America's moment of Truth - Pat Condell

by Pat Condell

You have a choice America - a very fateful choice, between the American way and the European, open-borders, globalist mega-bureaucracy way.

Pat Condell

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHCul_DIM_4

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Time for Newspapers to Retract Endorsements for Hillary - Peter Skurkiss

by Peter Skurkiss

In light of what is now known, how can these newspaper endorsements stand?

Look far and wide and you'll find that nearly every major newspaper in the country has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

But surprise! The ongoing Wikileaks dumps, coupled with the re-opening of the FBI's investigation regarding Clinton's reckless use of emails, shows the unbelievable and indisputable corruption of Mrs. Clinton's during her tenure as Secretary of State and that of the Clinton Foundation. The sordid behavior of the Clintons as they wormed their way to massive wealth is finally breaking into the consciousness of the general public, and it stinks to high heaven.

In light of what is now known, how can these newspaper endorsements stand? If these news outlets hope to retain even a fig leaf of credibility for their often-made claims that they stand for good government, they need to immediately retract these endorsements. This does not mean the papers have to come out for Donald Trump, but continuing to stand by Hillary Clinton is truly beyond the pale. To do so would make the media complicit with the Clinton corruption machine and guilty after the fact of their acts.

If these newspapers don't have the courage to do the right thing here, they will rightfully be indicted for willful blindness and add to the growing realization that the mainstream media is in the tank for the Clintons, come hell or high water.

Write to any local or regional newspaper in your area that has endorsed Hillary Clinton and demand they retract it.


Peter Skurkiss

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/time_for_newspapers_to_retract_endorsements_for_hillary.html

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Social Justice vs. Truth - Jack Kerwick

by Jack Kerwick

A look at the university’s new mission.

Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, argued in a recently published essay that while its traditional “telos” (end or goal) has been truth, within the last few decades the university has assumed another: Social Justice.

The university, however, can only have one telos.

The conflict between these two goals has raged for decades, Haidt claims.   Last year, though, it became unmanageable when student groups at 86 universities and colleges around the country issued “demands” to administrators, demands for Social Justice that, by and large, were met.  

The following statement is posted at BlackLiberationCollective.org:

“We demand at the minimum, Black students and Black faculty to be reflected by the national percentage of Black folk in the state and the country.

We demand free intuition [sic?] for Black and indigenous students.

We demand a divestment from prisons and an investment in communities.”

A statement of “principles” follows.  The Black Liberation Collective (BLC) opposes “anti-Blackness;” “sexism;” “ableism;” “capitalism;” “White privilege;” “inequality;” and “heteronormativity.”  It rejects as well non-violence considered as a principle in contradistinction to a tactic.

“Anti-Black racism is woven in the fabric of our global society,” says the BLC.  “When social systems are racialized by white supremacy, whiteness becomes the default of humanity and Blackness is stripped of its humanity, becoming a commodity, becoming disposable.”

The BLC is “anti-sexist” insofar as it affirms “the value of all Black women’s lives whether cisgender, transgender, or genderqueer.” In addition to rejecting “Eurocentric beauty standards that are made to lessen the beauty of Black women and Black women’s features,” being “anti-sexist” also means realizing that “police brutality, the prison industrial system, school to prison pipeline” and the like are aspects of “structural racism” that affect black women as much as they impact black men.

Black liberation entails “queer liberation” and “trans liberation.” “We also seek to destroy the heteronormative norms that dehumanize Black queer people,” the BLC asserts.  The “homophobia” within “the Black community” comes by way of “the same hands responsible for white supremacy.”

Presumably, “transphobia” within the black community is also a legacy of white supremacy. In cooperation with “cissexism” and “the gender binary,” “transphobia” has “been used as a means of invalidating and erasing our trans+ family members.”  The BLC pledges to “eliminate” such systemic biases.

These Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) are staunch opponents of “the capitalist notions of infinite profit, homogenized markets, and a privatized means of production.”  Capitalism, they insist, “is the economic system” that’s been “used to justify” the “oppression,” “marginalization,” and “exploitation” of blacks. 

Nor is the solution to this “oppression” to be found in supporting black-owned businesses.  The BLC explains that “we cannot adopt the patriarchal, exploitative tools of our oppressors as we seek liberation.”  Rather, the solution is to “dismantle anti-Black capitalist corporations that benefit from our oppression.”

It isn’t only the “capitalist corporations” that these students want destroyed.  They demand as well “the eradication of all institutional practices and policies that discriminate against the black community” and “the removal of all federal, state, and local government officials who do not abide by our principles.”

“The State and all its institutions that deny Black humanity and Black agency must be dismantled and replaced with those that produce Black liberty.”

Concerning its attitude toward America, the BLC is clear: “This country was built to systematically oppress groups of people, and the Black Liberation Collective will not stand for it.”

Haidt misspeaks in characterizing 2015 as the year when the university experienced a crisis of identity, an unmanageable conflict of goals.  To judge from the vast majority of liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences departments, Social Justice long ago eclipsed truth as the raison d’etre of the academy.  Interestingly, it is these SJW demands from last year that bear this out.

Perhaps it is because I’ve spent the last couple of decades in the academy in the capacity of both student and faculty that I may be more privy to this than are some others, but it’s painfully obvious that these student activists did not come up with these demands on their own.  If they didn’t have their professors actually write the demands for them, then the Black Liberation Collective unquestionably derived the concepts and language of their statement of demands from their mentors.

To put it bluntly, one must attend college, major in the liberal arts and humanities, and study under far left professors in order to think in the terms that are characteristic of Social Justice Warriors.

Leftist ideologues are training their students to bend the university to their will.  This is the first point. There is, though, another, a rich irony that is lost upon these self-styled radicals.

For all of their bluster over “systemic racism” and “structural white supremacy,” i.e. phenomena that are omnipresent and, hence, largely unconscious, these black students, their white collaborators, and their professors fail to realize that their thinking (for lack of a better term) on these issues is about as Eurocentric as one can get.  The “critical race theory” to which the BLC subscribe is a version of Marxism, the philosophical vision of a 19^th century German-Jewish man.  The Marxist tradition within which they are enmeshed was fleshed out over a span of generations by mostly white heterosexual men.
But there’s more to it than this.

The idea that “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “transphobia,” “ableism,” and the like against which SJWs rail are evils to be defeated is itself peculiar to the moral traditions of European civilization.  If these “isms” and “phobias” are immoral it can only be because those who are guilty of them fail to judge the individual as an individual.  Color, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and so forth are neither constitutive of nor essential to the moral identity of the individual—but only if the framework of the doctrine of individualism is accepted.

Yet this conception of the sacrosanct individual is as Eurocentric as the proverbial “apple pie” is American. 

The Social Justice Warriors’ intellectual landscape is as much a European “colony” as was any West African country in the 19^th or early 20^th centuries. Those in the Black Liberation Collective have most definitely internalized the modes of thought of their “oppressor.”

Now, they would have been well aware of all this had they received a genuine education in college rather than a training in Social Justice. 

Jack Kerwick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264638/social-justice-vs-truth-jack-kerwick

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Pro-Palestinian Propaganda Lowering Standards of Truth in America - Phyllis Chesler

by Phyllis Chesler

Manipulation by doctored narratives in every sphere.

Reprinted from IsraelNationalNews.com.

Commendably, organized American Jewry is finally focused on the campaign to boycott, de-legitimize, and sanction Israel. However, focusing primarily on Israel, and not also on America and Europe, is short-sighted. 

The BDS campaign has not devastated Israel economically. Israel is thriving both economically and in terms of regional alliances—but fifty years of a well-funded propaganda campaign has all but destroyed Israel's good name and has rendered her and Jews everywhere vulnerable to diplomatic, academic, and mob attacks. 

It has also lowered the standards for truth among Americans. This is a very important point.
An Islamic-style of Jew hatred has merged with Western, politically correct anti-racism to breed an unnatural passion for "Palestinians," (Fakestinians), which has infiltrated every corner, every crevice of our lives and world. It has infected Americans and Europeans on both sides of the aisle and of every class, race, and ethnicity. 

This is utterly astounding, amazing really; something like this does not happen overnight.

The BDS campaign is rooted in the Arab League, PLO, and Soviet propaganda campaign that began in the mid-1960s. In the mid-1970s, the UN proposed its infamous Zionism=Racism resolution.

In 1967, the day after Israel won yet another war of self-defense, Israel--not the Arab aggressors--was seen as the alleged "occupier." 

By the late 1970’s, Edward Said's treacherous, lying work had begun to have its way with Western academics, (and with Western-style academics in Israel), European governments, and international organizations. 

I only realized how successful his campaign was in 1980, when Israel was demonized at a UN conference on Women in Copenhagen. The Soviets, the Iranians, the Arab League, the PLO-- roamed the hallways chanting "Death to Israel;" European feminists called upon "Palestinian" refugees but refused to hear Jewish-Israeli refugees from Arab and Muslim countries. By 2001, the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban was an even more out-of-control Hate Fest and riot against Israel. 

As we approach 2017, UN Resolutions against Israel are as commonplace as they are grotesque. UNESCO’s recent decision to De-Judaize Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and the First and Second Temples is a grim and maddening continuation of this trend. At the same time, pro-Israel professors and students in America are increasingly being harassed, even fired.

Such Lies have infiltrated my private social world. For example: At a recent holiday dinner, our guests agreed that we live in criminal and anarchic times and that no great power has stopped global barbarism, no entity is willing to bring the world back from the brink. 

A like-minded gathering, yes?
Not exactly.  One man, a genial, well-heeled, well-educated Jewish-American suddenly began hectoring us about the "Palestinians."
"What if they did not hate the Jews and destroyed all their textbooks that demonize Jews and Israelis? What if they were peaceful? Wouldn't we have to admit that Palestinians have always existed and therefore deserve a state of their own? You can't deny that the Palestinian people have always lived there, can you?"
Oh my. Where to start? 
The company included two author-scholars who, between them, have published 15 books and thousands of articles, many of them dealing with the history and nature of Islam, tribal gender and religious apartheid, Israel, and anti-Semitism, etc. Among us was a third author, who had also served four tours of duty in the IDF. I held my breath and prayed that we would not go to war at the table. 
This man was punching way above his pay grade and I could not understand why.
The two author-scholars presented facts, cited statistics. I pulled down book after book from my shelves. We got nowhere.
"Look," he said. "I have some really good Muslim friends, they're Americans, totally Westernized, they are Palestinians. They strongly feel that this is their identity. Why deny them the identity of their choice?"
And then I understood that the pro-Palestinian/anti-Zionist propaganda behind the relentless BDS campaign is successful precisely because so many Americans of all ages, are without knowledge; without respect for knowledge; do not know this; and frankly, don't care.

"Fair is fair," he said. In other words: What's good for the Jews has to be good for everyone else. If not, the Jews don't deserve whatever it is either.

Here's a man who's not an anti-Semite or an anti-Zionist; not an active member of any organization--yet who needs to believe the canard that non-Jewish "Palestinians" have always existed; or that they existed by the nineteenth century or no later than 1948, the year that another stateless people--the Jews--chose a national sovereign identity.

He would not listen to reason. It was quite astounding. How is this possible?

His mind-set is part of our ruling American zeitgeist. If Rachel Dolezal can say she's "black" even when she's "white" and direct a chapter of the NAACP; if a man can say that he's really a woman, trapped in a man's body; if all truth(s) are "relative;" if everything is "subjective;" if objectivity is no longer important; if doctored narratives have supplanted fact-based histories; if revisionism is preferred to truth--then, yes, anyone can say that they deserve their own nation state because they "feel" or "believe" that they do.

I am grateful to my combative guest for reminding me that ignorance is often arrogant and as such, is a great enemy; that educated people have been especially vulnerable to False Ideas; that, psychologically speaking, we must approach them as if they've been brainwashed by a cult.

Facts alone will not work. We must consider all known techniques for de-programming.

This is one of our greatest challenges.

Phyllis Chesler

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/264633/pro-palestinian-propaganda-lowering-standards-phyllis-chesler

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BDS, Political Religion, and the Crisis of the Global Left - Dr. Alex Joffe

by Dr. Alex Joffe

Antipathy is dominant at universities, where endless boycott resolutions are introduced in student governments and “Apartheid Walls,” die-ins and mock evictions of Jewish students are common.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 374

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The BDS movement against Israel is a microcosm of the global Left. Both are political religions that sanctify secular entities and demonize their opponents, weaponizing liberal principles in order to create retributive “justice.” The BDS movement fuses Muslim and Communist antipathy towards Jewish difference and indeed to Jewish existence, embodied in Israel. 

The global Left has a problem with Israel. The “Israel Question” pervades the progressive movement, including the British Labour Party, Green Parties, liberal Protestant denominations, and a wing of the US Democratic Party – where supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement nearly rewrote the party’s platform.

Antipathy is dominant at universities, where endless boycott resolutions are introduced in student governments and “Apartheid Walls,” die-ins and mock evictions of Jewish students are common. Within the classrooms, Israel is the Little Satan to the American Great Satan. Supporters of Israel find themselves under increased opprobrium and physical threat.

“Intersectional” alignments between the BDS movement and Black Lives Matter, equating the Palestinian and American black experiences, threaten the vestiges of the black-Jewish alliance that underpinned the civil rights movement. Indeed, Israel is placed increasingly at the intersection of all forms of oppression.

Some on the political and cultural Left, both inside and outside the Jewish community, have renewed efforts to sway the broader progressive movement back towards Israel with new organizations and new arguments. But is this goal possible?

Perhaps the issue is not simply that the BDS movement is morally reprehensible but that the premises of the global Left that facilitate and valorize it are wrong.

There is little to debate about the liberal principles of individual liberty, gender equality, and religious pluralism. But it is in its implementation of such universals as equality and justice, opposition to racism and ethnocentrism, and cosmopolitanism and multicultural tolerance that the global Left has become unhinged. The necessarily political means of implementation have become objects of worship and are coupled with a ferocious will to power.

The worship of means over ends is inherent to all efforts to reshape society, thought and behavior toward “justice.” But the issue is not merely subjective interpretation or selective application of principles. It is, rather, a mindset particular to the Left that is both redemptive and retributive.

Punishment is key to salvation, derived perversely from liberal values like justice and equality. But it is given shape and direction by Western guilt (i.e., secularized Christian guilt) and Third Worldism, which glorifies national liberation from the West. For some, this thinking is a means of willful cultural self-annihilation; for others, it is a path to personal redemption. Both are predicated on the seizing of all forms of power.

This power-grab is rooted in several claims: 1) that oppression and victimhood are prime indicators of good and, conversely, of evil; 2) that nationalism is intrinsically bad except among subalterns; 3) that invocation of “human rights” demands uncritical genuflection; 4) that international organizations and NGOs are invariably correct and above reproach; 5) that “rights” are ever-expanding and never to be questioned; 6) that free speech is a dangerous aggression; 7) that academic inquiry, if not all intellectual activity, must be subordinated to the political; and 8) that all activity and thought must display the correct politics. Contesting ideas are evil and sinful and ought to be suppressed.

These are the characteristics of the global Left in the 21^st century, founded on the paradox of high cultural self-loathing made possible by capitalism. But they are also the characteristics of a political religion to which the global Left and the BDS movement subscribe. That religion sanctifies the Palestinians as it demonizes Israel, and, increasingly, Jews in general. Its adherents perceive themselves as an elect community, and they champion a totalitarian pedagogy. They believe, in the words of two leading scholars, in “[d]iscrimination against the outsider, undertaken by way of coercive measures that range from exile from public life to physical elimination of human beings who, because of their ideas, social conditions and ethnic background, are considered inevitable enemies.”

The religious dimensions of the global Left call into question secularization itself. Stripped of God, the movement appears nothing less than a new church, with clerics, theology, angels and demons. Do the Left’s virulent hatreds and parochialisms, not least its hatred of Jews and Israel, thus flow precisely from Leftist premises, in an inverse manner of the right?

A debate on this question is in order, but the terms have been skewed so far as to make debate almost impossible. All criticism is defined as rightist if not reactionary. Thoughtful defenses of the nation-state as the best vessel to protect individual, group, and minority group rights are derided as racist and exclusionary. Critiques of international organizations and NGOs as biased and unaccountable are seen as repression and censorship.

The same applies to calls for objectivity in academia or even criticism of opposing ideas, which is now equated with McCarthyism. And any criticism, however mild, of Palestinian politics, society, or culture is automatically racist, a Zionist defense of “occupation.” That Palestinian society as a whole regards the “occupation” as the 1948 post-war status quo is either ignored or, increasingly, embraced as correct. The Left has erased the middle ground.

Critiques of BDS from the Left describe it as a misapplication of liberal principles, misinterpretations that treat Israel as a unique evil. But what if they are in fact the logical application of those principles? Counterarguments are made that Israel defends freedom of speech and religion, protects the rights of religious, ethnic, and gay minorities, and enforces (however imperfectly) gender equality. All are trumped by BDS claims that any positive statements about Israel are a heinous whitewashing of the unique evils of dispossession, occupation, imperialism, and settler-colonialism.

Explanations regarding historical exigencies (including Palestinian political culture or civil society) are trumped by the absolute conviction that Palestinians have zero agency; they can only respond violently to endless provocations. A leftist pro-Israel response claims that ending the “occupation” will remove the cause and alleviate the effect. But in the Palestinians” view, the original sin is Israel’s very existence.

Moreover, what is a leftist pro-Israel response to claims that “Ohio is infested with Zionists” or that Zionists are responsible for college tuition increases? The Leftist ideology of “resistance” is the source of these calumnies. If the existence of any “oppression,” meaning grievance, disappointment or unhappiness (“micro-aggression”), is cause for permanent revolution, how could the complaints of Palestinians or anti-Semites not provide endless fodder for the global Left?

The global Left’s theoretical convergence and practical alliance with two other closed systems, Communism and Islam, is thus explained. Each is supremacist, regarding itself as the inevitable outcome of epic struggle against adversaries who are not simply wrong but evil. Each has core doctrines regarding conflict that are immune to updating, and diffused clergies who compete for primacy only through extremism. And each has a unique (if convergent) antipathy towards Jews and Israel.

Islam’s antipathy is foundational in the Koran and hadith; Communism’s flows directly from party founders and 19^th century socialism. And for more than 60 years, Soviet anti-Semitism was directed at the Muslim, Arab, and Third Worlds. It is no surprise that the global Left has openly adopted the stance of its patrons and progenitors, nor that the Global Muslim Brotherhood, through its many Western organs like Students for Justice in Palestine, helps drive BDS.

For the Left, Israel embodies atavistic nationalism that must be transcended in order to purify the world. For Muslims, the existence of Israel is a theological affront and impediment to the perfect Islamic world promised by the prophet, a wound to Islam’s heart. BDS thus merges two prophetic “truths.”

A decent Left would recognize that Israel is not the source of all the Middle East’s problems, but this measured assessment has been overwhelmed by an anti-Semitic Left. And thus one arrives at the central question: is the global Left, or any form of Leftism, inevitably anti-Semitic?

Rightist “blood and soil” premises taken to a “logical” extreme are anti-Semitic; Jews are permanent aliens, forces of disruption and disharmony. Conversely, Marx argued that Jews’ liberation from their religion would be the first step in their liberation (and that of humanity itself) from capitalism.

But the leveling of difference is inherent in all the Left’s ideas. Is it really Jewish difference that is fundamentally unacceptable, the chimera that is simultaneously capitalist and socialist, tribal and cosmopolitan? Is Jewish sovereignty in the ancient Jewish homeland another difference that must be extinguished?

Perhaps the objections are deeper – to Jewish survival as a group and ideology, when “history” indicates that it should be otherwise; to the misunderstood idea of Jews as “chosen” by God; or even to the notion of a single God, which in a sense defies the underpinnings of multiculturalism. The central objection, that the Jews’ continued existence impedes progress to Paradise, is very old indeed.

The BDS movement’s indecency is that of the Left itself. It is intolerant, self-righteous, and ahistorical. It demands the politicization of everything in the name of its own narrow sense of morality, justice, and rights. It subverts every institution it touches, turning them into mechanisms for indoctrination.

In the revolutionary world of the Left, institutions like universities, corporations, and the state would exist only as shells for conformity and official self-righteousness. Behind the mask of solidarity and equality is a church that preaches a gospel of salvation and damnation, forever scourging itself and its endless enemies.

The alternative is not a rightist vision where nationalism is the highest virtue, but civility, derided today by both left and right. But the immediate prognosis is crisis rather than moderation. Universities are at risk of collapse under the weight of their own irrational politics. Also wavering is the European Union, which debates the finer points of labeling Israeli products while millions of migrants hammer at its flimsy walls and flimsier cultural convictions. The BDS movement and the global Left cheer this on while the decent Left grasps for answers. Perhaps there are none.

Liberal notions of equality and justice have been weaponized against the culture that created them, as tools for “antiracism” and “multiculturalism.” The once-tolerant Left has embraced intolerance, replacing inquiry with inquisition. Any philosophy that seeks to straighten mankind’s crooked timber is destined to take this route eventually.

Jews and Israel are perennial scapegoats. The final act is not yet played out, but a rethinking is in order, including a return to classical liberal principles – along with a recognition of the abuses inherent in efforts to perfect humanity.
 
PDF

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family


Dr. Alex Joffe is a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He edits the monthly BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Source: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/374-joffe-bds-political-religion-crisis-global-left/

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The New Anti-Racist Racists - Douglas Murray

by Douglas Murray

Here is this "anti-racist" organisation, largely made up of white men who present themselves as being anti-racists, and yet who spend their time attacking Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a black immigrant woman. At the top of any list of "hate-groups," the SPLC must in future be sure to place itself.

• There is a trait campaigning groups have that is well known. Once they have achieved their objective, they continue. Usually it is because there are people with salaries at stake, pensions, perks and more.
• Suddenly the SPLC seemed to spy a new fascism. The SPLC saw this new fascism in people who objected to people flying planes into skyscrapers, decapitating journalists and aid workers and blowing up the finish line of marathons.
• One got the impression that it had become immensely useful for some people to be able to smear those concerned about Islamic fundamentalism, and try to make them akin to Nazis. The only other movements who find this equally useful are, of course, Islamic extremists.
• The SPLC's list of "anti-Muslim activists" also includes a practising Muslim, Maajid Nawaz, one of the most principled and courageous people around calling out the extremists in his faith for their bigotry and hatred. He does so, like Hirsi Ali, at no small risk to himself.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery, Alabama, has struck again. The self-appointed boundary-markers and policemen of free discussion have issued what they call a "Field Guide" to help "guide" the media in "countering prominent anti-Muslim extremists." It is hard to know where to start with such idiocy, so let us start from the beginning.

The SPLC was founded in 1971, ostensibly to fight for civil rights among other good causes. By the end of its first decade it was targeting the KKK and other racist organisations. So far so good. But like many a campaigning organisation, they experienced the happy blow of basically winning their argument. By the 1990s, there were mercifully few racist groups in America going about unchallenged. When a member of the KKK cropped up everybody in civil society pretty much understood that here was a bad person who should not be given a free pass.

But there is an odd trait in campaigning groups that is well known. Once they have achieved their objective, they continue. Why is this so? Usually it is because there are people with salaries at stake, pensions, perks and more. Campaigning for a particular thing or against a particular thing has become their way of life and their means of earning. And so they find a way to continue. For some years, the SPLC staggered around in such a manner, as pointless and purposeless an organisation as could be imagined.

And then in the last decade something happened to this increasingly obscure institution. It is not for me to speculate why or how this happened, whether it had to do with new staff or new money, but the focus of the organisation changed. Suddenly the SPLC seemed to spy a new fascism. They did not spy it in people who flew planes into skyscrapers, decapitated American journalists and aid workers or blew up the finish line of marathons. No, the SPLC saw it somewhere else. The SPLC saw this new fascism in people who objected to people flying planes into skyscrapers, decapitating journalists and aid workers and blowing up the finish line of marathons. For the SPLC, the big threat on the horizon was not Islamists but those people who objected to Islamists -- that is, people they called "Islamophobes." In the same way, they did not seem to have any particular problem with jihad, but they developed a huge problem with people they called "counter-jihadists." To their existing lists of designated "hate-groups" they now added such people.

More honest groups might have balked at such a stance. More informed groups would have walked a thousand miles from such a stance. But the SPLC did no such thing. In fact, one got the impression that it had become immensely useful for some people to be able to smear those concerned about Islamic fundamentalism and try to make them akin to Nazis. The only other movements who find this equally useful are, of course, Islamic extremists.

The media today in America are increasingly wary of Islamic extremists. Most journalists do not want the parameters of what should be discussed dictated by Islamic fanatics. Whereas an organisation such as the SPLC, which did something good forty years ago, is the sort of institution that the media is for the time-being happy to hear from. Perhaps after this latest development that will no longer be the case.

The SPLC's latest production is disgraceful, discrediting and sloppy even by its own increasingly disgraceful, discredited and sloppy standards. For this publication, they have listed "Fifteen anti-Muslim activists," most likely in the hope that they will scare the media off inviting them on, or the wider public from being allowed to listen to them.

Among the list is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The SPLC lists a set of allegedly outrageous things that she has said, which have appeared in such obscure and extreme venues as The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. They mention in passing -- as though it were an incidental mishap -- that Hirsi Ali's film-making partner, Theo van Gogh, was slaughtered on an Amsterdam street by a jihadist, with a death-threat to Hirsi Ali pinned into van Gogh's dying body. But they still clearly cannot imagine why anybody would have a problem with such a thing. One wonders how the staff of the SPLC would feel if one of their colleagues was murdered in such a manner? Doubtless they would shrug it off. Yet it remains that case that here is this "anti-racist" organisation, largely made up of white men who present themselves as being anti-racists, and yet who spend their time attacking a black immigrant woman.
Hirsi Ali is of course well known for being an ex-Muslim. But the SPLC's list of "anti-Muslim activists" also includes a practising Muslim. Of course, if Maajid Nawaz were an Islamic extremist then SPLC would have nothing to say about him. But Maajid Nawaz is not an extremist -- he is one of the most principled and courageous people around calling out the extremists in his faith for their bigotry and hatred. He does so, like Hirsi Ali, at no small risk to himself. If the jihadists within Islam are ever going to be defeated, it will be because of Muslims like Nawaz, who are willing to argue for reform on liberal, progressive, pluralistic and democratic grounds.

Yet for the SPLC, this Muslim is not just not the right type of Muslim -- he is "anti-Muslim." The charges that SPLC levels against Nawaz are (this is not satire) that he has (a) co-operated with, rather than worked against, the British police (b) suggested that customers in banks should have to show their faces (c) once failed to abide by the most hardline interpretation of Islamic blasphemy law (d) once visited a strip club on his stag-night.

The Southern Poverty Law Center decided to turn itself into a racist organization, with its attacks on principled and courageous critics of radical Islamism such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left), a prominent ex-Muslim writer, and Maajid Nawaz (right), a moderate practising Muslim writer, radio host and politician. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

Who knows what lapses in personal decorum have occurred among the staff of the SPLC? Perhaps one of them once had extra-marital intercourse? Or perhaps one of them once consumed a glass of Merlot, in contravention of the hardest-line interpretations of Islamic scripture? Who knows, but who the hell would anybody else be to judge, and who the hell do the SPLC think they are? It seems that the SPLC has decided to turn itself from an anti-racist organisation into a racist one. An organisation that used to prosecute white racists has ended up attacking black and Muslim immigrants. At the top of any list of "hate-groups," the SPLC must in future be sure to place itself.

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Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9210/splc-racists

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Muslim Imperialism Reaches the United Nations - Denis MacEoin

by Denis MacEoin

Before the United Nations, with its authoritarian, anti-democratic voting blocs, finishes eradicating Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, as it is clearly trying to do, it is high time for Western democracies to run, not walk, away, before further harm comes to them too, as it surely promises to do.

• UNESCO has joined forces with Islamic State. The fundamentalists now have a new weapon: resolutions passed by servile international bodies.
• An earlier delay and the opposition of UNESCO's chief, Irina Bokova, had raised hopes that this act of jihadist, barbaric, unjust, and, frankly, arrogant supremacism might be voted down. It was not. Now a new lie was given the sanction of the world's largest and most unaccountable body whose reason for being is to preserve significant sites, not to bowdlerize them.
• Lies by UNESCO to rewrite history, erasing all traces of Judaism and Christianity to favour a jihadist Islamic fancy, were already under way in 2015. UNESCO fraudulently renamed two ancient Biblical Jewish sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, as Islamic sites. Historically, Islam did not even exist until the seventh century.
• This is the history of Islam, how it takes over -- with both hard jihad (violence) and soft jihad (usurping history, migration [hijrah], political and cultural infiltration), and intimidation (soft jihad with the threat of hard jihad underneath it). What is even more saddening is that often, as with this vote, it is done with the West's cooperation and voluntary submission.

UNESCO last August planned to vote on the historical status of Jerusalem's Temple Mount and its associated Western Wall. Back then, this author stated that UNESCO's plan was to deny any Jewish link to this most central of all Jewish holy sites, to trash a history going back thousands of years, and to claim the Mount and the Wall as Islamic sites.

Islam believes that it is eternal and had therefore preceded the other two great monotheisms, Judaism and Christianity, even though it was only to become visible to the world through Mohammad in the seventh century AD, but entitled to elbow out the two older religions.

Lies by UNESCO to rewrite history, erasing all traces of Judaism and Christianity to favour a jihadist Islamic fancy, were already under way in 2015. UNESCO fraudulently renamed two ancient Biblical Jewish sites, Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs -- abracadabra -- Islamic sites.

Historically, Islam did not even exist until the seventh century.

This is the history of Islam, how it takes over -- with both hard jihad (violence) and soft jihad (usurping history, migration [hijrah], political and cultural infiltration), and intimidation (soft jihad with the threat of hard jihad underneath it). What is even more saddening is that often, as with this vote, it is done with the West's cooperation and voluntary submission.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is now, according to this deeply compromised body, supposedly the "Ibrahimi Mosque," and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem is supposedly the "Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque," even though it never could have been a mosque. As the saying goes, "calling a cat a pig does not make it one."

UNESCO's latest resolution to deny any Jewish link to Jerusalem's Temple Mount, the most central of all Jewish holy sites, is not the first time the body has tried to rewrite and falsify a history going back thousands of years. UNESCO had previously declared the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron (left) as the "Ibrahimi Mosque," and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem (right) as the "Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque." (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

Now a new lie has been given the sanction of the world's largest and most unaccountable body, whose reason for being is to preserve significant sites, not to bowdlerize them.

On October 13, the news was broadcast that UNESCO had passed a majority vote endorsing this rape of archaeological and Biblical history. On the following Tuesday, the resolution was endorsed by the body's executive board. If your majority, however, consists of members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (the OIC, a bloc consisting of 56 Islamic states plus "Palestine", and possibly the largest bloc at the UN), a fraudulent result such as this should probably not come as a surprise.

An earlier delay and the opposition of UNESCO's chief, Irina Bokova, had raised hopes that this act of jihadist, barbaric, unjust, and, frankly, arrogant supremacism might be voted down. It was not. Following the vote, Bokova issued a powerful statement condemning it, saying, among other things:

"The heritage of Jerusalem is indivisible, and each of its communities has a right to the explicit recognition of their history and relationship with the city. To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justified its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
"Nowhere more than in Jerusalem do Jewish, Christian and Muslim heritage and traditions share space and interweave to the point that they support each other. These cultural and spiritual traditions build on texts and references, known by all, that are an intrinsic part of the identities and history of peoples."

Now the Christian and Jewish worlds will have to deal with the resolution's ramifications, the first of which is that all democracies would be wise immediately to abandon the United Nations, or at the very least to stop funding it, before further harm comes to them too, as it surely promises to do.

The resolution was first proposed to UNESCO by seven Muslim states (Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Sudan on behalf of the Palestinian Authority -- all OIC groupies -- in October 2015. Any reputable body empowered to protect ancient religious sites would have rejected it out of hand and given those responsible a dusty answer.

UNESCO's parent body, the United Nations, has over many years increasingly shown itself as untransparent, unaccountable and thoroughly disreputable -- from its $100 billion, never-prosecuted, oil-for-food embezzlement scandal exposed in 2004, to "Peacekeepers" who demand sex from children in exchange for food; to its incessant, fabricated persecution of one member state, Israel, while giving unlimited passes to the most ostentatious violators of human rights in other nations.

Before the UN, with its authoritarian, anti-democratic voting blocs, finishes eradicating Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, as it is clearly trying to do, it is high time for Western democracies to run, not walk, away.

Of UNESCO's 195 member states, 35 are fully Islamic nations, another 21 are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and four are OIC observer states. That makes 60 who represent a bloc favourable to Muslim-inspired resolutions, yet UNESCO's Board consists of only 58 members. That board approved Resolution 19 with 33 votes in favour, six against and 17 abstentions. Ghana and Turkmenistan were absent altogether. Only six countries voted against the resolution -- the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia. Revealingly, France, Spain, Sweden, Russia and Slovenia were among those who supported it. It is not hard to identify the source of the majority vote.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the move as another "absurd" UN resolution:

"UNESCO ignores the unique Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the site of two temples for 1,000 years, and the place to which Jews prayed for thousands of years... The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and proving that there is no low to which it will not reach."

Jewish patience in the Holy Land is being tested to the limit.

UNESCO's vote is just the latest example of Muslim supremacism as expressed in the demolition, re-definition, or outright expropriation of the places of worship, shrines, and other buildings linked to other faiths -- invariably faiths that have long preceded Islam itself, including Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. The process began in the year 630, two years before the prophet Muhammad's death, when his forces conquered his hometown of Mecca. During a brief stay there, before returning to Medina, he ordered all of the 360 idols in the Ka'aba, and all those in private homes, to be destroyed. The Ka'aba itself, long a centre of pagan worship, was transformed overnight into the most important building of the Islamic faith, the Qibla or the spot towards which Muslims still turn in prayer five times a day. It sits at the heart of the Masjid al-Haram, the most important mosque in the Muslim world.[1]

Early Muslims did more than expropriate the building for their own purposes. They created a legend to justify their possession of the site.[2]

But the Qur'an and subsequent Muslim tradition are not content to re-establish history, bringing Abraham out of the Land of Canaan as far down as the Arabian Peninsula. They transform Abraham himself. According to the Qur'an (3:67): "Abraham was neither a Jew (yahudian) nor a Christian (nasranian), but was rather a pure worshipper of God (hanifan), a Muslim...."

This forms part of a broader enterprise. In Islamic doctrine, all true, monotheist religion has, from the beginning, been only Islam. Thus, Adam was the first Muslim and the first prophet. Abraham was a Muslim and a prophet. Moses was a Muslim and a prophet. Noah was a Muslim and a prophet. Jesus was a Muslim and a prophet. In the beginning, everyone was a Muslim and all land belonged to Islam. In the Qur'an, we read:

"Say, 'We believe in God, and in that which was sent down to us, and in that which was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in what Moses and Jesus were given, and in what the prophets were given form their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we submit."

That last phrase reads nahnu lahu muslimun. It can be read generically, meaning "those who submit themselves to God"; or specifically to mean "We are Muslims."

The belief that all true religions involve submission to God and that, in this sense, all true religion may be defined as "Islam" (literally "submission"), may be taken as a unifying, comprehensive declaration of a universal truth, without prejudice to anyone except "idolaters" such as Hindus and Buddhists.

But this generalization was soon forgotten when Muslims found themselves in competition with the followers of other faiths: Jews in Medina, Christians throughout the Byzantine empire, or Zoroastrians in Iran. Muhammad had originally preached his religion as one in harmony with the views of the "People of the Book," the Jews and Christians who had been sent their own scriptures by God. But not long after his taking control of Medina, he turned on the city's three important Jewish tribes, expelling two, then attacking the third, the Banu Qurayza, beheading all the men and teenage males and taking the women and children as slaves. From here on, the Qur'an is rife with condemnations of the Jews as a people and of Christians as corrupters of scripture: "O believers, do not take Jews and Christians as your friends" (Qur'an 5:51)

Once Muslim armies went out to conquer Persia, Turkey, Greece, the Levant, all of North Africa, the Balkans, Hungary, Poland and then conquered Portugal, Andalusia in Southern Spain and other Christian territories, all sense of an identity with the People of the Book as, in a sense, fellow Muslims, went out the window, to be replaced by a sense of them as dhimmi or subjected people, the preservation of whose lives and property were contingent on the payment of a protection tax (the jizya) and on agreeing to live as humiliated denizens under special laws of subjugation in lands ruled by Islamic caliphates.

One consequence of this unequal relationship were countless rules, including special, marked clothing that predated the compulsory yellow Star of David that Jews were forced to wear during Hitler's Third Reich, and that churches and synagogues could not be founded, repaired, rebuilt or given prominence in competition with mosques; and there could be no audible summons to Jewish or Christian prayers.

More than that, the occupation and transformation of lands of earlier religions -- Persia, Turkey, Greece, all of North Africa and much of Eastern Europe -- proceeded apace during unstoppable Islamic conquests. In Jerusalem, two structures were erected on the Temple Mount (giving rise to the claim for UNESCO's recognition): the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Masjid al-Aqsa, "the Farthest Mosque", although no one has a clue where that might have been; very possibly in Arabia) and the Qubbat al-Sakhra, or Dome of the Rock, constructed on the alleged site of Abraham's aborted sacrifice, no longer of Isaac but now Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabs. Both were built within the first century of Islam.

There is no need here to list all the churches converted to mosques during succeeding centuries. Most notable are the Hagia Sophia churches of the Christian Byzantine empire in Constantinople, Eregli, Nicaea, and Trebizond, refashioned as mosques after the Ottoman conquest of 1453.[3]

Today, the Islamic State has destroyed or converted churches, shrines, and other monuments (including Muslim sites) in Iraq and Syria.

Similar devastation took place under the various Islamic states in India, with something like 2000 Hindu temples destroyed to make way for mosques and other Muslim structures, while a similar fate befell others.

This extraordinary level of fanaticism is not unique to Islam (one only has to think of Oliver Cromwell and his puritans in England), but it has been far more extensive and has continued for many more centuries.

It is a totalitarian puritanism. Today's resolution against the Jewish faith must be put in this context.

Today, the Mecca and Medina of the first and second centuries of the Islamic faith have been all but wrecked, not by the Islamic State or any other radical entity, but by the Wahhabi Saudi government. In the past two decades, major historical sites in Mecca and Medina, all related to the lifetime of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad and shortly after, have been destroyed or disfigured to the point where neither city is recognizable save for the Ka'ba and the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. And the two major mosques are themselves much expanded modern constructions.[4]

UNESCO has put Jewish sites with Muslim names into Muslim hands, in the heart of Israel's capital, to try slowly to destroy the Jewish state. UNESCO is not fooling anyone.

It may not be long before Christian holy places and churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth will also be handed over on a plate to placate the forces of Islam, fearful of what they may do not just in the Middle East, but in Europe, North America and Europe, happy to have someone finally try to eliminate those supposedly pesky Jews. All Judeo-Christian countries would be wise to pull out of the UN, or at least cease funding it -- before it is too late for them, too.

Denis MacEoin is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He has just completed work on a large study of Western concerns about Islam.

---

[1] See William Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina, Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 69. And see Yousef Meri, Ka'aba, Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide, Oxford University Press, 2011
[2] There is more than one version of this tale, but it is broadly this: the Ka'aba was first built by the Prophet Adam with the help of angels, then destroyed in Noah's flood, and finally rebuilt by the Prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael. The Qur'an itself advances the story about Abraham's role:

"And [remember] when We made the House [that is, the Ka'aba] a place of visitation [a pilgrimage site] for mankind, and a sanctuary, 'Take the place of Abraham as a place of prayer.' And we made a covenant with Abraham and Ishmael, 'Purify My House for those who circumambulate, those who live there in retreat, and those who bow and prostrate." .... And [remember] when Abraham and Ishmael were raising the foundations of the House, 'Our Lord, accept it from us. Truly, You are the Hearing and the Knowing.'" [Qur'an 2: 125, 127]

[3] The former Portuguese cathedral of Tangier, now the city's Great Mosque; the Christian basilica of St. John the Baptist, captured in 634 and turned into the Great Umayyad Mosque, one of the oldest, and considered the fourth holiest site in Islam; the small Catholic Basilica of Saint Vincent of Lérins, after the Umayyad conquest demolished to make way for the Great Mosque of Córdoba (restored as a cathedral after the Renconquista in 1236). Under the Ottomans, churches in Cyprus and Hungary were replaced as mosques; and as French colonies became independent in the 20^th century, many churches were converted into mosques, including the St. Philip Cathedral in Algiers, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs in Constantine (Algeria), the Tripoli Cathedral and the Benghazi Cathedral in Libya.
[4] The vast Jannat al-Baqi cemetery, which holds so many remains of Muhammad's family, close companions and the earliest Muslim saints, has been levelled, and all domes and mausoleums turned to dust. That act followed earlier levellings by Wahhabis in 1906 and the ultra-Wahhabi Ikhwan in 1925. Those included the graves of the martyrs of the Battle of Uhud and that of Hamza, the prophet's uncle and most beloved supporter. So too the Mosque of Fatima (Muhammad's daughter), the Mosque of the Manaratayn (the twin minarets), and the cupola that marked the burial place of the prophet's incisor tooth. Medina as well, the home of Muhammad's Ethiopian wife, Maryam, where his son Ibrahim was born, has been paved over. In Mecca, the house of his first wife, Khadija, the first person to whom he divulged his mission, has been turned into public toilets. In 1998, the grave of the prophet's mother, Amina bint Wahb, was bulldozed in Abwa, after which gasoline was poured on it and set alight.

Denis MacEoin is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He has just completed work on a large study of Western concerns about Islam.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9173/unesco-muslim-imperialism

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AG Lynch refuses to answer questions about Iran ransom payment - Rick Moran

by Rick Moran

This is politics pure and simple as the administration tries to avoid the embarrassment of information coming to light about our humiliation at the hands of Iran.

Congress wants to know what role Attorney General Loretta Lynch played in the transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran in exchange for our hostages but the AG, in effect, is taking the fifth.

Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Pompeo sent a series of questions to Lynch that a spokeman summarily dismissed, saying pretty much that it was none of Congress's business.

Washington Free Beacon:

In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.
The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.
The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.
“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”
“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”
The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.
When asked about Lynch’s efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.
“Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch’s approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?” Pompeo said. “This has become the Obama administration’s coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran—hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.”
“They know this isn’t a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,” the lawmaker added.

Information about the ransom deal is unclassified, but in order to view, lawmakers must treat the details as if they were nuclear secrets:

Details about the deal are unclassified, but are being kept under lock and key in a secure facility on Capitol Hill, the Free Beacon first disclosed. Lawmakers and staffers who have clearance to view the documents are forced to relinquish their cellular devices and are barred from taking any notes about what they see.
“Please note that these documents contain sensitive information that is not appropriate for public release,” Kadzik wrote to the lawmakers. “Disclosure of this information beyond members of the House and Senate and staff who are able to view them could adversely affect the diplomatic relations of the United States, including with key allies, as well as the State Department’s ability to defend [legal] claims against the United States [by Iran] that are still being litigated at the Hague Tribunal.”

Get that? Unclassified information is "not appropriate for public release." Perhaps the administration thinks releasing details of the transaction will outrage our allies - not to mention the American people, who continue to be kept in the dark about the administration's negotiations with a terrorist state to free our hostages.

Since the details are not classified, the AG cannot claim a national security exemption. This is politics pure and simple as the administration tries to avoid the embarrassment of information coming to light about our humiliation at the hands of Iran.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/ag_lynch_refuses_to_answer_questions_about_iran_ransom_payment.html

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DOJ's Lynch Objected to FBI Disclosure on Hillary Email Probe - NewsMax

by NewsMax

According to CNN, both Lynch and Yates objected, but Comey disregarded their wishes and sent the letter Friday anyway, shaking the presidential race 11 days before the election

Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates objected to FBI Director James Comey's decision to announce Friday there was new evidence that could raise more questions about Hillary Clinton's private email server, according to sources close to the Obama administration and Justice Department.

According to CNN, both Lynch and Yates objected, but Comey disregarded their wishes and sent the letter Friday anyway, shaking the presidential race 11 days before the election and nearly four months after the FBI chief said he wouldn't recommend criminal charges over the Democratic nominee's use of the server.

"You don't do this, a former senior Justice Department official, who was not named, told The New Yorker, which reported the development overnight."It's aberrational. It violates decades of practice."

And Lynch said she did not want Comey to break the department's practice of refusing comment on ongoing investigations, another administration official told the publication, or to take action that could influence the November election, but Comey reported he felt compelled to report the discovery specifically because of the impending election.

Breaking the practice, the Justice Department official said, "impugns the integrity and reputation of the candidate, even though there's no finding by a court, or in this instance even an indictment."

The Justice Department has long advised prosecutors and law enforcement officials to avoid appearances that it was interfering in elections, including holding off on filing charges on present cases.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder four years ago sent a memo to Justice Department employees, notes The New Yorker, warning that officials "must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality, and nonpartisanship," notes The New Yorker, and said employees facing questions about the timing of charges should consult with officials first.

Kevin Lewis, a deputy director of public affairs for the Justice Department, said the division would not comment about whether Comey consulted with the department's Public Integrity Section or other officials. Comey is also a Justice Department employee.

Matthew Miller, who was the public affairs director under Comey, told The New Yorker that in one case, the department waited to subpoena witnesses, but waited because of a pending election.

"People may think that the public needs to have this information before voting, but the thing is the public doesn't really get the information," said Miller. "What it gets is an impression that may be false, because they have no way to evaluate it. The public always assumes when it hears that the F.B.I. is investigating that there must be something amiss. But there may be nothing here at all. That's why you don't do this."

Further, Miller called Comey an "outstanding law-enforcement official," but complained that the FBI director "mistakenly thinks that the rules don't apply to him. But there are a host of reasons for these rules."

Friday's letter to House Republicans wasn't Comey's only "original sin," said Miller — that happened in July, when he announced the FBI found no reason to file criminal charges against Clinton, comments that came without a sign off from the Justice Department.

His announcement brought other events, including congressional hearings where Comey defended his decision, and scorn from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who until Friday had used the decision to add to his "Crooked Hillary" arguments.

But Comey's supporters claim Lynch also incriminated herself by meeting with former President Bill Clinton as the investigation wound up.

Comey himself told Congress in his letter that ordinarily, the FBI would not comment about an ongoing investigation, but in this case, he felt "an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed."

On Friday, Clinton called on the FBI to release the "full and complete facts" about the review, reports CNN, as "voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately…[it is] imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay."

She also said she does not think the emails will change the conclusion Comey reached in July.
GOP nominee Donald Trump reacted to the news, however, by declaring Clinton's "corruption" as being "a scale we've never seen before," during a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire and insisting "we must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office."

NewsMax

Source: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/DOJ-Loretta-Lynch-Email-FBI/2016/10/29/id/755945/

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