” requirements because the dogs were considered an advertisement for the business. A self-service dog wash across the street was allowed to keep commissioned graffiti on its walls because it did not contain any references to dogs.

At the time, ARLnow reported that the board responsible for the rules had taken steps to loosen the sign restrictions. Eight years later, it appears those steps led to nothing.

All of this over some paintings. You may recall the Virginia government recently promised online retail giant Amazon $573 million (including $23 million raised through increased taxes in Arlington) and promised to alert the company if someone filed a Freedom of Information Act request over its business practices to give it time to file a protective order to stop that information from being obtained.

Maybe the city won’t be so kind to Amazon if it paints pictures of household products on its outside walls without a permit.

When a “teenager” from Iran joined students at Stoke High School in Ipswich (a county town of Suffolk, England), students and parents immediately noticed something was off.

The alleged 15-year-old boy, Siavash, was 6’1”, stubble, a large Adam’s apple, and a hairline that some viewed as receding. Students and parents believed the “teen” was closer to 30 than 15.

When parents began complaining that an adult man was in school with their underage children, they say their concerns were “dismissed as racist,” according to the Daily Mail.

“I went in [to] complain but I was fobbed off. They are deluded and seem more worried about how the bloke might feel,” a father of two teenage students told the Mail. “I am not aware of this lad having done anything inappropriate, but it’s clearly wrong that he should be in a class with children.”

Another parent said she was told the man sat on a bench during lunch near teenage girls, “just looking.”

One student said Siavash started FaceTiming a female student, “sending her messages, asking how close she lived to the school.” The student took the messages to school officials but was told there was nothing wrong with them, according to the Mail.

It turns out, Siavash actually was an adult, and was removed from the school. He had told the school he fled from Iran and came to the United Kingdom with his little brother, who authorities believe actually is 12 years old. Siavash was seeking a free education while posing as a teenager.

As the Mail points out, Siavash benefited from Britain’s generous asylum system, which has been found to be abused by those seeking a free education by posing as minors.

“Britain’s system, under which around 3,000 unaccompanied youngsters – around 80 per cent of whom are male – claim asylum each year, came under intense scrutiny in 2016 when a busload of alleged teenagers arrived in Croydon after being transferred to the UK from Calais.

By claiming to be children, the new arrivals were entitled not just to free education, but also to places in local authority children’s homes (in areas with high migrant populations such as Kent, up to half the places in such homes are taken by unaccompanied asylum seekers).

Yet critics have long pointed out that those rules also create an incentive for adult migrants to simply destroy ID papers and pose as vulnerable children. Indeed, several of the young men who disembarked from the coaches in Croydon appeared to be square-jawed men in their 20s or 30s.”

After this controversy, the asylum rules were tightened, and in the following year, 705 age disputes were raised. Sixty-five percent of the 618 resolved disputes found claimants over the age of 18 (who were mostly male) pretending to be children. Those handline asylum claims are now told to treat seekers who appear to be adults as adults if they lack reliable documentation, though when they are unsure, they are supposed to give the seekers the benefit of the doubt.

LONDON (AP) – Officials say a man has been arrested after a British Transport Police officer was stabbed outside a train station in east London.

Police said late Friday night that the officer is being treated in a hospital with injuries that are not thought to be life-threatening.

The stabbing happened outside Ilford Station while the officer was on duty.

The suspect has not been named or charged.

The chairman of the British Transport Police Federation, Nigel Goodband, said the attack was “totally unprovoked” and part of an “epidemic” of knife crimes and attacks on police.

The officer has not been identified.

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TEL AVIV – An extremely rare stone weight inscribed with a word from the Hebrew Bible dating back 3,000 years was discovered by archaeologists near the Western Wall.

The weight, known as a “beka,” was used to measure worshipers’ half-shekel levy prior to ascending the Temple Mount. This was the first time such a stone weight was found with this particular inscription of the word “beka” written from left to right.

“Beka weights from the First Temple period are rare; however, this weight is even rarer because the inscription on it is written in mirror script,” archaeologist Eli Shukron told Haaretz.

Shukron said this is likely a sign that it was made by a seal-maker, “since seals were always written in mirror script so that, once stamped, the inscription would appear in regular legible script.”

“Apparently, the seal craftsman got confused when he engraved the inscription on the weight and mistakenly used mirror script as he was used to doing. From this mistake we can learn about the general rule: the artists who engraved weights during the First Temple period were the same artists who specialized in creating seals,” said Shukron.

The word “beka” makes two appearances in the Bible. The first instance is when the matriarch Rebecca is gifted a nose-ring weighing a “beka” in the Book of Genesis. The second occurs in the Book of Exodus as a weight for the Temple donation: “One beka per head; half a shekel, according to the holy shekel, for each one who goes through the counting, from 20 years old and upward, for 603,550 [persons].”

“When the half-shekel tax was brought to the Temple during the First Temple period, there were no coins, so they used silver ingots. In order to calculate the weight of these silver pieces they would put them on one side of the scales and on the other side they placed the Beka weight. The Beka was equivalent to the half-shekel, which every person from the age of 20 years and up was required to bring to the Temple,” Shukron said.

According to Shukron and others, the fact that the artifact was found next to King Solomon’s Temple is yet more proof of deeply rooted Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

“This is a word that is used both inside and outside of the Bible. You don’t need to ask too many questions, just open the Bible and see it. It’s very simple. You can see beka written in the Bible and what it was used for, and there you have it,” he said.

“The Bible, the artifact found close to Solomon’s Temple, north of the City of David, the Temple foundations — everything is connected,” said Shukron.

“This three thousand-year-old Beka weight, inscribed with ancient Hebrew, was likely used in the First Temple, anchoring once again the deep historical connection of the Jewish People to Jerusalem,” said Doron Spielman, Vice President of the City of David Foundation, which funded the excavation.

There were nearly a dozen explosions heard recently along the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, but it wasn’t a sign of the Korean War heating up again. The North Koreans reportedly dynamited ten of their own guard towers in advance of a previously agreed deadline for bringing down the structures. (ABC News)

North Korea blew up 10 of its guard posts within one kilometer radius of the Military Demarcation Line separating the two Koreas on Tuesday in accordance with agreements made with South Korea earlier this year.

The explosions were carried out simultaneously within a four minute time frame after the North notified the South of the project, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.

North Korean soldiers have been destroying the brick structures over the past couple of weeks. Analysts said they most likely decided to demolish the guard posts all at once to meet the November 30th deadline.

While it used to be a challenge to get any sort of reporting, particularly photography, on the activities of the North Korean military, the press is now clearly able to get in there and cover the action. This photo from the AP, taken by photographer Jung Yeon-je, captures the smoke rising from one of the detonated towers.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the project aimed at “dismantling” a number of these guard towers and clearing out some of the landmines along one stretch of the DMZ. Apparently, the process of taking them apart brick by brick was taking too long so the North Korean army opted for a more “direct” solution.

There’s been more of this activity taking place. Just a couple of days ago, soldiers from the North and the South met at the DMZ line out in the woods. Rather than shooting at each other, their officers shook hands and chatted for a while. Here’s the video.

So how much of this is real and how much is for show, as Kim Jong-un continues his charm offensive in an attempt to remove the international sanctions on his country? Last we heard, Kim and President Trump are still pushing ahead toward a second summit, possibly as soon as January. Kim’s lack of missile launches and nuclear tests have certainly impressed the Chinese, enough so that they’ve been quietly reducing economic pressure on the North and undercutting American pressure on Kim’s regime.

Denuclearization of North Korea, more freedom for their people and a formal cessation of the Korean War are all admirable goals. But while you may grow tired of hearing me repeat myself, there’s something important to keep in mind here. Kim Jong-un is still a monster. He and his family have been directly responsible for the murder of tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own citizens. They assassinate prominent military leaders and government officials with impunity while sending countless citizens to die in hidden work camps. His history shows that any promises he makes are valid only as long as they serve his purposes.

Kim has to be watched like a hawk. While much of this recent news is positive and encouraging, North Korea can still not be trusted.