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I am within 30 pages of finishing Jon Meacham's biography of Andrew Jackson. The parallels between Jackson's two term presidency is startlingly similar in many ways to Trump's 7 months. Both were hated and loved, both faced serious issues and acted boldly, both changed the way American's thought about the presidency. Jackson was censured by The Senate and the charge was later expunged. Mueller is now going full blast regarding his investigation. Furthermore,Some in Jackson's administration had it in for him.
I believe McCain, always the maverick, is doing everything he can, in an insidious manner, to get back at Trump for his comment regarding McCain's lack of heroism because he was a POW. Will Trump be destroyed not only by his own inability to curb his personal excesses but by the new Swamp candy called "The 4 M's:" McCain, Meadows, McMaster and Mueller?. (See 1 and 1a below.)
And
https://www.israpundit.org/
Can Kelly arrest Trump's inner demons? (See 1b below.)
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Sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader: https://miltonfriedman.hoover.
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23,000 and counting. Islamic terrorists will never defeat the West on the battlefield. They will defeat us in the bedroom mattress. (See 2 below)
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Who is fooling who? (See 3 below.)
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Kissinger warns: https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/08/04/kissinger-warns-iranian-radical-empire-could-emerge-in-a-post-isis-middle-east/ (See 4 below.)
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Hanson and pushing back. (See 5 below.)
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If. Gen. John Kelly is the new White House extremist we need more of them! (See 6 below.)
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Scandals galore and everyone just shakes their heads. After all, it is only tax payer's money that is being squandered. What's new? (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1) Mueller and the US “Corruptocracy”
There are no longer any doubts that the D.C. Swamp and its attendant muddied creatures are working their hardest to take down legally-elected (by the citizens of the United States of America) President Donald J. Trump and throw him out of his position as President. Now, even the Republican Swamp Things in the Senate have joined their Democrat critters in working to pass a bill that will remove President Trump’s Executive Branch powers to fire those who serve at the pleasure of the POTUS. The Republicans—who have been secret Marxists for a very long time—are now working to damage duly-elected President Trump.
We are on the brink of beginning an extremely perilous journey down the path of Venezuela and other autocratic totalitarian governments and are on our way towards losing our Constitution. We have, apparently, already lost our Republic.
Note: The coup attempt that both the Congressional Democrats and RINOs are trying to pull off will do nothing less than eliminate our form of government and render this election and all others to follow null and void…if the politicians don’t agree with our choices. If the ruling class, which is now in the process of seizing our government, is not stopped, we will very shortly become an Oligarchy. We-the-People as a part of the US government will be no more and will no longer have any say in our own governance. We will, essentially, be in bondage to the country’s rulers; rulers who will be the decision makers as to what we may and may not do and what we may and may not say. We will no longer be the masters and mistresses of our own fate. America will have died.
With each passing day, both Houses of the—virtually—completely corrupt Congress are scheming to take Trump out. Trump wants to lead us back—as closely as possible—to our Founder’s vision and version of the country. However, that is not what the already salivating at their pulling off bringing the country to its knees oligarchical “betters” have planned for us. Where we work for light…they work to keep us in darkness. A dumbed-down population is easier to manage than one which has tasted the fruits of liberty and experienced individual choice.
And, then there’s former FBI Chief and now Special Counsel (to get Trump) Robert Mueller…the best friend of James Comey (Trump-fired FBI Chief) who began the “Let’s end Trump” movement in earnest.
James Comey was fired from his position as FBI director by President Trump. The Executive Branch of the US government has the sole authority to do so…not Congress and not the Judiciary; only the president. Comey served at the pleasure of the president and was not pleased when he was fired. Understandable. However, Comey took his anger much…much further than in more normal, sensible and law-abiding times would be allowed. Still using the already created-from-whole-cloth, fake ‘dossier’ concocted and written by a former British Intelligence agent—some say in collaboration with John McCain, the Clinton Team and Democrat Party—which falsely charged President Trump with soliciting prostitutes amongst other things, Comey used this widely disproven document to have his best friend—Robert Mueller—appointed as a “Special Counsel” to begin the process to uncover (or make up) any crime they could pin on Donald Trump. Note: Comey had previously told President-Elect and then President-Trump 3 times that he wasn’t under investigation. Then, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (another close Comey friend) appointed Mueller as Special Counsel to examine the non-crimes of President Donald J. Trump. As a side note, Mueller had interviewed for the FBI director’s slot under Trump. He was not chosen. Mueller was not happy. After becoming the SC to “get Trump,” Mueller has hired—now—almost 20 lawyers…who were adamant Hillary supporters and/or her attorneys, donors to her campaign and vocal anti-Trumpers. Washington…we have a problem! And the problem is a biased Mueller with an uber-biased team who should not be involved in this witch hunt. None of them should be investigating Trump or any members of his family. Mueller should have recused himself immediately. The US DOJ Government Ethics Outline specifically forbids outward or the appearance of bias, conflict of interest in any investigation. I submit that Mr. Mueller has disqualified himself in all of the above…and more. Yet, he seems to be the one the D.C. Swamp has chosen to bring down President Trump. We truly are now living in a Banana Republic.
Steve Byas of the New American writes: “In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed FBI Director Mueller to deliver a sample of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) to Russia. The uranium had reportedly been stolen. It seems particularly odd, considering that the FBI is not under the supervision of the State Department, and that the FBI director would personally make the transfer.
“Assange released the controversial cable on May 17, the same day that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tapped Mueller as an “independent” counsel to investigate any supposed Trump-Russian ties.”
Our country as a democratic-republic is now hanging by the thinnest of threads. And, we can no longer count on all too many of our in-it-for-themselves elected Republican politicians. They want to not only usurp President Trump and his team’s powers but, ours as well. We are on the precipice of the end of our country…and the politicians affecting the no-longer-silent coup have brought it out into the open. We have reached the “It’s either them or us” phase. While your Swamp critters are home over, yet, another vacation (aka “recess”), I strongly suggest you tell them what you think about their antics. May God bless you…and please keep the ammo close and your powder dry.
1a) A Republican Failure
The Meadows-McCain Congress may elect a Democratic House.
By The Editorial Board
The Senate left town for its August recess Thursday, a week after the House vamoosed, and let’s hope the Members get an earful from constituents at home. The Republican Congress has so far been a monumental disappointment and on present trend is heading toward electing Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2018.
Republicans campaigned in 2016 on the promise of government reform, and a typical new Congress would have racked up several big victories by now. But this Congress wasted seven months on health care only to blow itself up in spectacular fashion. Three GOP Senators, notably John McCain, put the final daggers in their own party’s back.
But don’t believe the talk-radio babble that this is solely a failure of “RINO” Members. Mark Meadows and the Freedom Caucus also contributed to failure by holding up the House reform for weeks and sounding like Democrats as they trashed the bill. Heritage Action, FreedomWorks and the Koch network also played a damaging role. Unlike center-left interest groups, they showed an unwillingness to accept incremental progress, and now they have ceded the policy advantage back to the left.
The policy failure will compound for years in the expansion of the entitlement state that Republicans will be asked to raise taxes to fund. And the immediate political damage has already arrived in polls that show a growing lead for Democrats on the question of who should control Congress. The table nearby shows the gap at 44%-37%, which would translate to a Democratic gain of 30-35 House seats and the loss of the GOP majority.
The Freedom Caucus wants more mandatory spending cuts, which can’t pass the Senate. The moderates want fewer discretionary cuts. Members are grousing over proposed reforms to welfare, education and agriculture. Yet without a budget outline, Republicans can’t use the reconciliation process that would allow tax reform to pass the Senate with 50 votes.This self-destructive behavior may continue in September. Republicans will return having passed no budget, with a mere four weeks to figure out a spending plan for fiscal 2018. House Budget Chair Diane Black passed her draft with unanimous GOP committee support last month, but the plan has stalled amid familiar GOP infighting.
Tax reform may fail like health care from the same refusal to compromise. In June Mr. Meadows said the border-adjustment tax was the “one stumbling block” to tax reform. But now that GOP leaders have nixed the BAT, he’s moving the goal posts to push back against GOP plans for full and immediate business expensing. This is the same game he played on health care.
House Republicans have passed only four of 12 spending bills, though they promised to end continuing resolutions and giant omnibus blowouts. At this point they will have no choice but to pass another huge catch-all spending bill of the kind that makes it harder to set priorities.
Adding to the mess, Republicans may have to attach a debt-ceiling increase to this spending bill. The usual conservative House suspects are refusing to approve a stand-alone debt-ceiling increase unless it includes policies for new spending restraint. Who do these GOP wizards think will be blamed if financial markets get nervous about U.S. credit? Barack Obama ? Republicans now run the government, which means taking difficult votes to run it.
The tax debate may also be complicated by mopping up operations on health care. Republicans have boxed themselves in over “cost-sharing” subsidies to insurers, and Senator Lamar Alexander is negotiating the terms of GOP surrender with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The policy defeat aside, these talks will roil GOP ranks and consume the attention of Members who need to focus on tax reform if it is ever going to get done.
Congress has accomplished a few things, notably using the Congressional Review Act to roll back 14 late Obama regulations. This is helping the economy. President Trump in June signed the Veterans Affairs Accountability Act, a modest reform that gives VA leadership greater ability to fire bad employees and protect whistle blowers.
The House has also moved some notable if overlooked reforms that would be useful if they can get through the Senate even in part. Rep. Jeb Hensarling’s financial bill that passed the House in June would roll back much of Dodd-Frank. The House also passed two energy bills designed to simplify oil and natural gas pipeline permitting.
All of this is worth doing, but the reality after six months of general failure is that tax reform will now make or break this Congress. If Republicans can’t even agree on cutting taxes and eliminating loopholes for Democratic constituencies like green-energy firms, what’s the point of electing Republicans?
1b) Can Kelly Conquer the White House Chaos?
The new chief of staff has the confidence of a general and the power of the last available grown-up.
I realized as I wrote this that I’ve never met a Kelly I didn’t like, who wasn’t admirable. There was the great journalist Michael Kelly, lost in Iraq in 2003 and mourned still by anyone with a brain: What would he be making of everything now? There’s Gentleman Jim Kelly, formerly of Time and an award-winning journalist. Ray Kelly was one of New York’s finest police commissioners. Megyn Kelly is a brave, nice woman. I wrote once of a small miracle in which a group of friends arrived, late and in tears, to see John Paul II celebrate Mass in New York. The doors of the cathedral were shut tight. A man in a suit saw our tears, walked over, picked up a sawhorse, and waved us through. As we ran up the steps to St. Patrick’s, I turned. “What is your name?” I cried. “Detective Kelly!” he called, and disappeared into the crowd.
Grace Kelly was occasionally brilliant and always beautiful. Gene Kelly was a genius. There is the unfortunate matter of the 1930s gangster “Machine Gun Kelly,” but he is more than made up for by Thomas Gunning Kelley (an extra e, but same tribe), who in 1969 led a U.S. Navy mission to save a company of Army infantrymen trapped on the banks of a canal in South Vietnam’s Kien Hoa province. He deliberately drew fire to protect others, was badly wounded, waved off treatment, saved the day. He received the Medal of Honor. There are other Kellys on its long, illustrious rolls.
So Gen. John Kelly (retired), U.S. Marine Corps, veteran of Anbar province, Iraq, and new chief of staff to President Trump: onward in your Kellyness.
Everyone wonders what he’ll do, what difference he’ll make. He is expected to impose order and discipline, tamp down the chaos. I suspect his deepest impact may be on policy and how it’s pursued, especially in the area of bipartisan outreach.
American military leaders are almost always patriotic, protective, professional, practical. They’re often highly educated, with advanced degrees. Mary Boies, who for two decades has worked with the military as a leader of Business Executives for National Security, said this week: “In general, military top brass are among the most impressive people in our country.”
It’s true. And in a nation that loves to categorize people by profession, they can be surprising.
Generals and admirals are rarely conservative in standard or predictable ways, ways in which the term is normally understood. They’ve been painted as right-wing in books and movies for so long that some of that reputation still clings to them, but it’s wrong.
They are not, or not necessarily, economic conservatives. Top brass are men and women who were largely educated in, and came up in, a system that is wholly taxpayer-funded. Their primary focus is that the military have what it needs to do the job. Whatever tax rates do that, do that. They are not economists, they don’t focus on Keynesian theory and supply-side thought. They’re like Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who saw the historically high tax rates of the Roosevelt-Truman era and thought fine, that’s how we won World War II. He didn’t seem concerned about tax rates until he’d been president for a while and started hearing about the problems of business while playing golf with CEOs.
Generals are not romantic about war, because it’s not abstract to them. Ms. Boies: “Army officers know better than anybody the limits of military hard power. Military people hate war because they’ve seen it and know both its limitations and its devastating effects.”
In my observation generals are both the last to want to go in (“Do you understand the implications of invasion? Do you even know the facts on the ground?”) and the last to want to leave (“After all this blood and sacrifice, this hard-won progress, you’re pulling out because you made a promise in a speech?”). They hate hotheaded, full-of-themselves civilians who run around insisting on action. Those civilians are not the ones who’ll do the fighting, and as public allies they’re not reliable.
On social issues they generally tend to be moderate to liberal. I have never to my knowledge met a high officer who was pro-life. They largely thought Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a reasonable policy, but they’re realists: Time moves on, salute and execute. They don’t want to damage or retard their careers being on the wrong side of issues whose outcomes seem culturally inevitable. You don’t die on a hill that is not central to the immediate mission.
They are as a rule not deeply partisan. Those who work in the Pentagon have to know how to work with both parties and negotiate their way around partisan differences. (Enlisted men in my experience are more instinctively conservative, though often in interesting ways.)
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When things are working right, chiefs of staff have an impact on presidential thinking. They guide discussions toward certain, sometimes directed conclusions. They’re expected to give advice, and it’s expected to be grounded in knowledge and experience.
It may be easier for Mr. Kelly to impose order than people think. Sacking Anthony Scaramucci sent a message. The warring staffers around Mr. Kelly know it won’t be good for them if they don’t support him, at least for now. If they fight him with leaks, they’re revealed as part of the problem of the past six months. If they are compliant and congenial, it will look like they weren’t the problem; someone else was. Also they’re tired of being part of a White House that has been famously dysfunctional. It will help their standing in the world to be part of something that works. Similarly with Mr. Trump: If it works with Mr. Kelly, the first six months were Reince Priebus’s fault, if it doesn’t work, it was the president’s.
Beyond that, a good guess is that Mr. Kelly will not be especially interested in partisan differences; he will not be ideological. He will guide Trump in the direction of: Solve the problem.
On tax reform, for instance, his instinct will be to figure the lay of the land and try to get to the number it takes to pass a bill with both parties. A friend who once worked with Mr. Kelly said: “He won’t go ‘This has to be comprehensive, historic.’ He’ll figure the few things both sides agree on and build out from there. You’ll get a compromise. It won’t solve everything, but it will be good for the country and it will get Trump on a path to somewhere, because right now he’s on a path to nowhere.”
Generals are not known for a lack of self-confidence. If he goes up against Mitch McConnell it won’t be big dawg versus eager puppy, it will be big dawg versus big dawg. And Mr. McConnell has already disappointed the president. Mr. Kelly hasn’t.
Mr. Trump, whatever his public statements, doesn’t need to be told things haven’t gone well; he knows. He has nowhere else to go, and the clock’s ticking.
Mr. Kelly has the power of the last available grown-up.
Another advantage: He doesn’t need the job. He’s trying to help, as a patriot would. But this is not the pinnacle for him. His whole career has been pinnacles.
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2) UK: 23,000 Terrorists and Counting
- Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups.
- For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalized young men and women.
- What seems not to be understood about “the religion of peace” is that “peace” comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a “Dar al-Harb“, the “Abode of War,” will no longer even exist.
- Since the beginning of March, 17,393 people have been listed as terror suspects. — French Senate report: “Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities”, April 2017.
On May 26, four days after the major terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, British intelligence officials stated that they had identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the UK, all of them considered potential terrorist attackers. According to The Times,
About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of “former subjects of interest” and no longer subject to any surveillance.
A police officer stands guard near the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017, following a suicide bombing by an Islamic terrorist who murdered 22 concert-goers. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)
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The report adds that the two men who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in London, in 2013, had been known to the security services, just as Abedi and Masood were, but had been dropped to low priority.
David Anderson, QC, the former reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, noted concerns in his 2015 report about the “speed with which things can change” around suspects and “the difficulties in knowing how best to prioritise limited surveillance resources”. Senior police have also spoken of the difficulty in identifying the triggers that might “reactivate” extremist behaviour.
Others had expressed similar concerns about how the jihadi ideology, based in radical religious belief, is so intensely ingrained that it never leaves individuals and may easily reactivate a desire to commit atrocities.
Ben Wallace, Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers clearly indicates just how serious the threat has become: “This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century,” he said. “Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing.”
One problem is that the police and MI5 lack enough resources to investigate any more than 3,000 suspects at a time, leaving the other 20,00 free to pass without surveillance and under the radar. According to a report issued this year by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), and detailed in The Guardian, budget cuts to the police forces in England and Wales have left law enforcement inadequately prepared:
In a stark message about the current state of policing, Zoë Billingham, Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, said the “disturbing” practices did not apply to the majority of forces but the watchdog could see the problems spreading if action was not taken.“We're leading to a very serious conclusion regarding the potentially perilous state of policing,” she said. “It's a red flag that we're raising at this stage. A large red flag.”
Ironically, this austerity-produced situation stands in stark contradiction to comments by one of the country's leading security experts:
Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can't go on as if this wasn't happening.”
In April, as Islamic State was facing defeat in Mosul and Raqqa, a small national study found that many young British Muslims believed that jihadists returning from Syria to the UK should be given a “second chance” and should “reintegrate” within society. This is estimated to be around 800 or 850 individuals. One person interviewed argued that:
When people feel isolated and angry because they are not being treated with respect and if they go out and fight in Syria and when they come back there is no help, then I promise you, you will see more terrorism because these young people will think why should I do anything when my own Government don't care about me.
That appears to be a threat that ignores completely what sorts of crimes returnees may have committed abroad. As such individuals do return, they may well add significantly to the list of potential terrorists living in a country they had already found occasion to hate. In 2016, “the Government admitted [that] just 14 of nearly 400 returnee fighters have been jailed, raising fears the rest are living off the radar and may be vulnerable to radicalisation.”
Adam Deen of London's anti-radical Quilliam Foundation stated that:
What is important here is that the more Isis are under siege and the more territory they're losing, the more they're going to channel their efforts and energies into terrorism,” he said in an interview with The Independent.Those individuals that have managed to get back into the country will be activated or will be conspiring to commit some kind of terrorist act. That's a major concern.
Britain is not alone in facing such potential threats, but it may have the largest population of potential terrorists. There is confusion in Germany, for example, as to how many such individuals there are. According to a report from the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), the number of suspects is on the rise, but they list only 657 people as capable of carrying out an attack, alongside another 388 “relevant persons” who might lend assistance to perpetrators. Separate information, however, from the country's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz), stated that the number of radical Salafists in Germany had risen from 8,350 in 2015 to 10,100 in 2016 (with 680 classified as “dangerous”), and that hundreds of jihadis entered among the more than one million migrants welcomed into the country during the two previous years. Overall, however, the same agency estimates that 24,400 Islamists are active in Germany, a figures similar to that of the UK.
Things are little better in France, which, according to Gatestone author Yves Mamou, has a large but never-quantified Muslim population of at least six million. In April 2017, the French Senate published its “Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities” report, showing that since the beginning of March, 17,393 people had been listed as terror suspects. As in Britain, French authorities said that not all suspects are being constantly monitored; smaller numbers are investigated at regular intervals.
In May, the general secretariat of the international police organization, Interpol, published a list of Islamic State fighters who were thought to have already returned to Europe and may be planning suicide attacks in different countries:
Interpol has circulated a list of 173 Islamic State fighters it believes could have been trained to mount suicide attacks in Europe in revenge for the group's military defeats in the Middle East.The global crime fighting agency's list was drawn up by US intelligence from information captured during the assault on Isis territories in Syria and IraqEuropean counter-terror networks are concerned that as the Isis “caliphate” collapses, there is an increasing risk of determined suicide bombers seeking to come to Europe, probably operating alone.
The situation in the UK is, in some ways, the most alarming, not only because of cuts to the police budget. Cuts have also been made to the security and intelligence services, even more sharply since the June general election. Prior to that, on June 4, Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a speech the day after the London Bridge attack. Her speech included strong promises to tackle terrorism by introducing fresh measures to strengthen existing legislation.
While we have made significant progress in recent years, there is – to be frank – far too much tolerance of extremism in our country. So we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society. That will require some difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations.Since the emergence of the threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, our country has made significant progress in disrupting plots and protecting the public. But it is time to say “Enough is enough”.
She even named the ideological basis for the attacks:
while the recent attacks are not connected by common networks, they are connected in one important sense. They are bound together by the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism that preaches hatred, sows division and promotes sectarianism.
This was progress. Three days after that, May presented proposals for fresh legislation to clamp down hard on Islamic extremism. They included amendments to Britain's 1998 Human Rights Act, which protects potential terrorists; tougher Terrorism Prevention Investigation Measures based on a 2011 Act, but in 2016only used for six individuals; more deportations of suspects, and longer prison sentences, even though much radicalization takes place in prisons.
That was one day before the June 8 general election. May, overly confident that she would win handily and increase her majority in parliament, led a disastrous campaign that left her with a much reduced majority, forcing her to make an alliance with Northern Ireland's controversial Democratic Unionist Party. Tim Worstall, writing for Forbes magazine, wrote:
“It would be both reasonable and fair to say that Theresa May has just run the worst British election campaign of modern times… Theresa May has in fact achieved something that no one in modern times has managed, to start a general election campaign 20 percentage points up and then arrive without even a parliamentary majority for her party. There simply isn't anything to compare with this in the annals”.
To make matters worse, the Labour party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, came close to winning the election and performed considerately better than anyone might have thought a month earlier. Corbyn and his increasingly far-left party had been considered unelectable. Now, they were a force to contend with in the House of Commons.
Corbyn is the last person to be entrusted with Britain's security. Addressing a Stop The War Coalition conference in 2011, he told the crowd: “I've been involved in opposing anti-terror legislation ever since I first went into Parliament in 1983”. He has also opposed the UK's involvement in all foreign wars: Sir Gerald Howarth, the former Tory defence minister, said: “Jeremy Corbyn has opposed every British military intervention and represents complete capitulation and weakness”. He refused for many years to condemn IRA terrorism, preferring to condemn the British army posted there. He called terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah his “friends”; refused to denounce them as late as 2016, and only said he regretted his support for them after heavy pressure was put on him.
Since the election, Labour has made it clear that it opposes any changes in current human rights legislation, and claims that terrorism can be tackled through the laws presently in force. Given the strains the British government is now under, especially with weak negotiations for Brexit and May's increasing unpopularity even within her party, the strong opposition within parliament is certain to weaken further attempts to block radicalism and terrorism, particularly where action against both involves (as it inevitably will) Muslims from various ethnic minority groups.
There has already been vehement opposition to the government's core anti-radicalization program, Prevent, with schoolteachers, students, and others claiming it snoops on Muslim communities. Within the Labour party, Corbyn's radical followers in the Momentum Movement are already planning to force the deselection of members of parliament who oppose Corbyn, unless the such MPs “get on board” by wholeheartedly supporting the leader and his far-left policies. As this takes place, the hard left will strengthen its grip on parliament and make it even more difficult for strong new legislation to be passed.
Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups. Following an enquiry commissioned by May's predecessor David Cameron, the report was due for publication in 2016, but is unlikely now to be revealed for public scrutiny because it is deemed too “sensitive”. The sensitivity derives from Saudi Arabia being exposed as a major financier of Islamic extremism worldwide, yet May and the UK government depend heavily on selling arms and other things to the Wahhabi kingdom.
According to the London-based Henry Jackson Society, in its short report on foreign funding of extremism,
The foreign funding for Islamist extremism in Britain primarily comes from governments and government linked foundations based in the Gulf, as well as Iran. Foremost among these has been Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s has sponsored a multimillion dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the West.In the UK this funding has primarily taken the form of endowments to mosques and Islamic educational institutions, which have in turn played host to extremist preachers and the distribution of extremist literature. Influence has also been exerted through the training of British Muslim religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, as well as the use of Saudi textbooks in a number of the UK's independent Islamic schools.A number of Britain's most serious Islamist hate preachers sit within the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology and are linked to extremism sponsored from overseas, either by having studied in Saudi Arabia as part of scholarship programmes, or by having been provided with extreme literature and material within the UK itself.
If the British government itself prefers to cover up such ties, opting to rescue its trade balance at the cost of endangering the lives of its own citizens, our concern for the future security of the country deepens immeasurably. The UK, like much of Western Europe and Scandinavia, stands at a crossroads. For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalized young men and women. Sometimes they have been watched, but almost none has been deported, almost none has been imprisoned, and almost none has been singled out, due to the pretense that “Islam is a religion of peace”. In Islam, the whole world is divided into two parts” the Dar al-Islam [Abode of Islam] and the Dar al-Harb [Abode of War]. What seems not to be understood about “the religion of peace” is that “peace” comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a “Dar al-Harb“, the “Abode of War,” will no longer even exist.
Theresa May's promise of tightened legislation to protect the British public was the right response to three major recent terror attacks. Yet fall-out from the election and May's own wish to protect Saudi Arabia from scrutiny are likely to guarantee that the serious measures we so much need may never be implemented. When there are further attacks and more people die, who will step forward to give us the protection we need? Or by then will it be too late?
Dr. Denis MacEoin taught Arabic and Islamic Studies at a British university and now specializes in Islamic radicalism, and the Middle East. He has just completed a major book on concerns about Islam in the UK. He also serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at New York's Gatestone Institute.
3) Even Kushner Knows Negotiation Can't Solve the Palestinian Conflict
by Gregg Roman
The Hill
The Hill
In a recently leaked off-the-record speech to a group of congressional interns, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner said that the administration is committed to working "with the parties very quietly to see if there's a solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He followed this up with what seemed like a throw-away line that's actually very significant: "There may be no solution, but it's one of the problem sets that the president asked us to focus on. So we're going to focus on it and try to come to the right conclusion in the near future."
Even for those who agree with that statement, hearing a senior White House official admit that the conflict may not have a solution is remarkable, especially since president after president has made achieving peace such a priority.
Still, the United States is not out of options, nor should we read Kushner's words as an indication that the White House intends to abandon hope or forgo attempts to make progress towards peace.
Admitting that the conflict may not have a solution presents an opportunity to try something different.
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In fact, this could present an opportunity to try something different, to fly in the face of the so-called conventional thinking that has ended in a resounding failure for the past 24 years.
In order to hasten the end of this conflict and create conditions for peace, security and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians, American policy must be changed in five key areas.
First, Palestinian terror organizations like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad must be defeated. The Trump administration has made significant progress in isolating and targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they should use that success as a model to cut off funding and root out the structures that support terrorism in the Palestinian territories.
Second, we must use diplomacy — no small feat for this administration — to convince our allies in Turkey and Qatar to end their support for these groups. For too long, Turkey and Qatar have provided funding and, perhaps more importantly, safe haven for the leadership of Hamas. The United States must use every tool available to convince these nations that supporting terrorism, even tacitly, will be costly.
Third, the United States should use economic leverage to prop up those in the Palestinian territories who oppose terror and to punish those who support it.
The Taylor Force Act aims to force the Palestinian Authority (PA) to end salaries for the families of terrorists. While this law would help end this abhorrent practice, it would do little direct harm to terrorist groups or those who support them. Instead, all economic assistance and benefits provided by the United States — through qualified industrial zones, favorable trade agreements and direct assistance should be tailored to incentivise the Palestinian Authority to get serious about coming to the table for the kind of negotiations with Israel that they have been unwilling to enter for decades.
Fourth, security cooperation between the United States and the Palestinians must be re-imagined so that Washington is no longer agnostic on the question of whether the PA forces cooperate with Israel. In fact, Palestinian-Israeli security coordination is frequently halted when it is needed most, like at the beginning of the latest furor surrounding security on the Temple Mount.
A 2016 Palestinian textbook instructs schoolchildren: "I will color the map of my homeland with the colors of the Palestinian flag." Notice anything missing?
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The State Department's Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator should make funding and training for the PA forces conditional. If they meet targets to cooperate with Israeli forces — both security and political conditions — then we provide support, if not, like PA President Abbas announced recently, then they're on their own.
Finally, the United States should give serious consideration to the messages that reach the Palestinian people. The U.S. Board of Broadcasting Governors should adopt an anti-rejectionism platform and cease funding any media that calls for Israel's destruction, instead offering support to the minority of voices in the region that encourage cooperation and peace.
Generations of Palestinian leaders have made entire careers out of rejecting Israel while perpetuating this conflict. If we are smart about how we engage in the region, the United States can make it very costly to continue this strategy.
They must accept they have been defeated so they can come to the table with an eye toward building their society into one that can move past the seventy-year old war they're still fighting.The time for the U.S. to act as a neutral convener — an "honest broker" — has come to an end. In order to move forward in a way that advances our interests and supports the safety and security of our closest ally in the Middle East, we must stop allowing the Palestinians to perpetuate this conflict, which is what is driving many to assume there is no hope towards its end.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East Forum.
4) Kissinger Warns: ‘Iranian Radical Empire’ Could Emerge in a Post-ISIS Middle East
by Algemeiner Staff
The downfall of ISIS could be a boon for Iran, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger cautioned in an article published by CapX this week.
“Across large areas of Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army, ISIS, has declared itself a relentless foe of modern civilization, seeking violently to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a single Islamic empire governed by Sharia law,” the 94-year-old Kissinger wrote. “In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be regarded as your friend no longer applies. In the contemporary Middle East, the enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy. The Middle East affects the world by the volatility of its ideologies as much as by its specific actions.”
“The outside world’s war with Isis can serve as an illustration,” he continued. “Most non-ISIS powers — including Shia Iran and the leading Sunni states — agree on the need to destroy it. But which entity is supposed to inherit its territory? A coalition of Sunnis? Or a sphere of influence dominated by Iran? The answer is elusive because Russia and the NATO countries support opposing factions. If the Isis territory is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Shia forces trained and directed by it, the result could be a territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut, which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire.”
Last November, as reported by The Algemeiner, Kissinger said the biggest challenge facing the Middle East was the “potential domination of the region by an Iran that is both imperial and jihadist.”
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5)
The Problem of Competitive Victimhood Divisive identity politics are fading in favor of a shared American identity. By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted By Ruth King
The startling 2016 presidential election weakened the notion of tribal identity rather than a shared American identity. And it may have begun a return to the old idea of unhyphenated Americans.
Many working-class voters left the Democratic party and voted for a billionaire reality-TV star in 2016 because he promised jobs and economic growth first, a new sense of united Americanism second, and an end to politically correct ethnic tribalism third.
In the 19th century, huge influxes of Irish and German immigrants warred for influence and power against the existing American coastal establishment that traced its ancestry to England. Despite their ethnic chauvinism, these immigrant activist groups eventually became indistinguishable from their hosts.
Then and now, the forces of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage make it hard to retain an ethnic cachet beyond two generations — at least without constant inflows of new and often poor fellow immigrants.
The strained effort to champion the victimized tribe can turn comical. In the 1960s, my family still tried to buy Swedish-made Volvo automobiles and Electrolux vacuum cleaners. But it proved hopeless to cling to a fading Swedish heritage.
For all the trendy talk of the salad bowl and the careerist rewards of hyping a multicultural ancestry, America still remains a melting pot of diverse races, ethnicities, and agendas.
The alternative of adjudicating which particular group is more victimized and in greater need of government reparations is a hopeless task in a multiracial society — one that inevitably results in internecine strife among identity-politics groups.
Recent scholarly studies, here and abroad, have found that the aggressive effort to win government preferences for particular ethnic and religious minorities descends into “competitive victimhood.” In other words, such groups battle each other even more than they battle the majority.
After all, who can calibrate necessary government set-asides and reparations for a century and a half of slavery, for ill treatment of Native Americans, and for descendants of victims of the Asian immigration exclusionary laws, of segregation, of the unconstitutional repression of German citizens during World War I and of Japanese-American internment during World War II?
In another paradox, immigrants came to and stayed in America because they saw it as preferable to their abandoned homelands. Romanticizing a forsaken culture that one has already decided offered far less opportunity and security than America is incoherent.
In the aftermath of the election, for all the shrill charges that Trump is a racist, bigot, nativist, and xenophobe, the identity-politics industry is silently making some subtle concessions. For example, the National Council of La Raza announced that it will wisely drop “La Raza” and change its name to the less politically correct UnidosUS.
The old La Raza dream of a permanent victimized class of millions of Spanish-speaking citizens — championed by ethnic elites on the basis of shared race — will neither win the Democrats the Electoral College nor prove sustainable as immigration policy returns to being measured, legal, and diverse.
Despite denials, La Raza activists could never escape the reality that “raza,” as its Latin roots testify, is an exclusionary racial term (as opposed to “gente”).
“Raza,” a buzzword of the 1960s, actually had come into popular political usage some 30 years earlier in Francisco Franco’s fascist Spain (Franco wrote a novel, Raza) and as the chauvinistic idea of “razza” in Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship in Italy.
Other changes reflect election realities. Now, the Democratic party — stunned by the 2016 loss of its proverbial electoral “blue wall” of Midwestern states — is talking of a new agenda dubbed “A Better Deal.”
The obviously more inclusive message is that wounded Democrats want to unify their constituencies — rather than continue with divisive racial, gender, and ethnic arguments — in order to win back the suffering middle classes. The latest “Deal” is designed to resonate with the old populism of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Harry Truman’s subsequent “Square Deal.”
In 2020, Democratic candidates will certainly avoid stereotypical putdowns of “clingers,” “irredeemables,” and “deplorables.”
These were past coded smears used by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to define supposedly illiberal conservative working-class voters, who were written off as too ignorant to know what was good for them and certainly were no longer needed in the Democratic party.
But no longer: “Them” is out, and “us” is back in.
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6) Gen. John Kelly: Anatomy of an “Extremist”
Gen. John Kelly: Anatomy of an “Extremist”
California Democrat Rep. Barbara Lee is about as loathsome as it gets.
After the White House announced that Gen. John Kelly had been tapped by PresidentDonald Trump to be the new Chief-of-Staff, Lee twit-tweeted on Friday…
“By putting Gen John Kelly in charge, Pres Trump is militarizing the White House & putting our executive branch in the hands of an extremist.”
Extremist? Let me tell you a little more about this “extremist” (Source: Wikipedia)…
- John Kelly enlisted in the United States Marines in 1970.
- He was discharged from active duty as a sergeant in 1972…at the same time Babs was volunteering at the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party.
- Kelly signed up for the Marine Corps’ Officers Candidate School in 1975 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
- He served aboard aircraft carriers USS Forrestal (CV-59) and USS Independence (CV-62).
- In 1984 he was put in command of a rifle and weapons company for the Second Marine Division.
- In 1987 he was promoted to major as a battalion operations officer.
- He served as head of the Offensive Tactics Section, Tactics Group in Quantico, Virginia.
- He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was assigned as commanding officer, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (1st LAR), 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California.
- In 1994, he enrolled in the National War College in Washington, DC, graduating in 1995
- He then served as the Commandant's Liaison Officer to the U.S. House of Representatives and was promoted to colonel.
- In 1999 he was transferred and served a special assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
- In 2002 he served with the 1st Marine Division as the assistant division commander, spending most of his time serving in Iraq.
- In 2003, while in Iraq, he was promoted to brigadier general, where he took command of the newly formed Task Force Tripoli and drove it north from Baghdad into Samarra and Tikrit.
- In 2007, he was promoted to major general.
- In 2008 he assumed command of the Multi-National Force–West in Iraq.
- He was transferred to the Pentagon in 2011 where he served as the senior military assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
- He then took over as commander of the U.S. Southern Command in 2012.
- On December 7, 2016, he was tapped to head the Department of Homeland Security.
- He has a Master of Science degree in National Security Studies from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
Gotta love this…
When, during the Iraq War, a Los Angeles Times reporter asked “if, considering the size of the Iraqi Army and the vast supplies of tanks, artillery and chemical weapons available to Saddam's forces, he would ever consider defeat,” Kelly responded…
"Hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain't shit."
Among the Distinguished Service Medals Gen. Kelly has earned during his military career…
- Defense Distinguished Service Medal
- Defense Superior Service Medal
- Legion of Merit w/ 1 award star and Combat V
- Meritorious Service Medal w/ 1 award star
- Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal w/ 3 award stars
- Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal
- Combat Action Ribbon
- Navy Presidential Unit Citation
- Joint Meritorious Unit Award w/ 1 oak leaf cluster
- Navy Unit Commendation
- Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation w/ 2 service stars
- Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal
- National Defense Service Medal w/ 2 service stars
- Southwest Asia Service Medal w/ 1 service star
- Iraq Campaign Medal w/ 3 service stars
- Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal
- Global War on Terrorism Service Medal
- Navy Sea Service Deployment Ribbon w/ 4 service stars
- Navy & Marine Corps Overseas Service Ribbon
- Grand Officer of the Order of San Carlos (Colombia)
- Kuwait Liberation Medal (Kuwait)
Gen. Kelly is also a Gold Star Dad…
“In 2010, Kelly's 29-year-old son, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, was killed in action when he stepped on a landmine while leading a platoon of Marines on a patrol in Sangin, Afghanistan. . . . Robert Kelly's death made John Kelly the highest-ranking military officer to lose a child in Iraq or Afghanistan. Kelly's other son is a Marine Corps major.”
If that’s an “extremist,” we need a helluva lot more extremists in this country!
And a lot fewer Barbara Lees.
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7) The Scandal That Matters
Democratic IT staff who had access to sensitive data stand accused of fraud.
Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport July 24, while attempting to board a flight to Pakistan. For more than a decade the congressional staffer had worked under top House Democrats, and he had just been accused by the FBI of bank fraud.
It was a dramatic moment in a saga that started in February, when Capitol Police confirmed an investigation into Mr. Awan and his family on separate accusations of government theft. The details are tantalizing: The family all worked for top Democrats, were paid huge sums, and had access to sensitive congressional data, even while having ties to Pakistan.
The media largely has ignored the affair, the ho-hum coverage summed up by a New York Times piece suggesting it may be nothing more than an “overblown Washington story, typical of midsummer.” But even without evidence of espionage or blackmail, this ought to be an enormous scandal.
Because based on what we already know, the Awan story is—at the very least—a tale of massive government incompetence that seemingly allowed a family of accused swindlers to bilk federal taxpayers out of millions and even put national secrets at risk. In a more accountable world, House Democrats would be forced to step down.
Mr. Awan, 37, began working for House Democrats as an IT staffer in 2004. By the next year, he was working for future Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Over time he would add his wife, two brothers, a brother’s wife and a friend to the payroll—and at handsome sums. One brother, Jamal, hired in 2014 reportedly at age 20, was paid $160,000. That’s in line with what a chief of staff makes—about four times the average Capitol Hill staffer. No Democrat appears to have investigated these huge numbers or been asked to account for them.
According to an analysis by the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, who has owned this story, the family has collected $5 million since 2003 and “appeared at one time or another on an estimated 80 House Democrats’ payrolls.” Yet Mr. Rosiak interviewed House staffers who claim most of the family were “ghost” employees and didn’t come to work. Only in government does nobody notice when staffers fail to show up.
The family was plenty busy elsewhere. A litany of court documents accuse them of bankruptcy fraud, life-insurance fraud, tax fraud and extortion. Abid Awan, a brother, ran up more than $1 million in debts on a failed car dealership he somehow operated while supposedly working full time on the Hill. One document ties the family to a loan from a man stripped of his Maryland medical license after false billing. Capitol Police are investigating allegations of procurement fraud and theft. The brothers filed false financial-disclosure forms, with Imran Awan claiming his wife had no income, even as she worked as a fellow House IT staffer.
This is glaringly shady stuff, in no way “typical,” yet nobody noticed. Federal contractors are subject to security standards, but individual congressional offices have giant leeway over their hiring—and apparently no quality control. If a private firm had such shoddy employee oversight, it’d be sued into oblivion.
The most recent FBI affidavit accuses Imran Awan of defrauding the Congressional Federal Credit Union by lying about the use of his rental properties to get a $165,000 home-equity loan—which he immediately wrapped into a $283,000 wire transfer to Pakistan. At one point, when the credit union asked Mr. Awan (who was pretending to be his wife on the phone) why he wanted to send money to Pakistan, he replied, “funeral arrangements.”
Told this was not an acceptable reason, Mr. Awan went to “look online for an acceptable reason” and responded “buying property.” The bright bulbs at the credit union approved the transfer. His wife was already in Pakistan. The FBI stopped her at the airport in March, and despite finding $12,400 in undeclared cash (in excess of the legal limit), they let her go. Seriously.
Imran Awan has pleaded not guilty to bank fraud. The law office representing him issued a statement casting the investigation as “part of a frenzy of anti-Muslim bigotry in the literal heart of our democracy.” It calls the accusations “utterly unsupported, outlandish, and slanderous.”
Yes, it is weird that Ms. Wasserman Schultz continued to shield Imran Awan to the end. Yes, the amounts of money, and the ties to Pakistan, are strange. Yes, it is alarming that emails show Imran Awan knew Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password, and that the family might have had wider access to the accounts of lawmakers on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.
Yet even if this never adds up to a spy thriller, it outranks most of the media’s other obsessions. The government, under the inattentive care of Democrats, may have been bilked for ages by a man the FBI has alleged to be a fraudster. That’s the same government Democrats say is qualified to run your health care, reform your children’s schools, and protect the environment. They should explain this first.
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