bAs long as Obama's mindset controls our
intelligence apparatus and dictates its thinking
we can only be expert at investigating and reporting
after Radical Islamic terrorist attacks but we
will remain unable to prevent them. (See 1 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another memo 'reprieve' as we drive to Louisville, Wednesday by way of Cartersville, Ga. so we can visit The Booth Museum of Western Art.
We were founding members of this wonderful museum which is north of Kennesaw, Ga. on US 75.
I maintain, The Booth is the the personification of the best of Capitalism. Directors of a cable company merged and used a significant amount of the sale proceeds to build a museum devoted to Western Art and to give back to the community they served. They offered employment to all who worked for the cable company, even sending some to college to learn about museum operations.
A visit to The Booth is a must for anyone who loves Western Art.
The reason for our trip, whose ultimate destination is Louisville, is to be present at a shower for Kevin (our grandson) and Andy, his future wife, given by their friends. Kevin and Andy now live in Nashville and he is with Channel 4 as their TV reporter during the ungodly hours of 4AM to 12PM,.
Andy is completing her degree in design and home decorating. They will be married in Nashville, Aug 6,
This leaves 2 of our appropriate aged grandchildren unmarried and 3 too young to even be candidates.
We return late Tuesday by way of Athens after a meeting of my GMOA Committee.
+++
Sunday we attended the celebration of two very dear friend's 60th anniversary. While living in Rochester, New York they befriended a large number of visiting foreign students attending the excellent local universities and a significant number of them returned to celebrate. These former students are a very diverse lot, unbelievably accomplished world class citizens.
Argie and Jerry have been wonderful supporters of and participants in my museum tours and speaker programs and do so much to make our community a special place.
Many more happy and healthy anniversaries.
+++
Most anyone can see we are at war notwithstanding the fact Obama prefers keeping his head somewhere else. (See 2 below.)
===
Millennials and Israel. (See 3 below.)
===
Concluding review of Gorka's: "Defeating Jihad."
In Chapter 2, Gorka tells the story of Jihad, traces its development and explains who the major players were/are. He lists, what he calls, the "Seven Swords" and makes distinctions between Islam and Christianity, between Mohammad and Jesus and explains the critical importance of the Jihadist's desire to bring back the Caliphate and its connection to occupying territory.
Gorka is convinced there is no negotiating with radical Islamists. They simply mean to kill infidels and have marked America as the remaining nation standing in their way toward their goal of world domination. Furthermore, the author makes no bones about Jihad's religious and political connections and the role Mohammad played in its philosophical foundation. You are either a faithful Muslim or an infidel. There is no in between.
In Chapter 3, Gorka explains how modern Jihad has gone global and how the enemy is everywhere and recruitment is active and well financed. ISIS currently operates in more than 50 countries.
In Chapter 4, Gorka takes the reader through the roles of the various grand strategists of modern Jihad and how various books have been so instructive such as "Milestones" which he considers is the early field manual for Jihadists and, to this day, remains a core doctrinal of The Muslim Brotherhood.
Al Qaeda has retooled itself by exporting guerrillas to theaters around the world and employs effective social media propaganda, technology in the establishment of killing cells.
Apparently a Pakistan Brigadier General, by the name of S.K Malik, wrote: "The Quranic Concept of War" and has devised the strategy of targeting the soul of the infidel, as the response to The West's dependence upon the Clausewitz and Machiavellin's way of fighting. In other words, war has nothing to do with the nation state because Jihadist's only object is the realization of Allah's sovereignty on earth.
Though Gorka believes we have been losing the war against radical Islam since 2001, he presents his argument about what we must do to win in Chapter 5. He scoffs at those who believe Jihadist's target only Christians, pointing out they have killed ten fold Muslims. He also rejects Obama's argument that poverty, joblessness and political disenfranchisement are to blame for Muslim anger and anti-social activities.
The existential threat America faces has switched from Communism to Global Jihadism and he makes the point that in war names matter. Why? Because that is the way we refer to our enemy, the way we talk about how our enemy functions. The way we gather raw intelligence is critical to shaping strategy and the techniques employed.
He makes the case that the first place to start is to understand how the enemy sees itself and how it refers to itself. Gorka refers back to Kennan's "long Telegram" which Truman used as the basis of forming his "Communist Containment Strategy" and Nitze's top secret NSC-68 as a guide to where we should begin. He concludes America cannot:
a) Maintain its current losing policies.
b) Cannot embrace isolation.
c) Cannot initiate a preemptive nuclear war and in, fact argues we need more human intelligence.
d) We must, however, resort to promoting democratic values, improve upon our use of social media to combat the Jihadists superior abilities and work toward their defeat from within as happened vis a vis Russia.
It is obvious Gorka does not believe our current president has the answers, remains unwilling to link religion to the existential threat we face from radical Islamists and the next president is going to have a monumental task in reversing the mind set inculcated/imposed by Obama within the ranks of government and most particularly in the intelligence branches .
In a chapter entitled: "Afterword," Gorka outlines what we as citizens can and must do to lend our effort to defeating radical Jihadists. We need to be more vigilant and report activity that make us wary and/or suspicious. He even encourages Americans, so inclined, to arm themselves and learn to use the weapons they purchase.
He then offers a list of sources that can further one's knowledge of the war against radical Islam, ISIS Al Qaeda etc., if they are predisposed, as follows:
ThreatKnowledge.Org
CouncilonGlobalSecurity.org
Westminster-Institute.Org
Writings by Steve Emerson which I frequent
Memri and the Clarion Project which I both resort to and support financially
The Ali Muslih Foundation
and
Several books, as follows:
Robert Reilly's: "The Closing of the MuslimMInd: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis," Tawfik Hamid's: "Inside jihad: How Radical Islam Works; Why It Should Terrify us; How to Defeat it" and Melanie Philipi's: "The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power," which I reported on in previous memos.
I commend Gorka's book and after reading it, I began to apply what I learned to the Orlando tragedy and it became evident the FBI were legitimately suspicious but, perhaps, did not carry their investigation far enough. In other words, they, perhaps, did not investigate his first wife, father, known associates because it is evident, again after the fact, this man displayed radical tendencies, had made radical statements and visited certain countries linked to terrorism and Jihadism.
On the other hand, we are a nation that permits free speech and there was no overt evidence he had broken any laws. Furthermore,The FBI has limited personnel and cannot track every suspect. They are already stretched thin with well over 70 or more agents investigating Hillary and are hide bound by Obama's lunacy.
It is obvious Obama has handcuffed our various agencies by barring them from using certain phrases, linking religion to radical Islamism and basically staffing our intelligence agencies with incompetents willing to drink the PC Kool Aid which demands walking softly, carrying no stick larger than a Q Tip and not making waves being pro-actively suspicious of Muslims because that is deemed racially motivated profiling and is verboten.
After several more ISIS inspired episodes, which are highly likely, perhaps Americans will become so incensed they will demand Congress rise to the occasion and they will not tolerate another president to conduct them self as this one has.
We are a slow to react people but even basset hound Americans will take only so much.
Gorka even spends a few paragraphs discussing the Muslim sign of raising one's forefinger as a gesture of solidarity and when Obama is in the company of a Muslim audience he has been known to do so.
We even have the current Attorney General stating her department will prosecute those making slurs etc. against Muslims.
Has Obama tilted our government so far towards misplaced empathy for Muslims he has endangered our nation and violated his oath of office?
In the past few weeks Trump has been given three lay ups:
a) The State Department Inspector General's Report on Hillary's violations of server protocol
b) The weak employment report.
c) The Orlando tragedy which follows a long series of domestic terrorism resulting in American.
deaths.
Did Trump take advantage of them in ways that enhanced his effort to become president? Personally I believed he blew all three because he could not stay on message and focused. He wandered off the reservation in pursuit of Pocahontas, he continued to talk about Hillary as being crooked, which some 60% concur with, and he queried whether Obama should resign due to incompetence.
I know what to expect from Hillary because she is a predictable warn out shoe. With Trump, I never know what to expect other than he has a self-defeating tendency to drift off the page. Again, I do not believe Trump is a racist and I believe he is mostly correct and cleverly effective to call attention to things most sensible American's think but have been cowered into feeling they cannot say because of the burdensome chains of PC'ism, attacks from the left and bias from the media and press. I do not claim to be a wizard but my age and temperament allow me, in fact, demand me to be outspoken. It is part of my cantankerous DNA.
I believe Trump has a bluster component to his personality that is more tactical than defining and I believe he will surround himself with a good team of advisers, will listen and is capable of self- modification but then he has a propensity to wander off the beaten path and stub his toe and that gives ammunition to his many detractors and concerns supporters like myself..
As I told my dinner friends tonight, I am sticking with him because I know where Hillary will take me and I am still willing to gamble with Trump. I was unwilling to roll the dice with Obama and I sure do not want to play roulette with Hillary so I will try Baccarat with Donald and pray for the best.
+++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DENYING REALITY WILL GET US KILLED
BY PHYLLIS CHESLER
President Obama could not bring himself to utter the word “Muslim” (not even “radical Islamist”) in connection with the worst mass shooting murder in American history–one inspired by ISIS, one claimed by ISIS–an attack committed by a home-grown, lone wolf, Muslim-American citizen, whose parents came here from Afghanistan.
Obama focused on the “handgun” issue, on gun violence, as did other members of his administration. Yet, the Orlando shooter was a security guard who had the legal right to pack and carry. He was an armed guard. Think about that for a minute. And he carefully planned this mass murder. Months ago, he became enraged when he saw two gay men kissing in Miami; weeks ago, he tried to purchase high grade military body armor.
Although the FBI had him on their radar, no one monitored his actions. One wonders why.
The LGBT Bar (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, and Transgender Legal Association of New York) could not immediately bring themselves to say the dreaded “M” word either.
This denial of reality is literally killing us.
Do gay Westerners not know that Sharia law–Muslim law–views homosexuals and apostasy (leaving Islam) as capital crimes? Do they not know that ISIS has been throwing suspected homosexuals off the roofs of very tall buildings? Do they know that Israel is the only country in the Muslim Middle East that grants asylum to gay Muslims, beginning with Arabs in the disputed territories, who are in flight from being honor killed?
I understand that politically correct and culturally “sensitive” Westerners do not want to assign collective blame or judge people up in terms of religion, ethnicity, and race. This is a noble endeavor–but at this moment it may also be suicidal.
This attack may help elect Donald Trump to the Presidency–that's if Hillary refuses to use the “M” word too. She's in a difficult situation since she is counting on Obama's support and no matter what happens–the Boston bombing, for example–Obama will not attribute it to murderous actions on the part of Muslims–Muslims who, in his view, are actually “anti-Islam.”
That's precisely what Hamid Karzai, the former President of Afghanistan. said on Sunday. Karzai said that Omar Siddiqui Mateen, was “anti-Islam.” He said that Afghanistan was doing very well, that the Taliban were not a problem, they are actually “fighting ISIS,” that America should continue “helping” his country. Karzai insisted that life was peaceful, even good in Afghanistan.
Has the world really gone completely mad? Do we believe our own lies? Have we all gone “Afghan?”
We are not accepting comments at this time, please go to the Facebook page to generate discussion!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Orlando: Why it Means War
When an Islamic terrorist gunned down defenseless US servicemen at Fort Hood in 2009 we were told it was workplace violence. When Islamic terrorists gunned down local government employees at a picnic in San Bernardino in 2015 we were told to withhold judgment until the facts were in even though minorities and women were hardest hit.
But now that an Islamic terrorist has killed 50 at a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, our rulers are calling it “terrorism,” even President Obama, even on the first day after the shooting.
Now I define government as “an armed minority occupying some territory, and taxing the inhabitants thereof to reward its supporters.”
It is interesting to me that the government apparently was not too exercised when a bunch of soldiers were killed, even though soldiers are the actual men with guns that keep the rulers in power. It is interesting that the government wasn’t too exercised when its local minions were gunned down, even though they are the functionaries that keep us “inhabitants thereof” properly subordinated to the rulers and that “make us legible” to the rulers by counting us and taxing us as James C. Scott writes in Seeing Like a State.
But this time it looks as though ISIS or its associates have really gone and done it. It demonstrates, I suppose, just how central gays are to the identity and the throbbing heart of the Democratic Party.
You can kill a few soldiers, or wipe out minorities and women at a government agency picnic, but you’d better not mess with gays. Because this means war. If the Democrats cannot protect gays from rampaging Islamic terrorists, what are they for?
Hey gays! Maybe your support of the Democratic Party is not such a good thing after all. Maybe the gay Hispanic Republican, Juan Hernandez, who supports Donald Trump and got beaten up for his trouble in San Jose a while back, is on to something.
According to my instinct, governments operate in two modes. In wartime mode they are ruthless killers, mobilizing the people and the economy of the nation to fight the foe and not rest until they have defeated the evildoers and received their abject surrender.
In peacetime mode governments are working hard to reward their supporters with pensions, subsidies, and general free stuff.
Of course, governments all originate in war, just like our own U.S. government that began as a bunch of hotheads that weren’t going to take those British taxes any more, and that determined to do something about it. But once they switch to peace, governments find it hard to switch back to war. At least our rulers do, especially our current Democrat rulers that don’t believe in nation states, don’t believe in western civilization, and don’t believe in winning. So President Obama responds to the shooting by blaming assault weapons.
(Ahem. Did you know that “powerful assault rifle[s]” are illegal in America, Mr. President? You seem to have got confused with the gun-control lobby’s notion of “assault-style” rifles that merely look like the real thing.)
So governments -- certainly democratic governments, especially peace-and-justice governments -- find it hard to deal with the fact that the world is a dangerous place and governments are all about men with guns defending us from enemies foreign and domestic.
I wonder if we are reaching the point where ordinary Americans -- including ordinary Democratic voters -- are going to want a president that does not speak in meaningless platitudes about “our values.” Americans might want to think about a president that proposes to halt immigration from Muslim lands until we can figure out what is going on.
It’s a wonderful thing to have a government pumping out free stuff to its citizens. It’s a wonderful thing to have a government that gives meaningful employment to people that want to save the planet from climate change. It’s a wonderful thing to have a government dedicated to fighting the “rape culture” on college campi. But none of that is really the job of government.
The job of government is to defend us from enemies foreign and domestic. In return, we the people recognize that the government needs to take money from us by force, and put young men into harm’s way in order to do this.
If it takes the foul murder of 50 gays in a bar in Orlando, Florida, to finally get our ruling class serious about its fundamental task, then so be it.
But I would ask our gay friends, after grieving for their dead compadres, to lay off on the Christian bakers and pizza parlors for a while. If we are to fight Islamic terrorists it does no good to be punishing your domestic enemies for WrongThink.
We need to come together. And that means putting off our little local quarrels until later.
Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) Why Millennials Dislike Israel
by Alexander H. Joffe
The Times of Israel
The Times of Israel
Many have taken notice of the recent Pew poll that shows decreasing support for Israel among millennials. Overall the poll showed solid American support for Israel; 54% sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians, while only 19% said they sympathize with the Palestinians. But the poll also showed alarming generational contrasts; only 43% of millennials (born after 1980), as opposed to 61% of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), feel sympathy toward Israel. Another recent poll showed that fully one-thirdof millennials would support a boycott of Israel.
Why this decrease in support among millennials? The Pew poll must be read not simply as a story about changing attitudes regarding Israel but about a changing America. Broadly, the issues are Protestantism and patriotism.
The first change is the erosion of the Anglo-European demographic base of the United States. This was brought about by the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 that replaced the quota system with one oriented towards family unification and attracting skilled labor, and from the 1980s onward by a series of amnesties that retroactively legalized many millions of illegal immigrants. Amnesty has become the deliberate strategy under the Obama administration, which has decided to discard border enforcement and offer legal status to illegal immigrants.
Growing Hispanic and Muslim communities in the United States are far less supportive of Israel.
|
Whatever one may think of this, not least of all making immigration policy through executive action, the outcome, in terms of creating anethnically and religiously diverse millennial youth bulge, is unprecedented in US history. TheProtestant founding of the country was predicated on emulating Jews and inspired a level of religious tolerance, if not always affection, toward them. Other growing American communities, such as Hispanics and Muslims, are far less supportive of Israel. A millennial wave with non-European and non-Protestant origins has inherent distance from Jews and has been exploited by the left-Muslim alliance in American life that underpins the BDS movement.
But the shape of public attitudes, including among millennials, is never a foregone conclusion. Historically, immigrants from a plethora of cultures including non-Protestant countries came to the US and embraced democratic republicanism, constitutionalism, and the "melting pot," wherein they retained private culture and beliefs, and participated as equals in American economic, legal, and political life. From this also flowed respect for minorities and for national aspirations, Jews and Israel included. This is no longer entirely the case.
The demographic shifts of the past 50 years have coincided with a second major process, the systematic discarding of American national identity by its educational system. Previous generations had been acculturated into knowledge of and respect for constitutionalism and the "American's creed." But starting in the 1960s civic education was gradually discarded, beginning with universities. Post-Americanism has now filtered down to all levels.
Civic literacy and respect for basic American virtues are at new lows on university campuses.
|
A pernicious form of multiculturalism gradually inverted the story of America's history, legal and political systems. To a shocking extent primary and secondary schools depict America at best as a background to stories of individual and oppressed group empowerment and at worst the pivot of capitalist, colonialist, imperialist and warmongering evil. Civic literacy and respect for basic American virtues such as religious liberty andfree speech are at new lows, especially on university campuses.
As in European states, a sense of guilt was inculcated among Anglo-Europeans (now lumped together as 'whites'), including if not especially among Jews, and corresponding senses of grievance intensified among others. This strategy of divide and conquer was especially useful to late 20th century ethnic minorities anxious for power and to new 21st century coastal elite structures of corporate media and technologists. Transnational progressivism – borderless cosmopolitanism that elevates international and law institutions to near religious status – vies to become the reigning ideology, supported by a broader culture of censorship, self-censorship, and racialization.
Israel supporters are frequently harassed and shouted down at American universities.
|
To this must be added the increasingly pervasive anti-Israel environment on college campuses, where the word Zionism is anathema, pro-Israel speakers are regularly harassed and shouted down, and where being anti-Israel is demanded as part of progressive conformity.
In is in these contexts that millennials as a demographic have been programmed to side against both Israel and the United States. They now increasingly do so.
To see the process a few years down the line we may look at Britain. There demographic engineering by the ruling Labour Party at the beginning of the 21st century was designed to make Britain "multicultural" and to cement its own political power. This saw the dramatic rise in 'Asian," that is, Muslim, immigrants with the number increasing by over 75% in a decade. They vote almost exclusively for Labour, and a significant minority have deep antipathy towards Jews and Israel.
The natural alliance between socialists and communists who dominate the Labour Party and outsiders anxious for power has brought Islamists into the political mainstream in Britain and will do so in the US. Antisemitism is something all sides appear to tacitly agree on, along with more public hatred for Israel. Labour's escalating antisemitism scandal, which began on university campuses, has now swallowed dozens of councilors and Parliamentarians. Labour members have accused Jews of funding the slave trade, Zionists of colluding with Nazis, all the way up to party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been exposed as a supporter of the Israel boycott movement. These must be set against a broader British mindset of post-imperial and post-colonial guilt, which characterizes British patriotism as an outdated fetish. American patriotism appears to be suffering the same fate.
Labour's problem of "entryism" is also found in the Democratic Party where the "progressive" candidate, Bernie Sanders, has appointed Israel-loathers Cornel West and James Zogby to the platform committee, and a variety of Muslim and Jewish BDS supporters to roles in his campaign. Sanders' indifference to Israel is couched in the familiar rhetoric of "even-handedness" toward Israel and the Palestinians, but his supporters' goal of diminishing his party's historic support for Israel is so obvious that even mainstream media have been forced to take notice.
Parallel to this is the rapid rise of the xenophobic right supporting Donald Trump. Millennial support for Trump has not been analyzed but if the massive outpouring of antisemitism from Trump supporters is any indication, there may be similar antipathy toward Jews and Israel among his younger supporters. America's party politics have been fundamentally changed and, as one commentator has noted, America's Jews have already lost.
For a growing number of
millennials, the Israeli 'occupation' began in 1948, not 1967.
|
In short, the future is not bright for Israel and millennials. It has nothing to do with "settlements" or "the occupation" except to the extent that for a growing number of young voters, these began in 1948 and not 1967. But the problem is much deeper still. The end of the Biblically-inspired Protestant cultural and political dominance in America bodes ill in many regards, since it was that particular mindset that created the country's unique institutions and values – the separation of church and state, the enshrinement of free speech and freedom of association, respect for the impartial rule of law, religious tolerance, and much more. Other cultures – and the issue is culture, not race – do not hold these values, which, tragically, are now being spurned by an increasing number of Americans.
Whether Clinton or Trump wins in November, America's foundations have been deeply shaken. Millennials and their values are no foundation for a liberal nation-state, particularly in a world where illiberal religious movements and revanchist empires threaten the very existence of the modern order. Unless the existing foundations can be quickly reinforced, Israel, American Jews, and America itself, face unprecedented peril.
Alexander H. Joffe, a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a historian and archaeologist.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment