I am Not A Jew, But I Played With One, As a Kid. Obama's Shinola is Ticking: God Bless Israel!

 Obama wears a Shinola watch; of course he does. "While the main reason for President Obama's visit to Detroit on Wednesday was to shine a light on the recuperating auto industry, he also made a point of stopping by the city's finest watchmaker. Since 2011, Shinola has been crafting American-made timepieces in the Motor City, helping transform its image and neighborhoods along the way. "Esquire.  President Obama is waiting to help destroy Israel and burnish his progressive legacy.

"Does Mr. Obama want to be remembered as the President who criminalized Israeli citizenship," asks the Wall Street Journal

Yeah, I think that he would be perfectly fine with that.  He and Israel's Prime Minister have not been two for a four-some.

Israeli diplomats gird for the possibility that President Obama may try to force a diplomatic resolution for Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations. The White House has been unusually tight-lipped about what, if anything, it might have in mind. But our sources say the White House has asked the State Department to develop an options menu for the President’s final weeks.
One possibility would be to sponsor, or at least allow, a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction, perhaps alongside new IRS regulations revoking the tax-exempt status of people or entities involved in settlement building. The Administration vetoed such a resolution in 2011 on grounds that it “risks hardening the position of both sides,” which remains true.
But condemning the settlements has always been a popular way of scoring points against the Jewish state, not least at the State Department, and an antisettlement resolution might burnish Mr. Obama’s progressive brand for his post presidency. Wall Street Journal

Have I mentioned that I am of Irish Catholic descent?

No Shinola, Sherlock. I am as Catholic as Tim Kaine, maybe more so.  I know American Catholics who hate Jews and really hate Israel.  I never understood that?   These days, the salt-water Irish I chat with who have come to America from Kerry, Clare, Mayo. Galway and Derry, really seem to hate Israel.  To a person they are very well educated, hard working, fair-minded and generous, but they all seem tained with the Noam Chomsky contrarian mindset, so fashionably sophisticated and European.

That I follow, but can not for the life of me understand.

The Irish and the Jews have had a long and firm grip on one another's suffering, history and contribution to Western Civilization.  The Israeli Defense Forces, fighting for the nation's existence, was formed on the tactics and strategies of the Irish Republican Army of 1921.

Not only were many of the Zionist military tactics in 1940’s Britain and Palestine drawn from pre-war IRA bombing campaigns in Britain but the Irgun was re-organized “on IRA lines”, according to Walton, by Robert Briscoe, father of Fianna Fail TD and Mayor of Dublin Ben Briscoe, who travelled secretly to Britain in the pre-war years to meet and advise Irgun representatives.
Briscoe Senior, himself a Fianna Fail TD for many years, had impeccable IRA credentials. He accompanied Eamonn de Valera to the USA on a lengthy fund-raising trip during the Anglo-Irish war and also was sent by Michael Collins to Germany in 1919 to procure arms for the IRA. A former Chief of Staff of the IRA’s boy scouts, na Fianna Eireann, Eamonn Martin was Briscoe’s best man at his wedding and he hated the British, describing himself in a memoir as a self-appointed professor holding “the chair of subversive activities against England”.
Another Irish Jew who strongly supported both Irish Republican and Zionist terrorism was Isaac Herzog, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland who emigrated to Palestine in 1936 where he was appointed to the chief rabbinate, the most powerful clerical position in the Jewish world. MI5 kept him under close surveillance and asked the Irish police to keep tabs on Briscoe.
He wrote in his memoirs that he elected himself “to a full Professorship with the Chair of Subversive Activities against England,”
 (See more at: )

These facts have been Progressively white-out-ed and erased from historical considerations. Note well, British MI-5 after WWII was run by the Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five's Marxist affections and the Soviets were no friend of Israel.

Over the years, younger Irish people ( under 75) came to believe that Palestinians never slaughtered Jews in 1920s, that the Grand Mufti was a Quaker and that the survivors of Holocaust were everything Hitler said they were in the Nuremberg Laws. They forgot that Sean MacStiophan and Menachim Begin were pals.  This was the result of the Irish Government's BBC culture that sprouted post-DeValera.

However, even after Kim Philby was proven to be a Soviet mole, the Old Boy OxBridge affections for Animal Farm rooted in academia and the BBC nestled in Old Blighty and Old Erin's bogs.

Israel morphed from a harbor from the Holocaust to Nazi Germany in the memes of the elites.

Irish politicians are seem unanimously anti-Israel: Michale Higgins, Enda Kenny, Mary Robinson & etc. Yanks are as bad.

America apes every Etonian fashion from Carnaby Street and Beatlemania to a World Without Borders and the Garden of Gaza. aways a few years behind.  The Brit anarchists were burning tires under viaducts, while Kurt Cobain was learning to string his own Silvertone. Long before Occupy and the Battle of Seattle,  Sophisticates, love Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

I am not that sophisticated.

I know Jews, love Jews, admire Jews and hung around with Jews.  From Danny Levy, Little Flower High School Class of 1970 to Phil Scharf, second violin Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to Si and Shirley Blitzstein who hired Catholic kids from Leo, Brother Rice and Little Flower at Mr. Lee's in the old Evergreen Plaza, I have known only honesty, humor, talent and American patriotism from my Jewish friends and neighbors.

President Obama is sophisticated,

His cabinet is full of sophisticates, like Valerie Jarrett who has done more for Persian hegemony in the world than Cyrus and his Celtic United Nations Ambassador Samantha Powers, who only recently took the side of Israel against the emerging nations dictators and sheiks.



That was in February, and Powers told Israel:

“When we see bias, injustice or the continuation of strife within the United Nations, it is not because the UN created all of this, it is because the UN gathers governments and gathers problems, and being in the UN doesn’t change the biases of those governments,” she said.
Power, whose visit was seen by some analysts as a sign of renewed US interest in jump-starting peace talks, admitted that the situation was not ripe for new negotiations, though the US would continue to pursue a two-state solution.
“I would expect that pursuit to continue, and right now we hope the parties will take steps to move them closer again to restart negotiations, which is not a position they are in now,” she said. “We will dedicate ourselves to that as long as we are in office.”
Power also expressed hope that students participating in the Model UN would soon be able to sit behind a “Palestine placard,” backing the importance of a two-state solution.
“You must strive to wade side by side into the toughest issues, because it is you and your children and the generations following them who will reap the benefits of the peace you’ve built, or else endure the suffering of ongoing strife,” she urged the students.

Things change.  Putin is about to shell Aleppo into dust, the Presidential election is seven days away, Iran and Valerie Jarrett want to make sure President Obama rolls up the carpet on Israel before he leaves office.

The worst option would be an effort to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Security Council setting “parameters” for a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The French have been eager to do this for some time, and one option for the Administration would be to let the resolution pass simply by refusing to veto it. Or the U.S. could introduce the resolution itself, all the better to take credit for it.
As the old line has it, this would be worse than a crime—it would be a blunder. U.S. policy has long and wisely been that only Israelis and Palestinians can work out a peace agreement between themselves, and that efforts to impose one would be counterproductive. Whatever parameters the U.N. established would be unacceptable to any Israeli government, left or right, thereby destroying whatever is left of a peace camp in Israel.
The Palestinians would seize on those parameters as their birthright, making it impossible for any future Palestinian leader to bargain part of them away in a serious negotiation. Arab states would find their diplomatic hands tied, making it impossible to serve as useful intermediaries between Jerusalem and Ramallah. It could refreeze relations with Israel even as they finally seem to have thawed.
President Obama may be the last man on earth to get the memo, but after decades of fruitless efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict it might be wiser for the U.S. to step back until the Palestinians recognize that peace cannot be imposed from the outside. If Mr. Obama is still seeking a Middle East legacy at this late stage in his presidency, his best move is do nothing to make it worse.

Samantha Powers is an accomplished person who actually wrote her own books and President Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.  Powers has been in the United Nations since August 2013.  Perhaps she has learned to see the world differently.  President Obama is the same man who took the Oath of Office in 2009 - the exact same man.  Valerie Jarrett never leaves his ears.

Many American Catholics who buy into the Social Justice Warrior facade detest Israel and support the Obama Palestinian gambit.  Catholic Activists like Kevin Clark, a member of International Solidarity Movement went Israel and encourage American students to throw themselves in front of IDF bulldozers in Gaza.  The blood of Rachel Corrie, for whom the Irish OXFAM Gaza Flotilla flagship was named, is not on the hands of Israel, but on Clark the Social Justice Warrior.  This guy is bad and he has the ear of Catholic social justice sheep. 

I grew up believing that deeds and not words marked the character of people.

We all can be fooled, tricked, gulled, anesthetized, or  made oblivious.  A few of us don't mind any of the afore mentioned conditions.

My Irish cousins forgot that Israel is not Nazi Germany.  My Catholic coreligionists need to leave moral equivalency to the Unitarians and too many of the other Mainline faiths.

I know that Shinola can be a watch and a swell shoe polish.  I know that Israel is our best friend on the planet.  President Obama?  Not so much.

John Ruberry Marathon Pundit on the Street With SEIU . . .I mean OWS Chicago

Pat Quinn and his Marxist guru Dr. Quentin Young* - Shanghai Pat is sporting his SEIU Purple Tie - wears it alot.

That purple tie and the color purple here in Illinois is the icon of the next layoff for a skilled tradesman, cop, nurse, firefighter, Chicago sanitation worker ( Garbage Collection Grid), Water Reclamation District employee ( think Rahm's looming Tax Water Park, kids) all thanks in large part to the influence of SEIU on Illinois' political/journalistic/academic culture.

When all the taxes have been sucked dry, it's lay-off time! We have larded the government work rolls and the pension debt at the say-so of SEIU.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Vanishing American Middle Class. This morning I read Marathon Pundit by Morton Grove's on the scene pundit-blogger John Ruberry.

Rubes is a guy who is like so many Americans; he has a good memory and is not much for the Memes.

When The Catholic School Girls Against the War tossed fake blood on worshippers at Holy Name Cathedral he too remembered that International Solidarity Movement ( Hamas Activists)leader Kevin Clark not only goaded the goofy kids taken away in hand cuffs after their assault, but had also encouraged American-born Rachel Corrie to place herself in front of an Israeli Bulldozer and become an International martyr for the Left. Kevin Clark is a Gay Liberation activist as well and all purpose goader who manages to avoid arrest.

More so, John Ruberry also recognizes that activists like the shameless Clark work and play together, while the lazy Chicago media actively ignores their complicity in every confrontational demonstration and manage to spark police bashing universally.

Hamas, or the Palestinian Blockade, or George Bush Hate Fests, or anti-Catholic Gay Rights shout-downs, Condoms for Kindergartners, or Big Box SEIU Tax Raises, Kevin Clark, Andy Thayer and SEIU's Joe Isobaker are in the thick of the goading, shouting, liquid tossings, or press opportunities.

The Middle Class, in particular families supported by members of the Skilled Trades and Industrial unions, has been chipped away to near invisibility by SEIU and their lesser lights. SEIU is the monster PAC that masquerades as a labor union.

SEIU became legitimatized under the leadership of oafish John Sweeney in the 1970's, along with Teachers Unions, AFSCME, and radicalized under the great Mandarin of "Labor" Andy Stern.

SEIU is the most dynamic of organizing machines. They amass numbers - members, dues, and votes. Their members stay in low paying jobs for their entire lives as members of SEIU - janitors, nursing home bed-pan tossers, some nurses & etc.

SEIU members depend upon the threats of the leaders over cowardly, or cynical legislators, City council members, or any one who can raise tax revenue. That is collective bargaining SEIU fashion.

The Democratic Party and the Skilled Trades found it convenient to play-ball with SEIU, in this our post-Shakman Progressive world. SEIU feeds platitudes to lazy ink-slingers and copy for the morning reads.

Pipe-fitters, Insulators, Operating Engineers, Iron Workers, Electricians, Carpenters and Industrial workers have allowed the bullhorns of SEIU and its armies of XXXXL Purple T-shirt clad mobilized forces to intimidate legislators and keep American Labor in the news. In fact so effective was the Marxist Andy Stern in leading labor that BIG LABOR became synonymous with SEIU. SEIU is the voice of the National Democratic Party on Health Care, Gay Marriage, Abortion and Redistribution of wealth. SEIU organizes. SEIU is Occupy Wall Street as it was Occupy Madison and get Walker.

Click my post title and read John Ruberry and take a gander at the great photos take by a real journalist. You won't find this coverage of OWS kiddies in the Tribune or the Sun Times.

Thanks Rubes!

*

The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young joined the Young Communist League as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of Mao Zedong.



Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and led a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became associated with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by Michael Lerner, an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles.



In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer lobby group whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the Democratic Socialists of America, which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, asserts that "many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed." In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare "should be financed by truly progressive taxation."

In 1995 Young attended the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to Alice Palmer, a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, teaching the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama:

"Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator] -- influenced, I hope, by me and others -- categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion…."

Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day.

Chicago's Networked Activists Say, "Bring The Kids! The G-8 Riots Will Be Great!"

Your Bush 4 Defendants:GLN's Buddy Bell, Jeff Pickert, Kevin Clark and GLN's Andy Thayer will back for the G-8 Riots! Bring the Kids!

I have a dash above room temperature I.Q. - I think the tests were racist, or skewed against my cultural background. That said, I know that the media ignores whom they wish to ignore.

Pit bulls like Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun Times will dig their incisors into the rumps of 'bullet-proof' kin to powerful politicians. That is all good. Tim Novak is the absolute best and most honest of newsmen. He is interested in getting to the root causes of corruption. Novak is on the Daley/Davis real estate bonanza, as well as other crimes and misdemeanors of the nepotists.

However, no Chicago journalist ever bothers to connect the dots on the thick network of activists whose fibers form a Gordian knot of lucrative activism via academia, 501 (c) 3's, radical terrorism, public service PACs like SEIU, the media, lawsuit lotto lawyers, Brahmin agendas: Gay, Anti-War, Hamas, Cop Brutality (real and mostly imagined, Poverty Pimping, and tax-increase legislation.

Kevin Clark - a leader of the highly dicey International Solidarity Movement is also a Gay Liberation Activist who happens to work closely with self-proclaimed Catholic Anti-war activists, Hamas, and was the man who helped guide the late Rachel Corrie into the path of an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer. Clark led suits and protests against Peoria based Caterpillar for building bulldozers. Clark also spearheaded the Gaza Flotilla activism and the attack on Cardinal George one Easter Sunday a few years ago again using kids to do his work -Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War.



Then there is the ubiquitous Andy Thayer whose commercial challenged young would be Bolsheviks with his Thee You in the Threeth before blocking traffic and getting the challenged arrethted. That great Marilyn Katz-like video and so many others have been scrubbed on You Tube. You may remember it from 2003, a parade of earnest radicals in motorcycle helmets urged us all to See Them in the Street. Wasn't that a time, to paraphrase the Methuselah of Red Pete Seeger? Well here's activist Andy:



Andy, like the smarmy Clark, happens to be a Gay Liberation Activist which is nice, but he also works with Lawsuit Lotto Lawyer Jon Loevy who has made millions of dollars bringing suit against any and all law enforcement for any reason.

There also a parade of feminists nuns who shill for abortion and manage to wheedle money under the guise of charity who help the activists get gigs with Ariana Huffington, face time on WTTW and a pass from breaking the laws.

SEIU Joe Iosbaker has had a year of playing at Haymarket Martyr thanks to an FBI raid over his labors on behalf of Hamas. Joe wants Chicagoans to think of the G-* summit as a latter-day Republic Steel picnic (1937). Bring the kids in strollers and maybe the Bulls, not the team, but the old-timey Red handle for cops, will light up a few babies, when provoked by the Soul-Patched Knit-Hat Che T-shirt dweebs. " Cool Bix! Light the tires under Viaduct! Seatle!"

I believe ex- Professor Dave Protess has the bus wheel marks all over the back of his Brooks Brothers Oxford shirt, more because he shed light on the network of wealthy radical enterprises - I wonder way Professor of Law and Can't Practice Law NU's Bernardin Dohrn, who took a trip to Eygpt in solidarity just before the Gaza Flotilla disaster and the soapy Arab Spring, has not stood in solidarity with the Fagin of the Innocence Project? I know Chicago's supine media is not wondering the same thing.

The same clowns and posers, Andy, Kev, Joe, Sister Mary Forceps and their familiars, are there when trouble gets planned and never called on it.

The same geniuses vet our elected officials from White House on down to Commissioner of Side-walk safety.

Chicago activist Joe Iosbaker, who helped organize the RNC protests in 2008 and whose home was raided by FBI agents last October, said he applied for permits to hold demonstrations in Daley Plaza and Federal Plaza downtown the day the White House announced the city would host the summits.

So far, he has not heard anything about the status of the permits from the county about using Daley Plaza or the agency that controls Federal Plaza. City officials also have said organizers will not be able to apply for a permit for a planned march through the city until the first of the year, Iosbaker said.

“They told me they would get back to me in two weeks to let me know at least that we were in the process of getting the permit,” Iosbaker said. “That was nine weeks ago.”

Local activist Andy Thayer said demonstrations will be peaceful, despite a recent statement by police Superintendent Garry McCarthy that the department is preparing for “mass arrests” of protesters during the summit.

The remarks were especially galling given Chicago's mixed history of dealing with large demonstrations, Thayer said. Police in 2003 arrested about 900 people who marched to protest the start of the Iraq war, with some protesters held for up to 36 hours. The arrests prompted a class-action lawsuit, Thayer said.

“Statements like that from McCarthy have a chilling effect,” he said. “The city has a history of attacks on civil rights.”

Iosbaker noted that events like the G8 and World Trade Organization summits have seen some violence in their host cities. Iosbaker attributed the clashes to aggressive police, and said his group is planning to do nothing to disrupt the city or the conferences.

“What we want is a safe, permitted, legal protest,” Iosbaker said. “Something that parents feel safe bringing their babies in strollers to, and we want our voice to be heard.”

Should be a great outing for the whole family,Joe. Let us know how that all works out.

Chicago IndyMedia is a great place to see all these folks in a very postive light. Doing so would put me off my feed, but that's just me.

http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/24328/index.php

Kevin Clark--ISM/SUSTAIN interview in 2 partsAuthor
Rita Sand
Date Created
12 Apr 2003
Date Edited
12 Apr 2003 10:13:27 PM
Rating
•Current rating: 0
Kevin Clark recently returned to Chicago from serving as a human shield in the Israeli occupied territories as part of the International Solidarity Movement. In light of the killing of ISM member Rachel Corrie of Washington State, the shootings Brian Avery from New Mexico and Tom Hurndall of Great Britain, Clark describes daily life in Palestine and the brutality and dangers that Palestinians and ISM workers face every day. (article 2)

Andy Thayer is co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network (www.GayLiberation.net), a Chicago-based LGBT direct action group which has been a local leader in gay rights, anti-police brutality and anti-war organizing. As a leader in the local anti-war movement, he's helped organize most of the city's large anti-war protests for the last several years, including a march of 15,000 on Lake Shore Drive at the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He's been arrested numerous times in various protests and was recently found not guilty of two felony counts from a January 2008 protest against the Chicago visit of President Bush. Last May he was among 30 LGBT activists arrested in the 4th annual gay pride demonstration in Moscow, Russia.

Time to Get Serious About Gaza

Some people just can not forget the OJ acquittal.

I deleted a rather amusing though fetid comment concerning my point of view with regards to the Gaza situation and the Second Flotilla. It was rather long and contained a litany of Hamas talking points, interspersed with Progressive language and misspellings, as well some sobering reflections and talking points that I must attend to and assume with regard to my continued carbon foot-printing of Mother Earth. Goats, melons, myself and boys of all ages are out of the question, Sir!

All serious people, the Anonymous scribe noted, are for the Palestinians because the Jews control the Vatican, the Media, The Congress, Texas Rangers, Most of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, Cable TV, Carnival Rides, Tin-Pan Alley, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Jesse Jackson's Dinning Room Centerpiece, The CTA 49A Western Bus Route, The Flow of the Chicago River, Boystown Violence, Black Flash Thugs, Jon Burge, Wesley Snipes, The Great Taste of Miller High Life, Dewey Kilbride's Dance Shoes, Kankakee ELK Lodge 627, The Millard Fillmore Society, the late Det. Billy Higgins' Bar Stool at Keegan's Pub on Western, Bill Veck's Leg, . . . and the Mormon Tabernacle Janitor Crew

Time to get serious -

Two Hamas Pappys are sitting in a Gaza Strip bar chatting over a pint of fermented goat’s milk, last Fathers Day.

One pulls his wallet out and starts flipping through pictures and they start reminiscing.

"This is my oldest son, he’s a martyr."

"This is my second son. He is a martyr also."

After a pause and a deep sigh, the second Père Hamas says wistfully,
"They blow up so fast, don’t they?"

Seriously. Rockets are not much of a giggle during the mid-day Soaps.

* This is serious -Who is behind the second Gaza flotilla?
JULY 1, 2011 BY GAZAFLOTILLA101 (click my post title for more serious news)

The second flotilla is coordinated by Muhammad Sawalha, a senior UK-based Muslim Brotherhood figure connected to Hamas. Many of the participating organizations can be directly linked with the Union of Good (UoG), a coalition of European charities affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which in 2008 was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury for transferring funds to Hamas. The UoG was initiated by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a global scale, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.

… Other main organizers include the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement (ISM), as well as far-left socialists from Europe and the United States. Many of the flotilla’s main organizers have stated that its prime aim is to create provocations and harm Israel’s image. … the flotilla is far from being a peaceful, humanitarian effort to support the Palestinians in Gaza. It should instead be seen as a major, pro-Hamas effort to delegitimize Israel by a “red-green alliance” of leftists and Islamists.