05/23/17

Industrial Shares Lead Markets Higher

By: Kent Engelke | Capitol Securities

Equities advanced as President Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia netted deals that lifted industrial shares and crude pushed to a one month high before OPEC meets this week. There is now speculation the economy can weather the political turmoil and grow at a pace greater than the past 10 years.

How will President Trump fare at the upcoming G-7 and NATO meetings? Is speculation rising that he will have similar success in Europe as he has had in the Middle East?

This week the Minutes from the May FOMC meeting are released. Odds are rising that an interest rate increase is all but a certainty at the June meeting. To remind all, before the Comey firing, odds were at 100% that the overnight will be increased at the next Committee gathering.

As written many times, I believe society, the economy, the global order is in making a generational change. Most political scientists will agree such changes occur every 30-40 years and such is to be expected.

To most, change is frightening even if the status quo is uncomfortable. There will be winners and there will be losers.

It is against this backdrop that explains why I believe a macroeconomic and geopolitical thesis is required before making any decisions, a view that is inverse from the passivity investing strategy that is today dominating the markets.

Last night the foreign markets were up. London was up 0.16%, Paris was up 0.73% and Frankfurt was up 0.56%. China was down 2.21%, Japan was down 0.33% and Hang Sang was up 0.05%.

The Dow should open flat. The 10-year is flat at a 2.24% yield.

05/23/17

Best Buds Mueller and Comey Target Trump

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

The Washington Post, a mouthpiece for Obama holdovers in the CIA and other agencies, reports that “sources” say a current White House official is under investigation as “a significant person of interest” in Russia-gate, but that the sources “would not further identify the official.”

This is a case of anonymous officials talking about an anonymous official.

Interestingly, the term “person of interest” was used by the FBI against scientist Steven Hatfill in the post-9/11anthrax letters case. He was totally innocent and the Department of Justice paid him $5.8 million in damages.

After dismissing Hatfill and several others as suspects, the FBI blamed a dead U.S. Army scientist, Bruce Ivins. However, evidence indicates that the more likely culprits were al-Qaeda operatives who got the anthrax from a U.S. lab. The truth was too embarrassing for the FBI to reveal.

The new Russia-gate special counsel, former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, presided over this fiasco. What’s more, Mueller was sued for malfeasance in the case by FBI agent Richard Lambert who was put in charge of the anthrax investigation.

Yet, here is what we read about Mueller, who was FBI director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama:

“Widely respected by members of both parties” and “an unflinching advocate for facts,” claims The New York Times.
“Skilled and upright,” writes Kimberley A. Strassel of The Wall Street Journal.
“Widely respected” and “highly regarded by both parties,” writes Andrew McCarthy of National Review.
“Uniquely suited to the task,” says The Washington Post.

These comments reflect the consensus of what President Trump would call the “swamp.”

A New York Times editorial was titled “Robert Mueller: The Special Counsel America Needs.” Making no mention of the anthrax debacle, it called Mueller “one of the few people with the experience, stature and reputation to see the job through.”

A far different opinion is offered by Carl M. Cannon, executive editor and Washington Bureau chief of RealClearPolitics, who noted that the FBI director fired by Trump, James Comey, and Mueller “have a long history as professional allies. For Mueller to be brought in to investigate the behavior of the guy who sacked Comey seems a conflict of interest.”

Cannon pointed to their work on the anthrax case, saying, “Comey and Mueller badly bungled the biggest case they ever handled. They botched the investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that took five lives and infected 17 other people…”

Like Mueller, Comey, who was deputy attorney general, declared Hatfill guilty.

Leaving aside Comey’s mishandling of another major investigation, the Hillary emails, consider his conduct and behavior.

While President Trump has been attacked for calling Comey a “nut job” and “crazy,” Comey friend Benjamin Wittes says the former FBI director tried to hide in the curtains during a White House visit for a ceremony honoring law enforcement officials who provided security at the inauguration.

The New York Times reported, “Mr. Comey—who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and was wearing a dark blue suit that day—told Mr. Wittes that he tried to blend in with the blue curtains in the back of the room, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would not spot him and call him out.”

Was the 6 foot 8 inch Comey so crazy that he went to a White House event with Trump but tried to hide from him in the drapes?

Wittes, in his own words, says that Comey “felt that he could not refuse a presidential invitation, particularly not one that went to a broad array of law enforcement leadership. So he went. But as he told me the story, he tried hard to blend into the background and avoid any one-on-one interaction. He was wearing a blue blazer and noticed that the drapes were blue. So he stood in the back, right in front of the drapes, hoping Trump wouldn’t notice him camouflaged against the wall. If you look at the video, Comey is standing about as far from Trump as it is physically possible to be in that room.”

However, Comey was wearing a red tie that stood out like a sore thumb. His suit was darker than the drapes. Plus, Comey is so tall that he is hard to ignore, even with drapes behind him. Frankly this is nothing more than a diversion from the real issue—FBI corruption.

Reporters would rather write about the drapes than investigate the corruption under Comey and his predecessor, Mueller.

Who is Benjamin Wittes? He is the co-author of The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones—Confronting A New Age of Threat. He discusses the anthrax attacks in the book.

Five years after the FBI “closed” the case, Wittes doesn’t seem to accept the verdict that Bruce Ivins was the villain. He refers to Ivins as the FBI’s “suspect,” quickly adding, “or whoever else may have been responsible for the attacks.”

So why didn’t Comey reopen the case? One possible explanation is that he didn’t want to upset Mueller and the FBI officials who engaged in the cover-up. He had approved their targeting of, and conclusions about, Hatfill.

In return, Mueller, as special counsel in Russia-gate, can be expected to do Comey a big favor. He will not probe Comey’s malfeasance in using the phony “Trump Dossier” to investigate President Trump and his team. That is the real story—how Hillary donors financed by pro-Russian interests hired a former British agent to concoct an assortment of charges against Trump.

Mueller is a company man; he will protect the FBI and its former director and friend. The fix is in.

This is a far more important story than Comey hiding in the drapes. Writing about drapes may sound silly, but it is yet another way for the media to suggest that Comey was afraid of Trump trying to influence his inquiry into Russia-gate.

The story is not how Trump influenced the investigation, but rather how Comey used the phony “Trump Dossier” to go down dead-end roads and produce no results. It’s the anthrax investigation all over again.

Mueller’s job is to pump life into Comey’s fiasco, and turn the tables on Trump for firing Comey.

Meanwhile, corruption in the FBI goes unreported, and Congress fails to do adequate oversight of the intelligence community, which is supposed to keep us safe.

Retired Foreign Service officer and intelligence analyst Kenneth J. Dillon told Accuracy in Media, “My research on the 2011 anthrax mailings case suggests that Mueller was responsible for the suicide of the alleged but wrongly accused mailer, Bruce Ivins, as well as for the subsequent cover-up. Mueller appears to have lied to a Senate committee about Ivins, and destroyed key alibi evidence for him. The new FBI director needs to reopen the anthrax mailings investigation and get to the bottom of this shocking and outrageous case.”

Dillon’s research indicates that Ivins prepared the anthrax to test vaccines, but the anthrax was sent to various civilian labs, including one infiltrated by an al-Qaeda operative. The anthrax was transferred to another al-Qaeda operative, Abderraouf Jdey, and used in the attacks. “There was a very lax attitude in the pre-9/11 era relating to the handling of anthrax,” Dillon says.

Why would this fact be suppressed? “The FBI was embarrassed by the fact that they had detained Jdey in August of 2001 and had let him go,” he says. Jdey was free, not only to mail the anthrax letters but according to Dillon’s theory, he went on to become the shoebomber on Flight 587, which crashed on November 12, 2001, and was conveniently blamed on co-pilot error.

“If indeed Abderraouf Jdey brought down Flight 587 with a shoe bomb, the U.S. Government would have been deeply negligent in permitting an al Qaeda operative whose whereabouts were known to carry out this attack,” Dillon notes.

Mueller has fooled a lot of people. His appointment is good news for the Swamp but bad news for Trump.

Carl M. Cannon seems to think the outcome is preordained, noting the attitude of “official Washington” and what the “insiders” want to see happen—impeachment leading to Trump’s ouster.

Unless Trump picks a new FBI director who will get to the bottom of the FBI’s corruption by shining the light on the mishandling of the anthrax probe, Trump may be hiding in the drapes before the Russia-gate investigation is over.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected] View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

05/22/17

Russiagate Cover-Up Artist Robert Mueller

By: Cliff Kincaid | America’s Survival

Does Russiagate Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, have any credibility? Kenneth J. Dillon, a former Foreign Service officer and intelligence analyst, says, “My research on the 2001 anthrax mailings case suggests that former FBI Director Robert Mueller was responsible for the suicide of the alleged, but wrongly accused mailer, Bruce Ivins, as well as for the subsequent cover-up.”

05/22/17

2010: Remember When Obama Pulled U.S. Spies From China?

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Of course you don’t, one had to be quite the investigator of journalism to know it much less remember it.

So….why you ask? Hold on….there is a pattern and story here.

2010: The White House National Security Council recently directed U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority placed on intelligence collection for China, amid opposition to the policy change from senior intelligence leaders who feared it would hamper efforts to obtain secrets about Beijing’s military and its cyber-attacks.

The downgrading of intelligence gathering on China was challenged by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta after it was first proposed in interagency memorandums in October, current and former intelligence officials said.

The decision downgrades China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2,” which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.

The National Security Council staff, in response, pressed ahead with the change and sought to assure Mr. Blair and other intelligence chiefs that the change would not affect the allocation of resources for spying on China or the urgency of focusing on Chinese spying targets, the officials told The Washington Times.

White House National Security Council officials declined to comment on the intelligence issue. Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for Mr. Blair, declined to comment. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.

Cyberwarzone

Directors of CIA in that time frame:

Leon Panetta 2010

Mike Morrell (acting) 2011

David Petraeus 2011

Mike Morrell (acting) 2012

John Brennan 2013

Mike Pompeo, current director

***

Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations

NYT/WASHINGTON — The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.

Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.

But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.

Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.

Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.

At a time when the C.I.A. is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the F.B.I. investigates possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.

The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. both declined to comment.

Details about the investigation have been tightly held. Ten current and former American officials described the investigation on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing the information.

Investigators still disagree how it happened, but the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press..Photo by: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press..

The first signs of trouble emerged in 2010. At the time, the quality of the C.I.A.’s information about the inner workings of the Chinese government was the best it had been for years, the result of recruiting sources deep inside the bureaucracy in Beijing, four former officials said. Some were Chinese nationals who the C.I.A. believed had become disillusioned with the Chinese government’s corruption.

But by the end of the year, the flow of information began to dry up. By early 2011, senior agency officers realized they had a problem: Assets in China, one of their most precious resources, were disappearing.

The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. opened a joint investigation run by top counterintelligence officials at both agencies. Working out of a secret office in Northern Virginia, they began analyzing every operation being run in Beijing. One former senior American official said the investigation had been code-named Honey Badger.

As more and more sources vanished, the operation took on increased urgency. Nearly every employee at the American Embassy was scrutinized, no matter how high ranking. Some investigators believed the Chinese had cracked the encrypted method that the C.I.A. used to communicate with its assets. Others suspected a traitor in the C.I.A., a theory that agency officials were at first reluctant to embrace — and that some in both agencies still do not believe.

Their debates were punctuated with macabre phone calls — “We lost another one” — and urgent questions from the Obama administration wondering why intelligence about the Chinese had slowed.

The mole hunt eventually zeroed in on a former agency operative who had worked in the C.I.A.’s division overseeing China, believing he was most likely responsible for the crippling disclosures. But efforts to gather enough evidence to arrest him failed, and he is now living in another Asian country, current and former officials said.

There was good reason to suspect an insider, some former officials say. Around that time, Chinese spies compromised National Security Agency surveillance in Taiwan — an island Beijing claims is part of China — by infiltrating Taiwanese intelligence, an American partner, according to two former officials. And the C.I.A. had discovered Chinese operatives in the agency’s hiring pipeline, according to officials and court documents.

But the C.I.A.’s top spy hunter, Mark Kelton, resisted the mole theory, at least initially, former officials say. Mr. Kelton had been close friends with Brian J. Kelley, a C.I.A. officer who in the 1990s was wrongly suspected by the F.B.I. of being a Russian spy. The real traitor, it turned out, was Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kelton often mentioned Mr. Kelley’s mistreatment in meetings during the China episode, former colleagues say, and said he would not accuse someone without ironclad evidence.

Those who rejected the mole theory attributed the losses to sloppy American tradecraft at a time when the Chinese were becoming better at monitoring American espionage activities in the country. Some F.B.I. agents became convinced that C.I.A. handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst.

Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.

This carelessness, coupled with the possibility that the Chinese had hacked the covert communications channel, would explain many, if not all, of the disappearances and deaths, some former officials said. Some in the agency, particularly those who had helped build the spy network, resisted this theory and believed they had been caught in the middle of a turf war within the C.I.A.

Still, the Chinese picked off more and more of the agency’s spies, continuing through 2011 and into 2012. As investigators narrowed the list of suspects with access to the information, they started focusing on a Chinese-American who had left the C.I.A. shortly before the intelligence losses began. Some investigators believed he had become disgruntled and had begun spying for China. One official said the man had access to the identities of C.I.A. informants and fit all the indicators on a matrix used to identify espionage threats.

After leaving the C.I.A., the man decided to remain in Asia with his family and pursue a business opportunity, which some officials suspect that Chinese intelligence agents had arranged.

Officials said the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. lured the man back to the United States around 2012 with a ruse about a possible contract with the agency, an arrangement common among former officers. Agents questioned the man, asking why he had decided to stay in Asia, concerned that he possessed a number of secrets that would be valuable to the Chinese. It’s not clear whether agents confronted the man about whether he had spied for China.

The man defended his reasons for living in Asia and did not admit any wrongdoing, an official said. He then returned to Asia.
By 2013, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. concluded that China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted — it is not clear how — but the damage had been done.

The C.I.A. has tried to rebuild its network of spies in China, officials said, an expensive and time-consuming effort led at one time by the former chief of the East Asia Division. A former intelligence official said the former chief was particularly bitter because he had worked with the suspected mole and recruited some of the spies in China who were ultimately executed.

China has been particularly aggressive in its espionage in recent years, beyond the breach of the Office of Personnel Management records in 2015, American officials said. Last year, an F.B.I. employee pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent for years, passing sensitive technology information to Beijing in exchange for cash, lavish hotel rooms during foreign travel and prostitutes.

In March, prosecutors announced the arrest of a longtime State Department employee, Candace Marie Claiborne, accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials. According to the criminal complaint against Ms. Claiborne, who pleaded not guilty, Chinese agents wired cash into her bank account and showered her with gifts that included an iPhone, a laptop and tuition at a Chinese fashion school. In addition, according to the complaint, she received a fully furnished apartment and a stipend.

*** Just to be sure China had a real handle on all CIA operatives in country, what came next? The OPM hack, remember that one?
Enter China’s Unit 61398

The program used by China:

In part from Wired: The US-CERT team moved into OPM’s sub-basement and among the first moves was to analyze the malware that Saulsbury had found attached to mcutil.dll. The program turned out to be one they knew well: a variant of PlugX, a remote-access tool commonly deployed by Chinese-speaking hacking units. The tool has also shown up on computers used by foes of China’s government, including activists in Hong Kong and Tibet. The malware’s code is always slightly tweaked between attacks so firewalls can’t recognize it.

By Tuesday the 21st, having churned through a string of nearly sleepless days and nights, the investigators felt satisfied that they’d done their due diligence. Their scans had identified over 2,000 individual pieces of malware that were unrelated to the attack in question (everything from routine adware to dormant viruses). The PlugX variant they were seeking to annihilate was present on fewer than 10 OPM machines; unfortunately, some of those machines were pivotal to the entire network. “The big one was what we call the jumpbox,” Mejeur says. “That’s the administrative server that’s used to log in to all the other servers. And it’s got malware on it. That is an ‘Oh feces’ moment.”

By controlling the jumpbox, the attackers had gained access to every nook and cranny of OPM’s digital terrain. The investigators wondered whether the APT had pulled off that impressive feat with the aid of the system blueprints stolen in the breach discovered in March 2014. If that were the case, then the hackers had devoted months to laying the groundwork for this attack.

Leaping forward in details:

Once established on the agency’s network, they used trial and error to find the credentials necessary to seed the jumpbox with their PlugX variant. Then, during the long Fourth of July weekend in 2014, when staffing was sure to be light, the hackers began to run a series of commands meant to prepare data for exfiltration. Bundles of records were copied, moved onto drives from which they could be snatched, and chopped up into .zip or .rar files to avoid causing suspicious traffic spikes. The records that the attackers targeted were some of the most sensitive imaginable.

The hackers had first pillaged a massive trove of background-check data. As part of its human resources mission, OPM processes over 2 million background investigations per year, involving everyone from contractors to federal judges. OPM’s digital archives contain roughly 18 million copies of Standard Form 86, a 127-page questionnaire for federal security clearance that includes probing questions about an applicant’s personal finances, past substance abuse, and psychiatric care. The agency also warehouses the data that is gathered on applicants for some of the government’s most secretive jobs. That data can include everything from lie detector results to notes about whether an applicant engages in risky sexual behavior.

The hackers next delved into the complete personnel files of 4.2 million employees, past and present. Then, just weeks before OPM booted them out, they grabbed approximately 5.6 million digital images of government employee fingerprints.

Then comes, a little too late and thin on substance in February 2015:

President Obama Speaks at the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection

Is all this fixed yet? Hah…not even close. Then we need to ask why are we trusting China with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program? Do we have spies in Iran? North Korea? Any new operatives in China?

Scary eh?

05/22/17

President Trump in Saudi Arabia, Joined the Culture

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior adviser for policy and speechwriter, is the principal aide in charge of writing both the speech on Islam and Trump’s later speech on the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The speech appeared to be well received, yet there were a few flaws. The word ‘genocide’ should have been included applying it to Jews and Christians. Another persecuted sect is the Yazidi. They are a Kurdish people living chiefly in Iraq, Syria, Armenia, and Georgia and adhering to an ancient monotheistic religion. Calling out Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas was a perfect moment and raising the issue of women’s rights in the region was spot on.

Placing the accountability and responsibility on all Islamic countries to defeat militancy within Islam needed to be said, and Trump repeated this often in his speech.

When it comes to this ‘sword dance’, many questions should be raised. Trump’s speech rightly included the notion that the United States did not come to Saudi Arabia to dictate how to live, who to worship or pass judgment, however, joining in the sword dance was over the top. The State Department and the CIA has Islamic experts that likely told the Trump White House to not participate. Wilbur Ross and Rex Tillerson also joined in. Why was this a screw up? Saudi Arabia, as with other Islamic countries is steeped in history and tradition. This dance is known as Ardha. The nomadic Bedouins (indigenous people of Saudi Arabia) have great influence on Saudi folk music. The music varies in every region, for instance, in the Hijaz, the music of al-sihba combines poetry and songs of Arab Andalusia, while the folk music of Makkah and Madinah incorporates both local and music influences from other Islamic countries.

The national dance, Ardha, is an ancient tradition with its roots in the country’s central area known as the Najd. The Ardha used to be performed before a battle by soldiers and involves singing, dancing with swords and poetry. In summary, the dance and the sword are symbolic to submission to Allah. Hummm, right?

To formally open the new counter terrorism center in Riyadh, leaders touched the glowing light. This project actually began two years ago, about the time the CIA operations were forced out of Yemen and had to relocate in Saudi Arabia. It is a state of the art center.

The glowing light in the orb is calling to the Madhi to return in the text of the Hadith. “The Mahdi will conquer the world; at that time the world will be illuminated by the light of Allah, and everywhere in which those other than Allah are worshipped will become places where Allah is worshiped; and even if the polytheists do not wish it, the only faith on that day will be the religion of Allah.”

The Mahdi will not be (from any tribe) other than from Quraish. The Caliphate is not (from any tribe) other than from Quraish. However, he has an origin (roots) and kinship in Yemen.” ( Nuaim bin Hammad’s Kitab Al-Fitan, Jalal-uddine AsSuyuti’s Al-Urf Al-Wardi fi Akhbar Al-Mahdi, a part of Al-Hawi li Al-Fatawa)

His name will be Muhammad and his father’s name will be Abdullah. Ibn Masood reported that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “Even if there remains only a day before the World ends, the almighty Allah will greatly prolong that day to send a man from me (my progeny), from members of my House (family). His name will be similar to my name and his father’s name similar to my father’s name.” (Abu Dawud)

Al-Abdal (pious individuals) and those seeking the Mahdi like them will come to him (the Mahdi) from Syria. Al-Nujaba (pious individuals) from the dwellers of Egypt will come to him (the Mahdi). Groups of dwellers from the East and those seeking the Mahdi like them will come until they all gather together in Mecca. So, they will pledge their allegiance to him (the Mahdi) between Al-Rukn (corner of the Ka’ba containing the Black Stone) and Al-Maqam (Place) of (Prophet) Abraham عليه السلام (located on a side of the Ka’ba).

Then, he (the Mahdi) will lead (an army) towards Syria, with (angel) Gabriel at the fore front and (angel) Michael in the middle. The dwellers of Heaven and Earth will be joyful because of him. Water will be plentiful in his country (Syria) and the River (Euphrates) will spread and treasures will be found ( gold or treasures of religious significance ) .

When he (the Mahdi) reaches Syria, he will slay the Sufyani under a tree, the branches of which grow in the direction of Lake Tiberias and he will defeat Kalb (tribe). On that Day (battle) of Kalb, disappointed will be whoever does not get some (of the treasures).”

05/21/17

Yes, Trump Did Condemn Radical Islamic Terrorism in Speech to Arab Muslims (quotes/transcript/video)

By: Arlen Williams | Gulag Bound

And what does this say? Click to see the featured tweet/clip.

President Trump’s speech before the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sunday did specifically condemn what he has before called “radical Islamic terrorism,” despite what we have heard from reporters and pundits for days. That he did not choose to string those words together in that order is simply beside the point.

Consider the following. Very clearly, he was speaking to Muslims about Muslims, that is, believers in Islam. Further, he directly condemned the “extremism,” or the “radicalization,” or “fanatical” interpretation of their ideology and the “terrorism” concomitant with it. So, there you have it. In the following excerpts, emphasis is added to make the point.

Trump began to draw the lines early in the address, “But in sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern nations. They have born the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence.”

But what fanaticism and violence did Trump describe? Very soon he specified: “The true toll of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It also must be counted in generations of vanished dreams.” Later in the speech, he added Iran and its ally/puppet, Syria to the litany. What major strand do these terrorist entities have in common, but Islam?

Further quotations from the president, spelling out what all in the know realize he has addressed as “radical Islamic terrorism”:

But this untapped potential, this tremendous cause for optimism, is held at bay by bloodshed and terror. There can be no coexistence with this violence. There can be no tolerating it, no accepting it, no excusing it, and no ignoring it.

Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith. Terrorists do not worship God, they worship death.

If we do not act against this organized terror, then we know what will happen. Terrorism’s devastation of life will continue to spread. Peaceful societies will become engulfed by violence. And the futures of many generations will be sadly squandered.

If we do not stand in uniform condemnation of this killing—then not only will we be judged by our people, not only will we be judged by history, but we will be judged by God.

[…]

Starving terrorists of their territory, of their funding, and the false allure of their craven ideology will be the basis for easily defeating [them].

[…]

But you can only unlock this future if the citizens of the Middle-East are freed from extremism, terror, and violence.

[…]

Will we be indifferent in the presence of evil? Will we protect our citizens from its violent ideology? Will we let its venom spread through our societies? Will we let it destroy the most holy sites on earth? If we do not confront this deadly terror, we know what the future will bring: more suffering, more death, and more despair. But if we act, if we leave this magnificent room unified and determined to do what it takes to destroy the terror that threatens the world, then there is no limit to the great future our citizens will have.

Semantically, it should also be noted that where Trump spoke of this violent form of Islam (commonly singled out as political and violent Islamism, or Jihadism) free of the word “radical,” he lays the issue more squarely at the feet of any and all Muslims, not less so, letting them sort through the crisis. When a sect presents a radical version, after all, it means to offer to change something at its root. But Trump at times let the roots simply lay wherever they may be found.

Since there are many passages in the Quran which call for violence, since its eschatological promise and aim is violent, and since Muslims are commanded to emulate the (extortive and violent) life of Mohamed, it is only right to express humanity’s concerns of Islamic violence, whether divergent or central, and whether episodic or systematic, to all Muslims.

Transcript of the address | Video:

05/21/17

Boots on the Ground in Montana

By: Lloyd Marcus

Hi Folks. Lloyd here, checking in from Montana with Conservative Campaign Committee working to defeat extreme liberal Rob Quist for congress.

Mary has fallen in love with the Prairie dogs running around everywhere with their cute babies following them. I told her to forget about it. We are not taking Prairie dogs home on the plane to add to our 8 birds, two cats and greyhound.

Democrats have spent millions flooding the airways with ads lying about the Republican candidate Greg Gianforte. These people are despicable. Meanwhile, their candidate, Quist is nothing more than another Pelosi hand puppet to help fake news media’s impeach Trump scheme.

Mary and I stuffed envelopes for two hours yesterday. CCC is sending bumper sticks and letters to Montana Republicans urging them to get to the polls on Thursday, May 25th.

Mary ordered the 3 ft by 8 ft “GIANFORTE FOR CONGRESS” banner she and I hold on street corners during our CCC team’s numerous sign waving sessions. Response from Montana motorists honking their horns have been overwhelmingly in favor of Gianforte.

Conservative Campaign Committee is running get-out-the-vote radio ads on several stations. Miss Lulu is managing our phone-from-home initiative.

Folks, I am talkin’ old school, grassroots, do everything you can think of to push your candidate over the finish line campaigning. While it is grueling, Mary and I enjoy working with our CCC team, making a difference for our country.

The Bible says faith without works is dead. In other words, while we should pray for God’s blessing, it is crucial that we work toward what we want; putting legs to our faith.

The theme of our Montana get-out-the-vote effort is “All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.”

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Montana. But if they don’t vote, we are toast! Please call your Uncle Joe or whomever you know in Montana and tell them to get to the polls THIS THURSDAY! http://bit.ly/2rhjfL7

I always try to taste the most popular local dish. Chicken fried steak is high on the list; flour battered and deep fried; placed on a bed of mashed potatoes and smothered in gravy. Sounds awesome. For health reasons, I ate a bit of cooked medium/plus rib eye. Delicious!

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Author: “Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has shattered the dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black America.”
Singer/Songwriter and Conservative Activist

05/19/17

James Simpson: I am fed up!

By: James Simpson | BombThrowers

Trump leaked classified information! He tweeted something stupid! He is offending our allies and encouraging our enemies! He is a threat to national security and must resign now! Such are the fanatical ravings coming from the Lords of the Press, the Democrat Party, and a rogues’ gallery of brain-dead Republicans.

I am absolutely sick to death of it!

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), that stalwart example of political grace, politesse, and comity, leveled his stern opinion: “In a week full of revelation after revelation — on a day when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, they have,” he said on the Senate floor. “I say to all of my colleagues in the Senate: History is watching.”

The heroic John McCain, ever a voice of level-headedness, moderation, and grace, said that the White House scandals are rising to “Watergate-size and scale.” Wow!

In an opinion piece, appropriately titled “No More Benefit of the Doubt,” the formidable Erick Erickson himself said, “Frankly, if there is not a course correction soon, the President needs to consider resigning.”

I have to ask: Are these people serious?

I have never, ever, ever seen such hyperbole in my entire life of watching this sordid melodrama called Washington, D.C., play itself out on the world stage. The cacophony is shaking the rafters. It is almost impossible to hear oneself think.

And after all, that is the goal isn’t it?

For there has never, ever, in the twisted history of this stinking, corrupt, self-absorbed, self-deluded, seditious city, been a greater demonstration of fraud, hypocrisy, and knuckle-dragging stupidity.

EVER.

And that, my friend, is saying something!

After being treated to eight years of an almost daily assault on our economy, our Constitution, our culture, and our national security; where casual disregard for the rule of law and eye-popping corruption and scandals were so commonplace they rarely received more than passing comment; where the government was turned against our nation, using the IRS to target the president’s political enemies and intelligence agencies launched an unprecedented, massive surveillance of our entire society, including reporters, private citizens, and politicians; where President Obama repeatedly insulted and betrayed our citizens and our allies, when those same allies – even, or perhaps especially, the Muslim ones – got the message and began abandoning us like rats deserting a sinking ship; when meanwhile Obama was telling Putin “I’ll have more flexibility after the election”, (has anyone questioned what he said to Putin after the election?); where we switched sides in the War on Terror – making mortal enemies like al-Qaeda and Iran our allies – while Hillary Clinton sold American foreign policy to the highest bidder by coaxing $176 million from 16 foreign governments for the Clinton Foundation; where we went on an apology tour among nations like Cuba, which has been seeking to subvert our country for decades; where Obama gave away not billions, but trillions of dollars to Russia, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and his political friends; where the White House could rely on a totally complicit press – in spite of illegal wiretaps of reporters – because so many press regulars were related to White House staff; where GOP politicians violated practically every single promise made to the citizens who worked tooth and nail to elect them by giving Obama every penny he ever asked for, and then some; or where we became exhausted watching completely useless, phony hearings, that never accomplished a single thing — not one conviction in a sea of corruption — where insipid Republican spinelessness was on daily display; Washington, D.C. now has something to be genuinely outraged about:

Trump said something stupid.

Let’s be clear, that is all there is. None of the allegations the Democrats scream about have been proven. Those who supposedly have evidence of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia and other nonsense steadfastly refuse to show their hand. Why? Because they don’t have a hand to play, and in fact are trying to redirect the gaze from their outrageous, criminal, unprecedented surveillance of the Trump campaign. We are still waiting for the intelligence community to divulge who among them has been illegally passing state secrets to press allies. Unlike Trump’s occasional ham-handedness, these are criminal acts for which they should go to jail.

Now that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has given the Democrats a special prosecutor in former FBI Director Robert Mueller, he needs also to be tasked to look into the leaking of classified information by Obama holdovers and the diabolical effort to undermine President Trump being carried out before our eyes by Trump enemies still buried within the government.

Furthermore, if telling now-fired FBI Director James Comey to lay off former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn is criminal, then where is the outrage when President Obama unilaterally halted the amply justified investigation into Hillary Clinton’s serial wrongdoings? In fact, Trump, as president, can do that. He has the authority. And in suggesting that Trump obstructed the Flynn investigation, Comey may actually have violated the law. This entire campaign is seditious hubris.

As Greg Gutfeld said:

[E]lecting Trump, a disruptive force, was revolutionary. So now, what you’re seeing is the counter-revolution, led by a frantic force that slept through the last nine years. The whole thing is silly and overwrought. It’s like a Twilight movie with old, ugly people.

Washington survives on words. Actions mean little within the rarified D.C. air. But in the real world, deeds speak much louder than words. So what has Trump actually done? Has anyone stopped for a nanosecond to consider actions rather than words?

While we are disappointed in his lackluster battle for control of the border — which we can blame at least partially on corrupt, absurdly overreaching federal courts — or the Obamacare debacle where the GOP establishment more than anyone else is responsible, once again, for betraying its promise to REPEAL the stinking, destructive, unconstitutional law, we can point to an unprecedented number of positive actions the Trump administration has already taken while this D.C. circus distracts us, to reverse the almost incalculable damage Obama did to our country during his eight years in office:

Rolling back heinous Obama environmental regulations, including:

Reversing Obama’s war on coal
Approving the Keystone Pipeline
Neutering Obama’s insane global warming agenda

Rebuilding our military – reduced under Obama to pre-World War I levels
Cutting funding for sanctuary cities
Strengthened border enforcement

– Illegal Southern Border crossings have declined 74 percent since December.

Strengthened law enforcement
Standing up for law enforcement
Standing up for Second Amendment rights
Reducing regulations on manufacturers
Placing a hiring freeze on federal employees
Exiting the U.S. from the TPP
Despite the court stay on Trump’s executive order on immigration, refugee resettlement is down significantly, and – music to my ears – the corrupt, self-serving resettlement industry is wailing about its lost funding
And much more

So the Washington hysteria grows, feeding on every new concocted outrage. But if you open your eyes, it is exactly as planned.

What we are really witnessing is an unprecedented effort to destroy this presidency. They have said that is their intention. And Republicans, not content to sit on the sidelines and watch their serially corrupt Democrat brethren and the Democrats’ media and street thug allies wreak havoc, have jumped in to help out rather than get tarred with the same brush.

Washington’s roar of reactionary discontent is simply the D.C. version of what we are seeing played out in town halls, airports and public parks across the nation, where Antifa communist thugs are violently attempting to impose their own version of the Arab Spring. (If you recall, that misnamed effort at “direct democracy,” i.e. mob rule, ushered in the Muslim Brotherhood – the kings of terrorism- that birthed al-Qaeda and practically every other Islamic terrorist group in the world. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed in Egypt and the military intervened to save that country from drowning in what would have become a Sharia-compliant, 7th century-style, brutal autocracy.)

Republicans and conservatives have been attacked, poisoned, run off the road, threatened with guns and savagely attacked in the press, but this all gets a yawn from the media.

We are indeed wading into dangerous waters.

But it is not because Donald Trump tweets out conflicting statements. Admittedly he doesn’t help his case by doing this. He should instead use his substantial powers of persuasion by taking to the bully pulpit and explaining what our domestic enemies – the Left, and the establishment that rolls over for them – is doing in this country.

Unlike Trump’s seemingly compulsive need to tweet — which detracts from the great things he has already done – his enemies’ destabilizing, anarchistic efforts are pushing this country toward a crisis from which it may never recover. They are truly threatening our nation’s very existence.

05/19/17

Ivanka Thinks Liberals Will Like Her Father

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

One of the side effects of the anti-Trump liberal media propaganda is that many conservatives automatically jump to the President’s defense, even as he continues on a suicidal course, such as a scheduled Thursday meeting with news anchors. This is like a bleeding man jumping into the water with sharks, enticing them to engage in a feeding frenzy.

The only notion more naïve is that liberals will start to like Donald Trump if he does their bidding, such as allowing the U.S. to remain in President Obama’s Paris climate change agreement.

Remember that President Trump called global warming a “hoax,” and implied that he would pull the U.S. out of the agreement.

Yet, NASA continues to promote the notion that human beings are causing dramatic changes to the climate. NASA research on “climate change,” or “global warming,” is subsumed under the “Earth Science” section of the NASA budget that has a line item of $453.2 million.

And you thought NASA was all about outer space.

What’s more, the leader of a NASA-funded climate change project is scheduled to speak about the dangers of capitalism at an event sponsored by the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a spin-off from the old Communist Party USA.

California State University, Northridge (CSUN) professor David Klein runs the NASA-funded Climate Science Program at CSUN. A mathematical physicist and professor of mathematics at CSUN, Klein also co-founded the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and sponsors the CSUN “Boycott Israel Resource Page.”

The CCDS currently offers a booklet, “Vietnam: From National Liberation to 21st Century Socialism,” glorifying the communist dictatorship which was established when American troops withdrew from Southeast Asia and communist military forces seized South Vietnam. More than 55,000 Americans gave their lives to keep South Vietnam free.

In addition to its roots in the Moscow-funded Communist Party USA, the CCDS is probably best known as a launching pad for the career of Van Jones, the former Obama official turned CNN commentator. Jones was forced out of the Obama administration as the “Green Jobs Czar” when his communist past came to light.

Klein’s books include Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming. In what passes for scientific literature these days, the cover of the book shows a big dollar sign on a melting earth.

“The second part of the book clarifies and illuminates the role of capitalism in creating and perpetuating the climate crisis and related dangers,” the synopsis explains. “Clear evidence and compelling arguments are presented to demonstrate the impossibility of adequately addressing the climate crisis within the framework of capitalism.”

The Klein talk for CCDS is advertised as a telephone discussion that requires use of the password “ecosocialism” in order to listen and participate. That seems appropriate.

We are told that the CSUN Climate Science Program was created with funding from NASA. Students are “encouraged to enroll in climate science courses offered through this program, housed within the Departments of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Geography.”

This is how a “consensus” in favor of “climate change” develops. Federal money is used to pay professors who “educate” students about the current socialist agenda, leading to the production of more scientists who accept the consensus that they’re told already exists. This, in turn, leads to media acceptance of the “consensus,” by virtue of the sheer numbers of professors accepting the theory and seeking more federal money to validate it.

Klein’s talk is part of an ongoing CCDS socialist agenda that goes by the catchy title, “Resist, Resist, Resist the White House agenda. Build, Build, Build the Progressive Majority.”

Described as a longtime activist in many different left-wing causes, Klein is the faculty advisor for the CSUN’s Students for Justice in Palestine and for the CSUN Greens. His website tells us that “The U.S. Green party has endorsed BDS and the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.”

The BDS is the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

Accuracy in Media was unable to discover how much taxpayer money from NASA was used to underwrite Klein’s anti-capitalist campaign, but we did discover at least some of the funding for the CSUN Climate Science Program came through a program called NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE).

The NICE website declares, “Seventy-one NICE projects, located at organizations across the United States, have been awarded funds thus far through NICE and its predecessor projects—NASA’s Global Climate Change Education and Innovations in Global Climate Change Education—for developing innovative and engaging ways to better educate students and the public on the science surrounding climate.”

No wonder your kids are coming home from school believing in the climate change hysteria.

President Trump has asked his daughter Ivanka, a fashion designer, to review the United States’ commitment to the Paris climate change agreement, which was signed for the purpose of reducing the global CO2 emissions blamed for global warming, or climate change.

But Obama refused to submit the agreement for Congressional approval, and Trump with a stroke of the pen can pull the U.S. out.

It’s mystifying why Trump has not followed through. One possible explanation is that his daughter Ivanka wants him to maintain the flawed agreement. She apparently thinks this will make her father more acceptable to the liberals.

Somebody should brief her on the Watergate madness that consumed the presidency of Richard Nixon.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected] View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

05/19/17

America’s Elected Government Hangs in the Balance

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Years ago I agreed to be interviewed for a film which was included in an exhibit for the national museum in Washington, D.C. known as the Newseum. It was on the use of anonymous sources. In the film, which is still playing, I cautioned about their use, saying that they can be inaccurate or even non-existent, and that they reduce trust in the news media.

Today, the use of anonymous sources has accelerated, and the “sources” being used against President Donald Trump are now openly acknowledged as coming from U.S. intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Not surprisingly, questions about the motives of sources are seldom, if ever, examined by the media that rely on them.

Even when anonymous sources supposedly come forward and identity themselves, there is doubt. The Newseum staged an exhibit on Watergate, the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, and focused on Mark Felt, who was second in command of the FBI at the time. The story is that he “broke his silence and ended the decades-long mystery” about the identity of “Deep Throat,” the alleged anonymous source who helped Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

But the late Accuracy in Media (AIM) chairman Reed Irvine and I wrote a series of articles questioning whether he was in fact Deep Throat. At that time, Felt was a stroke victim with dementia and couldn’t deny it. What’s more, Felt was not in a position to supply the information about Watergate that is attributed to Deep Throat in the Woodward/Bernstein book about the scandal.

Our conclusion was that Felt was being used as a cash cow to generate book deals, and that the actual Watergate sources were somewhere else in the bureaucracy, probably the intelligence community.

This wasn’t the only time that Woodward had attributed facts and information to an alleged source who couldn’t speak for himself. In Woodward’s 1987 book, Veil, he claimed to have interviewed William J. Casey, the CIA director, after Mr. Casey had brain surgery and could not speak intelligibly.

The slogan of the Newseum is, “There’s more to every story.” This concept is appropriate when considering the nature and origin of the anonymous sources behind the anti-Trump stories that generate Watergate-style hysteria in the liberal media on almost a daily basis.

Even more important or significant than the stories themselves are the motives of the leakers and why they would go to the Post, a paper whose billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, is linked to the CIA and NSA through a series of government contracts.

As history unfolds, we learn new information about journalists and their sources, but some of it comes too late to make a real difference.

Consider that there will have to be an update to the section on Ernest Hemingway, the famous writer and author whose work as a reporter for The Kansas City Star is highlighted at the Newseum. A new book by former CIA officer Nicholas Reynolds entitled Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy identifies the Pulitzer Prize-winner as a Soviet spy. Hemingway was recruited into the enemy camp on ideological grounds.

This revelation provides more evidence that things are rarely what they seem to be in the media. There can always be a hidden hand in the work of major personalities in the journalism business. These people depend on their sources. More importantly, they are used by them.

The Post clearly has no principled objection to working with officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and other agencies in bringing down a president. After all, they claim that they relied on an FBI official to help bring down Nixon.

Even with the firing of FBI director James Comey, an obvious source for the media, it’s apparent that many of these high-level people remain in the intelligence community. They were not elected, however, and they remain in the shadows, making decisions affecting the fate of a government elected by the American people by creating the appearance of a Watergate-style scandal.

Interestingly, the title of the new Hemingway book is a takeoff on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré that was made into a blockbuster film, and was based on the real-life “Cambridge Five” communist espionage ring.

It turns out that Hemingway worked for the CIA’s predecessor, the OSS, before going to work for the Russians.

Interestingly, the anonymous sources now being used to destroy Trump, on the grounds that he is a Russian puppet, have used a “Trump Dossier” that is based on the work of a former British spy who worked for Hillary Clinton and pro-Russian interests.

Since this is demonstrably the case as we have noted in a series of investigative stories, it is reasonable to assume that these anonymous sources in the Trump case are working against American interests. Equally significant, if they are in the intelligence community, they are working for, not against, the Russians. It is bizarre but true.

Leaving aside the identity of sources and their motives, the official story of Watergate continues to be that Nixon was forced out of office for corrupt practices. But these had also occurred under other administrations. Victor Lasky’s classic book, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, set the record straight on that score.

We have also noted other scandals that had received far less attention than Watergate, including:

FDR’s Pearl Harbor cover-up, blaming Admiral Kimmel for the disaster
The stolen presidential election of 1960 that put John F. Kennedy in the White House
Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s bugging of the phones of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clinton administration abuse of the IRS and FBI to go after “enemies”

Does the latter sound familiar? It sounds like something that occurred under President Obama, but which never achieved Watergate status. Neither did the Benghazi cover-up or his own pro-Russian policies and statements.

“Look at the way I’ve been treated lately, especially by the media,” Trump told graduates of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. “No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly.”

He’s correct, except possibly for the Nixon example. In Trump’s case, it’s true that he offends the media. But he has also offended some powerful people in the intelligence community. Together, they are determined to destroy him.

It may turn out to be the case that Trump’s real crime was failing to clean house in the intelligence community. Did the firing of Comey come too late to make a difference?

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected] View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.