Declassified: Did Rosenstein Make False Statements to the FISA Judge? - Allan J. Favish

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by Allan J. Favish

A newly revealed memorandum sets forth a compelling case that the deputy attorney general was dishonest in carrying on his witch hunt.

Journalist Paul Sperry tweeted on August 5, 2018 that we should look this month for President Donald Trump to "declassify 20 redacted pages of the June 2017 FISA renewal."  Sperry is referring to a Portable Document Format file released on July 21, 2018 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which contains heavily redacted versions of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant applications to conduct surveillance of Carter Page, who had been a foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump.  Even with the redactions, the June 2017 warrant application is damning for deputy United States attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

The June 2017 warrant application begins on PDF page 292, with the title "VERIFIED APPLICATION."  On PDF page 379, it states: "The FBI has reviewed this verified application for accuracy in accordance with its April 5, 2001 procedures[.]"  On PDF pages 390-391, it states the following under the heading "APPROVAL":

I find that this application regarding Carter W. Page satisfies the criteria and requirements for such applications set forth in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended, and hereby approve its filing with this Court. [redacted] Accordingly, I approve the filing of this application regarding Carter W. Page with the Court [redacted][.]

This APPROVAL is signed on PDF page 391 by Rosenstein.

The unredacted portions of the June 2017 warrant application reveal two deceptions by Rosenstein that have not received sufficient attention.  The first is that Rosenstein told the FISA judge that the information from former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele that was in the warrant application was "verified" but failed to tell the FISA judge that a month earlier, Steele admitted that his information was "unverified."  After Steele's dossier was published in early 2017, Steele was sued for libel in Great Britain.  On page seven of Steele's response to interrogatories in that case, Steele stated:

The December memorandum [a portion of Steele's dossier] was a raw intelligence report which contained information gathered from a confidential source(s) about various national security issues that warranted further investigation.

Further, the words complained of [by the plaintiffs in the libel suit] were published by BuzzFeed as part of an article which stressed that the contents of the dossier (which included the December memorandum) were "unverified", "unconfirmed" and contained "unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations".  The article added that, "BuzzFeed News reporters in the US and Europe have been investigating the alleged facts in the dossier but have not verified or falsified them."  The article reported that the President-elect's attorney, Michael Cohen, had said that allegations in the dossier "were absolutely false".

In these circumstances, readers of the words complained of were therefore aware that (i) the contents of the December memorandum did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation given their potential national security implications; (ii) persons mentioned in the December memorandum were unlikely to have been approached for comment, and therefore many of those persons were likely to deny the allegations contained in the raw intelligence; and (iii) while the December memorandum was prepared in good faith, its content must be critically viewed in light of the purpose for and circumstances in which the information was collected.

As seen on page nine of Steele's response to the interrogatories, the document is dated May 18, 2017.  Presumably, this document was made public on that date or shortly thereafter.  Although we know that Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, sent FBI director Christopher Wray a copy of Steele's interrogatory responses in October 2017, it is likely that the FBI and the DOJ had a copy before the June 2017 warrant application was submitted.   It would be difficult to believe that the FBI and DOJ were not monitoring the lawsuit against Steele.  If for no other reason, failure to monitor the lawsuit would have been a dereliction of duty by the FBI and DOJ, given that the Steele dossier was used in the three previous FISA warrant applications and was being used again in the fourth FISA warrant application for a warrant that would allow surveillance for another 90 days.

The FBI and DOJ had a duty to monitor the lawsuit to see if anything developed that would impact the representations the FBI and DOJ were making to the FISA judges.  This is precisely what happened in May of 2017, when Steele responded to the interrogatories.  Yet there is nothing in the June FISA warrant application indicating that Rosenstein informed the FISA judge about Steele's interrogatory responses.  It is unlikely that a disclosure about Steele's interrogatory responses was redacted in the publicly released version of the June 2017 FISA warrant application because there would be no legitimate reason to redact it given that Steele's interrogatory responses were public information.

Rosenstein's second deception was falsely telling the FISA judge that Steele did not disclose his information to the press in September 2016, but disclosed to the press only in October 2016.  Footnotes on PDF pages 308-309 and 320-321 in the June 2017 warrant application state that 1) Steele told the FBI that he shared his information only to Fusion GPS and the FBI, and the FBI did not believe that Steele shared his information with the press in September 2016; 2) in late October 2016, when FBI director James Comey publicly announced the reopening of the Hillary email server investigation, Steele became "frustrated" with this action and, in response, disobeyed the FBI and shared his information with the press in late October 2016; and 3) the FBI continues to assess Steele's reporting as reliable but closed Steele as an active source.

The problem for Rosenstein is that on page eight of Steele's interrogatory responses, from May 2017, Steele admitted that he shared his information with the press in September 2016.  This is the opposite of what Rosenstein told the FISA judge in June 2017.  Rosenstein did not tell the FISA judge in June 2017 about Steele's admission from a month earlier.  The FISA judge was likely left with the impression that Steele had only disobeyed the FBI once regarding sharing with the press, and then only because Steele was "frustrated" at the reopening of the Hillary email investigation in late October 2016, and Steele had no other motivation for sharing with the press.  This was a false impression because Steele's "frustration" over the reopening of the Hillary investigation could not account for Steele's sharing with the press in September 2016.  Moreover, Rosenstein did not tell the FISA judge that Steele had lied to the FBI about his sharing with the press in September 2016.  The FISA judge was not given any indication that Steele's credibility was in serious doubt because of that lie.  This is especially egregious, given that the June 2017 warrant application was significantly based on Steele's credibility.

Senator Grassley and Senator Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, noticed the significance of Steele's interrogatory responses over six months before the public release of the FISA warrant applications.  On February 6, 2018, Grassley and Graham, releaseda redacted version of their memorandum on the topic dated January 4, 2018.  On pages 4-5 of their memorandum, they asserted that FBI and DOJ officials misrepresented Steele's credibility to the FISA Court in order to make Steele appear more credible than the facts would justify.

The Grassley-Graham memorandum is primarily focused on Steele's lying to the FBI about when he spoke to the press.  However, the memorandum sets forth a compelling case that Rosenstein was dishonest with the FISA judge in June 2017, and the unredacted portions of the June 2017 warrant application support this conclusion.

Allan J. Favish is an attorney in Los Angeles.  His website is allanfavish.com.  James Fernald and Mr. Favish have co-authored a book about what might happen if the government ran Disneyland, entitled Fireworks! If the Government Ran the Fairest Kingdom of Them All (A Very Unauthorized Fantasy).

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/declassified_did_rosenstein_make_false_statements_to_the_fisa_judge.html

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Antifa, the Real Fascists - Matthew Vadum

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by Matthew Vadum

The assault on Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens is just the beginning.

Foul-mouthed Antifa demonstrators went on a rampage August 6 as they assaulted two high-profile conservative activists at a downtown Philadelphia restaurant for being conservatives and supporters of President Trump.

The attack came the day after Antifa smashed the windows at a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office in Berkeley, Calif., during a leftist counter-protest of a “No to Marxism” rally. Twenty people were arrested. “Besides the damage to the Marine Corps post, Berkeley police also said ‘an extremist element among a large group’ damaged 21 city vehicles, setting one on fire, and slashed their tires,” Fox News reported.

The incident in Pennsylvania’s biggest city also came after the leftist mayor of Portland, Ore., Ted Wheeler (D), allowed anarchy to break out in his city, instead of cracking down on Antifa troublemaking. For 38 days Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, allowed hundreds of his Antifa allies to unlawfully occupy public property at an Occupy ICE protest site that eventually became a biohazard. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.”

The attack in Philadelphia and other recent violent actions by Antifa are yet another reminder that the totalitarianism-loving domestic terrorists of Antifa, who call themselves anti-fascist activists, are the real fascists in today’s America because, among other things, they use violent tactics pioneered by the real-live fascist storm-troopers of Weimar Germany, the Sturmabteilung (SA). These Antifa goons opposed the Nazis but eagerly copied their tactics, using their fists to shut down political opponents and break up meetings and rallies. Some Antifa today even dress like Nazis, wearing black and red, the anarchist colors which traditionally have also been used by Nazis.

Antifa, which as a group has been warmly embraced by many Democrats, have regained prominence in the post-Obama era by assaulting conservatives and Trump supporters. The hyper-violent anarchists and communists of the Antifa movement are notorious for promiscuously labeling those they target as fascists, Nazis, and racists, in the absence of evidence.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and communications director Candace Owens were trying to enjoy breakfast at the Green Eggs Cafe when Antifa thugs surrounded them and became loud and belligerent. Antifa poured a bottle of water on Kirk as police officers, who were not white, tried to protect them.

The restaurant assault resembled a Black Lives Matter action carried out on the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 in 2015. In it leftists terrorized people as they got together for brunch. "Black Brunch" organizers and their followers stormed upscale eateries in New York City and Oakland, Calif., reading out the names of black criminals killed by the police and shrieking that whites had no right to be there. They accused whites of committing "genocide."

Kirk and Owens were no doubt targeted because Turning Point USA is becoming a formidable threat to the increasingly violent anti-Trump resistance movement. Turning Point is a six-year-old nonprofit organization whose mission, according to its website, “is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government.”

The group “has embarked on a mission to build the most organized, active, and powerful conservative grassroots activist network on college campuses across the country. With a presence on over 1,300 college campuses and high schools across the country, Turning Point USA is the largest and fastest growing youth organization in America.”

In a bizarre scene right out of Communist China’s Cultural Revolution, young white Antifa agitators blew whistles in the faces of Kirk and Owens, a black woman, while chanting “Fuck white supremacy,” during the restaurant showdown earlier this week. Owens can be seen in a video yelling back at the Antifa activists, "We love the police, we love America, we love the U.S.A.," as police officers in the City of Brotherly Love tried to separate Owens and Kirk from the protesters.

Soon after the assault, Kirk took to Twitter to denounce the Antifa activists involved.

“If [an] angry conservative mob formed while two young liberals, one white guy and a black woman, were eating breakfast, and the mob hurled horrific insults, threw objects and assaulted them, the left would call it a ‘hate crime’ and every major outlet would be demanding condemnation,” Kirk tweeted.

Interestingly, Antifa activists, like those in Philadelphia who claim America is an irredeemably racist hellhole, are generally young and almost exclusively white.

This fact was not lost on Owens, who referred to Antifa as “an all-white fascist organization” on Twitter, and thanked the police for coming to her aid. “Would like to personally and publicly thank the @PhillyPolice force for keeping us safe today. As you can see in the video, they were all Hispanic and black. The white liberal thugs were shouting ‘no good cops in a racist system[,]’”she tweeted.

Interestingly, at least two left-wingers came to Owens' defense.

Movie director Samm Hodges stood up for Owens in a Twitter post.

Man, I hate @RealCandaceO's politics, but watching an (apparently) all-white crowd scream "fuck white supremacy" in her face was sickening. I'm pretty sure that no part of being an ally includes actively oppressing women of color.

Singer Ariana Savalas tweeted:

This is beyond comprehension. What the hell is happening to my party? No matter what you think of @RealCandaceO, even if you hate her, this childish behavior is abhorrent. Fellow liberals, come on. We need to start speaking out more strongly against this bullshit. #NotInMyName

These disturbing incidents caused by radical leftists are becoming increasingly common.

The attackers in Philadelphia seemed to be expanding on the admonition of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) who earlier this summer urged her supporters to publicly confront and harass members of the Trump administration over the separation of illegal aliens’ children from their parents in immigration detention.

"Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that [the] cabinet of [President Trump] in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Kirk blamed Waters for the Monday incident in Philadelphia.

“Why won’t Democrat leaders denounce these ANTIFA thugs?” Kirk tweeted. “This is the new base of the Democrat party. They hate America and will go to violent measures to attack conservatives. This is {Maxine Water’s] America - she called for these sort of attacks.”

Leftists recently hounded Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen into abandoning her dinner at a Washington, D.C. restaurant. Members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) participated in the name-and-shame action and broadcast video footage of it over social media. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was chased out of a restaurant in Lexington, Va., for daring to work for President Trump. Immigration hardliner Stephen Miller was screamed at in the capital city for doing his job and a set of “wanted” posters appeared near his downtown apartment. He famously discarded an $80 box of sushi after a chef heckled him as he left a restaurant (Miller said he feared his food had been spat on).

Presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was accosted in a supermarket. Former chief strategist Stephen Bannon was harassed while he was quietly minding his own business in a bookstore. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R), a strong Trump supporter, was harassed by activists outside a movie screening.

But now Americans far outside President Trump’s inner circle are feeling the wrath of Antifa.

And a backlash is on the way.

Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270986/antifa-real-fascists-matthew-vadum

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Hamas: Equation of 'blood for blood' will continue - Dalit Halevi

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by Dalit Halevi

Senior Hamas officials stress that the "resistance" will continue to implement the new policy of response to Israel's actions.

Violence on the Gaza Border
Reuters

Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said on Friday that "the Palestinian people are capable of imposing the equation of life in freedom and dignity because of their steadfastness and sacrifice and despite the repeated attacks of the occupation."

Al-Hayya spoke at one of the processions held as part of the “March of the Return” east of Gaza. He declared that these processions would continue until the goals of return and breaking the “siege” on Gaza are achieved. The weekly protest marches include violent confrontations along the Gaza border and attempts to attack IDF soldiers in various forms.

"We support the people of Gaza who demand a life of freedom and dignity in the face of those who impose a siege," al-Hayya said. "We are sending a message to the occupation that our people are determined to work to end the occupation and to lift the siege on Gaza at all costs.”

Ahmed Bahar, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Authority parliament and a senior member of the Hamas leadership, said that the Palestinian resistance would continue to protect the rights and national principles of the Palestinian people.

In this context, he stressed that the new equation of the organizations of the resistance will remain in force and will be based on bloodshed in response to bloodshed, shelling in response to shelling and calm in response to calm, while at the same time preserving the right to resistance for the protection of the Palestinian people and the holy places.

Dalit Halevi

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250369

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Father of New Mexico Islamist Compound Leader is Linda Sarsour's 'Mentor' - Leo Hohmann

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by Leo Hohmann

Training camp for child terrorists has chilling connection to top Democratic Party operative.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj Jr., 40, of Clayton County, Georgia, was arrested along with his two sisters and two other adults last Friday in New Mexico on charges of felony child abuse for holding 11 starving children in an underground trailer hidden from view in a compound described as "overflowing" with weapons and ammunition.

But there is more to this story that is not appearing in the nightly news accounts we've all been following.

Nobody is talking about Wahhaj's well-connected father, Siraj Wahhaj Sr., a radical Brooklyn imam who is the spiritual adviser to Democratic Socialist and Bernie Sanders supporter Linda Sarsour.

The elder Wahhaj also has ties to the two most prominent U.S. Muslim organizations -- the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA -- and he was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Sarsour, co-chair of the Women's March on Washington, has become the face of ISNA. She spoke at an ISNA conference in Chicago last summer in which she praised Wahhaj Sr. as her "favorite person" and called on U.S. Muslims to wage political jihad against the Trump administration. Since that time she has been working to elect far-left Democrats to public office such as Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez in New York, and Stacy Abrams in Georgia.

Siraj Wahhaj Jr., according to court documents, was training the malnourished kids to carry out school shootings. Essentially, it was a jihad training camp for child terrorists.

Clothed in rags and reduced to skeletons, the children were living with five adults at the compound in Taos County, a remote area of northern New Mexico. Police found the body of a toddler on the grounds which they believe to be that of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, the 3-year-old son of Wahhaj Jr. and grandson of Wahhaj Sr. According to court documents, Wahhaj Jr. also faces abduction charges for allegedly kidnapping his son from his mother's home in Georgia. While focused on the boys' military training, he neglected their basic needs while leaving them malnourished and living in horrific conditions described by police as "Third World."

But the media seems reticent to bring up this Muslim "extremist's" family's ties to Sarsour, a darling and rising star in the Democrat Party, as it tilts more to the extreme left to placate its base in the age of Trump. Nor are they posing the question: If Wahhaj Jr. holds "extremist" views, where did he get them from? Could it have been from his imam father?

Father schooled in Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia

The 40-year-old Wahhaj Jr. is the son of Siraj Wahhaj Sr., 68, a black Muslim convert who went on to become a well-known and politically-connected Saudi-trained imam. Wahhaj Sr. was an honored guest at the Clinton State Department and the Obama White House. He was the first Muslim to lead prayer at the U.S. House of Representatives in 1991. He once predicted in a widely available sermon that U.S. democracy would "crumble" and be conquered from within by Islam, and also said it is "our duty as Muslims to replace the U.S. Constitution with the Quran."

Wahhaj has called for death to all homosexuals and lesbians, citing Islamic law.

Wahhaj Sr., speaking at a fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation, said:

I pray Allah will bless us to raise an Army, and I'm serious about this. We were very close, recently. We had made intention to raise an army of 10,000 men in New York City. Muslim men to fight in the way of subhanahu wa ta'ala. And this is serious.

So this is the father of the guy who has a compound stocked with military-grade weapons and floor-to-ceiling ammunition in the remote New Mexico desert, where he was training young boys to fight in the way of Allah.

Wahhaj Jr. had lived near Atlanta in Clayton County and none of the information that led to his capture would have come to light were it not for the fact that one of his wives, Hakima Ramzi, filed a missing child report late last year regarding her 3-year-old son. Ramzi said her husband, Wahhaj Jr., took the boy to the park in Clayton County and never came back.

The local sheriff told New Mexico media his department had "suspicions" that Wahhaj and the boy were present at the compound in Taos, but they did not have enough evidence to get a warrant.

That didn't happen until last week, when someone inside the New Mexico compound got word to police that they were starving.

If Siraj Wahhaj Sr. is not already being investigated by the FBI for any possible knowledge of his son's criminal activities, we can only hope that such an investigation will be forthcoming.

It's not as if Wahhaj Sr. has a pristine reputation. He has already been linked in court documents to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and testified on behalf of the notorious "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted for masterminding the bombing.

Wahhaj Sr. also serves as the leading spiritual mentor to Sarsour, who last year called on Muslims to wage jihad against the Trump administration and exhorted them not to assimilate into U.S. society.

Sarsour last summer addressed the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America or ISNA. She had glowing words for her "mentor," Siraj Wahhaj Sr., who was sitting in the audience:

And to my favorite person in this room, that’s mutual, is Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has been a mentor, motivator, and encourager of mine. Someone who has taught me to speak truth to power, and not worry about the consequences. Someone who has taught me that we are on this earth to please Allah and only Allah, and that we are not here to please any man or woman on this earth. So I am grateful to you Imam Siraj, and you might think this is weird, but every once in a while, when I get into that deep dark place, Imam Siraj comes and talks to me. And he helps me to emerge out of those places, so I’m grateful to you Imam Siraj, and may Allah bless you and protect you for a long time for our community, because we need you now more than ever.

Wahhaj Sr. is known for his stridently anti-American views, a theme that Sarsour has parroted in her speeches, though the politicians who openly cavort with her are rarely called into question for associating with her.

"In time this so-called democracy will crumble and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam," Wahhaj Sr. said, according to a 2003 Wall Street Journal article.

Sarsour posted to her Facebook page (above) on March 5 a picture of herself with Siraj Wahhaj Sr. and CAIR leaders Dawud Walid and Nihad Awad, among others, at an anti-Trump protest rally in Washington, D.C.  

Sarsour was known as the de facto campaign manager for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who finished second in the Democrat gubernatorial primary Tuesday, Aug. 7, in Michigan.

Sarsour has also endorsed the candidacy of Democrat primary winner Stacy Abrams for governor of Georgia, who had her picture made with Sarsour in January and tweeted "Proud to stand with activist organizer and @womensmarch national co-chair LSarsour."

Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes wrote in his book Militant Islam Reaches America that Wahhaj Sr. represents Muslims who both despise the United States and ultimately wish to transform it into a Muslim country."

Wahhaj Sr. grew up Jeffrey Kearse in a Baptist family. He converted to the Nation of Islam as a young man and later converted to orthodox Sunni Islam. In 1978, he attended a class in Naperville, Illinois, with 50 African-American Muslims consisting of 40 days of intense training on the Quran. He later traveled to Mecca for more training. He returned to the U.S. and started his own mosque in 1981 and has been, since the early 1990s, one of the most popular circuit-riding imams in the U.S., traveling around the country preaching hatred against America and Israel.

One of his more telling quotes, from a sermon, is as follows:

Islam is better than Democracy. Allah will cause his deen, Islam, to prevail over every kind of system. And you know what? It will happen.

Philip Haney, a retired Homeland Security investigator and author of the book "See Something, Say Nothing," said he wonders if the FBI has been tracking Wahhaj Jr. given the notorious activities of his father. And if there were, why didn't they raid the compound in New Mexico sooner?

Haney said he has been following the preaching career of Wahhaj Sr. closely for years.

"His father is definitely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. ... This has been going on way too long when Siraj Wahhaj goes around the country preaching hatred and sharia law in our mosques," Haney said. "I've been tracking his career for some time and it's well past time that this information gets laid out on the table."

Haney said Wahhaj Sr. has known ties to the radical ADAMS Center mosque in northern Virginia, and Dar al Hijra mosque in Washington, D.C., as well as past affiliations with Anwar Al-Awlaki, and the "Blind Sheikh."

"Now that this has come out, it shows the American people were really smart not to nominate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed for governor of Michigan," he said. "Imagine if you had nominated this guy with all this new information coming out about CAIR and ISNA, the face of whom is his buddy Linda Sarsour."

Photo: Linda Sarsour, second from right, poses at an anti-Trump rally in Washington in March with Siraj Wahhaj Sr., far left.

Leo Hohmann

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270991/father-new-mexico-islamist-compound-leader-linda-leo-hohmann

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UN Human Rights Office gets a New Leader - Joseph Klein

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by Joseph Klein

Will Michelle Bachelet reverse the disgraceful record of her anti-Semitic predecessor?

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has chosen Michelle Bachelet for the key post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and submitted her name for approval by the General Assembly. Ms. Bachelet, a socialist, was most recently president of Chile between 2014 and 2018, having served previously as president from 2006 to 2010. In between, she served as the first Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN‑Women). Ms. Bachelet will succeed Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who will step down at the end of August after a highly controversial term in office. As Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said, “During his tenure, the HRC [Human Rights Council] became a theater of the absurd, with hypocrisy and double standards rampant among its proceedings and reports.”

Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, advised Ms. Bachelet to "avoid the failures of the past." The Trump administration announced last June its withdrawal from the dysfunctional Human Rights Council. 

As a torture survivor herself, Ms. Bachelet will bring a unique perspective to her new position. She and her family were tortured by the dictatorial Pinochet regime. Her father lost his life after enduring months of torture for opposing Pinochet's overthrow of the duly elected President Salvador Allende. “Violence ravaged my life,” she said. “I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred.”

Ms. Bachelet also brings to her new position a demonstrated commitment to expanding the rights of women. As Executive Director of UN Women, she said, for example, “Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. What’s important is that women have the right to make their own decisions, and that these decisions are not controlled by anyone else.” She has served as a role model in her own career in public service. “As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere,” she said, “little girls would come up to me and say, 'I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.' Now, they tell me, 'I want to be president just like you.' All of us can dream as big as we want.”

Nevertheless, while Ms. Bachelet deserves a chance to prove her willingness and ability to restore a measure of credibility to the UN’s fundamentally flawed human rights apparatus, there are some worrisome red flags raised by some of her past statements and actions. While still serving as president of Chile, Ms. Bachelet praised the work of the Human Rights Council despite its abject failure to address real human rights abuses by some of the world’s worst dictatorships and its anti-Israel obsession. “I raise my voice in support of the efficacy of the United Nations and the Human Rights Council,” she said, while calling for an increase in the UN’s regular budget allocation to the UN’s so-called human rights agenda. 

A socialist herself, Ms. Bachelet has praised the socialist dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. When she visited Cuba earlier this year, she met with the dictator Gen. Raúl Castro, without seeing any of Cuba’s dissidents. On the occasion of Fidel Castro’s death, she called him “a leader for dignity and social justice in Cuba and Latin America.” Similarly, she eulogized the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for “his most profound love for his people and the challenges of our region to eradicate poverty and generate a better life for everyone and his profound love for Latin America.”

Ms. Bachelet’s commitment to socialism was noted in a 2006 U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks: “Eight months into her term as Chile's President, the core socialist principles that guide Michelle Bachelet are very much in evidence. In the international arena, Bachelet's initial inclination is to adopt positions of brotherly solidarity, including those with an ‘anti-imperialist’ tint… Ideologically, Bachelet is sympathetic to much of the rhetoric and some of the politics found on the left.”

While serving as UN Women Executive Director, Ms. Bachelet addressed an annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, citing the Palestinian issue as a top priority among “a number of important reports before us.” This UN body passed only one country-specific resolution, targeting Israel. The resolution accused Israel of “systematic violation” of the human rights of Palestinian women. Iran, which was then a member of the 45-country UN Commission on the Status of Women, escaped any condemnation despite its abysmal record on women’s rights.

Chile is home to one of the world's largest Palestinian populations outside the Middle East. Its Jewish population, while relatively sizable, is no more than one-tenth the size of Chile’s Palestinian population. Back in 2014, during Ms. Bachelet’s second term as Chile’s president, her government demonstrated its pro-Palestinian tilt by halting free trade negotiations with Israel and recalling Chile's ambassador in Tel Aviv. These actions were taken to protest Israeli actions in Gaza designed to defend its citizens against Palestinian terrorist attacks. ADL wrote a complaint letter to then-President Bachelet, stating: “Chile’s public statements and actions have put the onus for this conflict solely on Israel, despite the indisputable evidence that Hamas is indiscriminately targeting Israeli civilians with a relentless barrage of rockets and missiles, has built scores of tunnels with the intention of conducting terrorist attacks and kidnappings of Israeli civilians and soldiers, and  the well-documented cruel indifference of Hamas to the lives and safety of its own people in Gaza through the situating of rockets, weapons depots and terrorist operations inside mosques, schools, hospital and other medical clinics. Inexplicably, nowhere in Chile’s statements is there a recognition of Israel’s responsibility to protect its citizens - the majority of which live under the threat of Hamas rocket and tunnel attack.”

On the issue of immigration, Ms. Bachelet supported during her presidency some reforms in Chile’s immigration laws. However, she lashed out at those who, she claimed, “wrongly associate immigration with a kind of unfair competition in the field of labor, while others go so far as to link it with crime.” 

Given the warning signs in Ms. Bachelet’s record, those who truly care about human rights as well as national sovereignty will need to keep a watchful eye on her performance as the new  UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. We should know soon whether she will truly avoid the many failures of the outgoing commissioner, Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein, and try to steer the UN’s badly damaged human rights office in a more constructive direction.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270992/un-human-rights-office-gets-new-leader-joseph-klein

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Sweden's Government Funds Anti-Semitism - Nima Gholam Ali Pour

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by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

Sweden's "new" anti-Semitism be defeated by isolating its advocates and marginalizing all organizations spreading its ideas. 

• The municipality of Malmö uses taxpayers' money to support "Group 194," an organization that posts anti-Semitic images on its Facebook page -- such as a defamatory cartoon portraying a Jew drinking blood and eating a child.
• In Sweden, imported Middle Eastern anti-Semitism is funded by taxpayer money, so when scandals occur, they are often addressed by the same people who have participated in spreading its message.
• No effective actions are currently being taken against the spread of anti-Semitism in Sweden.
• Just as European anti-Semitism was defeated by rejecting and condemning the ideology after World War II and isolating its proponents, so must Sweden's "new" anti-Semitism be defeated by isolating its advocates and marginalizing all organizations spreading its ideas. This means that all direct and indirect government funding of these organizations has to end. As long as this does not happen, Jews in Sweden will continue living in fear and insecurity.

As major Swedish cities such as Malmö have become known as places where Jews are threatened, anti-Semitism in Sweden has attracted international attention. Does Sweden, however, really deserve this bad reputation or is there some misunderstanding?

In December 2017, when US President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, demonstrations broke out in Malmö. Protesters, often people with an Arab background, shouted, "We want our freedom back and we're going to shoot the Jews", and a chapel at the Jewish cemetery was attacked with firebombs. In Gothenburg, the city's synagogue was also attacked with firebombs.

The synagogue in Gothenburg, Sweden was firebombed on December 9, 2017. (Image source: Lintoncat/Wikimedia Commons)

The local newspaper in Malmö, Kvällsposten, described how the Jewish congregation in Malmö -- not Israelis; Swedish Jews -- tries to protect itself:

"At the synagogue in Malmö, the Jewish congregation has set up poles to prevent attacks with vehicles. In addition, the building is protected by a high fence around the building. The area has been guarded for a long time by the police. As soon as the congregation holds a service, the premises are guarded by the police."

One could fairly say that the Jews in Malmö are under siege. Reports also note that Jews in Malmö cannot wear any Jewish symbols in public without the risk of being attacked.
Only the most brazen and explicit anti-Semitic acts are reported by the Swedish media. Many organizations that spread implicit anti-Semitism receive no attention from either the Swedish media or the so-called "anti-racist" movements. The group Youth Against Settlements (YAS), for example, which has its base in Hebron, visits high schools and holds lectures in Sweden, and is conducting a campaign against the Jewish residents of Hebron. One student described what was said when YAS visited the Glokala Folkhögskolan school in Malmö on February 28, 2018:

"They talked about there being checkpoints everywhere in the country [Israel] and that Arabs are constantly being stopped and beaten down, killed. They also said that the Palestinians lived in concentration camps, kind of like the Second World War. And that Israel sees and hears everything. Like they had cameras everywhere and observed everything. I mean there was a lot of bullshit that they said. Towards the end, everybody was forced to take pictures with their flag. I had to pretend to go to the bathroom to avoid it. Really sick!"

Another student said about the YAS visit:

"The most controversial thing that was mentioned was that Jews control the United States and the media."

These interviews with the students were conducted by a Swedish blogger, Tobias Petersson, who published them on his blog. That public high schools received visits from an organization that demonizes Israel and makes false and outrageous anti-Semitic statements should, at the very least, have been investigated by the media. But the Swedish media ignored the defamation and neither verified nor repudiated the information.

Instead, the two individuals who represented YAS and were touring in Sweden, Zleikha Al Muhtaseb and Anas Amro, were described as "peace activists". On their Facebook pages, however, knife attacks, martyrdom and intifada are celebrated. YAS also supported the recent riots at the border between Israel and Gaza, despite these riots having led to more Palestinians being killed, worsening the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and having been organized by Hamas, an anti-Semitic terrorist organization that outspokenly seeks to destroy Israel.

YAS was invited to hold lectures for public institutions in Sweden; and the foreign minister of Sweden, Margot Wallström, met with YAS when she visited Ramallah in December 2016. As such, YAS became an organization legitimized by the Swedish government. When organizations such as YAS visit Sweden and are received unquestioningly, with open arms, by high schools and other public institutions, this kind of welcome legitimizes the type of anti-Semitism that is presented, no matter how false, as a supposedly reliable view of Israel.
Another organization that clearly has anti-Semitic tendencies and is supported by public institutions in Sweden is Group 194. Its name, which derives from United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, adopted on December 11, 1948, during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War that followed the founding of Israel. Resolution 194 says, among other things:

"...the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible..."

The resolution is used by many Palestinians to try to prove international recognition of a "right to return" to what is today the heartland of Israel, to erase Israel, as maps of "Palestine" openly display, and ostensibly to reclaim homes that 70 years later are likely no longer there.

Group 194, a pro-Palestinian political organization, has close ties with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), a terrorist group that has murdered at least 36 Israeli civilians, and which supports the Assad regime in Syria. That is why it seemed strange when the Labor and Social Services Board of the Municipality of Malmö, on October 27, 2017 granted 132,000 kronor (roughly $15,000) to Group 194 and two other organizations, so they could patrol the suburb of Rosengård at night, supposedly in order to make the area safe. For full disclosure, the author, as a member of this municipal board, and a few of his fellow party colleagues voted against this proposal; the majority of the board, however, supported it. Today, it is a fact that pro-Palestinian organizations are funded by the municipality of Malmö.

Group 194 supports violent extremism. On their Facebook page one can see pictures of minors holding Kalashnikov rifles. There also have been anti-Semitic images on Group 194's Facebook page, such as a defamatory cartoon portraying a Jew drinking blood and eating a child. Why does the municipality of Malmö support such an organization with taxpayers' money? The reason is that Malmö and Sweden have serious problems in dealing with imported, Middle Eastern anti-Semitism. When Swedish politicians -- because of ignorance or tolerance for intolerant behavior -- accept anti-Semitism in an important Swedish city as Malmö, that is an unacceptable problem. It is also unacceptable when a majority of local politicians in Sweden's third-largest city support taxpayer money going to a pro-Palestinian organization that has made anti-Semitic statements and promoted violence. It reveals that too many Swedish politicians apparently cannot even recognize what anti-Semitism looks like and when and how to take a stand against it. What are Swedish Jews to think?

Group 194 was also given an award by the municipality of Malmö at a gala it organized, and has received contributions from various municipalities in Sweden for several years, including Sundsvall and Landskrona, where the municipality has a close cooperation with Group 194. When Landskrona had its official summer party, one of its organizers was Group 194.

Ship To Gaza is an organization that usually gets a lot of media publicity. When one of its activists, Ferry Saarposhan, stated that Israel's treatment of Palestinians "is worse than the Holocaust," the Swedish media stayed silent. The video clip of his statement is posted on the official Facebook page of Ship to Gaza-Sweden, a page that has more than 35,000 "likes". But no one has yet responded to his slander.

Different factors end up reinforcing each other, as this author has already noted. They create an echo chamber that then leads to a situation where Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism becomes accepted by Swedish authorities. These factors include:

• Large-scale immigration from countries where anti-Semitism is normalized.
• A strong pro-Palestinian engagement among Swedish politicians that has resulted in a totally inaccurate and surreal debate about the Israel-Palestine conflict, in which Israel is unjustly demonized.
• A desire among political parties in Sweden to win the votes of immigrants.
• A Swedish multiculturalism that is so uncritical of foreign cultures that it cannot differentiate between culture and racism.
• A fear of sounding critical of immigration.
• Important Swedish institutions, such as the Church of Sweden, legitimizing anti-Semitism by endorsing the counter-factual Kairos Palestine document.

Today this process has gone so far that many in Sweden seem to have totally internalized this imported, Middle Eastern anti-Semitism and made it an integral part of their ideology.
Today in Sweden, supporting organizations that demonize Israel and spread anti-Semitism is considered completely normal. It is not even the subject of discussion -- unless an extreme statement is uttered. Oldoz Javidi, a parliamentary candidate for the feminist party, Feminist Initiative, for instance, said that all Israeli Jews should move to the United States so "the Palestinians can live in peace and rebuild the country that once was theirs". Only after the Times of Israel and other non-Swedish media outlets wrote articles about this incident did some Swedish mainstream media outlets start writing about the incident and describe the candidate's statements as anti-Semitic. The criticism from Swedish media outlets forced Javidi to withdraw her candidacy.

When it comes to confronting imported Middle Eastern anti-Semitism, there seems to be simply a fear of conflict, and especially of being called "racist" or "anti-immigrant." These fears seem to lead at best to a wish to try to paper over problems by holding "dialogues" to find "compromises."

In August 2017, Bassem Nasr, a representative for the Green Party in Malmö's municipal council, wrote an op-ed that criticized anti-Semitism within pro-Palestinian organizations. Strangely enough, Nasr was embraced by the Swedish establishment, which often brands anyone who criticizes Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism as racists.

Nasr, however, has a history that the media failed to mention. In 2006, he invited the anti-Semitic terrorist organization Hamas to Malmö. The visit never took place, only because one of the Hamas representatives was denied a visa to enter Europe. Nasr, however, never explained why he invited Hamas representatives in the first place; he never even apologized.
In 2008, Bassem Nasr wrote -- incorrectly -- in an op-ed:

"The fact is that there is no Israeli prime minister throughout history that has had so little blood on his hands as the Iranian president."

At the time Nasr made this statement, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denied that the Holocaust ever happened, was president of Iran. The fact that Iran is an Islamist dictatorship and second only to China for most executions in the world -- and even executes minors -- makes Nasr's statement even more bizarre.

What seemed to have suited the Swedish establishment was that Nasr had no suggestions on how to counter anti-Semitism in Malmö and Sweden, except that it was "the task of the teachers". That Nasr had once invited Hamas to Malmö and been active in pro-Palestinian organizations for several years evidently created the feeling of comfortable, non-confrontational "dialogue" that many policy-makers in Sweden seem to imagine can fight anti-Semitism.

One source of Middle Eastern anti-Semitism is the messages that come from Sweden's mosques. In April 2017, a mosque in the Swedish city of Borås invited a speaker who had been convicted in Germany for calling for the murder of Jews. In July 2017, an imam at a mosque in the Swedish city of Helsingborg said that Jews were the descendants of apes and pigs.

When the government, after several scandals related to extremism in Muslim religious communities, wanted to investigate the criteria for financial support from the state, Ulf Bjereld, who has a history of defending Islamists in different contexts, was appointed to head the investigation. Bjereld is also chairman of the Religious Social Democrats of Sweden. This organization has been criticized several times for excusing and legitimizing anti-Semitism, and is part of the Social Democratic Party -- Sweden's governing party.
Appointing someone such as Bjereld for this investigation shows that the Sweden's national and local governments are not ready to confront Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism, but would much rather have a nice, quiet "dialogue" about it.

In Sweden, imported Middle Eastern anti-Semitism is funded by taxpayer money, so when scandals occur, they are often addressed by the same people who have participated in spreading its message.

No effective actions are currently being taken against the spread of anti-Semitism in Sweden.

In December 2017, this author submitted a motion to the Malmö municipal council to map and analyze anti-Semitism in the city. It is a measure that would give the politicians a clear picture of why anti-Semitism has increased there, so that corrective measures could be taken. But this proposal is unpopular, because such an analysis of anti-Semitism in Malmö would force the authorities to realize that Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism is a huge problem.

Just as European anti-Semitism was defeated by rejecting and condemning the ideology after World War II and isolating its proponents, so must Sweden's "new" anti-Semitism be defeated by isolating its advocates and marginalizing all organizations spreading its ideas. This means that all direct and indirect government funding of these organizations has to end. As long as this does not happen, Jews in Sweden will continue living in fear and insecurity.

• Follow Nima Gholam Ali Pour on Twitter and Facebook

Nima Gholam Ali Pour Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. He is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö. He is the author of the books "Därför är mångkultur förtryck" "Allah bestämmer inte i Sverige" ("Allah Does Not Decide in Sweden").

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12814/sweden-antisemitism

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