[VIDEO] Jonah Goldberg: Trump has the Power and Obligation to Vet Refugees
Posted: January 26, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Terrorism, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Donald Trump, Fox News, Immigration, Jonah Goldberg, media, Refugees, Vetting, video | Leave a comment
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[VIDEO] Dana Perino on Obama’s Response to Crisis in Syria
Posted: December 17, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Russia, Terrorism, War Room, White House | Tags: Aleppo, Barack Obama, Dana Perino, Fox News, Human rights, media, news, Refugees, Syria, video | Leave a comment
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This is the Wall Around The Vatican
Posted: February 18, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Politics, Religion | Tags: Catholicism, Illegal immigration, Open Borders, Pope Francis, Refugees, Transylvania, Vatican, Walls | 1 Comment
The wall around the Vatican
“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel.”
— Pope Francis, February 1016

The walled churches of Transylvania

Walls of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai

Wall around the Carmelite monastery in Philadelphia

Wall at Mar Saba Orthodox monastery in the Holy Land

The wall around the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius monastery in Russia
Source: TeamNRO
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‘Criminal Checks Gone Mad’: Daily Telegraph Front Page for Dec 26th, 2015
Posted: December 25, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Global, Mediasphere, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Boxing Day, British Press, Crime, England, Immigration, media, news, Newspapers, Refugees, Tabloid, The Telegraph | Leave a commentRate this:
Ideas Have Consequences
Posted: December 7, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Terrorism, War Room, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Islamism, Jihadism, National security, Refugees, Syria | Leave a commentRate this:
Syrian Refugees Have Been Resettled In 36 States, Most In California, Texas, and Michigan
Posted: December 1, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Politics, Terrorism, U.S. News | Tags: and Migration, Associated Press, Bashar al-Assad, Bureau of Population, Church World Service, EUROPE, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Jersey City, John Kerry, Michael McCaul, New Jersey, Refugee, Refugees, Refugees of the Syrian civil war, Syria, United Nations | 1 Comment
Monday CNS News reported that the vast majority of Syrian refugees that have been resettled in the U.S. are Sunni Muslim and very few are Christians or other religious minorities.
Caroline May reports: Since the start of the Syria’s civil war in the spring of 2011, the U.S. has admitted 2,311 Syrian refugees and resettled them in 36 different states.
According to data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center the top three destinations for Syrian refugees since the beginning of the conflict are California, Texas, and Michigan.
From March 15, 2011 through December 1, 2015, California received the most (261) Syrian refugees, Texas received the second most with 242, and Michigan has received the third most with 217.
Other states that have received Syrian refugees since March 2011 include: Arizona (182), Illinois (170), Pennsylvania (161), Florida (142), Kentucky (101), New Jersey (99), Ohio (89), Massachusetts (72), Georgia (69), North Carolina (56), New York (55), Connecticut (51), Maryland (43), Tennessee (42), Indiana (39), Washington (38), Idaho (37), Missouri (29), Virginia (26), Colorado (18), Louisiana (14), Utah (12), Kansas (8), Nevada (8), Minnesota (7), New Mexico (6), Oregon (6),New Hampshire (3), Oklahoma (3), Wisconsin (2), Arkansas (1), Maine (1), and West Virginia (1). Read the rest of this entry »
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POLL: Obama Approval on Terrorism: 40/54 Lowest. In His Presidency. Lowest. Ever.
Posted: November 20, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Global, Mediasphere, Politics, War Room, White House | Tags: Barack Obama, Democratic Party (United States), European Union, Immigration, Iowa, ISIS, Islamic sympathizer, Jihadism, Marco Rubio, Multiculturalism, Polling, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Refugees, Republican Party (United States), Syria, Ted Cruz, United States | 2 CommentsGary Langer reports: With terrorism fears near a post-9/11 high in a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, majorities of Americans back increased use of military force, including ground forces, against the Islamic State, and more than half oppose admitting Mideast refugees to the United States.
[Also see – Barack Obama: Worst. President. Ever.]
Seventy-three percent support increased U.S. air strikes against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and 60 percent back more ground forces, double the level of support for ground forces from summer 2014. One reason: Eighty-one percent see a major terrorist attack in the United States in the near future as likely, a level of anxiety that has been higher just once since 9/11.
Fifty-four percent oppose admitting refugees from Syria and other Mideast countries, while 43 percent are in favor. Opposition in part reflects skepticism about the U.S. government’s ability to screen out terrorists; 52 percent are dubious, and they’re especially likely to oppose entry.
That said, if refugees are admitted, an overwhelming 78 percent of Americans say all should be considered equally, without regard to their religion. Just 18 percent favor special consideration for Christians, proposed by Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz.
[See PDF with full results here]
…Perhaps most fundamentally, 59 percent of Americans in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, say the United States is at war with radical Islam, which is little changed from a poll earlier this year but another indication of the public’s mindset in the post-9/11 world….

Fifty-four percent disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the threat of terrorism in general, up 9 points since January to the worst rating on terrorism of his career. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of his handling of the Islamic State in particular. “Strong” disapproval on both is quite high, 43 and 46 percent, respectively…

Fewer than half of Americans, 45 percent, are confident in the government’s ability to prevent further terrorist attacks in the United States. That’s near the average since 9/11, and helps explain the level of public concern about an attack occurring.
[Read the full text here, at ABC News]
Not all views have changed substantially. In a Fox News poll of registered voters in January, 56 percent said they thought the United States was at war with radical Islam. A similar number says so now, 59 percent of all adults (and 60 percent of registered voters).
Response
In terms of a response to the Paris attacks, 73 percent of Americans say the United States should play a role in military action against ISIS. Likely given the attacks’ locus on French soil, however, those who favor action say by more than 2-1 that the United States should take a supporting role in responding, not the leading role.
At 73 percent, support for increased U.S. air strikes against ISIS is similar to its level just more than a year ago, having risen sharply after the ISIS killings of U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Fifty-two percent “strongly” support more air strikes, a continued high level. Read the rest of this entry »
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5 Syrian Men Caught In Honduras Trying To Enter United States With Stolen Passports
Posted: November 18, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Global, Mediasphere, Terrorism, War Room | Tags: Greece, Honduras, Islamism, Jihadism, Paris Attacks, Passports, Refugees, Syria | Leave a commentSource: Weasel Zippers
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House Republicans Seek to Cut Off Funding for Syrian Resettlement Program
Posted: November 17, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Law & Justice, Terrorism, Think Tank, White House | Tags: Agence France-Presse, AP-1 transcription factor, Barack Obama, Bill Posey, Blake Farenthold, Brian Babin, Congress, Democratic Party, Diane Black, Frank Guinta, GOP, Gregg Harper, Islamism, Jeff Duncan, Jihadism, John Duncan, Lou Barletta, Louie Gohmert, Mark Meadows, Migrants, Mike Pompeo, Mo Brooks, Paris Attacks, Refugees, Steve King, Syria, United States, Walter Jones, White House | 1 CommentThe growing momentum behind new legislation, still being drafted, sets up a future clash between the White House and Congress.
John Hudson reports: Following the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, House Republicans are proposing to block federal funding for resettling Syrian refugees until a series of new conditions are met, Foreign Policy has learned.
“Currently, 60 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes or are otherwise considered refugees — higher than at any other time in recorded history.”
The growing momentum behind new legislation, still being drafted, sets up a future clash between the White House and Congress as the Obama administration seeks to offer residency to 10,000 Syrian refugees who currently live outside the conflict zone. Currently, 60 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes or are otherwise considered refugees — higher than at any other time in recorded history. An estimated six million to eight million displaced people are still in Syria, and more than four million Syrian refugees are in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon.
“The 15 Republican lawmakers pushing the legislation aren’t the only politicians looking to slam the brakes on Obama’s resettlement program. The governors of 15 U.S. states have already said they would not allow Syrian refugees to live in their states.”
The draft legislation, a copy of which was obtained by FP, is backed by Reps. Brian Babin, Lou Barletta, Diane Black, Mo Brooks, Jeff Duncan, John Duncan, Blake Farenthold, Louie Gohmert, Frank Guinta, Gregg Harper, Walter Jones, Steve King, Mike Pompeo, Mark Meadows, and Bill Posey. It would prevent funding for the resettlement of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa until authorities adopt “processes to ensure that refugee and related programs are not able to be co-opted by would-be terrorists.” Once those processes are in place, details of the security checks must be given to Congress in both classified and public forums, and the administration must establish a “longer-term monitoring process” to track refugees in the U.S.
“Additionally, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul plans to raise the issue of blocking Syrian refugee resettlement at a Tuesday meeting with fellow Republicans, according to two congressional sources.”
The 15 Republican lawmakers pushing the legislation aren’t the only politicians looking to slam the brakes on Obama’s resettlement program. The governors of 15 U.S. states have already said they would not allow Syrian refugees to live in their states. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) has proposed legislation to restrict U.S. funding for refugee resettlement and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) has said he will introduce legislation to prevent Syrian refugees from obtaining U.S. visas. Read the rest of this entry »
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Obama Administration Promotes Fast Lanes to Accelerate Processing of Incoming Syrians
Posted: November 14, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics, War Room, White House | Tags: 14th Infantry Regiment (United States), Afghanistan, Berlin, Federal government of the United States, Invation, Islamic state, Islamism, Jihadism, Migrants, Obama administration, Refugees, Refugees of the Syrian civil war, Syria, Terrorism, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Department of State | 3 Comments
Screening outposts to be set up in Iraq, Lebanon as U.S. urges Arab nations to do more.
The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday.
The move comes after President Barack Obama pledged in September to admit an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, torn by four years of civil war and disorder.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the plans to open a refugee settlement processing centre in Erbil, Iraq, before the end of 2015, and to resume refugee processing in Lebanon in early 2016, said spokeswoman Danna Van Brandt.
The White House would not say how many additional refugees it may take in beyond the 10,000, but two senior administration officials said they are seeking ways to increase the number.

Refugees and migrants arrive from the island of Lesbos to the port of Piraeus on Friday. About 25,000 refugees and other migrants are heading to the Greek mainland from the eastern Aegean islands after the country’s seamen’s union called off ferry strikes. (Thanassis Stavrakis/Associated Press)
“We want to be in a place where we can push out really ambitious goals,” said one of the officials, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
The State Department runs nine screening centres worldwide that serve as meeting points for refugees and U.S. Department of Homeland Security employees who have to decide who is suitable for resettlement in the United States.
The additional centres will double the number available to refugees in the Middle East. Read the rest of this entry »
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‘I Think the German Press Has Now Officially Lost It’
Posted: September 18, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere | Tags: Angela Merkel, Der Spiegel, EUROPE, Germany, Hungary, Magazines, media, news, Politics of Germany, Refugees, Syria, Twitter | Leave a commentRate this:
How the Obama Administration Turned its Back on South Sudan – The Country George W. Bush Helped Create
Posted: February 26, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Diplomacy, Global, War Room | Tags: al Qaeda, Amina Mohamed, and Migration, Anne C. Richard, Barack Obama, Baroness Amos, Bill Clinton, Federal government of the United States, George W. Bush, Humanitarian Aid, Iraq War, Jeb Bush, Nairobi, Refugees, Riek Machar, South Sudan, United States, Valerie Amos | Leave a commentUnmade in the USA
Less than three years after independence, South Sudan collapsed into bloody civil war. Could the United States, a crucial backer of the young African state, have prevented the violence?

Then U.S. President George W. Bush and Salva Kiir meet in the Oval Office on Jan. 5, 2009, in Washington, D.C., to discuss a peace agreement with Khartoum as well as the situation in Darfur.
To the outside world, the reference might have seemed cryptic. But in South Sudan, the message was crystal clear: 1991 was the year Machar broke away from the main southern guerilla movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), that was fighting against the Sudanese government in Khartoum. The move nearly brought about the SPLA’s demise. Now, Machar was again estranged from the flock and about to mount a new rebellion from the bush. By linking the two events, Kiir was invoking an old and powerful grudge. “It was not in the spirit of reconciliation,” Lam Akol, who led the breakaway SPLA faction with Machar in 1991 and later served as Sudan’s foreign minister, told me. “It was a declaration of war.”
“When South Sudan finally hoisted its own flag in Juba on July 9th, 2011, someone waved a sign that read ‘Thank you George Bush’.”
During and after Kiir’s press conference, forces loyal to the president rounded up and executed hundreds of male Nuers, the ethnic group to which Machar belongs. The soldiers reportedly identified the men by asking their names in Dinka, the language of Kiir’s ethnic group; inability to answer could be a death sentence. In one neighborhood, according to Human Rights Watch, between 200 and 300 men were detained in a building used by police and then murdered by gunmen, alleged to be members of the South Sudanese armed forces, who fired on the prisoners through windows.
[Read the full text here, at ForeignPolicy.com]
Machar denied the coup allegation, but as Juba descended deeper into violence, he quickly took up arms against the government. Soon, blood was flowing across the northeastern portion of the country: in Bor, the capital of restive Jonglei state, and then in Bentiu and Malakal, two major cities in the heart of South Sudan’s oil country. Reports of war crimes committed by both sides followed.
Over the next year, somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people would be killed and another 2 million forced to flee their homes. Farmers missed their planting season, and aid agencies warned of an impending famine. According to the United Nations, the humanitarian crisis created by South Sudan’s civil war is now on par with those in Syria, Iraq, and the Central African Republic. “I never thought I’d see the day when people would be fleeing to Darfur,” Toby Lanzer, the top U.N. aid official in South Sudan, told me in August. “But that’s the situation we’re in.”
“These tensions have come to the fore in the Obama era. Unlike Bush, who one senior White House official told me ‘could have been the desk officer’ because he was so engaged on southern Sudan, Obama has preferred to leave details to his staffers, who have not always seen eye to eye with one another.”
A few days after my meeting with Lanzer, I boarded a U.N. plane in Juba packed with peacekeepers and other humanitarians and flew several hundred miles north over swampland and jungle to Malakal, roughly tracing the path of the violence that had exploded across the country. Control of the city had changed hands between the government and Machar’s rebels six times in nine months, and some of the worst atrocities of the civil war had been committed there. The last time rebels overran the city, they burned so much of it that satellite imagery revealed charcoal smudges where whole neighborhoods once stood. Now, the government was back in charge, and it was flooding troops and equipment in ahead of the dry season, when fighting in South Sudan has historically taken place. Rumors abounded of an impending rebel attack.
After a brief stop at the U.N. base near Malakal, where roughly 20,000 civilians were waiting out the violence in overcrowded displacement camps, I caught a ride with UNICEF employees down the rutted dirt track to what used to be South Sudan’s second-largest city. The closer we got, the fewer civilians there were. In the center of town, where abandoned market stalls sat bleakly on patches of scorched earth, the only humans in evidence were government soldiers, most of them carrying AK-47s. When we passed the sagging bungalow that used to serve as UNICEF’s living quarters, half a dozen armed men grinned out at us. Like most structures that hadn’t been destroyed, the building was occupied by the South Sudanese army.



March 2014: Rebels and defected SPLA soldiers loyal to former vice president Riek Machar, in a controlled territory of Malakal city. People help an elderly woman evacuate from her hut in Malakal. Credit: Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
We drove past looted warehouses, shelled government buildings, and rows of thatched huts that had been put to the torch. Not far from the obliterated central market, the ruins of a teaching hospital spilled out into the street: smashed vials, soiled bandages, and now-useless medical equipment. In February 2014, at least 14 people were murdered there when rebels swept into Malakal. The day before our arrival, I was told, staff members discovered a body rotting on the roof of one of the hospital’s annex buildings. While we toured a gutted pediatric complex across the street, I nearly stepped on a skull that was hidden in the grass.
Slogging through what was left of Malakal, it was difficult to imagine that South Sudan was once considered a major U.S. foreign-policy success. Over a span of nearly two decades, three different U.S. administrations worked to bring the new nation into being. Bill Clinton was the first to signal support for the southern separatists battling Khartoum in the Second Sudanese Civil War, which lasted more than 20 years and left an estimated 2 million people dead; his administration unlocked military support for neighboring countries that was then funneled covertly across borders. George W. Bush later made Southern Sudan a centerpiece of his foreign policy, helping broker a landmark north-south peace deal in 2005 that ended the civil war and paved the way for southern independence. The Obama administration carried the ball across the goal line, ensuring that an independence referendum went ahead as planned in early 2011 and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid into the new country.
When South Sudan finally hoisted its own flag in Juba on July 9, 2011, a delegation of Bush and Obama administration officials was in attendance. In the crowd, the New York Times reported, someone waved a sign that read, “Thank You George Bush.”
Now that South Sudan has imploded in spectacular fashion, however, it offers a case study in the limits of American power: Not only have its tremendous state-building efforts failed to bear fruit, but the U.S. government now finds itself with virtually no ability to shape events on the ground. “We’re at an all-time low in terms of influence,” said Cameron Hudson, who worked on South Sudan policy in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
“There are those who feel that Obama saw little benefit from engaging with the young and troubled nation. Certainly, they say, he did not share the same political incentives as Bush, whose evangelical base championed the southern cause.”
To be sure, the new nation faced long odds. At independence, it had virtually no civil institutions, about 120 doctors for a population of roughly 9 million, and a total of 35 miles of paved roads spanning a territory the size of France. It was also landlocked, ethnically diverse, and entirely dependent on oil revenue. In other words, it faced every major challenge identified by social scientists as a predictor of state failure.
Yet there are American officials who have worked closely on Sudan and South Sudan policy who still feel the situation could have played out differently, and that brutal war could have been avoided. The story of how the South Sudan project came unhinged — pieced together over six months from more than two dozen interviews with current and former U.S., U.N., and South Sudanese officials — is one of extraordinary challenges faced down and enormous errors made by leaders in Juba. It is also the story of how tensions between and within U.S. administrations alienated the South Sudanese government, reduced American leverage, and blinded U.S. officials to warning signs that the new nation’s ruling party was breaking apart.
“The cumulative effect of all these factors was that the United States began to distance itself from South Sudan at a time when the young nation, long supported by Washington, was arguably at its most vulnerable.”
These tensions have come to the fore in the Obama era. Unlike Bush, who one senior White House official told me “could have been the desk officer” because he was so engaged on southern Sudan, Obama has preferred to leave details to his staffers, who have not always seen eye to eye with one another. Key administration posts, including the special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, ambassador to South Sudan, and assistant secretary of state for African affairs, have remained vacant for extended periods during his presidency. “Through the crucial part of the time that the relationship between [South Sudanese] factions deteriorated, the U.S. had nobody in office,” said John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official who co-founded the Washington-based Enough Project, a group that works to end genocide around the world.




March 2014: Rebels and defected SPLA soldiers loyal to former vice president Riek Machar, in a controlled territory of Malakal city. People help an elderly woman evacuate from her hut in Malakal. Credit: Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
There are those who feel that Obama saw little benefit from engaging with the young and troubled nation. Certainly, they say, he did not share the same political incentives as Bush, whose evangelical base championed the southern cause. (The people in the north — present-day Sudan — are generally Arab and Muslim, while the southern population is mostly African and either Christian or animist.) But if ideology and politics mattered, so did personality: Due to a fateful meeting at the United Nations in 2011, at which Kiir reportedly lied to the U.S. president about military action along his country’s northern border, Obama’s relationship with the South Sudanese president was “poisoned from the start,” according to Princeton Lyman, who served as the special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan from 2011 to 2012.