Policy Archives - Page 1362 of 1760

Globalists Fight Psychological War of Words against America

February 9, 2017/in Courts & Law, Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Michael Cutler

Borders are a nation’s first line of defense and last line of defense against the enemies of that nation. In fact, it could properly be said that the primary role of our military is to keep America’s enemies as far from our shores (and borders) as possible.

However, “up close and in person,” the issue of border security becomes the domain and responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies charged with border security and the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

The report, “9/11 and Terrorist Travel – Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” began with this paragraph:

“It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.”

However, border security is a problem for globalists who see in secure borders impediments to their wealth. And, politicians who depend on political campaign contributions, by necessity, must take into account the demands of their campaign contributors, many of whom have globalist objectives.

Organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a host of other special interest groups that depend on the exploitation of the immigration system are eager to fill the campaign coffers of politicians irrespective of whether they are Democrats or Republicans in order to get “the best government money can buy.”

Today news reports on immigration often lack clarity and honesty. Frequently news reports appear to have been written by Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” and the term “propaganda” comes to mind when considering them.

Consider that “propaganda” has been described thusly:

propaganda |ˌpräpəˈɡandə|
noun
chiefly derogatory information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view: he was charged with distributing enemy propaganda.

the dissemination of propaganda as a political strategy: the party’s leaders believed that a long period of education and propaganda would be necessary.

All too frequently journalists have been participants in efforts to obfuscate the issue of immigration following the lead of Jimmy Carter, originator of the Orwellian term, “undocumented immigrant.” Their news reports foisted on Americans are part of what I have come to refer to as the immigration con game.

President Trump’s executive order to temporarily block the entry of aliens from seven countries parallels the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Aliens from those countries cannot be effectively vetted; yet, major news organizations breathlessly exclaimed that aliens who had been issued visas were denied entry into the U.S., blithely ignoring the fact that aliens with valid visas are routinely denied entry into the United States by Customs and Border Protection Inspectors, an issue with which I am intimately familiar.

For the first four years of my 30-year career with the former INS I was an Immigration Inspector at John F. Kennedy International Airport. My article, “Aliens Guaranteed Entry Into The U.S.? – Trump’s executive order on immigration and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission,” explained how a visa should be simply thought of as a “ticket” that enables an alien seeking U.S. entry to a port of entry and make an application for admission. However, an alien who has been issued a visa is not guaranteed entry into the country. Indeed, aliens do not have an inherent right to enter the U.S.; only American citizens do.

Furthermore, while nearly every news report identified those seven countries as being “majority Muslim countries,” ignored was the fact that the Obama administration had compiled that list of countries because they were identified with terrorism and were therefore extremely problematic.

Unfortunately too many Americans are “drinking the Kool-Aid,” an expression that refers to the deaths of more than 900 people who killed themselves or murdered their children, blindly following the insane exhortations of charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, in what came to be known as “The Jonestown Massacre.”

Those Americans should put down their straws and be relieved, not angered, that for once our government is seeking to protect innocent lives, putting safety ahead of the globalists’ anti-American agenda.

DeVos Confirmed: Everything They Said about Her Is False by James Agresti

February 9, 2017/in Education, Labor & Unions, Policy, Politics/by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Betsy DeVos has been confirmed as Secretary of Education, but just barely. In the course of the hearings, outrageous claims were made about her views. Most originated from the public school industry itself, which is clinging to old forms for dear life. The result has been nothing but confusion. Let’s look more carefully.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) alleges that she is voting against Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education because:

DeVos opposes policies that allow “our young people, all of them, to participate in our democracy and compete on a fair footing in the workforce.”
DeVos supports “voucher systems that divert taxpayer dollars to private, religious and for-profit schools without requirements for accountability.”
“The voucher programs that Ms. DeVos advocates leave out students whose families cannot afford to pay the part of the tuition that the voucher does not cover; the programs also leave behind students with disabilities because the schools do not accommodate their complex needs.”

Each of those claims is belied by concrete facts, and Hassan is guilty of most of the charges she levels at DeVos. Also, Hassan sent her own daughter to a private school, an opportunity that she would deny to other children.

A Fair Footing

Under the current U.S. education system, the quality of students’ schooling is largely determined by their parents’ income. This is because wealthy parents can afford to send their children to private schools and live in neighborhoods with the best public schools. Such options narrow as income declines, and the children of poor families—who are often racial minorities—typically end up in the nation’s worst schools.

Contrary to popular perception, funding is not the primary cause of differences between schools. Since the early 1970s, school districts with large portions of minority students have spent about the same amount per student as districts with fewer minorities. This is shown by studies conducted by the left-leaning Urban Institute, the U.S. Department of Education, Ph.D. economist Derek Neal, and the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Moreover, contrary to the notion that certain minorities are intellectually inferior, empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that with competent schooling, people of all races can excel. For example, in 2009, Public School 172 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York, had:

a mostly Hispanic population.
one-third of the students not fluent in English and no bilingual classes.
80% of the students poor enough to qualify for free lunch.
lower spending per student than the New York City average.
the highest average math score of all fourth graders in New York City, with 99% of the students scoring “advanced.”
the top-dozen English scores of all fourth graders in New York City, with 99% of students passing.

These and other such results indicate that school quality plays a major role in student performance. Hassan and other critics of school choice are keenly aware of this, as evidenced by the choices they make for their own children. For example, Obama’s first Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, stated that the primary reason he decided to live in Arlington, Virginia, was so his daughter could attend its public schools. In his words:

That was why we chose where we live, it was the determining factor. That was the most important thing to me. My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn’t want to try to save the country’s children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children’s education.

Duncan’s statement is an admission that public schools in the D.C. area often jeopardize the education of children, but he would not let this happen to his child. Few parents have the choice that Duncan made because most cannot afford to live in places like Arlington, where the annual cash income of the median family is $144,843, the highest of all counties in the United States.

Other prominent opponents of private school choice—like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton—personally attended and also sent their own children to private K-12 schools. Likewise, Hassan’s daughter attended an elite private high school (Phillips Exeter Academy) where Hassan’s husband was the principal.

The existing U.S. education system does not provide an equal footing for children, but Hassan criticizes DeVos for supporting school choice, which would lessen this inequity. By its very definition, school choice allows parents to select the schools their children attend, an option that Hassan and other affluent people regularly exercise.

Taxpayer Money and Accountability

Four lines of evidence disprove Hassan’s claim that DeVos wants to “divert taxpayer dollars” to non-public schools “without requirements for accountability.”

First, private school choice generally increases public school spending per student, which is the primary measure of education funding. As explained by Stephen Cornman, a statistician with the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, per-pupil spending is “the gold standard in school finance.”

Private school choice programs boost per-student funding in public schools because the public schools no longer educate the students who go to the private schools, which typically spend much less per student than public schools. This leaves additional funding for the students who remain in public schools.

According to the latest available data, the average spending per student in private K-12 schools during the 2011-12 school year was about $6,762. In the same year, the average spending per student in public schools was $13,398, or about twice as much. These figures exclude state administration spending, unfunded pension liabilities, and post-employment benefits like healthcare—all of which are common in public schools and rare in private ones.

Certain school costs like building maintenance are fixed in the short term, and thus, the savings of educating fewer students occurs in steps. This means that private school choice can temporarily decrease the funding per student in some public schools, but this is brief and slight because only 8% of public school spending is for operations and maintenance.

Second, school choice provides the most direct form of accountability, which is accountability to students and parents. With school choice, if parents are unhappy with any school, they have the ability to send their children to other schools. This means that every school is accountable to every parent.Under the current public education system, schools are accountable to government officials, not students and parents. Again, Hassan knows this, because her son has severe disabilities, and Hassan used her influence as a lawyer to get her son’s public elementary school to “accommodate his needs.”

Unlike Hassan, people without a law degree, extra time on their hands, or ample financial resources are at the mercy of politicians and government employees. Short of legal action or changing an election outcome, most children and parents are stuck with their public schools, regardless of whether they are effective or safe. That is precisely the situation that DeVos would like to fix through school choice, but Hassan talks as if DeVos were trying to do the opposite.

Third, taxpayer funds are commonly used for private schools, and Hassan actually wants more of this. Her campaign website states that she “will fight to expand Pell Grants” but fails to reveal that these are often used for private colleges like, for example, Brown University, the Ivy League school that she, her husband, and her daughter attended (disclosure: so did this author).

In other words, Hassan supports using taxpayer money for top students to attend elite private universities, but she opposes the same opportunity for poor students to attend private K-12 schools.

Hassan’s position on college aid also undercuts her objection that DeVos supports programs that “leave out students whose families cannot afford to pay the part of the tuition that the voucher does not cover.” If that were truly Hassan’s objection, she would also oppose aid that doesn’t cover the full costs of every college, because that would leave out students who can’t pay the rest of the tuition.

Fourth, contrary to Hassan’s rhetoric about accountability to taxpayers, she supports current spending levels in public K-12 schools, “debt-free public college for all,” and expanding “early childhood education” in spite of the facts that:

the U.S. spends an average of 31% more per K-12 student than other developed nations, but 15-year olds in the U.S. rank 31st among 35 nations in math.
federal, state, and local governments spend about $900 billion per year on formal education, but only 18% of U.S. residents aged 16 and older can correctly answer a word problem requiring the ability to search text, interpret it, and calculate using multiplication and division.
the average spending per public school classroom is $286,000 per year, but only 26% of the high school students who take the ACT exam meet its college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math, and science).
federal, state and local governments spend $173 billion per year on higher education, but 80% of first-time, full-time students who enroll in a public community college do not receive a degree from the college within 150% of the normal time required to do so.
4-year public colleges spend an average of $40,033 per year for each full-time student, but one-third of students who graduate from 4-year colleges don’t improve their “critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem-solving, and writing” skills by more than one percentage point over their entire college careers.
the federal government funds dozens of preschool programs, and the largest —Head Start—spends an average of $8,772 per child per year, but it produces no measurable benefit by the time students reach 3rd grade.

In sum, Hassan supports pumping taxpayer money into programs with high costs and substandard outcomes, but she opposes doing the same for private K–12 schools that produce better outcomes with far less cost.

Left Behind?

Hassan’s claim that private school choice programs “leave behind students with disabilities because the schools do not accommodate their complex needs” is also false.

In Northern and Central New Jersey, there are more than 30 private special education schools that are approved by the state. As far as parents are concerned, these schools serve the needs of their children better than the public schools in their areas. If this were not the case, these private schools would not exist.

More importantly, if parents don’t think that a private school will be best for their special needs child, school choice allows them to keep the child in a public school that is better-funded thanks to the money saved by school choice.

In a recent brief to the Nevada Supreme Court, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, and its state affiliate argue that free-market voucher programs will lead to “cream-skimming—the drawing away of the most advantaged students to private schools––and lead to a highly stratified system of education.”

As detailed above, the current public school system is highly stratified by income, and income and education go hand in hand. Hence, the real issue is not stratification but what happens to students who stay in public schools. Contrary to the belief that school choice will harm these students, a mass of evidence shows the opposite.

At least 21 high-quality studies have been performed on the academic outcomes of students who remain in public schools that are subject to school choice programs. All but one found neutral-to-positive results, and none found negative results. This is consistent with the theory that school choice stimulates competition that induces public schools to improve.

Who Wins and Who Loses?

Wide-ranging facts prove that school choice is a win for students, parents, and taxpayers. However, it financially harms teachers unions by depriving them of dues, because private schools are less likely to have unions than public ones.

In turn, this financially harms Democratic politicians, political action committees, and related organizations, which have received about $200 million in reported donations from the two largest teachers’ unions since 1990. Unions also give many unreported donations to Democratic Party causes.

Teachers’ unions are firmly opposed to private school choice, and the National Education Association has sent an open letter to Democrats stating that “opposition to vouchers is a top priority for NEA.”

So why does Hassan oppose giving other children opportunities that she gave to her own children? Motives are difficult to divine, but the reasons she gave in her op-ed are at odds with verifiable facts and her own actions.

James Agresti

James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a nonprofit institute dedicated to publishing verifiable facts about public policy.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sought to REDUCE security screening for Syrians in 2015

February 9, 2017/in Immigration, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Ann Corcoran

UPDATE: Who was that man over Senator Blumenthal’s left shoulder [in the above featured image]? That is CAIR-Connecticut’s Executive Director behind Senator Blumenthal. Getting pretty brazen aren’t they, or is Blumenthal just pretty dense to invite CAIR to be so prominently involved in lessening security screening for refugees?

Because he is all over the news today as the focal point in one more attack on President Donald Trump, I’m re-posting this story from 2015 so you know just who Senator Blumenthal is and why he must be pretty unhappy with Trump.

In 2015 Senator Blumenthal held a press conference with the director of CAIR Connecticut seeking to speed up Syrian refugees to America by reducing security screening requirements. 98% of Syrians entering the US are Muslims.

This is what I said October 7, 2015:

Yesterday we told you that Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is leading the charge to lessen the security screening for Syrian and other Middle Eastern refugees and he wants to expand the so-called P-3 (fraud ridden!) family reunification program.

See yesterday’s post by clicking here. (Go there to see exactly how Senator Blumenthal wanted to make it easier for Syrians to get through the refugee screening process.)

Now we know the answer to the question I asked all of you to help answer. Looming over Blumenthal’s shoulder is none other than Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)- Connecticut director Mongi Dhaouadi.

(When I mentioned to a friend that I had updated my post with that information (thanks to Kyle), she suggested I write a second post because as a subscriber, who received the earlier one, she would not see the update.)

But it is worth mentioning again because this is now the second time we have seen CAIR involving itself directly in the Syrian (mostly Muslim) resettlement issue (and you can bet they are not advocating for the persecuted Syrian Christians).

Clearly their interest is in boosting the Muslim population in the US.

CAIR was here in the St. Louis ‘Bring them here march’ last month.

Here is Mr. Dhaouadi’s bio at CAIR’s website: (update: Apparently Mr. Dhaouadi has moved on since I first wrote this story)

Mongi Dhaouadi
Executive Director

Mongi S. Dhaouadi was born and raised in Tunisia. He moved to the US when he was 19 years old and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As The Executive director of CAIR-CT, he conducts civil rights workshops throughout the state of Connecticut under the title “Know Your Rights.” Also, he leads several workshops and discussions on Islamophobia and the Muslim experience before and after 9/11. He has participated in and led several media campaigns and press conferences on issues concerning the Muslim community ranging from discrimination cases to advocating for the change of racial profiling laws in the state of Connecticut. Dhaouadi was featured in countless local, national, and international media outlets including NPR, FOX News, and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. During the summer, he runs a youth internship program during which high school and college students work on several projects ranging from preparing a toolkit on Islamic cultural competency for schools, to writing and publishing articles from a Muslim youth perspective in the local papers and publications. Dhaouadi leads a Connecticut delegation at the Capitol Hill visits; an event that is organized every year by CAIR National, where members of the Muslim community visit their representatives in Wasington, DC and advocate for issues of concern domestic and foreign. Prior to joining CAIR-CT on a full time bases Dhaouadi was the Head Administrator at SKF Academy in Hamden Connecticut. Dhaouadi is married with three children: ages 11, 14 and 18. He lives with his family in New London, Connecticut. His favorite past time is playing or coaching soccer.

So far Connecticut doesn’t get very many refugees compared to other states. I guess Blumenthal and Dhaouadi would like to change that.

Is CAIR getting into the refugee resettlement program where you live? Let me know. And, while you are at it, see if you notice the involvement of Islamic Relief (USA) as well.

Go here to find the regional offices of Islamic Relief (USA) thanks to reader Cathy.

More on Connecticut here.

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Muslim in tweet ‘To infidels of the West’ Exposes the Truth about Radical Islam

February 9, 2017/in Commentary, Culture War, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Dr. Rich Swier

Democrats for Trump wrote on Twitter:

This Radical Islamist just commented this under one of my posts!

According to Democrats for Trump Adegoke O. Adebayo tweeted the following:

This lays out the strategy of radical Islam and who are their supporters and partners.

I have said that the Democrat Party is the party of Marx, Mohammed and Manning. Mr. Adebayo’s tweet appears to confirm my analysis.

Flynn: ‘If we can’t tackle enemy doctrines that call for our domination or extinction, we aren’t going to destroy their jihadis’

February 9, 2017/in Immigration, National Security, Policy, Religion/by Jihad Watch

It is so refreshing to see this realism and common sense after eight years of Obama’s denial and willful ignorance.

“Flynn’s plan to beat radical Islam starts with schools and social media,” by Paul Sperry, New York Post, February 4, 2017:

President Trump’s national security adviser wants to fight not just Islamic terrorists but the “radical ideology of Islam,” and he plans to do it from the grass roots up, starting with our children at schools while also using social media.

Dealing with the global Islamist threat on a tactical level through drone strikes and arrests hasn’t worked, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn argues, according to his largely overlooked 2016 book, “The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies.” He wants to combat it more broadly, using informational warfare, among other things, on a scale not seen since World War II.

But first, he writes, the government has to overcome the political taboo of tying Islamic violence to the religion of Islam, including its sacred texts, which he says the enemy is using as a manual of warfare….

“If we can’t tackle enemy doctrines that call for our domination or extinction,” Flynn writes, “we aren’t going to destroy their jihadis.”…

“It’s long past time for us to denounce the many evils of Radical Islam,” he writes, while highlighting the many defeats of ISIS and al Qaeda to show potential recruits that “the Almighty has changed sides in the holy war.”Fired by former President Barack Obama from the Defense Intelligence Agency for taking such stands, Flynn vows to reverse the longstanding government practice of whitewashing the violent nature of the enemy’s faith through pleasant platitudes like, “The terrorists are hijacking a religion of peace” and other apologia. He calls such policies “Islamophilia,” and complains they border on appeasement.

“I firmly believe that Radical Islam is a tribal cult, and must be crushed,” he writes.

In his book, Flynn says the Islamist enemy studies our culture “very carefully” and excels at “identifying our weaknesses,” while we, on the other hand, have done very little to exploit weak points in their ideology. We suffer pangs of guilt just “calling them by name and identifying them as fanatical killers acting on behalf of a failed civilization.”

That “failed civilization,” he notes, is Islam, and he says the government must publicly point out its failures, from depressed economies to high illiteracy rates to oppression of women, while supporting “a complete reformation of the Islamic religion” throughout the Muslim world.

He suggests working closely with the president of Egypt, who has called for a renewal of Islam. He also praises reforms pushed by Singapore to convince Muslims that there’s no requirement to follow Sharia in a secular state and that Allah hasn’t blessed jihad against the West. He also cites the half dozen countries that have banned Islamic headscarves around the world.

“We’ve got to get inside the minds of the jihadis” and understand the doctrinal justification for “the cult of killing, the worship of death” and why they, literally, “eagerly drink the blood of their dying enemies,” Flynn writes. What in their scripture brainwashes them into thinking, “We love death more than you love life?” Once that doctrine is exposed, it can be undermined to the point where it loses its potency….

“The war against Radical Islamists must begin at home,” he writes. “Muslims want to apply Sharia law by using our own legal system to strengthen what many believe to be a violent religious law that has no place in the United States,” he writes, adding the government must stop implying Islamic and Western civilizations “are morally equivalent.”“Let us accept what we were founded upon: a Judeo-Christian ideology built on a moral set of rules and laws,” he writes. “Let us not fear, but instead fight those who want to impose Sharia law and their Radical Islamist views.”…

“We can’t win this war by treating Radical Islamic terrorists as a handful of crazies and dealing with them as a policing issue,” he writes. “The political and theological underpinnings of their immoral actions have to be demolished.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Jihad Watch.

VIOLENT ACTION ALERT: ‘Roudy As Hell Autonomous Rebels’ F17 Strike in Tucson, AZ

February 9, 2017/in Courts & Law, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D.

The demonstrations that seemingly just “pop-up” are not at all what they appear.

These are planned and well-coordinated acts of anarchy with the intent to promote destruction of property, both private and public, and to disrupt financial sectors creating financial loss and hardships on business. Those involved are trained in various forms of destruction including, but not limited to: physical violence, the setting of fires, breaking and entering, destruction of property, aggressive acts towards law enforcement. The information below substantiates what I just wrote, and the recent Berkeley campus riots are further proof of anarchists accomplishing far more than exercising their First Amendment Rights.

Tucson, Arizona downtown is now scheduled to experience a Berkeley-style demonstration.

An action notice to disrupt downtown Tucson on February 17th at the Ronstadt Transit Center has been posted by ItsGoingDown.org.

F17 Tucson: Strike Is a Verb!

No Pipelines or Presidents on Stolen Land. Or Anywhere.

For a World Without Borders, Prisons, or Police.

To be sure, No Ban – No Wall.

Always Anti-Capitalist, Always Anti-Fascist,

Rowdy As Hell.

In response to the call for a national general strike on February 17th, a group of autonomous rebels hope to open up space for resistance here on occupied Tohono O’odham land, Tucson, Arizona.

Meeting at 6PM at the Ronstadt Transit Center downtown, we will gather with the intention of being as disruptive as possible. In order to not be complicit in the continued destruction of the earth, in the cycle of genocide and fear mongering and racist hate, we have to choose to disobey. We must make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land.

Participants are encouraged to come organized to carry out whatever plans you can come up with – our intention is to open up a space to make varied forms of resistance possible depending on YOUR desires! Anyone without the capacity or desire to come with a prepared group is, of course, absolutely welcome and encouraged to show up! Some resources on organizing affinity groups to carry out actions in the safest and most effective ways possible can be found here and here.

Communist Party USA: Eager to Work with the Democratic Party to Advance Communist Goals

February 8, 2017/in Culture War, Economy, Policy, Politics/by Discover The Networks

Upon its inception in 1919, the CPUSA was inextricably linked to the Soviet Communist International (Comintern), which was controlled by Moscow leadership and possessed “uncontested authority” over all international parties. When it was founded, the Party had approximately 50,000 members.

By the 1920s, the CPUSA’s membership had dwindled to approximately 15,000 because the Comintern forced it to adopt an ultra-revolutionary stance and give up attempts at “coalition building.” The Great Depression presented the Party with an opportunity to recruit and build its membership. Thus the CPUSA used hard times as a propaganda tool to assail the failure of capitalism, targeting particularly the liberal policies of the early FDR administration while successfully infiltrating government agencies, notably the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.

In 1935, with the rise of Nazism, the Comintern changed its policy and adopted the Popular Front tactic, which allowed the CPUSA to pose as the anti-fascist defenders of American liberalism. As Earl Bowder, the leader of the CPUSA from 1935 to 1945, declared, “Communism is Twentieth-Century Americanism.” This new tactic increased the Party’s membership to nearly 100,000 people — its high point — , and it simultaneously allowed the Party to infiltrate a whole host of liberal institutions and use them as front groups. The CPUSA worked especially on becoming a presence within the powerful labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (which would later merge with the American Federation of Labor, to become the AFL-CIO).

In 1939, the Nazi-Soviet pact brought an end to the CPUSA’s anti-fascist pose. Soon after, the Party returned to its prior aggressive denunciations of mainstream American politics — a move that eventually brought about a collapse in membership, especially when the Party reversed course once again with Hitler’s invasion of the USSR.

After World War II ended, Soviet hostility to the West surfaced once more. In 1944, U.S. Army cryptanalysts broke the code to the KGB’s communications, and by 1948 the Venona project had identified hundreds of espionage operatives in the United States. Although the Roosevelt administration had dismissed Republican assertions that Communists had infiltrated the New Deal, by the late 1940s the Truman administration began to treat the internal Communist threat as a very serious matter.

In 1948, Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, both former Communists, testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities that Communists had operated in the Roosevelt administration — especially Alger Hiss, who had served as a top official in the State Department. In January 1950, Hiss was convicted. A year later, on March 6, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the CPUSA and militant Stalinists, were put on trial for espionage and were executed two years later in 1953. Generations of radicals perceived them as martyrs for the cause and, to this day, many still protest their guilt, even though evidence continues to prove that they engaged in a conspiracy to steal the atomic secrets of the United Stated and deliver them to the USSR.

Joseph McCarthy, United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957, became the most famous and aggressive politician to take up the anti-Communism banner. In 1950, although the purge of the CPUSA from American politics was well underway, McCarthy used anti-Communist sentiment to gain power. Claiming that he was in possession of a list of Communists in the State Department and later in the Truman administration and the U.S. Army, McCarthy propelled himself into the national limelight. His influence was to be short-lived, however; in 1954 he was censured by the Senate for abusing his legislative power. Rather than weeding out Communists in government, McCarthy’s methods became a boon to the radical Left. By evoking the specter of open-ended witch-hunts, he gave the Communist Left a banner around which to regroup.

As the Cold War developed and Congressional legislation targeted its revolutionary activities, the CPUSA had to retreat underground. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” — denouncing the crimes of Josef Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary — further depleted the CPUSA’s membership, which fell to 3,000. In 1959, Gus Hall became the leader of a marginalized CPUSA that was a diminished shell of what it had been a generation earlier.

Although the CPUSA’s support of the Soviet invasions of Prague and Afghanistan continued to brand the Party as part of the Old Left, it began to see some increased membership in the 1970s. Some previous Party members now felt it safe to rejoin the organization, and a small number of 1960s radicals also joined the Party.

From its inception, the CPUSA had put resources into recruiting African Americans into ranks. While this effort never yielded many members and collapsed with the advent of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s, Herbert Aptheker, a long-time member and founder of the American Institute for Marxist Studies, and Angela Davis now attempted to incorporate racial radicalism into the Party.

While its goal has always been the development of a national Communist Party, in 1984 the CPUSA began to give indirect support to the Democrat Party as the only alternative to the conservatism of the Reagan era. In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev introduced Perestroika to the Soviet Union, leading eventually to the near disintegration of the CPUSA. In 1992 Herbert Apthetker and Angela Davis split away from the Party to found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

In 2008 the CPUSA built what it termed “a labor and people’s alliance” to support Barack Obama’s presidential bid. On January 31, 2009, Sam Webb, the current leader of the CPUSA, gave a speech celebrating that “a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House.” He described President Obama’s inauguration as a sign that “an era of progressive change is within reach, no longer an idle dream.” According to Webb, the new administration was already considering “a new model of governance” that “would challenge corporate power, profits and prerogatives.”

In October 2010, CPUSA national executive vice-chair Jarvis Tyner spoke in Detroit on the need to for “left and progressive”-minded Americans to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm election.

On November 3, 2010 — the day after mid-term elections in which Democrats lost 6 Senate seats, more than 60 House seats, and 7 governorships — CPUSA Labor Commission chairman Scott Marshall emphasized that his organization had worked collaboratively on political campaigns with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. Said Marshall:

“The continuing independence of the labor movement was heightened tremendously by the election, and in very specific ways, not just in general. Not only did the campaigning take place from union hall[s],… but this time, as Trumka told us when he was in Chicago, they began the nuts and bolts [of] building independent labor campaign organizations in five key cities around the country.”

Also on November 3, 2010, the CPUSA praised the Obama administration for having “accomplished many things.” Moreover, the Party:

complained that prior to the previous day’s elections, a “corporate-Republican alliance depended on lies, fear, and hatred to spread its message”;
praised labor unions for having worked to raise “class consciousness”; and
asserted that a key CPUSA priority for the immediate future would be “to deepen and expand class-consciousness.”

Late in 2010, CPUSA member C.J. Atkins called for his comrades to drop their “communist” label, so that they could work more effectively inside the Democratic Party. Soon thereafter, Joe Sims, co-editor of the CPUSA publication Peoples World, acknowledged not only that collaboration with the the Democrats “will be an area of engagement for those wanting to make a difference,” but also that communists might someday be able to “capture” the Democratic Party entirely. Sims warned, however, against dissolving the CPUSA entirely into the Democratic Party. Rather, he advised his organization to remain a separate entity, working both inside and outside the Democratic Party as circumstances required.

On December 5, 2010, the CPUSA held an awards ceremony in Connecticut, where it honored, among others, John Olsen, head of the Connecticut AFL-CIO.

CPUSA’s modus operandi is to delegitimize and smear American society by depicting it as deeply and irremediably infested with racism, sexism, homophobia, and all manner of injustice. Click here, for instance, for an explanation of how the organization in 2014 used its flagship publication, People’s World, to foment racial strife in Ferguson, Missouri, in the aftermath of a white police officer’s fatal shooting of a black suspect.

In January 2015, CPUSA National Committee chairman John Bachtell published an essay in People’s World stating that American Communists were eager to work with the Democratic Party in order to advance communist goals. He wrote, for instance:

“[L]abor and other key social forces are not about to leave the Democratic Party anytime soon. They still see Democrats as the most realistic electoral vehicle to advance their agenda, especially in the national battle against the extreme right. Their main goal at this time is changing DP policies and approaches away from influences of the Wall Street wing and the more conservative elements…. First, we are part of building the broadest anti-ultra right alliance possible…. This necessarily means working with the Democratic Party. Second, our objective is not to build the Democratic Party. At this stage we are about building the broad people’s movement led by labor that utilizes the vehicle of the Democratic Party to advance its agenda. We are about building the movements around the issues roiling wide sections of people that can help shape election contours and debates…. [W]e are for building movements in the electoral arena and see engagement in the electoral arena and democratic governance as a vital means to further build movements.”

CPUSA is a member organization of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition. The group also has strong ties to China, Cuba, and other nations hostile to the United States.

Socialist Alternative: Fighting to Undermine President Trump and Transform America

February 8, 2017/in National Security, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Discover The Networks

Inspired by the example of the United Kingdom-based group known as Militant Tendency, Socialist Alternative (SA) is a Trotskyist revolutionary political party that first emerged in the U.S. as “Labor Militant” in 1986. A decentralized entity with branches of varying sizes and levels of activity in almost 50 American cities, SA proudly claims to be “in political solidarity” with the Committee for a Workers’ International, which is a worldwide socialist organization with a presence in nearly four dozen countries. On the premise that “the global capitalist system” is “the root cause” of “poverty,” “discrimination,” “war,” “inequality,” and “environmental destruction,” SA aims to promote the creation of “a socialist United States and a socialist world.” Asserting that “the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were [unfortunate] perversions of what socialism is really about,” SA instead advocates a form of “democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over [their] daily lives.”

In the late 1990s, SA tried to help the now-defunct U.S. Labor Party to advocate for electoral opposition to Democratic Party politicians, whom SA viewed as being too moderate.

SA was particularly active in the anti-globalization movement from 1998-2002, and it continues to speak out against free trade and capitalism today.

In 2004, SA members initiated Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR), a project that sought to persuade high-school students to resist military recruitment efforts and oppose the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beginning in September 2011, SA supported the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Early the following month, SA issued a statement of solidarity with OWS.

In the fall of 2011 as well, SA endorsed a national “Jobs Not Cuts” campaign in response to proposed congressional budget cuts. This initiative was endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Jill Stein, Veterans for Peace, the American Federation of Teachers, Students for a Democratic Society, and the International Socialist Organization, among others.

On the premise that “the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business” and are thus unworthy of holding political power, SA seeks to “build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.” In 2013, SA for the first time ran, on its own ticket, two openly socialist candidates – Ty Moore and Kshama Sawant – in carefully selected political races. The results were encouraging for SA: Moore lost his bid for a Minneapolis city council seat to Democrat Alondra Cano by a mere 229 votes, while Sawant won a seat in the Seattle city council by defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Richard Conlin by more than 1,000 votes. Two years later, Ms. Sawant was re-elected.

In the wake of Republican Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election of November 2016, SA helped organize massive, sometimes violent, anti-Trump protests in cities across the United States. Other notable organizers of these disruptions included the ANSWER Coalition, the Occupy Movement, and MoveOn.org.

Professing an uncompromising commitment to “fighting for the 99%,” SA supports measures that would: raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour “as a step toward a living wage for all”; provide “free [taxpayer-funded] … public education for all from pre-school through college”; ensure “free … health care for all” in a system of “fully socialized medicine”; forbid any “budget cuts to education and social services”; impose “a major increase in taxes on the rich and big business”; ensure “a minimum guaranteed weekly income of $600/week for the unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others unable to work”; “shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits”; and institute “public ownership” of “bankrupt and failing companies” as well as “the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the U.S. economy.”

To promote “environmental sustainability,” SA demands that America’s federal and state governments “fight climate change” by minimizing the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with human industrial activity. Toward that end, the organization recommends “massive public investment in renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to rapidly replace fossil fuels”; “a major expansion of public transportation”; and “democratic public ownership of the big energy companies, retooling them for socially necessary green production.”

In its “Equal Rights for All” initiative, SA supports the Black Lives Matter effort to “build a mass movement against police brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system.” Further, SA favors massive “invest[ment] in rehabilitation, job-training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons”; the abolition of the death penalty; the “immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants”; “free reproductive services, including… abortions”; “at least 12 weeks of paid family leave for all”; and “universal … publicly run child care.”

With regard to national security and defense issues, SA demands that the federal government “slash the military budget” of the United States, shut down the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, and repeal the PATRIOT Act.

To help promote and disseminate its ideological precepts and political agendas as effectively as possible, SA publishes a newspaper out of its New York City location.

SA supported the presidential campaigns of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. In 2012 the organization supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and in 2016 it backed Bernie Sanders.

Trump Could Simply Ignore Court’s Order Halting Travel Ban

February 8, 2017/in Courts & Law, Immigration, Must Read, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Selwyn Duke

Does our current status quo make our Constitution a suicide pact? Thomas Jefferson certainly said as much, warning that accepting judicial supremacy would make our founding document just that, a felo de se, as he put it in Latin.

Acceptance of judicial supremacy, by the way, is precisely why President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations is on hold. Imagine that, Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, No. 78 that the judiciary is the “least dangerous” branch of government because it “has no influence over either the sword or the purse,” yet it’s trumping the man with the sword, the president. But does it have to be this way?

No, Trump could simply ignore the court ruling suspending his ban.

Outrageous!? Unconstitutional!? Actually, it’s wholly constitutional.

In his dissent from the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges marriage ruling, late Justice Antonin Scalia warned that with “each decision… unabashedly based not on law,” the Court moves “one step closer to being reminded of [its] impotence.” What did Scalia know about courts’ power?

That it’s basically an illusion.

Let’s do a civics quiz. Why does the legislative branch have the power to make law? Why does the executive branch (presidency) have the power to enforce law? The answer in both cases is because the Constitution grants it.

Okay, now how is it that the judiciary has the “power” to rule on law and have its decisions constrain not just its own branch, but the other two as well? How have the courts become king? Because the Constitution grants…no, stop. It’s not in the Constitution — anywhere.

Rather, this “power” was declared by the courts themselves, most notably in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision.

That’s right, the Supreme Court gave the Supreme Court the supreme power to have the final say on laws’ meaning.

It’s a great con if you can pull it off.

The point is that the judiciary enjoys this power at the executive branch’s pleasure. As soon as the latter says, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, “The courts have made their decision; now let them enforce it,” that power goes bye-bye. The judiciary is reminded of its impotence.

So it isn’t just that the courts lack the sword or purse, the possession and exercise of which could simply amount to might making right. They also have no constitutional claim to judicial supremacy. In fact, the power is a violation of everything for which America stands.

Jefferson explained why in 1820, writing that “to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions” is “a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an Oligarchy.” This is where we are now, and have long been — suicide-pact territory. The will of a nation 320-million strong is expressed through its duly elected representatives and laws are passed….

And then that will is thwarted by five black-robed lawyers in a central-government tribunal.

Does this sound like a government of, by and for the people to you?

As time has worn on, the judiciary has become increasingly brazen, issuing rulings more and more distant from the Constitution. This is no surprise. As Jefferson put it, “Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps.”

They even conjure up rationalizations justifying this power and privilege. For example, they long ago invented, out of thin air, the concept of the Constitution as a “living document” that can be interpreted to “suit the times.” Yet since the interpretations so often conflict with popular will, the only common thread is that they suit the judges.

These esteemed jurists then put a veneer of legitimacy on their violation of law and duty by assigning themselves an intellectual-sounding designation. “Why, we’re not constrained by a 200-year-old piece of parchment like those knuckle-dragging originalists,” they say, “We’re ‘pragmatists’!”

To understand how outrageous this is, consider an analogy touched on by Chief Justice John Roberts when, during his confirmation hearings, he said his job was only “to call balls and strikes.” Expanding on this, judges can in fact be thought of as baseball umpires, while the game’s ruling body is the legislature and the rule book is the Constitution. Now, what if an umpire considered the rule book living and said, “With the great pitchers in these times, three strikes are insufficient; I’m giving the batter four strikes”? What if he then stated, “I’m not abdicating my duty. I’m a pragmatist!”

Would this be taken seriously? Or would he be laughed off the diamond?

Obviously, it’s the job of the ruling body to alter the rules if necessary. Likewise, there is a lawful way to make the Constitution “live”: the Amendment Process. It’s long and difficult, and this ensures that before a change is made, a majority of the people agrees. This brings us to the problem with it — from the judiciary’s perspective:

Judges can’t control it.

So they usurp the people’s power with a wink and a nod. They must be stopped.

There’s more than one way to do this. Another little known fact is that Article III of the Constitution grants Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts below the Supreme Court and the appellate jurisdiction of the latter. In other words, Congress could simply have prevented federal courts below the SCOTUS from ruling on immigration (and other issues) to begin with and the SCOTUS from reviewing lower-court decisions on those issues.

Congress also has the power under Article III to eliminate any and every federal court, except for the SCOTUS. So it could have made the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — a bench of fools now reviewing Trump’s immigration ban — disappear long ago.

Yet this would require that our cowardly politicians take a real stand on a contentious issue. They’d rather that judges, who don’t have to be re-elected, make the tough decisions. They can then pretend they did all they could and say, “The courts have ruled. The law’s the law!”

So is it any surprise the courts are going rogue? “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” as Lord Acton warned. And how can we have a balance of power among the three governmental branches, as the founders intended, when two branches refuse to exercise their power?

I’ve heard it said that if the president ignored the courts, it would spark a constitutional crisis. Newsflash: When a branch of government is continually trampling the rights of others and violating the Constitution, we’re already in a constitutional crisis. Showing the judiciary its impotence isn’t the disease — it’s the cure.

Only power neutralizes power. It’s shocking how we’ve betrayed the letter and spirit of our nation’s founding and have allowed the courts to run amok. We can continue drinking the judicial-supremacy Kool-Aid and committing national suicide, or we can drain the swamp infested with black-robed tyrants. It’s impotence for them — or irrelevancy for us.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Response to Bishop Oscar Cantu, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace

February 8, 2017/in Commentary, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jerry Gordon

Here is the head of the US Catholic Bishops Committee on International Justice warning that a possible US embassy move to Jerusalem would produce an undivided Israel preventing ending a 50 year allegedly cruel occupation for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Forgive me Bishop Cantu, but what right does the church have to suggest that the Jewish nation of Israel surrender its sovereignty to its land? The Bishops are entitled to their views, as is the holy father, Pope Francis.

Is this the Vatican perennial line that it wants the internationalization of Jerusalem?

We had enough of that under Pope Pius the XII in the UN deliberations to partition the holy land into a Jewish and Arab State, only to have Israel fight with five invading Arab Armies in th War of Independence in 1948 1949. That ended in an Armistice line dividing Jerusalem between the illegally occupied eastern half by Jordan and western half by Israel until its liberation and unification 50 years ago this June in 1967.

If the United States does finally elect to move the Embassy to Jerusalem, perhaps the Vatican and the other 159 countries with embassies in Tel Aviv could do the same.

You must admit Bishop that unlike the Jordanian illegal occupation, that under Israeli administration all religious institutions in Jerusalem have been protected and freedom of worship maintained by the Jewish nation of Israel.

But the Vatican hs chosen for whatever reason to recognize the State of Palestine, dspite the fact it does’t meet the acepted international standards for a functioning democratic state. But then the Vatican signed Lateran acts with Hitler and Mussolini as I recall.

Don’t move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, bishops ask …

The U.S. bishops are asking the new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to not fulfil President Donald Trump’s pledge to move the country’s embassy from Tel Aviv

TOPBUZZ.COM

Democrat Leaders Protest President Trump’s Determination to Keep Americans Safe

February 8, 2017/in Featured, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Jihad Watch

Spurious moral equivalence employed in order to divert attention from the real threat. My latest at The Geller Report:

It was reported Friday that “a trio of House Democrats say President Trump is making a mistake pushing for counter-extremism efforts to focus only on radical Islam….Friday’s letter was signed Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson (Md.), Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and John Conyers (Mich.).”

Thompson, Engel and Conyers wrote: “Such a move is wrongheaded insofar as persons who commit acts of violent extremism are inspired by diverse political, religious and philosophical beliefs, and are not limited to any single population or region.”

In reality, there have been over 30,000 murderous jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11. What other political, religious and philosophical beliefs have been responsible for any comparable number? A widely publicized study purporting to show that “right-wing extremists” have killed more people in the U.S. than Islamic jihadis, and thus pose a greater threat, has been debunked on many grounds.

These representatives also wrote: “Changing the name to ‘Countering Islamic Extremism’ or ‘Countering Radical Islamic Extremism’ would have damaging effects to our national security by feeding into the propaganda created by terrorist groups and child domestic and international diplomatic relations. Additionally, it could further alienate and create distrust with the Muslim-American communities when the program depends on close cooperation with law enforcement.”

Islamic jihadis routinely cite the texts and teachings of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. The idea that Muslims who reject jihad terror will be enraged if the U.S. government takes note of this is absurd. If they reject jihad terror, they won’t embrace it because officials are saying things they don’t like; in fact, if they really reject it, they should welcome and cooperate with efforts to identify its causes and eradicate them. These Congressmen are recommending that we curtail our speech to avoid criticizing Islam, which is a Sharia blasphemy provision that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been trying to foist upon the U.S. by means of “hate speech” laws for years. That the statements of Thompson, Engel and Conyers are simply today’s conventional wisdom is one indication of how successful these efforts have been.

Critics of President Trump’s plan have complained: “The program, ‘Countering Violent Extremism,’ or CVE, would be changed to ‘Countering Islamic Extremism’ or ‘Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,’ the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.”

Indeed, but the white supremacist threat has been wildly exaggerated by Soros-funded groups (which exaggerations have been pushed by Soros-funded media) that downplay and deny the jihad threat. Reuters’ equivalence here also ignores the fact that the jihad is an international movement set on destroying the U.S. and found on every continent; white supremacism is not.

What Trump is really doing here is reversing Obama’s bow to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in scrubbing counter-terror training materials of all mention of Islam and jihad. On October 19, 2011, Farhana Khera of Muslim Advocates delivered a letter to John Brennan, who was then the assistant to the president on National Security for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism. The letter was signed by the leaders of virtually all significant Islamic groups in the United States: 57 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian organizations, many with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Relief USA, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

The letter denounced what it characterized as U.S. government agencies’ “use of biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam.” Khera complained specifically about me, noting that my books could be found in “the FBI’s library at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia”; that a reading list accompanying a slide presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit recommended my book The Truth About Muhammad; that in July 2010 I “presented a two-hour seminar on ‘the belief system of Islamic jihadists’ to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Tidewater, Virginia”; and that I also “presented a similar lecture to the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council, which is co-hosted by the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office.”

These were supposed to be terrible materials because I was supposedly bigoted and hateful. However, many of the examples Khera adduced of “bigoted and distorted materials” involved statements that were simply accurate. The only distortion was Khera’s representation of them.

For instance, Khera stated:

A 2006 FBI intelligence report stating that individuals who convert to Islam are on the path to becoming “Homegrown Islamic Extremists,” if they exhibit any of the following behavior:

“Wearing traditional Muslim attire”

“Growing facial hair”

“Frequent attendance at a mosque or a prayer group”

“Travel to a Muslim country”

“Increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or political cause”

The FBI intelligence report Khera purported to be describing didn’t actually say that. Rather, it included these behaviors among a list of fourteen indicators that could “identify an individual going through the radicalization process.” Other indicators included:

“Travel without obvious source of funds”

“Suspicious purchases of bomb making paraphernalia or weapons”

“Large transfer of funds, from or to overseas”

“Formation of operational cells”

Khera had selectively quoted the list to give the impression that the FBI was teaching that devout observance of Islam led inevitably and in every case to “extremism.”

Despite the factual accuracy of the material about which they were complaining, the Muslim groups signing the letter demanded that the task force, among other actions:

“Purge all federal government training materials of biased materials.”

“Implement a mandatory re-training program for FBI agents, U.S. Army officers, and all federal, state and local law enforcement who have been subjected to biased training.”

They wished to ensure that all law enforcement officials ever learn about Islam and jihad would be what the signatories wanted them to learn — and Brennan was amenable to that. He took Khera’s complaints as his marching orders.

In a November 3, 2011, letter to Khera that — significantly — was written on White House stationery, Brennan accepted Khera’s criticisms without a murmur of protest and assured her of his readiness to comply. He detailed specific actions being undertaken, including “collecting all training materials that contain cultural or religious content, including information related to Islam or Muslims.” In reality, this material wouldn’t just be “collected”; it would be purged of anything that Farhana Khera and others like her found offensive. Honest, accurate discussion of how Islamic jihadists use Islamic teachings to justify violence would no longer be allowed.

The alacrity with which Brennan complied was unfortunate on many levels. Numerous books and presentations that gave a perfectly accurate view of Islam and jihad were purged. Brennan was complying with demands from quarters that could hardly be considered authentically moderate.

This Obama policy of the U.S. government ensured that numerous jihadists simply could not be identified as risks. The Obama administration was bound, as a matter of policy, to ignore what in saner times would be taken as warning signs. Now we can hope that Trump will reverse all that. Indeed, it is our only hope of defeating this scourge.

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President says media doesn’t report terror attacks, media responds with outrage and fury

February 8, 2017/in Commentary, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Jihad Watch

If you open your window right now, you will be able to hear the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and the BBC and all the rest collectively screaming, “Oh yes we do!” But President Trump is correct. He said: “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t even want to report it.” The establishment propaganda media has taken this to mean that he was claiming they didn’t even mention the attacks. They did. But in virtually all cases, they did all they could to obscure the motivating ideology behind those attacks. They deliberately conceal and/or misrepresent the aspects of them that make it clear that they’re Islamic jihad attacks. This is in accord with the guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists, which tells journalists not to connect Islam with terrorism, and to obscure that connection wherever possible.

One notorious example of this is the Orlando massacre. Mainstream news outlets claimed that Omar Matteen was a conflicted gay man lashing out at other gays. This was outright disinformation: the FBI later announced that there was no evidence that he was gay, no gay apps on his phone, etc. Few outlets published his actual remarks, making it clear that he was killing for the Islamic State and Islam. The coverage of terrorist incidents in general in the establishment media deliberately misleads the public.

“White House List Contradicts Trump Claim That Terror Attacks Go Unreported,” by Brian Naylor and Jessica Taylor, NPR, February 6, 2017:

President Trump, in another broadside against the news media, on Monday accused “the dishonest press” of failing to report terrorist attacks.

But in a list put out by the White House later Monday evening, many of the attacks cited, such as the attack the Orlando night club shooting last June and 2015 attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris were extensively covered by the media around the clock.

Speaking to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, Trump cited a series of recent attacks and then added, “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t even want to report it.”

Trump told the troops that the media “have their reasons, and you understand that,” but didn’t elaborate beyond that.

Trump initially cited no examples of the media’s failure to report terrorist attacks. Onboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington with the president, press secretary Sean Spicer said terrorist attacks “aren’t exactly covered to a degree on which they should be” and said they would release a full list of examples soon.

Late Monday evening, the White House did just that. According to a White House official, the point they were trying to make “is that these terrorists attacks are so pervasive at this point that they do not spark the wall-to-wall coverage they once did.”

“If you look back just a few years ago, any one of these attacks would have been ubiquitous in every news outlet, and now they’re happening so often … that networks are not devoting to each of them the same level of coverage they once did,” the administration official continued.

PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim as “Pants on Fire,” writing that they “found no support for the idea that the media is hushing up terrorist attacks on U.S. or European soil. The media may sometimes be cautious about assigning religious motivation to a terrorist attack when the facts are unclear or still being investigated. But that’s not the same as covering them up through lack of coverage. There is plenty of coverage of in the American media of terrorist attacks.”…

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Jihad Watch.

Army Corps Ready to Grant Easement to Finish Dakota Access Pipeline

February 8, 2017/in Courts & Law, Energy, Policy, Religion/by Sean Hackbarth

The drama over the Dakota Access Pipeline could soon come to an end, Bloomberg reports:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a court filing it will grant Energy Transfer Partners LP the easement it needs to finish the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline.

The company needs the easement to complete work under Lake Oahe, following President Donald Trump’s memorandum that advised expediting review of the project. Trump took office promising to favor oil and natural gas developments as well as support new infrastructure, which has included reviving TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline.

[ … ]

In January, the Department of the Army, withholding the final easement necessary for construction beneath the lake, initiated an Environmental Impact Statement, which Energy Transfer failed to block in court. Energy Transfer has argued it went through the full permitting process and has the necessary approvals.

The project was originally scheduled to be operational by the end of 2016. Now it’s expected to start operating June 1, assuming no new obstacles prevent it, a person familiar with the matter said Feb. 3. Lisa Dillinger, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, confirmed that the project would be in service in the second quarter.

The pipeline would provide a new path for transporting North Dakota crude oil to Midwest refineries.

This is a win for jobs, improved energy infrastructure, and the rule of law.

Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, was pleased with the news:

Today’s news indicates a positive step forward for the Dakota Access Pipeline. It’s encouraging to see how seriously the Trump administration is taking the need to build energy infrastructure, which will create jobs, improve our security, and keep energy affordable for families and businesses around the country.

While the permitting situation is finally falling into place, clean-up crews are hard at work picking up the hundreds of truckloads of garbage from extreme, anti-energy, “keep it in the ground,” pipeline opponents left at their protest site:

Making a dent in the immense amount of trash being hauled out of the Oceti Sakowin protest camp is being hindered by the weather. All the garbage that was left behind is now frozen into massive chunks of junk.

In a month, all this trash could become toxic.

“Standing Rock Environmental Protection Agency and Dakota Sanitation are working together to try and advert an environmental tragedy,” says Tom Doering, Morton County Emergency Manager.

It’s estimated it will take 250 trucks filled with litter to clear the camp.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in Iowa. Photo credit: Carl Wycoff. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

VIDEO: U.S. Senate shuts down Elizabeth Warren for visciously attacking Jeff Sessions

February 8, 2017/in Elections, Policy, Politics, Video/by Dr. Rich Swier

UPDATE: ValuBit.com news in their column “Elizabeth Warren ‘Silenced’ Again After Video Surfaces Of MLK’s Wife Thanking Senator Sessions” writes:

After being silenced last night on the Senate floor during her desperate racial stunt to read disparaging remarks about now-confirmed Attorney-General Jeff Sessions, we suspect Senator Elizabeth Warren is lost for words as video surfaces of Coretta Scott King thanking Senator Sessions at the launching of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.

Read more…

The Daily Signal published a video with commentary on the debate taking place at the U.S. Senate to confirm Senator Jeff Sessions to become the Attorney General of the United States. Senator Mitch McConnell shut Warren down for viciously attacking a fellow Senator.

Elizabeth Warren has become the face of the party of the unhinged, uncivil and increasingly irrelevant, a.k.a. Democrats.

The Daily Signal noted:

Hours after staging a 24-hour talkathon against Betsy DeVos’ nomination for education secretary, Senate Democrats were back at it Tuesday night. This time, Republicans had the last word.

As the Senate debated the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., delivered a blistering critique. She accused Sessions of trying to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”

That’s when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stepped in to call out Warren for violating Senate Rule 19—impugning the motives and conduct of Sessions.

The Senate proceeded to vote, 49-43, prohibiting Warren from speaking throughout the remainder of the debate on Sessions.

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Asylum!

February 8, 2017/in Courts & Law, Immigration, National Security, Policy/by Tabitha Korol

Adam Ghahramani, a digital product and marketing director in New York, is an Iranian-American who penned his concerns on VentureBeat, that President Trump will prevent all Muslims from seeking asylum in these United States. He maintains that Iranians have the talent and potential to become successful, productive, good citizens, and he joined mainstream media, sundry entertainers and city officials in expressing his unfounded fears of this new administration.

An asylum of sorts may indeed be needed by the rioters who appear to be in perpetual meltdown.

VIDEO: Tracing the path of four terrorists sent to Europe by the Islamic State (video courtesy of the Washington Post).

They articulate their doubts even when President Trump clearly iterated that he is following through on his campaign promise of security for all citizens – Christian, Jewish, and Muslim alike. In fact, based on reports by the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) for the previous administration, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia were identified by President Obama as the source of increasing terrorism. This is clearly a terror-prone region, home to only 8% of Muslims worldwide. Since January, 2009, we have had 32 terrorist attacks, with 83 fatalities and 402 injuries in the U.S., attributed by President Obama to these seven countries.

Iran: The US government classified the Islamic Republic of Iran as the “most active state sponsor of terrorism since 1948, both by direct attacks and by proxy through providing weapons, funds, training, and sanctuary to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and militias in Iraq. The year 2012 showed a marked resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism not seen since the 1990s.
Syria: Classified the world’s worst state sponsor for terrorism since 1979, Syria also gives asylum for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and arms Hezbollah forces in Lebanon with SCUD missiles. Syria was responsible for movement of foreign Al Qaeda affiliates into Iraq.
Iraq: Provides safe haven, training, financial support to terrorist groups, and support to some Islamist Palestinian groups. Iraq played a role in the 1985 Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and provided financial support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestine Liberation front, Arab Liberation Front; and finances families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Libya: Our State Department warns US citizens against all travel to Libya; our embassy in Tripoli is closed and extremist groups continue to plan terrorist attacks against US interests in Libya and the Middle East. Violent activity against civilian commercial interests, US officials and citizens remains high.
Yemen: US government describes Yemen as an “important partner in the global war on terrorism.” A Yemini Al Qaeda masterminded the USS Cole bombing (2000); Al Qaeda militants have threatened the Jewish community (2007) and attacked the US Embassy (2008); bomb devices have been found on aircraft (2010), deadly terrorist strikes are a continuous threat since 2001.
Sudan: Designated a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” in 1993, the Sudanese government continues to harbor international terrorist groups. President Bill Clinton prohibited transactions with Sudan; US bombed Sudanese Al-Qaeda network; Sudan maintains direct relations with Iranian Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Popular Resistance Committee. Sudan is key transit route of weapons to Gaza.
Somalia: Radical Islamist terrorist group al-Shabab targets to recruit Minneapolis Somali- American refugees to become jihadists, with the intent of imposing strict sharia law on Somalia and to attack the United States.

That we cannot vet all refugees for ties to terror has been confirmed by FBI Director James Comey, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich), and Hillary Clinton. With such verification, it is no surprise that President Trump, a man of his word, would issue a travel ban on those countries (only) so that the DHS may establish a comprehensive vetting process. He had promised to institute a policy designed to protect our sovereignty and citizens once he took office, and within days of his inauguration, he began to fulfill his promise by taking the steps needed to defend our values.

It would be irresponsible to continue to accept untold unidentified migrants, of which any number could bring with them the instability and hostility that permeates their homelands, endangers our women and children for the dishonest cause of multiculturalism that has befallen Sweden and Germany. Unvetted immigration has turned Sweden into the Rape Capital of the West and Germany appears to be competing for the title.

But while some of our population has been provoked to deep anxiety about this brief and insignificant hiatus, we can’t help but wonder at the absence of outrage when Christians are raped and murdered by Muslims or when the entire Muslim world enacts a travel ban against travelers’ bearing passports with Israeli connections that has thus far lasted for seven decades.

Still, Mr. Ghahramani warned that America would experience a dearth of talented, industrious workers from the Middle East, exampling successful children of those refugees – Steve Jobs (Apple), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), Omid Kordestani (Google), Salar Kamangar (YouTube), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Kordestani and Ali Rowghani (Twitter), Bob Miner (Oracle), Shahram Dabiri (World of Warcraft), and Sean Rad (Tinder). Yet the ban has nothing to do with a success potential.

Learning why people emigrate from the Middle East to the West will shed much-needed light on the subject because people do not migrate when life is good. These families left an oppressive existence in a tyrannical Islamic regime, an all-encompassing social, political and legal system that breeds hate against Jews, Christians, and all non-Islamic civilization – and even among themselves. Such theocratic governments confine their people into a narrow uniformity. Medieval suspicion is instilled toward the modern world, stifling creativity in the arts and sciences. Five-times-daily rituals of prescribed prayer further drain the vitality of creative energy.

“The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.” “No stronger retrograde force (than Islam) exists in the world.” – Winston Churchill.

This enervating process is the daily background to the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation), honor killing of daughters, parents wrapping their children in explosives, and husbands stoning their wives to death. The frustrated human spirit protests in hatred and savagery. From the earliest age, they are taught and urged to stab, kill, rape, humiliate, stone, and drive vehicles into crowds of Jews and Christians, and homosexuality and apostasy are punishable by death.

The peoples of the current Islamic territories were once Zoroastrian, Christian, Pharoahan, Berber/Imazighen, Jewish, Baha’i, etc., until the Arabs swept out of the Arabian Peninsula in all directions, conquering and confining their victims to the life-denying cult known euphemistically as Islam. It is they who now seek American freedoms, longing for the light, as does all life, and that is why we must remain vigilant. But a significant percentage wants to enslave us under the same mortifying system that they had and to fulfill their ingrained obligation of hijra – conquest by numbers and the gradual imposition of sharia law in schools and workplaces across America. Their national goal is Islamic world domination.

How devastating if our founding fathers had escaped their authoritarian monarchy to establish a freer government, only to find themselves in another repressive dictatorship. How cruel and ironic if our ancestors had fled from Europe’s socialism, Marxism, and communism only to find themselves overcome by domination under the same doctrines. Our society is not only a haven for the talented and creative, but it is also a seedbed that we have the duty to preserve.

Should we allow the new jihadists or enemy from within to turn this Constitutional Republic into an Islamic theocracy, a caliphate, with all the intolerable restrictions of Sharia law that the new Americans thought they left behind?

We must not fail our citizens through negligence or a misplaced sense of compassion and think that we should accept all who alight on our shores. Egyptian-American author Nonie Darwish reminds us that some of the unhappy populations must stay behind and work to reform Islam and restore the Middle East. Here, we must vet every entrant to ensure their embrace of our values and that they will become a productive member of our society – for those who will not, will continue to teach their children their own tenets of obsessive hate, and we have enough troubles already.

The purpose of the Islamic ideology is to rule the world – and to destroy Israel, a stubborn bastion of freedom. Failure to perform jihad will lead to “spiritual death.” The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Society of North America, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Muslim Student Association, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and other affiliates are bound to insinuate into our society, and slowly implement Sharia changes into every facet of our lives. We already have a Sharia-compliant Muslim population of 3.3 million in more than 300 American cities and towns.

Only extraordinary measures will save the West from the extraordinary threat to her survival.

RELATED VIDEO: Muslim Leaders Declare Aim Of World Domination. Rome, London, Spain, Paris, America, ISIS.