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Has the New York Times Just Provided Proof of Muslim Brotherhood Influence Operations in the United States?

September 10, 2014

Has the New York Times Just Provided Proof of Muslim Brotherhood Influence Operations in the United States
by Katie Gorka 9 Sep 2014 Via Breitbart


(What a rat’s nest. – LS)

For years, a handful of national security experts, NGOs, and members of Congress have been trying to raise a red flag over what they suspected were active influence operations by the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

(The RAND Corporation defines influence operations as “the collection of tactical information about an adversary as well as the dissemination of propaganda in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent.”)

On June 13, 2012, five members of Congress called for an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations in the Obama administration. The five members– Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)– were widely criticized for doing so, even by their own Republican leadership, including John McCain (R-AZ), John Boehner (R-OH), and Mike Rogers (R-MI).

At the time, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said, “It’s not right to question the loyalty of fellow Americans without any evidence.” Well, now we have the evidence.

The New York Times published a comprehensive article on September 7th entitled, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.” The article documents multi-million dollar donations to Washington-based think tanks that include the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council, by foreign governments as a way of buying influence in Washington.

For example, the government of Qatar made a $14.8 million donation to the Brookings Institution. It is a matter of public record that Qatar is a key funder and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and, indeed, that supporting Muslim Brotherhood parties has been a cornerstone of Qatar’s foreign policy.

According to Middle East Monitor, The Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Tamim bin-Hamad, said that support for the Muslim Brotherhood is a “duty” for which no thanks are necessary. Qatar is home to the pro-Brotherhood channel Al Jazeera, to Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar has directly funded a number of Muslim Brotherhood entities, including Hamas and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar has also provided refuge to many exiled Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

While The New York Times does not make explicit the link between Qatar’s position on the Muslim Brotherhood and its support for the Brookings Institution, the Times does report that the former prime minister of Qatar sits on the Brookings board and that Brookings staff meet regularly with Qatari government officials about the center’s activities. The report says that Qatar’s large donations to Brookings buy something of a guarantee that Brookings will burnish the image of Qatar. It does not go into specific policies or positions that Brookings has advanced as a result of this alliance. But a close look at Brookings’ publications makes clear that promoting the Muslim Brotherhood has been a key part of that agenda.

In particular, Shadi Hamid, Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center, has consistently argued that the United States must learn to live with political Islam and that supporting the “non-violent” Muslim Brotherhood is the West’s only way of forestalling further radicalization and future threats from the “violent” Islamists such as Al Qaeda. For example, in one article, Shahid argued that the U.S. should exert its influence in Egypt and Jordan to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the upcoming elections: “With much-anticipated elections in both countries scheduled for 2010 and 2011, the Obama administration as well as the U.S. Congress have the opportunity to weigh in and address the question of Islamist participation, something they have so far avoided doing.”

The fact that the New York Times has provided proof of foreign-government influence operations in America’s national security community should now raise serious concerns about some major policy decisions in recent years, where foreign interference was suspected but never proven.

In 2012, Newt Gingrich wrote an article about the Congressional probe of MB infiltration where he noted that the Defense Department’s official report on the Fort Hood shooter illogically described Nidal Hassan’s attack as “workplace violence.” Gingrich also charted the White House’s efforts to expunge mention of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel not merely from its own statements but also from the historical record, and he noted the explicit exclusion of Israel from the Global Counterterrorism Forum, in September 2011, by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Claiming Jerusalem as the capitol of the caliphate has been a major goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. When the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood announced at a rally on May 1, 2012 that their candidate for president would be Mohammed Morsi, Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi declared the following in a speech to thousands:

The capital of the Caliphate—the capital of the united states of the Arabs—will be Jerusalem, Allah willing. Morsi will liberate Gaza tomorrow….Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem, Allah willing.

Given the alignment of the Muslim Brotherhood’s goals with U.S. policies and now proof that very large amounts of money have been expended to influence policy, one has to ask what was behind these policies. Were they made with the interests of the United States in mind, or were they driven by other factors? Given the recent conflict between Israel and Gaza, this is a question of major significance.

An issue of even greater import for the security of the United States and for American citizens is the potential influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the massive purge of counter-terrorism trainers and training materials that took place in the autumn of 2011.

At that time, the Department of Justice initiated a sweeping review of all counter-terrorism trainers and materials used throughout federal law enforcement and every branch of the military. Hundreds of training slides were reviewed by an anonymous panel of reviewers. Many trainers were forbidden from future training and material that used terms like “jihad”, “Islamic terrorism”, or “Islamist violence” were expunged.

It was noted at the time that there were members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and in other positions of influence, who were known Islamists or Muslim Brotherhood members, or who had gone on record defending terrorist groups and acts of terrorism: individuals such as Louay Safi, Mohamed Elibiary, Omar Alomari, Imam Mohamed Magid, and Sahar Aziz. But while the questioning of allegiances and agendas of these individuals never moved beyond a small circle of conservative websites and analysts, American experts who had spent their lives in law enforcement or the military either lost their jobs or were constrained from further sharing of their expertise.

Aside from the injustice of what happened in 2011, the burning question for today, as we approach the 13th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, is whether U.S. law enforcement or the military can be prepared properly for the rising threat from The Islamic State (ISIS) if there are constraints on what they are being taught about Islamist terrorism and what words they are allowed to use to describe the threat.

The New York Times has provided a very important glimpse into a new era of foreign-government influence operations in the United States. Those who raised concerns about it in the past should now feel vindicated. But if members of Congress or the Department of Justice decide to dig deeper into this issue, their investigation cannot stop at influence-buying of US think tanks but must look into every aspect of America’s national security apparatus.

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Edelstein in Prague: Europe will understand Israel’s problems when IS reaches it

September 10, 2014

Edelstein in Prague: Europe will understand Israel’s problems when IS reaches it

Islamic terrorism is a threat to all of humankind, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka in Prague Wednesday.

“When the Islamic State reaches Europe, everyone will understand what Hamas meant for Israel,” Edelstein warned. “We must eradicate Islamic terrorism for the good of humankind.”

Edelstein expressed hope that the Czech Republic will continue to stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself in European fora and in the UN.

The Knesset Speaker also discouraged Sobotka from having his country upgrade relations with Iran, as the Czech Republic is considering sending an ambassador there and increasing trade with Teheran.

Edelstein explained that disregarding sanctions would be a victory for the Iranian regime.

Sobotka said his country will continue its unqualified support of Israel, adding that the friendship between the countries spans foreign affairs and defense matters, as well as economics, innovation, culture and tourism.

Edelstein met with Sobotka in one of several high-level meetings he held on his visit to the Czech Republic.

On Thursday, the Knesset Speaker will continue to Oslo for a convention of parliamentary speakers from around the world.

Edelstein is expected to meet with parliamentary speakers from Germany, Norway, Ireland, Montenegro and Azerbaijan at the conference, and plans to emphasize that Israel will defend itself as longs as its citizens’ lives are in danger.

“This is an opportunity to explain the importance of [Operation Protective Edge] and, no less important than that, is the need to fight dangers that await Israel like boycotts and manifestations of anti-Semitism,” Edelstein said Sunday.

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Group of Christian Leaders Rally Against U.S. Action on ISIS

September 10, 2014

Group of Christian Leaders Rally Against U.S. Action on ISIS, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, September 10, 2014

(They should go to Iraq, Syria and other places infested by the Islamic State, its predecessors, cohorts and progeny to preach the Gospels. Surely, all involved Islamists would then understand that their violent ways are evil misguided because contrary to not only to the Gospels but also to their own religion. What could possibly go wrong? — DM)

Islamic-State-Assassinate-Iraqis-HP_2Islamic State militants assassinate Iraqis

These Christian activists have adopted the Islamist narrative while ignoring the Islamists’ words about their own intentions. By teaching their supporters that ISIS is the result of American “aggression,” they are promoting inaction that will further the Islamist extremist cause and enable the persecution of fellow Christians.

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A group of 53 Christian leaders and activists are urging the Obama Administration not to militarily strike the ISIS terrorist group in Iraq and Syria in a published letter. Several of the organizations represented have a history of willful blindness to the Islamist ideology and have allied with American Islamists with extremist histories.

The letter was published by the Catholic Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns. One of the group’s stated objectives is:

“Identifying and eliminating the root causes of violence and conflict with a focus on…U.S. aggression and national security policy (e.g. war on terrorism and war in Iraq and Afghanistan). The nexus of violence and poverty is clear.”

The worldview of this Christian group is that Islamic extremism is a response to American imperialism. In other words, its America’s fault and the Islamist terrorists are victims, even if their methods are deplorable.

This perspective is fundamentally in error and naïve. ISIS calls itself the Islamic State because that’s what it is fighting for. According to its own words, it is fighting for a caliphate and sharia governance (i.e, an Islamic State). There is no logical way to connect opposition to American foreign policy with this agenda.

In a blunt interview with NBC News, an American from North Carolina who tried to join ISIS and was arrested said, “My reason for the support of ISIS is because they’ve proven time and time again to put Islamic law as the priority and the establishment of an Islamic state as the goal,” Don Morgan said.

By characterizing American military action as “aggression” and ISIS as victims, the organization is assuming the worst of American intentions and the best of ISIS’, even going so far as to ignore ISIS’ own words and actions.

The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns views Islamic terrorism as an outburst against inequality and poverty. Studies have repeatedly debunked this. The latest was a Queen Mary University of London study that concluded that there is no connection between Islamic terrorism and poverty, lack of education or unemployment.

This latest letter endorsed by 53 Christian activists claims that, “More bombing will ultimately mean more division, bloodshed, recruitment for extremist organizations, and a continual cycle of violent intervention.” They argue that U.S. military action “will only propitiate more armed intervention in a tit-for-tat escalation without addressing the root causes of the conflict.”

The logic is that military action is always counter-productive. If this logic were followed during World War II, the existence of Nazi Germany would be accepted. The Nazi regime was dismantled because the Allies accurately attributed the conflict to an immoral ideology.

The letter’s policy recommendations have already been mostly tried, yet its authors present it as something new and innovative. This includes humanitarian assistance, engagement of Iraqi leaders, sanctions and replacing U.S. airstrikes with “community-based nonviolent resistance strategies.”

Endorsers of this letter include leaders of the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the American Friends Service Committee, professors from various universities and clergy from around the country.

While activists like these may argue that they don’t necessarily oppose all uses of force, their worldview inevitably leads to appeasement and inaction in the face of major threats and human rights abuses.

Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy,writes that proponents of this trend “often demand maximalist, unattainable standards [for military action] that default towards a functional pacifism.”

In the current instance of ISIS, Tooley compares the letter to “telling a woman being chased down the street by a rapist that instead of seeking an armed police officer she should urge her aspiring assailant to get counseling for his anger issues.”

Yet, the protest by some of the letter’s endorsers is unsurprising given their history of partnering with Islamists. The United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society endorsed a2012 letter protesting five members of Congress for requesting investigations into the relations between U.S. governmental agencies and Muslim Brotherhood entities.

The letter defends the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group founded by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues.

The United Methodist Church is listed on ISNA’s website as an interfaith partner. The church also endorsed a letter protesting the New York Police Department for its intelligence-gathering programs and showing of The Third Jihad, a Clarion Project documentary that exposes the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist extremists.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) participates in the same actions and more. It works with Islamists in producing reports on Muslim-Christian relations and published a book whitewashing radical clericImam Zaid Shakir and the school he founded, Zaytuna College. In July, the Church divested $21 million from Israel. The Iranian regime and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke celebrate the anti-Israel activism of the Church.

The Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Kairos Response, United Church of Christ Israel-Palestine Network and others belong to the Interfaith Boycott Coalition, the faith-based wing of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. This bloc isdefending a woman accused of perpetrating a bombing of civilians in Israel.

Overwhelmingly, the American people reject these Christian activists’ arguments. The latest poll shows that 71% of Americans support airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and 65% support doing the same in Syria. About 58% support arming Kurds fighting ISIS.

Another poll found 76% in favor of airstrikes on ISIS with only 23% opposed. About 62% favor military aid to forces fighting ISIS. These high numbers come before President Obama’s speech making the case for military intervention.

These Christian activists have adopted the Islamist narrative while ignoring the Islamists’ words about their own intentions. By teaching their supporters that ISIS is the result of American “aggression,” they are promoting inaction that will further the Islamist extremist cause and enable the persecution of fellow Christians.

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The Nice ISIS Jihadist Next Door

September 10, 2014

The Nice ISIS Jihadist Next Door, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, September 10, 2014

abdirahmaan-muhumed-killed-fighting-isis-403x350U.S. citizen Abdirahmaan Muhumed of Minneapolis, MN, was recently killed fighting for ISIS.

The nice Jihadists flocking to rape Yazidi girls in Mosul are convinced that Allah knows best and his Caliph knows best. The worst of them are acting on impulse. The best of them are acting on faith.

Faith is irrational. Believers believe without understanding and act without thinking. The holy men of our religions acted on faith. So do the holy men of Islam. It’s what they have faith in that is the problem.

It’s easy to dismiss a small enough religion as a cult because its leader sleeps with young girls and its members are willing to kill for him. But when the cult grows big enough, we say it’s a religion of peace and hope that its followers believe the peaceful version of Islam that the infidels preach to them.

And they never do. Why should they?

The current misguided thinking is that we can win a debate between a “good Islam” and a “bad Islam.” The good Islam will tell Muslims to refrain from joining ISIS, to work for social change, to embrace diversity and to champion democracy. But this “good Islam” is just a liberal’s conception of what religion should be. Its only real followers are liberal non-Muslims and it has little to do with what Islam really is.

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Every week another lad or lass from St. Louis, Toronto or Sydney makes the trip through Turkey to the Islamic State. A reporter dispatched by a local paper to talk to the neighbors scribbles down the same recollections about how nice and normal Jihad Joe or Jihad Jane was.

Classmates remember a loud partier or a shy student. Neighbors mention that everything seemed normal until those last few years when he began wearing a robe and she began wearing a burka.

The Somali and Algerian immigrants, the German and American converts, the black burkas and dyed beards, headed into the dying summer to kill Christians and Kurds, Turkmen and Shiites, to behead babies and crucify critics, don’t seem like monsters.

They loved their parents. They posed for jokey snapshots on Facebook. They had dreams of becoming biologists or boxers. Until they began killing people, they seemed just like the rest of us.

And with one difference, they were.

The forensic examinations of their lives rarely reveal anything of significance. The extensive digging into the lives of the Boston bombers told us nothing about why they would plant a bomb near a little boy.

The answer lay in the topic that the media carefully avoided. As with the other Muslim terrorists, the meaning of their motives was in the little black book of their religion which commanded them to kill.

The Jihadist isn’t a serial killer. While there are some converts attracted to Islam for its violence, the Muslim convert usually doesn’t convert for the killing, he kills because he converted. Likewise the nice Muslim Jihadist next door might well be moderate by inclination and immoderate by faith.

As the Koran says, “Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah knows, while you know not” (Quran 2:216).

Allah knows you have to kill. Even if you think you shouldn’t.

The nice Jihadists flocking to rape Yazidi girls in Mosul are convinced that Allah knows best and his Caliph knows best. The worst of them are acting on impulse. The best of them are acting on faith.

Faith is irrational. Believers believe without understanding and act without thinking. The holy men of our religions acted on faith. So do the holy men of Islam. It’s what they have faith in that is the problem.

Charles Manson’s girls, Jim Jones’ followers and Mohammed’s companions all believed in much the same things. They saw the world as a fundamentally hostile place and they believed that only one man could change the world. And they believed that people had to die for that change to come about.

In a multicultural environment in which we believe that all religions are the same, we don’t like to think about what might have happened if Charles Manson had a million groupies instead of a few elderly women locked up in prison. Nor do we like to think about how we would handle Jim Jones if he were running California, instead of just being closely linked to the political infrastructure of the men like Governor Brown and Harvey Milk who did run it.

It’s easy to dismiss a small enough religion as a cult because its leader sleeps with young girls and its members are willing to kill for him. But when the cult grows big enough, we say it’s a religion of peace and hope that its followers believe the peaceful version of Islam that the infidels preach to them.

And they never do. Why should they?

Mohammed was quite clear about what he wanted. For all the abrogations, the Koran is reasonably clear on what it expects its followers to do. Mohammed’s history was that of a man who tried to convince the Arabs that he had seen an angel by telling them and failed, and who succeeded only when he killed enough of them, not to mention the Jews and any other infidels hanging around the place.

That is the history of Islam.

Germany was not a nation of monsters. It was a nation that behaved monstrously. The average German would not stick his neighbor in an oven in his basement or chain him up as a slave. He would however do these things in Poland because he was contextually contaminated by a monstrous ideology.

As an individual he was a nice man who loved his children, petted his dog and enjoyed street fairs. As a loyal member of a system run by the Nazi Party, he would do monstrous things. And then when the Nazi machine was switched off, he would go home to his wife and children without ever killing anyone else.

He was not a good man. Good men don’t do the things he did. But he wasn’t a budding serial killer. He was just doing what a death cult told him to do.

The problem isn’t “radicalization.” What Western governments call radicalization is the process by which the Muslim becomes aware of the dictates of his faith and their relevance to his life. It’s not the internet preachers with their fatwas. They are just the vectors for that awareness. The problem is Islam.

The current misguided thinking is that we can win a debate between a “good Islam” and a “bad Islam.” The good Islam will tell Muslims to refrain from joining ISIS, to work for social change, to embrace diversity and to champion democracy. But this “good Islam” is just a liberal’s conception of what religion should be. Its only real followers are liberal non-Muslims and it has little to do with what Islam really is.

Within the historical context of Islam and in the words of the Koran, our idea of the good Muslim is actually a very bad Muslim. And our idea of the bad Muslim is the best of all Muslims. When we argue that Islam is a religion of peace, we are pushing against the full weight of over a thousand years of history and religious ideas and counting on Muslims to be too ignorant of them to know any better.

Those who genuinely want to change Islam will not do it by lying to Muslims about their religion. Trying to convince the nice Jihadist next door that Mohammed would have rejected his expedition to rape and pillage non-Muslims in Syria is futile. The nice Jihadist may not be a scholar, but he knows his Koran.

If they want to change his mind, they will have to be honest about what Islam is.

Mohammed would have been as happy rampaging around Iraq and Syria as a pig rolling around in dung. ISIS is Islam. It’s the naked religion. There are no angels or djinns, no revelations, just piles of mutilated corpses and children playing with severed heads while other children are raped in prison cells.

It’s Mohammed, but it’s also Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad and Gaddafi. Islam doesn’t end the cycle of tyranny and oppression. It is the reason that the cycle continues.

“Deradicalizing” the nice ISIS Jihadist by lying to him will fail in the long run. Telling him the truth and offering him a clear choice is the only way.

Americans were brutally honest about the evils of Nazism, but failed to equally condemn Communism. Germany hasn’t had another Fuhrer, but Russia is back to acting a lot like the Soviet Union. And while Nazism is confined to trailer parks, sympathy for the red devil is prevalent among Western elites. ISIS is exposing its own evil to the West in a way that neither the brownshirts nor the flyers of the red flag did. If we destroy ISIS without exposing the ideology behind it, then we will have won a pyrrhic victory because we will still be fighting the nice Jihadist next door for the next thousand years.

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Still a long way to go

September 10, 2014

Still a long way to go, Israel Hayom, Clifford D. May, September 10, 2014

Those who understand such matters know that 9/11 was not about America’s chickens “coming home to roost,” as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright unforgettably characterized the murder of 3,000 Americans. Nor was it a protest against imperialism, colonialism and occupation — an attempt to address “legitimate grievances.” It was about a vision of the past and the future. It was about power and, uncomfortably, about faith.

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Do not call what happened 13 years ago this week a tragedy. It was a terrorist atrocity, an act of war and a war crime. Very different.

The self-proclaimed jihadis responsible for hijacking commercial jets and using them as missiles targeted the World Trade Center because it was a Western financial capital, a place where men and women of many ethnicities and religions worked in peace to create prosperity. Another plane was flown into the Pentagon, the brain of the greatest liberation army the world has ever known. One more jet was meant to hit the political heart of the Free World — the Capitol or the White House — but Americans on that flight refused to surrender and won a battle.

September 11 was not a date chosen at random. I’m inclined to credit the explanation offered by the late Christopher Hitchens, a man of the Left who dissented from the Left’s tendency to condone savagery directed at Americans. “It was on September 11, 1683, that the conquering armies of Islam were met, held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna,” he wrote in The Guardian on Oct. 2, 2001.

That defeat of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic caliphate was “a hinge event in human history,” he wrote. From then on, “it was more likely that Christian or Western powers would dominate the Muslim world than the other way around.”

Most Muslims do not seethe over a 17th century war any more than most Americans nurse a grudge against the descendants of King George III. But those whom we have come to call Islamists regard the failure of Muslim forces to conquer Europe as “a humiliation in itself and a prelude to later ones.” Hitchens added one more observation, particularly relevant this summer: “The forces of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza once published a statement saying that they could not be satisfied until all of Spanish Andalusia had been restored to the faithful as well.”

Those who understand such matters know that 9/11 was not about America’s chickens “coming home to roost,” as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright unforgettably characterized the murder of 3,000 Americans. Nor was it a protest against imperialism, colonialism and occupation — an attempt to address “legitimate grievances.” It was about a vision of the past and the future. It was about power and, uncomfortably, about faith.

The actions Western leaders have taken to counter this threat have been insufficient. Al-Qaida and its affiliates now operate in more countries than ever. An al-Qaida splinter, the Islamic State, has seized much of Syria and Iraq, declaring a caliphate, a successor to the one defeated at Vienna.

The Muslim Brotherhood — an organization whose motto includes the phrase “jihad is our way” — is regarded favorably by those who lead Turkey, a NATO ally, and rule Qatar, where the U.S. maintains a military base and American universities and think tanks have established campuses.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is keeping its eye on the ball, that ball being nuclear weapons, the great equalizer, although equality is not at all what Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have in mind. They are not cooperating with an International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into “the possible military dimensions” of their nuclear program. If they do obtain nuclear capability, the odds increase that a nuclear exchange will occur, and/or that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists. Iran and al-Qaida are rivals but they have cooperated in the past and are likely to do so against common enemies again. By now we get that, right?

In New Hampshire last week, Vice President Joseph Biden called those fighting for the Islamic State “barbarians,” melodramatically adding that the Obama administration will “follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice, because hell is where they will reside.”

But the very same day, Secretary of State John Kerry chose to change the subject, making the bizarre suggestion that it is America’s religious “duty” to confront climate change — which he has previously called “the biggest challenge of all that we face right now — not least because “Muslim-majority countries are among the most vulnerable.”

Coincidently, this also was the week that Matt Ridley, a science journalist and member of the British House of Lords, pointed out that “the climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.”

That does not imply climate change is not a concern; it does imply it is not our “biggest challenge.” How inconvenient for the many politicians who would rather fight carbon emissions than jihadis, who are more concerned about you and me driving SUVs than Iranian mullahs spinning centrifuges.

For such politicians, required reading ought to include Brookings senior fellow Robert Kagan’s most recent essay on the West’s disconcerting return to “the realism of the 1930s.” The fundamental grievance of the illiberal and atavistic forces on the march back then, he observes, was no different from that of illiberal and atavistic forces on the march now: “Being forced to live in a world shaped by others.”

Thirteen years after 9/11, the world shaped by Judeo-Christian values and the Enlightenment is undeniably imperfect. But are we willing to let al-Qaida, the Islamic State, the Islamic Republic and the Muslim Brotherhood restructure it for our children?

The jihadis want the job. And they are more passionate about their beliefs than most of us, more willing — even eager — to kill and be killed to spread them. Thirteen years after 9/11, it’s probably time to decide whether we’re capable of a serious response.

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This is of massive importance ahead of the speech tonight by Obama.

September 10, 2014

ISRAEL: Operation Protective Edge: Israel, Hamas “open-ended” ceasefire continues to hold – Page 1959.

Janey

  


User ID: 53426786
 United Kingdom
09/10/2014 10:51 AM


Iraq have now officially asked for assistance militarily against ISIS.

There were 2 things that had to happen before many countries, including the UK took military action:

1) was to establish the new government 

2) for that new government to ask for military help.

(2) was of vital importance to gain diplomatic cover. This now allows many countries to act and for the USA to raise the level of their airstrikes.

Many countries had been waiting on items 1) and 2) as part of the coalition. Major offensive against ISIS would not take place without both. It is no accident that the formal request from the new government came hours before Obama talks.

It is huge huge news and has opened the door for a broad campaign.

– Janey

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The Awful Truth: The World is at War

September 10, 2014

The Awful Truth: The World is at War, American Thinker, James Lewis, September 8, 2014

(With how many and which matters involving the “religion of peace” will Obama deal during his prime time address this evening? Probably very few if any. — DM)

Whether Obama likes it or not, the Jihad War is now worldwide. I have not even touched on South America or countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Democracies hate war and love denial. But denial is now ending — even in the liberal media. Average Americans are realizing this is not a passing rainstorm.

What we know at this time is that massive aggression against our national security is now worldwide. We know with certainty the ideological origins of worldwide war — and that it is not, repeat not our fault, contrary to liberal illusionists.

It is a massive threat that will be with us until we eliminate it.

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American Thinker and other commentary sites have been covering the Jihad War in great detail. But a coherent overview only came together for me after visiting the Long War Journal’s Threat Matrix, sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

The Threat Matrix helps us to see worldwide jihadist violence.

In just the last two weeks we see jihadist warfare in:

  1. Nigeria (Boko Haram)
  2. Iraq and Syria (ISIS, Assad and Hezb’ollah)
  3. Gaza (Hamas)
  4. Sinai Desert (Ansar Jerusalem against Egypt)
  5. Afghanistan (Taliban)
  6. India (Al Qaida)
  7. Pakistan (Waziristan terrorists)
  8. Iraq (Iranian-sponsored terrorist group, “League of the Righteous”)
  9. Libya (Libya Dawn Coalition and others)
  10. Somalia (Al Shabaab)
  11. Syria again (Al Nusrah, AQ affiliate)
  12. Iran (International Shi’ite terror sponsor, using Hezb’ollah and Quds Brigade).
  13. Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Sunni terror-sponsors, including Hamas)
  14. Turkey appears to be a major sponsor of ISIS,. It is run by an Islamofascist regime.

These groups operate in the Gulf region, in Asian countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in North Africa. We could add the Uyghurs in China and the Chechens in Russia.

We could easily add Europe, the United States, Israel and Russia as targets of Islamist terror strikes, including 9/11 in Manhattan, the British Underground bombing, the Madrid train bombing, massive car burnings in Paris, the Beslan and Moscow Theater attacks, in the UK, the massive Pakistani child rape scandal just uncovered in Rotherham.

Europe now has 44 million Muslims, providing fertile ground for terrorist recruitment.

Whether Obama likes it or not, the Jihad War is now worldwide. I have not even touched on South America or countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

This is a worldwide war.

The West has been in utter denial since 1993, the year of the massive Twin Towers truck bomb attack in Manhattan. Even 9/11/01 didn’t wake up our political and media elites.

Twenty years of massive denial of plain facts can only be explained by huge corruption and influence-buying in the West since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, which gave OPEC price-setting power in the international oil market. We know about massive oil-driven corruption from multiple sources, most prominently the 1994 Wall Street Journal expose of Saddam Hussein’s Oil for Food Scandal. Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin and Kofi Annan were directly implicated in that billion-dollar scandal. Other European politicians were bought off by Muammar Gadaffi, including Tony Blair (after he left the Prime Ministership, as far as we know).

The historian Bat Ye’or has described the beginnings of Muslim oil-money corruption in Europe in her book, Eurabia. Europeans in denial are finally beginning to realize the lethal dangers of Islamist infiltration and sabotage. Britain’s David Cameron and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders are speaking out in public.

The major causes of the new world war can be found in oil-fueled hate propaganda sponsored by Gulf Arabs and Iran. Western media are engaged in a massive cover-up of massive agitation-propaganda, but the Israeli website MEMRI.org does an excellent job of translating Arabic, Urdu, and Persian political propaganda into English.

Ironically, the Saudis are now running scared of ISIS and Al Qaeda.  Iran and Saudi Arabia may well be consumed by their own hate campaigns against Israel, Europe and the United States. They have lost control of the wars they started thirty years ago. Muammar Gadhafi was overthrown. Even Iran is threatened by the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

We cannot know the future. If Americans are finally coming to their senses, we will finally realize the truth, and mobilize our resources, recruit a coalition of the willing, and turn away from Obama and his league of liberal liars. That is how we finally faced the reality of imperialistic aggression in the world wars and the Cold War.

What we know at this time is that massive aggression against our national security is now worldwide. We know with certainty the ideological origins of worldwide war — and that it is not, repeat not our fault, contrary to liberal illusionists.

We also know that many Muslim countries are themselves panicking over the dark forces they have helped to unleash against us.

We know that Europe is paralyzed by its suicidal importation of what now totals 44 million Muslims.

We know that Obama has doubled the number of Muslim immigrants we are taking in.

It is time to sound a general alarm and stop self-sabotage before it is too late.

Democracies hate war and love denial. But denial is now ending — even in the liberal media. Average Americans are realizing this is not a passing rainstorm.

It is a massive threat that will be with us until we eliminate it.

Like it or not, it is a worldwide war.

 

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Defense minister makes unannounced visit to Azerbaijan

September 10, 2014

Defense minister makes unannounced visit to Azerbaijan
Moshe Ya’alon to meet with top officials, inaugurate Israeli pavilion at international defense industry exhibition
BY GAVRIEL FISKE September 10, 2014, 1:28 pm

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku, Azerbaijan, on September 10, 2014. (photo credit: Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku, Azerbaijan, on September 10, 2014. (photo credit: Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)NEWSROOM
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MOSHE YA’ALONISRAEL-AZERBAIJAN RELATIONSILHAM ALIYEV
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made an unannounced visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday, the first-ever visit by an Israeli defense minister to the central Asian nation.

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Ya’alon, in the country for two days, is to meet with top Azeri officials, including Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov, for discussions on strengthening Israel-Azeri bilateral relations and strategies for regional issues, the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a Wednesday statement.
The trip was only announced after Ya’alon had arrived.

Israel and Azerbaijan have long maintained cordial ties, which are sometimes a source of tension between Azerbaijan and its neighbor Iran.

The country is seen by some analysts as a linchpin in any possible Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear program, though Baku has denied it allows Israel to use its bases.

While in Baku, Ya’alon is to attend and inaugurate the Israeli pavilion at the “Adex” international defense industry exhibition. The Defense Ministry is to be represented at the pavilion, along with 15 Israeli defense companies.

“I am happy to be hosted here in the historical first visit of an Israeli defense minister to Azerbaijan,” Ya’alon said upon arrival. “Bilateral relations between us are fruitful, and there is a strategic relationship between the countries and joint endeavors in various fields.”

The arms exhibition represented “another opportunity to show the world the strength and capabilities of Israel’s defense industry and its contribution to security and economy,” he added.

The defense minister is also slated to meet with representatives of Azerbaijan’s small but ancient Jewish community, which Ya’alon said has a “glorious history who has enjoyed wonderful treatment, allowing it to exist in honor.”

 

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Obama’s Untruth, Inc.

September 10, 2014

Obama’s Untruth, Inc., National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson, September 9, 2014

(Obama’s most transparent ever administration, ever.

He will likely be as “transparent” on Wednesday when he tells us about his strategy for dealing with the Islamic State — DM)

We can usefully view the Obama administration’s chronic untruthfulness as a sort of multifaceted corporation of untruth, with all sorts of subsidiaries.

THE BALD LIES OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY
Remember the al-Qaeda-is-on-the-run 2012-election talking point? It was mostly a lie. The administration deliberately released to sympathetic journalists only those documents from the so-called Osama bin Laden trove that revealed worry and dissension among the terrorists. Then it nourished essays by pet journalists trumpeting the decline of al-Qaeda. Disturbing memos that confounded that narrative, as Weekly Standard journalist Steven F. Hayes recently noted, were kept back. “On the run” was dropped after the 2012 election, when events on the ground made such an assertion absurd.

Recent disclosures by some of the combatants about the night of the Benghazi attack remind us that almost everything Jay Carney, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama swore in the aftermath of the debacle was knowingly false. A video did not cause the attack. The rioting was not spontaneous. A video-maker, an American resident, was soon jailed, while one of the suspected killers was giving taped interviews at a coffee house in Benghazi. There were ways of securing the consulate and the annex that were not explored, both before and during the assault. Talking points were altered. Again, the catalyst for untruth was reelection worries by an administration that believes its exalted ends of social justice allow any means necessary for reaching them.

Has anything the administration said about pulling our troops out of Iraq proven true? Was it really the Iraqis’ fault or George Bush’s? Was our leaving proof that Iraq might be one of the administration’s “great achievements”? Was the Iraq that we left without any peacekeepers really “stable”? On more than ten occasions the president bragged on the campaign trail that he alone had ended American involvement in Iraq. When Iraq predictably blew up after our departure, he snarled to reporters that he was angry that anyone would dare accuse him alone of being responsible for our precipitate departure.

Was there any element of “reset” with Russia that was accurate? Obama came into office lambasting the prior administration for alienating Russia — when all it had done was adopt some rather moderate measures to punish Russia for invading Georgia. Reset, in truth, was a remission of punishments — from missile defense with the Czechs and Poles to cut-offs of some high-level negotiations — and thus served as a signal to Putin and his subordinates that Obama believed America had been wrong to react to Georgia. And we know what followed from that.

LIES TO HIDE WHAT WE DON’T LIKE
On issues where the public is at odds with the administration, the Obama team too often makes things up to hide its isolation. Little the administration has stated about the IRS scandal has proven true. It was not a slip-up in one local office; nor were liberal groups equally targeted. There was quite a bit more than a “smidgen” of corruption. The administration’s strategy was to make so many things up that the public got confused and the matter went away. The corruption worked to defang the Tea Party in 2012, and the cover-up — except for fall woman Lois Lerner, who took the Fifth Amendment — worked even better.

Have  any of the statements the administration has presented about our southern border proven true? Do we know how many people have recently crossed into the United States illegally, what exactly U.S. immigration policy is, or where exactly foreign nationals are and what are their statuses? The public polls strongly against lax borders and blanket amnesties, so the administration apparently must deceive to permit both — and in a politically disingenuous fashion of postponing the requisite executive orders until after the 2014 midterm elections, while blaming the delay on the crisis on the border that it caused.

Did much of anything prove accurate about the Affordable Care Act? Costs, keeping our doctors and existing plans, the effect on the deficit, the website? Had the president in 2008 outlined honestly the ACA’s provisions, he would never have gotten elected, or had he by 2012 fully implemented them, he would never have gotten reelected. Lying about Obamacare and demonizing any who objected were smart politics, but the president will never regain the trust of those whose premiums spiked, who lost their coverage and their doctors, and who still do not understand what exactly Obamacare is.

MYTHOGRAPHY
Most of the assertions uttered in the 2009 Cairo speech were untrue, from false claims about Islamic achievement to supposed Islamic tolerance during the Inquisition in Córdoba — at a time when there were no Muslims in Córdoba. Emperor Hirohito no more surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur than George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR were in office when their respective wars ended and they supposedly agreed to prisoner exchanges — or than Barack Obama’s grandfather helped to free Auschwitz. Obama sees history in the same postmodernist fashion in which he looks upon his own past — details are constructed by everyone, and thus truth is a relative concept that should not be adjudicated by those with privilege against those who are using narratives to advance social justice. The result is that almost any time the president makes reference to the past, ours or his, we can assume two things: His facts are wrong, and they are wrong in a way that is meant to highlight his own godhead.

AMNESIA
There are lots of things that Obama says that he knows will simply fade into oblivion. Did we ever believe that Joe Biden was going to bird-dog abuses in spending for the stimulus to ensure shovel-ready jobs? Did we really believe that Obama would halve the deficit by the end of his first term — or that he would close Guantanamo Bay? Did he really obtain congressional approval for bombing Libya, as he once promised for such operations? Did anyone believe that the Obama administration would not hire former lobbyists or that it would end the revolving door, any more than we believed Obama’s assurances that those who made less than $250,000 would not have any of their taxes go up? What exactly is an Obama step-over line, red line, or deadline? Obama’s serial rhetorical emphatics — Let me be perfectly clear, Make no mistake about it, In point of fact, You can take that to the bank, I’m not kidding, I’m not making this up — are the usual verbal tics that warn the audience that a complete untruth is to follow.

SCAPEGOATING
Then there is another sort of untruth summed up best as blame-gaming — “They did it, not me!” The president confessed to having no strategy to deal with the Islamic State. But that was the fault of the Pentagon for not yet formulating any. The Islamic State had crept up on us — and that was the fault of the intelligence services. The world is in chaos? The new social networking — the much-bragged-about hip keystone of Obama’s two election campaigns — is to blame for making the gullible believe the world is falling apart. The president had to remove every last soldier from Iraq — but he didn’t really do that; it was either Bush or Maliki. The president ignored his own red lines in Syria? But they weren’t his own: The U.N., not he, made them. The president dubbed the Islamic State the jayvees? No, he actually meant an array of groups.

Such blame-gaming is simply the current foreign-policy manifestation of a long-established Obama-administration trait of blaming dismal news on something other than its own policies: ATMs were responsible for high joblessness; the stimulus failed, but House obstructionism was to blame. The Republican House also blocked immigration reform — which Obama easily could have passed when the Democrats controlled the Congress in 2009–10. Tsunamis and earthquakes, including a mild tremor in D.C. itself, rattled the economy and contributed to the discouraging economic statistics. Bad GDP news? The American people had gotten a bit “soft” and lost “their competitive edge.”

REDACTED
Sometimes there are lies by omission. The administration is simply incapable of uttering the phrases “radical Islam” or “Islamic terrorism,” and that fact requires all sorts of lying by omission about who exactly is killing Americans and why. So we are serially told that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular, that workplace violence caused Fort Hood, that jihad is largely a personal journey, that the idea of terrorists creating a caliphate is absurd, and all the other euphemisms necessary to hide the apparently unpleasant truth of killing by radical Islamists.

As far as the VA, AP, IRS, NSA, and other scandals go, do not count on any confession, investigation, lawsuit, or special prosecutor to reveal the truth in the next two years. The Obama administration will lose documents, redact critical information, find e-mails only years later, and lie about evidence until most of its members are safely out of office and working for Citigroup, one of the major TV networks, or Goldman Sachs.

Obama’s prevaricating has lost him any thought of a legacy, all the more so because for years as a candidate and as president he pontificated about his new transparency and the need for executive candor — itself an untruth at best, and at worst a cynical ploy to provide cover for a deliberate effort to enact policies that could not be honestly presented to the American people.

The two fuels that run Untruth, Inc., are, first, a realization that most of the president’s policies, whether deliberately or as a result of indifference and laziness, run counter to what most Americans support, and, second, a media establishment so invested in his agenda that it will not call the administration to account. So the engine of lying keeps humming. On any given day the president of the United States can step up to the teleprompter amid the latest disaster and swear that he did not do what he just did, or insist that someone else, not he, did the dastardly deed, or simply skip over recent history and make things up. The press at first quibbles, then nods in agreement, and Obama is empowered to do it again and again. We have not seen such a disingenuous president since Richard Nixon — but he, at least, was countered rather than enabled by the media.

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