How President Trump Can Make American Intelligence Great Again

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Bureauracy, CIA, Intelligence agencies, Intelligence community, Intelligence failures, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, President Elect Trump, Redundancy, Trump appointments
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How President Trump Can Make American Intelligence Great Again, Center for Security Policy, Fred Fleitz, December 12, 2016

(But please see, Abolish the CIA? Perhaps Trump’s CIA will be better than the old CIA.– DM)

ciastuff

Source: National Review

In 2010, when I was on the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I attended a committee hearing on the North Korean nuclear program. That hearing epitomized the failure of post-9/11 reforms of U.S. intelligence and showed why the Trump administration must take aggressive steps to streamline American intelligence. Only then can it can return to being the great institution that provides the intelligence support our presidents need to protect our nation against national-security threats facing our nation today.

This process should start by sharply scaling back or eliminating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The lead witness at this hearing, seated at the center of a long witness table, was the ODNI North Korea issue manager. Seated next to him on each side were the ODNI issue manager for WMD proliferation and the director of the ODNI National Counterproliferation Center.

Joining them were the National Intelligence Council (NIC) officers for WMD proliferation and East Asia, both part of the ODNI. The CIA sent two witnesses, from its proliferation and North Korea–analysis offices. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department, and the Department of Energy sent one witness each.

In addition to these 10 witnesses, other senior intelligence officials attended as backbenchers. There also was a gaggle of aides, handlers, and congressional liaison staffers. There were so many that they could not all fit into the hearing room.

The hearing seemed to go on forever, since the lead witness kept inviting all his colleagues to weigh in on every question asked by committee members. Some of the backbenchers spoke too. This became monotonous, since every witness (except for the one from DIA) parroted the same watered-down consensus view. Making this worse, the witnesses’ consensus statements were proven to be completely wrong a few months later.

This mob of intelligence officials spouting the same watered-down pablum exemplified why the reform of U.S. intelligence mandated by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) has been an utter failure. Although IRTPA created the position of the director of national intelligence as a new official to oversee all U.S. intelligence agencies, to ensure that these agencies would cooperate and share information, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has developed into a huge additional layer of bureaucracy, with far too many officials, that has made American intelligence analysis and collection less efficient and more risk-averse.

This is in part due to blowback from 9/11 and Iraq War intelligence failures, but also is a typical situation for a 70-year-old, multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy that has become complex and complacent. As is true with many established government bureaucracies, political factors and fear of being wrong weigh heavily on the operations of U.S. intelligence agencies. While America still has the world’s best and most capable intelligence service, it has lost the “can-do” intrepid spirit of its predecessor, the heroic World War II-era Office of Strategic Services.

The ODNI has made this problem much worse — not just because it is an additional layer of stifling bureaucracy, but also because it has become a 17th intelligence agency, with its own intelligence analysts, thousands of employees, and a huge — and ever growing — budget.

In 2007, House Intelligence Committee members were so disturbed about the rapid growth of the ODNI bureaucracy that they approved, on a bipartisan basis, an amendment to the 2008 intelligence authorization bill to freeze the ODNI staff to the number working for it as of May 1, 2007. I drafted this amendment, which was co-sponsored by Congressmen Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) and Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.).

Hastings said at the time about this amendment:

We will not give you a blank check with which you could continue to grow a new bureaucracy before we know what you are doing with what you already have. A bigger bureaucracy does not make better intelligence.

Although Hastings was right, the Hastings/Rogers amendment was never implemented, since Congress did not pass an intelligence authorization bill that year. I hate to think how many times the ODNI staff has doubled since the House Intelligence Committee attempted to halt its growth in 2007.

The IRTPA reforms have hurt U.S. intelligence in other ways. The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), which used to be a lean and effective daily intelligence publication for the president produced by the CIA, has become an ODNI publication, weighed down with bureaucracy to make it “fair” so that all 17 intelligence organizations can participate and use it to publish articles justifying their budget requests to Congress.

The ODNI bureaucracy has also burdened intelligence agencies with unnecessary reports, regulations, and foreign travel by ODNI staff.

Aside from being an attempt to improve the sharing of information between intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the 9/11 intelligence failures, the ODNI also was created because some believed it is impossible for the CIA director to both manage the CIA and oversee the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

I have long believed that these reasons are false. The CIA director, as the director of central intelligence (DCI), worked well for decades as the head of all U.S. intelligence agencies. The failure to share intelligence between U.S. intelligence agencies prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks could have been addressed without creating the DNI position and its huge and plodding bureaucracy. Moreover, intelligence agencies have failed to share crucial information despite the creation of the ODNI.

For example, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) issued a damning report in 2010 on how U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information that could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the 2009 “underwear bomber” — from boarding a plane from Europe that he almost blew up over the city of Detroit. The report found that U.S. intelligence agencies had the information to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane to the United States but had failed to cooperate with each other and share intelligence. According to the report, “no one agency saw itself as being responsible” for assessing such threats. The report identified 14 specific failures by intelligence agencies which included a bureaucratic process for adding names to terror watch lists that was too complicated and too rigid to address quickly emerging terrorist threats.

Concerning the argument that the CIA director can’t simultaneously manage the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, if the president can manage the White House and the entire U.S. government, there’s no reason why we can’t have the CIA director in charge of his home agency and overseeing other U.S. intelligence agencies.

Eliminating the ODNI and rolling its duplicative organizations into the CIA would save at least $1 billion and could make U.S. intelligence more efficient and nimble. Such a move should include eliminating the huge number of redundant ODNI managers and officials such as those mentioned above.

More needs to be done to streamline U.S. intelligence and fix problems caused by earlier reforms and reorganizations.

For example, CIA director Brennan carried out a huge and controversial reorganization in 2015 that many critics believe created a confusing and bloated bureaucratic structure that will hurt long-term analysis and create security risks. This reorganization needs to be carefully reviewed by the next CIA director and possibly reversed.

There also are redundant units in multiple intelligence organizations that perform identical missions that should be streamlined. More of these crop up every year.

For example, U.S. intelligence agencies have increased their efforts to counter cyberwarfare over the last few years by creating large, separate organizations to address this issue. These include:

  • The ODNI Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, created in 2015.
  • The U.S. Cyber Command, created in 2009, to defend Department of Defense networks, systems and information, to defend the homeland against cyberattacks, and to provide support to military and contingency operations.
  • The Department of Homeland Security National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, created in 2009, to monitor cyber threats across government agencies and critical infrastructure.
  • The CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation, created in 2015.

There are many other examples of such duplication and redundancy, especially concerning counterterrorism.

To the greatest extent possible, these types of offices should be streamlined into a single inter-agency entity with one agency having the lead.

A reconstituted DCI should also take the lead in doing a better job of encouraging cooperation between intelligence agencies by pressing intelligence officers to take temporary assignments in other agencies. Having worked as an analyst with CIA and DIA, I know their analysis missions are very similar and would greatly benefit from closer collaboration, possibly by creating a joint CIA/DIA intelligence analyst service.

Managers and experts need to be brought in from outside the U.S. intelligence community to challenge the groupthink and analysis-by-committee that has gripped our intelligence agencies in the aftermath of the 9/11 and Iraq WMD intelligence failures. To deal with emerging security threats, we need more out-of-the-box and “competitive” analysis that provides policymakers with alternative assessments of global threats. There also is a great need for better strategic analysis of future threats.

U.S. intelligence agencies also need to improve their efforts to analysze and collect against new technological developments and challenges, including social media, big data, and hostile actors utilizing increasingly powerful encryption.

Outside managers and experts could also help counter the politicization of intelligence by intelligence officers who don’t like President Trump. This was a serious problem for previous Republican presidents. Recent leaks to the press by intelligence officers about Trump’s daily briefings suggest this problem has already resurfaced.

Implementing intelligence reforms to make U.S. intelligence agencies into the innovative and effective institution they once were will take strong leaders in top intelligence positions who will act independently and are not beholden to the intelligence community. These officials must have the full backing of the president.

President-elect Trump, by appointing Mike Pompeo as CIA director, General Mike Flynn as National Security advisor, and KT McFarland as deputy national security advisor, is off to an excellent start to implementing these kinds of intelligence reforms to make American intelligence great again.

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The Palestinian Jihads against Israel

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Abbas, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Khaled Mashaal, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians
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The Palestinian Jihads against Israel, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, December 13, 2016

“We will not recognize Israel because it will inevitably go away. And we will not backtrack on the option of armed struggle until the liberation of all Palestine.” — Khalil Al-Haya, Hamas senior official.

The abandonment of Gaza by Israel in 2005 drove the Palestinian vote for Hamas the next year. It also explains why many Palestinians continue to support Hamas — because they still believe that violence is the way to defeat Israel.

Hamas believes that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against rockets and terror attacks. It even considers Israel’s self-defense as an “act of terror.”

In yet another sign that exposes Hamas’s ongoing preparations to attack Israel, the movement last week held a drill with live ammunition in the northern Gaza Strip.

“What has been achieved so far is a small jihad, and the big jihad is still awaiting us.” — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is convinced that his “diplomatic jihad” against Israel is no less effective than Hamas’s jihad of terrorism.

Yet even if Abbas manages to achieve reconciliation with Hamas, this move should not be seen as sign of pragmatism on the part of the Islamist movement. Under no circumstances will Hamas relinquish its policy of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamist state.

From Abbas’s point of view, Hamas’s terrorism will only increase the pressure on Israel to capitulate. Here Abbas has an ally in Hamas: to multiply jihads to force Israel to its knees.

The Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, which is currently celebrating the 29th anniversary of its founding, misses no opportunity to broadcast its stated reason for being: to wage jihad (holy war) in order to achieve its goal of destroying Israel. Those who allege that Hamas is moving toward pragmatism and moderation might take note.

Last week, tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to participate in rallies marking the anniversary of the founding of Hamas. As in previous years, the rallies were held under the motto of jihad and “armed resistance” until the liberation of all Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Another message that emerged loud and clear from the rallies: Hamas will never recognize Israel’s right to exist.

This year’s rallies once again also served as a reminder of the enormous popularity that Hamas continues to enjoy among Palestinians — not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank, where supporters of the Islamist movement celebrated the occasion, but on a smaller scale and with a lower profile, out of fear of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli security forces.

Khalil Al-Haya, a senior Hamas official, outlined in a speech before his supporters in the Gaza Strip his movement’s strategy, namely to pursue the fight until the elimination of Israel. “We will not recognize Israel because it will inevitably go away,” he declared.

“And we will not backtrack on the option of armed struggle until the liberation of all Palestine. Since its establishment, Hamas has been — and will remain — a Palestinian Islamic national and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Israeli project. The liberation of the Gaza Strip is just the first step toward the liberation of Palestine — all Palestine. There is no future for the Israeli entity on our homeland.”

When Hamas leaders talk about the “liberation” of the Gaza Strip, they are referring to the total unilateral Israeli disengagement from that area in 2005. Hamas and many Palestinians have never viewed the full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a gesture on the part of Israel. Nor have they ever considered the disengagement as a sign that Israel is no longer interested in controlling the lives of nearly two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

On the contrary, Hamas and many Palestinians continue to see the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip as a sign of weakness. In fact, this disengagement is why Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006, when it took credit for driving Israel out of the Gaza Strip through suicide bombings and rockets. Back then, this abandonment of land by Israel drove the Palestinian vote for Hamas. It also explains why many Palestinians continue to support Hamas — because they still believe that violence is the way to defeat Israel.

Many Palestinians see Israeli concessions, gestures and unilateral moves as proof of capitulation, rather than positive signs testifying to Israel’s peaceful intentions. These “concessions for peace” by Israel further increases Palestinians’ appetite for launching armed attacks against Israel. Today, many Palestinians are convinced that they can achieve more through stabbings, vehicular rammings and shooting attacks than sitting with Israel at the negotiating table.

The Qatar-based Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, seized the anniversary as an opportunity once again to remind everyone of his movement’s real goals. Speaking on the Al-Jazeera TV network, which serves as a platform for the Muslim Brotherhood organization (Hamas is an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood), Mashaal said:

“We are moving forward with our resistance to achieve our national project… We are looking forward to liberating Palestine and cleansing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and protecting it from division and demolition. We also seek the return of the refugees to their homeland and the liberation of our prisoners from Israeli jails.”

When he talks about “cleansing” Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Hamas leader is referring to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been exploiting these visits to incite their people against Israel. They claim that Jewish visitors are “desecrating” the holy site and should not be allowed to set foot there. These words mirror those used by President Mahmoud Abbas, who said that Palestinians will not allow Jews to “defile with their filthy feet” the Al-Aqsa Mosque (although no Jew has entered the mosque itself).

Mashaal, who in the past few years has been living as royalty in Qatar (the country that is the main patron of Muslim Brotherhood), went on to emphasize that Hamas has “not changed its strategy of liberating Palestine.” He also said that, “Military work remains the backbone of liberation.” Hamas, he added, “Continues to believe in the full liberation of Palestine and that jihad and resistance are the only means to expel the occupation and liberate Palestine and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.” According to Mashaal, Hamas continues to look toward Arab and Islamic countries, including Iran, for the military, financial and political support to achieve its goal of destroying Israel.

Hamas’s armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, boasted on this occasion that 22 of its men have been killed since the beginning of 2016, while preparing for the next war with Israel. Most of the Hamas men were killed when the tunnels in which they were working in collapsed. Hamas continues to build new tunnels and renovate those that were destroyed during the last war with Israel in 2014. Hamas says it wants to use these tunnels in the future to infiltrate Israel and kill or kidnap Israeli civilians or soldiers.

Ironically, while Hamas pursues its round-the-clock efforts to prepare for war against Israel, its leaders do not hesitate to depict themselves as victims, and warn of supposed Israeli plans to launch a “new aggression” against Palestinians. Hamas believes that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against rockets and terror attacks. It even considers Israel’s self-defense as an “act of terror.”

Take, for example, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum’s recent assessment. Lashing out at U.S. aid to Israel, Barhoum said that the American military and financial aid to Israel constitutes “official support for terrorism.”

This is effectively Hamas’s message to the new U.S. administration: Stop supporting Israel with weapons and money because that hinders our goal of destroying Israel. In yet another sign that exposes Hamas’s ongoing preparations to attack Israel, the movement last week held a drill with live ammunition in the northern Gaza Strip. The drill enacted, among other things, an incursion into a civilian populated area. Hamas said the drill was the fruit of 380 hours of non-stop military training of its “Special Units.”

Hamas’s rhetoric and actions leave no room for doubt as to its intentions. Twenty-nine years after its establishment, a defiant Hamas continues to believe that Israel can, and should, be destroyed. The dream to eliminate Israel remains alive and well among many Palestinians, as evidenced at Hamas rallies by the massive turnouts.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, however, are kissing cousins when it comes to Israel. Hamas’s talk of jihad against Israel is right in line with Abbas’s speech before the 7th Congress of Fatah, which convened in Ramallah two weeks ago. “What has been achieved so far is a small jihad, and the big jihad is still awaiting us,” Abbas declared.

According to Abbas’s aides, the PA president was referring to a different type of jihad — one that relates to his ongoing efforts in the international arena to isolate and delegitimize Israel, to force it to make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians. Abbas’s diplomatic warfare against Israel began several years ago, with the PA’s efforts to join international institutions and seek unilateral recognition in the UN of a Palestinian state. His ultimate goal is to have the international community exert pressure on Israel to withdraw fully to the pre-1967 lines. Abbas wants to establish a Palestinian state with the help of the international community, and not through direct negotiations with Israel. He is convinced that his “diplomatic jihad” against Israel is no less effective than the Hamas jihad of terrorism.

This Abbas talk of “small” and “big” jihad comes at a time when Abbas and Hamas are in courting mode. Some reports have suggested that Abbas recently sent conciliatory messages to Hamas in yet another bid to end the dispute between the two sides. He and Khaled Mashaal have had regular phone contact, with both expressing a desire to end the conflict between them. The reports have even suggested that the two rival parties may be preparing to resume their “reconciliation” talks in Doha under the auspices of Qatar. Last October, Abbas met in Doha with Mashaal and another Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, as part of his rapprochement with the Islamist movement. The meeting was said to be held in a cordial atmosphere, and some Palestinian political analysts point to a warming of relations between the two sides.

677-1Last October, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Qatar with Khaled Mashaal and another Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, as part of his rapprochement with the Islamist movement. Pictured above: Abbas (right) meets with Khaled Mashaal in Qatar on July 20, 2014, in a previous reconciliation attempt. (Image source: Handout from the PA President’s Office/Thaer Ghanem)

Yet even if Abbas manages to achieve reconciliation with Hamas, this move should not be seen as a sign of pragmatism on the part of the Islamist movement. Under no circumstances will Hamas relinquish its policy of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamist state. The movement’s own words on its anniversary provide the best proof of this intention. To their credit, Hamas leaders are nothing if not honest about their commitment to Israel’s destruction. Abbas certainly will not attempt to convince Hamas to abandon this fundamental goal. So, as far as Hamas is concerned, reconciliation means that Abbas will move closer to the Islamist movement and not vice versa.

In fact, Mahmoud Abbas seems to believe that Hamas’s and his jihads complement each other. Thus, Hamas will continue its deadly jihad, while Abbas will pursue his “diplomatic jihad” against Israel. From his point of view, Hamas’s terrorism will only increase the pressure on Israel to capitulate. Here Abbas has an ally in Hamas: to multiply jihads to force Israel to its knees.

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Terror Experts ‘Very Concerned’ About Sen. Warren Aide and His Radical Mosque

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Donald Trump and Islamists, Elizabeth Warren, Islamist grievances, Islamist mosques, Islamist organizations, Islamist terror attacks, Islamists and Israel, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, President Elect Trump
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Terror Experts ‘Very Concerned’ About Sen. Warren Aide and His Radical Mosque, Counter Jihad, Paul Sperry, December 12, 2016

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she made an ill-advised appearance at a Boston mosque linked to several major terrorism cases at the request of an office aide who attends the radical mosque.

The Massachusetts Democrat said she agreed to speak Sunday at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center at the urging of staffer Hamza Abdelgany, who is a member of the mosque, which has graduated no fewer than 13 terrorists and recently was caught on video defending many of the terrorists, even after they were convicted in federal court.

Warren spoke before the congregation for several minutes chiefly to complain about “anti-Muslim hate” allegedly inspired by the election of GOP President-elect Donald Trump.

Charles Jacobs, founder of Boston-based Americans for Peace and Tolerance, told CJ that he is “very concerned” that a member of a mosque that supports and even raises money for the legal defense of known terrorists has such political clout. He said that Warren’s ill-considered visit bestowed undue legitimacy on ISB.

ISB operates two mosques: one in Roxbury, where the so-called “interfaith” event attended by Warren was held, and the other in Cambridge, where several terrorists and terrorist supporters have worshipped, including:

  • Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev;
  • Aafia Siddiqui, aka Lady al-Qaida, who raised money for the terror group in area mosques and is serving an 86-year federal sentence for trying to murder a US Army captain in Afghanistan, where she was captured with plans to carry out a chemical attack on New York City;
  • ISB imam Abdullah Faaruuq, who was heard on tape urging Boston Muslims to “pick up the gun and the sword” to defend Siddiqui during her 2010 trial.
  • Tarek Mehanna, who in 2012 got 17 years in federal prison for conspiring to use automatic weapons to murder shoppers in a suburban Boston mall, as well as for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda;
  • Ahmad Abousamra, an indicted terrorist co-conspirator of Mehanna who fled to Syria in 2006 where he resurfaced as a top ISIS propagandist and was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2013, where he remains today.
  • ISB congregant Rezwan Ferdaus, who in 2012 got 17 years in federal prison for plotting to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with remote-controlled airplane bombs.
  • ISB major donor Oussama Ziade, who was indicted in 2009 for dealing with terrorist funds and is now a fugitive living in Lebanon.
  • ISB co-founder Abduraham Alamoudi, who was sentenced in 2004 to 23 years in prison for plotting terrorism and identified by the US government as a top Muslim Brotherhood figure as well as a key al-Qaida fundraiser in America.
  • ISB founding trustee Yusuf Qaradawi, who was placed on the US terror watchlist after calling for violent jihad against US troops in Iraq and is currently the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant on charges of incitement to murder.
  • Jamal Badawi, another former trustee who in 2007 was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a plan to funnel more than $12 million to Palestinian suicide bombers.

ISB leadership also includes Abdul-Malik Merchant, an associate imam who recently was forced to apologize to the Jewish community for posting anti-Semitic posts on social media.

ISB member Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was caught on surveillance videotape planting a bomb along the Boston Marathon route, became an angry jihadist after joining the mosque. According to his ex-girlfriend, “One minute he was a normal guy, the next minute he is watching these crazy Muslim videos.”

In 2011, ISB hosted an event in support of no fewer than 22 terrorists who were convicted of providing material support for al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Jihad and Pakistani terrorist groups — including Siddiqui, Alamoudi and Mehanna. During the event, which was caught on video, relatives of the terrorists bashed the FBI, the Justice Department and the US government; and at least one speaker called for violent jihad against the US.

Still, Warren stood where they stood and bashed the president-elect.

“I am very concerned about how Donald trump is beginning to define his administration with the people he personally is picking to lead this country,” Warren said, while claiming that “since the election attacks on racial and religious groups have skyrocketed.”

“Now is a time when we must be willing to say loud and clear there is no room for bigotry anywhere in the United States of America — none,” she said. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and we will fight back against discrimination whenever and wherever it occurs.”

Six prominent religious leaders fired off a letter criticizing Warren for agreeing to appear at the mosque, arguing she provided “political cover to one of the most intolerant jihadist mosques in America.”

Warren was invited by ISB member Hamza Abdelgany, a staff assistant working out of Warren’s Quincy, Mass., office. Abdelgany was involved with the Muslim Students Association while attending the University of Massachusetts at Boston. The US government says MSA is a front group for the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which supports violent jihad and conspires to one day bring the US and other Western nations under Islamic rule.

“The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt … Its ultimate goal is the creation of a global Islamic State governed by Sharia law,” U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks said in a 2008 court filing related to a major terrorism case. “Muslim Brotherhood members first migrated to the United States in the 1960s, where they began their grassroots work on campuses through an organization called the Muslim Students Association.”

ISB is run by the Muslim American Society, a known Muslim Brotherhood front group which also runs the so-called “9/11 mosque” in the Washington area, Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center.

Ilya Feoktistov, director of research for Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said that by ignoring ISB’s well-documented ties to terrorists, Warren is serving as an “enabler” of jihad.

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“Hate Spaces” Film Exposes Campus Intolerance

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Academia and Islamists, Academia and Israel, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism in academia, Hate spaces, Islamists and freedom of speech, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Israel, Islamophobia, Students for Justice in Palestine
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“Hate Spaces” Film Exposes Campus Intolerance, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Noah Beck, December 13, 2016

hatespaces

A new documentary, “Hate Spaces,” exposes the epidemic of campus intolerance favoring Muslims and anti-Israel activists over Jews and Israel supporters when it comes to free speech, academic freedom, and protection from abuse.

The film is being released theatrically by Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), a Boston-based non-profit dedicated to raising public awareness about the increasingly hostile campus environment. “Hate Spaces” premiered Nov. 30 in New York, and will be screened at select locations around the country (contact info@peaceandtolerance.org for details). The film will also be available on DVD in early 2017 and eventually on YouTube. Click here to sign up for alerts.

The film’s title refers to the concept of “safe spaces” that has been used to silence unpopular speech on universities around the United States.

Executive Producer Avi Goldwasser, who also wrote and directed “Safe Spaces,” first noticed the extent of the campus problem in 2004, when he produced “Columbia Unbecoming.” That film documented the intimidation by Columbia University professors of Jewish students who supported Israel. “Jewish students were abused by faculty members and the administration ignored it,” Goldwasser told the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). “The abusing professor got tenure.”

Indeed, anti-Israel lies, incitement, and hate speech are often tolerated under the banners of academic freedom and free speech. Last September, for example, the University of California, Berkeley reinstated a student-led course that presented a demonizing, one-sided history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after public outcry claimed that free speech and academic freedom were jeopardized by the course’s suspension. In contrast, pro-Israel speech is attacked by Israel critics who demand the right to have “safe spaces” free from “hate speech.”

“Any support of Israel is hate speech!” one protestor in the film proclaims.

Groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) leverage their politically favored status to exercise rights and protections that they try to deny their political opponents. At Northeastern University, SJP violated school policies over a two-year period, including “vandalism of university property, disrupting the events of other student organizations, not getting the appropriate permits when required, distributing unauthorized materials inside residence halls and sliding them under the doors of private rooms, not providing a ‘civility statement’ which was required after a previous sanction [and] not meeting with university advisers,” according to Northeastern spokeswoman Renata Nyul.

“We have zero tolerance for anti-Semitism, zero tolerance for racism or any kind of hatred,” Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun said in the film, defending his school’s decision to suspend SJP.

But SJP successfully reframed the school’s response as suppression of free speech and rallied public and media pressure until their suspension was lifted. Thus, in an SJP-dominated campus, speech that violates school policies and harasses Jews and Israel supporters is protected as “free speech” rather than punished as “hate speech.”

By contrast, critics of Islam have been silenced with accusations of “hate speech” and “Islamophobia.” In 2014, Brandeis University canceled a speaking invitation and honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a campaigner for women’s rights and a fierce critic of Islam, after she was branded an “Islamophobe” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Around the same time, CAIR used similar accusations to stop the screening of a documentary on honor killings.

Meanwhile, Jewish students and organizations are targeted with impunity, as feckless college administrators hesitate to take remedial action (as happened at Connecticut College). One of the reasons for their reluctance, the film suggests, is fear of jeopardizing funding – collectively, over $1 billion over the last six years – from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Through brazen lies – like claiming that Israel “commits genocide” and “apartheid” – SJP and MSA have created campus environments that are hostile to Jews and pro-Israel students, while suppressing support for Israel as “hate speech.”

“Hate Spaces” was a story that had to be told, Goldwasser said, because “most people do not realize how the hostility is being institutionalized, made fashionable by a combination of forces including radical faculty, radical student organizations, and an enabling university administration. While many anti-Jewish incidents and the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel) campaign are reported by the media, few are willing to connect the dots and report on the underlying ideology and extremist organizations that are inciting the hostility.”

The film shows how such campus hostility can reach as far as student council meetings, events that should be focused on campus affairs and otherwise far-removed from Middle East politics. It features UCLA sophomore Rachel Beyda, who applied for a leadership position on the Undergraduate Students Association Council. She was challenged by an SJP-backed campaign that claimed her Jewish background would make her biased when deciding sensitive campus issues. For about 40 minutes, students questioned whether her Jewish identity would make her a less fair-minded leader, even though three other students deciding her fate had been similarly active in their respective communities (Iranian students’ group, the MSA, and the Sikh students’ group).

The film also highlights the extent of SJP’s infiltration into academia. The organization, which has ties to Muslim-Brotherhood-linked groups, has chapters on more than 600 campuses. “Hate Spaces” underscores how there is “sensitivity training” on many campuses for just about every group (including for bestiality and incest at Yale) but not when it comes to groups relating to Jews or Israel.

The film includes footage of SJP founder Hatem Bazian calling for an intifada in America during a 2004 San Francisco rally. In addition to heading the University of California, Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, Bazian is AMP’s founder and national chair. AMP provides funding, printed materials (including “Apartheid walls” for public demonstrations), and staff to SJP chapters.

“Hate Spaces” cites the IPT’s 2015 report about AMP support for Hamas and terrorism against Israel.

It includes footage from an AMP event with several disturbing quotes. “When I look at the people who fight with the Israeli Occupation Forces,” says AMP’s Munjed Ahmad in one example, “I don’t think we understand how many American Jews who were involved in the assault of Gaza the past summer were American…Of those people massacring those 500 children and those civilians, there were American Jews.”

Taher Herzallah asks: “What if as Muslims, we wanted to establish an Islamic State? Is that wrong? What if, as Muslims, we wanted to use violent means to resist occupation? Is that wrong?”

“Hate Spaces” attempts to explain how campuses became so hostile to Israel. By manipulating identity politics, SJP created an anti-Israel alliance of hard-left groups. They exploit the academically trendy concept of “intersectionality” – the idea that all injustices are interconnected – to demonize Israel and make common cause with activists from totally unrelated movements, like the campaign to address police violence.

SJP also attracts well-meaning students concerned about equality and social justice by portraying Palestinians as blameless victims of wholly unjustified Israeli attacks. “What drew me to SJP was my motivation to support equal human rights,” one student says in the film. “I joined them because I felt that the Palestinian people were being oppressed.”

Another student explains how “SJP deliberately works with anti-Zionist Jewish organizations because working with those organizations helps to immunize them …against charges of bigotry and anti-Semitism. It gives SJP cover.”

“Hate Spaces” points out that student demographics have also helped SJP, because tens of thousands of students from Muslim countries that are traditionally hostile to Israel have arrived on U.S. college campuses in recent years. As noted by a former-SJP activist interviewed in the documentary, “There’s definitely a lot of ethnic solidarity between Muslims and Palestinians because [a] majority of the Palestinians are Muslims, so it’s almost like a brotherhood.”

Goldwasser describes the intended audience for “Hate Spaces” as “decent Americans, especially, those in leadership positions.” He believes that “once they are educated about this outrage on campus, there is a chance that changes will be made. All we ask is that Jewish students be treated equally, receive the same protection as any other minority on campus.”

The film notes that professors and administrators have only exacerbated the campus movement promoting BDS, through their indifference or open complicity with the movement’s campus leaders and tactics: “Many university officials are uncomfortable dealing with hatred that comes from a non-Western minority, preferring to selectively invoke the concepts of academic freedom and free speech instead of fulfilling their responsibility to Jewish students.”

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Trying to overturn a free and fair election

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, CIA, Clinton supporters, Election rigging, Electoral College, Intelligence community, President Elect Trump, Putin, Russia
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Trying to overturn a free and fair election, Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, December 12, 2016

vlad

The world has turned itself upside down. Only yesterday the liberals and the left (the “progressives,” as they want to be called) regarded the CIA as the locus of evil, the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, forever poisoning gentle minds with a diet of conspiracy and tall tale.

In those gloomy days of the Cold War, where every day was seasoned with a sharp wind and a cold rain, it was the Democratic intellectuals who were forever chiding the rest of us that the Soviet Union was not so bad, the Russians just wanted to be understood and maybe deserved an occasional cuddle. It was the Republicans and other conservatives who were mindless rubes who imagined there was a mad Russian under everybody’s bed.

Now the CIA, in the liberal/left’s fevered dreams, is the last bulwark of the republic, the last remaining hope to turn the 2016 election result on its head and deprive Donald Trump of the victory he won. The Russians, it now turns out, are just as bad as the conservatives said they were.

President Obama, who mocked Mitt Romney four years ago for suggesting that Russia and Vladimir Putin was America’s No. 1 enemy, now says it was Mr. Romney who was smart and got it right four years ago. The president himself, in his telling, is the man dumber than a cypress stump.

The president, at last awake and paying attention to Russian cyber warfare, wants answers, and by noon on Jan. 20. He can then only dine out on the answers, because he won’t have any more authority to do anything about them than the cat.

Desperation pursues despair, and the Democrats are stumbling from inanity to insanity in search of a way to block Donald Trump’s path to the White House. Hilary Clinton’s remnant of a campaign has endorsed an attempt by a handful of members of the Electoral College — 9 Democrats and a rogue Republican — to get the “intelligence briefing” they think might derail next Monday’s scheduled day for the members of the Electoral College to vote for president, 306 of whom are honor bound to vote for the Donald. That’s 36 votes more than he needs.

“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” John Podesta said Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.

“Each day our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump. Despite our protestations this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in our campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

What should distress every American is the way the left, the liberals, the progressives and their handmaidens in the press have discarded reasonable conversation to try out every absurd alarm, one after the other, to see whether one could stick, to undermine and undercut the results of what everyone agrees was a free and fair election on Nov. 8. None has worked. More than a month later, the republic stands.

Hysteria now threatens to become insanity. Rep. Jim Hines of Connecticut, a Democrat, says it came to him in the night, as if Marley’s ghost was rattling his chains at the bedside, “that this man is not only unqualified to be president, he’s a danger to the republic. I do think the Electoral College should choose someone other than Donald Trump to be president. That will lead to a fascinating legal issue, but I would rather have a legal issue, a complicated legal problem, than to find out the White House was now the Kremlin’s chief ally.”

Accusing a president-elect of treason, of plotting with the enemy against his country, and with no evidence at all, is something that even a congressman from Connecticut should understand is beyond the limits of rational and decent political debate. Alas, it’s par for the course on the left this season.

The sudden deep concern by President Obama and the Democrats about Russia and cyber warfare, is a bit rich. The Washington Post, which continues so deep in denial that its side lost the election that it may never find the way to the next stage of grief, hangs its survival on the conclusion of the intelligence agencies — which, to put it charitably, have a dismal record of finding out what’s going on anywhere.

A competent president and a responsible “intelligence community” would have done something about the Russians and their hackers a long time ago. Whining doesn’t work.

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Italy: Priest bans Nativity scene for fear of offending Muslims

Posted December 13, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Christmas, Islamic sensitivities, Italy, Roman Catholic Church
Tags: , , ,

Italy: Priest bans Nativity scene for fear of offending Muslims, Jihad Watch, , December 12, 2016

(The last Obama family “Christmas card” being sent from the White House does not mention Christmas, wishing everyone merely “Happy Holidays.” — DM)

Remember the rule: in Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities. And in non-Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities.

nativity-manger-scene

“Nativity Scene Could Offend Muslims, Priest Says,” by Nick Hallett, Breitbart, December 12, 2016:

A priest in Italy has caused uproar after announcing there would be no Christmas nativity scene at the local cemetery this year because it could offend Muslims and atheists.

Fr Sante Braggiè said there would be no crib in the cemetery in the northern city of Cremona because it may anger people of others faiths or none whose relatives are buried there.

“A small corner of the cemetery is reserved for Muslim graves,” Fr Braggiè said. “A crib positioned within sight of them could be seen as a lack of respect for followers of other faiths, hurt the sensibilities of Muslims, as well as Indians and even atheists.”

He also cited a lack of council workers to set up the crib as another reason for abandoning the tradition.

Corriere della Serra reports that Fr Braggiè’s predecessor as local priest, Fr Oreste Mori, strongly criticised the decision, saying: “Seriously? I can’t believe it!”

“We cannot renounce our culture and traditions,” he said. “That would be an unpardonable weakness.”

“I am, for the time being at least, in Italy, not Saudi Arabia.”…

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ISIS seizes big Russian-Syrian T-4 air base

Posted December 12, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Foreign policy, Obama and Middle East, Palmyra, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Secretary of Defense, Syria war
Tags: , , , , , ,

ISIS seizes big Russian-Syrian T-4 air base, DEBKAfile, December 12, 2016

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Islamic State forces pushed their assault forward to retake the central Syrian town of Palmyra Monday, Dec. 12. By evening, they had entered the big Russian-Syrian T-4 air base outside the town, carrying off substantial quantities of Russian armaments. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s military sources add that the booty they snatched included different types of ground-to-ground missiles as well as anti-tank and anti-air rockets.

Russian forces manning the base were hurriedly evacuated from Palmyra and the T-4 base, after the worst defeat Russian armed forces had ever experienced at ISIS hands in Syria. Military circles in Moscow commented grimly that the Russian army had suffered “a major disgrace” in Palmyra.

According to our sources, long convoys of ISIS fighters backed by tanks taken booty from the Syrian army, first forced the Syrian 11th Tank Division to abandon the strategic Jhar Crossroad. After that, the way was clear for the jihadis’ column to reach the T-4 base.

DEBKAfile reported on the ISIS terrorists’ fresh momentum Sunday.

Judging from the rash of reports claiming US-Iraqi military progress in the Mosul offensive against ISIS and the extra American special operations forces personnel posted to Syria for an impending US-Kurdish operation to capture the ISIS Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the Islamic State ought to be cowering under siege, finally defeated – or at least on the run.

But the facts tell another story. ISIS is on the offensive – so far in the Middle East. Over the weekend, Islamist terrorists accounted for dozens of deaths and injured hundreds more.

Sunday, Dec. 11, at least 25 people worshipping at the Coptic St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s church adjacent to St, Mark’s cathedral in Cairo were killed and scores injured. The Coptic pope often leads the prayers there. DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism sources reveal that the attack was carried out by Islamist terrorists from Raqqa who bided their time until they struck in the Egyptian capital. Saturday, six Egyptian troops were killed by another Islamist bomb near the Giza pyramids.

On the same day, ISIS fighters pushed back into the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra, nine months after their expulsion.

The Raqqa terrorist stronghold is clearly alive and kicking on more than one front. A number of contributing factors enable the Islamic State to unleash a fresh spate of terror.

1. The US-Iraqi-Kurdish drive has stalled without driving ISIS out of Mosul or choking off the terrorist fighters’ freedom to move between Mosul and Raqqa, their Syrian bastion.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who arrived in Baghdad Sunday, Dec. 11, was assigned by the Obama administration to make a last effort to reactivate the Mosul campaign. His chances of success are slim. The military coalition which launched the campaign two months ago has lost a vital component, the Kurdish Peshmerga, which backed out three weeks ago. The Iraqi military units which captured some of the city’s outskirts stopped short when they reached the strongest defense lines set up by the Islamic State and have been unable to break through, even with US air support.

The pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite front which undertook to seize Tal Afar in order to sever the ISIS connecting link between Iraq and Syria are parked outside, having been warned by Turkey not to set foot in the town.

Added to these setbacks, the US CENTCOM which is running the aerial war in Iraq is at loggerheads with the Iraqi Air Force command and has practically grounded all Iraqi warplanes.

Even if Carter can wave a magic wand and resolve all these issues, the momentum and high hopes that actuated the Mosul campaign when it started have been lost and can hardly be recovered before Barack Obama leaves the White House.

At least two of the incoming president Donald Trump’s designated security advisers – Defense Secretary Gen, James Mattis and National security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn – have criticized the operation in is current form.

2. What is happening in Raqqa doesn’t fit the designation of an offensive. At most, small Kurdish and Syrian rebel groups are mounting sporadic raids against ISIS fighters on the town’s outskirts, with the support of the Obama administration. Our military experts say that Raqqa can’t be captured from the Islamist terrorists by conventional means – mainly because it is spread over a large area of mostly empty desert. ISIS has taken advantage of this terrain to distribute knots of defenders across a vast area ranging hundreds of kilometers from northern to eastern Syria up to the winding, heavily overgrown banks of the Euphrates River.

So when Ash Carter announced Saturday that he would be sending another 200 Special Operations Forces into Syria to join the battle for Raqqa, he had no idea that he, the Russians and the Syrians were about to be caught off guard by a fresh ISIS initiative to reoccupy Palmyra, the ancient Syrian two from which they are thrown out in March.

This was a poke in the eye for Russian President Vladimir Putin who proclaimed Palmyra’s capture from ISIS as a signal coup for the Russian army in its war on Islamist terror.

3.  He might well commiserate with Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi. For two years, the Egyptian armed forces have been fighting an uphill battle to crush the ISIS groups infesting the Sinai Peninsula. The jihadists constantly elude punishment with the help of supportive Bedouin tribes.

Every few months, they pose a real threat to the stability of the El-Sisi regime by striking inside Cairo, the capital, with some terrorist atrocity, for which they are aided by the Muslim Brotherhood underground and Palestinian Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip.

The bombing of the Coptic church Saturday was unusually the work of jihadists deployed from Raqqa, Syria.  Egypt has reacted by placing extra guards at Christian sites and declaring three days of national morning for the disastrous bombing attack on Egypt’s largest minority.

The new Islamist drive is looking ominously like the onset of the Christmas-New Year holiday terror onslaught the Islamic State has threatened to unleash in the Middle East and beyond. US and European security services have been placed on high alert in the belief that returning jihadis are programmed to strike at home.

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Abolish the CIA?

Posted December 12, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: CIA, Incompetence, Russian hacking
Tags: , ,

Abolish the CIA? Power Line, Steven Hayward, December 12, 2016

In the course of research for my two-volume history of Ronald Reagan I read through a lot of declassified CIA assessments and reports, and was amazed at how consistently bad, and most often wrong, the analysis was. Here’s one example I included in the book:

On October 5, 1973, the CIA’s daily bulletin commented on Egyptian military exercises on the west bank of the Suez canal, just across the canal from the Israeli-occupied Sinai peninsula: “The exercise and alert activities . . . in Egypt may be on a somewhat larger scale and more realistic than previous exercises, but they do not appear to be preparing for a military offensive against Israel.”  The very next day, the CIA’s daily bulletin reiterated its judgment that “For Egypt a military initiative makes little sense at this critical juncture.” Before the ink was dry, 70,000 Egyptian troops and 800 tanks started rolling across pontoon bridges over the Suez.  Syria launched a simultaneous surprise attack in the Golan Heights to Israel’s northeast.  The attack had been carefully planned for months, yet Egypt achieved complete surprise over the CIA.

I could go on with a whole catalogue of CIA assessment blunders, from the Bay of Pigs, repeated wrongheaded conclusions about Vietnam, completely wrongheaded conclusions about the Soviet economy almost to the very end, and underestimating Soviet military expenditures and arms buildups. The CIA concluded after Pope John Paul II was named in 1978 that it “will undoubtedly prove extremely worrisome to Moscow.” For this keen analysis American taxpayers must pay? (And who can forget the CIA concluding about 10 years ago that Iran had given up its drive to develop nuclear weapons. Was anyone fired for that assessment?)

The left loves to remind us of the CIA’s assurances that WMDs in Iraq was a “slam dunk,” but my favorite example of CIA cluelessness was its 1986 assessment that real per capital income in East Germany was higher than real per capita income in West Germany ($10,440 versus $10,220)—a proposition so absurd that you needed to have an Ivy League education to believe it. But that’s just the problem; any taxi driver in West Berlin could have told you this was nonsense, but the CIA didn’t have any taxi drivers on their payroll, preferring sophisticated Ivy League graduates instead. This misprision turned out to be a cause of alarm and dismay in the eastern bloc. East Germany’s chief spymaster Markus Wolf later confessed: “For a time in the late 1970s and 1980s the quality of the American agents was so poor and their work so haphazard that our masters began to ask fearfully whether Washington had stopped taking East Germany seriously.”

Richard Nixon hated the CIA, and they reciprocated that hatred in ways that are still probably not fully known. Reagan’s great CIA director, William Casey, knew the CIA was dysfunctional and mostly went around it in his drive to undermine the Soviet Union. Another excerpt from my second Reagan book:

What Casey found was a stifling bureaucracy; Robert Gates wrote that it had slowly turned into the Department of Agriculture. Casey had been around Washington long enough to know that the CIA bureaucracy would not be susceptible to sweeping reform schemes; he had said as much at his confirmation hearings, telling the Senate Intelligence Committee “This is not the time for another bureaucratic shake-up of the CIA.”  He also had the requisite distrust of the CIA’s inertia.  The Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky recalled visiting Casey with a proposal for nasty deed against the USSR. “It’s just great,” Casey told him, “but let me give you some advice: don’t tell anyone in the CIA about it; they’ll screw it up.” He focused instead on trying to get specific divisions of the CIA to conceive of their mission in radically new ways. Casey and Gates did shake up CIA analysts when they announced that henceforth the accuracy of individual reports would be taken into account when it came time for promotions.

The basic problem of the CIA is that, like any other bureaucracy, it will tend to send up the kind of assessments that it thinks its political masters want. Hence the Vietnam-era findings that were always congenial to LBJ (until they weren’t congenial), etc. The latest CIA assessment that Russia influenced our election may be true, but it is also highly convenient for what the Obama Administration would like to hear just now, no?

So if Trump really wants to “drain the swamp,” maybe he should revive an idea first proposed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan back in the 1990s—abolish the CIA. And Trump can claim it is a bipartisan idea: Moynihan isn’t the only Democrat who has made the suggestion. Bernie Sanders has been for abolishing the CIA. It would be fun to watch liberal critics of the CIA twist themselves into knots if Trump proposed this. Pass the popcorn.

Chaser:

mccartyhjy-on-fake-news

 

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10 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’

Posted December 12, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: 2016 elections, Obama and Russia, President Elect Trump, Russian hacking
Tags: , ,

10 Ways the CIA’s ‘Russian Hacking’ Story is Left-Wing ‘Fake News’, Breitbart, Joel B. Pollak, December 12, 2016

podesta-and-putin-640x480

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to support a congressional investigation into whether Russian hacking affected the 2016 election. Republicans have nothing to fear from such an investigation, because they won the election fair and square.

No, Russia is not the friend that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent several years pretending it was. But the idea that Russian hackers coronated Trump is only the latest left-wing opiate — after white supremacists and “fake news” — designed to dull the pain of electoral defeat, and postpone the reckoning that must occur if Democrats are to pose a significant threat as an opposition party at any time in the near future.

Here are just ten of the reasons the “Russian hacking” story is a sham — a left-wing twist on the red-baiting McCarthyism of the 1950s.

1. There is actually no new information leading the CIA to its conclusion. The New York Times reports: “The C.I.A.’s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency’s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.” In other words, someone only decided after Trump won that it the accusation was worth making.

2. The “evidence” that the CIA has gathered is inconclusive. The FBI also disagrees with some of the CIA’s conclusions about Russia’s motives. “While lawmakers were seemingly united on the need to present a strong bipartisan response, the FBI and CIA gave lawmakers differing accounts on Russia’s motives, according to The Post,” The Hill reported on Sunday.

3. The CIA is not making public claims that Russia hacked the election. Several CIA veterans, in fact, have urged caution about the leaked reports. As Newsweek reports: “‘I am not saying that I don’t think Russia did this,’ Nada Bakos, a top former CIA counterterrorism officer tells Newsweek, in a typical comment. ‘My main concern is that we will rush to judgment. The analysis needs to be cohesive and done the right way.’” Thus far there is not even a clear idea what the CIA’s conclusions are.

4. Despite left-wing “fake news,” there is no evidence Russian hackers actually distorted the voting process. The most that the CIA is alleging is that the Russians may have helped hack of the Democratic National Committee emails, as well as (possibly) the emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chaiman John Podesta. There is zero evidence Russian hackers messed with voting. Ironically, Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount has eliminated any doubt about the integrity of the results.

5. The Obama administration has a history of manipulating intelligence for political gain. The most under-reported scandal of Obama’s presidency was the CENTCOM scandal, in which it emerged that “senior U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) leaders manipulated intelligence assessments in 2014 and 2015 to make it appear that President Barack Obama is winning the war against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).” There is even more reason to doubt the truth of a selective leak about the election.

6. Julian Assange and Wikileaks have vigorously denied that the Russians were involved in Wikileaks’ disclosures. Of the Democratic National Committee emails, Assange said: “That is the circumstantial evidence that some Russian, or someone who wanted to make them look like a Russian, was involved, with these other media organisations. That is not the case for the material that we released.” Assange made similar denials about the Podesta email leaks later in the election.

7. The fact that the Russians might constantly be trying to hack U.S. systems, and might even specifically have targeted the election, does not prove that they succeeded. Nor does it prove that they tipped the election to Trump even if they had some effect. As pollster Frank Luntz tweeted: “Did Russia also hack Hillary’s campaign calendar and delete all her stops in rural Wisconsin, Penn., and Michigan?” Hillary Clinton lost the election for reasons entirely of her own making.

8. Foreign interference in elections is nothing new — and the Obama administration is a prime culprit. In 2015, the Obama administration made a strenuous and not-terribly-well-hidden effort to swing the Israeli elections toward the opposition and away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The State Department gave $300,000 to a “pro-peace” Israeli group, which then paid political activists whose goal was to unseat Netanyahu. In 1984, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) actually asked for Soviet help. Russian efforts to intervene would be bad, but not unique, either for Russia or for the U.S.

9. What would the consequences of allowing undue Russian influence in our elections be, exactly? Would we yield primacy in Eastern Europe to Vladimir Putin? Would we give up our plans for missile defense? Would we make deep unilateral cuts in our nuclear arsenal in exchange for flimsy concessions ? Would we tolerate a Russian land invasion of a friendly, pro-Western country? Would we cede the Middle East to Russian hegemony? Because Hillary Clinton and Obama already did that.

10. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation for the “Russian hacking” story is that it is “fake news” that suits the left-wing media. It is not unknown for Russia to use false propaganda to affect public opinion in foreign countries. Nor is it unknown for the U.S. media to use bias, “fake news,” and outright lies to shift public opinion in this country. The current focus on Russian “hacking,” based on no new evidence and — again — zero evidence of tampering with the voting process.

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Brooklyn: Feds raid businessmen linked to Penn. imam blamed for Turkey coup

Posted December 12, 2016 by danmillerinpanama
Categories: Erdogan, Fethullah Gülen, Obama and Turkey, Turkey's failed coup
Tags: , , ,

Brooklyn: Feds raid businessmen linked to Penn. imam blamed for Turkey coup, Creeping Sharia, December 12, 2016

fethullah-gulen-index

Source: Feds raid businessmen linked to imam blamed for Turkey coup | New York Post

Federal authorities raided a Brooklyn cafe linked to the Pennsylvania imam blamed by Turkey for plotting July’s failed coup attempt in that country.

The feds seized computers from Masal Cafe in Sheepshead Bay — which operates in a portion of the old Lundy’s Restaurant — in October, said a source familiar with the Brooklyn Turkish community and accounts in the Turkish press.

Cafe owner Selahattin Karakus told the Daily Sabah, an English-language newspaper in Turkey, that agents were at his Sheepshead Bay home and the cafe.

“They told me not to talk about this with anyone,” he is quoted as saying.

Karakus, 39, is a supporter of Fethullah Gulen, an imam who fled Turkey in 1999 and lives in self-imposed exile in the Poconos. He heads a moderate religious movement that operates schools and cultural centers around the world, including one in Sheepshead Bay.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed Gulen for orchestrating the coup attempt and has demanded that the US extradite him to Turkey. The Turkish government considers Gulen’s movement a terrorist organization.

Gulen has denied involvement in the uprising, which killed more than 250 people.

…

Since the uprising, Erdogan has expanded a crackdown on the Gulenist movement, with more than 30,000 people arrested or detained and media outlets shuttered.

Shortly after the coup attempt, the Obama administration expressed its support for the Turkish democracy and said it would consider any evidence Erdogan presented to extradite Gulen.

Karakus is considered close enough to Gulen that the reclusive cleric is said to have suggested the name for his restaurant, which has become a meeting place for Gulen supporters, according to press reports. The word “masal” in Turkish means a tale or story.

He is among a number of Gulen adherents who have contributed to political campaigns across the country, according to a 2014 BuzzFeed article. Karakus denied at the time there was an orchestrated attempt at political influence.

He has donated $11,300 to congressional campaigns since 2012 including those of Democratic Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Yvette Clarke in Brooklyn and Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Texas. Texas is home to the greatest number of Gulen-backed charter schools.

Karakus has also given $2,500 to Brooklyn Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, a Democrat from Sheepshead Bay. Cymbrowitz’s campaign has spent $130 at the Masal Cafe, records show.

“All I know about a federal raid is what I read in the newspaper. Mr. Karakus has a successful restaurant and is an active member of the Sheepshead Bay merchants’ association,” Cymbrowitz said.

The entity that operates the eatery, Boz Export and Import Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection in September, just days before the FBI raid. The company owes $450,803 in back rent, according to its bankruptcy filing.

Karakus refused to talk to The Post, and his lawyer declined to comment. The FBI would not comment.

Gulen has schools all across the U.S., many of them robbing taxpayers of funds and jobs. Watch: Killing Ed – Charter Schools, Corruption, and the Gülen Movement in America.

As we wrote in this post, Erdogan tells Obama to take care of Pennsylvania-based Islamist Gulen:

Will Obama back Erdogan – who is Islamizing Turkey, or will he back Gulen – who is Islamizing the U.S.?

It looks like Obama will back Gulen after one inning of play…

The Brooklyn raid should confirm that assessment.

Sheepshead Bay is the same Brooklyn neighborhood where Despite 20+ violations, 2 stop orders, Muslims impose mosque on residential Brooklyn neighborhood.

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