Just as I always thought:
SHOCK – Former Obama Aid COMES CLEAN On National TV On Spying On Trump
Obama aide says Live on MSNBC she helped spy on Trump. These Democrats were so frickin’ arrogant, sloppy because they honestly believed that Hillary Clinton would automatically win.
None of these people thought that their crimes would be exposed. Boy. Were they wrong…
Meet Evelyn Farkas, an advisor to the Clinton campaign the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under Obama. On MSNBC she confessed the following:
- She helped spy on Trump for Obama before he left the White House.
- Trump, not Russians, were the targets of surveillance
- She was concerned about hiding their methods from Trump
- She encouraged leaks because she was “worried” about Russians
- “People on the Hill” (Congress) knew about Obama’s spy plot
The Democrats have got to be squirming as they try and get out of this “Worse-than-Watergate” scandal.
Liberals seriously think that Obama didn’t have any scandals but their world is slowly falling apart. It’s hard to believe that Democrats live in such a bubble.
And:
The Democrats come out of hiding and support the anti-Israel crowd and Sen. Franken leads the parade. (See 1 below.)
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Cair, Alinsky and The Muslim Brotherhood:All linked at the hips. (See 2 below..)
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More Cyber commentary. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Hanson on Russia. (See 4 below.)
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Mass. Legislator helps illegals escape from ICE.We have really become a nation with some warped and bizarre minds. (See 5 below.)
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My dear friend Avi Jorisch offers some fishing advice. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)
SENATE DEMS STAND WITH ANTI-ISRAEL J STREET OVER ISRAEL
Democrats dive into the anti-Israel swamp.
By Daniel Greenfield
On March 23, 2017, Senators had a simple choice to make. On one side was J Street; an anti-Israel pressure group that had hosted BDS activists and opposed Israel’s right to defend itself. On the other was Ambassador David Friedman, the first pro-Israel nominee in decades.
And the choice was made.
Every Democrat chose to stand with J Street with only two exceptions; Senator Robert Menendez, the last pro-national defense Democrat, and Senator Manchin.
There could hardly be a better demonstration of the descent into the fever swamps of anti-Israel politics then their decision to stand with an anti-Israel hate group whose Muslim-led student arm is waging war on campuses against the Zionist “occupation”.
Senator Schatz, who weaseled his way into his office when the Governor of Hawaii decided to appoint his minion to the job, was first in line. Schatz sniveled that Republicans had come out against Obama’s Iran deal which provided billions to terrorists. Schatz spent 5 minutes lying like a rug. Then he accused Ambassador Friedman of not being “objective” about whether Islamic terrorists destroy Israel or not.
“I take a back seat to no one in my personal and professional passion for the United States-Israel relationship,” he whined. There isn’t a seat far back enough on the longest bus in the world.
Schatz is backed by J Street. The Anti-Israel group’s PAC actively fundraised for him. It even solicited volunteers for him.
J Street PAC was No. 2 in Schatz’s top 5 contributors. Brian Schatz sold his hardly used soul for a low six figures. And George Soros probably overpaid for a worthless product.
But Schatz rewarded the anti-Israel group with his undying loyalty. He joined the boycott of Netanyahu’s speech and vocally backed the deal that protects Iran’s nuclear program and pours billions into its terrorist machine. While Schatz bemoaned Ambassador Friedman’s criticism of the anti-Israel group that owned him, he did not utter its name. “J Street”, like Rumpelstiltskin or Voldemort, could not be voiced.
Next up was Senator Udall of New Mexico. Politics is the Udall family business. Udall’s father and uncle were congressmen. His cousin was a senator. J Street’s cash made it
Udall’s third biggest donor. Udall was the
second biggest recipient of J Street checks in the ’14 election cycle.
$157,310. That was what Udall got from the anti-Israel lobby. Now it was time for him to dance for J Street’s dirty money.
Udall, who had voted to confirm numerous Obama ambassadors whose only qualifications had been their six figure checks, bemoaned Friedman’s lack of “diplomatic experience”. But he had voted for a soap opera producer who couldn’t name a strategic interest in Hungary as ambassador to Hungary.
The other Senator from J Street sputtered that Jews living in “settlements” on territory claimed by Islamic terrorists were an “obstacle to peace.” And then Udall did what Schatz had been too cowardly to do. The puppet named the puppeteer. The slave spoke the name of his master on the Senate floor.
“Most horrific, he said: J-Street supporters . . . are far worse than kapos,” Udall blithered.
Above all else a man who criticized Udall’s paymasters could not be tolerated. Why not? Because J Street signs the checks. And if J Street’s haters are kapos, what does that make him?
But then it was time to send in the clown. Next up in J Street’s batting order was the Senator from Saturday Night Live. Senator Franken had received no money from J Street. Not a penny. And he’s up for reelection in 2020. Minnesota’s second biggest joke on America was left-wing enough for J Street money. He was anti-Israel enough for J Street money. And doggone it, J Street ought to like him.
Schatz and Udall were bought and paid for by J Street. Al Franken was auditioning for cash. It was hard to know which of them was sadder and more despicable. Schatz and Udall were kept men of the anti-Israel lobby. Franken was flagging down Jeremy Ben-Ami's car in a trench coat and offering his services.
Franken had moved from comedy to politics because he was only unintentionally funny. The author of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them lectured that, "Diplomacy means not resorting to insults and to name-calling when you have a disagreement."
And Ambassador Friedman had insulted the nice men and women whom Franken hoped would write him a nice big check so he could go on being Senator Franken instead of having to play Stuart Smalley on a nostalgia cruise where he would be sharing equal billing with Legionnaire’s Disease.
“Mr. Friedman,” Franken lisped, “called supporters of the American Jewish Organization J Street ’far worse than kapos.’''Schatz and Udall had been satisfied with noting the grave insult to their paymaster and moving on. But Franken was auditioning and so he went all out singing the praises of J Street
"J Street is a pro-Israel organization dedicated to the two-state solution," Franken flattered. Insulting J Street members was a "calumny” and should be a "disqualifier". It was "profoundly insensitive". If J Street doesn’t send Franken a check after this, its terrorist supporters have hearts like stones.
"Mr. Friedman's offensive remarks don't stop there," Senator Franken huffed. "He even called me a clown and a moron."
There’s no doubt that Ambassador Friedman’s remarks were deeply offensive to clowns and morons. The clown and moron community deserves an apology for being compared to Senator Franken.
But why did Friedman call Franken a clown and a moron? It was over Franken’s attacks on a Trump ad critical of George Soros. Soros helped fund J Street.
After Franken had made his appeal for J Street money, it was back to those senators lucky enough to already be riding the anti-Israel lobby’s gravy train.
Senator Leahy (J Street PAC
- $44,588) got up to denounce the insult to J Street without actually naming his 3
rdbiggest donor. “We all want what is best for the American people,” he sniveled.
Leahy’s definition of the “American people” is a left-wing Hungarian billionaire.
Senator Van Hollen (J Street PAC -
$66,506) took a more unique approach by objecting to Friedman’s description of our Islamic “allies” as “cowards”, “hypocrites” and “freeloaders”. It could just as easily have been a description of Van Hollen and his cowardly, hypocritical, freeloading colleagues.
And then it was finally over. Every Democrat, but one, who had spoken against Friedman, was owned by J Street. And every Democrat, but two voted for J Street. And why not? It’s good money.
Senator Schumer betrayed his Jewish constituents. He sided with J Street. So did Senator Cardin. So did almost all of the rest. But this was what the Dems had become.
The contentious vote to confirm an ambassador is highly unusual.
Senate Dems had no objection when
Obama sold the ambassadorships of the UK, Japan, France, Canada, Italy and Germany to the highest bidder. ($3.5 mil for the UK, $2.5 mil France, $2 mil Japan, $1.7 mil Switzerland, $1.5 mil Belgium, Canada $1 mil and Germany $1.5 mil.)
Obama appointed his campaign finance manager, John Kerry’s cousin, married to the heiress of the Jack Daniel’s liquor empire, ambassador to the UK. The Senate confirmed him by unanimous consent. The wife of the former CEO of eBay, who
kicked in $2 mil, was named Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council. He made a soap opera producer who raised over $500K, the ambassador to Hungary and the producer of Dr. Dolittle 2, who raised millions for him, the ambassador to Denmark.
This grotesque parade of hideous corruption was approved with unanimous consent when in a more honest time everyone involved in this would be sitting under spotlights in an interrogation room.
Senator McCain put up a fight over the soap opera ambassador. McCain asked her, “What are our strategic interests in Hungary?” The Bold and the Beautiful producer spewed gibberish. The
vote came to the Senate floor. The Democrats who voted against Friedman voted for her. Franken, Schumer, Gillibrand, Udall, Schatz; the whole miserable gang of liars, scoundrels and hypocrites.
But it’s not our Ambassador to Hungary who matters, but the Hungarian who owns the Democrats.
Senate Dems ought to be made to answer why the choice of Ambassador to Israel should be determined by an anti-Israel pressure group funded by George Soros, a Hungarian billionaire who described his role in the Holocaust as “the most exciting time of my life”, and
Consolacion Esdicul who works for a Hong Kong gambler? They ought to be made to answer why they stand with Soros and the PLO over Israel.
2)
U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Saul Alinsky: A Match Made in America
By
Center for Security Policy, CSP Staff
In September 2015, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) published Star Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party. Warnings issued then have since been confirmed, specifically, that the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), while deceptively cloaked in red, white, and blue, is simply the leading edge of the Islamic Movement in this country.
In pursuit of Civilization Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood’s information operations – including many tactics learned directly from the KGB – have enabled this organization to insinuate itself gradually into a position from which it can assault the pillars of our society. These include: academia, the U.S. judicial system, faith groups, all levels of government, the media, intelligence and security agencies, and our refugee resettlement and other immigration processes. As will be shown here, a development not new but recently uncovered reveals that USCMO Secretary General Ousamma Jammal is directly connected to Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a Marxist-Leninist organization dedicated to revolution in America.
In his Brotherhood/USCMO leadership role, Jammal has a well-established track record of political activism and success at developing strategic relationships for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood including with members of the U.S. government. In the ‘About Us’ section on the USCMO website, the third prong of the USCMO Mission Statement declares the necessity “to create and sustain an urgent, collective sense of direction that well-serves the American Muslim community toward the betterment and guidance of our nation.” What the USCMO fails to share with the American people is the USCMO’s commitment to the establishment of Islamic Law (shariah) in place of the U.S. Constitution.
It’s long been known that the USCMO is openly allied with far-left racist and revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter. Recall that, in March 2016, the Center released a video which highlighted the statements of Muslim Brotherhood leaders that should be chilling to Americans who cherish the Constitution and oppose the expansion of shariah. That video showed top USCMO leadership figure, Nihad Awad (also the Executive Director of HAMAS USA dba the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR), explicitly aligning the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood with the Black Lives Matter movement. The Muslim Brotherhood alignment with the overall Red-Green Axis demonstrates the genuine aims of jihadis in suits: undermining the U.S. Constitution and national security through the global Islamic Movement.
In CSP’s Civilization Jihad Reader series publication, The Red-Green Axis: Refugees, Immigration, and the Agenda to Erase America, author James Simpson provides several crucial data points that hint at the Brotherhood’s other, Marxist-Leninist, affiliations.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is the grant making vehicle of the USCCB. It was founded in Chicago in 1969 with the help of radical organizer Saul Alinsky specifically to fund Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
CCHD has been a radical leftist funding vehicle ever since, giving millions to ACORN, the radical training school, Midwest Academy and others. IAF receives the largest percentage of CCHD grants of any CCHD grantee.
In a Metro Industrial Areas Foundation action memo dated 20 November 2016 and published by member organization ‘Dupage United’ on 9 December 2016, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal is listed among the leadership. The …And Take Counsel section on the USCMO website states, “When we speak with one clear, communal voice, our advice can help true the direction of American society toward justice.” It must be understood, however that within Islam, the word ‘justice’ means ‘shariah’ and only shariah. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood version of social justice is not intended as benevolence towards non-Muslims; quite to the contrary. Rather, in true Saul Alinsky form, the aim of the Red-Green Axis is anarchy intended to collapse the U.S. system of Constitutional law and order.
Jammal is fully cognizant that the Muslim Brotherhood’s manipulation of progressive leftist social justice entities aligned with the Red-Green Axis is strategic for the advancement of the settlement process. The Muslim Brotherhood has both co-opted the interfaith religious dialogue movement and mastered the operational mechanics of the political process in the U.S. to advance Islam’s shariah objectives. That Jammal works so closely with IAF leadership should be a red flag warning and belies what the USCMO shares with non-Muslims when it says: “Our well-deliberated and sincerely expressed words for the benefit of the nation can fortify attitudes that propagate harmony between people and institutionalize policies that spread prosperity to all.”
This revelation, that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood works directly with the Marxist-Leninist Alinsky-founded IAF at the highest levels, lends yet additional substance to the overall Red-Green Axis, whose seemingly disparate elements nevertheless have been collaborating to bring down this Republic for some time. Forthcoming CSP publications will delve even further into the Brotherhood-IAF connection.
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“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” This 19th-century quip, often attributed to the satirist Ambrose Bierce, deserves a 21st-century update: “Attacks against the U.S. are God’s way of teaching Americans how weaker enemies are stronger than they seem.”
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are the paradigmatic examples of this. On September 11, 2001, they gave Americans, along with the rest of the world, a lesson in “asymmetric warfare”—armed conflict between two sides whose relative military power differs significantly, and in which one party can gain advantage by targeting the other one’s weak points.
In that case, 19 suicidal terrorists armed with box cutters gained control of three commercial jetliners and used them to strike some of the most sensitive and symbolic targets of the most powerful and technologically advanced nation in the world. Al-Qaeda spent an estimated $500,000 on the attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people and cost hundreds of billions of dollars in material losses. The reactions that followed were even larger and more consequential than the attacks themselves: The United States launched what is to date its longest war ever (in Afghanistan), and its third-longest (in Iraq), at the estimated combined cost of $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Moreover, the geopolitical disruptions from all these events are still shaping today’s world.
If Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda taught a new generation of Americans about kinetic asymmetric war, WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have taught them about cyber asymmetric war. While the first relies on physical violence to kill people, destroy buildings, and disable critical infrastructure, the second uses the internet and other cyber tools, which can cause not only physical damage but also weaken the institutions that are critical for the functioning of a democratic government.
When Leon Panetta, then the U.S. secretary of defense, warned in 2012 about the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor,” he envisioned physical calamity like hackers causing train derailments or contaminating the water supply. Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, involving what U.S. intelligence believes were Kremlin-directed hacks and leaks of emails damaging to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, differed from this vision. It represented a political cyber-Pearl Harbor.
And that cyber confrontation was asymmetrical, not because America was at a technological disadvantage (the U.S. is among the world’s leaders in the technologies needed to wage cyberwars), but because Russia was able to exploit the weak points of America as a democracy.
What made America uniquely susceptible to the attack from an authoritarian Russia is emblematic of what makes other democracies particularly vulnerable, relative to their authoritarian counterparts, to political cyberattack. For one thing, the 2016 election attack targeted the democratic process itself. In the words of the intelligence community’s January 2017 report on the incident, the hacks and leaks worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” They aimed to take advantage of the free flow of information in a democratic society, the affect of that information on public opinion, and the electoral mechanisms through which public opinion determines a country’s leadership. (The assessment did not allege cyberattacks on voting machines, nor assess the actual impact Russian meddling might have had on the final outcome.)
If, on the other hand, a hacker leaked damaging information about Vladimir Putin, there are various obstacles in the way of its having an electoral effect. Restrictions on the media in Russia could prevent the information from circulating widely. Even if it did manage to attract publicity and sway public opinion, what then? Putin has tight control over the country’s electoral apparatus, meaning that a voting citizenry inclined to punish him for leaked evidence of misdeeds has no real mechanism to do so. The Panama Papers leaks of spring 2016, which resulted from the alleged hack of a law firm specializing in offshore banking, help illustrate the point. Though they exposed shady financial dealings within Putin’s inner circle, the Russian media covered them in a way favorable to Putin. The leaks made virtually no dent in his popularity.
And if democratic politicians are more vulnerable to the effects of leaks, democracies are also more likely to produce leakers to begin with. The legal protections individuals enjoy in the democratic states make it hard to deter this type of behavior—though as illustrated by the case of Chelsea Manning, who provided classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, leakers can be prosecuted and jailed. (Edward Snowden, who leaked classified details of government surveillance programs to journalists, fled the U.S. before he could face prosecution.) But the cost of leaking in an autocratic society like Russia, where political opponents of Putin have been known to wind up dead, could be far higher, obviously posing a major disincentive.
Democracies, too, have used cyberattacks against non-democratic states. Perhaps the best known example is the use of StuxNet, the successful attack, most likely by the United States and Israel, involving a malicious computer worm that sabotaged an element of Iran’s nuclear program. Other countries with similar capabilities could be stealthily using them against their rivals. As a member of former President Barack Obama’s council of advisers on science and technology told me: “The internet is now fully weaponized.”
But, so far, the main political victims of cyberattackers have been leaders and public figures in democratic countries—especially the United States. And the United States is not the only democracy vulnerable to political cyberattacks. One of the conclusions of the intelligence community’s report on the 2016 election hacks points to a much broader implication: “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.”
With elections coming up in several European countries, the Kremlin might turn its attention to influencing outcomes that would benefit its national interests. From bolstering populist candidates who have vowed to leave the EU, to encouraging skepticism of NATO by global leaders (most notable, so far, being President Trump), to supporting candidates who would ease the economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Crimea, there are numerous incentives for Putin to interfere, and numerous ways in which he could do so. Indeed, Russian cyber meddling was longstanding practice in Europe before 2016, and France, Germany, and the Netherlands are facing cyberattacks ahead of their elections this year.
The question is: Why haven’t Western democracies made the necessary reforms to adapt to the threat? Why have they let countries like Russia get the upper hand, not in capabilities, but in practice? One answer is that democracies, by their very nature, hinge on checks and balances that limit the concentration of power and slow down governmental decisionmaking. While all bureaucracies, including those of authoritarian regimes, are slow-moving, Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping surely are less encumbered by their laws and institutional constrains than their democratic counterparts.
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 unleashed a massive American reaction. It remains to be seen what the reaction to America’s political cyber-Pearl Harbor will be—if any.
Author: BOB CESCA
The Soviet Union never attacked America as blatantly as Putin has — and we're in danger of losing democracy. Conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is understandably hesitant to embrace these terms, but it should be obvious to anyone following along that Russia declared war on the United States last year, and it’s a war that continues to be waged today.
Unlike hot proxy wars of the past in faraway places like Vietnam or Afghanistan, and certainly unlike the Cold War in which the Soviet Union and the United States aimed thousands of weapons of mass destruction at each other’s population centers and other strategic targets but never fired a shot, this is perhaps the first time in modern history that Russia has directly attacked the United States — on American soil no less and precision aimed at what matters most: the very integrity of our democratic process.
The other obvious and breathtaking angle to this story, which few are discussing, is exactly how and why Russia’s sustained attack on the U.S. has been so successful. We’ve barely begun to acknowledge that millions of our own people, millions of American voters on both sides of the aisle (but predominantly the conservative side, given the outcome), were manipulated into acting as unwitting foot soldiers for Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
There are dozens of reasons why Putin’s cyberwar strategy has been so successful, but it was with infuriating ease that tens of millions of Americans were suckered by Putin’s plot and acted in accordance with it. The autocratic Russian president, his oligarch allies and his intelligence services, including the Federal Security Service (or FSB) and the GRU, recognized an emerging perfect storm in America that included a convergence of the following:
1. A distrust in institutions and the news media.
2. The emergence of almost universal social-media usage.
3. The willingness to repeat outrageous rumors or fake news to help boost personal social-media branding.
4. Political polarization and the accompanying emergence of information bubbles, confirmation bias and echo chambers.
5. The metastasizing of the post-Watergate misconception that anyone can or should be president, leading to the candidacy of a reality-show celebrity named Trump. (Today’s folksy “have a beer” qualification nearly supersedes other qualifications.)
The ingenuity of Putin’s war against democracy is that he was able to successfully exploit these five characteristics of our discourse in order to turn our own people against us. Let’s be clear: Americans are deeply vulnerable to digital manipulation and weaponized social-media hoaxes. Putin observed the desperately weakened condition of our discourse through the lens of a seasoned KGB veteran; he viewed it all as exploitable weakness and subsequently recruited malicious hackers linked to the Russian intelligence community, which acts with relatively significant impunity compared to its U.S. counterpart. With the apparent support of WikiLeaks and quite likely Donald Trump’s inner circle as well, Putin injected countless volumes of disinformation into our virtual bloodstream.
From there, Putin’s entire gambit could have fallen apart. An informed and conscientious society would generally recognize agitprop and disinformation as it scrolls across its smartphones and computer screens. Sadly, we’re no longer a conscientious or informed society. We believe what we choose to believe, based not on evidence or peer-reviewed facts, but on ideology and whether the information we encounter conforms to the rules of a particular team. We’ve also decided that each of us is an expert in everything. (We’re definitely not.) In other words, if your team wants to believe John Podesta ran a sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizzeria, then presenting falsified evidence of such a thing will be greeted with enthusiasm and the currency of the modern age: follows, “likes”, shares and retweets.
The blind acceptance of Russian propaganda, because it happened to include “facts” that some of us were starved to read, is what turned otherwise decent though gullible Americans into Putin’s infantry, virally blitzing the Kremlin’s message through the trenches of the political internet, attacking and converting more voters with zombie lies. Trench by trench, Facebook group by Facebook group, Americans executed Putin’s attacks for him.
The hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Podesta files aside, the effort to trick Americans into being recruited as Russian cyber-soldiers began by turning Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders against the predicted front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Using “bots” and human resources, Putin lobbed fake news and ridiculous conspiracy theories into social media. Voters who were predisposed to distrust Clinton willingly shared these stories, poisoning everyone who inexplicably wanted to be poisoned. It was textbook “divide and conquer” — split the enemy lines and turn their own cannon into the exposed flanks.
Once the presumptive nominee was decided, the same process was employed to boost the prospects of the Republican candidate, Trump. We’ve learned recently that Russia-based bots were deployed strategically at times when Trump’s polling numbers diminished, boosting Trump when he needed it the most. This happened on top of what was already underway: more weaponized fake news and hacked documents tweaking American voyeurism and predisposition to see conspiracies where they don’t exist — that were perhaps released in direct coordination with the Trump campaign. Consequently, a deeply flawed Republican nominee with a list of scandals that would have crushed any other candidate was able to slide into the White House by way of the most freakish, alternative-reality election night since 2000.
Knowing what we know now, it’s no longer a stretch to report that Trump was placed in office by Putin. But it only happened because millions of Americans unknowingly volunteered to serve as enemy combatants, undermining and betraying their own country and their own democratic elections. Make no mistake: Putin’s attack was less about electing Donald Trump and more about turning Americans against America. Whether you were suckered by Putin or voted for Trump based on fake news, we all suffer from a skewed view of U.S. elections today. We’re all more suspicious about whether our elections are on the level, and we should be. Putin’s goal was to goad us into asking the perpetual question: How can we possibly trust the outcomes of future elections knowing that Russia preselected our president years ago and then set about guaranteeing that outcome by turning our people against us?
This is the next colossal problem to solve. Once we weed out Putin’s quislings inside the White House, we have no choice but to pursue a far greater task: re-establishing the integrity of our elections while re-establishing facts and reality as the basis for our decisions. There are too many of us who sadly and disturbingly can’t tell the difference between foreign propaganda — fake news — and legitimate news. This has to change or else Putin will have won, and democracy as we know it will cease to exist.
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4) The Russian Farce
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Remember when Obama and Hillary cozied up to Putin? And recall when the media rejoiced at surveillance leaks about Team Trump?
The American Left used to lecture the nation about its supposedly paranoid suspicions of Russia. The World War II alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had led many leftists to envision a continuing post-war friendship with Russia.
During the subsequent Cold War, American liberals felt that the Right had unnecessarily become paranoid about Soviet Russia, logically culminating in the career of the demagogic Senator Joe McCarthy. Later, in movies such as Seven Days in May, Doctor Strangelove, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Hollywood focused on American neuroses as much as Russian hostility for strained relations.
In the great chess rivalry of 1972 known as “The Match of the Century,” American liberals favored Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky over fellow countryman Bobby Fischer, who embarrassed them by winning.
In the same manner, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev was often portrayed in the media as the urbane, suave, and reasonable conciliator, while President Ronald Reagan was depicted as the uncouth disrupter of what could have been improved Russian–American relations.
Senator Ted Kennedy reportedly reached out to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1984 to gain his help in denying Reagan his reelection.
In sum, the American Left always felt that Russia was unduly demonized by the American Right and was a natural friend, if not potential ally, of the United States. That tradition no doubt influenced the decision of the incoming Obama administration to immediately reach out to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, despite is recent aggressions in Georgia and steady crackdown on internal dissent, and despite Russia’s estrangement from the prior Bush administration.
Obama’s Entreaty to the Russians
In March 2012, in a meeting with President Dimitri Medvedev of Russia, President Barack Obama thought his microphone was either off or could not pick up the eerie assurances that he gave the Russian president:
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Vladimir Putin] to give me space.”
Medvedev answered: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . ” Obama agreed and elaborated, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Medvedev finished the hot-mic conversation with, “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir, and I stand with you.”
A fair interpretation of this stealthy conversation would run as follows:
Barack Obama naturally wanted to continue a fourth year of his reset and outreach to Vladimir Putin, the same way that he was reaching out to other former American enemies such as the Iranians and the Cubans. Yet Obama was uneasy that his opponent, Mitt Romney, might attack him during his reelection campaign as an appeaser of Putin. Thus, to preempt any such attack, Obama might be forced to appear less flexible (offer less “space”) toward Putin than he otherwise would be in a non-election year. In other words, he couldn’t publicly assure Putin that he would be “flexible” about implementing missile defense in Eastern Europe (“all these issues”) until after he was reelected.
An apprehensive Obama, in his hot-mic moment, was signaling that after his anticipated victory, he would revert to his earlier reset with Putin. And most significantly, Obama wished Putin to appreciate in advance the motives for Obama’s campaign-year behavior. Or he at least hoped that Putin would not embarrass him by making international moves that would reflect poorly on Obama’s reset policy.
Furthermore, Obama did not want his implicit quid pro quo proposal to become part of the public record. Had it been public, it might have been interpreted as a message to Putin that he should empathize with Obama’s plight — and that he should interfere with the American election by behaving in a way that would empower Obama’s candidacy rather than detract from it.
In the present hysterical climate, substitute the name Trump for Obama, and we would be hearing Democratic demands for impeachment on grounds that Trump was caught secretly whispering to the Russians about compromising vital national-security issues in a quid pro quo meant to affect the outcome of the 2012 election.
The Architects of Russian Outreach
The Obama administration came up with a reset–soft-glove approach to Vladimir’s Russia, characterized by Secretary Hillary Clinton’s heralded pushing of the red plastic button on March 6, 2009, in Geneva. Reset was couched in overt criticism of George W. Bush, who had supposedly alienated Putin by reacting too harshly (like a typical cowboy) to Russia’s aggression in Georgia.
Over the next few years, the reset policy consisted of, among other things, backtracking on previously agreed-on missile-defense plans in Eastern Europe. In the second presidential debate of 2012, Obama portrayed Romney as being too tough on Russia, to the point of delusion:
A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaeda. You said Russia. In the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
The Obama administration invited Russia into the Middle East for the first time in nearly a half-century to help Obama back off from his own redline threats to attack Syria if evidence of WMD usage appeared. Moreover, after the Crimea and eastern Ukraine aggressions, the perception in most of the Western world was that the U.S. was not sufficiently tough with Putin, largely because of its commitment to a prior (though failed) outreach.
So what ended this one-sided reset in 2016?
The estrangement certainly did not coincide entirely with Putin’s aggressions on Russia’s borders. Nor were Democrats inordinately angry with Putin when he bombed non-al-Qaeda Syrian resistance fighters.
Rather, Democrats’ split with Putin grew from the perception that hackers had easily entered the porous e-mail account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign guru John Podesta and released his messages to WikiLeaks. This led to general embarrassment for Hillary and the Democrats — and they floated the theory that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange were taking orders from Putin or at least operating with the encouragement of the Kremlin’s intelligence services.
After the WikiLeaks mess, the image of Putin was reset again, and now he was said to have ordered the hacking because he hated Hillary Clinton and indeed the Obama administration in general.
That was a bizarre indictment. If Putin were really a conniving realist, he would have much preferred Hillary in the 2016 election — given his success in manipulating the Obama-era reset.
Unlike Trump, Clinton would probably have kept the radical Obama defense cuts and perpetuated the restrictions on domestic energy development that were helping Russia. She probably would have likewise continued Obama’s therapeutic approach to foreign policy.
From Russia’s point of view, considering their strategic and economic interests, a pliable Obama 2.0 would have been far better than Trump, with his pro-oil-and-gas domestic agenda, his promised defense buildup, and his unpredictable Jacksonian promises to help friends and hurt enemies.
Squaring the Surveillance Circle
The entire Trump-collusion-with-Russia narrative has now descended into incoherence.
For five months, dating back to the heated final stretch of the 2016 election, mainstream media — in particular Obama-administration pet reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC — ran creepy and occasionally near-obscene stories about “collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russians. These published rumors were based on “unnamed sources” often identified generically as American intelligence officers inside the FBI, CIA, and NSA.
Soon that narrative went from ominous to hysterical — but only once Hillary inexplicably lost the election. The anonymous allegations of collusion were used to convict the Trump circle of a veritable pre-election partnership with the Russians. The collusion was to be followed, the story went, with a new reset with Putin — this time born not out of naïveté but of lucre and near treason.
We forget that the Democrats’ narratives of the purported Trump collusion also radically changed to meet changing circumstances.
Before the election, a sure and poor-loser Trump was pathetically cheating with the Russians to stop the fated winner Clinton.
Then, in the post-election shock and transition, the Russian-interference storyline was repackaged as an excuse for the poorly conducted Clinton campaign that had blown a supposedly big lead and sure victory. “The Russians did it” was preferable to blaming Hillary for not visiting Wisconsin once.
Finally, Trump’s Russian connection served as a useful tool to delegitimize an abhorrent incoming Trump administration. And the delegitimizing was made easier by Obama’s eleventh-hour order, days before his departure, to expand the list of federal officials who would have access to sensitive intelligence and surveillance transcripts.
But all such accusations of Trump-Russian complicity, based on admitted leaks from intelligence agencies, required some sort of hard evidence: leaked transcripts of Trump officials clearly outlining shared strategies with the Russians, hard proof of Russian electronic tampering in key swing states, doctored e-mails planted in the Podesta WikiLeaks trove, travel records of Trump people in clandestine meetings with Russian counterparts, or bank records showing cash payoffs.
Yet a hostile media, in collusion with intelligence-agency leakers, has so far provided no such proof. John Podesta had as much invested in Russian profiteering as did former Trump aides. Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation had as many financial dealings with pro-Russian interests as did Trump people. The ubiquitous Russian ambassador had met as many Democratic grandees as he had Trump associates
The lack so far of hard proof gradually created a boomerang effect. Attention turned away from what “unnamed sources” had alleged to the question of how unnamed sources had gathered surveillance of the Trump people in the first place — as evidenced by media reports of General Flynn’s conversations, of Trump’s private talks with foreign leaders, and of allegations of electronic contact between Russian and Trump Tower computers.
In other words, the media and their sources had gambled that congressional overseers, law enforcement, and the public would all overlook surveillance that may have been illegal or only partly legal, and they would also overlook the clearly illegal leaking of such classified information on a candidate and a president-elect — if it all resulted in a scandal of the magnitude of the Pentagon Papers or Watergate.
So far such a scandal has not emerged. But Trump’s opponents continue to push the Russian narrative not because it is believable but because it exhausts and obfuscates likely illegal surveillance and leaking.
The real scandal is probably not going to be Trump’s contacts with Russians. More likely, it will be the rogue work of a politically driven group of intelligence officers, embedded within the bureaucracy, who, either in freelancing mode, or in Henry II–Thomas Becket fashion (“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”) with Obama-administration officials, began monitoring Team Trump — either directly or more likely through the excuse of inadvertently chancing upon conversations while monitoring supposedly suspicious foreign communications.
Added to this mess is the role of three unsympathetic characters who are on record as either not telling the truth, deliberately obfuscating it, or showing terrible judgement.
Obama CIA director John Brennan, who assumed that role after the still mysterious and abrupt post-election departure of David Petraeus, has a long history of political gymnastics; he has made many a necessary career readjustment to changing Washington politics. He is on record as being deceptive — he failed to reveal that the CIA intercepted Senate communications. He also stated falsely that the drone program had not resulted in a single collateral death. And, in the spirit of Obama’s new Islamic outreach, Brennan strangely suggested that jihad was a sort of personal odyssey rather than a call to use force in spreading Islamic influence. Brennan is also on record as critical of Trump: Trump “should be ashamed of himself,” Brennan said the day after the inauguration, in response to Trump’s speech to CIA staffers gathered in front of the Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has in the past lied to Congress, when he assured that the NSA did not monitor the communications of American citizens. Likewise, he bizarrely asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely a secular organization. And more than 50 CENTCOM officers formally accused Clapper of distorting their reports about the Islamic State. Like Brennan, Clapper has been critical of Trump, asking, “Who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence community?”
During the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey popped up to assure the nation that while Hillary Clinton had conducted herself unethically, and probably in violation of federal statutes in using her private e-mail server for government business and wiping away correspondence, her transgressions did not rise to the level of indictable offenses. It was as if the investigator Comey, rather than the appropriate federal attorney, was adjudicating the decision to charge a suspect.
Then in the final stretch of the race, Comey resurfaced to assert that “new” evidence had led him to reconsider his exculpation of Clinton. And then, on November 6, 2016, just hours before the nation went to the polls, he appeared a third time in front of cameras to reiterate his original judgment that Hillary’s transgressions did not merit further investigation, much less criminal prosecutions. The media contextualized Comey’s schizophrenia as see-saw reactions either to liberal Obama-administration pressures or to near revolts among the more conservative FBI rank-and-file. Just as likely was Comey’s own neurotic itch to seek public attention and to position himself favorably with a likely new president.
Comey’s weird election-era prominence was also apparently fueled by the fact that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was caught in an embarrassing private meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton — a meeting during the investigation of his spouse. (The encounter was intended to remain secret, but a local reporter was tipped off.) That unethical encounter had tainted Lynch’s pose of disinterested adjudication, and she accordingly de facto fobbed off her prosecutorial responsibilities to Comey. Comey most lately has asked the Justice Department to refute Trump’s claims that he was subject to electronic surveillance by the government during the last days of the Obama administration.
Given the past assertions and political natures of Brennan, Clapper, and Comey, none are very credible in any future testimony they might give about the Trump-Russia narrative or the role U.S. intelligence agencies played in the possibly illegal monitoring of Trump associates. All three men are even less credible when it comes to the illegal leaking of such classified information to media outlets.
Trump’s infamous and clumsy tweet (“just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower”) may well prove to be inaccurate — literally. But it could also end up being prescient if revelations show that Obama-appointed officials or their underlings used surveillance on foreign officials — three years after the NSA got caught tapping Angela Merkel’s cellphone — in order to sweep up Trump communications and then leak them to the media to damage his candidacy and later his transition.
We are left in the end with paradoxes:
How did Obama’s naïve pro-Putin reset and Clinton-family profiteering transmogrify into wild accusations that others had become even friendlier to such an unsavory character?
How did the image of a sacrosanct media speaking the “truth” of Trump’s collusion with Putin rest on the peddling of false narratives — many of them based on likely illegal surveillance and certainly unethical and unlawful dissemination?
And if Trump was unhinged for leveling wild allegations based on mainstream news reports, why were news outlets themselves — and those who quoted them chapter and verse — not unhinged for spreading such suddenly unreliable information?
What is the explanatory sword that cuts this Gordian knot?
Trump supposedly had zero chance of winning. But when he did, facts had to adjust to a bitter actuality — at first perhaps to explain away reality, but quite soon after to alter it by any means necessary.
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5)Treason Alert: Dem Lawmaker Tips Off Illegals of Specific Date and Location of ICE Raids on Social Media
‘If there’s a knock on the door and you don’t know who it is, don’t open the door’
(WND) – A Democrat state lawmaker in Massachusetts has been caught tipping off illegals – many of whom are violent street gang members, child sex offenders and drug traffickers – to imminent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids Tuesday, even telling criminal targets not to open their doors, to stay silent, to refuse to sign anything and to “fight back” with an attorney.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman suggested to WND that the lawmaker is “doing a disservice to the community” and “endangering public safety” with her statements.
Massachusetts State Rep. Michelle DuBois, a Democrat representing the 10th Plymouth District, warned illegals about imminent federal immigration raids scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in Brockton, a city just 25 miles outside of Boston. DuBois posted the warning on her Facebook page. She included a phone number illegal aliens may call if they’re caught in an immigration raid.
In January 2016, federal authorities arrested 56 members of MS-13, a highly organized and well-funded Central American gang known for its brutal acts of violence, in and around the Boston area. They were indicted on conspiracy charges and charges related to murder, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. Some were also charged with other offenses, including drug trafficking and firearm violations. According to the indictment, several of the individuals were involved in the murders of at least five people since 2014 and the attempted murders of at least 14 people.
MS-13’s motto is “Mata, viola, controla” – kill, rape, control.
A 2016 U.S. Department of Justice press release stated: “Members of the MS-13 organization in Massachusetts sell cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, and commit robberies, in order to generate income to pay monthly dues to the incarcerated leadership of MS-13 in El Salvador. This money is allegedly used to pay for weapons, cell phones, shoes, food, and other supplies for MS-13 members in and out of jail in El Salvador.”
Despite the horrific illegal-alien gang violence in the area, DuBois felt compelled to warn lawbreakers of impending immigration raids.
“I got the following information from my friend in the Latin community: ‘I have a message for the immigrant community of Brockton. Please be careful on Wednesday 29. ICE will be in Brockton on that day,’” DuBois wrote on her Facebook page.
“If you are undocumented don’t go out on the street. If there is a knock on the door of your house and you don’t know who it is, don’t open the door. I ask you to be careful.”
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6)
How Israel Can Help Stem Over-Fishing in the South China Sea
South China Sea littoral states should look to Israel for innovative solutions
by Avi Jorisch
While world leaders and Asian policymakers focus on disputes in the South China Sea, a less-publicized threat looms right over the horizon: over-fishing. As an important natural resource is rapidly depleted, millions, even billions, could be affected. Israeli innovation has an important role to play in averting catastrophe.
The South China Sea is one of the most important economic, military, and environmental locations on earth. Ten countries and territories surround it, and over $5.3 trillion worth of
international trade traverses their shores annually. The area covers approximately 1.4 million square miles, and its rich marine ecosystem provides food and jobs to millions. Around the world, one in five people depend on fish as their primary source of protein, and over 200 million
rely on fishing for their livelihood and food security. According to the
UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, however, more than 80 percent of the world's fish species are depleted or are not producing at maximum capacity.
Seven of the 10 countries around the South China Sea claim some or all of the maritime features, which could lead to major conflagration. In
early 2014, China, which claims most of the waters as sovereign territory, shifted its foreign policy, building military bases on disputed islands and systematically intimidating non-Chinese fisherman.
Political tensions and hostile naval actions have caused a destructive cycle: non-Chinese fishermen do not venture very far off their coasts, resulting in local over-fishing and illegal practices. Fishermen use underwater bombs and cyanide to optimize their catch. Chinese nationals are encouraged by their government to fish as much as possible throughout this vast ocean to flex their national muscle, further adding to over-fishing.
The South China Sea has less than one-tenth the number of fish it did 60 years ago. "What we're looking at is potentially one of the world's worst fisheries collapses ever,"
says John McManus, a University of Miami marine ecologist. The fishing industry cannot be regulated as long as the territorial conflict continues, and it is unlikely to end anytime soon.
For years, fishermen have used fish farming, or aquaculture, to help them cope with geopolitical disputes, dwindling fish supplies, pollution, and weather. But farms bring challenges of their own. Until recently, they had to be located near the ocean because waste had to be channeled out and the fish resupplied with fresh seawater. Over time, however, waste byproducts dumped into the ocean, primarily nitrogen, made the area uninhabitable for other marine life. Consequently, many countries limited the use of fish farms or banned them entirely. But experts see fish farms as among the few technological solutions to over-fishing.
Innovators have tried building fish farms with embedded treatment systems, but until recently, all produced fish that were far more expensive than ocean-caught fish or had adverse environmental effects because of pollution.
Almost 25 years ago, Hebrew University Professor Jaap Van Rijn invented a solution: "zero-discharge" fish farming, an entirely self-contained, recirculating aquaculture system that did not emit waste. Van Rijn sought a way to treat water using biological filters and specially grown bacteria to consume fish fecal matter. Experts called it impossible.
Yet Van Rijn's idea has inspired an innovative industry. His solution has been tested extensively and proven to work with extremely limited amounts of water, without harming the environment. Large Jacuzzi-like tanks are filled with water, and fish are added. Next, his specially created microbes, which treat the fish waste and nitrogen, are mixed in. Only evaporated water is replaced. This allows fish to grow to full maturation and remain in the tanks until they are sold or eaten. The system is efficient, yields no pollution and can be set up anywhere. No additives or potentially carcinogenic antibiotics are used. Van Rijn's innovation provides a viable fish farm alternative without any of the harmful consequences.
Today, only
about two-dozen land-based recirculating farms around the globe grow salmon, trout, and steelhead fish. A variety of governmental and non-governmental agencies have an important role to play in ensuring more ventures adopt this technology.
According to ForeignAssistance.gov, the 2017 U.S. foreign aid budget for countries around the South China Sea will be over half a billion dollars. The Trump administration should allocate a percentage for recirculating aquaculture systems for national security and ecological reasons, and for an easy public opinion win. This will boost local economies and give fishermen a powerful (and ecologically friendly) way to engage in their trade.
Last May, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
released its 2016-2020 strategic plan, which aims to expand sustainable U.S. marine aquaculture production by at least 50 percent. The United States today imports over 90 percent of its seafood, and about half is farmed. NOAA's strategy, however, has only one brief mention of recirculating systems, and according to industry experts, NOAA is
focused on open-water aquaculture. The new NOAA administrator should focus on more sustainable production that protects consumer health and the marine environment.
International organizations like the World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organization have
recognized the need to develop a reliable and sustainable way to secure more seafood to feed billions of people around the world. Fish farms already
provide 50 percent of the world's 167 million tons of fish, and experts
believethat by 2030, another 40 million tons will be needed to meet consumer protein needs. Van Rijn's method provides a solution that will not destroy the ocean further and will curb over-fishing.
"Aquaculture, not the Internet, represents the most promising investment opportunity of the 21st century,"
according to the late Peter Drucker, economist and Nobel laureate. As the planet's population grows, so too will the human appetite for fish protein. Policymakers around the world wishing to prevent over-fishing, protect marine life, provide healthy food, and address national security concerns should look to Israel for innovative solutions.
Avi Jorisch (@avijorisch) is a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of a forthcoming book on Israeli innovation.
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