02/18/15

10 Troubling Aspects of President Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Summit

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

The White House’s “Countering Violent Extremism” summit is barely underway, yet the message is already clear: the conference is politically correct — and far worse — a charade.

And that is a charitable interpretation.

Its sponsors are engaging in intentional obfuscation (e.g., saying “violent extremism” is the enemy), as well as peddling ineffective and ill-considered policy proposals (more community “empowerment”). The conference will effectively aid and abet America’s increasingly ascendant jihadist foes.

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

Reviewing the Obama administration’s summit preview, here are its 10 most disturbing aspects:

1. Contrary to its big government ethos, the Obama administration asserts that national security should be driven by the people, not the state.

(Image source: BuzzFeed)

According to the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

Really at the core of our approach is that the government does not have all the answers in combatting violent extremism. It is, at its core, a bottom-up approach. It puts communities with civic leaders, with religious authorities, with community power brokers, teachers, health providers, et cetera, in the driver’s seat. They know their citizens best. They are the first line of defense to prevent or counter radicalizing forces that can ultimately lead to violence. And so our approach is to really embrace and empower what local communities can do. So we’ve been working with our federal partners and our local partners to put in place this approach over the past couple of years.

Further:

Again, this is not about government, especially the federal government. The federal government doesn’t have all the answers. This is about building a comprehensive network to fight back against violent extremism. And we are explicitly recognizing the role that civil society plays, the private sector plays, and that families, et cetera, can play in countering violent extremism.

Who knew the Obama administration had so much respect for and faith in civil society?

Yet of course, this faith turns out to be dangerously misplaced as…

2. The groups the president wants to empower are those who may pose the biggest threat.

As Patrick Poole noted in an extensive report for TheBlaze:

In December 2011, the White House issued the “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” – the local partners, of course, being Islamic organizations, including those cited by the Justice Department as working to aid foreign terrorist organizations. All national security and law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local level would now have to consult these groups and rely on “local partners” as a matter of policy. And as made clear in Salam al-Marayati’s Los Angeles Times op-ed, Islamic groups complaining about counter-terrorism policies or training would disrupt government efforts to “counter violent extremism” gave them an implicit veto over counter-terrorism policies. [Los Angels Times link added for context]

Why should we care about this 2011 report?

A senior Obama administration official noted in previewing the summit that the report details the very efforts the administration will be hawking during the three-day event.

Local partners such as the Council on American-Islam Relations — an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Hamas funding trial in history — has advised members of the Muslim community not to work with the FBI, and religious leaders to lawyer up as opposed to working together with law enforcement when it comes to potential jihadists. On the eve of the summit, CAIR is reportedly calling for the Department of Justice to “protect those who act in good faith to prevent violent extremism by engaging with [Muslims] considering it in order to dissuade them.”

A partner of perhaps higher standing is the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a group linked to numerous jihadis and jihadi-sympathizers, that is reportedly the primary liaison between the Muslim community and law enforcement in countering violent extremism. The Boston program will be one of the three held up as a success story during the summit, despite the ISB’s Islamic supremacist efforts.

Looking to the heart of Muslim communities, according to the Mapping Sharia project, imams in over 80 percent of 100 randomly surveyed representative mosques in America recommended the study of violence-positive texts. The correlations with these texts are disturbing, as illustrated below:

Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques (Image Source: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/sharia-adherence-mosque-survey/html)

(Image Source: Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques)

In Pew’s extensive 2011 report on Muslims in America, 21 percent of those polled indicated there was a great deal or fair amount of “support for extremism among Muslim American;” 19 percent did not indicate that “suicide bombing/other violence against civilians is justified to defend Islam from its enemies;” only 70 percent indicated that they viewed Al Qaeda “very unfavorably.”

As leaked Department of Homeland Security documents reveal, the second highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by our government reside in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn’s population is 96,000, and it has the highest percentage of Arab-Americans of any city in the country.

In light of these figures, and the fact that jihadist groups worldwide claim they are at war with America, having committed over 25,000 attacks in the name of Allah since Sept. 11, 2011, one must ask, what exactly is the rationale behind leaving self-policing to Muslim communities when these are the very places from whence jihadists spring?

Such a policy of course is only baffling if you are of the belief that jihad is an Islamic tenet, and that Islamic supremacist ideology is what animates the vast majority of the world’s “violent extremists.”

But of course…

3. According to the administration there is no profile of a “violent extremist.”

Returning to the transcript:

[I]n the United States there has been violent extremists that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and so the agenda for all three days is going to show a wide array of speakers and participants from all backgrounds who combat radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism in its many forms.

…In terms of the phrase “vulnerable community,” I think one is that we want to be clear that the evidence doesn’t show that there’s any particular community, there’s no profile that we can point to say this person is from this community, is going to be radicalized to violence.

4. The administration thinks a key focus should be on non-Muslim terrorist groups — like those in Colombia.

Per the preview:

Q: I’m just wondering, in light of the current events that Andrea Mitchell and others mentioned during this call, almost all of those involves Muslim extremism. And I get that the phrase for this three-day event is “violent extremism.” Might some critics think that you’re avoiding the world “Muslim” as though extremists in the Islamic communities are the focus — or are they not the focus? That’s my question.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: …I think obviously we want to be taking into account the current concerns that different countries are facing. But as I think will be clear from the variety of presentations and case studies that are mentioned — to include some of the media that we have organized to help catalyze the discussion that features some of the longer-running terrorist threats that people sometimes forget about in the current context, such as the FARC in Colombia, which is now in negotiations, but has been a designated terrorist organization for some time, responsible for countless acts of violence.

I think we will see through the complexity of the discussion that violent extremism is a broader trend…I think we’ll see in the context of the meeting itself the diversity that reflects the reality of recent history.

5. The administration disavows a link between jihadism — a word it won’t use — and religion.

This image made from a video released Sunday Feb. 15, 2015 by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group purportedly shows Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. Later in the video, the men are made to kneel and one militant addresses the camera in English before the men are simultaneously beheaded. The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. (Image source: AP)

Per the administration preview:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let’s be clear. We recognize that violent extremism spans many decades and has taken many forms. But we all agree that the individuals who perpetuated — who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere are calling themselves Muslims and their warped interpretation of Islam is what motivated them to commit these acts. They’re not making any secret of that, and neither are we.

But we are very, very clear that we do not believe that they are representing Islam. There is absolutely no justification for these attacks in any religion, and that’s the view of the vast majority of Muslims who have suffered huge casualties from the likes of folks like ISIL or al Qaeda. So you can call them what you want. We’re calling them terrorists.

6. The administration continues its “mea culpa” campaign, attributing radicalism to economic, social and political disparities — but not religion.

Per the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

The final panel will focus on secure and resilient communities, and it will, in particular, begin by looking at the role of civil society, particularly youth and women preventing violent extremism. It will look at community-police relations and community-security force relations as a critical element of prevention. And it will finally broaden that conversation to address social, economic and political marginalization, including the effects of integration of minority communities.

Based on all we have observed from this White House, do you think that the onus will fall on law enforcement to work on “improving relations” with “violent extremist” communities, or vice-versa? Reports on the Minneapolis countering violent extremism pilot program, one of the three that will be presenting at the summit, indicate that its Somali Muslim community mistrusts law enforcement because it fears being spied upon. Does this give you confidence in cooperation from a neighborhood that has produced over a dozen known jihadists in recent years?

The notion that “marginalization” and poor integration in minority communities is the root cause of jihadism, as echoed by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf is a canard. Not only are there very wealthy families from the bin Ladens to the Saudi royals who drive jihadism worldwide, but conversely practically every group that has ever succeeded in America came to this country poor and marginalized, yet did not resort to strapping bombs to themselves or chopping off heads.

None of this is even to mention the fact that Muslims, other ethnic and religious minorities and the most important minority, the individual, has at least historically had more freedom and opportunity in America than in any other country in the world. Perhaps the White House wishes this forum to be a vehicle for revisiting Ferguson.

7. The administration wants to rehabilitate and reintegrate violent extremists.

Clearly the recidivism rate for Guantanamo Bay detainees has not sunk in to the collective mind of the public, as the White House continues:

The third session focuses on weakening the legitimacy and the resonance of the brand of violent extremism. So that will include a panel on strategic communications, social media. It will include a discussion of how non-violent religious issues and education can be elevated as a matter of international and local-level concern. And it will look at best practices with regard to rehabilitating and reintegrating violent extremists.

Note that this is also in keeping with the Obama administration’s efforts through Eric Holder’s Justice Department to treat terrorism as a criminal matter.

8. The Obama White House has regularly partnered with and enabled ”violent extremists,” without whom a countering violent extremism summit would not be necessary in the first place.

One of the more unbelievable indications of the Obama administration’s willful lack of self-awareness is that it has regularly partnered with the “violent extremists,” aiders, abetters and sympathizers with whom theoretically this summit is about countering.

The administration is currently negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program — the largest state sponsor of terror in the world.

Several weeks ago the White House met with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose 1991 strategic memorandum on North America called for a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

In Libya and Syria we have armed jihadists to our own great detriment.

How can a president who so frequently makes common cause with, and whose interventions overseas have so consistently aided jihadists, have any credibility in countering violent extremism?

9. The summit’s very name tells us how fatally flawed the exercise is.

Little exemplifies better how ill-equipped America is to deal with the threats facing her than the fact that the Obama administration wants us to believe that we are fighting “violent extremism.”

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

As many have said in recent weeks, if you cannot identify your enemy, you cannot defeat it. By not having the moral clarity, or even worse by exhibiting such cowardice in creating a mushy phrase like “violent extremism,” which not only obscures the enemy from the American people, but allows the Obama administration to associate all sorts of other peoples with jihadists is shameful.

Islamic supremacists are at war with us. It is quite evident we are not at war with them.

10. Finally, the key issues crucial to understanding the nature of, and means of best countering Islamic supremacism are not going to be addressed.

Were the summit actually to identify Islamic supremacism as the enemy, as the Center for Security Policy’s recent Defeat Jihad Summit illustrated, we might examine issues among many others including:

The Islamic doctrine that animates jihadists both Shitte and Sunni, and the goals, tactics and strategies set forth therein
The global funding of the jihadist support architecture
- Activist groups
- Educational institutions including America’s Middle East studies departments
- Media organizations
- Mosques
- Other agents of influence
Jihadist infiltration of American political institutions
The undefended borders through which jihadists are surely entering
Legal immigration policies including visas for religious leaders, student visas and immigration from jihadist areas worldwide
Iran’s efforts to infiltrate South America
Radicalization in prisons

We should seriously consider the aforementioned 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on its mission in North America:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

…A mission as significant and as huge as the settlement mission needs magnificent and exhausting efforts. With their capabilities, human, financial and scientific resources, the Ikhwan will not be able to carry out this mission alone or away from people and he who believes that is wrong, and God knows best. As for the role of the Ikhwan, it is the initiative, pioneering, leadership, raising the banner and pushing people in that direction. They are then to work to employ, direct and unify Muslims’ efforts and powers for this process. In order to do that, we must possess a mastery of the art of “coalitions”, the art of “absorption” and the principles of “cooperation.”

02/18/15

Watcher’s Council Nominations – ‘All ISIS Needs Is Jobs’ Edition

The Watcher’s Council

The Obama Regime’s State Department in action, courtesy of spokeshole Marie Harf:

When even Chris Matthews gets it (sort of), we’re in real trouble.

The Obama regime can’t even create decent jobs here in America, let alone Iraq. Do these people seriously think we’re going to be able to buy off the Islamic State?

Then there’s the president’s new ‘war’ request, which ought to be voted down, at least at this time. The video above tells us why the sort of mindset that prevails in the White House shouldn’t be trusted to manage a successful war.

First, the AUMF Matthews refers to isn’t really a declaration of war, just another half-assed ‘authorization’ and we’ve certainly been there before.
Second, IS is not anywhere near the imminent threat Iran is, and taking ISIS out simply delivers Iraq to Iran as part of their goal… a Shi’ite, Iran-ruled nuclear armed bloc controlling both sides of the Persian Gulf and stretching to the Mediterranean. Taking out ISIS simply removes one more obstacle to Iran, the same way our taking out Saddam Hussein did. Let’s deal with Iran first… which of course will never happen with this president.
And finally, based on this president’s record as Commander-in-Chief, do we really want him in charge of creating yet another stupid blunder? Do we want our troops fighting another war and dying because they’re handcuffed by his ridiculous rules of engagement? Just today, he insulted the Egyptians and criticized them for bombing targets in Libya after ISIS killed a number of Egyptian Copts there… whom the Obama Administration in their statement pointedly did not refer to as Christians. Our president would be challenged running a McDonald’s successfully,let alone a war. A loose AUMF that gives him the leeway to play amateur strategist inbetween golf games is not the answer.

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, The People’s Cube and The Political Commentator earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

To bring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out on Wednesday morning.

Simple, no?

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have for you this week…

Council Submissions

The Noisy Room – ISIS Parades 17 Kurdish Fighters in Cages to be Burned Alive Like Jordanian Pilot
Simply Jews – Then we’ll kill us some Jews too…
Bookworm Room – Getting Obama On Board With Israelis: They’re not imperialists; they’re just undocumented immigrants!
The Right Planet – More Hipster Harf: ‘We Can’t Stop ISIS by Killing Them; We Need to Give Them Jobs’
GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – New AUMF
VA Right! – Will Hanover Schools Teach ‘Both Sides’ of the Pilot ISIS Burned Alive?
The Razor – Fifty Shades Of Pathetic
Nice Deb – Supporters of Violent Extremism To Participate In WH Summit on Countering Violent Extremism (Video)
The Independent Sentinel – Stunning: Barack Obama Refused to Share Intel With Egypt and Jordan
Rhymes With Right – Chris Hayes Gets One Right On Similarity Of Muslim Murders To Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown Killings
The Glittering Eye – Intervene in Haste, Repent at Leisure
Ask Marion – Palimania And Why She Can Win

Honorable Mentions

David Gerstman/Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Obama’s Concessions to Iran Alienating Allies
The People’s Cube – Isn’t it time you upgraded your Race Card to a Gay Card?
The Political Commentator – I am running out of (printable) words to describe Barack Obama!

Non-Council Submissions

Caroline Glick – Obama: Mainstreaming Jew-Hatred in America submitted by The Noisy Room
Tom Gross – What Bat Mitzvah? Nothing Random Here submitted by Simply Jews
Graeme Wood/The Atlantic – What ISIS Really Wants submitted by Bookworm Room
Judicial Watch – Border Patrol Ordered to Release Drunk Drivers, “Allow Them to Go On Their Way” submitted by The Right Planet
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad/The National Interest – Navigating a Turbulent Middle East submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
Breitbart – CNN Lists Attacks by Islamists, Says ‘Religion’ Had Bad Week submitted by VA Right!
Megan McArdle/Bloomberg – A Few More Arguments Against Obamacare submitted by The Razor
FrontpageMag – Obama White House Partners with ISIS-Linked Group submitted by Nice Deb
David Greenfield/FrontPage Mag – Heroes of Freedom Died in Copenhagen submitted by The Independent Sentinel
Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – U Cal Student Gov’t votes to divest from most of world, including U.S. submitted by Rhymes with Right
Charles Cameron/Zenpundit – Joas Wagemakers on al-Maqdisi & the Jordanian pilot negotiations submitted by The Glittering Eye
Gary P. Jackson/A Time For Choosing – “Irrelevant” Sarah Palin Steals the Headlines at SNL’s 40th Anniversary Bash submitted by Ask Marion
The Other McCain – Tea Party & GOP Elite Walk Into A Bar… submitted by The Watcher
Andrew McCarthy/NRO – Folks Do the Randomest Things submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that! And don’t forget to tune in Friday for the results!

02/18/15

Congress Fiddles While the World Burns

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

The Obama administration may be on the same side as the Muslim Brotherhood, but at least we know where they stand. Congress, by contrast, sounds tough and does nothing.

Consider the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who has issued a “seven-point plan” to defeat Islamist terrorism that includes countering Islamist ideology. He gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute called, “An American Strategy for Victory in the War Against Islamist Terror.” Unfortunately, he had the opportunity to go on the offensive more than two years ago when he rebuffed requests to hold hearings into Al Jazeera’s expansion into the United States.

Once known as the mouthpiece for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Al Jazeera has earned the label “Jihad TV.”

There used to be a time when the U.S. was on-guard against foreign influence and propaganda. During World War II, we had a congressional panel known as the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which exposed the Communists, the Nazis and their agents operating on American soil. A particular focus of HUAC was foreign propaganda activities.

Just two years ago, when the Chinese bought AMC movie theaters, they went for approval to a federal panel known as CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The Chinese Dalian Wanda Group Co., known as Wanda, announced after the review that it had received all necessary regulatory approvals in the U.S. and China for the planned acquisition of AMC.

Wanda is described as China’s largest investor in cultural and entertainment activities. AMC operated 346 theaters with 5,034 screens, primarily in the United States and Canada.

One can argue that AMC should have been barred from such a purchase. The legitimate fear is that China is using its entertainment operations in the U.S. to propagandize the American people. Selwyn Duke, in an article on China’s increasing power and influence in Hollywood, has a list of films in which characters or plot lines have been changed to accommodate the Chinese regime and its censors.

By contrast, Al Jazeera completely bypassed the CFIUS process. McCaul’s committee should have held hearings into evidence that Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news operation but rather a conduit for propaganda from terrorist groups. McCaul had received a letter—signed by media critics, journalists, academics, and national security and Middle East experts—requesting hearings on Al Jazeera’s purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV. In a display of arrogance, he didn’t even bother to respond.

The issue is not Al Jazeera’s small audience. It’s the nature of that audience and the ability of the channel to reach terrorist-minded Muslims with anti-American messages.

Foreign channels do not have the right to provoke terrorism on American soil. If they are legitimate news operations, they may have the right to broadcast in the U.S. But they are also required under the law to register as foreign agents and label their broadcasts as foreign propaganda. Al Jazeera has not been forced to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The law was originally passed to counter Nazi propaganda activities, but applies to all foreign entities that attempt to manipulate an American audience.

Now that awareness is growing about how terrorists are being inspired and recruited, McCaul is sounding concerned. He should be. He was AWOL in 2012 when Al Jazeera was dramatically expanding its operations in the U.S.

There are two dangers with Al Jazeera. One is the transmission of pro-terrorist propaganda. The other is that the channel could be serving as cover for agents of foreign terrorist groups to operate as “news” personnel while gathering intelligence and recruiting agents.

In his remarks explaining his new strategy, McCaul noted the case of “a would-be attacker who wanted to target the U.S. Capitol here in Washington D.C.” He added, “The barbarians, I believe, are at the gate…and it is time for this nation to confront them.”

We don’t know if the ISIS sympathizer, Christopher Cornell, was a fan of Al Jazeera. That’s something which should be examined. But it is interesting to look at Al Jazeera’s coverage of this case. The channel ran an “analysis” piece by Ehab Zahriyeh suggesting that the culprit wasn’t a jihadist, but instead had “social and emotional issues” and was a victim of entrapment by the FBI. By contrast, in the North Carolina case, where a truly deranged individual killed three Muslims over a parking space, Zahriyeh reported that the attack was evidence of “Islamophobia.”

Al Jazeera’s Zahriyeh had also reported that Houston’s Quba Islamic Institute “was set ablaze,” in another apparent “Islamophobic” act. It turned out the culprit was a homeless person with an extensive criminal history for charges like drug possession and prostitution. It appears that he started the fire to stay warm and it got out of control. Zahriyeh featured the comments of Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front. CAIR can always be counted on to find evidence of “Islamophobia,” even when none exists.

So this is how Al Jazeera “reports” the news. It is designed to inflame, provoke and mislead.

It turns out that Zahriyeh worked previously at Press TV, an English-language Iranian government propaganda channel. He was at Columbia University in New York City to cover the opening of the Center for Palestine Studies, an outfit characterized by “hostility toward Israel.”

McCaul had a chance to investigate Al Jazeera more than two years ago and he balked. As we documented at the time, Al Jazeera and its sponsor, the government of Qatar, hired several lobbying firms to stop any probe of Al Gore’s deal with the Muslim Brotherhood channel.

Hence, McCaul’s new proposal to take the fight to the enemy by countering “domestic radicalization” and undermining “the insidious ideology at the core of Islamist terrorism” has to be taken with a grain of salt. No plans have been announced to probe Al Jazeera.

We have consistently argued that allowing Al Jazeera to operate in the United States, during a global war against Islamic terrorism, is akin to fighting the Nazis while allowing their spokesperson, Axis Sally, to run a broadcasting operation in the U.S. In this war, by contrast, McCaul and others treat Al Jazeera as a legitimate news organization deserving of First Amendment protections. They refuse to investigate its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and various terrorist groups.

Yet McCaul wants people to think he’s going to get the bottom of the global jihad problem. In his headline-grabbing speech, McCaul said, “Overseas terrorist groups aren’t yesterday’s extremists, moving messages between couriers and caves. They are tailoring their hateful ideology toward Western audiences on social media, recruiting homegrown fanatics, and fueling a ‘jihadi cool’ subculture. Already, their propaganda is leading to an uptick in homegrown terrorism. For example, there have been more than 90 homegrown terror plots or attacks in the United States since 9/11—and nearly three-fourths of them have taken place in the past five years. Many of the suspects were radicalized at least in part by online Islamist propaganda, including the Boston Marathon bombers.”

McCaul doesn’t mention Al Jazeera. Yet, the channel is available on DIRECTV, Comcast / XFINITY, Time Warner Cable, DISH, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS, and Bright House Networks.

McCaul declares that “…we must defend the Homeland against domestic radicalization,” adding, “We are entering an era of ‘do-it-yourself’ jihad, and terrorists are finding it easier to encourage individual attacks rather than sneak operatives into our country. But we are alarmingly unprepared to address the threat of homegrown terrorism.”

On the latter point, he’s correct. But he’s been part of the problem. He’s talking about himself and his committee.

02/18/15

Reds in Hollywood Making a Comeback

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Bryan Cranston is famous for his role as meth cook “Walter White” on the AMC drama series, “Breaking Bad.” He may become infamous for something else later this year. He is playing the role of Stalinist Communist and Hitler apologist Dalton Trumbo in the new film, “Trumbo.”

The film is said to be in its “post-production” phase, and Cranston may not have known what he was getting into. It’s hard to believe he would have played this role had he known the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Once the facts get out, his role could derail what looked like a promising career.

Allan H. Ryskind, author of the new book, Hollywood Traitors, anticipates that the film “Trumbo” will be “celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast…” He notes that the advance publicity for the film says that Trumbo bravely took a “stand against the Communist-witch-hunt at the height of the Cold War” and was “punished for his principled stand for free speech and the Constitution.”

Indeed, the conventional wisdom is that Trumbo and all other members of the “Hollywood Ten were innocent victims of a ‘blacklist.’” The facts show something very different. Trumbo was in fact a Soviet/Nazi agent of influence in Hollywood. All of the “Ten” were communists but Trumbo was one of the worst.

Ryskind, the son of famous Hollywood screenwriter Morrie Ryskind, reports that “Trumbo, in truth, was a full-fledged Stalinist who had the distinction of siding with three of the most barbarous dictators in the 20th century: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and North Korea’s Kim-Il Sung.”

Ryskind, a long-time editor of the newspaper Human Events, worked on this book for many years and combed through Trumbo’s papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. He goes on to write, “Like so many of his comrades, he [Trumbo] became a Hitler apologist after Stalin joined Hitler in that 1939 pact. In order to poison the well against Hitler’s enemies, he demonized the Fuehrer’s foes. England was no democracy, he argued in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew, because it had a ‘king.’ FDR was guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for his pro-England policy. No drop of American blood should be risked or spilled for the selfish and deceitful British.”

On the matter of Trumbo’s support for the communist North Korean regime, Ryskind notes, “When North Korea waged war against South Korea in 1950, where did Dalton stand? In an unpublished movie script dedicated to several Hollywood Ten figures, he has the heroine declare that North Korea’s invasion was perfectly justifiable, for this is “Korea’s fight for independence, just as we had to fight for our own independence in 1776.”

Ryskind provides more details in a special report that accompanies the release of his book. He says, “Communist Dalton Trumbo, a prominent screenwriter, a Hollywood Ten figure and a Hollywood icon, led the fight in America to ease Hitler’s burden of conquest. He did this by demonizing Hitler’s enemies, assailing Great Britain as deceptive and dishonorable and suggesting it was unworthy of assistance because it was a monarchy not a democracy. England, he also noted, had declared war against Hitler, not the other way around, and he accused FDR, previously a Communist Party favorite, of being guilty of ‘treason’ and ‘black treason’ for giving England military assistance. Trumbo vigorously presented his views in speeches and in writing, and laid out his case most explicitly in his 1941 novel, The Remarkable Andrew.”

The rest of the story is also provided by Ryskind: “The Hollywood Communist contingent, including Trumbo, quickly turned against Hitler after the Fuehrer betrayed Stalin in June of 1941, launching a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. Then, and only then, did the radical screenwriters switch sides again, now demanding America give massive assistance to the Soviet Union to combat fascism and help it survive the Nazi onslaught. Only after Hitler invaded the USSR did the Communist screenwriters become ‘patriotic,’ since they believed US assistance was crucial to the Soviet Union’s survival.”

After examining the historical record, including Trumbo’s papers, Ryskind concludes, “…I’ve never found a paragraph, or even a phrase, where he ever publicly or privately condemns Stalin’s Soviet Union in a meaningful way, certainly not when the Caligula in the Kremlin was dispatching his own citizens by the millions, egging Hitler on as he invaded the Western democracies, cheering Goering’s air force as it rained death and destruction on London and eagerly devouring Eastern Europe in the post-World War II era. Not a peep of protest or regret from a man whom Hollywood longs to lionize.”

It may be the case that Cranston was not aware of the facts about Trumbo’s service to the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany. That is why I recently sent him a letter setting forth the facts contained in this column. If he was deceived about Trumbo’s true character, he has the right to raise hell.

Whatever the ultimate fate of the film and Cranston’s role in it, Ryskind’s book about the days when communists were trying to dominate Hollywood has suddenly taken on more importance.

02/18/15

Irreconcilable differences: Obama’s job approval ratings and unemployment

By: James Simpson
WatchDog.org

PERCEPTION VS. REALITY: A number of economic statistics not covered in official reports reveal the differences between the public’s perception of the president’s performance in handling unemployment and the reality.

According to a recent poll by AP-GfK, President Obama currently has a 47 percent job approval rating, up from 41 percent in December. Fifty-one percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the unemployment issue, compared with 44 percent before, while 45 percent approve of his handling of the economy overall, up from 41 percent in December.

These numbers track with the declining unemployment rate and optimistic newscasts that followed the publication of the most recent unemployment statistics, but do not reflect actual economic conditions. In fact, a closer look at the poll itself reveals that people have grave reservations about the economy—reservations that are reflected in a number of economic statistics not covered in published reports.

The overall unemployment rate has been on the decline since the trough of the recession in 2010 (see Chart 1. below); however this paints a very deceiving picture. Were it indicative of a true economic recovery, other indicators would show similarly positive results. But this is not the case. For example enrollment in food stamps has grown 65 percent since President Obama took office, from 28 million in 2008, to 46 million today. Despite a small decline in 2014, food stamp use has been at its highest levels in recorded history—magnitudes higher than any previous time. Over 46 million people, equal to about 30 percent of the civilian labor force, now use food stamps.

Chart 2 shows the number of people working part time for economic reasons. Workers in this category are defined by the Bureau of Labor statistics as being part timers due to slack work, poor business conditions, or only being able to find a part-time job. These people would work full-time if the opportunity were available. While these numbers have come down somewhat, they remain at the highest level in recorded history.

The overall civilian unemployment rate does not account for these part-timers. It also does not consider those marginally attached to the labor force. This includes the so-called “discouraged workers,”—i.e. people who have given up looking for work in the past year because they do not believe they will find a job—and others who are unemployed as a result of work slowdowns or temporary layoffs.

When these groups are included, a much more troublesome picture emerges. As of January 2015, this unemployment rate stands at 11.3 percent. This is the real unemployment rate, and is the lowest it has been since October 2008. It reached an unprecedented high of over 17 percent in 2010. The last and only time the rate went over 11 percent was in early 1994. (See chart 3.)

The civilian labor force participation rate measures the percentage of those among the population who are working or actively seeking work. In measuring this rate, the most important demographic is 25 to 54 year-olds. Younger people often leave the labor force to attend college, and as the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, older folks are retiring at an increasing rate, thus the absence of these groups may not directly reflect economic conditions. This rate reached an all-time high of 84.6 percent in 1999. It fell substantially following 9-11 but began to recover during the later Bush years. Since the end of 2008 however, it has fallen precipitously with little sign of recovery.

Real (inflation adjusted) wages are also a good indication of economic conditions. Real wages have grown consistently year-over-year since the mid-1990s. For the past four years however, real wages have been flat. (See chart 5. Note: the CPI less food and energy was used to correct the wage figures for inflation. That data series removes the volatility associated with food and energy prices and is considered a better measure of underlying inflation.)

These economic statistics present a much worse picture of the economic situation than portrayed by the civilian unemployment rate taken alone. Indeed the same AP-GfK poll indicates that while Obama’s approval ratings have improved slightly, the assessment of overall economic conditions has not.

Only 35 percent of families say they have fully recovered from the recession. An almost equal number, 33 percent, say their situation has improved little or not at all. For small business owners, 46 percent said they have not recovered at all, while only 18 percent responded that their businesses had completely or mostly recovered. Thirty-nine percent of individuals said the job market in their area had not improved, while only 27 percent said it had recovered. Finally, only 38 percent believe the economy will improve in the next 12 months.

That response is unchanged from December. Fifty-nine percent believe the economy will either remain as is or get worse. In December, 61 percent believed this. So, while the media like to harp on the falling unemployment rate and Obama’s modest poll improvements, the actual poll, supported by numerous economic statistics, reveals continued widespread pessimism about the economy.

This article was written by contributors of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.

02/18/15

Beyond Anti-Semitism

By: Alan Caruba
Warning Signs

I read Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent call to European Jews to move to Israel in the wake of the attacks in Paris and in Copenhagen. “Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe,” was Netanyahu’s message to those considering leaving their home nations.

By 2012 about 43% of the world’s Jewish community lived in Israel, making it the country with the largest Jewish population. The bulk of the rest of the world’s Jewish population lives in the United States and the remainder are scattered among other nations.

When it declared its sovereignty in 1948 Israel quickly filled with Jewish immigrants from the surrounding Arab nations that made it clear they were not welcome even if their families had lived there for generations. Now they are extending their hatred to Arab Christians.

These days Israel’s population numbers 7,821,850. For years Israel has been welcoming Jewish immigrants from nations that include Russia, Ethiopia, Ukraine, and France; even some from the U.S. As incidences of anti-Semitism increase in Europe, Netanyahu’s invitation is being answered by more Jews seeking a respite from the hatred they are encountering.

Jews represent less than 0.2% of the world’s population.

In the U.S., unless you live in a major urban center or its suburbs, you are not likely to encounter too many Jews. According to the 2015 World Almanac and Book of Facts® there are 5,439,000 Jews in North America and 13,862,000 worldwide.

So why are we witnessing attacks on Jews? Writing in The Wall Street Journal on January 15, 2015, Ruth R. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, warned that “If we mistakenly imagine that this is ‘about’ Jews, however, we fall into the trap that anti-Semitism sets for us by deflecting attention from perpetrators to victims.”

“The trail of terror leads not to the Jews but from those who organize against them…In every case, Jews are convenient targets standing in for the liberalizing aspects of individual freedom, democratic governance and modernity complete with its anxieties. Anti-Jewish politics aims at the tolerant societies in which Jews flourish.”

Therein lays the danger in President Obama’s resistance to identifying the terrorists and acts of terrorism around the world as fundamentally Islamic. Do all Muslims hate Jews? Probably not, but enough do to support radical Islamism in the millions and their hatred extends to Christians and all other infidels, unbelievers.

One thing is for sure. As reported on June 3, 2014 in The Wall Street Journal, “from 2010 to 2013, the number of jihadist groups worldwide has grown by 58%, to 49 from 31; the number of jihadist fighters has doubled to a high estimate of 100,000; and the number of attacks by al Qaeda affiliates has increased to roughly 1,000 from 392.” Those numbers are increasing.

CNS News.com reported in November 2014 that “The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60% compared to the previous year—from 11,133 to 17,958—with four Sunni Muslim extremists groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities” according to the Global Terrorism Index, a project of the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The failure to defeat the jihadist groups can only lead to the increasing danger of an attack on the U.S. homeland, but it will also ensure that such attacks occur throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East wherever there are large Muslim populations.

On September 29, 2014, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly. “It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. Typically its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one. Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds—no creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world. You know the famous American saying, ‘All politics is local’? For militant Islamists, ‘All politics is global’ because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world.”

When Netanyahu addresses the U.S. Congress next month, his message will surely be the same, but with one difference. He will focus on the insane prospect of an Iran, the source of terrorist acts against the U.S., since the Beirut bombing of our Marine barracks there in 1983.

What Obama does not grasp is that Netanyahu wants the U.S. to cease its insane support for a nuclear Iran. He wants to protect his nation, but what he also wants to do is to save Iranian lives because Iran will not be permitted to reach a point where it can annihilate Israel.

This goes beyond the anti-Semitism that has flourished for millennia and goes straight to the question of whether Israel and the U.S. can survive an inevitable attack and whether the rest of the world can avoid slipping into a new Dark Age rooted in the seventh century.

02/18/15

The Betrayal Papers – Part I of V – Under Obama: The U.S. Captured by the Muslim Brotherhood

The Betrayal Papers will trace the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama administration’s foreign and domestic policies. The five-part series will present a picture of a conspiracy that is manipulating the American government to the benefit of a totalitarian, genocidal movement that seeks to establish a global Islamic State.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an international political, financial, terrorist and movement whose goal is to establish a global Islamic State (Caliphate).
They have and continue to exert tremendous influence of the American government’s foreign and domestic policies under President Barack Hussein Obama.
The violence in the Middle East and across North Africa is a direct consequence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s effective control over American foreign policy in the region.
They operate through various “civic” front groups, as well as through American institutions who take their money as operational funding (Georgetown University, Brookings Institution).

In America, we have a weak and struggling economy, growing public and private debt and millions are un- and underemployed. While a weaponized IRS targets Tea Party groups and other voices of liberty, and military veterans are labeled as “domestic terrorists” by the Department of Homeland Security, the federal government refuses to secure the southern border. Educational policy now includes the teaching Arabic and visits to mosques for schoolchildren.

Internationally, America is in retreat. The Middle East is in ashes, and in the midst of an ongoing genocide replete with daily horrors, the likes which have not been seen for centuries. Former allies have been abandoned and are embittered. Under the present leadership in the White House and State Department, Israel is considered the aggressor and Hamas the oppressed.

In sum, the world is at its most volatile point since the outbreak of World War II.

If you think that this is a result of something other than an “incompetent,” “stupid,” or “clueless” President, words regularly used by those who sense something is wrong but, can’t quite bring themselves to own up to the ugly truth, you’re not alone.

Millions of Americans are realizing that the Obama administration is not merely “misguided.” It is actually and consciously anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and broadly anti-Western. Yet , the American public does not yet fully appreciate why and how the administration always finds itself square against everything this country is based on – religious freedom, capitalism, and justice under law.

This series of articles will explain the force and mechanics behind Obama’s anti-American global agenda: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon: The Root of Today’s Islamic Evil

Husseini speaking with Hitler in 1941

Founded in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood (aka, the Society of Muslim Brothers, or Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon in Arabic) is an international movement (some would argue an international conspiracy) that seeks to establish a worldwide Islamic State (or Caliphate). When it was created in the late 1920s, the Brotherhood was a contemporary of the Nazi Party of Germany. Indeed, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, Amin al-Husseini, is considered by some as the man who catalyzed the Holocaust; for it was only after Husseini visited Hitler in Berlin in 1941 that the systematic extermination of Jews and other minorities began with industrial efficiency.

After the war, despite the insistence by many wartime leaders (Churchill included) that he be brought to justice, Husseini escaped to the Middle East. He lived there until his death in the 1970s, serving as a mentor to a young Yasser Arafat. Husseini and the Nazi Party are the connection points between the Holocaust and today’s Middle Eastern genocide.

The Allies conscious failure to arrest and prosecute Husseini haunts us today.

A Terror Hedge against Stalin and Soviet Russia

At the beginning of the Cold War, working with former Nazis, the American CIA began to court the Muslim Brotherhood as an ally against Soviet Russia. This calculus may have made sense when facing down Josef Stalin, a totalitarian tyrant hell-bent on world domination, but it has proved a costly strategy in the long run.

In the years and decades that followed World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved into a modern day Nazi International, not unlike the old Comintern (Communist International). It has a vast network of financial and business interests across the world; it has agents, supporters, and apologists within western governments; and it has a support network of “civic” organizations in the West.

These all serve as a cover for its darker and insatiably violent ambitions.

For despite all their intrigue and political gamesmanship, the Muslim Brotherhood is not strictly a political movement, nor a financial cabal. It’s also the mothership of virtually all Islamic terrorist groups operating in the world today, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, the Taliban, Boko Haram, and many more. Such groups, all children of the Muslim Brotherhood’s fanatical Islamic ideology, are today ethnically cleansing countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Nigeria of all traces of Christianity. No less than the President of Egypt, Muslim Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a devout Muslim, has said as much.

Considering how the Muslim Brotherhood and their terrorist pawns treat fellow Muslims in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Iraq, butchering them by the bushel including women and children, it should come as no surprise that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have declared the them a “terrorist” organization.

It should also come as no surprise that the United Arab Emirates has designated Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the United States “terrorist” entities. In November, the UAE effectively declared that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim-American Society (MAS) were no different than Al Qaeda. Why? It’s because they share a common origin in the Muslim Brotherhood. One could add to this list of domestic terrorist collaborators and enablers the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the Muslim Students Association (MSA).

A New HQ in America

Equally alarmingly, all-American institutions such as Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution have accepted so much money from the Muslim Brotherhood government in Qatar, that their political positions are virtually indistinguishable from the Muslim Brotherhood’s domestic front groups!

Yet, the United States government does not see these organizations and their employees as the enemy, as apologists for the worst kinds of barbarity. In fact, the highest profile people from these organizations advise the Obama administration, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Security Council. In January, the Department of State actually welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood to a meeting, and shortly thereafter Egypt exploded in jihadi violence. This is no magical coincidence.

To the detriment of our safety and well-being, the domestic Muslim Brotherhood front groups help dictate counterterrorism policies. It is their influence which leads to the farcical idea, recently expressed by Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, that the Crusades have something to do with ISIS and the mass murder of innocents in the Middle East today.

These front groups shape our foreign policy, which since the Arab Spring and continuing to this day is on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood.

So-called “moderate Muslims” employed at these front groups have made the country of Qatar, a totalitarian sharia-based society, and an “ATM for terrorists,” the closest ally of the United States under Obama’s Presidency. With enthusiasm from Obama and Eric Holder, they have us emptying Guantanamo Bay of the most vicious killers and sending them to Qatar, with only the vaguest of security assurances.

The remaining four articles will explore the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on American policy, both foreign and domestic (including in Common Core, Obama’s position on illegal immigration and amnesty, and the hostility of the administration toward police officers). The exposé will also detail the operatives in the government who work to advance the Muslim Brotherhood’s ambitions for a worldwide Caliphate. And it will put into context the mysterious influence that George Soros and Valerie Jarrett have over Barack Hussein Obama, his administration, and the policies that affect every American.

The Betrayal Papers is a collaborative effort by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which includes: Andrea Shea King, Dr. Ashraf Ramelah, Benjamin Smith, Brent Parrish, Charles Ortel, William Palumbo, Denise Simon, Dick Manasseri, Gary Kubiak, Gates of Vienna, IQ al Rassooli, Jeff Bayard, Leslie Burt, Marcus Kohan, Mary Fanning, General Paul E. Vallely, Regina Thomson, Scott Smith, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, Colonel Thomas Snodgrass, Trever Loudon, Wallace Bruschweiler, and William Palumbo.