CIA Director worries about Iran/North Korea Nuclear Cooperation

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There they  were at  a  University of Texas conference, the masters of intelligence disinformation, CIA Director John Brennan and DNI, James Clapper, poring over Kennedy Johnson era mythologies about body counts  as metrics of  success during  the Nam  era of the 1960’s and 1970’s seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. What a consummate waste of taxpayers’ dollars deflecting serious examination of national security failed strategies of an Administration intent on weakening America’s geo-political respect among doubting allies. All while hollowing out our military capabilities.

Brennan’s track record at the White House, before he was appointed as CIA head to  replace Gen. Petreaus,  was as counterterrorism czar overseeing a number of  Obama covert initiatives. There was the drone assassination program, sugar coating the radical Islam threat and running  covert ops under Presidential Findings collecting MANPADS  and shipping them  to Syrian rebels.  More may be revealed in upcoming hearings by the Special Benghazi Committee.

In this Washington Times (WT) report, Brennan raises the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Iran could have outsourced developments of nuclear weapons ad ICBMs to North Korea. Brennan was responded to media reports to that effect. He was cited by the WT saying:

Therefore, we have to make sure that we’re doing whatever we can to uncover anything,” Mr. Brennan said. “I’m not saying that something is afoot at all — what I’m saying is that we need to be attuned to all of the potential pathways to acquiring different types of [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities.

The WT further noted:

Mr. Brennan’s remarks on the Iran nuclear deal come just days after Mr. Clapper revealed that U.S. intelligence officials “are fielding some independent capabilities that will enable us … to have good insight into [Iran‘s] nuclear industrial enterprise” as the accord goes into effect over the coming months.

Mr. Clapper told the conference that he’s “pretty confident” U.S. intelligence officials will be able to verify “from our own sources” the accuracy of future IAEA assessments of whether or not Iran is complying with the terms of the accord.

Mr. Brennan on Tuesday also said that he stands behind the nuclear deal, and that he has “a lot of confidence” that the accord is structured in such a way that will make it extremely difficult for Iran to cheat.

What have my colleague Ilana Freedman, Stephen and Shoshana Bryen, Israeli  Missile defense expert Uzi Rubin, DIA and Office of Naval Intelligence reports been saying for nearly five years about cooperative nuclear weapons and  ICBM developments between these partners in the Axis of Evil?  That they may already  have developed a small number of nuclear weapons, tested warheads to be fitted on Shahab 3 missiles, and launched  missiles with  disposable boosters for satellite bombs and ICBMs.

House and Senate Iran deal hearings didn’t lay a glove on any of the Administration witnesses querying them about these possibilities , whether behind doors, or in front of the klieg lights of TV-cameras. Brennan either knew about those covert development possibilities, or  purposefully evaded responsibility for  informing  Congressional Select Permanent Intelligence Committees  about the status of those joint Iranian –North Korean development efforts.

We knew from what was leaked by the Pentagon regarding the September 2007 IAF Operation Orchard that destroyed the Syrian nuclear bomb factory on the Euphrates at al-Kibar there were intelligence file photos of North Korean and Iranian scientists at the site.  That was under Bush 43.

Would you place any trust in the representations of Messrs.  Brennan and Clapper?  Clapper is now embroiled in another intelligence disaster, the  allegations that as DNI he met frequently with CENTCOM intelligence chief, Gen. Grove to review  assessments of  the coalition aerial campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.  Given reports of a veritable revolt by 50 CENTCOM analysts about overly optimistic assessments about progress in defeating or at least achieving a stalemate in the war against ISIS, Clapper may be the subject of a Pentagon Inspector General investigations leading to possible  House and Senate Select Permanent Intelligence Hearings.

A Daily Beast report  in late August 2015 quoted former DIA chief, retired US Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn saying, “The phrase I use is the politicization of the intelligence community. That’s here. And it’s dangerous.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Islamic State’s top military commander was trained by U.S. Special Forces

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This article maintains that Abu Omar al Shishani was “radicalized” in a Saudi-funded mosque that challenged the moderate Islam that had hitherto prevailed in that region. Yet despite this supposedly prevailing moderation, its men gained a “reputation as crazy Islamic warriors.”

If this scenario is true, U.S. officials should think very carefully about the implications of the fact that there are hundreds of Saudi-funded mosques in the U.S. But they won’t.

And whether or not it is true that Abu Omar al Shishani was a “moderate” when he was trained by American special forces units, this story should make U.S. officials think carefully about the wisdom of such training, given that there is such a very fine line between “moderation” and “extremism.” But they won’t.

“U.S. training helped mold Islamic State’s top military commander,” by Mitchell Prothero, McClatchy, September 15, 2015:

…Abu Omar al Shishani, as he’s now known, had been born Tarkhan Batirashvili 27 years earlier in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, a tiny enclave of ethnic Chechens, known locally as Kists, whose roughly 10,000 residents represent virtually all of the Muslims in predominantly Orthodox Christian Georgia.

But analysts of extremist groups said Batirashvili’s impact has been far greater than the small numbers of Muslims in Georgia would suggest. Since he swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2013, thousands of Muslims from the Caucasus have flocked to Syria to join the extremist cause.

“More than anything else, Batirashvili has legitimized ISIS in the Caucasus by the power of his exploits, which is amplified by slick ISIS propaganda,” said Michael Cecire, an analyst of extremism for the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Batirashvili’s battlefield successes, including orchestrating the capture of Syria’s Menagh Air Base after two years of failed attempts, “helped to legitimize ISIS in militant circles, including in the North Caucasus,” Cecire said.

“Batirashvili’s ability to demonstrate ISIS’ tactical prowess attracted fighters in droves from other factions and tipped the scales in foreign fighter flow and recruitment,” Cecire said. “In the North Caucasus, young people no longer wanted to fight in Syria with the increasingly marginalized Caucasus Emirate (groups), but wanted to fight with the winners – ISIS.”

Batirashvili’s story also was compelling, Cecire said: “A man with a modest background, sickly and impoverished before he went to Syria,” becomes “a great battlefield commander defying the world” . . . a “seemingly emulable, rags-to-riches story.”

Those seeking an explanation for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence on sending military supplies and manpower to Syria to bolster the government of President Bashar Assad would do well to consider Batirashvili. Putin not only personally oversaw the Russian push into Georgia, but he has twice waged war against Islamist-led factions in Chechnya whose cause Batirashvili has supported since he was a teenager. Ethnic Chechens are thought to be the largest group of foreign fighters among Islamic State forces.

Now 30, Batirashvili is a key figure, reportedly a member of the group’s governing council, is said to be the Islamic State’s supreme military leader in northern Syria and Aleppo, and is perhaps the group’s most fearsome ground commander. His current status is an irony for a man once considered a Georgian soldier with a bright future.

“We trained him well, and we had lots of help from America,” said a former Georgian defense official who asked to not be identified because of the sensitivity of Batirashvili’s role in the Islamic State. “In fact, the only reason he didn’t go to Iraq to fight alongside America was that we needed his skills here in Georgia.”

Even before Georgia and Russia came to blows in 2008, Batirashvili had earned a reputation for fighting Russians. While a part of Georgia, the Pankisi Valley’s northern end abuts Chechnya, where separatists fought a brutal war for independence from Russia in the 1990s. Batirashvili’s mother was Chechen, and his father has told local journalists that young Batirashvili had seen a handful of military operations as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgia’s military in 2006 at age 20.

The choice of a military career was natural, say Georgian officials and journalists who knew him and his community. Pankisi is a tiny and isolated sliver of Georgia with little economic activity, and the choices for its youth are narrow: leave home to fight the Russians, become a subsistence farmer, join one of the legendarily nasty Chechen criminal gangs, or join the military.

According to Batirashvili’s ex-comrades in the Georgian military, Batirashvili was tapped immediately upon his enlistment to join Georgia’s U.S.-trained special forces.

“He was a perfect soldier from his first days, and everyone knew he was a star,” said one former comrade, who asked not to be identified because he remains on active duty and has been ordered not to give media interviews about his former colleague. “We were well trained by American special forces units, and he was the star pupil.”

Fighting the Russians in Chechnya would not have disqualified him, the former comrade said. “Having fought the Russians as a Chechen is hardly unusual and not the sort of thing that would have meant you were a bad guy,” he said. “It just means you’re from Pankisi.”

None of the people who knew Batirashvili during his military service noted any sort of dedication to Islam or jihadist tendencies, but that’s not considered particularly unusual in a country where Muslims tend to adhere to a moderate strain of Sufi Islam despite Chechnya’s reputation as a incubator of extremism.

Batirashvili’s exploits in the 2008 war with Russia are the stuff of local legend. Why he left the military isn’t clear.

“Chechens have a reputation as crazy Islamic warriors, but our Islam has always been moderate,” according to one Pankisi community and clan leader who’s been ordered by the government not to talk about the man many Georgians laughingly refer to as “Pankisi’s most famous son.”

That reputation for moderation, however, began to change in the wake of the Chechen wars, which devastated Chechnya, and by the construction in 2000 of a second mosque to serve the valley’s six small villages.

The new mosque, the community leader said, was built with a donation from Saudi Arabia and “preached a kind of alien Wahhabi-style Islam,” not the Sufi-style Islam that had characterized the regions for hundreds of years.

“It told our people that it was wrong to pray at graves of saints and ancestors, as our people have done for hundreds of years, and even to share our religious rites with our Christian brothers,” he said.

By the mid-2000s, multiple residents say, the situation had split the community, mostly by age, with the original Sufi mosque attended by the older members of the community, while the young people were radicalized by the new mosque. This led to significant tensions with police until it was resolved by a revolution almost 1,000 miles away.

“They all started leaving for Syria,” the community elder said. “Things are safer here now because all the radicals – our children – have gone to Syria.”

American and Georgian intelligence estimates put that number at between 150 and 200 young men who have left Pankisi to fight in Syria….

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Abu Omar al Shishani.

EXPOSED: The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood “political party” dedicated to civilizational jihad

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The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal in America is to “destroy the Western civilization from within.” Star-Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party shows the newest weapon in their arsenal for doing so – a self-described “political Party” called the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). This new monograph “connects the dots” between the Brotherhood’s secret plan to impose Shariah here and the insidious use it intends to make of our democratic political system to that end.

The USCMO understands that in order for it to succeed, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood must be galvanized to the execution of the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” – a term taken from a key 1991 Brotherhood document, An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, submitted as evidence by the Justice Department in the landmark 2008 U.S. v Holy Land Foundation, et al. HAMAS terror funding trial:

“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” 

By its nature, the object of such a stealthy form of jihad is to ensure that the target community remains unaware of the extent of the threat until it is too late. It is our purpose with this volume and the other monographs of the Center’s Civilization Jihad Reader Series to raise the alarm and to engage the American people and their elected representatives in countering this threat while there is still time.

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said of the new Civilization Jihad Reader:

The Muslim Brotherhood agenda for the United States demonstrably seeks through subversive infiltration of American institutions the triumph of shariah. We are now on notice that U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations is simply the leading edge of the jihadist movement in this country. While the USCMO seeks to cloak itself in red, white, and blue, it is only for the purpose of accomplishing what can aptly be described as “Star Spangled Shariah.”

The Center for Security Policy/Secure Freedom is proud to present this monograph as a superb addition to its Civilization Jihad Reader Series .  Star-Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party is available for purchase in kindle and paperback format on Amazon.com.

Click here for a full PDF of the newly released monograph.

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About The Center for Security Policy

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public. For more information visit www.securefreedom.org

U.S. Liberal Jews pushing for more Syrian refugees. Why?

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At one time I was a member of the national board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in the early 1980’s when the priority was helping Jews escape from tyranny in Russia, Ethiopia and Syria. There are reported to be less than a dozen elderly Jews left in Syria. HIAS was also involved in processing Vietnamese boat people refugees in the US.  That was over three decades ago.  HIAS is one of the 11 Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGS) under the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) and Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement pushing to bring to the US 100,000 Syrian refugees streaming out of the more than 5 million displaced internally and in external camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

HIAS has joined with Arab American advocacy groups and immigration lawyers, some controlled by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, like those on the Syrian American Council, to bring predominately Muslim Syrian refugees to America. As we have seen in the flood of an estimated  400,000 Syrian refugees, a vanguard of whom have entered the broken open borders of the Shengen system of EU countries, the predominate demographics are young men,. Among who may be ISIS sympathizers that may add to the already daunting problems that FBI Director Comey had said already faces us in all 50 states.

President Obama announced last week an increase in the annual allotment of 10,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled here. The current total PRM allotment under the Refugee Act of 1980 is 70,000. The PRM updated a list of local resettlement agencies in more than 180 communities throughout the US being screened as potential recipients of these Syrian and other UN designated refugees. One of those on the PRM listed is Catholic Charities in my community of Pensacola in northwest Florida.

A Pew Trust study revealed that 1.7 Muslim immigrants were admitted to the US over the US over the period from 1992 to 2010. Upwards of 250,000 Muslim refugees have already been admitted under the US Refugee Resettlement Program from conflict zones in the Middle East, Eastern and sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia since 1990. One refugee family assisted by the program in Boston were the Chechen Tsarneavs, whose sons, Tamerlane and Dzhokhar, who became Jihadist terrorists who perpetrated the heinous Boston Marathon bombing. We have written extensively about assimilation and national security problems of Somali refugees in the U.S., especially the problems in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Columbus, Ohio and other émigré communities. Some of these communities have spawned émigré fundamentalist fighters who joined terrorist groups Al Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Some of these émigré jihadis have returned to the U.S. and been arrested and convicted for material support for terrorism. Now the threat may be self motivated jihadists who perpetrated attacks such as in Garland, Texas and the deadly attack on Marine and Naval reservists in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On 9/11 the Jewish Telegraph Association (JTA) reported these developments in an article, “Arab Americans look to Jews for help on Syrian refugees:”

Over the last few days, HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, launched a petition drive calling on President Barack Obama to swiftly open America’s gates to an additional 100,000 Syrians, and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote to the president and congressional leaders calling for a coordinated international response.

“Our great nation must respond immediately by providing safety, food, shelter, refuge, and dignity,” wrote the Reform leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “How can a nation built by refugees from political persecution turn our back on refugees fleeing religious and political persecution?”

Omar Hossino, the Washington-based Syrian American Council’s public relations director, singled out HIAS as being particularly helpful.

“HIAS has been consistently calling for more resettlement and pushing back against the discriminatory rhetoric opposing opening the doors to Syrian refugees,” he said.

This week, HIAS president Mark Hetfield held a conference call with American Jewish organizational officials to talk about his agency’s decision to join with Arab-American leaders in critiquing U.S. policies that limit the numbers of refugees settled in the United States to about 70,000 per year.

Only about 1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted since the start of the civil war in 2011. Obama announced Thursday that the United States soon would take in 10,000 refugees, but Hetfield said that number was inadequate.

“We are dealing with a global humanitarian crisis to which the entire world must respond,” he said in a statement issued within hours of Obama’s announcement. “If Germany can open its doors to 800,000 asylum seekers, the U.S., with a population four times the size of Germany’s and a history as a nation of immigrants and refugees, can take 100,000.”

Hetfield appealed to regional Jewish groups to act on the grassroots level to help absorb refugees.

Akram Abusharar, a Gaza-born U.S. immigration attorney who handles approximately 80 Syrian asylum cases per month, said HIAS’s involvement was a boost to his cause.

“The Jewish community has more capacity to move the politicians on this issue than the Arab-American community,” he told JTA in an interview.

But more recently Hossino has tracked an uptick in opposition to bringing Muslim immigrants to the United States — especially among Republican candidates and members of congress. In television appearances last weekend, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said the United States has “done its fair share” when it comes to the refugee crisis. Sen. Rand Paul asserted that the U.S. “can’t accept the whole world” and should adopt a cautious stance towards resettlement.

Hetfield, in the conference call, said concerns about the Muslim and Arab identity of the refugees are misplaced, reminding listeners of similar reasoning when some nations in the 1930s blocked Jewish immigration from Germany.

So why is HIAS joining with other willing NGOs like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran World Refugee and Immigration Services, Church World Services and the International Rescue Committee promoting a flood of Syrian Refugees to come to the U.S.?  Is it a humanitarian gesture of openness?  Or is it the fees they receive  from processing refugees and asylees who fit the UN and US Citizenship and Immigration Service definitionthat determines who  qualifies to be admitted  for asylum under the Refugee Act of 1980? Those refugees that are admitted under the US resettlement programs receive a smorgasbord of federal and state welfare, medical, housing and other benefits that some migration specialists’ estimate could exceed 10 to 12 billion dollars annually. That taxpayer burden might double if HIAS and other VOLAGs, with the assistance of the Obama White House, succeed in dramatically increasing the allotments for Syrian Refugees over the next several years.

Syrian Christian refugees(1)

Syrian Christian Refugees.

If anyone among the displaced Syrian refugees deserves priority it is the Syriac Christians and other non-Muslim religious minorities with existing Diaspora communities in the US. Communities that might provide private sponsorship assistance. Those traditional private sponsorship programs like the Canadian federal effort have demonstrated the ability to rapidly absorb refugees who share basic values traditional with our society.  We also have the examples of Jewish philanthropists like the venerable UK publisher, 95 year old Lord George Weidenfeld, a holocaust survivor, spearheading the Safe Havens Fund actively supporting efforts to spare a fraction of these threatened Christian and non-Muslim Middle East minorities. HIAS could expand upon Weidenfeld’s example.

HIAS, Jewish Federations and the leaders of the  Reform Movement should carefully vet Arab American ‘partners’ before sallying forth on humanitarian grounds to admit more Syrian and predominately Muslim refugees. Especially, when there are threatened Middle East Christians and other non-Muslim minorities that deserve preference. That is demonstrated by the Safe Havens Fund of Lord Weidenfeld, who received the Theodore Herzl Award of the World Jewish Congress.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

More undesirables from Mexico? Syrians!

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Breitbart has news yesterday that the Mexican government might be planning to ‘welcome’ Syrians to Mexico. And, then they could do what Trump says they do—send us their problem people!

Prominent Mexican officials are calling on their president to open the doors for 10,000 Syrian refugees, though thousands of Mexicans per year are fleeing their cartel-controlled nation and its violence and seeking asylum in the United States. The move comes on the heels of Mexico accepting 30 Syrian students. Other nations south of the porous U.S.-Mexico border have already opened their doors for people fleeing the Middle East.

Considering the Mexican government’s inability to govern its own territory and the willingness of Mexican officials to accept cash bribes, one could question whether their screening process would exclude potentially dangerous individuals. Even in the case of an individual being identified having a connection to a terrorist organization, a wealthy benefactor or ally of the individual could simply pay off a decision-maker and get the individual through.

Read on…..

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Lebanese Christian Politician Attacks Israel

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Noted Israeli-Canadian scholar Dr. Mordechai Nisan’s, latest book, War and Politics in Lebanon, reveals that very few Lebanese Christian politicians and commanders had a high level of ethics.  See “Engimatic Lebanon”, in the September 2015, New English Review. Those who didn’t lust after power were few. Some were powerless like Charles Malek and Fuad Bustany. Others are dying like Antoine Lahd. Or are in exile such as Etienne Sacr.  Nisan cites  the  example of Christian leaders, like Michel Aoun who have opted to form alliances with Iran and its proxy Hezbollah.  Another Nisan also drew attention to is Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces political party. Nisan wrote, “Aoun and Geagea .. both tore Maronite unity into shreds and bloodshed.”

Geagea led the Lebanese Forces Christian militia from 1985 to 1990 in full alliance with Israel. That was before he was jailed by the Syrian-backed regime in 1994 for eleven years for “assassinations of Lebanese citizens”.

Now Samir Geagea has apparently made  a major ideological and strategic change of direction. In a surprising statement issued yesterday, Geagea attacked “the aggressive Israelis for their violence against Palestinians, and Israel’s suppression of Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem.”   Contrast this with his earlier condemnation of Hezbollah in the  January 2015 attacks by Hezbollah the killed two IDF soldiers near Mount Dov near the Lebanese border. The Algemeiner reported Geagea saying at the time: “Hezbollah has no right to implicate the Lebanese people in a battle with Israel. There is a government and a parliament which can decide on that.”?

This statement didn’t appear out of the blue.  Geagea and his wife MP Setrida Geagea had just returned from a visit to Qatar; a major supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. The visit took place after sources revealed that Geagea’s political party went in quest of funding.  He had received Saudi petrodollars in the past, according to wikileaks.

However, the pro-Muslim Brotherhood  and pro-Hamas attitude of Geagea isn’t of recent origin. He  dispatched a member of his party’s political bureau, MP Antoine Zahra, to Gaza in support of Hamas. Geagea supporters argue that he needs to play the Sunni card to create a balance with Hezbollah and Iran.  Lebanese Christian sources dismiss the Sunni Shia reason. They say, “Geagea could have kept his connections to moderate Sunnis like Sa’ad Hariri.  However, he openly allied himself with Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas which is a huge mistake. It is about Petrodollars of course.”

Waging an attack on Israel to buy credit among Islamist fundamentalists is not a Geagea invention. Before him, another Lebanese Christian leader General Michel Aoun who fought Assad in 1989 and went into exile for 15 years, reversed his position  upon his return to Lebanon in 2005.  He openly sealed an alliance with Hezbollah.  Aoun engaged in a decade long alliance with Assad, Hezbollah and Iran. Thus the two most powerful Christian politicians, who have fought the radical Islamists and Iran in the past, have become allies to the Jihadists, both Sunnis and Shia.  All to the surprise of  veterans of both the Lebanese Forces militia and the Lebanese Army.

In the 1980s, another former commander of the Christian militia, a close ally of Israel, Elie Hobeika, also  reversed course and shifted from being anti Assad to becoming an ally of the Syrian regime in 1985. He was attacked by both Geagea and Aoun in 1986 and removed from East Beirut. Ironically Geagea and Aoun, years later also abandoned their Lebanese Christian legacy to become allies with either Hamas or Hezbollah.

A Lebanese Christian scholar living in Beirut, who knew both Aoun and Geagea, said “this is a sickness of power. We haven’t seen anything like that when Bashir Gemayel was alive.  Geagea and Aoun are  power hungry. They abandoned their people and are aligning with radicals just  hoping one day they will snatch the supreme office of President of the Lebanese Republic. This is disgusting. We blame Geagea more, because he once led a force that was the heart of the Lebanese Christian resistance. He knew better, his betrayal is bigger.”

Geagea, we note,  fell short of  the  65 Parliamentary votes needed in the April 2014 election to succeed Michel Sleiman’s term as the Maronite President in the confessional political system. He only got 48 votes.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Samir Geagea  Christian Lebanese Forces political leader.

They call them ‘Syrian Refugees’ but are they really just ‘Refugees’?

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This past week, 14 years later we, as a nation, took pause to remember September 11, 2001.  Yes it has been 14 years already since that deadly attack on the American people and it is something that will be burned into our collective psyche for the rest of our lives.  We will never forget September 11th, 2001. Or will we? Or have we already?

Currently, there is a ‘crisis’ in Syria and the people are fleeing the multi-faceted civil war going on in that small Middle East nation.  There are at least three major factions fighting each other and it is creating havoc for the people of that nation. So much so that the men, women, children are fleeing for their lives and are flooding European nations that are near to Syria Or are they really?

Some studies have suggested that in many groups of refugees, the makeup of the people include women and children and elderly but that 80% are men between the ages of 18 and 30 and that is the age of a soldier. In fact we know that some of those young men are indeed members of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other Muslim extremist groups that are bent on the West’s destruction.  The problem is we don’t know which of them are or how many there are.

The media has portrayed this as a mass human exodus with unimaginable suffering.  What we hear from people on the ground in the areas affected is that this is not true.  In fact many European nations have closed their once open borders in an effort to stop the free flow of these people for the simple reason those countries know for a fact that some of those crossing their borders have nefarious reasons on their minds.

France, England, Belgium and other European nations are all too familiar with these kinds of immigrants because they have caused death and destruction on a massive scale. These nations have also learned that there is no integration of culture when they cross into their lands.  France thought they could appease Muslims by giving them whole towns to basically run as they please and that has not caused a drop in terrorism in France.  In fact, it has increased.

And now the French are beginning to take some hard line stances to curb this terrorism and England has begun to do the same thing for the same reasons.  Even those who do not love the USA are taking or have taken hard line stances. Take Russia for example, they do not tolerate deviation from its national culture because you either assimilate or President Putin will kick you out or put you in prison.

China has all but banned Islam within its borders by banning all Mosques.  Even Chinese citizens have been turned away and prevented from re-entering their own nation because of their Islamic affiliations. So with much of the world turning their back on Syrian refugees and radical Islam, one has to ask the question why is it that the American left is so open to the idea of bringing even more of these people into the country?

Does the left not understand that Islam hates them the most because they support all kinds of ideas that are a complete and total offense to Islam such as Atheism and homosexuality.  In the Middle East, they still hang or behead atheists and homosexuals.  Yet the left still thinks it’s worth bringing these haters into the USA.

It would seem to me that the left has forgotten what happened on September 11, 2001.  Don’t get me wrong I feel for the people of Syria.  I really do.  But only a fool would let their emotions rule the day and let terrorist into their midst willingly. This is the modern day version of the Trojan horse because if Women and Children and the Elderly are the refugees, how could we possibly refuse to take the young men as well?

I have not forgotten September 11, 2001 and I say it is easy to deny entry to those who have as their base religion, our very destruction as their agenda.  So it is written, so they say it will be done. We have to remind liberals that their illogical bleeding hearts could get people they know and love killed and then we would have another 9/11 to remember 14 years later.

It’s not humane to do such a thing.  It’s foolish.

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Pope admits danger of Islamic State infiltration among refugees, still wants parishes to accept them

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What could possibly go wrong? Last February, the Islamic State promised to flood Europe in the near future with as many as 500,000 refugees. And an Islamic State operative recently boasted that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had entered Europe. “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.” He explained: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.”

Is societal suicide really a requirement of Christian charity? So many Christian clerics seem to think so — either in regard to this refugee influx or in regard to accepting Islamic blasphemy restrictions on the freedom of speech — that apparently I am a misunderstander of Christianity.

“Pope: ‘I trust the young politicians. Corruption is a global problem,’” by Aura Miguel, Renascença, September 14, 2015 (thanks to Angemon):

But this challenge to welcome these refugees who are making their way into Europe, in your point of view, could it be positive for Europe? Could it be beneficial, a provocation? Is Europe finally waking up, changing track?

It may be. It’s true, I recognize that, nowadays, border safety conditions are not what they once were. The truth is that just 400 kilometres from Sicily there is an incredibly cruel terrorist group. So there is a danger of infiltration, this is true.

Which could reach Rome…

Yes, nobody said Rome would be immune to this threat. But you can take precautions, and put these people to work. But then there is another problem, that Europe is going through a very big labour crisis. There is a country… In fact, I am going to mention three countries, although I will not name them, but some of the most important in Europe, in which unemployment for under 25 year olds is, in one country 40%, in another 47% and in a third 50%. There is a labour crisis, young people can’t find work. So it is a mixture of things and we can’t be simplistic. Obviously, if a refugee arrives, despite all the safety precautions, we must welcome him, because this is a commandment from the Bible. Moses said to his people: “welcome the foreigner, because you also were a foreigner in the land of Egypt”.

But the ideal would be that they didn’t need to flee, that they could remain in their lands?

That’s right, Yes.

Your Holiness, during the Sunday Angelus you made this very concrete challenge to welcome refugees. Have there been reactions? What do you expect, exactly?

What I asked was that in each parish and each religious institute, every monastery, should take in one family. A family, not just one person. A family gives more guarantees of security and containment, so as to avoid infiltrations of another kind. When I say that a parish should welcome a family, I don’t mean that they should go and live in the priest’s house, in the rectory, but that each parish community should see if there is a place, a corner in the school which can be turned into a small apartment or, if necessary, that they may rent a small apartment for this family; but that they should be provided with a roof, welcomed and integrated into the community. I have had many, many reactions. There are convents which are almost empty…

Two years ago you had already made this request, what answers did you get?

Only four. One of them from the Jesuits [laughs]; well done, the Jesuits! But this is a serious subject, because there is also the temptation of the god money. Some religious orders say “no, now that the convent is empty we are going to make a hotel and we can have guests, and support ourselves that way, or make money”. Well, if that is what you want to do, then pay taxes! A religious school is tax-exempt because it is religious, but if it is functioning as a hotel, then it should pay taxes just like its neighbour. Otherwise it is not fair business.

And you have already said that you will be taking in two families, here in the Vatican…

Yes, two families. I was told yesterday that the families have already been identified, and the two Vatican parishes have undertaken to go and search for them.

They have been identified?

Yes, yes, yes, they have. Cardinal Comastri dealt with that – he is my vicar-general for the Vatican – along with Monsenhor Konrad Krajewski, who is the Apostolic Almoner, and who works with the homeless and was in charge of installing the showers underneath the colonnade, and the barbers – truly marvellous. He is the one who takes the homeless to see the museums and the Sistine Chapel…

And how long will these families be staying?

As long as the Lord wants. We don’t know how this will end, do we? Nonetheless, I want to say that Europe has opened its eyes, and I thank it. I thank the European countries which have become opened their eyes to this.

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Islamic State: Pakistan Taliban leader Adnan Rashid has pledged allegiance to the Caliphate

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Breaking News: Adnan Rashid commander of #Taliban Pakistan pledge allegiance to Islamic State. #Pakistan #TTP #KPK pic.twitter.com/wO1R8cKgUa

So claims Abu Talut Khorasani, who claims himself to be an ex-Taliban commander who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The Islamic State is making a concerted effort to win over the Taliban and gain a foothold in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If they succeed, they could present an even more formidable force against free people than they are now.

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U.S. Muslim killed fighting for Islamic State: “It’s Islam Over Everything”

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John Kerry, Joe Biden, and the U.S. Catholic bishops are on their way to see Marchello McCain now, so as to explain to him how his brother was a misunderstander of Islam, and that only greasy Islamophobes think that putting Islam over everything means dedicating one’s life to killing Infidels.

“Brother of American killed fighting for ISIS is charged with lying to FBI,” by Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2015 (thanks to Darcy):

The brother of an American citizen killed while fighting on behalf of ISIS was charged Monday with lying to the FBI when he denied knowing about his brother traveling to Syria.

Marchello Dsaun McCain, 33, already faced five counts of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition and one count of possession of body armor. A charge of making false statements was added Monday.

Douglas McCain, who was born in Chicago and raised in Minnesota before living in San Diego, was killed in August 2014 while fighting for ISIS in Syria against the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, according to the National Security Council.

Douglas McCain attended San Diego City College, worked in a local restaurant, and was an aspiring rap singer. On a website, he left the message “It’s Islam Over Everything” and included a speech by a leader of the so-called Islamic State….

The charge of lying to the FBI includes accusations that he knew that his brother had gone to Syria and used a credit card to buy an airline ticket to Turkey en route to Syria. He is currently in federal jail without bail.

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Congressional Report: Iran Spends Billions to Foment Global Terror

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Responding to a request from Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), the Congressional Research Service prepared a report detailing monies spent by Iran supporting terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

The report, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, outlined the massive expenditures by the Iranian regime on Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias Syria and Iraq, the Assad government, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as well as Iran’s own military program.

These expenditures will only increase with the expected release of $150 billion in sanctions relief due to the current nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers.

Iranian Military Spending

Although in May 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama stated Iran’s military budget was “$15 billion compared to $150 billion for the Gulf States,” Press TV, an Iranian-owned media outlet, reported in March the Iranian parliament had approved a $300 billion budget for the military for 2015.

The report names the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force as the main vehicle that carries out terrorism for the regime, citing one study that claims the actual funding for the force is “much greater” than the amount allotted to it in the official budget “as the group’s funds are supplemented by its own economic activities.”

Assad Government

Iran provides an estimated $6-20 billion per year in aid to the Assad regime in Syria. One source estimated in 2013 Iran was giving $600-700 million per month to Syria, while another says that the amount has since doubled. The money funds militias, weapons and military training as well as the purchase of subsidized oil from Iran and other commodities.

Although Iran claims to be cash strapped because of international sanctions, this past July, Iran extended $1 billion in additional financial credit to the Syrian regime.

Shiite Militias in Syria

Iran provides training for Iraqi Shiite militias who are fighting for the Assad regime in Syria. An estimated 5-10,000 Iraqi Shiites are said to comprise these forces that fight alongside Hezbollah and form sniper teams, lead ambushes, establish checkpoints and provide infantry support for Syrian armored corps. Iran also recruits fighters for the Assad regime from Afghanistan and from within Syria itself. Iran pays each fighter an estimated $500-1,000 per month.

Shiite Militias in Iraq

One Iranian cleric cited in the congressional report estimates Iran has spent more than $1 billion in military aid to Iraq since the Islamic State swept through the country and captured large swathes of territory in the north last summer.

The militias Iran funds in Iraq are theose that fought against the United States between 2003 and 2011. Iraqi intelligence officials say just one of these militias, As’aib Ahl Al Haq (League of the Righteous), receives between $1.5 and $2 million per month from Iran.

A report published by Amnnesty International in 2014 titled Absolute Impunity: Militia Rule in Iraq documented the horrific kidnapping and murder of Sunni men by these Shiite paramilitary groups.

Hezbollah

The latest State Department Country Report on Terrorism (2014) states Iran provided Hezbollah with “training, weapons, and explosives, as well as political, diplomatic, monetary, and organizational aid.” The Department of Defense estimates Tehran gives Hezbollah between $100-200 million in aid per year.

Iran-Khamenei-Nasrallah-Kiss-IP_0

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah kisses Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Photo: © Reuters)

Hamas

In 2006, it was estimated Iran was providing Hamas with $20-25 million per month to cover its governing budget as well as supplying the Gaza-based terror group weapons, technical assistance and military training.

In the years following, it was reported the aid had been cut, while at the same time Iran began sending more assistance to an alternate terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Most recent media reports say Iran has resumed its support of Hamas, providing “tens of millions of dollars” to Hamas’ military efforts including the rebuilding of tunnels destroyed the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, the replenishment of rockets and the salaries of fighters.

Houthi Rebels

Over the past number of years, Iran has been increasing its activities in Yemen. The Islamic republic is currently supporting the Houthi rebels who are fighting against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, providing them with “tens of millions of dollars.”

The infusion of $150 billion dollars in sanctions relief due to the current nuclear agreement with the world’s powers, in addition to monies garnered through vast business dealings with the West, will provide Iran will more fodder as it fans out its terrorist fires across the globe.

Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org

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VIDEO: Ground Zero Mosque — Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks

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Our acclaimed AFDI documentary, The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks, is on YouTube for a limited time only. This is the first time this film is available online.

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Iran: “The U.S. had no alternative but giving up its excessive demands”

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“She said the United States ‘was forced into negotiating’ the deal with Iran due do the ‘failure of the U.S. policy of sanctions and threats.’” Actually the sanctions were working fine to limit Iran’s activities, and the threats are all coming from the Iranians, not from anyone else.

“Iran: The Americans Had ‘No Option’ Besides a Deal,” by Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva, September 12, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):

Iran’s foreign ministry said on Friday that the United States had no option but to strike a nuclear deal with Tehran, after a Republican bid to block the agreement failed, AFP reports.

President Barack Obama hailed as a “victory for diplomacy” Thursday’s Senate vote during which a Democratic minority staved off the bid to sink the nuclear deal.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, however, played down his comments saying it was “explicitly paradoxical,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

She said the United States “was forced into negotiating” the deal with Iran due do the “failure of the U.S. policy of sanctions and threats”.

“The U.S. president, fruitlessly, tries to claim the results of the nuclear negotiations, but the truth is … the U.S. had no alternative but giving up its excessive demands,” Afkham claimed, according to AFP.

“The world would definitely be safer when the U.S. administration ends its authoritarian behavior and prevents the destabilizing and warmongering actions by its allies,” she added.

Afkham was taking a jibe at Obama who also said that the Senate vote was a “victory… for the safety and security of the world”.

Even after the signing of the deal with the West, Iranian leaders have continued their anti-Western rhetoric. The Islamic Republic has continued to gloat over what it sees as western powers’ “surrender” to Iran by agreeing to the agreement….

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The Real Rogue Cop Problem

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Over at PJ Media, I discuss where, and why, police are actually participating in the heinous targeting of certain population[s]:

Do #InfidelLivesMatter?

It’s open season on police officers these days, because many black Americans believe that it’s open season on them. And while some police officers are no doubt hateful, corrupt, and compromised to powerful interests, in the main one must go out of the country to find the real rogue cops: police officers who aid and abet, and sometimes even participate in, the terrorizing of their own people.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Pakistan took the unusual step of criticizing the police’s failure to intervene in the case of a couple, Shahzad and Shama Masih, who were murdered by a lynch mob in Kot Radha Kishan, Punjab, in November 2014. Five police officers stood by and did nothing while a frenzied mob murdered the Masihs.

Why didn’t they step in and stop the lynching? Because the Masihs were Christians, accused of blasphemy.

Blasphemy is a capital crime in Pakistan, but all too often the death sentence is carried out not by duly constituted authorities, but by slavering mobs such as killed Shahzad and Shama Masih.

Police, sharing the mob’s world view, stand by and let it happen.

Sometimes these rogue cops do worse than just stand by while infidels are brutalized.

Earlier this summer in Indonesia, police in the West Papuan city of Karubaga opened fire on worshippers at the local congregation of the Evangelical Church of Indonesia (GIDI), killing a fifteen-year-old boy, Endi Wanimbo, and wounding eleven other Christians. Indonesian authorities have hastened to protect the perpetrators: they have neither arrested the police officers responsible, nor released their names.

National police chief General Badrodin Haiti explained:

The victims were shot because they were pelting stones at Muslims who were just performing Eid prayers.

However, Natalius Pigai of the National Commission for Human Rights contradicted Haiti:

It seems to have been a misunderstanding that Evangelical Church of Indonesia (GIDI) is being hostile to Islam. In fact, they were not planning to burn the mosque. People were upset because of the police shootings.

Haiti appears to be another rogue cop, willing to bend the truth to protect Muslims who harm Christians.

Most troubling, the problem of cops protecting Muslim perpetrators has been occurring in Western countries, too.

In non-Muslim countries, “infidel” police officers are so afraid of offending ever-so-easily-offended Muslim sensibilities that they turn a blind eye to crimes committed by Muslims — particularly when there is justification for such crimes in Islamic scripture and law.

The most appalling example of this came in the British city of Rotherham. There, 1,400 British non-Muslim children were gang-raped and brutalized by Muslims whose actions found Islamic justification in the Qur’an’s allowance for men to take non-Muslim “captives of the right hand” for use as sex slaves (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50).

Police hesitated to act for fear of being considered “Islamophobic.”

A whistleblower noted the following about members of the Rotherham council:

They described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.

Last November, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announced that it was going to investigate ten officers of the South Yorkshire Police Department for their role in covering up the activities of Muslim rape gangs in Rotherham.

But in this case, the cops weren’t rogue; their superiors were. These ten police officers were just being set up to take the fall….

Read the rest here.

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Does Iran Support The Islamic State? by Kyle Orton

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In 2010, Farzad Farhangian, an Iranian diplomat based in Belgium, defected to Norway. Farhangian has now emerged with the extraordinary accusation that the Islamic Republic of Iran is controlling the Islamic State (ISIS) and using it as part of Tehran’s war against the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia. Farhangian’s accusations are lurid and (literally) incredible, but the question of Iran’s role in ISIS’ creation and growth, and Iran’s manipulation of ISIS to further its own ends, is one well worth asking.

Farhangian made his accusations in two separate posts, one dated February 25 and one from May 16. (Thanks be to @Paradoxy13 for translation.) Farhangian has been identified in media reports as the press attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Brussels; his own account adds to that that he was an advisor at the Iranian Foreign Ministry and worked in the Iranian Embassies in Dubai, Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen.

Farhangian says that after meeting with elements of the Iranian opposition in Paris, France, he then “spent four important hours with a high ranking Revolutionary Guard commander who left his post a while ago and is now arranging his residency abroad so he can announce that he is joining the opposition.” Farhangian says that he would ideally have liked to wait until the Guardsman was in the clear, but felt that what the Guardsman had to say was too important to wait. Farhangian says that what the Revolutionary Guardsman said was buttressed by a “confidential and extremely sensitive document”. Farhangian writes:

One of the most dangerous things I was informed of with photos and documents … was that Daesh [ISIS] was being managed and controlled through a military operations room in Mashhad [in northwestern Iran], and the room is being managed by high ranking Russian and Iranian intelligence commanders. The goal is to create chaos in the Arab world in general and the Gulf countries in particular, especially Saudi Arabia. The Iranian regime still believes and seeks by all means to subdue Mecca and Medina to Wilayat al-Faqih [the ruling ideology of the Iranian theocracy]. Russia on the other hand sees that revenge is inevitable because it believes that Saudi Arabia played a big role in dismantling the Soviet Union and its defeat in Afghanistan after it drove oil prices down causing economic collapse in the Soviet Union.

The Russian and Iranian operations room in Mashhad uses Russian satellites to provide support to Daesh in its plans, movements, and the tactics that they follow in their operations, in addition to providing intelligence on the international coalition sorties that target the organisation.

Iran wishes to “drag Jordan and Egypt into the war and to infiltrate Saudi and Kuwaiti land,” Farhangian says, and the setting up of ISIS outposts in Libya and the Sinai desert of Egypt is the prelude to the announcement of an Islamic State across North Africa that can be used as a launch-pad for an attack on the Gulf States. Meanwhile, Iran is seeking “to encircle Saudi Arabia” by means of “open[ing] a front on the northern borders of Saudi Arabia through Iraqi Shi’ite militias … to ease the pressure on the Houthis to the south [of Saudi Arabia], [and] at the same time Daesh will be carrying out terrorist acts in Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.”

So how reliable is all this? As stated: not very. Conspiracies of this scale and intricacy just do not happen. But what of the idea that Iran is using ISIS to further its strategic ambitions? On that the evidence is rather more suggestive.

Though the Obama administration is now sold on Iran as a partner in the anti-ISIS war, I noted recently that one of the reasons this won’t work is because Iran doesn’t want to defeat ISIS, at least not now. Iran has its strategic holdings in Iraq and Syria and its access to Hizballah in Lebanon. Iran couldn’t rule over all the Sunnis under ISIS’ “Caliphate” anyway, and ISIS’ presence helps keep Iraq and Syria off-balance—giving Iran the weak neighbours it has always wanted—and the ISIS menace helps keep any opposition to Iranian hegemony among the governments in Baghdad and Damascus side-lined when the alternative is extermination.

This, however, is only the most indirect means by which Iran has helped ISIS build its power. One “cannot truly understand ISIS today,” Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan write in their superb book on the takfiri group, without examining “the agendas of [the] regimes in Iran and Syria”.

Read more.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Syrian Intifada. The featured image is of Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s spymaster.