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Cutting Abbas down to size :Ruthie Blum

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

On Thursday, Bloomberg quoted a Palestinian Authority official saying that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is willing to forgo his usual preconditions for negotiations with Israel — such as a freeze on all settlement construction — in order to give the administration in Washington “a chance to deliver.”

In addition, according to the report, Mohammad Mustafa, Abbas’ senior economic adviser and former deputy prime minister said that the Palestinian leader will “tone down his campaign to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes and to rally condemnation of the Jewish state at the United Nations.”

This claim came mere days after Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Association and Olympic committee, declared in an interview on Israel’s Channel 2 that the Western Wall in Jerusalem “must be under Israeli sovereignty, but the Temple Mount is ours.”

Rajoub proceeded to praise U.S. President Donald Trump for his “clear intentions for an ultimate deal to end the suffering of both peoples.”

Neither Mustafa nor Rajoub was telling the truth, of course. Rajoub even issued a firm denial in Arabic the day after the interview. But the relatively mild rhetoric used by each was highly significant, as it was the direct result of a tongue-lashing that Trump gave Abbas less than three weeks ago in Bethlehem, for being deceitful about his role in incitement to violence.

Buoyed by the warmth with which he had been greeted at the White House on May 3, and familiar with the previous American administration’s continual appeasement, Abbas was stunned by the reprimand.

Although Trump should have been informed by his advisers that Abbas is and always has been a bald-faced liar — professing to seek statehood and peace, while funding and glorifying terrorists and infusing hatred for Israel and the Jews into the PA education system and media — he was apparently taken aback when shown very recent concrete examples.

Trump’s surprise at something so self-evident was disconcerting, particularly in light of his faith in his ability to facilitate a deal between Israel and the PA, and his backtracking on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His response to being manipulated by the aging despot, however, was heartening.

In a global context, Trump’s dressing down of Abbas constituted a welcome shift in the attitude of the administration in Washington to its place among nations. One shudders to remember, for instance, that former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry allowed Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to browbeat him shamelessly and with impunity during the negotiations that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers signed in July 2015.

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Paul Monk :Soviet Moles in Australia Really long and really interesting

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

The moles who operated in ASIO are living in quiet retirement, but the agency’s official historians aren’t allowed to tell us their names. As long as ASIO insists on protecting its ‘reputation’ from the truth it will anger and disconcert those whose trust it most needs.

The January-February edition of Quadrant carried a substantial review of the third volume of the official history of ASIO: The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO 1975–1989, by John Blaxland and Rhys Crawley. The reviewer, Harold Callaghan, was highly critical of the book and dismissed “official history” as an oxymoron. It would be unusual for the magazine to run two reviews of the same book and for that reason the following is offered not as a review of the third volume or of the history as a whole, but as a reflection on the critical issue of Soviet penetration of ASIO and the implications for our national security of this hostile penetration of our security intelligence body during the Cold War.

The official history should, in the nature of the case, have had the matter of Soviet penetration of the Australian intelligence services as one of its central preoccupations. It has failed the Australian public in that regard and it is important that this fact be registered as clearly as possible, now that all three volumes have been published and the official exercise finished. The final volume confesses that ASIO was in fact penetrated. It fails, however, to disclose anything of significance about the nature, extent or consequences of the penetration. This is disturbing. At the very least, the citizenry of this country deserve and should demand a clear account of the extent of the penetration and why it took so very long to discover it. As it is, the history remains lame and does a grave disservice to ASIO veterans by implying that treason does not matter and will go unpunished. Why, then, have an ASIO at all?

The three-volume official history had to cover and did cover an enormous amount of territory. Soviet penetration was only one of many things with which the small team of historians at the Australian National University were required to deal. The lead historian on the project, David Horner, before the project got under way, remarked that “there is much sucking of teeth at ASIO when you raise the question of penetration and we may not have a lot of room for addressing it”. This has been borne out in the published volumes—the whole problem of counter-intelligence and counter-espionage is poorly handled and the question of hostile penetration is not addressed adequately or honestly. The fault here lies with ASIO itself, which censored the official history and withheld the materials that matter most.

We need to be clear here. Hostile penetration of one’s security intelligence service vitiates both it and the other government functions it is intended to protect. Prevention of such penetration must, therefore, always be its highest priority. This subject is thus more intrinsically important than any other aspect of the official history. Complacency, indifference and secrecy about it make a mockery of our having a security intelligence service at all. Secrecy about what has happened does nothing to foil our enemies. It simply misleads the tax-paying public. This should be inadmissible, but it is what has happened. After Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, discussion of intelligence and security needs to be based on a clear premise: if these things are necessary at all, then hostile penetration of the agencies charged with such work must be prevented. This requires a highly professional counter-intelligence function. We now know that, throughout the Cold War, ASIO failed abysmally in this regard. We should not allow it to fail so badly again in the twenty-first century.

ASIO was formed, to begin with, because it was discovered in the 1940s that Canberra had been deeply penetrated by Soviet moles and spies. Those moles were not working at the margins of Australian society or confined to elements of the trade union movement. They were operating in the offices of the Minister for External Affairs (H.V. Evatt), the Secretary for External Affairs (John Burton) and on the staff of Paul Hasluck (in External Affairs and at the United Nations). The late Desmond Ball, doyen of Australian scholars on intelligence matters, went so far as to declare in his last years that he believed both Evatt and Burton had been knowing collaborators in this espionage in the 1940s. Both were resistant to the establishment of ASIO and to any vetting of External Affairs staff. Evatt notoriously remarked in the House of Representatives, in the mid-1950s, that there were no Soviet spies in Australia. He had asked the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and been reassured of this, he told his astounded fellow parliamentarians.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Hezbollah in the Bronx The feds say the Iran-backed militia recruited agents in the U.S.

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

Federal prosecutors have charged two U.S. citizens with providing material support to Hezbollah and helping the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group prepare potential attacks in America and Panama. The charges, announced last Thursday after the men were arrested June 1, show that Iran’s terror proxies roam far beyond the Middle East.

The FBI and New York Police Department carried out the investigation, which resulted in a raft of terror-related charges for naturalized citizens Ali Kourani of the Bronx and Samer el Debek of Dearborn, Mich. Prosecutors say Hezbollah recruited the men as “operatives,” provided them with “military-style training,” then gave them a variety of ominous tasks.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say the 32-year-old Mr. Kourani conducted “pre-operational surveillance” of military and law-enforcement sites around New York as well as Kennedy Airport. The feds allege that Mr. Debek, age 37, staked out targets in Panama that included the American and Israeli embassies as well as the Panama Canal. Attorneys for the two men did not respond to media inquiries.

Mr. Debek’s alleged Panamanian operations are consistent with Hezbollah’s presence across Latin America that goes back to the bombings of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in 1992 and 1994 respectively, killing more than 100 people.

In 2011 U.S. investigators foiled a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador at a Washington restaurant, leading to a guilty plea by the would-be assassin. Hezbollah was also behind a 2012 bus bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists and their local bus driver.

Iran bankrolls Hezbollah to the tune of $200 million annually and provides most of the 80,000 missiles the group points at Israel. The latest allegations are a reminder that the Tehran regime still deserves its reputation as the world’s leading state sponsor of terror.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Trump Budget Still Shortchanges The Military After the stagnant ’70s, Presidents Carter and Reagan boosted spending by double digits annually. By Mac Thornberry

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

Mr. Thornberry, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Ask anyone who served in the U.S. military in the late 1970s, and he will tell you it was a miserable time. Morale was low. Training was deficient. Weapons and equipment didn’t work. Good people left the armed services in droves. At the same time the world was growing more dangerous, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and multiple nations falling to communism.

A decade later the situation had turned around. How did America go from the hollow military of the 1970s to the strength that helped drive the Soviet Union out of existence? Are there lessons we could apply today?

A few months ago the vice chiefs from each branch of the military appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, which I lead. Their testimony certainly got my attention. Only three of the Army’s 58 Brigade Combat Teams are “ready to fight tonight.” More than half the Navy’s airplanes cannot fly because they are awaiting maintenance and spare parts. The Air Force is short 1,500 pilots and 3,000 mechanics, and its fleet is older and smaller than ever. All that is alarming enough, but what surprised me most was testimony that pilots today get fewer training hours in the cockpit than during the dire days of the 1970s.

How did this happen? Since 2010 the defense budget has been cut by more than 20%, but the world has not become 20% safer. To get planes, ships and equipment ready to deploy to the Middle East or elsewhere, the military has had to take parts off other planes, ships and units. This cannibalization has diminished American readiness. The military is not prepared to carry out all the missions it may be asked to do in time of war.

What is the answer? Rebuilding the military after the 1970s took serious and sustained effort. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Carter administration raised defense spending by 12% in 1979 and 15% in 1980.

Ronald Reagan added even more: 17% in 1981 and 18% in 1982. After that the rate of growth slowed a bit, but in all there were five straight years of double-digit increases followed by three more of nearly 10%. At that point the defense budget was about 6% of America’s gross domestic product. Today it is only 3.1%.

Repairing the damage done to the military in our time will require a similar sort of response. It is wrong to send brave men and women out on missions for which they are not fully prepared or without the best equipment the nation can produce. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Comey Closes the Case—Almost The president’s insistence on disputing the former director’s testimony was a needless complication. By Peter J. Wallison

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

Now we know, thanks to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week, that President Trump was not a target of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

That’s by far the most important thing Mr. Comey said. For a year, the FBI has been looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and apparently there was not enough evidence to make Mr. Trump a target. That news should put to rest—as the president had hoped—an allegation that, if true, would undoubtedly have caused even Republicans in Congress to consider impeachment.

But Mr. Comey’s testimony has put another question on the table: whether the president attempted to obstruct justice. According to Mr. Comey, he met with Mr. Trump privately in the Oval Office while the FBI was investigating former national security adviser Mike Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this thing go,” Mr. Comey says the president told him. The former FBI chief testified that the president also asked him for “loyalty.” Mr. Trump later fired Mr. Comey, possibly because he had not shown it.

As this national obsession continues, there will be heated discussions about whether Mr. Trump’s statements and actions, and the surrounding circumstances, were an effort to obstruct justice. The answer: Given what we know, there is very little chance Special Counsel Robert Mueller will bring an obstruction charge.

For one thing, the facts are ambiguous. Yes, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to abandon the investigation of Mr. Flynn, but he didn’t order it—something that, as president, he had the authority to do. As Mr. Comey remembered the president’s request, it was couched as a wish: “I hope you can see your way clear . . .” Similarly, the president’s desire for loyalty is not unusual. All presidents expect loyalty from those in their administrations. The executive branch cannot function if subordinates are not loyal to the president. Leaks are evidence of this.

In addition, Mr. Comey reported Mr. Trump said several things that are inconsistent with an intent to disrupt the investigation generally. The most serious part of the inquiry relates to the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians—clearly an impeachable offense if it occurred with Mr. Trump’s knowledge or direction. Mr. Comey reports Mr. Trump as saying “if there were some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out.” That clearly indicates Mr. Trump was not trying to keep the FBI from investigating the Russia collusion issue.

These factual ambiguities alone make the case for obstruction of justice far less than clear-cut. Legal and political considerations militate in the same direction.

There is a strong argument that, as a matter of law, the president cannot be criminally guilty of obstructing justice if he simply orders the FBI director not to investigate someone. All appointed officials are the president’s subordinates, and he is responsible for, and has authority over, their actions. CONTINUE AT SITE

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New Report Claims More Comey-Lynch Meetings Will Be Revealed “What’s obstruction for the goose is obstruction for the gander.” By Jack Davis

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

A new allegation has surfaced that there is more to the connection between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey than has so far surfaced.http://www.westernjournalism.com/new-report-claims-comey-lynch-meetings-will-revealed/

John Solomon, a reporter with Circa, appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Friday night and offered a prediction of more revelations to come concerning Comey and Lynch.

“I think there is probably more interest that should be focused on what happened between James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch after what we heard (in Comey’s testimony),” Solomon said.“And I am hearing tonight that Comey may have had other meetings with Lynch that are going to come to light in the next few weeks,” he added.

During his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Lynch gave him a “queasy feeling” when she instructed him which words to use in discussing the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

“At one point, the attorney general had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it amatter, which confused me and concerned me,” he said.

Lynch’s request “concerned me because that language tracked with how the campaign was talking about how the FBI was doing its work,” Comey said.

“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but it gave the impression that the attorney general was trying to align how we describe our work with the Clinton campaign,” he added. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude, ‘I have to step away from the department if we’re to close this case credibly.’”

The final blow came when former President Bill Clinton had a surreptitious meeting with Lynch on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport, Comey said.

One analyst said Lynch’s actions represented a “huge mistake” and “a partisan intrusion that must be investigated.”

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Bush-Era AG: Lynch Made FBI ‘An Arm Of The Clinton Campaign’ “That is a betrayal …” By Jack Davis

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

A former attorney general under President George W. Bush said Friday that ex-Attorney General Loretta Lynch made the Department of Justice “an arm of the Clinton campaign” in her directives to then-FBI Director James Comey about how to characterize the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server while was secretary of state.http://www.westernjournalism.com/bush-era-ag-lynch-made-fbi-arm-clinton-campaign/

During his testimony Thursday to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Lynch ordered him to call the probe a “matter” instead of an investigation.

Michael Mukasey, who was attorney general form 2007-2009, said that action amounted to collusion between the Obama-era Justice Department and the Clinton campaign.“What makes it egregious is the fact — and I think it’s obvious that it is a fact — that the attorney general of the United States was adjusting the way the department talked about its business so as to coincide with the way the Clinton campaign talked about that business,” Mukasey said in an interview with Newsmax.“In other words, it made the Department of Justice essentially an arm of the Clinton campaign,” he said.

“That is a betrayal of the department and of its independence to illustrate that clearly that the attorney general was essentially in the tank for Secretary Clinton.”

During his testimony, Comey he got a “queasy feeling” when told how he should refer to the probe.

“The Clinton campaign, at the time, was using all kind of euphemisms — security review, matters, things like that — for what was going on. We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to have to testify and talk publicly about. And I wanted to know, was she going to authorize us to confirm we had an investigation?” he said.

“And she said, ‘Yes, but don’t call it that, call it a matter.’ And I said, ‘Why would I do that?’”

“And she said, just call it a matter,” Comey said. “And so that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning.”

Other analysts agreed with Mukasey that the collusion between the FBI and the Clinton campaign is troubling.

“In Comey’s testimony Thursday, he basically admitted to colluding with Obama’s justice department to ensure that justice was obstructed in the Hillary Clinton email investigation,” wrote Robert Carbery on InvestmentWatch Blog.

“We all know justice was not served. Comey essentially laid out the case for why she should be indicted during that July presser, only to finish by saying no prosecutor in their right mind would seek an indictment. It pays to be the Clintons,” he wrote.

Joe Borelli, writing for The Washington Times, said the revelations about Lynch were significant.

“The most significant takeaways from the entire hearing did not, in fact, involve alleged inappropriate conduct by the Trump administration, but rather by the Obama Justice Department,” he wrote.

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

TV film on migrant Muslims’ hate of Europe’s Jews axed Bojan Pancevski

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

European broadcasters have been accused of censorship after refusing to air a documentary highlighting anti-semitism in Muslim migrant communities.

The film, Chosen and Excluded — The Hate for Jews in Europe, depicts the plight of Jewish people suffering violence at the hands of their Muslim neighbours in cities such as Paris.

The Franco-German broadcaster Arte and WDR, a German public broadcaster, shelved the film, saying it had failed to offer a “multi-perspective” approach and lacked reporting from European countries.

This was in defiance of experts who had been commissioned to evaluate the film and who praised it, calling for its release. Germany’s highest Jewish body also wanted it aired.

Joachim Schroeder, the co-director of the film, said television chiefs had told him the subject of anti-semitism in migrant communities was “very sensitive ” and the documentary had to be “balanced” in presenting the problems facing all minorities.

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Islamization of Europe: Erdogan’s New Muslim Political Network by Yves Mamou

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

What is notable is that France’s new Muslim party, the Equality and Justice Party (PEJ), is an element of a network of political parties built by Turkey’s President Erdogan and AKP to influence each country of Europe, and to influence Europe through its Muslim population.

What is their program? The classic one for an Islamic party: abolishing the founding secularist law of 1905, which established the separation of church and state; mandatory veils for schoolgirls; and community solidarity (as opposed to individual rights) as a priority. All that is wrapped in the not-so-innocent flag of the necessity to “fight against Islamophobia”, a concept invented to shut down the push-back of all people who might criticize Islam before they can even start.

“[The Islamist party’s] purpose is to conquer the world, not just have a mandate. Its mechanics were already established…. Islamists took power in the name of democracy, then suspended democracy by using their power…. Convert the clothes, the body, the social links, the arts, nursing homes, schools, songs and culture, then, they just wait for the fruit to fall in the turban… An Islamist party is an open trap: you cannot let it in. If you refuse it, your country switches to a dictatorship, but if you accept it, you are at risk of submission….” — Kamel Daoud, Algerian writer, in Le Point, 2015.

In the legislative elections that will take place June 11 and 18 in France, political parties are finalizing preparations: choosing their candidates, and printing posters and stickers. Business as usual? Not really.

(Image source: Rama/Wikimedia Commons)

One newcomer arose in the political spectrum: a Muslim party, the Parti Egalité Justice (“Equality and Justice Party”; PEJ). What is notable is that PEJ is an element of a network of political parties built by Trukey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), to influence each country of Europe, and to influence Europe through its Muslim population.
PEJ: A Pro-Erdogan Party in France

The PEJ was created in 2015 in Strasbourg, the de facto capital of eastern France, on the border with Germany. PEJ has already approved 68 candidates — not enough to cover the whole territory but enough to compete efficiently in districts where Turkish and Muslim populations are strongly represented. French citizens of Turkish origin are estimated to represent 600,000 people in France, out of a Muslim population estimated at 5-15 million, but official statistics do not exist.

Another Muslim party, “Français et Musulmans” (“French and Muslims”), is also quietly preparing to erupt on the political scene of the French legislative elections. “Français et Musulmans” originates from L’Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF) which has been rebaptized “Muslims of France”. “Français et Musulmans” is the French branch of Muslim Brotherhood.

The PEJ, is the first party in France established by Turks. PEJ already participated in elections of the Provincial General Assembly in March 2015, but was eliminated in the first round. According to the magazine Marianne: “PEJ is closely connected to Council for justice, equality and peace (Cojep), an international NGO which represents, everywhere it is based, an anchor for AKP”, the party of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayip Erdogan. According to L’Express “many managers of PEJ are also in charge in Cojep”.

What is their program? The classic one for an Islamist party: abolishing the founding secularist law of 1905, which established the separation of church and state; veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools; halal food for all schools; support for Palestinians; and community solidarity (as opposed to individual rights) as a priority. All that is wrapped in the not-so-innocent flag of the necessity to “fight against Islamophobia”, a concept invented to shut down the push-back of all people who might criticize Islam before they can even start.

According to the magazine Marianne, Mine Gunbay, responsible for women’s rights in the city council of Strasbourg, fearlessly and tirelessly denounced the metamorphosis of Strasbourg into “political laboratory of the AKP”. Strasbourg is the city where Erdogan was authorized by former president Hollande to hold an electoral rally in October 2015. Legally.

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Who Will Police the Police: The Comey Testimonies Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

Former FBI Director James Comey earnestly lectures about the inaccuracy of leaks and laments that it is not the purview of disinterested federal agencies to correct such erroneous information that the press such as the New York Times recklessly publishes. https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/10/will-police-police-comey-testimonies/

Fine. Yet for the last six months, information in the hands of the FBI, such as the infamous Steele fake-news dossier, a hit piece of opposition research, was leaked by intelligence agencies to the press for political advantage. Comey mirabile dictu himself confesses to planting leaked information to the press of a privileged conversation with the President, via a third-party friend—information that he composed while the Director of the FBI on government time in connection with his job and on a government computer.

In the age of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, why would a Director of the FBI himself leak a key government document to the press in deliberate fashion to undermine the president (and in the process mislead about the chronological sequencing of events that prompted him to leak) rather than provide the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee? Why would he use a third-party to go to the press?

Non-investigations

Comey corroborates his earlier thrice-stated admissions that Donald Trump was never under investigation for collusion with the Russians to subvert the 2016 election, but suggests now that he could not release such exonerating information to the press because he might later have had to go back to amend it should Trump at some such future time become under investigation.

This is an Orwellian argument—given:

(1) that it is becoming clear that almost all scurrilous rumors about Donald Trump were leaked to the press by the FBI and other federal agencies—while exculpatory facts, such as that Comey was not investigating Donald Trump, were not leaked;

(2) that Comey had in fact previously repeatedly done just the opposite of what he said he could not do in the Trump case—namely that he had first disclosed publicly that Hillary Clinton was no longer the subject of a “matter” (in obedience to Loretta Lynch’s mandatory euphemism aimed at helping the Clinton campaign), then later amended that public admission by saying that she was, in fact, again under renewed investigation, and then amending again that amendment by stating that she was no longer a subject of an investigation. In other words, there was no such FBI policy of prudently keeping silent on the progress of an investigation;

3) that any American citizen in theory could be a future target of any theoretical investigation; but, of course, that fact is no reason for a federal agency to fail to concede that it is not conducting an ongoing federal investigation of said citizen being battered by press leaks and unfounded allegations—unless the aim of a federal agency was to spread doubt about its intentions and thereby cast a prejudicial cloud of suspicion over an individual not under investigation. In Comey’s world, we can all live under a cloud of future investigations, should a mum FBI wink and nod, bob and weave to the press and public about whether we are currently under an investigation—as we are libeled and smeared.

He Said/He Said

Comey states that he was so concerned about a private conversation with Donald Trump (whom he admits once again was not pressuring him to stop a federal investigation of purported Russian collusion) that he immediately went to his government car to write a memo based on his interpretation of the conversation (again, subsequently to be leaked to pet journalists through a third-party friend and as yet strangely not made public). But was this standard Comey practice after meeting with administration officials whom he suspected might be inordinately pressuring him on investigations?