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February 2018

Release the FISA Documents The public deserves to see the full record on the FBI wiretap request.

President Trump Friday refused to declassify the Democratic memo on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), sending it back for negotiation with the Justice Department over intelligence sources and methods. This intelligence memo feud has become a frustrating political back and forth that needs to be trumped with more transparency.

Mr. Trump claimed in a tweet on Saturday that Democrats laid a trap with their 10-page memo, deliberately adding classified material that they knew “would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency.” That may be true, but it worked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer quickly sent out a statement, “what is he hiding?”

Our sources say the Democratic memo—six pages longer than the GOP version released a week ago—has three main themes. The first argues for the credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier that the FBI used as the bulk of its justification for a wiretap on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The second is that the FBI had good reason to surveil Mr. Page, and third is that the GOP memo is partisan.

None of this sounds like earth-shattering news since Democrats and their media echo chamber have been saying it for days. But keeping the memo classified plays into the Democratic narrative because the public can’t see the evidence behind their public claims. Let’s see what they’ve got.

The better remedy for these competing claims is to declassify all of the documents that House Intelligence Committee Members and staff used to compile the memos. This includes the full FBI application for a wiretap order from the FISA court—the original application and the three extensions. This would let the public see the full record and judge who is closer to the truth.

The Iran-Israel War Flares Up The fight is over a Qods Force presence on the Syria-Israel border. How will the U.S. respond? By Tony Badran and Jonathan Schanzer

The conflict between Israel and Iran may be heating up after a half-decade simmer. On Friday night Iran dispatched a drone from Syria that penetrated Israeli airspace in the Golan Heights. Israel destroyed it with an Apache helicopter. Then on Saturday Israel sent eight F-16s across the border to strike the airfield in the Homs governorate, called the T-4 base, where the drone originated, as well as a handful of other Iranian targets. Although the mission was a success, one F-16 was shot down by Syrian antiaircraft fire—though the pilot made it back to Israel, where he and his navigator ejected successfully.

This was the most significant clash to date between Israel and the so-called Axis of Resistance—Iran, Syria’s Assad regime and Hezbollah—since Iran began deploying soldiers and proxies to Syria six years ago. Israel insists its response was limited and its intent is to contain this conflagration. Its critics worry that the skirmish could explode into one of the worst wars the Middle East has ever seen.

The Iranians have been exploiting the chaos of the Syrian civil war to build up military assets there that target Israel, all the while sending advanced weaponry to Lebanon by way of Damascus, also under the fog of war. The Israelis have been vigilant; they have destroyed some of this hardware in Syria with one-off strikes. In December they struck an Iranian base southwest of Damascus, some 30 miles from the Golan Heights. But they had never entered Syria with the kind of overwhelming force seen on Saturday morning.

What prompted this level of response is still unclear. Israeli military officials won’t say whether the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle was armed. It would be a surprise, though, if Israel’s reprisal was prompted by an unarmed UAV. Indeed, this was not the first drone incursion into the Golan Heights. Last year, Israel’s missile defenses intercepted several Iranian-built drones, operated by Hezbollah, attempting to enter Israeli airspace from Syria.

The Israel Defense Forces had warned that the T-4 base was crawling with fighters from Iran’s Qods Force, an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had paid multiple visits to Moscow hoping to convince President Vladimir Putin to curb the threatening activities of Iran and its proxies. Mr. Putin has established a formidable presence in Syria since 2015, when his forces entered the country ostensibly to combat Islamic State.

The Israelis took a significant risk Saturday of rankling the Russians, especially since they reportedly did not warn Moscow of the attack in advance. Russian personnel sometimes embed with Syrian air-defense units and are sometimes present at the T-4 base. Thus the strike might have been intended as a message to the Russians as much as to the Iranian axis.

Whether Russia had advance knowledge of the Iranian drone operation isn’t clear. Nor do we know whether Russia was involved in unleashing the Syrian surface-to-air missiles that downed the Israeli F-16. What we do know is that after many Israeli airstrikes in Syria over many months, this was the first time Syrian antiaircraft weapons managed to hit a target. That points toward Russian involvement. CONTINUE AT SITE

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Printing prosthetic arms for amputees. Israel’s Stratasys is teaming up with multinational 3D software company Dassault Systèmes and robotics innovator Easton LaChappelle to provide amputees with affordable, custom-made, battery-powered prosthetic limbs, created using 3D scanners for printing anywhere in the world.
http://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3731258,00.html

British girl’s leg is saved. I reported previously (7th Jan) that the only chance Kyra Warrell, of Brighton, UK had of saving her leg from amputation, was for surgery at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center by visiting US (Israeli-born) surgeon Dr Dror Paley. Many Israelis helped Kyra’s family and the operation was a success.
https://www.jta.org/2018/02/06/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/british-girl-6-undergoes-special-surgery-in-israel-to-keep-her-leg/amp

Israel marks World Cancer Day. This video of five major Israeli cancer detection and treatments was released to mark World Cancer Day on 4th Feb. They are Velcade for multiple myeloma; IceCure; RAD51 gene research; bone marrow transplants for leukemia; and Doxil’s delivery direct to the tumor.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/R7FgJHMDc3w?rel=0

On the trail of the malaria virus. I reported previously (Mar 2015) that Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists made progress countering the way the malaria virus hides its genes from the immune system. Now Weizmann Institute scientists have disabled the gene that fools the immune system into attacking decoy cells.
http://nocamels.com/2018/01/israeli-scientists-breakthrough-malaria/

NHS target for Israeli digital health tech startups. British Jewish philanthropist David Dangoor is launching the UK Israel Dangoor Health Initiative. This new accelerator/hub will match a pipeline of Israeli digital-health startups with Britain’s NHS. http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/philanthropist-david-dangoor-well-pipe-israeli-health-tech-directly-into-the-nhs/

Doctors remove battery from infant’s stomach. 10-month-old Ram Jannam from the Druze/Arab town of Maghar, broke his toy telephone and swallowed the battery. Doctors at Israel’s Padeh-Poriya Medical Center in Tiberias, extracted the battery endoscopically under anesthesia. Ram is now back home and doing well.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/israeli-doctors-remove-battery-from-10-months-old-babys-stomach/2018/02/06/

Israeli innovations saving lives. Nice short video featuring some of the many Israeli life-saving and life-enhancing medical innovations. https://www.youtube.com/embed/7wMHmKHDiJI?rel=0

GLAZOV GANG: FBI LEADERS AIDING AND ABETTING TERRORISTS

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/02/11/glazov-gang-fbi-leaders-aiding-and-abetting-terrorists/

This new edition of The Glazov Gang features John Guandolo, a former FBI agent, combat veteran Marine, and now the president of Understanding the Threat.

John focused on FBI Leaders Aiding and Abetting Terrorists,revealing how the FBI praised a Jihadi Imam for teaching peace — when he is clearly doing the opposite.

Don’t miss it!

Hillary Clinton’s Fingerprints Are All Over The FBI’s Investigation Into Trump’s Russia Ties Her campaign’s is linked to at least three separate pieces of information fed to the FBI, including the dossier the FBI used as a pretext to spy on a Trump campaign associate.By Rachel Stoltzfoos

A significant part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s basis for investigating the Trump campaign’s Russia ties is looking more and more like a political hit job carried out by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her campaign’s fingerprints are on at least three separate pieces of information fed to the FBI, including the Christopher Steele dossier Republicans say formed the basis of a secret warrant obtained to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

A former State Department official confirmed on the record Thursday that Clinton associates were funneling information to Steele as he was compiling a dossier commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign and DNC. That’s on top of the recent revelation that a top Department of Justice official fed the FBI information compiled by his wife, who was working for the firm Clinton and the DNC were paying to dig up dirt on Trump, Fusion GPS.

The dossier was quoted “extensively” in the FBI’s application to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, according to a memo released by Republicans on the House intelligence committee. In a January letter to the FBI made public this week, two Senate Republicans also said Steele’s information formed a “significant portion” of the warrant application.

“It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility,” Sens. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham wrote in the letter referring Steele to the FBI for a criminal investigation.

Taken together, here’s what we know so far about the extent of Clinton’s involvement in the FBI’s case.

Silicon Valley’s Tax-Avoiding, Job-Killing, Soul-Sucking Machine Scott Galloway

Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. We love our nifty phones and just-a-click-away services, but these behemoths enjoy unfettered economic domination and hoard riches on a scale not seen since the monopolies of the gilded age. The only logical conclusion? We must bust up big tech.

I’ve benefited enormously from big tech. Prophet, the consulting firm I cofounded in 1992, helped companies navigate a new landscape being reshaped by Google. Red Envelope, the upscale e-commerce company I cofounded in 1997, never would have made it out of the crib if Amazon hadn’t ignited the market’s interest in e-commerce. More recently, L2, which I founded in 2010, was born from the mobile and social waves as companies needed a way to benchmark their performance on new platforms.

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The benefits of big tech have accrued for me on another level as well. In my investment portfolio, the appreciation of Amazon and Apple stock restored economic security to my household after being run over in the Great Recession. Finally, Amazon is now the largest recruiter of students from the brand-strategy and digital-marketing courses I teach at NYU Stern School of Business. These firms have been great partners, clients, investments, and recruiters. And the sum of two decades of experience with, and study of, these companies leads me to a singular conclusion: It’s time to break up big tech.

Over the past decade, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google—or, as I call them, “the Four”—have aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history. Together, they have a market capitalization of $2.8 trillion (the GDP of France), a staggering 24 percent share of the S&P 500 Top 50, close to the value of every stock traded on the Nasdaq in 2001.

How big are they? Consider that Amazon, with a market cap of $591 billion, is worth more to the stock market than Walmart, Costco, T. J. Maxx, Target, Ross, Best Buy, Ulta, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Saks/Lord & Taylor, Dillard’s, JCPenney, and Sears combined.

Part 8: From Magnitsky to Steele to Total Information War Diana West

Now for the pivot.

Recall that just as Fusion GPS was working on behalf of the DNC and Hillary campaign in 2016, it was also working on behalf of a law firm defending the Prevezon case, a money-laundering case the US government brought against Russian national Dennis Katsyv. Katsyv’s Russian lawyer was Natalia Veselnitskaya. Yes, that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the one who met with Don Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. (Some thoughts on Veselnitskaya’s little-noticed Senate testimony here.)

The Prevezon case was based on evidence provided by ex-American Bill Browder, a British citizen who became a billionaire in Russia. This evidence would go largely “unvetted,” as we say post-“dossier.” In his deposition, the primary US investigator on the case admitted as much. So, too, did the the author of a Council of Europe special report on the death of Browder’s accountant, Sergei Magnitsky. The connection here is that Magnitsky’s miserable death in a Russian prison is the basis of Browder’s campaign to sanction “complicit” Russians, which is a basis of the Prevezon law suit. Hence, the defense team effort, assisted by Fusion GPS research, to shred Browder’s evidence.

It is an odd feature of our caricature world that even to question Browder’s Magnitsky story is to “support Putin.” There is simply no other conceivable position or consideration in the public square, as administered by the Left and kindred Right. Thus, Fusion GPS, its key credentials for functioning in that public square tarnished by its anti-Browder/”pro-Putin” research, issued a statement negating the implications of that research to profess institutional support for Browder. Describing the firm’s role as collecting facts, Fusion GPS stated: “Occasionally, the facts turn out to be helpful to people we deplore, like Vladimir Putin, or undermine people for whom we have considerable sympathy, like William Browder.”

This was a brief but fascinating insight into Fusion GPS’s confessional mindset. The firm may well have uncovered evidence undermining the veracity of the Browder story, calling into gravest question his consequential international campaign, but evidence has no bearing on Fusion GPS’s “considerable sympathy” for the man. Professing anything less is to stray from the orthodoxy, and deviations will not be tolerated. This reminds me of … a lot of things, including the sundering of facts from conclusions historically associated with ideological, especially communist, zealotry. Note Fusion GPS resident Russia-expert Nellie Ohr and her apologetics on the Ukraine Terror Famine, and other “agonizing paradoxes” of Stalin’s communist dictatorship.

Part 7: A Red Thread Through Foggy Bottom by: Diana West

Last week, Sens. Grassley and Graham sent out a “batch of letters” listing 12 questions for (1) DNC Chair Tom Perez (c/o Perkins Coie’s Marc E. Elias); (2) Hillary for America campaign chairman Robby Mook (c/o Marc Elias); (3) former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz; (4) former DNC Chair Donna Brazile; (5) Hillary for America chairman John Podesta (c/o Marc Elias); (6) chief strategist Hillary for America Joel Benenson.

These are the top officials whose organizations, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America, bought and paid for the Trump-Russia “dossier,” brokered from Kremlin sources by retired MI6 agent Christopher Steele, under contract to GPS Fusion, and, to an unclear extent, the FBI.

What the senators seem be asking, in a nutshell, is whether these DNC/Hillary officials were charter members of the anti-Trump “coup.” Hard to imagine much in the way of voluntary answers. The questions, though, crack a little light on the direction of their investigation.

Question No. 12 is an eye-opener. It lists 40 people and entities from whom the senators seek dossier-client-communications “to, from, copying, or relating to.”

These include the Fusion GPS team; Christopher Steele and British associates; one genuine “Putin-linked” Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, and his British lawyer, Paul M. Hauser; two old Clinton circle intimates, “hatchet man” Sidney Blumenthal and “shady” Cody Shearer, who, we have recently learned, prepared a second anti-Trump report, which Steele also passed to the FBI; and, of course, the DOJ/FBI group.

The senators also want to see dossier-client communications with former DCIA and Gus-Hall-voter John Brennan, heretofore clinging to the outer, darker edges of the “coup” web; also Daniel J. Jones, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer for Senator Feinstein. Ditto for whether the DNC/Hillary officials were communicating about the Steele “dossier” with State Department officials Jon Winer, Kathaleen Kavalec, Victoria Nuland.

What a very wide web of subversion Question No. 12 pencils in! Whether all of these people participated in the Dossier Conspiracy remains to be seen. However, ties already criss-cross the web in the case of Clinton associates Blumenthal, Shearer and State Department official Jonathan Winer.

Why Are European Governments So Terrified of ‘Fake News’? by Judith Bergman

When Swedish authorities representing a Swedish left-wing government and media announce a project to prevent “fake news” from “decisively influencing” the 2018 elections, this ought to set off loud alarm bells among Swedes. Who determines what constitutes “fake news” anyway? Is it not the very essence of “fake news” when a media outlet refuses to report mass sexual assaults, because the perpetrators happen to be foreigners from third world countries?

A British Cabinet Office spokesperson told Sky News: “The Government is committed to tackling false information and the Government Communications Service plays a crucial role in this”. Perhaps their “rapid response fake news unit” should begin with Theresa May herself, who falsely and against all factual evidence continues to claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that ISIS is not Islamic.

Meanwhile, European citizens continue to face costly legal prosecution for refusing to accept the fake news about Islam propagated by people such as Theresa May.

“I also thought that Islam was just a normal religion, but then I read the Koran and became shocked by the hatred that exists there, the misogyny… The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology, which means dictatorship. So, I believe that our democratic system is in danger… I hate no people. What I hate is ideology, Islam. One can criticize fascism or Nazism, but why not Islam? Why should Islam have any protection status?” — Denny, on trial in Sweden for “incitement to hatred” for calling Islam “a fascist ideology” on Facebook. If found guilty, he faces up to two years in prison.

The Swedish government’s innovation agency, Vinnova, is financing a project led by the combined forces of Swedish mainstream media to, in the words of Vinnova, “prevent fake news and unfounded statements from spreading and playing a decisive role in the Swedish elections in 2018”. The next elections, which take place every four years, are scheduled to take place on September 9, 2018. The Swedish media giants involved in the project consist of Swedish State Television, Swedish State Radio, Bonnier, Schibsted Sverige, and NTM. Together, these media companies effectively own Swedish mainstream media in the form of newspapers, online news outlets, and state and private television and radio. The Swedish state is financing the technical aspects of the project with 1.9 million Swedish kroner ($240,000), while the Swedish mainstream media is financing the remaining project costs themselves. The “fake news” project was originally launched in October 2017.

Iran: Speaking Swedish, Acting North Korean by Amir Taheri

For the past decade, February, part of which coincides with the month of Bahman on the Iranian calendar, has been marked by febrile political activities in Iran under the Khomeinist regime. February 1 marks the anniversary of the late ayatollah’s return to Tehran after 16 years in exile. And February 11, regarded as the crescendo of the Iranian Revolution, marks the day that Shapour Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister to be named by the Shah, went into hiding, leaving a vacuum quickly filled by Khomeini’s supporters visibly surprised by the ease with which they had won power.

There were no revolutionary battles, no dramatic ups-and-downs, and, on a personal level, no opportunity for heroic shenanigans.

The Khomeinist revolution took around four months to achieve victory, not long enough to allow a lot of people to conjure a heroic biography for themselves.

Just a year before the “final victory” on 11 February some of the mullahs who emerged as grandees of the revolution, among them Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati who now heads the all-powerful Council of Guardians of the Islamic Constitution, were kissing the Shah’s hands during audiences for clerics. Other grandees of the revolution like Hojat al-Islam Morteza Motahari were on Empress Farah’s payroll as members of the “philosophical” boutique she had set up as solace from boredom.

The revolution had not lasted long enough to establish its ideological colors.