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Archive for January 26, 2017

Feds Blame “Lapse in Vetting” for Admitting Syrian Refugees with Terrorist Ties into U.S.

January 26, 2017

Feds Blame “Lapse in Vetting” for Admitting Syrian Refugees with Terrorist Ties into U.S., Judicial Watch, January 26, 2017

Circling back to Syrian refugees, as Obama let thousands settle in the U.S. his own intelligence and immigration officials admitted that individuals with ties to terrorist groups used the program to try to infiltrate the country and that there is no way to properly screen them.

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Dozens of Syrian refugees already living in the Unites States may have ties to terrorism and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is downplaying it, claiming federal agents missed “possible derogatory information” about the immigrants due to “a lapse in vetting.” Among those who slipped through the cracks is a man who failed a polygraph test after applying to work at a U.S. military installation and another who communicated with an Islamic State leader.

Information about this scandalous security lapse comes from federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the situation. They spoke to a mainstream newspaper on condition of anonymity, as many Judicial Watch sources who expose delicate information do, out of fear. This is the type of case the government works hard to keep quiet and consequences could be serious for those who blow the whistle. The news article reveals that federal agents are now “reinvestigating the backgrounds” of the dozens of Syrian refugees because somehow DHS discovered that the lapse in vetting allowed refugees with “potentially negative information in their files to enter the country.” The newspaper attributes the information to “U.S law enforcement officials” who were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Coincidentally, on the day this story broke a national newswire service reported that President Donald Trump drafted an executive order to stop accepting Syrian refugees. The president also plans to suspend issuing visas for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Under President Barrack Obama’s lax immigration policies, large numbers of terrorists from some of these nations entered the U.S., including members of ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. They include individuals who have engaged in or attempted to engage in acts of terrorism, conspired or attempted to conspire to provide material support to a terrorist organization or engaged in criminal conduct inspired by terrorist ideology. Some have been convicted and sentenced in American courts.

Additionally, the Obama administration was very generous in granting citizens of Muslim nations special amnesty protections and residency benefits in the U.S. During a five-year period, Obama’s DHS issued around 680,000 green cards to foreigners from Muslim countries, according to the agency’s figures. Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Libya were among the nations. In 2015 Judicial Watch reported on a special “humanitarian” amnesty program offered to illegal aliens from Yemen, an Islamic Middle Eastern country well known as an Al Qaeda breeding ground. Yemen is the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the State Department has revealed that AQAP militants carried out hundreds of attacks including suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations.

Circling back to Syrian refugees, as Obama let thousands settle in the U.S. his own intelligence and immigration officials admitted that individuals with ties to terrorist groups used the program to try to infiltrate the country and that there is no way to properly screen them. In 2015 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) confirmed that individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria tried to gain entry to the U.S. through the refugee program and that the program is “vulnerable to exploitation from extremist groups seeking to send operatives to the West.” Before that the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Matthew Emrich, admitted during a congressional hearing that there’s no way to adequately screen Syrian refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. Additionally, FBI Assistant Director Michael Steinbach conceded that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees.

Categories: Dept. of Homeland Security, Islamic refugees, Obama administration, Vetting Immigrants and refugees
Tags: Department of Homeland Security, Islamic refugees, Obama Administration, Vetting Immigrants and refugees

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Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer

January 26, 2017

Trump Fires Hillary’s Benghazi Fixer, Front Page Magazine (The Point), Daniel Greenfield, January 26, 2017

(Please see also, Josh Rogin The State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned. — DM)

benghazi-master1050

The mainstream media’s fake news operation is predictably spinning this as principled resignations by public officials who couldn’t stand the idea of working under Trump. Except that Patrick Kennedy, the biggest fish being forced out, had reportedly been begging to keep his job. These were resignations in name only. They were actually firings.

Thomas Shannon remains the United States’ acting secretary of state, but Foggy Bottom has lost its entire senior management team. President Donald Trump reportedly ordered these moves in an effort to “clean house.”

CNN reports the administration told four senior State Department officials that their services were no longer needed. The Washington Post characterized the departures as “sudden.”

Among those who are out include State’s long-serving undersecretary of management, Patrick Kennedy. He is reported to have been lobbying to keep his job. Other top officials who are no longer working at State include: Joyce Anne Barr, Gentry O. Smith and Michelle Bond. All three are career foreign service officers who have served under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Lydia Muniz, director of the bureau of overseas building operations, was asked to depart as well, CNN reports.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as Secretary John Kerry’s chief of staff.

Good and good riddance. Here’s a refresher on Patrick Kennedy from Paul Mirengoff at Powerline.

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official who tried to get the FBI to change email classifications in exchange for helping the FBI meet its staffing needs in Bagdhad, is what they used to call a “fixer.” ..

Kennedy was at fault for the poor security at Benghazi. Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s charge d’affaires in Libya, testified before Congress that “given the decision-making that Under Secretary Pat Kennedy was making with respect to Embassy Tripoli and Consulate Benghazi operations, he has to bear some responsibility” for the Benghazi terror attack.

As Clinton’s fixer, it was only natural that Kennedy assist the Clinton Foundation. The Washington Examiner reports that Kennedy was involved in pushing plans for a new $177.9 million embassy in Norway in 2011 over the apparent objections of diplomatic officials in Oslo. Norway’s government has donated between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.

Kennedy also helped fix it so that Brian Pagliano, the man in charge of Hillary’s home-brew email server, got a job at the State Department

And then there was this outrageous moment.

According to FBI interview summaries set to be released in the coming days. Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, discussed providing additional overseas slots for the FBI in exchange for revisions to classifications of the sensitive emails.

One email in particular concerned Kennedy and, according to the FBI summary, providing a B9 exemption “would allow him to archive the document in the basement of the department of state never to be seen again.” The FBI official told Kennedy that he would look into the email if Kennedy would authorize a pending request for additional FBI personnel in Iraq.

A summary of an interview with the section chief of the FBI records management division provides further evidence of Kennedy’s attempts to have the classification of some sensitive emails changed. The FBI records official, whose job includes making determinations on classification, told investigators that he was approached by his colleague in international operations after the initial discussion with Kennedy. The FBI records official says that his colleague “pressured” him to declassify an email “in exchange for a quid pro quo,” according to the interview summary. “In exchange for making the email unclassified State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.” The request was denied.

In the days that followed, the FBI records official attended an “all-agency” meeting at the State Department to discuss the ongoing “classification review of pending Clinton FOIA materials.” One of the participants at the meeting asked Kennedy whether any of the emails were classified. Kennedy purposely looked at the FBI records chief and then replied: “Well, we’ll see.”

Kennedy shouldn’t just be fired. He should be on trial. But hopefully the investigation of Hillary’s actions will continue.

Categories: Department of State, Trump presidency
Tags: Department of State, Trump presidency

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Radicalization in Public Schools

January 26, 2017

Radicalization in Public Schools, Gatestone Institute, Maha Soliman, January 26, 2017

Radicalization is not only manifested through the use of violence, but also through desiring to live by and impose sharia law on society.

One reason for the increased popularity of sharia is the radicalization of second- and third-generation Muslims in Western societies.

The school board said it believes that the checks and balances put in place will ensure that the Friday sermons are not used for radicalizing Muslim students; however, as laws against “Islamophobia” become a reality in Canada, and attempts to raise a concern are labelled hate speech, one should not count on it. With the passing of time, vigilance will be abandoned and people who express concern will find themselves vulnerable to bullying and defamation if they try to address an issue or crack down on a violation.

Saied Shoaaib, a Muslim authority and expert on political Islam, points out that the dilemma for Western societies is that the only version of Islam available to them is the radical version, mostly in mosques and Islamic schools, and also in public libraries.

The ongoing demand for the accommodation of Muslims in Western societies is a situation worth understanding. In the documentary “The Third Jihad”, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim who dedicates his life to fighting radicalization, explains that it is a cultural jihad that is meant to destroy our society from within — slowly and gradually to impose the sharia way of life.

On January 10, 2017, I attended the Peel District School Board’s meeting where recommendations for allowing Muslim students to write their own sermons (khutbah) for congregational Friday (Jumma) prayers in public schools were received. For more than 15 years, students were allowed to pray in the school but not in a congregational setting. In June 2016, the Jumma prayer was officially adopted but the students were only allowed to read from a list of pre-approved sermons.

Mississauga is one of three cities in the Peel region and the sixth largest city in Canada with high ethnic diversity and a population nearing one million. One of Mississauga’s calls to fame is that it is home to at least eight members of the “Toronto 18” — the first terrorist cell uncovered in 2006 and that aimed to create an Al-Qaida type of operation in Canada. Some of the 18 attended public schools: Saad Khalid, for example, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for pleading guilty to a single count of acting “with the intention of causing an explosion or explosions that were likely to cause serious bodily harm or death or damage property”. He was known to have attended the Meadowvale Secondary School. There, he had started an Islamic Club and, in the lecture hall, had led Friday prayers, which he attended with fellow arrestees Fahim Ahmad and Zakaria Amara. If people like Khalid are the champions of organizing Jumaa prayers and Khutbah in their schools, it is no wonder that pre-scripted sermons were the way to protect public safety while allowing Muslim students still to practice their faith.

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Canadian police arrest some of the “Toronto 18” terrorist plotters, in 2006. (Image source: CBC News video screenshot)

Today, radicalization in Western societies is becoming epidemic. It has become a reality of life in general, and an everyday concern to parents in particular — especially parents who want their kids safe from terrorism as well as parents who want their kids safe from radicalization.

This crisis could not be more highlighted than by a segment recently aired by 1010 News Talk, ironically on the same day, the morning January 10, 2017: “What do you do if your child decides to join ISIS?” — a topic that was probably unimaginable a few years ago, when protecting public safety trumped sensitivity, but has become a reality today as sensitivity seems to overpower protecting public safety.

The school board said it believes that the checks and balances put in place[1] will ensure that the Friday sermons not be used for radicalizing Muslim students; however, as laws against “Islamophobia” become a reality in Canada, and attempts to raise a concern are labelled hate speech, one should not count on it. With the passing of time, vigilance will be abandoned and people who express concern will find themselves vulnerable to bullying and defamation if they try to address an issue or crack down on a violation.

While the case of Ghada Sadaka, a principal in the York Region District School Board, is slightly different. She was forced to apologize for postings on Facebook and comments such as:

“A good start, but where is the voice of Muslims who are not extremists and of which they condemn these acts of terrorism. This is the time of vocalizing “where you stand”!!!”

Sadaka was simply posting her thoughts on social media without addressing a particular issue at schools. Yet, the purportedly moral war launched against her is only a pilot project: it is a warning to any other principal who tries to create awareness about radicalization or condemn it.

Radicalization is not only manifested through the use of violence, but also through desiring to live by and impose Sharia law on society. Under Sharia, polygamy is legal, honour crimes and female genital mutilation (FGM) are not punishable, amputations are welcome as a form of punishment, gays and apostates should be killed, and women’s rights are no more.

A 2016 survey noted that one in four UK Muslims prefer to live under Sharia. This troubling finding led to former head of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, who popularized the term “Islamophobia”, to admit that he was wrong. He said: “I thought Muslims would blend into Britain… I should have known better.” Today, the UK is plagued with having two parallel legal systems: the UK courts and the Sharia courts.

One reason for the increased popularity of sharia is the radicalization of second and third generation Muslims in Western societies. Uncovering the root cause of that radicalization can be found in the book Lovers of Death, authored by the Muslim authority and expert on political Islam, SaiedShoaaib. In his book, Shoaaib points out that the dilemma for Western societies is that the only version of Islam available to them is the radical version, mostly in mosques and Islamic schools, and also in public libraries. Even when he visited the Ottawa public library and handed them books that represent a more peaceful outlook on Islam to balance out what is already there, the library never considered including them in their Arabic language collection.

The idea of increasing the Islamic content in the public sphere is pathetic; especially in a society where so many people seem to have agreed that the founding Judeo-Christian values should take a back seat in an attempt to make everybody feel “included”. These accommodations result in the immense risk to our freedom of speech and way of life. There is also an economic penalty, as in the reduced opportunities for employment and lost business recently highlighted by the closure of the Peugeot auto plant, due to the excessive prayer breaks requested by Muslims who constitute the majority of the workers.

The ongoing demand for the accommodation of Muslims in Western societies is a situation worth understanding. In the documentary “The Third Jihad“, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim who dedicates his life to fighting radicalization, explains that it is a cultural jihad that is meant to destroy our society from within – slowly and gradually to impose the Sharia way of life. Produced exactly 10 years ago, the documentary was re-released in 2017, to demonstrate how his accurate predictions of societal transformation have come to pass. Now, for an accurate prediction of where Canada will be in 2026 if we continue on the same path, one need to look no farther than the report, “The Islamization of Britain in 2016” at Gatestone Institute, by the meticulous scholar, Soeren Kern.

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[1] Recommendations included:

All prayer spaces will continue to be supervised by school staff.
Prayer will be led by students only, on Friday, for Jummah prayer.
Two or more students can pray together on any other day but prayers would not be led nor include a sermon.
Students may write their own sermon (khutbah) or can use a sermon (khutbah) from a bank of prewritten sermons, obtained from the school MSA or a local faith leader.
Sermons will be presented in English, except for any verses quoted directly from the Quran.
Sermons must comply with the school code of conduct, the Education Act, its Regulations and the Ontario Human Rights Code.
As with all student activities in schools, appropriate disciplinary and corrective action will be taken where there are any contraventions of the Ontario Human Rights Code or the school code of conduct.

Categories: Canada - public schools, Islamic radicalization
Tags: Canada, Islamic radicalization

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Trump is playing with the press

January 26, 2017

Trump is playing with the press, USA Today, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, January 26, 2017

He’s gaslighting them and they fall for it every time.

Why are the relations between Donald Trump and the press so bad? There are two reasons. One is that Trump is a Republican, and the press consists overwhelmingly of Democrats. But the other reason is that Trump likes it this way, because when the press is constantly attacking him over trivialities, it strengthens his position and weakens the press. Trump’s “outrageous” statements and tweets aren’t the product of impulsiveness, but part of a carefully maintained strategy that the press is too impulsive to resist.

The first thing to understand is that one of the changes going on with Trump generally is the renegotiation of various post-World War II institutional arrangements. One of those is the institutional arrangement involving the press and the White House. For decades, the press got special status because it was seen as both powerful and institutionally responsible. (And, of course, allied with the Democrats, who were mostly in charge of setting up those postwar institutional arrangements). Press quarters inside the White House and daily press briefings made it easy for everyone to get together on the story of the day.

Now those things have changed. If the press were powerful, it would have beaten Trump. If it were responsible, it wouldn’t be running away with fake news whenever it sees a chance to run something damaging to Trump. And, of course, there’s no alliance between Trump and the media, as there was with Obama.

So things will change. The press’s “insider” status — which it cherishes — is going to fade, with Trump’s press people even talking about moving them out of the White House entirely, and ignoring their existing pecking order in press conferences. (This is producing waves of status anxiety, as are many other Trump-induced institutional changes). And, having abandoned, quite openly, any pretense of objectivity and neutrality in the election, the press is going to be treated as an enemy by the Trump administration until further notice.

n fact, Trump’s basically gaslighting them. Knowing how much they hate him, he’s constantly provoking them to go over the top. Sean Spicer’s crowd-size remarks on Saturday were all about making them seem petty and negative. (And, possibly, teeing up crowd size comparisons at this Friday’s March For Life, which the press normally ignores but which Trump will probably force them to cover).

Trump knows that the press isn’t trusted very much, and that the less it’s trusted, the less it can hurt him. So he’s prodding reporters to do things that will make them less trusted, and they’re constantly taking the bait.

They’re taking the bait because they think he’s dumb, and impulsive, and lacking self-control — but he’s the one causing them to act in ways that are dumb and impulsive, and demonstrate lack of self-control. As Richard Fernandez writes on Facebook, they think he’s dumb because they think he has lousy taste, but there are a lot of scarily competent guys out there in the world who like white and gold furniture. And, I should note, Trump has more media experience than probably 99% of the people covering him. (As Obama operative Ben Rhodes gloated with regard to selling a dishonest story on the Iran deal, the average reporter the Obama White House dealt with “is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.” In Rhodes’ words, “they literally know nothing.”)

If you read Don Surber’s election book, Trump the Press, it becomes pretty obvious that the press hasn’t been very good at understanding Trump’s strategies, or at responding to them. So far, there’s no sign of that changing as we move from the Trump campaign to the Trump administration.

So what should the press do? It can keep responding the way it has responded so far, or it can change its approach. But the latter may require more self-discipline than it’s got.

The killer counter-move for the press isn’t to double down on anti-Trump messaging. The counter-move is to bolster its own trustworthiness by acting (and being) more neutral and sober, and by being more trustworthy. If the news media actually focused on reporting facts accurately and straightforwardly, on leaving opinion to the pundits, and on giving Trump a clearly fair shake, then Trump’s tactics wouldn’t work, and any actual dirt they found on him would do actual damage. He’s betting on the press being insufficiently mature and self-controlled to manage that. So far, his bet is paying off.

That’s too bad. If we had a better press, we’d be much better off as a nation, and Trump’s strategy of capitalizing on the press’s flaws is good for Trump, but will probably make that problem worse, if such a thing is possible. But the truth is, we don’t have a better press. And as long as the press is mindlessly partisan and bereft of self-discipline, capitalizing on that is just good politics.

Categories: President Trump, Trump and media
Tags: President Trump, Trump and the Media

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Mexico’s President Cancels White House Visit After Trump Hits Cartels

January 26, 2017

Mexico’s President Cancels White House Visit After Trump Hits Cartels, Breitbart, Ildefonso Ortiz and Brandon Darby, January 26, 2017

Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto pauses during a press conference at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017. Pena Nieto said Monday that Mexico's attitude towards the Donald Trump administration should not be aggressive or biased, but one of dialogue. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto pauses during a press conference at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017. Pena Nieto said Monday that Mexico’s attitude towards the Donald Trump administration should not be aggressive or biased, but one of dialogue. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has canceled his planned visit to the U.S. where he was expected to meet with President Donald J. Trump. The cancellation comes after Mexico’s government denounced Trump’s new border security measures aimed at interfering with the cash flow of the very Mexican cartels believed to have financed the current Mexican president’s campaign.

On Thursday morning, Peña Nieto took to Twitter to announce that his staff had notified the White House that he would not be going to the scheduled meetings with Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump signed two executive orders dealing with enforcing current immigration laws and the construction of a border wall. Trump specifically called out Mexican cartels in the executive order. In response to the anti-cartel measures, Peña Nieto took to social media, as Breitbart Texas reported.

In addition to denouncing the measure, Peña Nieto announced that he would be ordering the 50 Mexican Consulates in the U.S. to step up their efforts to protect “migrants”. The Mexican president made no mention of the fact that the migrants are one of the largest funding mechanisms for the cartels who reportedly helped him gain his office.

In response to Peña Nieto’s announcement, Trump responded on Twitter that it would be better to cancel the meeting. According to Trump, the U.S.- Mexico relation has been one sided with the current $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico in connection with the current North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexican President Peña Nieto has been the subject of immaculate investigative reporting in his own country, though his reported ties to Mexican cartels received little attention from the U.S. during the presidency of Barack Obama.

As Breitbart Texas previously reported:

An in-depth investigation has revealed that through the use of shell companies, members of the Juarez Cartel financed the political campaign of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. The cartel members appear to have also used government programs to launder money and profit form their networks of contacts.

The bombshell revelation was made this week by the independent news outlet Aristegui Noticias who claim that top officials of the Juarez Cartel financed thousands of cash cards that were handed out by Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during the 2012 political campaign that resulted in the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto. According to the Mexican journalists, the cash cards were provided by a company called Monex. They were reported to be financed through a series of shell corporations by key players with the Juarez Cartel.

Through a three part series, the Mexican news organization identified Rodolfo David “El Consul” Avila Cordero as a key figure in the financial scandal that implicates the leading figures in Mexico’s ruling party the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Avila Cordero was arrested in 2005 in Mexico City in connection with the seizure of almost $750,000 in cash. At the time authorities had identified him as a top tier operative with the Juarez (Carrillo Fuente) Cartel who worked as their financial operator an a key figure in their connections with Colombian drug lords. Avila Cordero had earned the nickname “The Consul” because of his links to high ranking officials within the Mexican government and acted as an ambassador of sorts, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Eight years after his arrest, Avila Cordero became a contractor for a government funded program called Crusade Against Hunger. Using a company called Conclave SA de CV and Prodasa SA de CV, Cordero was able to secure more than $396 million pesos or $25 million in government contracts through rigged bidding processes by government officials.

The Crusade Against Hunger is a pet project of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who claimed that with that program he would improve the quality of life for his people.

According to the investigation by the Mexican journalists, Conclave and Prodasa are shell companies that do not have real offices or staff.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Carmen Aristegui, the founder of Aristegui Noticias, was a top rated radio journalists in Mexico, however her investigation into properties given to Pena Nieto as bribes led to her news outlet firing her and her staff. Despite being off the air, Aristegui continues reporting through her website.

As part of the investigation Aristegui Noticias also confirmed that Conclave was involved in the trading of soccer players with European soccer clubs.

Breitbart Texas also illuminated the current realities in Pieña Nieto’s Mexico, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican president has allowed paramilitary narco-cartels to control entire Mexican states. We wrote:

Though many politicians, journalists, and pundits have criticized the concept of a physical border barrier while others claimed the border to be safe, the aforementioned groups and individuals are simply ignorant on the topic or engaging in intentional deception. Breitbart Texas and the Cartel Chronicles effort has reported ad nauseum on Mexican cartels that have operational control over entire Mexican border states — including the governors’ offices and newsrooms. Our reporting has shown that U.S. law enforcement encounters with known or suspected terrorists have occurred frequently in remote areas along the U.S.-Mexico border. We’ve shown that there are humanitarian consequences associated with an unsecured border — not just for U.S. citizens, but for foreigners as well.

Our reporting has shown that one of the Mexican cartels, Los Zetas, is currently stockpiling Russian rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers at the Texas border, that they recently forced down a U.S. helicopter by open firing on the aircraft and striking it. Los Zetas are headquartered in Nuevo Laredo, a city that sits immediately across the shallow and narrow Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. There are no fences or walls in the region and the local police do not have a presence in many of the gang-infested narco-neighborhoods that sit in Texas along the open border.

This particular cartel also committed mass murders in communities near the Texas border in Mexico. They “disappeared” hundreds of civilians and burned them in a network of ovens that were operated in government facilities.

Along with Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel is also headquartered immediately south of the Texas border. The Mexican state of Tamaulipas is largely controlled by the two paramilitary groups. All of the news outlets in the region have a “link” who works for the cartel and tells journalists what they can and can’t write about. Journalists and editors who ignore the control of the local cartel faction are brutally murdered. Many concerned citizens in Mexico have taken to anonymous social media accounts to report on the cartels. When the now-citizen-journalists are discovered, they are brutally murdered.

The cartels in this region have also set up metropolitan camera and surveillance systems across the cities they control. Two of the past three governors for the state are currently fugitives from U.S. justice for their roles and relationships with the cartels. One of the former-governor fugitives was being protected by the state government as recently as a few months ago.

Categories: Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican cartels, Mexican president, Trump and Mexican cartels, Trump and U.S. Southern Border
Tags: Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican cartels, Mexican president, Trump and Mexican cartels, Trump and U.S. Southern Border

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CAIR: Cruz’s Muslim Brotherhood Bill Not About Terrorism

January 26, 2017

CAIR: Cruz’s Muslim Brotherhood Bill Not About Terrorism, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, January 26, 2017

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s bill seeking to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group is discriminatory leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) claimed at a press conference Wednesday.

“We believe it has little to do with national security or terrorism,” CAIR’s spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.

He sees Cruz’s bill as part of a two-step strategy to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and attack groups and their leaders who “Islamophobes have falsely labeled as linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Hard evidence, however, links CAIR and other American Islamist groups to the Brotherhood.

A phone book introduced at 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas fundraising trial revealed that CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and fellow CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. This committee came into existence as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to support Hamas in America.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis noted in a 2009 ruling that the HLF trial evidence provided “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.”

Awad defended the Muslim Brotherhood at the press conference, saying it has been “part in parcel of the democratic process” that it believes in democracy. Banning it for ideological reasons “is nothing short of shooting ourselves in the foot as the biggest democracy or the strongest democracy in the world,” Awad said.

Cruz’s bill would direct the secretary of state to tell Congress whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization. President Trump reportedly is considering an executive order accomplishing the bill’s objectives.

CAIR also protested Trump’s proposed executive order curtailing immigration and visas from majority Muslim countries such as Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iran. With the exception of Iran, all of these countries have barely functioning central governments and are in the midst of raging civil wars. It also contested President Trump’s order halting the processing of Syrian refugees and ordering the creation of safe zones inside Syria for them.

Awad cast the orders as anti-Muslim and bigoted.

“Never before in our country’s history have we purposely as a matter of policy imposed a ban on immigrants or refugees on the basis of religion or imposed a litmus test on those coming to this nation,” Awad said. “The orders will tarnish our image in the Muslim world, making us seem uncaring and hard-hearted.”

It’s not exactly without precedent. Early 20^th century immigration laws barred those belonging to ideological subversives and polygamists from coming to the U.S. Ottoman authorities protested the latter for curtailing Muslim immigration to the United States.

Categories: CAIR, Islamic terrorism, Muslim Brotherhood, President Trump, Ted Cruz, US Congress
Tags: CAIR, Islamic terrorism, Muslim Brotherhood, President Trump, Ted Cruz, US Congress

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Report: Trump Prepares Executive Orders to Reduce Funds for UN Bodies

January 26, 2017

The administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing executive orders that aim to minimize the role the U.S. plays in the UN.

Source: Report: Trump Prepares Executive Orders to Reduce Funds for UN Bodies

MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty

by Jack Tonhaben26 Jan 20171,895

The administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing executive orders that aim to minimize the role the U.S. plays in the UN and other international bodies, including organizations supporting the Palestinians or in which the Palestinian Authority has official representatives.

According to a report published in the New York Times on Wednesday, the first of two draft orders calls for stopping US funding to any UN or other global agency according to a list of criteria.

One of these criteria is giving the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinian Liberation Organization full membership, or any organization that “is controlled or substantially influenced by any state that sponsors terrorism” or is blamed for the persecution of marginalized groups or any other systematic violation of human rights.

The order, the Times reported, calls for a reduction of “at least 40 percent” in funding toward such organizations.
A committee to be established by the executive order will make recommendations on where funding should be cut

The second executive order, “Moratorium on New Multilateral Treaties,” calls for reviewing existing and pending treaties between the US and more than one other nation.

The order asks for recommendations on which negotiations or treaties the US should abandon.

Both orders call for reviewing funding that could go toward the International Criminal Court, even though the US does not currently provide any funding to that body.

Both orders also call for terminating funding to UN bodies in which the Palestinians are full members, but the US has already withdrawn its funding from the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during former President Barack Obama’s term, when the international accepted the Palestinians as full members.

Categories: Uncategorized

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John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky: Why Trump’s probe of voter fraud is long overdue

January 26, 2017

John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky: Why Trump’s probe of voter fraud is long overdue, Fox News, John Fund, Hans A. von Spakovsky, January 25, 2017

The real problem in our election system is that we don’t really know to what extent President Trump’s claim is true because we have an election system that is based on the honor system.

What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it — especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment.

The Obama administration did everything it could to avoid complying with requests from states to verify voter registration records against federal records of legal noncitizens and illegal immigrants who have been detained by law enforcement to find noncitizens who have illegally registered and voted.

The Justice Department has also opposed every effort by states—such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia—to implement laws that require individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship. This despite evidence that noncitizens are indeed registering and casting ballots.

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President Trump has announced that his administration will be launching a major investigation of voter fraud, including those who are registered in more than one state, “those who are illegal” and those voters who are dead but still registered. This followed a media firestorm in which the New York Times and others called Trump’s assertion a “lie.”

But just last week, President Obama told a whopper at his last news conference that went almost completely unnoticed, much less criticized.

He promised he would continue to fight voter-ID laws and other measures designed to improve voting integrity. The U.S. is “the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote,” he claimed.

This is demonstrably false. All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting.

Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption.

The real problem in our election system is that we don’t really know to what extent President Trump’s claim is true because we have an election system that is based on the honor system.

What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it — especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment.

Former Justice Department attorney Christian Adams testified under oath that he attended a November 2009 meeting at which then-deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes told DOJ prosecutors that the administration would not be enforcing the federal law that requires local officials to purge illegitimate names from their voter rolls.

This refusal to enforce the law came despite a 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or a duplicate. About 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, according to the study, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead. In most places it’s easy to vote under the names of such people with little risk of detection.

The Obama administration did everything it could to avoid complying with requests from states to verify voter registration records against federal records of legal noncitizens and illegal immigrants who have been detained by law enforcement to find noncitizens who have illegally registered and voted.

The Justice Department has also opposed every effort by states—such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia—to implement laws that require individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship. This despite evidence that noncitizens are indeed registering and casting ballots.

In 2015 one Kansas county began offering voter registration at naturalization ceremonies. Election officials soon discovered about a dozen new Americans who were already registered—and who had voted as noncitizens in multiple elections.

These blatant attempts to prevent states from learning if they have a real problem with illegal votes makes it impossible to learn if significant numbers of noncitizens and others are indeed voting illegally, perhaps enough to make up the margin in some close elections.

There is no question that there are dishonorable people who willing to exploit the loopholes in our honor system.

An undercover video released in October by the citizen-journalist group Project Veritas shows a Democratic election commissioner in New York City saying, “I think there is a lot of voter fraud.”

A 2013 sting operation by official New York City investigators found they could vote in someone else’s name 97 percent of the time without detection.

A second O’Keefe video showed two Democratic operatives mulling how it would be possible to get away with voter fraud.

They were both fired.

How common is this? If only we knew. Political correctness has squelched probes of noncitizen voting, so most cases are discovered accidentally instead of through a systematic review of election records.

The danger looms large in states such as California, which provides driver’s licenses to noncitizens, including those here illegally, and which also does nothing to verify citizenship during voter registration.

In a 1996 House race, then-challenger Loretta Sanchez defeated incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan by under 1,000 votes. An investigation by a House committee found 624 invalid votes by noncitizens, nearly enough to overturn the result.

How big is this problem nationally? One district-court administrator estimated that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period were not U.S. citizens.

A September report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 1,000 non-citizens who had been removed from the voter rolls in eight Virginia counties. Many of them had cast ballots in previous elections, but none was referred for possible prosecution.

There are many other examples of Justice’s dereliction of duty. In 2011, the Electoral Board in Fairfax County, Va., sent the Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Eric Holder, information about 278 noncitizens registered to vote in Fairfax County, about half of whom had cast ballots in previous elections. There’s no record of anything being done.

A 2011 study by three professors at Old Dominion University and George Mason University used extensive survey data to estimate that 6.4 percent of the nation’s noncitizens voted in 2008 and that 2.2 percent voted in 2010.

This study has been criticized by many academics who claim that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Yet the Heritage Foundation maintains a list of more than 700 recent convictions for voter fraud.

A postelection survey conducted by Americas Majority Foundation found that 2.1 percent of noncitizens voted in the Nov. 8 election. In the battleground states of Michigan and Ohio, 2.5 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively, of noncitizens reported voting.

The best argument for a real investigation into just how big voter fraud is stems from the refusal of the general public to believe the media’s claims it is insignificant.

The Washington Post conducted a poll last October using the Pollfish firm that found 84 percent of Republicans believe that a “meaningful amount” of voter fraud occurs in U.S. elections, along with 75 percent of independents. A majority of Democrats — 52 percent — also believed there was meaningful voter fraud. When it came to types of fraud, nearly 60 percent of Republicans told Pollfish they believed illegal immigrants were voting, but so too did a third of independents and a quarter of Democrats.

One Democrat who has personal experience with voter fraud is Bruce Franks Jr., a 31-year-old Black Lives Matter activist in St. Louis, who ran for state legislature last year. Last September, he got a local judge to call a new primary election after irregularities in hundreds of absentee ballots were found. He went on to win the new election with 71 percent.

Conducting an investigation that will help resolve the size of the voter fraud problem is straightforward. The Department of Homeland Security should cooperate with states wanting to check the citizenship status of voters on their rolls.

The Justice Department should put pressure on, or sue, counties and states that refuse to clean up their rolls.

The IRS has issued 11 million Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, most of them to illegal immigrants so they can file taxes. Privacy rules allow the IRS to share information for some law enforcement purposes, but not in a way that results in deportations. Those rules could be tweaked to allow states to compare the names of illegal immigrants the IRS has with their voter records.

Our honor system for voting doesn’t work. We don’t know how big of a problem voter fraud really is because no systematic effort has ever been made to investigate it. But the public doesn’t think it’s as insignificant as the media insists.

It’s time to learn more about just how many people are exploiting weaknesses that damage election integrity.

Categories: Media on vote fraud, Trump on vote fraud, Vote fraud
Tags: Media on vote fraud, Trump on vote fraud, Vote fraud

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100 Syrian children orphaned by civil war to find homes in Israel

January 26, 2017

Israel Hayom – The Newspaper

Source: Israel Hayom | 100 Syrian children orphaned by civil war to find homes in Israel

Prime Minister Netanyahu, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri approve framework to enable foster families in the Arab sector to care for the children • Once the children are safe in Israel, authorities will try to bring their close families to Israel as well.

Israel Hayom Staff

Israel is reportedly exploring ways to increase the medical assistance offered to Syrian casualties [Illustrative]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri on Wednesday approved a framework to enable some 100 Syrian children orphaned by the civil war in their country to find homes in Israel.

According to Channel 10 News, foster families in the Arab sector would care for the children, and some may be placed in Arab-Israeli boarding schools.

Once safe in Israel, authorities would make efforts to bring the children’s immediate families to Israel as well.

During the course of the bloody civil war in Syria, which began in 2011, Israeli hospitals have often cared for wounded refugees.

In a meeting with foreign journalists in December, Netanyahu revealed that he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to explore ways in which Israel can increase the medical assistance offered to Syrian civilian casualties and refugees fleeing Aleppo.

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IAF holds successful David’s Sling missile defense system test

January 26, 2017

Israel Hayom – The Newspaper

Source: Israel Hayom | IAF holds successful David’s Sling missile defense system test

System designed to intercept medium- to long-range missiles expected to become fully operational within weeks • Test successfully destroys “enemy” missiles fired over the ocean • Defense Ministry: Important milestone in Israel’s defense capabilities.

Lilach Shoval

A David’s Sling test fire

The Israeli Air Force on Wednesday successfully tested the David’s Sling missile defense system and destroyed several “enemy” missiles fired over the ocean.

David’s Sling, which is expected to become fully operational within a few weeks, is designed to intercept medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles fired from ranges of 40 kilometers (25 miles) to 300 kilometers (186 miles) away.

According to the Defense Ministry’s Homa Directorate, which oversees the development of Israel’s missile defenses, the test simulated the missile threats Israel faces.

Held at the Palmachim Airbase in central Israel, the test included a series of interception scenarios during which the system’s radar and command and control abilities were put into action. IAF personnel assigned to the future David’s Sling Unit participated in the test as part of their training.

Homa Director Moshe Patel said the test was “a complete success.”

“This successful test is an important milestone in Israel’s operational defense capabilities,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The system was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, along with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Israel Aerospace Industries’ subsidiary Elta, Elbit Systems, and American defense contractor Raytheon.

A Rafael official said that “the targets intercepted in this test fire were the most advanced [threats] the defense system can take on. … The targets were intercepted at very high altitude.”

He said David’s Sling would allow Israelis “to lead a normal life even when faced with the threat of precision and unconventional missiles.”

David’s Sling is part of Israel’s four-tiered air defense, which also includes the Iron Dome system designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells, the Arrow 2 short- and medium-range ballistic missile interceptor, and the Arrow 3 long-range missile interceptor, which is in the last leg of its development.

In the future, the Air Defense Forces plan to use David’s Sling to intercept enemy drones, an IAF official said.

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