WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declined a request to host an event to mark Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, two U.S. officials said, apparently breaking with a bipartisan tradition in place with few exceptions for nearly 20 years.
Since 1999, Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have nearly always hosted either an iftar dinner to break the day’s fast during Ramadan or a reception marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month, at the State Department.
Tillerson turned down a request from the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs to host an Eid al-Fitr reception as part of Ramadan celebrations, said two U.S. officials who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
According to an April 6 memo seen by Reuters, the office – which typically initiates such events – recommended that Tillerson hold an Eid al-Fitr reception.
His rejection of the request suggests there are no plans this year for any high-profile Ramadan function at the State Department. The month of fasting and prayer for Muslims gets under way in many countries on Saturday….
Dee, the woman who posted the link to the story, said this:
Frankly, after 8 yrs. of Obama’s PRAISE & ADORATION of the Muslim’s, I’m sick & tired of hearing how GREAT they are. The ”Asswipe” abandoned CHRISTIANS & all other Religions [editor’s insert: even moderate Muslim communities in the Middle-East or secular movements in Iran], except them! It’s another day, just like Easter is for Protestants to worship their faith… In today’s ”WAR ON ISIS”, the Muslims are KILLING CHRISTIANS, which is what America was built on… Judeo-Christian beliefs… RAAMADAAN is not a ”National Holiday” either… Let the Muslims worship the way they want, that’s fair, but let’s not make a big ”WhoopDeeDo” out of it… I have nothing against any religion & don’t dislike Muslims… WHAT SAY YOU?
I SAY that I am happy that we shouldn’t see anymore of this by our Commander and Chief (BREITBART and my post –RPT– are the source for the text below):
The Navy Times has the following report (h/t via Drudge Report)
On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.
But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.
While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.
These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.
“The ships are definitely Russian,” said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. “There’s no question of that in my mind.”
Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what’s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention.
A spokesman for the Democratic National Convention Committee was not able to immediately comment Tuesday, saying he had to track down personnel to find out what had happened.
The veteran who spotted the error and notified Navy Times said he was immediately taken aback.
“I was kind of in shock,” said Rob Barker, 38, a former electronics warfare technician who left the Navy in 2006. Having learned to visually identify foreign ships by their radars, Barker recognized the closest ship as the Kara-class cruiser Kerch.
[….]
For example, the ship in the foreground, on the far right, has a square radar antenna at the top of its masthead. That is the MR-700 Podberezovik 3-D early warning radar, commonly identified as “Flat Screen” for its appearance, a three-dimensional early warning radar mounted on the Kerch, said Eric Wertheim, editor of “Combat Fleets of the World.”
Similarly, the third ship has a MR-310 “Head Net” air search radar, shaped like two off-set bananas, at its masthead and is mostly likely the guided missile destroyer Smetlivyy. The first two ships seem to be Krivak-class frigates, but it’s hard to discern from the silhouette, experts said.
But the fact they are Russian ships is not in doubt. In addition to the ship’s radar arrays and hulls, which are dissimilar from U.S. warships, the photo features one more give-away: a large white flag with a blue ‘X’ at the ships’ sterns.
Polmar, who authored “The Naval Institute Guide to the Soviet Navy,” recognized the blue ‘X’-mark: “The X is the Cross of St. Andrew’s, which is a Russian Navy symbol,” Polmar said. (An anchored U.S. warship, by contrast, flies the American flag on its stern.)
Based on this specific group of these ship types, one naval expert concluded that this was most likely a photo of the Black Sea Fleet.
“Ships are all Black Sea Fleet,” A. D. Baker III, a retired Office of Naval Intelligence analyst, told Navy Times after looking at the image. “These four ships, at the time the photo was taken, constituted the entire major surface combatant component of the Black Sea Fleet,” Baker said, noting the photo was likely to be six years old or older. (The Kerch is now on the list to be scrapped, Baker said.)
This isn’t the first time Democrats have done ths. And this is really a cultural mistake, because, as these Democrats grow up and head off to Berkeley and other ivy league schools, they get to know our troops as projecting imperialist power to the rest of the world, and so, many do not serve or even do ROTC. So when they staff the offices of the Democratic leadership, and are asked to look for a graphic to post in an ad, they just assume Google throws them American pictures.
Here are some older examples. This first one comes from Nancy Pelosi and talks about veterans benefits and health insurance and how Democratic plans are better that their opponents. The only problem is that the soldier on the picture is a Canadian one:
Another one is from the DNC itself and was part of their front page. I will follow up the original with the original, non-photo shopped pic:
That soldier, unfortunately for whomever played with the pic, was a Canadian soldier:
It is sad that Democrats consistently mix our military men and women with those of other countries. It shows a lack of respect (explicit or implicit) for these few people who choose to make a difference in their countries future by the giving of their time to a greater purpose and will than their own. Its just another commentary on the seriousness of the Democrats as a Party worthy of this greatest nation on God’s green earth.
Democratic party heads rammed through the revised platform, which includes updated pro-Israel language and the mention of God, against the clear wishes of those voting at the convention in Charlotte. Here’s video of the chaos:
The vote to adopt the new platform requires two-thirds. It’s pretty clear that even after asking for multiple votes, two-thirds of the vote was not received. The revised platform was adopted anyway.
….Behind the respectable front of the National Council of La Raza lies the real agenda of the La Raza movement, the agenda that led to those thousands of illegal immigrants in the streets of American cities, waving Mexican flags, brazenly defying our laws, and demanding concessions.
Key among the secondary organizations is the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.
One of America’s greatest strengths has always been taking in immigrants from cultures around the world, and assimilating them into our country as Americans. By being citizens of the U.S. we are Americans first, and only, in our national loyalties.
This is totally opposed by MEChA for the hordes of illegal immigrants pouring across our borders, to whom they say:
“Chicano is our identity; it defines who we are as people. It rejects the notion that we…should assimilate into the Anglo-American melting pot…Aztlan was the legendary homeland of the Aztecas … It became synonymous with the vast territories of the Southwest, brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny.” (Statement on University of Oregon MEChA Website, Jan. 3, 2006)
MEChA isn’t at all shy about their goals, or their views of other races. Their founding principles are contained in these words in “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” (The Spiritual Plan for Aztlan):
“In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. … Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. … We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.”
That closing two-sentence motto is chilling to everyone who values equal rights for all. It says: “For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”
Whatever happened to the days of people like Caesar Chavez, founder of the UFW, who saw these movements now fully integrated into the Democratic Party, as the racist organizations they are:
“I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know,” Chavez told Peter Matthiessen, the co-founder of the Paris Review, for a profile piece in The New Yorker in 1969. “Some people don’t look at it as racism, but when you say ‘la raza,’ you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won’t stop there.”… ~ CHAVEZ
A Professor preaches his la Raza Hate/racism in Los Angeles… he has many students learning this hatred, funded by tax payers:
It is amazing to me that Democrats would support a movement called “The Race.” It solidifies the idea that Democrats are not against racism, but against “Americanism.” Dana Loesch has an article that points to Julian Castro’s radical positions:
Also among these legacy children: San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and brother, Joaquín, sons of Rosie Castro, who was also there at the beginning of La Raza Unida. Joaquín Castro is a state House rep and a congressional candidate.
“When I grew up I learned that the ‘heroes’ of the Alamo were a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them. But as a little girl I got the message — we were losers. I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.”…
…“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am—Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
****
Rosie named her first son, Julian, for his father whom she never married, and her second, who arrived a minute later, for the character in the 1967 Chicano anti-gringo movement poem, “I Am Joaquin.” She is particularly proud that they were born on Mexico’s Independence Day. And she was a fan of the Aztlan aspirations of La Raza Unida. Those aspirations were deeply radical. “As far as we got was simply to take over control in those [Texas] communities where we were the majority,” one of its founders, Jose Angel Gutierrez, told the Toronto paper. “We did think of carving out a geographic territory where we could have our own weight, and our own leverage could then be felt nation-wide.”
Removing all doubt, Gutierrez repeated himself often. “What we hoped to do back then was to create a nation within a nation,” he told the Denver Post in 2001. Gutierrez bemoaned the loss of that separatist vision among activists, but predicted that Latinos will “soon take over politically.” (“Brothers in Chicano Movement to Reunite,” Denver Post, August 16, 2001).
Gutierrez made clear his hatred for “the gringo” when he led the Mexican-American Youth Organization, the precursor to La Raza Unida. According to the Houston Chronicle, he “was denounced by many elected officials as militant and un-American.” And anti-American he was. “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill him,” Gutierrez told a San Antonio audience in 1969. At around that time, Rosie Castro eagerly joined his cause, becoming the first chairwoman of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party. There’s no evidence of her distancing herself from Gutierrez’s comments, even today. Gutierrez even dedicated a chapter in one of his books to Ms. Castro.
The Obama Campaign will sponsor an Islamic Jumah at the DNC in September. Obama’s DNC lists the assembly as an “official function.”
Robert Spencer wrote this about the DNC Jumah:
But the most disturbing aspect of the entire “Jumah at the DNC” is not the obvious victimhood-mongering of its agenda, but the people involved. The Democrats are playing host to an unsavory gang of Islamic supremacists with numerous ties to jihad groups. Even this is not surprising, but it should be a matter of concern to any Americans who are more aware of the jihad threat than the average politically correct Democrat pol.
But, as Atlas Shrugs pointed out, the Obama Campaign denied Catholic Cardinal request to lead prayer at the convention.
President Obama turned down a chance to have Timothy Cardinal Dolan deliver a prayer at the Democratic National Convention after Dolan told Democrats he would be “grateful” to deliver a blessing in Charlotte.
Dolan — considered the top Catholic official in the nation, as head of the Archdiocese of New York and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops — tipped off Democrats a few weeks ago that he had agreed to deliver the prime-time benediction at the Republican convention in Tampa next week, Dolan’s spokesman Joseph Zwilling told The Post.
And The Blaze adds this very important piece to the puzzle:
And while Muslim-Americans undeniably face distinct challenges, those who are well-informed on the dangers of radical Islam are expressing their doubts.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, wrote:
The leaders of this event – Jibril Hough and Imam Siraj Wahhaj [are not] moderates. They are radicals. These individuals embrace Islamist supremacy and have demonstrated support for radical ideologies.
A quick Google search by the DNC would have shown them that Hough and Wahhaj are leaders in the separatist American Islamist movement. While they may be able to get a few thousand Muslims to attend the event, they are NOT going to be mainstream Muslims. Most will likely come from Hough and Wahhaj’s radical networks that have long been entrenched in the Charlotte area. Make no mistake they are part of the Islamist movement.
[…]
Their jummah (group) prayer is…about empowering their Islamist and MB sympathetic groups into the very fabric of the political system so that Americans become anesthetized. We need American Muslims to speak up and marginalize these radicals. The DNC needs to understand and reject them because of their radical history and ideas.
Here are a few comments by people at an official “Jumah at the DNC” video:
I am a Democratic female. I feel the that the Democratic party does not share any of my values any longer. They have morphed into a near Socialist Party like that of China. I fear we have headed down the wrong path with President Obama and this country is in need of a change. That is why i am voting for Mitt Romney this election. He as the background and the economic recovery plan we need to Right America again!
——————————————
Obama has cobbled together a room full of gay-hating/ woman-hating Muslim terrorists, gay-hating racist blacks, women who laugh about killing their own babies, drunk-driving Hollywood celebs, rich lily white Union bosses and Occupy bomb makers. What could possibly go wrong?
…The Democratic National Convention will commence from August 31st through September 1st with a focus on Islam. Jumah at the DNC will begin Aug. 29th. 20,000 Muslims are expected to be in attendance. This is according to the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs (BIMA), led by one of the un-indicted co-conspirators in the World Trade Center bombing. The DNC has come full circle since 9-11 and they are now embracing the enemy from within and joining with radical Islam and their hatred of America.
Have you ever seen a more clear demarcation between good and evil, light and dark? I haven’t.
The DNC is sooo immersed in their belief in multiculturalism that they have welcomed with open arms Islamic extremists that declare that America will fall unless America “accepts the Islamic agenda.” They have asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.” It’s like those who embraced Stalin or Hitler – the DNC has embraced hate and national suicide.
