Constantly bombarded by allegations that his campaign associated with Russian intelligence, US President Donald Trump has held back from going through with his original plan for teaming up with Moscow in Syria for the important campaigns of wiping out the Islamic State and relieving Syria of Iran’s iron grip.
His entire Middle East policy is up in the air, while he grapples with domestic foes. The much talked-of US coalition with its regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, is also in abeyance.
Amid the uncertainty about the Trump administration’s future steps, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is unlikely to make much headway in his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday, March 9,
DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources report that, even if does persuade Putin to stick to his promise to prevent Iran and Hizballah from deploying troops on the Syrian-Israeli border opposite the Golan, he won’t get far in his bid to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent military and naval presence in Syria.
This is the situation stacking up against Netanyahu:
1. The Trump administration has decided not to decide on Middle East policy – and Syria, in particular – while engaged in dodging his domestic enemies’ Russian arrows.
2. Some of the president’s advisers maintain that the state of indecision in Washington may turn out into an advantage. It might not be a bad thing for Moscow to carry the heavy lifting of tackling ISIS, Iran and Hizballah, rather than putting US troops in harm’s way.
3. Putin is not waiting for Trump and is already on the move, DEBKAfile’s sources report.
Friday, March 3, Russian special operations units recovered the Syrian town of Palmyra from the Islamic State.
That day too, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), composed predominantly of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and Arab tribesmen from the north, agreed to hand over their positions in the strategic town of Manjib to the Russians and the Syrian army,
The SDF was created, trained, armed and funded by the United States as the potential spearhead force for the offensive against the Islamic State. This force was able to last year to capture the small (pop: 50,000) northern town of Manjib, 30km west of the Euphrates, thanks only to US aerial bombardments of ISIS positions and American advisers.
How come that this important US ally suddenly surrendered its positions to the Russians and Assad’s army?
There is more than one reason. Firstly, the SDF’s Kurdish and Arab commanders apparently decided to give up on waiting for Washington to come round, especially since the only weapons they had received from the Obama administration for fighting ISIS were Kalashnikov AK-74 rifles.
Moreover, the Kurds’ most implacable arch enemy is breathing down their necks. On March 1, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan threatened to order his army, which has occupied northern Syria since last year, to seize Manjib. He said: “Manjib is a city that belongs to the Arabs and the SDF must not be in Raqqa either.”
The Kurdish-Arab force decided to take the Turkish leader at his word. Believing him to be close to Trump, its leaders decided their services were being dispensed with. They saw no point therefore in wasting and risking their troops in battles in the US interest. In this situation, Moscow looked like a better bet.
DEBKAfile’s military sources stress that, when the Russians say they are working with the Syrian army, they really mean the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the pro-Iranian Shiite militias and Hizballah, because most Syrian army’s units were decimated by nearly six years of civil war, or exist only on paper.
That being so, even if Putin does promise Netanyahu to distance Iranian and pro-Iranian troops from the Syrian-Israeli border, he may not be in a position to honor his pledge. With the Americans far away, they are Russia’s main partners on the ground for achieving his future goals in Syria.
Now, not even Trudeau is sufficiently left-wing. Please read the list of protest supporters in the last paragraph of the article. — DM)
Syed Hussan. Photo: CIJnews
The anti-Islamophobia, anti “white”-supremacy and anti Justin Trudeau protest at Toronto’s Nathan Philips Square on Saturday, March 4, 2017 highlighted also a message of opposition to the wars against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (aka ISIS, Daesh, Caliphate) and Yemen’s pro-Iranian militias.
A sign on the central stage read the following:
Refugees welcome
(Fascists not)
Yes to refugees
No to Islamophobia
No to war in Syria and Iraq
The first speaker on behalf the Organizing Committee Against Islamophobia (OCAI) accused Justin Trudeau Liberal government among other things of espousing white supremacist policy, committing ongoing “genocide” against the Indigenous people, arming the Islamic regime of Saudi Arabia that bombed Yemeni children and exploiting refugees and immigrants. She called the federal government to repeal the Barbaric Cultural Practices Act that criminalizes forced marriage and tackles ‘honour killings’. To read the transcript of her speech and watch the video click HERE.
The Canadian flag was not displayed and the National Anthem was not played at the protest. For a photo gallery from the event click HERE.
In his speech, Syed Hussan portrayed Canada as a rogue state accusing Justin Trudeau Liberal government of implementing a colonial policy, taking part in wars and criminally neglecting indigenous people. Hussan said that anti-islamophobia motion is not enough calling for an orchestrated popular struggle to make sure that “racists” cannot gather and to “cut off the head of racism.”
The following are excerpts from Syed Hussan’s speech:
Colonialism… continues on these lands…
We need to come to terms with the fact that we live in a country, we live in a society, we live in a community, that is racist (crowd: shame).
We live in a country, in a community in a society that goes to war (crowd: shame).
We live in a country, in a community in a society where indigenous women are disappeared and murdered (crowd: shame).
We live in a country, in a community in a society where indigenous children are stolen from their families (crowd: shame).
We live in a country, in a community in a society where just if you don’t have a citizen status you can die, you can be denied health care (crowd: shame).
This is our reality. We have been for too long completely comfortable, completely confident in this idea that this place is somehow better, that we somehow achieved something…
What was achieved here has been achieved as a result of a collective, social struggle… if you talk about anything that is good in this country it was not given to us. We took it… and we get it in opposition to government, in opposition to elected parties…
We are not going to simply be ok with this motion to study the possible effects of Islamophobia and racism in this country. Are we? (crowd: no). We are not here to just defend a motion in Parliament by the same government that is breaking, that is breaking its promise to indigenous people, that sends more weapons to Yemen (sic. meant to Saudi Arabia)… that is not the government that we are supporting. This is not the policy that we can support…
[We gathered in a] symbolic protest to show that these racists cannot gather, will not gather. We need to commit to something more important, something more critical… if there is any work that you do, in your neighbourhood, in your community racism raises its ugly head and your job, our job is to find it and cut its head off.
Change will not come from laws, will not come from policies. It will not come from symbolic protests. It will come when we gather in the tens of hundreds of thousands we wage these battles. We find where they are the weakest and we attack together in solidarity, connecting all our struggles, gender justice, racial justice, economic justice, indigenous sovereignty. We will come together to fight, to win.
On February 4, 2017 Syed Hussan took part at a rally in front of the American Consulate in Toronto to protest the policy of US President Donald Trump. The demonstration was organized by Black Lives Matter – Toronto (BLM TO) – the self proclaimed “coalition of Black Torontonians resisting anti-Black racism, state-sponsored violence and police brutality” – that launched a nation-wide campaign entitled “National Days of Action Against Islamophobia & Deportations.”
In his speech at this event, Syed Hussan portrayed white supremacy, capitalism and liberalism as the enemy describing Donald Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the two sides of the same coin.
He called on the masses to organize and united under the common goal of dismantling the current governing system in the West, including by breaking down borders, prisons and detention centers, seizing farms and factories and becoming the enemies of the authorities.
“We must celebrate our way of life, what they called barbaric cultural practices on our streets and in our homes until their way of life dissipates under our feet,” Syed Hussan said.
The following is the transcription of Syed Hussan’s speech:
I want you to repeat these names with me Mamadou [Tanou Barry], Abdelkrim [Hassane], Khaled [Belkacemi], Aboubaker [Thabti], Azzeddine [Soufiane], Ibrahima [Barry] shot, killed, murdered, executed, massacred while praying, for praying, never forget. Lives extinguished, families torn apart, children made fatherless, a river of tears. A river of tears by the gun shots of a single man [Alexandre Bissonnette] or so we are told. An act of hate someone has to believe.But this act, this attack, this shooting was no act of hate. It is a strategic act, and intentional act, a thoughtful act. Mamadou [Tanou Barry], Abdelkrim Hassane] and Khaled [Belkacemi] were killed because they were seen as enemies. Aboubaker [Thabti], Azzeddine [Soufiane], Ibrahima [Barry] were killed not by a lone wolf, but because they were threats. You see, we, you and I, pushed out by borders, beaten down by police and impoverished in our communities. We are threats. We are fundamental challenge to our system of oppressiveness, this destructive way of life that cherishes the few over the many.
This way for life is what killed them. It gauges on oil to spread its evil wings. And to steal this oil it must declare us, it must declare the places we come from with oil, anti of humanity. It must turn us into enemies. This way of life is Islamophobia. It’s Capitalism. This way of life brings perpetual war, enraging war from Mosul (Iraq) to Mogadishu (Somalia), from the Chiapas (Mexico) to Chernobyl (Ukraine), from Aleppo (Syria) to Algeria. For as long as there has been history, black, brown, we’re the others. It is on our deaths that this system, this way of life, dances. And this way of life is what killed those six men. This way of life needs borders. It needs to divide some of us into citizens and the rest of us into undocumented, migraines, others.It needs to steal Indigenous children, destroy language, disappear women. We are made into enemies, disposable, locked up in prisons, forced to do endangered labour, in forms of factories. Pushed of our lands, recorded, weighed and measured for our skin.
This murderous way of life is white supremacy. This way pf life needs to be taken care off, its children fed, its food cooked, its homes kept warm and for that it must have gender, women. Women that are made to serve but watch closely. This way life is patriarchy. And this way of life, the one that killed our six loved ones, needs armed forces whose work is death. And it needs bureaucrats, it needs administrators to sustain it. It needs courthouses like this one [The Toronto Courthouse]. And it needs a public, a public that is you and I to uphold these laws, enforcing them in the smallest of ways as teachers that check ID cards, as nurses that check health cards.
This kind way of life is liberalism. And this way of life comes in all colours. It comes in the red, the blue and the orange of your political parties. It comes in many flavors. It comes in a caustic bile of [US President Donald] Trump and it comes in the saturated sweetness of [Justin] Trudeau, who defends Muslims, but will arm the [Saudi] bombing of Yemen, who defends Muslims, but will scrap to the likes of Barrick Gold [mining company] and will not clean the five decade long of mercury poisoning in Grassy [Narrows Reserve in Ontario].
So listen, why did drop bombs on us like [former US President Barack] Obama. What did they ban us like Trump? Or why did hug a few of us like Trudeau? To them we are enemies. On one side is the border wall. On the other side is the enemy. On one side is the prison and inside the prison the enemy. On one side the police and underneath the police the enemy. On one side is the deportation judge and in front of him the enemy. On one side the slave ship and inside it the enemy. On one side the drone pilot and on its screen the enemy. On one side that murderer [Alexandre Bissonnette] and in front of him six men in prayer the enemy.
So today I say to you: become the enemy. Become the enemies that they have nightmares about. Let’s gather in the tens, the thousands, the hundreds thousands to form organizations and movements, movements that will exert power and reshape our society. In millions we need to rewrite history. We cannot respond to Trudeau’s symbolic tweet with a symbolic protest. We must rest out the guns on front those that wishes that. We must break down the borders that keep out migrants and refugees. We must tear down the prisons and the detention centers.
We will seize the farms and the factories. We must become the enemies, so that in this city everyone can live with food, shelter, dignity. We must become the enemies that sow terror in their hearts so that laws like C-51 shredded away. We must celebrate our way of life, what they called barbaric cultural practices on our streets and in our homes until their way of life dissipates under our feet. Let us become enemies. Let us organize. Let us win. We cannot wait. Freedom is calling. This is what these demands, that demand of us, let us be enemies.
The demonstration on March 5, 2017 was supported by Communist Party of Canada, Revolutionary Communist Party, PAJU- Palestinian & Jewish Unity, Independent Jewish Voices Canada – Toronto, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network – Canada, Actions4Palestine, CFS Ontario // FCÉÉ Ontario, Committee of Progressive Pakistani Canadians, Common Frontiers, Christian Peacemaker Teams – Ontario, CUPE 3903, Educators for Peace and Justice, Fight for $15 & Fairness, Frente Para La Defensa Hugo Chávez, Hugo Chavez Peoples’ Defense Front, LAEN Latin American Education Network, Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN), MISN: Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, McMaster Womanists, OCAP Toronto,Pegida Watch Canada, Salaam Canada, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights – McMaster, Stop the JNF Campaign – Canada, SURJ Toronto, Toronto Against Fascism, The Anglican church of St. John’s West Toronto, Toronto Anarchist Reading Group, Toronto Socialist Alternative, Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance – Ontario, UNITE HERE Local 75, Westdale Social Action Committee, Women in Solidarity With Palestine, Women’s Coordinating Committee for a Free Wallmapu [Toronto], Young Communist League – Hamilton, Young Communist League – Toronto and York University Graduate Students’ Association (YUGSA). For more information click HERE.
Amid Thursday’s over-hyped brouhaha about Jeff Sessions meeting with the Russian ambassador, a curious detail emerged. In Sessions’ recusal memo, it was explained who at the Justice Department would be handling any investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. “Consistent with the succession order for the Department of Justice, Acting Deputy Attorney General and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente shall act as and perform the functions of the Attorney General with respect to any matters from which I have recused myself to the extent they exist,” reads Sessions’ official statement on the matter.
Except that if the Obama administration had its way, Dana Boente wasn’t supposed to be the U.S. attorney to handle these matters in the event that Sessions recused himself. On February 10, USA Todayreported the following:
Seven days before he left office, President Obama changed the order of succession without explanation to remove Boente from the list. Obama’s order had listed U.S. attorneys in the District of Columbia, the Northern District of Illinois and the Central District of California.
That seems like awfully suspicious behavior. In fact the USA Today story noted this is pegged to the news that Trump quietly signed an executive order restoring Boente to the line of succession. The Obama administration chicanery was likely brought to White House’s attention after Obama holdover and acting Attorney General Sally Yates tried to usurp the powers of the president and countermand his immigration executive order, actions for which she was summarily fired.
Why would the Obama administration make this eleventh-hour change to the line of succession at the Justice Department? “At the time, I was told it was done in consultation with Trump transition,” Gregory Korte, the USA Today reporter who wrote the story quoted above, told me Thursday. “Looking back, that’s clearly not the case.”
In fact, it seems like it was quite obviously not the case. The man Obama placed at the head of the line of succession is D.C.’s U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips, who is quite cozy with President Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder. He is a former senior adviser to Holder, and he stayed on to work under Obama’s next AG Loretta Lynch before Obama appointed Phillips D.C.’s U.S. attorney in 2015. But Phillips goes way back with Holder—Holder first hired Philips in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1994. It’s also safe to say that the AG offices in the Northern District of Illinois and the Central District of California are not hotbeds of Trump supporters.
It looks like the Obama administration was hoping that the reins of power here would unknowingly default to someone unfriendly to Trump in the event Sessions was forced to recuse himself—or even resign, as so many Democrats breathlessly demanded Thursday. (It’s worth noting that Sessions’s claims that he was already considering recusing himself from the Russia investigations because of his role on the campaign seem pretty sincere. Reuters reported last Sunday that the White House was considering the need for Sessions’s recusal long before the teacup tempest about Sessions failing to disclose minor encounters with the Russian ambassador.)
This might seem far-fetched, except to say that the leak-coordinated campaign by former Obama officials to undermine Trump seems to be very real, per the reporting of Lee Smith. Indeed, the New York Timesreported Thursday, “In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government.”
It’s not inconceivable that the pandemonium of an incoming Trump administration might have meant they would overlook a little-noticed change. Sessions could have recused himself thinking the old line of succession was intact, only to have Phillips appoint a rabid special prosecutor to go after the Trump administration on Russia the next day before the Trump administration could undo things. As soon as it was evident Boentes was going to be handling any Russian investigations, Schumer called on him to appoint a special prosecutor.
Yes, a United States senator really did collude with the Russians to influence the outcome of a presidential election. His name was Ted Kennedy.
While Sen. Al Franken (D-Ringling Bros.) and other Democrats have the vapors over a truthful, complete, and correct answer Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave in his confirmation hearing, it’s worth remembering the reprehensible behavior of Senator Ted Kennedy in 1984.
This reprehensible behavior didn’t involve launching an Oldsmobile Delmont 88 into a tidal channel while drunk. This reprehensible behavior was collusion with America’s most deadly enemy in an effort to defeat Ronald Reagan’s reelection.
You won’t hear much about that from CNN and the clown from Minnesota.
Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”
Among the promises Kennedy made the Soviets was he that would ensure that the television networks gave the Soviet leader primetime slots to speak directly to the American people, thus undermining Reagan’s framing of the sinister nature of the USSR. Event then, the Democrats had the power to collude with the legacy media. Kennedy also promised to help Andropov penetrate the American message with his Soviet agitprop.
That’s right, folks. Even 30 years ago, Democrat senators were colluding with America’s enemies to bring down Republicans.
So now they are after Jeff Sessions instead of Ronald Reagan. Ideological comrades throughout the Justice Department are helping out this time. Just before Trump’s inauguration, the Obamites widely distributed intelligence information throughout the Department of Justice, where their political comrades could be counted on to leak the information after January 20.
This is a problem that will plague President Trump and General Sessions until they drain the swamp at the Justice Department — something that isn’t even close to getting started. Ideological leftists throughout the DOJ are serving as agents of the Obama regime and undermining the new administration.
For example, even now, the front office at the Civil Rights Division is largely made up of Obama holdovers and “permanent career political” appointees. The Obamaites expanded the number of deputy assistant attorney general slots throughout the Department of Justice and populated them with the most reliably radical people. They also appointed swarms of radicals into political offices on January 18 to “assist” the transition. They, too, are still there watching, observing, and probably “reporting.”
Nobody thinks the noise about Jeff Sessions is a substantive issue. Eric Holder was found in criminal contempt of Congress and there wasn’t a fraction of the sanctimonious outrage from Democrats and CNN like we see today.
Today’s Justice Department drama is a tactic by Democrats to personalize and polarize a target. It is a strategy to make Jeff Sessions devote time and energy to this instead of protecting America from foreign influences and cleaning up the Justice Department from the lawless rot that Obama caused. The Democrats prefer the lawless rot, so they want Sessions to be diverted from his job.
Of course the leaks are going to continue until the new administration has the guts to clean the place out of all the radicals that were embedded there.
Leaks are pouring out over large and small matters because so far nobody is afraid of crossing the new administration. The attacks on Sessions started when some of his own employees decided to leak intelligence information — just like happened to General Flynn. It will continue unless the administration realizes the media isn’t the only gang in Washington opposed to the interests of the American people.
Trump and Reagan share more than an ability to stage speeches and to articulate a patriotic message. They share a contempt for America doubters.
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The slogan and organizing principle of President Trump’s administration is “America first.” As he explained last night: “My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.”
This is just common sense. Absent the Obama aberration, no president would think to say it.
However, even a message this obvious can use powerful, patriotic rhetoric and effective staging to support it. Trump’s presentation contained both, beginning with the second paragraph:
Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice — in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.
That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.
A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning.
A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation.
And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.
What we are witnessing today is the Renewal of the American Spirit.
Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead.
All the nations of the world — friend or foe — will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.
The address ended on the same note:
[W]hen we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began.
The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.
We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts.
The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.
And the confidence to turn those hopes and dreams to action.
From now on, America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears — inspired by the future, not bound by the failures of the past — and guided by our vision, not blinded by our doubts.
I am asking all citizens to embrace this Renewal of the American Spirit. I am asking all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold and daring things for our country. And I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and believe in yourselves.
Believe in your future.
And believe, once more, in America.
There was also the unforgettable response of Carryn Owens when Trump and Congress paid tribute to her fallen husband, Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. This was an American Greatness moment.
On Fox News, commentators of a certain age compared Trump’s address to those of President Reagan. It was Reagan, apparently, who began the practice of bringing heroic citizens to the gallery and recognizing them in his addresses.
I’m not sure that even Reagan ever matched the Ryan Owens moment.
But Trump and Reagan share more than an ability to stage speeches and to articulate a patriotic message. They share a contempt for America doubters.
This distinguishes them from the two Republican presidents who served in between them. Bush 41 and Bush 43 were great patriots. But they did not have, or at least display, a visceral reaction to nay-saying about America. (To be fair, neither followed a nay-saying administration).
Reagan and Trump have that visceral reaction, and they display it. This served Reagan well and, if Trump can control himself, it may well do the same for him.
Religious reform in Islam did not find support, as it did in the West. What does Trump need to do? There needs to be a stop to any form of cooperation with the varieties of political Islam and certainly the terrorist organizations.
Add to that: Dismantle the ideology that produces Islamic terrorism by supporting the disintegration of the ideology of terrorism through Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic schools, mosques, books, radio stations and television stations. Dry up the external financing and private Saudi and Gulf Islamic institutions in the West. And thus give to the Muslims what is normal in the West. We need to promote other Islamic religious choices, completely out of the ideology of the Islamic terrorist prison, and to encourage being part of the building and development of human civilization rather than the cause of its destruction.
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In every Muslim-majority country, especially in the Middle East, the Islamic terrorist genie came out from under the ashes, built the Islamic state and threatened the West — both with terrorist operations and from inside, in a more surreptitious, seemingly peaceful manner, as the Muslim Brotherhood does.
It is important to understand that Islam is a religion that includes, in its structure, political power that governs and controls and spreads the force of arms.
US President Donald J. Trump has succeeded in naming a jihadi problem, political Islam, but it is hard to single out defective products from the factory without closing the factory — if one does not want them to appear again.
This does not mean that what Trump intends to do is not important; on the contrary, we need him after most Western politicians faced Islamic terrorism awkwardly, if they faced it at all. Sometimes they even cooperated with these terrorist organizations, invited their members to the White House; to Iftar dinners during Ramadan, and hugging what they falsely call “moderate Islam” — especially the Muslim Brotherhood, the incubator that most terrorist organizations come out of — instead of the true “moderate Muslims” who have been struggling to be heard above the crush of “influence,” infiltration and petro-dollars.
We can say that so far “Trumps’s recipe” for facing radical Islam had been tried before and failed. Dictatorships and military regimes in the Middle East, such as the presidents of Egypt Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, and now el-Sisi, faced political and radical Islam. Russia did, and Saddam did in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, Bourguiba in Tunisia and others.
Perhaps the saddest failure is the Turkish model. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk built a dictatorship-state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. He decisively confronted all forms of political Islam, and destroyed the military wing of the army that dreamed of restoring that Empire. Atatürk founded a dictatorship guarded by the army’s broad powers, but within a constitutional and legal framework, to deter Islamists who might want to change his modernist structure. It was also meant to stop any move to Islamic rule that might want to change the relatively open and pro-Western ideas of the Kemalist Republic.
Atatürk dominated the religious institutions, and made them work for him; they gave him a legitimate Islamic platform. He wanted Islamic culture to prevail, but under his control.
Unfortunately, this model also failed. Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prosecuted the leaders of the army with trumped-up testimony; lowered the retirement age of the judiciary to force them out; fired educators, jailed journalists is building his Islamic state step by step.
Many Western politicians have cooperated with Islamists and Islamist organizations. (Image source: RT video screenshot)
In every Muslim-majority country, especially in the Middle East, the Islamic terrorist genie came out from under the ashes, built an Islamic state and threatened the West — both with terrorist operations and from inside, in a more surreptitious, seemingly peaceful manner, as the Muslim Brotherhood does.
Most of those who fought Islamic terrorism focused their efforts on the hunt for dangerous products from the factory of Islamic ideology, such as Anwar al-Awlaki or Osama bin Laden. This is important, but no one tried to shut down and destroy the factory itself.
Perhaps we remember that the West, in the fight against the ideology of communism, used weapons only rarely. The major part of the fight was against the ideology itself: encouraging and supporting its opponents, and disseminating ideas to counter those the Communists were exporting. There was a focus on the disadvantages of Communist ideology, such as oppression, tyranny and human rights violations. And suddenly the world woke up one day to find the Soviet Empire collapsed from inside.
We need from the West a positive energy to rebuild the civilization after the destructive energy that hollowed it out. And we need to dismantle the prevailing Islamic ideology that produces terrorism.
It is important to understand that Islam is a religion that includes, in its structure, political power that governs and controls and spreads the force of arms. First the Islamic prophet Muhammad published his call peacefully for nearly 13 years in Mecca, when the Quran verses called for tolerance, freedom of belief and other human values. But then Muhammad and some of his companions moved to the city of al-Madina and turned religion into a political authority aiming to expand and defend itself. It entered into a political and military struggle against its opponents within al-Madina and outside, especially with his tribe of Quraish.
At that time, Muhammad established what we might call political Islam. It was based on a new call: that Islam was no longer interested in the relationship between the individual and his God, as well as a good relationship with those around him, whether they agreed with his religious faith or not.
He turned the religion into a ruling political organization, undertaking to control — religiously, politically, socially and economically — Muslims and others. It builds on the culture of the tribe, spreads the force of arms and increases its numbers and the territories governed by them.
It became the religion of loyalty — meaning loyalty to the governor and vice-versa.
This structure continued after the death of Muhammad. Many ruled out of Quraish, the most prominent Turks, Al-Othmanin and the Ottoman Empire that expanded through force of arms to Persia; swept away the Christian Byzantine Empire; conquered by force North Africa, the Middle East, Greece, Spain and Eastern Europe
During this long history was established the Islamic culture that now prevails among the millions of Muslims in all corners of the world. It was founded on the sacred religious texts: the verses of the Quran and hadiths (the Prophet’s biography). Add to this a religious jurisprudence established during this imperial tide that swept the world. All of this, ordinary Muslims imprison inside them, unhappy. Some of them become potential soldiers for terrorist organizations and all varieties of political Islam.
This culture, prevalent in the West, is backed by money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, especially Qatar, and often backed by money from the West itself — along with many politicians, often opportunistic.
What is the solution? From within. Islamic political power controls the Islamic world, whether military or in an everyday dictatorial form.
Religious reform in Islam did not find support, as it did in the West. What does Trump need to do? There needs to be a stop to any form of cooperation with the varieties of political Islam and certainly the terrorist organizations.
Add to that: Dismantle the ideology that produces Islamic terrorism by supporting the disintegration of the ideology of terrorism through Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic schools, mosques, books, radio stations and television stations. Dry up the external financing and private Saudi and Gulf Islamic institutions in the West. And thus give to the Muslims what is normal in the West. We need to promote other Islamic religious choices, completely out of the ideology of the Islamic terrorist prison, and to encourage being part of the building and development of human civilization rather than the cause of its destruction.
The allotment of money for this campaign is an indirect acknowledgement by the Brotherhood that it exists in the U.S., and its activity in the country is important enough to fight for. The claim that the Brotherhood has an American wing will earn you a branding as a bigoted “Islamophobe,” but it isn’t so controversial in the Arab press (even though the Brotherhood insinuates the same thing there).
Foreign influence operations are at the top of the news right now in the U.S., but they center about Russia. Why is it acceptable to say that Russia would try to influence our policy, but it is bigoted to suggest that the Brotherhood—the largest Islamist movement in the world—would do the same?
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A senior Muslim Brotherhood official in Sudan told an Arab newspaper* that the group’s international leadership has launched a major PR campaign to influence the U.S. media and members of Congress to oppose the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Brotherhood official predicted that the group would not be designated by the Trump Administration and that the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act introduced into Congress would fail.
He claimed that his organization had made contact with governmental officials and members of Congress and convinced them that the Brotherhood is opposed to terrorism, even though the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing—Hamas—is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department.
The author of the article reports that, according to sources within the Brotherhood, the group has spent $5 million on the PR campaign, with contracts being signed last month. The effort to influence American media included having articles and essays published to argue against designation of the Brotherhood.
Indeed, a slew of articles defending the Brotherhood were published as it was reported that the Trump Administration was planning to designate the Brotherhood. Most of these argue that the Brotherhood is opposed to terrorism and violence. As I wrote in December 2014, this notion is patently false.
The Brotherhood also thanked the leaders of Turkey and Qatar for defending the organization. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have designated the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
The Egyptian government warned that the Brotherhood has a lobby in the U.S. disguised as civil society organizations. An Egyptian government website cited a study done by a think-tank in Cairo that concluded that the Brotherhood is trying to influence U.S. policy using affiliates in America that “aim to spread the Muslim Brotherhood’s extremist ideologies in the U.S.,” in the words of the website.
The allotment of money for this campaign is an indirect acknowledgement by the Brotherhood that it exists in the U.S., and its activity in the country is important enough to fight for. The claim that the Brotherhood has an American wing will earn you a branding as a bigoted “Islamophobe,” but it isn’t so controversial in the Arab press (even though the Brotherhood insinuates the same thing there).
Foreign influence operations are at the top of the news right now in the U.S., but they center about Russia. Why is it acceptable to say that Russia would try to influence our policy, but it is bigoted to suggest that the Brotherhood—the largest Islamist movement in the world—would do the same?
*This article was first noticed by Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It was then reviewed by Clarion Project’s Arabic translator.
White House Press secretary Sean Spicer takes questions from the media during the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The motor of fake news is not inaccuracy. It’s malice.
I had an insight into this important truth a couple weeks back when I was at a swank New York club for an evening event. The establishment in question is overwhelmingly conventional, i.e., leftish in that smug “We’re-all-beautiful-people-who-are-you?” sort of way that publications like The New Yorker and the New York Times, along with such media outlets as CNN and MSNBC, exude like the cloying aroma of paperwhites.
I ran into an acquaintance, a female journalist I hadn’t seen in years. I knew that her politics were echt conventional in the above sense, but I had also found her an amusing and lively person. We were chatting with a couple of other people about this and that when someone she knew from the Times joined in. I then overheard him explain to her that she had to be careful about what she posted on Facebook, Twitter, etc., because anything too explicitly anti-Trump could be used against her when that glorious day came and “they” — the conventional fraternity of groupthink scribblers — finally took down that horrible, despicable man.
“We’ve got dozens of people working on it all the time,” he explained, adding that it was only a matter of time before they got the goods on Trump and destroyed him.
There in a nutshell, I thought, is the existential imperative that has been so gloriously productive of fake news and its exacerbated allotrope, first delineated by Donald Trump in his famous media-bashing presser on February 16, “very fake news.”
News is the reporting of facts. Someone says “this happened on such-and-such a day in such-and-such a way,” and independent, publicly available sources confirm that, yes, what was alleged happened at just that time and in just that fashion.
Fake news insinuates a skein of innuendo and a boatload of shared presumption floating on an ocean of fantastic desire into the mix. Repetition, like Rumor in the Iliad, whips this unstable congeries into an intoxicating frenzy:
” Trump’s transition is in chaos, pass it on.”
“Trump is a puppet of Putin, pass it on.”
“Trump is Steve Bannon’s puppet, pass it on.”
“Trump, like Steve Bannon, is a white supremacist/racist/homophobic/woman-hating xenophobe, really pass that one along.”
Every one of these fantasies is not only untrue, but ostentatiously, extravagantly untrue. Liberals of sound mind understand this.
Thus the British journalist Piers Morgan, than whom a more reliably left-liberal figure is hard to imagine, noted to Tucker Carlson that the Left’s hatred of Donald Trump has blinded them to reality. Godwin’s law, which states that the longer an online exchange proceeds, the more likely it is that Adolf Hitler will be dragged into the conversation, has been exacerbated in the case of Trump. It is true that every Republican since at least Ronald Reagan has been compared to Hitler, but in the case of Trump the comparisons have taken on an especially surreal tone. This, too, is something that Piers Morgan, in another interview with Tucker Carlson, noted with a sense of exasperated amazement.
In fact, Donald Trump’s first 30-odd days have been extraordinarily successful. That’s the news.
As Charlotte Allen noted in a column for USA Today, to date Trump has been even more successful than was Reagan in beginning to fulfill his campaign promises. All of his cabinet nominees have been confirmed (Trump withdrew his nominee for Labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, after it became clear that the two differed on immigration). He has moved quickly to get the ball rolling on tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, strengthening the military, enforcing the country’s immigration laws, and cutting the jungle of business-sapping regulation down to size. He has, as Allen observes, “already taken steps … to fulfill at least a dozen of his campaign promises.”
But listen to the New York Times or any of the other conventional (see above) “news” sources, and you would think Trump is a malevolent and incompetent monster who, despite his supreme incompetence, is somehow tipping the country into moral Armageddon.
Harken, for example, to Andrew Sullivan, who in a column for New York called “The Madness of King Donald,” tells his readers:
This man is off his rocker. He’s deranged; he’s bizarrely living in an alternative universe; he’s delusional.
Sullivan’s evidence?
There is no anchor any more. At the core of the administration of the most powerful country on earth, there is, instead, madness.
Hmm. The dogs are barking, but the caravan keeps moving along, Andrew.
So there’s news (well, there was news) and then there is fake news. Here’s one bit of news: the stock market has risen by nearly 3000 points since Trump’s election.
But what about “Very Fake News”? One could investigate the Left’s truly bizarre Russian fantasy to get a glimpse of the phantasmagoric nature of very fake news. Memo to CNN: Donald Trump was correct when he said the whole Russian gambit was “a ruse.” One of my favorite lines from the English essayist William Hazlitt is: “Those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” It is ironical, to say the least, to find the very same people who decried Republicans for “red scare” tactics and the like now turn around and pretend that a man who is actively rebuilding America’s military, encouraging native energy production, and taking steps to unleash economic growth is somehow playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands.
That whole Russia narrative is deserving of the epithets served up by Andrew Sullivan: “deranged,” “delusional,” and smack dab in the middle of an alternate universe.
But Very Fake News is really more an attitude, an exfoliation of a moral atmosphere, than a putatively factual account. An exquisite specimen of the genre was vouchsafed us by the New York Times back in July, when the anti-George W. Bush historian Bruce Bartlett revealed that the Republican Party had become … the “party of hate.”
How did that terrible thing happen? Apparently, by a process akin to alchemical transformation.
Bartlett knows that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery in the 19th century, the party of segregation and Jim Crow in the early 20th century, and the party of identity politics, i.e., neo-segregation, now. He also knows, though he doesn’t come right out and say, that the Civil Rights Act was orchestrated overwhelmingly by Republicans over concerted Democratic opposition.
But then afterwards, somehow, Republicans became Democrats, or at least they became Southerners, i.e. the epitome of all that is racist, intolerant, homophobic, etc.
Note the logic: the GOP ushered in the Civil Rights and and the Voting Rights Act, but — pay attention now:
… in the process, Republicans absorbed the traditions of racism, bigotry, populism and rule by plutocrats called “Bourbons” that defined the politics of the South after the Civil War. They also inherited an obsession with self-defense, allegiance to evangelical Christianity, chauvinism, xenophobia and other cultural characteristics long cultivated in the South.
What do you think of that?
You should, I submit, think badly of it, on logical, moral, and historical grounds. Whence this alleged “process” of “absorption”? Is there any justification, any, for the deployment of those negative epithets racism, bigotry, populism? (And how did that last one sneak in?)
Bartlett’s dog’s breakfast of accusation is nothing more than a bagful of insults, utterly without content. He continues the disreputable campaign in the next paragraph:
The Southern states have long followed what are now doctrinaire Republican policies: minuscule taxes, no unions, aggressive pro-business policies, privatized public services and strong police forces that kept minorities in their place. Yet the South is and always has been our poorest region and shows no sign of converging with the Northeast, which has long followed progressive policies opposite those in the South and been the wealthiest region as well.
Personally, I am in favor of “minuscule taxes,” but, alas, the Republicans don’t favor them, at least not the ones writing the laws. Unions? There’s a place for unions in the private sector. But public sector unions, as even FDR understood, are a prescription for corruption. Privatized public services? Why not? What’s better: FedEx or the U.S. Postal Service? Then there’s “pro-business policies.” I like them, the more “aggressive” the better. Successful businesses make money, ergo they employ people and add to the country’s material well-being. It is true that Democrats favor the opposite strategy, but is that something to brag about?
As for the police, “strong police forces,” as Heather Mac Donald has shown (and Donald Trump has echoed) are valuable not only because they keep crime low but because they protect minorities, especially those in inner cities.
As for the relative prosperity of North and South, Bartlett is stuck in the 1850s. For more than a decade now, the South has outpaced the North in economic growth if not, thank God, in “progressive,” i.e., leftwing, anti-prosperity attitudes.
Bartlett’s scurrilous essay is one of those productions that, merely contemptible in itself, is nonetheless worth noting as a symptom. It exemplifies, even as it contributes to, that surreal atmosphere of groundless accusation and intimidation that has made the conventional (again, see above) reception of Donald Trump such a carnival of malignancy and groundless apocalyptic self-dramatization.
Steve Bannon was right to brand the media the “opposition party.”
To an extent marvelous to behold, it has become a factory for the production of fake and very fake news: not just the dissemination of lies, half-truths, and unsubstantiated fantasies, but also the perpetuation of that echo-chamber in which political paranoia feeds upon the bitter lees of its impotent irrelevance. As I say, that old adage about the barking dogs and the moving caravan is deeply pertinent to our situation. If Donald Trump is at all successful in his efforts to help the country, we will look back on the behavior of the media and its enablers circa 2017 with a mixture of horror and contempt.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton on Friday urged President Donald Trump to upend four decades of precedent by renegotiating the “One China” policy that denies Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Bolton told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview that the One China policy, which was established during President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, is “ahistorical” and fails to reflect the current reality in East Asia, where natives of Taiwan overwhelmingly identify as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese.”
“The One China policy is inherently ambiguous,” Bolton said. “China thinks it means one thing, we think it means another.”
Beijing maintains that One China means the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate China, encompassing Taiwan.
But the Shanghai Communiqué agreed to by the United States and China explicitly says the United States “acknowledged” that “all Chinese” on either side of the Taiwan Straight believe “there is but one China.” The pact does not deny Taiwan’s sovereignty on its face.
“A clear relationship with both Beijing and Taipei on this would help all concern rather than [having] this phrase which means anything and nothing,” Bolton said.
Earlier in the day, Bolton told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington, D.C., that the Trump administration needs to “make clear” there will never be reunification between China and Taiwan without the “express, overwhelming consent” of those living in Taiwan.
“It’s time for constructive clarity,” Bolton said. “We support the people of Taiwan. We support their continued self-government, independent of China.”
Bolton predicted that China will be the top strategic issue facing the United States in the 21st century. He said the president needs to immediately demand that China back down in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
Bolton also suggested the Trump administration pressure China to pursue Korean reunification to “eliminate” the North Korean regime. He urged the president to end the Iran nuclear deal “as soon as possible” and said the United States needs to renegotiate the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia so that the United States can rebuild its nuclear deterrent in the face of Moscow’s ongoing treaty violations.
“There’s only one country in the world that’s bound by this treaty—China’s not bound by it, North Korea and Iran aren’t bound by it, theoretically Russia is, but they don’t pay any attention to it,” Bolton said. “There’s only one country that can’t build intermediate-range nuclear forces and that’s us.”
Bolton is a vocal advocate of an expansive U.S. foreign policy that promotes American values abroad. He says the greatest threat to the nation is “self-induced weakness” that was characteristic during the Obama years.
The former ambassador told the Free Beacon he believes Trump would be successful in reversing many of former President Obama’s foreign policy initiatives within his first term, especially if he models his actions after the Reagan administration.
“It took Reagan a substantial amount of time to create a defense expenditure buildup to give us the kinds of military force that we needed to speak from a position of true strength, and I think Trump is going to have to go through the same process with correcting the mistakes of the eight Obama budgets,” Bolton said.
“At the same time, Reagan said right from the beginning that he was going to pursue a very different foreign policy and the political strength of his determination to do that gave us cover while we rebuilt the military and I think Trump should follow that approach too … It would’ve been a lot different if we had a Clinton administration and had not just an eight-year hole to climb out of but a 12-year hole,” he added.
Bolton was a finalist to fill the national security adviser position left open by the resignation of retired Gen. Mike Flynn.
Trump said the administration would ask Bolton to serve in a “somewhat different capacity” after it announced the selection of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster for national security adviser on Monday.
“John is a terrific guy. We had some really good meetings with him. Knows a lot,” Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “He had a good number of ideas that I must tell you I agree very much with. So we’ll be talking with John Bolton in a different capacity.”
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