Manchester Bombing, Cairo Christians Killed, MS-13 Gangs Harbored, Greece in Tatters -- and Only President Trump Cares about Us

IT'S MONDAY -- HERE'S THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY. Christians. Greece. Manchester. MS-13. • • • CHRISTIANS SLAUGHTERED NEAR CAIRO. On Friday, masked militants in three SUVs opened fire on a bus carrying Coptic Christians, including many children, south of Cairo in the Sinai, killing at least 28 and wounding 25, according to the Interior Ministry. On Saturday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, the fourth to target Christians since December. Islamic militants have for years been waging an insurgency in the troubled northern part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, although a growing number of attacks have recently also taken place on mainland Egypt. The assault happened while the bus was traveling on a side road in the desert leading to the remote monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Maghagha, in Minya governorate, about 140 miles south of Cairo. The victims were enroute from the nearby province of Beni Suef. Security officials said witnesses told them they saw between 8 and 10 attackers, dressed in military uniforms and wearing masks. Khaled Mogahed, Egypt's Health Ministry spokesman, said the death toll could rise further. According to Copts United news, 10 children were killed and only three children survived the attack. Arab TV stations showed images of a badly damaged bus along a roadside, many of its windows blown out. Ambulances were parked around it with bodies on the ground covered with black plastic sheets. • Hours after Friday's attack, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced that Egypt had launched airstrikes against militant training bases in eastern Libya. Senior Egyptian officials said fighter jets targeted bases in Libya of the Shura Council, an Islamist militia known to be linked to al-Qaida, not ISIS. El-Sissi told Pope Towadros II, the Pope of the Coptic church in Egypt, in a phone call on Friday that the state would not rest until the perpetrators of the attack were punished. El-Sissi had already declared a three-month state of emergency following the targeting of two churches north of Cairo on Palm Sunday. In December, a suicide bomber targeted a Cairo church. The three attacks, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, killed at least 75 people. • On Friday, US President Trump vowed to crush “evil organizations of terror.” In a sharply worded statement, Trump condemned terrorists "engaged in a war against civilization" and the "merciless slaughter of Christians in Egypt." El-Sissi, in his televised address, said of the US President: "I direct my appeal to President Trump : I trust you, your word and your ability to make fighting global terror your primary task." He said the attack on a bus carrying Christians, many of them children, would steel the nation's resolve to destroy terrorist organizations and expose "their depraved, twisted and thuggish ideology." Egypt’s Copts, the Middle East’s largest and oldest Christian community, have repeatedly been targets for discrimination and attacks at the hands of the country’s majority Moslem population. They account for about 10% of Egypt’s 93 million people. Copts rallied around el-Sissi, a general who was elected president, in 2013 when he ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohammed Morsi, of the Moslem Brotherhood, under whose leadership attacks on Christian homes, businesses and churches surged, especially in the country’s south, the heartland of Egypt’s Christians. • After Pope Francis visited Egypt in April, in part to show his support for Christians in this Moslem majority Arab nation who have been increasingly targeted by Islamic militants, ISIS vowed to escalate attacks against Christians, urging Moslems to stay away from Christian gatherings and Western embassies, saying they are targets for the group’s followers. • The systematic genocide of the Middle East Christian community must soon be stopped before all traces of the oldest religious sect in the region are obliterated. Where is the European outrage at the massacre of its fellow Christians -- or is this yet another atrocity that the EU looks to America to master for it? • • • GREEKS, LIKE CHRISTIANS, ARE IGNORED BY THE EU. Former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was wounded Thursday in an explosion in a car in central Athens, police said. According to the AP, Papademos, 69, opened an envelope inside his car that contained explosives. This was confirmed by local news in Athens. However, police did not immediately confirm that it was a parcel bomb -- then, what was it?? Papademos was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Papademos served as prime minister for six months from 2011 to 2012 and is a former deputy governor of the European Central Bank. Police said two other people in the car were also wounded. • A recent protest in Athens, during a general strike against a new round of austerity cuts, took hundreds of thousands of Greeks off the job as they heeded the call of labor unions to join a 24-hour general strike. The effects of the strike came in response to pledges made by the leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Greece’s international creditors. Flights and public transportation were disrupted, ships remained anchored in ports, government offices were closed and hospitals operated with limited staff. • Greece has struggled for years to dig its way out of an economic crisis, and even though there has been progress, overall unemployment is at 23%, with the country largely dependent on outside help. National unions were strident in their rejection of the new round of austerity cuts : pension cuts starting in 2019 and tax increases beginning in 2020 that together would save about 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion). In a statement, the Greek civil servants’ union, Adedy, called the austerity measures “barbaric,” calling them the “looting of wages and pensions” and a “sellout” of state assets, referring to plans to privatize the power board and other public bodies. Thanos Vasilopoulos of Greece’s private sector union, GSEE, told Greek media : “The memorandums have consciously crushed small- and medium-size businesses," he said, referring to three foreign bailouts that successive governments have agreed to since 2010, adding “Basically, they have created an army of 1.5 million unemployed.” • Some members of the Tsipras government expressed opposition to the measures, but coalition lawmakers approved them after Tsipras placated wavering lawmakers and a public weary of seven years of austerity by preparing legislation that would introduce some so-called countermeasures, including social benefits for the poor. • The parliamentary approval before Greek finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, met his Eurozone counterparts at a meeting in Brussels last Monday was supposed to guarantee the release of €7 billion that Greece needs to meet debt obligations due in July, as well as to start a discussion of relief for Greece’s huge debt burden, which is equivalent to nearly 180% of GDP. Greece, which has been under the supervision of international creditors since 2010, has imposed wave after wave of austerity measures in return for bailout loans to keep the economy afloat. Fiscal discipline has improved Greece’s finances, but it has left one in four Greeks unemployed and cut household incomes by a third, and the ratio of the country’s debt to its GDP is the highest in the Eurozone. • BUT, after Tsipras herculean effort to force through his coalition parliamant yet another painful set of austerity measures, much to everyone's shocked surprise, Eurozone finance ministers failed to agree on a debt relief plan for Greece, raising the prospect of a summer crisis for the Eurozone if Athens misses a loan repayment. The meeting of the Eurozone’s 19 finance ministers broke up late last Monday, amid a row with the International Monetary Fund about Greece’s debt burden. The standoff came just hours after France and Germany pledged to deepen co-operation in the Euro and reform the Euyrozone in order to stave off populist groups from the left and right from taking power in some EU countries. After eight hours of talks in Brussels, Greece’s creditors -- the Eurozone members states and the IMF -- were unable to bridge their differences on Greece’s ability to repay its debts in the long run. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, who chaired the meeting, said : “We were very close and we were just unable to manage it tonight.” He said he hoped for a deal at the next Eurozone meeting on 15 June. The Eurozone-IMF fight is the final obstacle to Greece's receipt of a tranche of bailout funds that will let it repay €7.3 billion of loans due to be paid in July. The EU agreed to a €86 billion rescue package for Greece in July 2015, an unprecedented third bailout that stopped the country from crashing out of the Eurozone, but Greece needs to carry out scores of detailed reforms before receiving the cash, which is paid in installments. It secured €10.3 billion last May, but the latest payment has been held up for months. • The problem is that northern European countries do not want to lend Greece more money unless the IMF agrees to be part of the third bailout. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands think the IMF will add discipline to the program and fear the EU alone would be too soft on Athens. But the IMF has so far refused to get involved in Greece’s third bailout because officials think the country’s debts cannot be managed in the long-run. The Washington-based IMF has repeatedly said it is looking for “a credible strategy to restore debt sustainability.” The dispute centers on a demand that Greece run a budget surplus equivalent to 3.5% of GDP. The EU thinks Greece can hit this target, but the IMF has long argued that any country with such high unemployment would struggle to meet such demanding fiscal targets over decades. In a sign of a possible concession, Dijsselbloem said there had been “full agreement that the 3.5% primary surplus should remain for five years” and eventually fall, although he did not specify a figure. The IMF continues to insist anything higher than a 1.5% surplus is not credible, and it is urging the Eurozone to be realistic about Greece’s ability to keep a tight cap on public spending over decades. Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s European department, wants to see “more realism” in the EU’s growth forecasts for Greece and “a bit more specificity” on how the Eurozone will ease Greece’s debt burden in the long-run. • So, not only does the EU turn a blind eye to the genocide of Middle East Christians, it is apparently willing to inflict severe and increasing economic hardship on one of its own -- Greece -- which happens to be the major gatekeeper preventing a wholesale influx of illegal migrants who are pouring onto its islands by raft from Turkey. Does the EU care either about Greece or about being overrun by illegals who harbor terrorists??? Apparently not. • • • OBAMA PLACED MS-13 GANG MEMBERS THROUGHOUT THE US. The EU indifference to infiltration by illegal terrorists isn't very different from the Obama administration's transferring MS-13 gang members to placement centers across America in 2014. This was confirmed in a May 23 letter to Scott Lloyd, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, in which Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, stated that at least 16 self-proclaimed MS-13 gang members were transferred out of federal custody and into community placement centers across the country during the border surge of unaccompanied “children” from Central America in 2014. Johnson pointed out that the image of Unaccompanied Children, UACs, as little children is misleading. The reality is that out of nearly 200,000 UACs apprehended between 2012 and 2016, 68% were ages 15, 16 or 17, that is, older teens. Furthermore, the majority of these teenagers were male, making them prime targets for gang recruiting. Senator Johnson said the FBI has identified five hot spots that have a concentrated MS-13 presence and violence -- Los Angeles, Houston, the Washington DC region, Long Island, and Boston. He cited figures showing an estimated 10,000 MS-13 members in the United States and another 30,000 in Central America. • A Fox News report on May 17, written before Johnson’s committee began its hearings, quoted statements from Sheriff Vincent DeMarco of Suffolk County, New York -- the eastern two-thirds of Long Island. He said that the unaccompanied minor program initiated by former President Obama provided an avenue for members of MS-13 to infiltrate communities across the country : “These unaccompanied minors who are already MS-13 members in El Salvador have made their way to communities throughout the country, but Suffolk County has been extremely hard hit with this program in that 4,000 minors from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, a lot of them MS-13 members before they came, are now in Suffolk County." The Fox News report went on to note that President Trump has put MS-13 on notice and vowed to “really go after” the brutal criminal gangs and drug cartels that prey upon Americans, stating : “For too long Washington has gone after law abiding gun owners while making life easier for criminals, drug dealers, traffickers and gang members -- MS-13. You know about MS-13. It’s not pleasant for them anymore,” Trump told the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum in Atlanta in April. DeMarco told Fox News he is hopeful the Trump administration will continue to combat the increasing gang violence by appointing officials that believe in law, order, and justice. DeMArco said : “Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is doing a great job and [DHS] is working very closely with us now, too. They’ve expanded a gang task force.” • • • AND WHAT ABOUT BRITAIN PAYING STUDENT BENEFITS TO TERRORISTS. Does the UK care any more than the EU or Obama about illegal immigrant terrorist infiltration? A You Tube posted by Blabber buzz shows that in the UK, terrorists are “able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMdHxmqyoe4). The UK Telegraph reports that police say the Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loan and benefits to bankroll the terror plot. Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp. In another development, a barber shop in Manchester was raided on the theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide -- a chemical used in the hairdressing industry that can also be used to construct bombs -- from the salon. Abedi’s finances are a major "theme" of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing. One former detective told the Telegraph that jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up.” Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015. • If that isn't enough, consider that UK government sources have confessed that there are at least 23,000 jihadists in Britain -- more than seven times more than previously revealed. Until recently, the public had been led to believe there were around 3,000 known jihadists in Britain, with 500 being subject to active investigations led by MI5. Whitehall officials have now disclosed that a further 20,000 individuals have been identified as posing a “residual risk”, according to The Times of London. "Residual threat"??? -- Khalid Masood, who ran down a number of pedestrians and stabbed a police constable to death outside the Palace of Westminster in March was among the pool of individuals who had been reported to the authorities but was not under active surveillance; and, Manchester Arena killer Salman Abedi, a son of Libyan refugees with Islamist links, had also been reported to the authorities, but, as with Masood, “limited resources” allowed him to slip through the surveillance net. Senior National Co-ordinator for Counter-Terrorism Neil Basu revealed that terror suspects are now being arrested “on a near daily basis” in Britain after the Westminster attack -- an early hint at the scale of the challenge Britain is facing. • Anthony Glees, the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies director who recently estimated the number of jihadists in Britain at “between 6,000 and 10,000”, described the Whitehall revelations as “horrifying” : “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can’t go on as if this wasn’t happening.” And, Colonel Richard Kemp, a former member of the COBRA committee and Joint Intelligence Committee, as well as commander of British forces in Helmand, Afghanistan, has also called for robust action, saying that all foreign nationals on the terror watch list who cannot be prosecuted should be deported or interned. Kemp tweeted : "We do not allow them to roam free on our streets to murder and maim our children....“Every single person who we have intelligence upon, who is known to be involved in terrorism, who is not a UK citizen, and who we cannot prosecute in the courts, we get rid of out this country. We deport them; we send them back to where they came from." • And how many terrorists are hiding among illegal immigrants in France and Germany...and among 'refugees' admitted to the US?? If officials know, they aren't telling us. • • • DEAR READERS, if the massacre of Coptic Christians in Egypt and the bombing of teenagers and children in Manchester has taught us anything, it is that President Trump is indispensable -- he is right to be hyper-cautious about admitting refugees from Middle East war zones and he is right about stamping out ISIS and other terrorist groups with the greatest force and cooperation of America's allies possible. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the Trump travel ban as an unconstitutional ban on Moslems was wrongheaded and suicidal. Worse, it came from unelected judges who are taking on the mantle of the legislature, a role reserved to the Congress in the US Constitution. What do these federal judges think about after they rule so dangerously and then read about bodies of dead Christians murdered by radical Islamic terrorists in Egypt and in Britain? Do they, like the EU and Britain's homeland intelligence agency, MI-5, and Barack Obama, simply shrug their shoulders while innocents are being slaughtered by those they are protecting?? Compassion and full legal protection for illegal terrorists -- but what about the victims?? • Fortunately, the case is now likely to go to the Supreme Court where, thanks to President Trump, Justice Neil Gorsuch now holds the Scalia seat. Manchester and Egypt and the MS-13 dispersion are chilling reminders of the threats we face from those who respect neither laws nor any religion. The terrorists of Egypt and Manchester would slaughter the judges of the Fourth Circuit just as they slaughtered Christians and children. • No wonder Republican Greg Gianforte beat the hostile media's odds in Montana’s special House election Thursday. Gianforte’s victory won following reports that only 24 hours before, he had grabbed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs by the throat and allegedly “body-slammed” the journalist and broke his glasses after the reporter jammed a microphone into Gianforte's face and insisted he answer a negative question. The encounter raised questions about whether hostility toward the liberal media among conservatives and Republicans in general has grown so intense that the so-called “body slam heard round the world” didn’t harm and may have helped Gianforte. After reports worldwide that the embattled Republican received $100,000 in unsolicited small donations following his encounter with Jacobs, Laure Mandeville, editor-at-large of the venerable 'conservative' French publication Le Figaro said to Newsmax : “Incredible, indeed. Are journalists hated that much [by conservatives]? It’s worrying.” • But, all things taken together, nothing beats Hillary Clinton's charge that President Trump will be impeached. Hillary made the comment during a commencement speech this weekend. If Hillary were to feel the full weight of the law, that gratuitous slur would have come from a federal prison cell. • Even Hillary Clinton’s own former campaign manager John Podesta disagrees with her. Podesta said last week that he does not see any indication that President Donald Trump will be impeached, despite the fact that many in his party are calling for it : “I see no sign that there’s any likelihood that he’ll be impeached.” Podesta was not being kind to Trump or having a drastic change of heart. He was being realistic. And if any American speaks for George Soros, it most likely is John Podesta, so we may assume that the Progressive camp hierarchy has folded the impeachment tent and will satisfy its bloodlust for Trump's scalp by sending out its minions to nip at his heels every step of the way along his presidency. • And, that is the News of the Day -- not very pretty, is it??? Who but Donald Trump is looking out for us?? Nobody.