Russia Special Counsel Mueller Worked with Radical Islamic Groups

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Now that Robert Mueller has been appointed special counsel to investigate if Russia influenced the 2016 presidential election it’s worth reiterating his misguided handiwork and collaboration with radical Islamic organizations as FBI director. Judicial Watch exclusively obtained droves of records back in 2013 documenting how, under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI purged all anti-terrorism training material deemed “offensive” to Muslims after secret meetings between Islamic organizations and the FBI chief. Judicial Watch had to sue to get the records and published an in-depth report on the scandal in 2013 and a lengthier, updated follow-up in 2015.

As FBI director, Mueller bent over backwards to please radical Islamic groups and caved into their demands. The agency eliminated the valuable anti-terrorism training material and curricula after Mueller met with various Islamic organizations, including those with documented ties too terrorism. Among them were two organizations— Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—named by the U.S. government as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case. CAIR is a terrorist front group with extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists. It was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

The records obtained as part of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit show that Mueller, who served 12 years as FBI chief, met with the Islamic organizations on February 8, 2012 to hear their demands. Shortly later the director assured the Muslim groups that he had ordered the removal of presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices nationwide. The purge was part of a broader Islamist operation designed to influence the opinions and actions of persons, institutions, governments and the public at-large. The records obtained by Judicial Watch also show similar incidents of Islamic influence operations at the Departments of Justice and State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Obama White House.

Here are some of the reasons provided by Mueller’s FBI for getting rid of “offensive” training documents: “Article is highly inflammatory and inaccurately argues the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization.” It’s crucial to note that Mueller himself had previously described the Muslim Brotherhood as a group that supports terrorism in the U.S. and overseas when his agency provided this ludicrous explanation. Here’s more training material that offended the terrorist groups, according to the FBI files provided to Judicial Watch: An article claiming Al Qaeda is “clearly linked” to the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing; The Qur’an is not the teachings of the Prophet, but the revealed word of God; Sweeping generality of ‘Those who fit the terrorist profile best (for the present at least) are young male immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance;’ conflating Islamic Militancy with terrorism. The list goes on and on.

Mueller’s actions have had a widespread effect because many local law enforcement agencies followed the FBI’s lead in allowing Islamic groups like CAIR to dictate what anti-terrorism material could be used to train officers. Among them are police departments in three Illinois cities— Lombard, Elmhurst and Highland Park—as well as the New York Police Department (NYPD). In the case of the Lombard Police Department, CAIR asserted that the instructor of a training course called “Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy” was anti-Muslim though there was no evidence to support it. Like the FBI, Lombard officials got rid of the “offensive” course. The NYPD purged a highly-acclaimed report that’s proven to be a critical tool in terrorism investigations after three New York Muslims, two mosques and an Islamic nonprofit filed a lawsuit.

Considering Mueller’s role in much of this, it makes him a bizarre choice to lead the heated Russia investigation. The goal, apparently, is to determine of Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and if President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian officials. In the Justice Department announcement, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein describes Mueller as person who qualifies to lead the probe because he exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command. “Special Counsel Mueller will have all appropriate resources to conduct a thorough and complete investigation, and I am confident that he will follow the facts, apply the law and reach a just result,” according to Rosenstein.

Mark Steyn on the poisoning of Robert Spencer

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“The social-justice crowd are moving toward the same point as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and for the same reason: They’re too stupid to argue.”

Yes.

Here is an excellent take on what happened to me in Iceland and its larger implications.

Mark Steyn

“The Poisoning of Robert Spencer,” by Mark Steyn, May 18, 2017:

For years now I’ve said that anti-free-speech leftists and the men who slaughtered the staff of Charlie Hebdo, shot up Lars Vilks’ event in Copenhagen, etc, are merely different points on the same continuum: They’re both in the shut-up business: both groups find it quicker and easier and more satisfying to silence you than to debate you.

There were those who found the comparison offensive – to whom I would on good-humored days grant that the two points on the same continuum were nevertheless some distance apart.

Well, they got considerably closer in Reykjavik last week.

Robert Spencer, the author of several bestselling books on Islam, a brave crusader against the dopier multiculti illusions and the proprietor of the indispensable Jihad Watch, gave a speech at the Grand Hotel, went to unwind at dinner afterwards, and was poisoned by a social-justice warrior. Here’s Robert’s account of what happened…

That’s quite a sophisticated operation – a two-man team, the first a fake fan, the second a post-kiss-of-death gloater.

Before the banking crash of ’08, Iceland was flush, and celebs like Elton John were flown in for gala bashes. But it’s all quietened down a bit since then, so the Spencer event was a big deal. He drew an audience of 500 – which in a town of 125,000 and a nation of 300,000 is pretty impressive. There was lots of coverage of his visit – none of which actually quoted him or excerpted his speech or interviewed those who were interested in hearing what he had to say. Instead the media preferred to cover the few dozen protestors of his trip. In all the column inches devoted to Robert Spencer, no journalist thought to seek a comment from Robert Spencer. There are two sides to every story – except this guy’s story: he doesn’t deserve a side.

This kind of dehumanization sends a message – and the man who poisoned Robert got it loud and clear:

Those who paint the targets, and those who shoot at them, think they’re doing something great. Not only does the Left fill those whom it brainwashes with hate, but it does so while portraying its enemies as the hatemongers, such that violent Leftists such as the young man who drugged me feel righteous as they victimize and brutalize for the crime of disagreement.

I have no doubt whatsoever that whoever poisoned me in Iceland went away feeling happy over what he had done. If he told anyone what he did, I’m sure he was hailed as a hero. I’m also aware that many who read this will crow and exult in knowing that someone who hates my opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression made me seriously ill. This is how degenerate and evil the Left has become.

I don’t know how I’d stand up to a cocktail of Ritalin and Ecstasy. I do know there’s at least one person in my modest entourage it would kill. And I have no doubt that had the fellow in the restaurant switched on the radio the following morning and heard that Robert Spencer had died in hospital overnight he would have celebrated.

Like the guns at Singapore, the social-justice mob’s fingers are pointing in the wrong direction: They accuse their opponents endlessly of “otherization”; yet they are the ones who so deny the humanity of “the other” that it seems cool and heroic to attempt to kill a chap who gave a speech you object to – even though you never heard the speech, and, even if you had, are incapable of articulating what exactly in it you take issue with.

Douglas Murray and I noted after the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons how strangely controversial the post-event dinner has become. In Copenhagen, the restaurant panicked at the sight of the PET – the Danish security-service agents – and canceled our booking. As Douglas wrote:

Ten years ago, you could publish depictions of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. Ten years later, it is hard for anyone who has been connected with such an act to find a restaurant in Copenhagen that will serve them dinner.

For those in Robert Spencer’s line of work, these events are undeniably stressful. There are security precautions, of course, but you never know, from the Vilks event in Copenhagen to Robert’s in Garland, Texas, whether some jihadist will succeed in breaking through. There’s a sense of relief when you exit the stage and it’s all gone off without incident. You’re looking forward to a drink and a bite to eat in convivial company. And you’re on your post-performance high, so you’re generally bonhomous when people approach professing to be fans and seeking a selfie or an autograph. And there’s three or four and they’re all around you, and you put your drink down on the table – as Douglas and I did again and again in the bar we wound up in late that night. And the fans move on, and you pick up your glass without a thought…

Robert Spencer will never do that again.

The social-justice crowd are moving toward the same point as the Charlie Hebdo killers, and for the same reason: They’re too stupid to argue. For the Islamic imperialists, debate is a largely alien concept. For the left, it’s simply too much effort. As I said here many years ago, the great appeal of multiculturalism is that it absolves you from having to know anything about other cultures: If they’re all equally valid, what’s the point? Slap on the CO-EXIST bumper sticker and off you tootle. No need to worry whether the “C” might have a bit of a problem with some of the other letters, and that indeed, if not for the “C”, you wouldn’t need a bumper-sticker admonition to CO-EXIST in the first place. But, after two generations of social engineering, of the substitution of attitudes for education, it would require too much effort to equip yourself to argue against the difficult questions a man such as Robert Spencer raises. It’s literally easier to kill him.

Not yet in the blood-lusting exultant scimitar-raising style of the decapitators of French priests. But just through whatever you’ve got in your stash that might ensure he’ll be flying out of Reykjavik by the handles. So for the moment there is still a continuum. But it’s narrowing, and will narrow still.

Get well soon, Robert.

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Iran’s Election Farce: President Trump must close Iran’s illegal election sites

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Iranian voters go to the polls on Friday to select a new president from a list of the regime faithful chosen for them by the Supreme Leader and his aptly-named Guardians Council.

Many opposition groups, both inside Iran and in exile, have called for a boycott on these sham elections, which are a masquerade of democracy.

Regime supporters whined when the leftist government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shut down polling stations set up by the Islamic State of Iran’s embassy in Toronto, arguing that Western governments should want more voting by Iranians, not less.

But these elections are as free as those held by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or by Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the 1980s. Stalin’s famous dictum – it’s not the people who vote who count, it’s the people who count the votes – is nowhere more true today than in Islamic Iran.

And while incumbent president Hassan Rouhani is trying to position himself as an election-eve convert to moderate policies, his supporters cannot name a single political prisoner who owes his or her freedom to Rouhani’s intervention, or to a single political execution Rouhani helped to block.

But the elections are important to Ayatollah Khamenei. The so-called “Supreme Leader” of the Islamist Iran has repeatedly called on citizens to vote on Friday, reasoning that a high turnout will “send a message” to regime foes in Israel and the United States.

It’s an outrage that U.S. taxpayers are paying to spread the Ayatollah’s anti-U.S. propaganda, but it’s true. That and many similar “news” stories touting the virtues of Iran’s [s]elections have been broadcast by the Persian service of VOA and Radio Farda, run by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Put simply, a vote on Friday is not a vote for moderation or freedom, or even the better of bad choices: it is a vote of support for the Islamic terror regime in Tehran.

As the pro-bono president of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, I have joined forces with the Islamic State of Iran Crime Research Center and hundreds of others in petitioning the White House to shut down the 56 illegal polling places the Iranian regime authorities say they want to set up across the United States on Friday.

Among them are unknown locations in Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michican, and Seattle, Washington, where the Islamic regime’s embassy plans to bus in would-be voters from across the border in Canada. (I can hear the questions from our Customs and Border Control agents: and you want to come to the United States to do what?)

We expect the regime to update its dedicated website on the elections with actual addresses at the last minute, as has been their practice in previous years. Their goal in this hide and seek is to avoid federal prosecution, and to prevent protest by regime opponents.

There are other reasons why freedom-loving Iranians and ordinary Americans should join us in calling on the Trump administration to shut down these election sites: they violate a whole gamut of U.S. laws.

As part of the 1981 Algiers Accord that ended the 444-day ordeal of U.S. diplomats held hostage by Tehran, the Iranian regime is allowed to maintain two diplomatic facilities in the United States: a Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, and an Interests section in Washington, DC, currently under the protection of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

But the accord also forbids those diplomats from traveling beyond a 25 mile radius from New York or Washington, DC, without a specific permit from the Department of State.

Iranian regime election law, however, requires that regime officials actually man the polling stations and certify the balloting.  If any Iranian diplomats are caught traveling beyond the 25-mile limit without a permit, they should be immediately jailed and ultimately declared Persona Non-Grata.

Beyond that, U.S. sanctions under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act and other authorities prohibit U.S. citizens from conducting business or performing services for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Treasury Department can freeze the assets of violators under a simple order that is not subject to judicial review.

That means that any U.S. university, hotel, business, or private person entering into a contractual relationship to provide facilities to be used as polling places for the Iranian “election” on Friday does so at their peril. They have far more to lose than just the thirty pieces of silver they took as rent from the regime.

Pro-Tehran lobbyists continue to populate the swamps in Washington, DC.

One such group, calling itself the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans (PAAIA), has been trying to organize opposition to the Trump Executive Orders on immigration, and filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC, seeking to stay their implementation.

PAAIA leaders are coming to Washington, DC, this coming Monday for meetings with Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Others, such as the National Iranian American Council, wildly successful under the Obama administration, have seen their influence shrivel to the size of one peanut under Trump.

Like millions of ordinary Americans who finally woke up and voted last November because they saw the real possibility that the country they grew up in would be destroyed, pro-freedom Iranian-Americans generally abhor politics. They rarely act in a well-organized fashion. Even protests against Ahmadinejad’s visits to the United Nations in New York rarely attracted more than a few thousand demonstrators, and most of those were paid and bused in by the Islamist Marxist Mujahedin-e Khalq, as I revealed in these pages over a decade ago.

That is why the grass roots support from Iranian-Americans to shut down these sham elections is so important.

Ayatollah Khomeini famously said during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, “America can do nothing.”

By that he meant, we can spit in their face, we can stomp on their flag and defy them on their own territory, and they won’t dare to oppose us.

The Islamic state of Iran’s current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, loves to repeat Khomeini’s slogan. This is a terrific opportunity not just to prove the ayatollahs wrong, but to show them that America remains a beacon of freedom that ultimately will shine brighter than their dark regime inside Iran itself.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

The backdoor law used to bring illegals to America

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Illegal aliens under the age of 21-years old are migrating to America legally. They are coming under the provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act – Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) program.  SIJS has been used to flood border states, like California, with illegal migrants from the “violence-prone Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.”

In a column titled A ‘Generous’ Pathway to Citizenship, Foster Care Bret Schafer reports:

For the past fifteen years, Casa Libre has served as a refuge for unaccompanied minors who arrive in Southern California from the violence-prone Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Many of those children have been granted lawful permanent residence in the United States through a form of relief known as Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), which provides green cards to unauthorized refugee children who cannot be returned to one or both parents due to abuse, neglect or abandonment. The program has been widely used by child welfare agencies and advocates as a way to support the needs of unaccompanied minors living in the U.S. 

Enacted in 1990, SIJS was originally created by Congress to protect vulnerable, non-citizen homeless and foster children from deportation and exploitation. But in 2008, President Bush signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which expanded the definition of SIJS to include minors under the age of 21 who have been declared a dependent of a juvenile court, who cannot be reunified with one or both parents due to abuse, neglect or a similar basis, and for whom a return to their country of origin is determined to be against their best interests.

“It’s the most generous form of relief I know of in the world,” said Lenni Benson, a professor of law at the New York Law School and the director of the Safe Passage Project, a non-profit that provides pro-bono legal representation to unaccompanied immigrant children. [Emphasis added]

Read more…

There is growing concern that ISIS is using fake passports to gain entry into the United States or crossing the southern border illegally. We also know that ISIS has recruited, trained and deployed an estimated half million children to fight the infidels.

According to Schafer, “USCIS received 19,475 petitions, more than double the annual quota. At the end of 2016, there were more SIJS applications awaiting decisions (8,533) than there were total applications submitted (6,840) between 2010-2012.”

Are some of these “children” coming to America under the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status program terrorists and/or drug cartel gang members?

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Ireland not taking its required EU quota of Muslim migrants

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Calais migrant camp.

Calais migrant camp.

But they promised to take 200 migrants from the “French migrant camp in Calais.”  Twenty-one have arrived already!

Don’t you love it the way the media makes it sound like the camp at Calais was just one more sanctioned migrant camp.  It was not! It was a location in France across the English Channel from the UK where illegal aliens built a make-shift camp as they attempted to break in to the UK.

Lesson here is make demands long enough and you will be ‘welcomed’ to the UK, in this case Ireland!

Invasion of Europe news….

From RTE News (Irish public radio):

Ireland is being urged to resolve security issues with Italy to allow for the arrival of more migrants.  [Good for them they are at least using the word ‘migrants’ and not automatically calling them ‘refugees!’—ed]

The Department of Justice has previously said that due to issues with the Italian authorities surrounding the security assessment of migrants, relocations from Italy have yet to commence for many countries, including Ireland.

But today the European Commission called on the Government to find ways to overcome these hurdles.

Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said “I call on Ireland and Estonia to find mutually acceptable working arrangements with Italy on security interviews in the way that for example The Netherlands, France and Greece have worked out successfully.”

[….]

The latest figures from the Department of Justice show that 21 unaccompanied minors, previously resident in the French migrant camp in Calais, have arrived in Ireland and are in the care of the child and family agency Tusla.

The Government has committed to taking up to 200 unaccompanied minors who were previously resident in Calais.

[….]

Two European Council decisions adopted in September 2015 resulted in member states committing to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece by September 2017, but as of last Thursday only 18,418 had been moved.

Under the programme, the Government pledged to accept 4,000 people.

All of my ‘Invasion of Europe’ news is archived here.  My Ireland archive is here.

ENDNOTE: I didn’t get around to posting the map below and story last week. The point of it is that Poland doesn’t take refugees and therefore has zero Islamic terrorist incidents (coincidence?). Maybe someone in Ireland should see it! Or, maybe they have already and thus the foot dragging.

Dots represent terrorist attacks across Europe. NOTE: There are no dots in Poland.

Dots represent terrorist attacks across Europe. NOTE: There are no dots in Poland.

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Muslims littering leads to discovery of their weapons arsenal and bomb-making equipment

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“According to police, a man walked by a parked car in north Minneapolis about 5 p.m. Thursday and confronted the people inside after they threw food wrappers on the ground. They ignored him until he paused to get the car license number. The men then got out of the car and indicated they had guns…Inside, the officers found a hand grenade, handgun, assault rifles and magazines and a large quantity of ammunition, the complaint said. They also found cellphones, computers and electronics equipment, including drone parts. Bomb squad personnel called to the scene noted that the large amount of ammunition and electronic devices could be used for bomb-making…”

Litter: more harmful than you realize.

“Routine arrest leads Minneapolis police to arsenal,” Star Tribune, May 15, 2017 (thanks to Undaunted):

Minneapolis police uncovered an arsenal of guns and bomb-making devices during a routine arrest last week.

According to police, a man walked by a parked car in north Minneapolis about 5 p.m. Thursday and confronted the people inside after they threw food wrappers on the ground. They ignored him until he paused to get the car license number. The men then got out of the car and indicated they had guns, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday.

The man flagged down officers, the complaint says, but the men from inside car continued to yell at him and resisted the officers’ attempts to control the situation. The men were insistent they needed to be near the car because a drone was coming to deliver a package, the complaint said. Because of the suspicious circumstances and fear for the man’s safety, the men were placed in the squad while officers searched their car.

Inside, the officers found a hand grenade, handgun, assault rifles and magazines and a large quantity of ammunition, the complaint said. They also found cellphones, computers and electronics equipment, including drone parts.

Bomb squad personnel called to the scene noted that the large amount of ammunition and electronic devices could be used for bomb-making, the complaint said.

Abdullah N. Alrifahe, 27, of Minneapolis, was charged with a gross misdemeanor for carrying a pistol in public without a permit. In December, he was convicted of the same offense….

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U.S. form used to screen migrants doesn’t ask about ties to al-Qaeda or ISIS

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“Form N-400 asks various questions, including whether the applicant supports the Constitution or if they’ve ever been members of the Communist or World War II-era German Nazi parties, which are included by law. It also asks if the immigrant is in any way associated with any terrorist organizations but doesn’t list specific groups’ names, such as the Islamic State or al Qaida. ‘On both a symbolic and practical basis, this demonstrates a significant failure by the U.S. government,’ Sauter told TheDCNF. ‘If the government thinks it’s important to use these forms to ask people if they belong to specific hostile groups, why not include the groups that are trying to destroy us today, instead of ones that we were worried about decades ago?’”

Good question. Much draining of the swamp is needed, but it is proceeding very slowly, if at all.

“Fed Form Doesn’t Ask Immigrants’ About Terrorism Ties, Illegal Voting,” by Ethan Barton, Daily Caller, May 12, 2017:

Federal officials don’t compile crucial data, such as what terrorist organizations applicants are affiliated with or if they’ve ever illegally voted in an American election, on the form used to vet immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) doesn’t collect any statistics on how applicants answer questions on Form N-400, which is used to screen immigrants, according to the agency.

“We have completed our search and no records responsive to your request were located,” USCIS wrote in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Mark Sauter, a co-author of a homeland security textbook and former investigative journalist.

“This data is critical, it should be aggregated, it should be analyzed,” Sauter told TheDCNF. “If the U.S. government isn’t doing the most basic form of data collection and data mining, then what the heck is going on? In my estimate, every day they fail to collect data from the N-400 is a day the federal government is not protecting us.”

The data could be used for a variety of purposes, such as analyzing how immigrants from certain countries or regions answer questions, according to Sauter.

It could also be used to show how many applicants were rejected – or admitted – from U.S. citizenship after answering disqualifying questions.

“Having those questions and the results on that statistic would confirm that U.S. law is being adhered to in the naturalization process,” Heritage Foundation homeland security expert David Inserra told TheDCNF. “If they’re not reporting that data than you can’t query it.”

He added that info could be used to confirm immigrants’ applications for citizenship are rejected for providing disqualifying answers, such as having ties to terrorist groups.

Form N-400 asks various questions, including whether the applicant supports the Constitution or if they’ve ever been members of the Communist or World War II-era German Nazi parties, which are included by law. It also asks if the immigrant is in any way associated with any terrorist organizations but doesn’t list specific groups’ names, such as the Islamic State or al Qaida.

“On both a symbolic and practical basis, this demonstrates a significant failure by the U.S. government,” Sauter told TheDCNF. “If the government thinks it’s important to use these forms to ask people if they belong to specific hostile groups, why not include the groups that are trying to destroy us today, instead of ones that we were worried about decades ago?”

Immigrants seeking naturalization also face an interview where USCIS officials try determining if applicants are affiliated with specific terrorist groups, according to Inserra.

“In both cases, you are responding to the U.S. government, and everything you say can be used against you and can be used later,” Inserra told TheDCNF. “The lying to an immigration officer can be grounds for deportation. If you acquire citizenship as a result of fraud – not just mistakenly, but purposely trying to lie and mislead – then that is grounds for revocation of citizenship.”

A USCIS official confirmed that applicants have answered that they have ties to terrorist organizations on Form N-400. The agency did not respond to a DCNF request asking if it holds data on naturalization applicants’ answers to interview questions.

Regardless, an interview requires relying on bureaucrats asking questions and interpreting answers, whereas “a form is a standardized way of collecting information,” Sauter told TheDCNF.

Inserra, however, noted that interviews allow a dialogue, which can be used to gather more information than from a paper or digital application.

“I don’t particularly see a reason why they need to add terrorism to the form,” he told TheDCNF.

Form N-400 also asks if the immigrant applicant has “ever voted in any federal, state or local election in the United States.”

“There are laws prohibiting [immigrants from voting] and that would be a disqualifying action,” Inserra said. “That would be really interesting to know if they’ve occurred.”…

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Barack Obama Wrote Becoming Donald Trump Was The American Dream

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In a Complex.com article  wrote:

In 1991, Obama, a 29-year-old soon-to-be Harvard Law School grad, wrote a paper with a friend, Robert Fisher, called “Race and Rights Rhetoric.” Obama summed up the average American’s mindset with the following sentence: “I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”

This quote came to light following the publishing of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, a new 1,460-page biography of the former U.S. president by David J. Garrow. That law paper was previously unpublished.

Here’s the full excerpt:

“[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”

So why is Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action (OFA) working against President Trump and his agenda? After all, it was Barack Obama who said the elections have consequences.

For example, OFA is against President Trump’s immigration initiatives including securing America’s southern border. OFA’s website states:

WHY WE REJECT “THE WALL”

One of the first actions the new administration took after entering office was to sign an executive order that advanced a plan to waste billions of taxpayer dollars on a massive wall along our southern border.

Now, let’s be clear: This wall is unnecessary, unpopular, and unpaid for. But even more importantly, it would be a physical embodiment of precisely the kind of fear and division that America must reject. It won’t serve to make us more secure, but instead cast a shadow of intolerance.

PROTECTING LAW-ABIDING UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS

For the millions of undocumented immigrants living in America, we have entered a time of great concern and uncertainty. Already, the new administration has signed an order aimed at punishing sanctuary cities, whose policies protect law-abiding undocumented immigrants in order to increase public safety. And as other potential policy changes are discussed, the threat of deportation continues to haunt many of our friends and neighbors.

President Trump made it a key part of his campaign to build a wall along the border with Mexico. OFA’s phrase undocumented immigrants is actually illegal aliens who came to America to take jobs away from legal immigrants and natural born American citizens.

So, why is it necessary to build a wall along America’s southern border?

Perhaps one reason is that there is a war going on in Mexico and it is spilling over our southern border into our towns and cities. But the media does not report how this violence, primarily from drug cartels and gangs like MS13, are causing crime and violence to rise in our major urban areas.

CNN’s Elizabeth Roberts in an article titled Report: Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016 wrote:

It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.

In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS.

And Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist.

Here are the top 5 countries for killings in 2016:

  1. Syria                             50,000 [Est.]
  2. Mexico                         23,000
  3. Iraq                               17,000
  4. Afghanistan                16,000
  5. Yemen                          7,000

Note that four of these “dangerous countries” are on President Trump’s travel ban, which several judges have stopped. OFA is also against the travel ban, even though it was former President Obama who declared the countries on the ban as harboring terrorism.

OFA is anti-Trump, the same Trump that Obama dreamed of becoming. Can you say ironic?

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President Trump, don’t give in to Turkey’s dangerous Iran-tied demands

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Turkey has been on a steady glide path to dictatorship for well over a decade, as Islamist ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consolidated power, eliminated his political foes, and bought out or shut down critical media.

But the Reichstag fire that propelled him to dictator status occurred last July, when an amateurish coup d’etat allowed him to purge 120,000 government employees and jail more than 40,000 of his political opponents.

Erdogan called the failed coup a “gift from God.” Indeed, it has given him a pretext to eliminate all opposition media and to impose strict border controls to catch would-be opponents as they attempt to leave the country, as totalitarians have done for generations.

Less known to the general public — and absolutely critical for understanding Erdogan’s reason for coming to Washington on May 16 to meet with President Trump — are his ties to the Islamic State of Iran.

A 900-page indictment compiled by Turkish state prosecutors in 2013 spelled out details of those ties, which allegedly involve billions of dollars in bribes from an Iranian government money-laundering network paid to Erdogan, his family, and cronies in government.

Americans would know little about that investigation — or indeed, Erdogan’s corrupt ties to Tehran — were it not for the missteps of the alleged money-launderer-in-chief, 33-year old Turkish-Iranian citizen Reza Zarrab, who was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol agents in March 2016 at a Florida airport while attempting to take his family to Disney World.

Zarrab is now facing prosecution in New York on money-laundering charges and has hired an impressive stable of white-shoe attorneys, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose law firm is a registered foreign agent for Turkey.

Giuliani was outed by federal prosecutor Michael Lockard after court filings in which Giuliani explained a late February 2017 meeting with Erdogan as an attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the Zarrab case that would be in America’s national security interest.

Dr. Ahmet Yayla, a highly-respected former police chief in southeastern Turkey, believes that Erdogan tasked Giuliani with proposing a deal to President Trump: drop prosecution against Zarrab in exchange for Turkish acquiescence to U.S. arming the Kurds. Even Zarrab’s chief defense lawyer admitted that Giuliani’s role in the case was unprecedented.

The original Turkish indictment, which Yayla shared with me, detailed Zarrab’s vast alleged oil-for-gold money laundering scheme that allowed Iran to circumvent international sanctions, sell upwards of $200 billion in oil and use the Turkish banking system by paying bribes to Erdogan and members of his immediate family.

Prosecutors in Turkey arrested Zarrab on December 17, 2013, for paying bribes to four members of then Prime Minister Erdogan’s cabinet, including his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. Erdogan then fired the prosecutors, police investigators and judges involved in the probe.

Two months later, audiotapes of phone conversations between Erdogan and his son, Bilal, posted on line, revealed Erdogan instructing his son to remove $1 billion in cash from his home and the homes of family members before the police arrived. (Erdogan has not disputed the authenticity of his voice, but claims the tapes were altered).

But the real scandal is Erdogan’s deep ties to Tehran, which go way beyond the Zarrab money-laundering scheme and Erdogan’s corruption.

I first got wind of Iran’s extensive intelligence network in Turkey during a 1994 reporting trip to Istanbul for Time Magazine. The French counter-terrorism judge investigating the murder of Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister of the former shah, recommended me to Istanbul police chief Nezdet Menzir, who he said had provided critical intelligence on the Iranian government hit team that had carried out the Bakhtiar assassination.

During several days of meetings, Menzir not only provided me information on the specific Iranian hit team that had used Turkey as a logistics hub for the assassination in France, but detailed a vast Iranian government intelligence network then operating in Turkey that was responsible for the murder of Turkish journalists and intellectuals.

Yayla says a second Turkish government indictment, also shut down by Erdogan in December 2013, detailed the ongoing efforts of that same Iranian government intelligence network in Turkey. Only now, it named the Iranian regime’s top operatives.

They include members of Erdogan’s cabinet and, most astonishingly, the current director of Turkish National Intelligence, Hakan Fidan, according to Yayla.

No wonder Erdogan wants to meet President Trump, get front-man Zarrab away from American prosecutors and reporters, and has paid $1.1 millionto a Washington, D.C., public relations firm for one week’s work during his visit. The Iranian skeletons in his closet would sink a ship.

Instead of giving in to his demands, the President should inform Erdogan that the United States will be arming the Kurds regardless of Turkish policies, and could make things much worse for Erdogan should the Turks again bomb our Kurdish allies in Syria. Why should we save his sinking ship?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Hill.

Stop legitimizing the regime in Iran!

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The Islamic republic in Iran’s elections have NEVER been democratic under their electoral system and its Islamic constitution.

Unlike many Iranians, I do not travel back and forth to Iran, do not do business with the Islamic Republic, and do not hold a valid Iranian passport. As such, I have no vested interest in the survival of this regime.

I am a Canadian with an Iranian heritage. not an Iranian with a Canadian passport living in Canada merely as a “guest”. I wish to cut off the hands of the Islamic Republic agents and infiltrators from Canada and do not promote or defend the Islamic Republic’s policy or ideology. My loyalty is to Canada not to an antiquated regime governed under seventh century Islamic laws. I stand on guard for Canada while speaking out against human rights violations and terrorism by the Islamic Republic.

I take pride in the fact that I never participated in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s sham elections and never voted for any of their ‘PRE’ selected presidential candidates.

In my opinion those who supports this criminal regime and participate in their s/elections, by legitimizing this criminal regime, inadvertently have their hands in the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have been executed, murdered, imprisoned, tortured, and raped.

It should never be taken lightly that the so called ‘reformist’ advocate’ agenda wholeheartedly supports the Islamic Republic’s constitution, and practices of Sharia law where they are heavily funded by the regime in Iran. They preach reform but the very nature of these reforms have never been clarified. Will there be political prisoners, torture, stoning, and amputations under reform?

It is worth noting that the 1988 mass executions occurred while Mr. Mir Hossein Moussavi, one the two leaders of the Green Movement, was Prime Minister of Iran. Karroubi and Moussavi were both founding members of the Islamic Republic who committed plenty of atrocities during their time in power.

A list with picture of martyrs killed by Islamic Republic in Iran after the election coup d’etat !

The infamous Chain Murders of Iran (the assassinations of opposition leaders both inside Iran and abroad) and the Buenos Aires bombing of the largest Jewish center also occurred during the Rafsanjani “reformist” era. Our very own Canadian photojournalist, Zahra Kazemi, whose son still wakes up hearing the screams of his mother, died under vile torture in 2003 under the presidency of Mr. Khatami, the most “moderate” of all of reformists. Miss. Maryam Ayubi, 31, was slowly stoned to death in 2001 (Amnesty International July 11, 2001 report); one of 38 unfortunate souls stoned during so called reform (Boroumand Foundation). Mr. Feyzollah Mekhubad, 77, had his face whipped and eyes gouged out in 1995 for making phone calls to relatives in Israel and the USA (Amnesty International Report May 1995, and Boroumand Memorial). Who is to speak for them if only the voices of reformists are being heard? Can a regime with such atrocities be truly reformed?

Due to a weak immigration vetting system, the Islamic Republic has been so successful in infiltrating Canada and advocating for its survival from our Canadian soil. In the years to come, the Government of Canada can NEVER say they were not warned about anti-Canadian activities funded by the Islamic Republic in Iran through the so called ‘reformists’ apologists. How appeasing these Iranian pro-nuclear and pro-terror mouthpieces benefits Canadians remains a puzzle to us.

Participating in the Islamic Republic’s Sham Elections only legitimizes the regime. I hope that Canada returns to her previously tough position against the regime in Iran, will not give in to pressures created by the Islamic Republic mouthpiece and agents in Canada, and stop giving a voice to them, which is not only is a slap in the face and an insult to human rights advocates, but insidiously dangerous for Canada.

Please sign this petition and tell The White House not to allow the Islamic Republic in Iran to have ballot boxes for their sham elections in the United States.

“The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose and it will defend itself.” St. Augustine.

RELATED ARTICLE: What does Canada get out of restoring diplomatic ties with Iran?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Times of Israel.

TAKE ACTION: Email the 9th Circuit Court supporting President Trump’s travel ban

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The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument on President Trump’s revised travel ban from early March.  The federal appeals court held a hearing on May 15, 2017 at 12:30 p.m. ET in Seattle to hear the case filed by the State of Hawaii. The court reviewed the decision issued by Hawaii U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson regarding the ban’s enforcement.

The three judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals includes Judges Ronald Gould, Richard Paez and Michael Daly Hawkins.  All three judges were appointed by President Bill Clinton.

US District Judge Derrick K. Watson issued an order that halted enforcement of the travel ban on the erroneous basis that it likely violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it allegedly discriminates against Muslims.

The ACLU lawyer in the Maryland travel ban case admitted that the executive order would be constitutional if a different president had ordered it.   Fourth US Circuit Court Judge Paul V. Niemeyer questioned the plaintiffs’ attorney, Omar Jadwat, in the Maryland case about his motive for opposing the ban.  Judge Niemeyer asked “If some other candidate had won the election and issued this order, I gather you would have no problem with that.”  Then Judge Niemeyer stated and asked Jadwat “We have an order on its face. We can read this order and we have no antecedent statements by a candidate about this order. We have a candidate who won the presidency — some candidate other than President Trump won the presidency — and then chose to issue this particular order with whatever counsel he took. … He issued this executive order. Do I understand that just in that circumstance the executive order should be honored?”  Jadwat had already twice refused to answer the question, but when the judge offered such a comprehensive hypothetical, he admitted: “Yes, your honor, I think in that case it could be constitutional.”

Judge Watson’s order:

  • Failed to recognize the president’s statutory authority to execute the ban pursuant to Sections 1182(f) and 1185(a) of Title 8.
  • Failed to consider the travel ban addressed only six of forty-nine (12%) Muslim majority countries.  Pew Research reported on January 31, 2017 there are forty-nine Muslim majority countries.
  • Ignored the fact that the travel ban applied equally to all nationalities and religions from the six designated countries.
  • Failed to recognize that for the past 30 years, every President has invoked that power to protect the Nation by suspending entry of categories of aliens.
  • Is unprecedented in that it restrains an executive order by the President of the United States because of statements that he made as a private citizen before he swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
  • Strongly appears to place a priority on politics instead of justice.

Judge Watson’s order perpetuates a dangerous myth that President Trump’s travel ban is a “Muslim Ban.”  What other federal laws will be unenforceable against Muslims if the U.S. Courts erroneously rule that President Trump and his administration are biased against Muslims?

Nearly 25,000 people sent emails in 2014 and 2015 through Floridafamily.org that urged the judges serving on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a three judge panel decision that banned the Youtube.com video titled Innocence of Muslims, a critique of Mohammad.

Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to urge Judges Ronald Gould, Richard Paez and Michael Daly Hawkins to make national security a priority over politics and public safety a priority over political correctness in the case of Hawaii v Trump.

To send your email, please click the following link, enter your name and email address then click the “Send Your Message” button. You may also edit the subject or message text if you wish.

Click here to send your email to urge the 9th Circuit Court judges to make national security a priority over politics and public safety a priority over political correctness in the case of Hawaii v Trump.

False Claims to U.S. Citizenship — Far from a “victimless crime”

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Virtually all criminals lie.

Lying is a common tactic used by criminals to conceal their identities, their backgrounds and their crimes.  They lie to cover their tracks, to evade detection and to escape from the reach of the “long arm of the law.”

This is why suspects who are taken into custody are fingerprinted and photographed, to attempt to make certain that the name the suspect provides is truly his/her name.  Often criminals use multiple false identities whether by committing identity theft or fabricating altogether fictitious identities.

In point of fact, the 9/11 Commission found that in the aggregate, the 19 hijackers who participated in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, used more than 300 false identities or variations of false identities to conceal their identities and their movements as they went about their deadly preparations.

The 9/11 Commission also identified other terrorists who had entered the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11 and found that the majority of all of these terrorists engaged in multiple forms of immigration fraud.  This was the starting point for my recent article, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.

The act of lying is, itself, a crime when it is done in furtherance of other criminal activities.  A section of federal law, 18 U.S. Code § 1001, addresses this crime.  Here is how this statute begins:

  1. Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;

shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.

Please notice that the statute cited above noted the potential nexus between false statements and terrorism.

Getting back to immigration, aliens who enter the United States without inspection or who enter the United States legally but then violate the term so their immigration status may lie to authorities about their names, their countries of birth and/or countries of citizenship in order to evade detection by immigration law enforcement, to create the appearance that they are entitled to various public assistance programs or to be able to be employed in the United States and to achieve other illegal goals.

Such false claims to United States citizenship is a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 911.  The description of this crime and the punishment for this violation of law is contained in this brief sentence:

Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

The primary goal of illegal aliens is to not be arrested and deported (removed from the United States).

It is not uncommon for illegal aliens to make false claims about being United States citizens when they are encountered by law enforcement.  Citizens of countries where Spanish is the predominant language may attempt to pass themselves off as being from Puerto Rico.  Citizens of Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and St Lucia may make false claims to having been born in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

They may even purchase birth certificates in false names to back up their claims.

Back when I was an INS special agent, I encountered this sort of situation almost routinely.  Some illegal aliens even managed to obtain United States passports under assumed identities.

On May 8, 2017 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a news release, 15 illegal aliens arrested in East Texas for identity theft that reported on precisely this crime that was allegedly committed by 15 illegal aliens to easily enable them to defeat the E-Verify system by purchasing birth certificates in false names.

Many folks believe that simply mandating the use of E-Verify by all employers would turn off the “job magnet” that draws many illegal aliens to the United States.

In reality, while E-Verify most certainly should be mandatory, without an adequate number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel to conduct field investigations, unscrupulous employers could still hire people “off the books” and illegal aliens could defeat the system the way that the 15 aliens reported on in the ICE press release did.

Additionally, more than ever before, the public and our political leaders have developed an extreme fascination with statistics.  Almost every report about immigration includes the supposedly reliable statistic that there are 11 or 12 million illegal aliens in the United States.

Various “think tanks” periodically release reports in which they provide estimates about the size of the illegal alien population both at large and also the number of such aliens who are incarcerated.

Prior the Amnesty of 1986 that was part and parcel of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), it was estimated that roughly one million illegal alien would “emerge from the shadows” under the auspices of that “one time” amnesty program.

By the time the IRCA amnesty program ended more than 3.5 million such aliens stepped out of the “shadows.”

Some may have entered the United States after the estimate was made and then lied about their actual dates of entry into the United States, however, it is likely that for various reasons, such as the issue of aliens making false claims to United States Citizenship the efforts to estimate the true number were way off base.

What what likely blithely ignored then, as well as today, is how the number of such illegal aliens is determined.  Aliens who evade the inspections process at ports of entry do not create a record of arrival as they run the border or, perhaps, stowaway on a ship.

Furthermore, it is not unusual for criminal aliens to make false claims to being citizens of the United States, not unlike those 15 illegal aliens noted previously.

When an alien has been deported and illegally reenters the United States, it is to be expected that in running the individual’s fingerprints, his/her criminal history and immigration history will be discovered.

However, when an illegal alien who is arrested for the first time lies about his/her citizenship, falsely claiming to be a United States citizen, unless that individual is questioned by someone with an understanding as to how to break such false claims to citizenship, there is a strong possibility that the deception will not be caught.

Such a criminal alien may well do his/her sentence and then be released into the community without notification being made to ICE because of the mistaken notion that the criminal is a U.S. citizen.

For INS personnel, one of the items on our training curriculum addressed the tactics by which such false claims to United States citizenship could be uncovered- both during questioning and by other means.

I hope that this class is still being taught at the academy to all ICE personnel, but I am skeptical, considering the way that the Obama administration refused to enforce the immigration law and even turned thousands of criminal aliens loose.

The issue of the training being provided to new ICE agents is one that the current administration must address, and the sooner the better, to make certain that this vital training is mandated for all ICE enforcement personnel.

Irrespective of how ICE agents are trained, this training into breaking false claims to United States citizenship is likely not being provided to any other law enforcement agencies.

Furthermore, where “Sanctuary Cities” are concerned, it is entirely possible that during the arrest and booking process, police and jail officials may simply ask the individual where he was born and dutifully record whatever he says without giving his claimed place of birth or his assertion of being a U.S. citizen a second thought.

It is, in fact, entirely possible that in such sanctuary cities any information about the number of criminal aliens in custody is not reported at all.

Consequently, not only would this result in criminal aliens not being identified and subsequently deported, but statistics concerning the actual number of criminal aliens who are incarcerated would be skewed with the number being reported being smaller, perhaps significantly smaller than the true number, downplaying the true impact of illegal immigration on the criminal justice system.

While there is no reliable way to know the actual number of illegal aliens present in the United States, (we don’t know what we don’t know) one thing is clear- that number is far greater than has been estimated and the detrimental consequences for America and Americans are far greater than most of our elected “representatives” are willing to admit.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

Trump Defiles the Sanctity of Government, and it Drives the Center-Left Mad by Jeffrey A. Tucker

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Has the center-left ever been more apoplectic about a presidency? It can’t have been this nuts even during the Nixon presidency. Every day, their publications fill up with articles that are breathless to the point of hysteria about the disgrace that the Trump administration is bringing to the affairs of government. His incessant tweeting, his violations of protocol, his attacks on the press, and even the very existence of this administration has them in permanent meltdown.

Here is an example. I’m leaving the over-the-top language from Charles Blow’s New York Times piece just to provide flavor:

I feel as if we are being conditioned to chaos by a “president” who abhors the stillness of stability. Every day we awake to a new outrage. We now exist in a rolling trauma — exhausting and unrelenting…. This should shock the whole of America out of its numbness. This is outrageous and without precedent… The sheer brazenness of it all is stunning…. It’s all just too much. We need an independent investigator. I don’t trust anything — anything! — coming out of this White House, and I don’t trust this feckless Congress to constrain Trump. This is not about partisanship, but patriotism. We must protect this country from moral corrosion, at best, and actual destruction, at worst. If this doesn’t stink to you, your nose is broken.

Yes, I know you have read something similar a thousand times in the last months. You have seen it on television stations, pretty much 24/7. Or you can turn on National Public Radio and listen to the same all day.

Or consider after Trump fired FBI director James Comey. The headlines by midnight all screamed: Crisis of Democracy! But I woke up the next morning and failed to see the evidence. The banks were open. People were buying chicken biscuits at the convenience store. The kids were getting dressed for school. Everything seemed normal.

It’s remarkable. This frenzy even has a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is an identifying state of mind. It has particular symptoms.

To be sure, I read these pieces and don’t entirely disagree with the particulars of the analysis. In none of our lifetimes have we seen anything like this. The stodgy, serious, protocol-driven attempt to bring high dignity to this office has been a main concern of government. When it came out that Bill Clinton was using his power and office for private pleasures, it rattled the establishment, not because of his sins but because his behavior elicited ridicule from the public.

We had no idea of what was coming!

Agree, Sort Of

But there is something off about this center-left tendency. These commentators are driven to wild apoplexy by Trump, but not for the reasons I would normally cite. I don’t like his trade theories, his views on immigration, his shabby understanding of the problem with American health insurance, his ramping up of the police state, or his foreign policy. I was calling him out on all of this as early as July 2015.

They, on the other hand, seem to object to the very existence of Trump, his every utterance, his actions no matter what they are, and everything related to this new administration.Their complaints are contradictory. He is terrible because he is doing terrible things! He is terrible because he is not really doing anything! This presidency is destroying the world! This presidency is all sound and fury and nothing else!

The Why

It finally struck me why. For this crowd, all their hopes and dreams are bound up with particular political processes, outcomes, and institutions. The state is their favorite tool for all the good they aspire to do in this world. It must be protected, guarded, defended, celebrated. The illusion that the government is not a taker but a giver and the source of all good things must be maintained. The gloss of the democratic process must be constantly refurbished so that the essential sanctity of the public sector can be constantly cited as the highest calling.

The center-left has at least one hundred years of work and resources invested in the state’s health, well being, reputation, and exalted moral status. Nothing must be allowed to threaten it or take it down a peg or two. Any failures must be deemed as temporary setbacks. The slightest sign of some success must be trumpeted constantly. The population must be subjected to unrelenting homilies on the essential holiness of the public sector.Their education told them this. Their degrees and ruling-class pedigree were hard earned. This is what has inspired them. They believe so strongly that they can make the world a better place through the managerial state that it has become their religion. It’s their very core!

Above all else, the president is supposed to represent. His duty is to reflect and broadcast this sensibility.

This View Has a Name

Writing in 1944, Ludwig von Mises wrote that the debate over the future of freedom is not only about beating back socialism, communism, fascism, interventionism, and so on. There is broader discussion to be had. The core problem is the ideology of statism, a word he took from the French term etatism. It identified a view that the state should always and in everything be the central power, organizing principle, and spiritual core of any society. It must be the final judge, the final arbiter, the center of our loyalties, the one indispensable institution because it alone is deserving of our highest devotion and ideal. It must be forever built, larger and larger, taking on ever more responsibility and taking ever more money and power from the rest of us.

The president is supposed to at least pretend to be the high priest of the statist religion. That’s his job, according to this outlook.

Everything seemed to being going so well under the Obama administration, which was so earnest, so decorous, so civil. He was funny, smart, respectful of process, and sincere in his pronouncements. He ran on hope and change but governed as the person who kept hope for a new freedom and any radical change at bay.

Change in the Matrix

Trump has profoundly disturbed the balance. He overthrew the respective establishments of two parties, tore right into the legitimacy of the national press, humiliated every expert who predicted his demise, and is now stumbling around Washington like a bum in a jewelry store. He is not actually cutting back on the size of the state; he is doing something even more terrifying from the center-left point of view: he is ruining the mystery of the state, and thereby discrediting their holy institutions.

After the election, I wrote that this might be our 1989. What I meant is that major aspects of what we always thought would be true were suddenly not true any more. New possibilities have opened up. An older establishment has been discredited if not overthrown. What comes next is another matter.Trump is not a liberator in any sense. His temperament suggests the opposite. It was he who famously said in the campaign: “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony.” Moreover, and in many ways, the deep state has regrouped and bitten back to avoid losing power and influence in Washington.

Even so, he is everything that the center-left fears most, a person who works, despite himself, to discredit the thing they love the most. He has demoralized them beyond consoling. Now we are seeing talk of impeachment. This seems to be some people’s last hope for saving the old faith.

Unsustainable

But the truth is that, with or without Trump’s reign of chaos, the 20th-century project of enlightened and comprehensive statism is not sustainable for the long run. The welfare programs are drying up and their plans have constantly proven unviable and unworkable. We live in a world in which the miracles of the private commercial sector are all around us, while the failures of statism are everywhere present as well.The old world of command and control just can’t last, not for the long run. Perhaps this is the role that Trump is inadvertently playing in this great drama of history. And this is precisely why his existence is driving the partisans of old-fashioned government planning to psychotropic drugs to control their anger and panic.

If you doubt it, I invite you to read the opinion columns of the mainstream press, tomorrow, the next day, the next day, the next day….

Jeffrey A. Tucker

jeffreytuckerJeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press.

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EDITORS NOTE: Get trained for success by leading entrepreneurs. Learn more at FEEcon.org

Reason to Build the Wall: Mexico second deadliest country in 2016

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Americans are bombarded with news about protests against building a wall on the southern border. The Democrat Party is doing everything it can to stop the wall from being built. Certain judges, appointed by the previous administration, are hindering efforts to build a wall.

So, why is it necessary to build a wall along America’s southern border?

Perhaps one reason is that there is a war going on in Mexico and it is spilling over our southern border into our towns and cities. But the media does not report how this violence, primarily from drug cartels and gangs like MS13, are causing crime and violence to rise in our major urban areas.

CNN’s Elizabeth Roberts in an article titled Report: Mexico was second deadliest country in 2016 wrote:

It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.

In comparison, there were 17,000 conflict deaths in Mexico in 2015 and 15,000 in 2014 according to the IISS.

The Mexican government lashed out at the report’s writers. In a statement posted to its website, the government criticizes the report’s characterization of Mexico having a non-international armed conflict, saying the military’s policing of criminal gangs does not equate to what goes on in other countries. It also disagreed with the report’s methodology.

Read more…

And Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist.

Here are the top 5 countries for killings in 2016:

  1. Syria                             50,000 [Est.]
  2. Mexico                         23,000
  3. Iraq                               17,000
  4. Afghanistan                16,000
  5. Yemen                          7,000

Note that four of these “dangerous countries” are on President Trump’s travel ban, which several judges have stopped.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Corruption in Mexico to Blame for Human Smuggling Racket

Mexico: Muslim stabs priest at the altar of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral

How This Maryland Police Department Is Combating the MS-13 Gang

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Honduras: Exodus After Texas Enacts Anti-Sanctuary Law | The Daily Caller

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Six Republican Senators question Trump refugee admissions, appear to want MORE refugees admitted to the US

U.S. Catholic bishops complicit in Muslim persecution of Christians

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Recently I was interviewed about the persecution by Catholic bishops of Catholic priests who enunciate unpopular truths about Islam.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Islamic Expert: US Bishops Complicit in Muslim Persecution of Christians,” by Anita Carey, ChurchMilitant.com, May 8, 2017:

DETROIT (ChurchMiltant.com) – A prominent Islamic expert is comparing the bishops’ silence on terrorism to sex abuse cover-up. Robert Spencer, an Islamic terror expert and author of 16 books on Islam, released an editorial Sunday excoriating the U.S. bishops’ actions to punish clergy and schoolteachers who speak out against Islam, including Spencer himself.

“The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops moves actively and swiftly to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about the Muslim persecution of Christians,” Spencer noted, naming various bishops who’ve refused him, as well as other Muslim critics, a platform in their dioceses.

“You can reject every element of the Nicene Creed and everything the Church teaches, and still the U.S. Catholic Bishops will consider you a Catholic in good standing,” he continued. “But if you believe that Islam is not a religion of peace, you have no place in the U.S. Catholic Church.”

Church Militant spoke with Spencer on his thoughts regarding the reasons why the U.S. bishops are so reluctant to speak out against the evil of Islam.

CM: At what point do you think the bishops started to pander to a politically correct agenda?

RS: This is an outgrowth of the confusion that overtook the Church in the wake of Vatican II, and the popular but erroneous idea among liberal Catholics that the Church had discarded its tradition and dogmas and essentially embraced the leftist agenda. This idea took root in earnest in the 1960s, but began germinating long before that.

CM: Knowing the historical conflicts between Islam and Christianity, why would the bishops be so quick and severe toward those who are informing the laity? Why would they want the laity ignorant?

RS: This mystifies me, but my best assessment is that this is an outgrowth of the spirit of Vatican II, which called upon Muslims and Christians to set aside ancient antagonisms and find common ground. There is a general assumption among the bishops that just as Christianity has changed since the time of the Crusades, so also has Islam, and dialog will iron out any remaining differences.

In reality, this is an unfounded assumption, as Islamic teaching has not changed, and still contains an imperative to wage war against Christians and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law. I would expect that most bishops, however, would dismiss the idea that Islamic teaching contains such an imperative as an “Orientalist” and “Islamophobic” false claim. They, however, are the ones who are ignorant.

CM: What do you think the bishops’ problem is with your talks and position on Islam?

RS: I’m told that Bp. Nicholas Samra believes that I am “spreading hate,” and since I was a member of his diocese, he himself told me that many bishops had approached him at the USCCB conference telling him that he had to “do something” about me. They apparently believe that I am harming the dialog they are conducting with Muslims, and they apparently also think that this dialog is producing results, even though Muslim persecution of Christians has increased exponentially since it began.

For my part, I reject the charge that I am spreading hate, and challenge Samra or any other bishop to quote a single hateful statement from my work. I am exposing facts that many would prefer to keep concealed; the “hate” charge is simply an attempt to make people of good will turn against my work.

CM: If the bishops do start to speak out against Islam, will it make Christian persecution worse or start an all-out war? 

RS: In Islamic law, Christians must live in subservience and submission to Islamic law. If they speak out about their plight, it will get even worse for them, and their lives could be forfeit. Thus they generally adopt an attitude of publicly praising and siding with those who persecute them, so that it won’t get even worse for them. This is the attitude that the bishops now appear to have adopted as well: Samra himself told me that I shouldn’t speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians, as doing so would only make matters worse for Middle-Eastern Christians.

While I am aware of that possibility, at the same time to dissimulate about the nature and magnitude of that persecution only misleads Christians outside the Middle East into complacency. It also just validates and reinforces violent intimidation. It is incumbent upon the bishops as messengers of the truth to tell the whole truth about what is happening to the Christians of the Middle East, and to reject a submission to Islamic intimidation that would condemn our children and our children’s children to slavery. To accept that intimidation and lie or remain silent because of it is only to encourage more such intimidation. They could speak out while working to ensure that the United States and other powers do everything they can to protect the remaining Christians in the Middle East from further persecution.

CM: What can the faithful do to influence the bishops or fight back against the liberal media?

RS: Call them to tell the truth. When they issue statements about Islam that are dishonest and misleading, challenge them. I have been severely criticized for criticizing bishops. Many Catholics seem to think that to do so is disloyal to the Church. On the contrary, I believe that not to call out bishops when they are sinful and wrong is even more disloyal to the Church. It is the kind of thinking that led to the pedophilia scandals.

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