Germany: Police Powerless Against Middle Eastern Crime Gangs - Soeren Kern

by Soeren Kern

Middle Eastern crime syndicates have established themselves across Germany, where they engage in racketeering, extortion, money laundering, pimping and trafficking in humans, weapons and drugs.

• Observers have surmised that the real reason for the judge's leniency was that he feared his family might be subjected to retribution from the clan.
• "In their concept of masculinity, only power and force matter; if someone is humane and civil, this is considered a weakness. In clan structures, in tribal culture everywhere in the world, ethics are confined to the clan itself. Everything outside the clan is enemy territory." — Ralph Ghadban, Lebanese-German political scientist and leading expert on Middle Eastern clans in Germany.
• "The state promotes organized crime with taxpayer money." — Tom Schreiber, a member of the Berlin House of Deputies.

A court in Hanover has handed suspended sentences to six members of a Kurdish clan who seriously wounded two dozen police officers during a violent rampage in Hameln. The court's ruling was greeted with anger and derision by police who said it is yet another example of the laxity of Germany's politically correct judicial system.

The case goes back to January 2014, when a 26-year-old clan member, arrested for robbery, tried to escape from the magistrate's office by jumping out of a seventh-floor courtroom window. The suspect was taken to the hospital, where he died. Members of his clan subsequently ransacked the hospital, as well as the court, and attacked police with rocks and other projectiles; 24 police officers and six paramedics were injured.

The judge said he was lenient because the defendants witnessed the death of the 26-year-old and were traumatized. The judge also revealed that he had reached a deal with the clan, which among other effects prevented police from testifying in court.

Dietmar Schilff, chairman of the GdP police union in Lower Saxony, said that the ruling had left many police officers shaking their heads in disbelief: "All police forces expect protection and support from the state." He added:

"If we want to protect those who ensure public security, it must be clear that anyone who attacks police officers attacks the state — and has to fear appropriate consequences. It does not matter from which milieu the perpetrators come."

Observers have surmised that the real reason for the judge's leniency was that he feared his family might be subjected to retribution from the clan.

Middle Eastern crime syndicates have established themselves across Germany, where they engage in racketeering, extortion, money laundering, pimping and trafficking in humans, weapons and drugs.

The syndicates, which are run by large clans with origins in Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, among other places, operate with virtual impunity because German judges and prosecutors are unable or unwilling to stop them.

The clans — some of which migrated to Germany during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and have grown to thousands of members — now control large swathes of German cities and towns — areas that are effectively lawless and which German police increasingly fear to approach.

Ralph Ghadban, a Lebanese-German political scientist and a leading expert on Middle Eastern clans in Germany, said that the Hanover ruling was a massive failure of the German judicial system. He added that the only way for Germany to achieve control over the clans is to destroy them:

"In their concept of masculinity, only power and force matter; if someone is humane and civil, this is considered a weakness. In clan structures, in tribal culture everywhere in the world, ethics are confined to the clan itself. Everything outside the clan is enemy territory."

In an interview with Focus, Ghadban elaborated:

"I have been following this trend for years. The clans now feel so strong that they are attacking the authority of the state and the police. They have nothing but contempt for the judiciary.... The main problem in dealing with clans: state institutions give no resistance. This makes the families more and more aggressive — they simply have no respect for the authorities....
"The state must destroy the clan structures. Strong and well-trained police officers must be respected on the street. It is a poor example if clan members are allowed seriously to injure 24 policemen and six others without having to fear real consequences. In addition, lawyers and judges must be trained. The courts are issuing feeble judgments based on a false understanding of multiculturalism and the fear of the stigma of being branded as racist....
"The clans adhere to a religious group, a kind of sect with an Islamic orientation. The Islamic understanding of their spiritual leader, Sheikh al-Habashi, who died a few years ago, justifies violence against unbelievers. He taught that there is only the house of ​​war [Dar al-Harb], which justifies plundering unbelievers and possessing their wives...."

In Berlin, a dozen or more Lebanese clans dominate organized crime in the German capital, according to Die Welt. They effectively control the districts of Charlottenburg, Kreuzberg, Moabit, Neukölln and Wedding. The clans are committed to counterfeiting, dealing in drugs, robbing banks and burglarizing department stores. Experts estimate that around 9,000 people in Berlin are members of clans.

The clans reject the authority of the German state. Instead, they run a "parallel justice system" in which disputes are resolved among themselves with mediators from other crime families. A classified police report leaked to Bild described how the clans use cash payments and threats of violence to influence witnesses whenever German police or prosecutors get involved.

(Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

The clans are now canvassing refugee shelters in search of young and physically strong men to join their ranks. State Prosecutor Sjors Kamstra explained:

"The refugees come here with no money. They are shown how inexpensive money can be obtained very quickly. Poverty makes this seductive. Many of them cannot speak German and are naturally vulnerable when they are addressed by someone in their native language. For the clans, the refugees are welcome newcomers, because they are new here and are not known to the police."

The clans have also entered the refugee business by buying real estate and renting those properties to asylum seekers at exorbitant prices. Focus magazine reported that they are laundering dirty money while at the same time getting paid by the German state to house migrants.

Focus reporters visited a dilapidated apartment in Berlin in which five Syrian refugees were accommodated in 20 square meters (215 square feet). On the regular rental market the apartment would barely have yielded €300 ($335) a month in rent, but the clan collects around €3,700 ($4,125) per month from the German state, which pays landlords to house migrants. "Business with the refugees is now more profitable than drug trafficking," said Heinz Buschkowsky, a former mayor of Neukölln.

The Berlin Criminal Police Office (Landeskriminalamt) confirmed that "proceeds from criminal offenses, including organized crime, were invested in real estate by the persons concerned or by third parties." Tom Schreiber, a member of the Berlin House of Deputies, said the clans have exposed the moral bankruptcy of the German government: "The state promotes organized crime with taxpayer money."

"Berlin is lost," said Michael Kuhr, a well-known Berlin-based security consultant. "These clan structures have established themselves in all areas of organized crime. We will never go back to how things were 20 years ago. In addition, these people are highly dangerous and have lost all respect for the power of the state."

In Duisburg, a leaked police report revealed that in the Marxloh district, the streets are effectively controlled by Lebanese clans that reject the authority of German police. They have taken over entire streets to carry out illegal business activity. New migrants from Bulgaria and Romania are contributing to the problems. Marxloh's streets serve as invisible boundaries between ethnic groups, according to Die Welt. Residents speak of "the Kurdish road" or "the Romanian road."

Police say they are alarmed by the aggressiveness and brutality of the clans, which are said to view crime as leisure activity. If police dare to intervene, hundreds of clan members are mobilized to confront the police. A local woman interviewed by Deutschlandfunk radio said she was afraid for her safety: "After dark I would not stand here because there are a lot of conflicts between foreigners, especially between Lebanese and Turks."

A 17-page report prepared for the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) revealed that Lebanese clans in Duisburg divide up neighborhoods in order to pursue criminal activities. These clans do not recognize the authority of the police. Their members are males between the ages of 15 and 25 and "nearly 100%" of them are known to police.

The report also described the situation in Duisburg's Laar district, where two large Lebanese families call the shots: "The streets are actually regarded as a separate territory. Outsiders are physically assaulted, robbed and harassed. Experience shows that the Lebanese clans can mobilize several hundred people in a very short period of time by means of a telephone call."

Peter Biesenbach of the Christian Democrats (CDU) said: "If this is not a no-go area, then I do not know what is." He has called for an official inquiry to determine the true scope of the criminal clans in NRW.

NRW Interior Minister Ralf Jäger rejected that request because such a study would be politically incorrect:

"Further data collection is not legally permissible. Both internally and externally, any classification that could be used to depreciate human beings must be avoided. In this respect, the use of the term 'family clan' (Familienclan) is forbidden from the police point of view."

In nearby Gelsenkirchen, Kurdish and Lebanese clans are vying for control of city streets, some of which have become zones that are off-limits to German authorities. In one incident, police were patrolling an area in the southern part of the city when they were suddenly surrounded and physically assaulted by more than 60 members of a clan.

In another incident, two police officers stopped a driver after he ran a red light. The driver stepped out of the car and ran away. When police caught up with him, they were confronted by more than 50 clan members. A 15-year-old attacked a policeman from behind and strangled him to the point of unconsciousness.

Senior members of the Gelsenkirchen police department subsequently held a secret meeting with representatives of three Arab clans in order to "cultivate social peace between Germans and Lebanese." A leaked police report revealed that the clans told Police Chief Ralf Feldmann that "the police cannot win a war with the Lebanese because we outnumber them." The clan members added: "This applies to all of Gelsenkirchen, if we so choose."

When Feldman countered that he would dispatch police reinforcements to disrupt their activities, the clan members laughed in his face and said: "The government does not have enough money to deploy the numbers of police necessary to confront the Lebanese." The police report concluded that German authorities should not harbor any illusions about the actual balance of power: "The police would be defeated."

Another leaked police report revealed that the clans are the "executive body of an existing parallel legal system to self-adjudicate matters between large Kurdish and Lebanese families in the western Ruhr area." These clans "despise the police and German courts" and "settle their matters on their own terms."

The Frankfurter Neue Presse reported that Kurdish, Lebanese and Romanian clans have divided up the Gelsenkirchen districts of Bismarck, Rotthausen and Ückendorf, including around the central station, and have "claimed individual streets for themselves."

Arnold Plickert, the head of the police union in North Rhine-Westphalia, warned: "Several rival rocker groups, as well as Lebanese, Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian clans, are fighting for supremacy of the streets. They make their own rules; the police have nothing more to say."

In Düsseldorf, two members of a clan brutally assaulted a 49-year-old woman who witnessed a car accident in the Flingern district. Her mistake, apparently, was to corroborate the "wrong" version of what she saw. The Rheinische Post called on the German government to fight the clans:

"The threat remains, in particular wherever large families, mostly immigrants, place the supposed need for the protection of their loved ones above all else. The readiness for violence is great, the inhibition threshold is low. The punishment of existing laws hardly deters anyone."

In Naumburg, police confiscated the driver's license of Ahmed A., a 21-year-old member of a Syrian clan, during a traffic stop. Almost immediately, police were surrounded by a mob of other clan members. The police retreated. The mob then marched to the police station, which they proceeded to ransack.

Ahmed A., a serial offender whose asylum application was rejected but who remains in Germany, said: "Lock me up. I have nothing to lose. I am going to put a bullet in the head of every single police officer. I will make your life feel like hell. Then I'll just be a cop killer." He also warned the police officer who seized his license: "I will destroy his life. I know exactly where he lives." He then explained what he would do to the officer's wife and daughter. Ahmed A. was allowed to walk free; police said there were insufficient grounds for his arrest.

Naumburg police have defended their weak response as being due to a lack of personnel, but regional parliamentarian Daniel Sturm pointed to the big picture: "We are talking about resistance to the power of the state." The Interior Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Holger Stahlknecht, said that it appeared as though the Syrian clan had established a "parallel society" in Naumburg. A local newspaper noted that the police's failure to act "sounds like the capitulation of the state of law (Rechtsstaat)."

In Mülheim, around 80 members of two rival clans got into a mass brawl following a dispute between two teenagers. When police arrived, they were attacked with bottles and stones. More than 100 police backed up by helicopters were deployed to restore order. Five people were taken into custody but then released.

In Munich, police arrested 20 female members of a Croatian clan believed to be responsible for up to 20% of all the burglaries committed in Germany. Investigators believe that the clan has at least 500 members throughout Germany.

In Bremen, police effectively surrendered to clans from Kurdistan and the Balkans because of the need to conserve limited personnel resources for the fight against spiraling street crime by migrant youths.

Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Union (DPolG), criticized city officials for their lack of resolve. "Bremen has capitulated to extremely dangerous clans. The state's monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force [Gewaltmonopol des Staates] is now becoming the law of the jungle. Security continues to go down the drain."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10543/germany-crime-gangs

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Something is fishy about USS Fitzgerald story we are getting from the media - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Under no circumstances should a US Navy vessel possibly be damaged by a container ship at sea.

Under no circumstances should a US Navy vessel possibly be damaged by a container ship at sea. Multiple systems exist to prevent this. Even CNN is noticing how little we know about the catastrophe that took the lives of seven sailors and almost caused a powerful warship to founder.

The USS Fitzgerald, an anti-ballistic missile destroyer that was part of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, will no longer be ready to defend the carrier and other ships from missile attacks launched from North Korea, should push come to shove in the current confrontation with the rogue regime on the threshold of the capability to attack New York, Los Angeles, and our power grid with nuclear missiles. This is an incident that could affect the outcome of a nuclear confrontation of historic moment.

Brian Joondeph yesterday noted how the media have distorted what really happened, by reporting a “collision,” as if the ships randomly bumped each other in the fog or something. The truth is that the ACX Crystal, a ship with somewhat murky provenance, rammed into the Fitzgerald with calamitous results:

[Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin of the 7th fleet] described the damage as "extensive," adding that there was a big puncture and gash below the waterline on one side of the ship. He also said three compartments were severely damaged.

"The ship is salvageable ... [it] will require some significant repair," Aucoin said. "You will see the USS Fitzgerald back ... It will take months, hopefully under a year."

Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby describes for CNN the extent of the chaos unleashed:

First, we know the crew fought heroically to save their ship and the lives of their shipmates. We know that from early reports by Navy officials but also from the images that flashed across our screens, our tablets and our phones after the incident happened early Saturday.

One look at the crushed, twisted starboard side, the hoses flaked about, the water being discharged, the frantic work being done tells you all you need to know about the stuff you can't see in those same images: a fiercely brave crew working together to staunch the flooding, to rescue their shipmates and to save their ship.

You can be certain they ended up drenched, exhausted, scraped and bruised -- but not broken. They kept that ship from foundering for 16 brutal hours. And they brought her back into port.

We received an email from a Navy Mother that raises serious questions. We will redact her name, while the rumors (and that’s how they must be categorized for now) reported by her son aboard the Fitzgerald are checked out. Here is what she wrote to us:

My son is assigned to the USS Fitzgerald. I am unable to share his rate with you.

The information is short and not so sweet. The implications are disturbing.

The ship is registered in the Philippines. We do not know who the owner is. The container ship neither had its running lights or transponder on. That is an action taken willfully. Furthermore, for the container ship to strike with such accuracy is troublesome. Given what some have done with cars in Europe, what a feather in the cap it would be to sink a U.S. Navy warship. Think on that.

My son missed being washed out to sea by the blink of an eye. He was on his way to one of the berthing areas that was rammed.

Yes, language is important. "Rammed" is the perfect word.

Loving and Concerned Navy Mother

If there is any substance to this – that the ACX Crystal disabled protective systems and rammed the Fitzgerald at high speed aimed at crtical facilities (evident from the damage) –

…we have to consider the possibility of an asymmetric warfare attack designed to disable missile defense of a carrier strike group, as North Korea demonstrates the ability to make exactly such attacks on a multibillion dollar warship carrying thousands of sailors.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/something_is_fishy_about_uss_fitzgerald_story_we_are_getting_from_the_media.html

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How the Deep State Built Its Field of Dreams - Clarice Feldman

by Clarice Feldman

President’s Trump’s “one great advantage in all of this is that he has done nothing wrong

This week, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey will probably be a witness in any proceeding brought by his close friend Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Rod Rosenstein, a former Mueller staffer, appointed Mueller because Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who handed the oversight of this matter to his Deputy Rosenstein, had recused himself and that recusal was based on a misreading of the law by career Department of Justice attorneys. Sessions’s recusal, moreover, was engendered by illegal leaks. And the investigation by Mueller is being fanned by more of them. 

James Comey

At the center of the narrative is James Comey, who, in a girlish recital, testified about a brief conversation he had with the President in which he was told General Flynn was a “good guy” and that the President hoped the FBI investigation would “let this go.”

Comey has a long history of prosecuting questionable obstruction cases. Among other overreaches, it was Comey, who with almost certain knowledge (as I have explained previously) that there was no leak of a covert CIA agent by Dick Cheney or any of his staff, sicced former colleague, Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on Lewis Libby and got a conviction on a dubious process crime.

He also confessed to having leaked through a third-party friend, Columbia University Law Professor Daniel C. Richman, his version of the discussion with the President.

His explanation was self-serving and inconsistent. Linda Shelley writes:

Comey wanted to prevent the appointment of a special counsel for Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of an FBI investigation, but he wanted to “prompt” the appointment of a special counsel for President Trump, who was not the subject of an FBI investigation.
He understood that the appointment of a special counsel “would send the message, ‘Uh-huh, there’s something here’” and that it would be “many months later or a year later” before the special counsel would announce that, in fact, “there was no case there.”
Any questions?
Here’s one: Is President Trump alleged to have done anything illegal or is this investigation just war, by any means necessary, against someone who has put a lot of swamp creatures out of power and out of work?
Comey testified that while he was FBI director, Trump was not under investigation by the FBI -- not in a criminal investigation, and not in a counter-intelligence investigation, which, in Comey’s words, “tend to be centered on individuals the FBI suspects to be witting or unwitting agents” or “covertly acting as an agent” of a hostile foreign nation, or “targeted for recruitment.”
In the FBI’s judgment, Trump was none of those.
Comey revealed to Congress in March that the bureau was investigating “possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign,” yet he flatly refused to tell the public, until his testimony on Thursday, that Trump wasn’t under investigation.
Comey testified that after he was fired, he orchestrated a selective leak in order to prompt a lengthy special counsel investigation of the president, knowing full well that the FBI had found no reason to place the president under investigation.
That is genuinely deplorable.

Sessions' Recusal Was Based on an Erroneous Reading of the Law

Sessions was misled by the Department of Justice lawyers upon whom he relied into recusing himself from any matter involving “Russian” interference with the election.

Sessions had no conflict warranting his recusal.

Andrew McCarthy, also a former attorney with the SDNY U.S. Attorneys Office explains:

Sessions says that he recused himself, on the advice of career ethics experts at the Justice Department, because he thought this was required by the federal regulation controlling “Disqualification arising from personal or political relationship” (28 CFR Sec. 45.2). But judging from the public testimony that former FBI director James Comey has given about the investigation into Russia’s election-meddling, the regulation did not mandate recusal.
Section 45.2 states that an official is disqualified from “a criminal investigation or prosecution” if he has a personal or political relationship with a “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” or with a person or organization whose interests would be affected by the outcome “of the investigation or prosecution.” …
The probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is not a criminal investigation or prosecution. Moreover, when the reg[ulation] speaks of the “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” it is using “subject” as a criminal-law term of art. A “subject” is a person or entity whose actions are being examined by a grand jury with an eye toward a possible indictment. There are no “subjects” in that sense in a counterintelligence investigation because the objective is not to build a criminal case and there is no grand jury.

“Russian Collusion”: Not a Crime in any Event 

In the first place, the "Russian collusion" accusation is utterly pretextual, concocted by the media and the Democrats, and it began when President Obama ordered the intelligence chiefs to compose a report on Russian Interference. The Obama administration then spread the flimsy report, hastily put together across the intelligence community, through a supine if not complicit media.

According to the pertinent federal regulation, a special counsel should only be appointed when the Justice Department’s leadership “determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted,” and that “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter” by the Justice Department “would present a conflict of interest or other extraordinary circumstances.” (Emphasis added.)
So, what is the crime based on which Trump’s deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, authorized the appointment of a special counsel?
There isn’t one.
When Rosenstein named Mueller special counsel on May 17, he cited as grounds for the appointment Comey’s testimony at a March 20 House hearing. Here is the pertinent testimony:
the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.
Again, a counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. And the regulations do not authorize the appointment of a special counsel to perform “an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.” There is supposed to be evidence showing the need for a criminal investigation before a special counsel is appointed.
Prior to this March 20 testimony, Comey had assured Trump that he was not under investigation. These assurances continued after this testimony, even though the testimony happened more than a month after the February 14 meeting in which Trump had lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf -- you know, the “Obstruction!” Moreover, in closed session in connection with his testimony, Comey told members of Congress that Trump was not under investigation—a detail omitted from the director’s public testimony.
Thus, what Comey informed Congress about was a counterintelligence investigation, which had generated no evidence of Kremlin coordination with the Trump campaign, and no suspicion of wrongdoing by Trump.
Based on that, Rosenstein appointed a special counsel.

McCarthy elaborates on why a counterintelligence investigation (not a legal basis for a special counsel appointment) is not a criminal investigation:

This is a huge problem with defining Mueller’s jurisdiction in terms of the counterintelligence investigation, as deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein did, in violation of the governing regulation.
A counterintelligence investigation is not a criminal investigation. The latter focuses on specified factual transactions in which there is reasonable suspicion that a specified crime has been committed. A counterintelligence investigation, in stark contrast, is an information-gathering exercise. There are no limiting parameters to an information-gathering exercise -- intelligence agents always want to know more. Unlike criminal investigations, in which investigators need to prove exactly what happened under rules that limit the kinds of evidence that may be considered, intelligence is all about probabilities. It is a predictive discipline in which all manner of information is gathered since you never know what morsel of triple-hearsay (that would never be admissible in a criminal trial) may help you figure something out down the road.
The counsel called for him to “determine that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.” He did not do that. As a rationale for appointing a special counsel, he cited the investigation then-FBI director James Comey had described in his March 20 congressional testimony. Comey said the investigation was a counterintelligence probe -- not a criminal investigation. He described it as a counterintelligence investigation focused on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including any ties between Trump associates and Putin’s regime, as well as any “coordination” between the Trump campaign and Russia’s interference efforts.
None of what Comey described -- other than the hacking that has been attributed to the Russian efforts -- is necessarily, or even probably, criminal. Having ties to Russians is not a crime, and “coordination” with Russians is not a crime unless it rises to the level of a criminal conspiracy to violate a federal criminal statute.
In sum, Rosenstein has failed to describe, in a “specific factual statement,” the basis for the criminal investigation that purportedly triggered the need to appoint a special counsel -- as the regulations require him to do. That description is supposed to state the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction so that we don’t end up with a fishing expedition.

There are some who argue that Mueller is, in fact, going after the illegal leaking and “unmasking” that formed the basis of the “Russian collusion” story, notably Sundance at Conservative Treehouse. But given Mueller’s prior history with respect to the raid on Congressman William Jefferson’s office, in which he -- like Comey -- showed insufficient respect for constitutional prosecutorial limits, I have my doubts. 

The Unending Leaks About the Investigation from Anonymous Sources 

From Bloomberg:

Leakers are essentially liars. They want the benefit of being trusted with confidences without suffering the cost of keeping what they know to themselves. They sit in meetings and review documents and implicitly promise to keep the secrets, but their actual plan is to decide for themselves which juicy nugget to share with others. In philosophical terms, the leaker always does a moral wrong to the person who entrusted him with the secret.
But like most moral wrongs, the leak can be excused if the cause is sufficiently vital. Consider the corporate whistle-blower who brings to the authorities details of horrific misfeasance by his employer. I argued last time that one might plausibly excuse, for example, the leaks by former FBI Director James Comey, who explained his conduct as an effort to force the appointment of a special counsel to look into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. 1 Perhaps others in the rash of leakers in recent months had the same motive.
You can decide for yourself whether the motive is sufficient to justify the underlying lie. In any case, now that special counsel Robert Mueller III has begun his investigation, that rationale no longer exists. The individual who leaks what’s going on inside the investigation has no excuse. To share the special counsel’s secrets with a reporter is self-indulgence. To go to work the next day is to intensify the underlying wrong.
One might object that the public has the right to know what the prosecutor is doing, but this seems to me mistaken, at least in the short run. The reason to have an investigation is to take the time to work out what’s happened. Leaks from within make the job of finding the truth that much harder. In other contexts, prosecutors have rightly been sanctioned by judges for leaking to the press details of their investigations. Here, the identity of the leaker makes little difference. Once we know that the special counsel’s office -- or perhaps the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- lacks the capacity to keep its secrets, the cost to the witness of cooperating goes up. Now anyone the prosecutors want to interview must weigh the possibility that what he or she says will wind up on the front page of tomorrow’s paper. 2
It is for just this reason that I argued before that editors are wrong when they insist that their reporters explain to readers why the leaker insists on anonymity. Those explanations (which usually amount to “because he was not authorized to comment publicly”) are essentially meaningless. What would be enormously helpful to the news-consuming public would be if reporters would disclose instead the leaker’s motivation.

If these leaks are investigated and come from Mueller’s shop, the leakers should be prosecuted. But they could come from many sources -- congressmen and senators on the relevant committees, their many staffers (most of whom supported Hillary) their colleagues in the Department of Justice, the FBI and Intelligence Agencies -- in other words, the Deep State. They may think they are only harming the President, but to my eye they are harming their ally, Mueller as well.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein warned this week about relying on stories attributed to “anonymous officials”. But I am certain given the partisan interests of the press and the leakers, they will continue.

In the meantime, Comey, who leaked at least one or more of his self-serving memos -- memos he surely wrote in anticipation of buttressing his testimony in any criminal trial as “recollection recorded,” an exception to the hearsay rule -- turned them over to the FBI. That agency has refused a FOIA request to hand them over on the grounds that releasing them could “reasonably interfere with enforcement proceedings” because they are part of “a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding”.

President’s Trump’s “one great advantage in all of this is that he has done nothing wrong, notes Spengler. Let’s hope that advantage outweighs all the dishonest maneuvering by the Deep State.


Clarice Feldman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/how_the_deep_state_built_its_field_of_dreams.html

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Impeach Trump’s Impeachers - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

They’re dirty and crooked as hell.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.

The rush to impeach President Trump is on by an opposition party that lacks the votes, evidence or legal basis for such a move. But since when did an illegal left-wing coup need any of those things?

No Dem has been more honest about the real motive for impeachment than Congressman Ted Lieu.

“We should not give him a chance to govern,” Lieu had declared after Trump had been in office for ten days. And he predicted that, “I do believe that if we win back the House of Representatives, impeachment proceedings will be started.”

What was the basis for impeaching President Trump after ten days in office? Lieu made it clear that if the Democrats won, they would try to impeach Trump no matter what.

That’s not how things work in the United States. But the left is running America like a banana republic.

More recently Lieu had mused that, "A recent poll came out saying that 46 percent of Americans want the president impeached, and certainly members of Congress take notice."

And what better basis could there be for impeachment than popular Dem support for the move?

The latest poll from PPP, the notorious left-wing troll pollsters Lieu was relying on, shows 75% of Democrats support impeaching President Trump. PPP did not provide any justification. Nor was any needed. President Trump had to be forced out of office to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

The legal basis for such proceedings was as irrelevant as any coup in a banana republic.

Congressman Lieu is a member of the House Judiciary Committee. He’s indicated recently that he’s “researching” impeachment. His statement on being appointed to the Committee claimed that Trump had “lost the popular vote” and that he would “fight like hell on the Judiciary Committee” against him.

Since Lieu has made it clear that his pursuit of impeachment is based on partisan opposition, not evidence, any such action would be an unethical abuse of power whose goal is not justice, but a conspiracy to prevent the President of the United States from even having the “chance to govern”.

This could lead to censure and even expulsion; the Congressional alternative to impeachment.
Congressman Brad Sherman has drafted articles of impeachment for President Trump. The claims in Sherman’s draft contradict, in part, Comey’s testimony even as it claims to be based on it. But it still puts the California politician ahead as the first to put forward a written legislative call for impeachment.

But that’s only because most of his rivals can’t write.

Congressman Al Green (not the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who crooned "Put a Little Love in Your Heart") called for the impeachment of President Trump on the House floor in the name of “liberty and justice for all” and also “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

And how better to stand for “government by the people” than with a shameless attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election and for “liberty and justice for all” than to undertake it baselessly?

“No one is above the law,” Al Green declared. Except maybe Green who was accused of sexual assault by a former aide. Green in turn accused her of blackmail. Put a little love in your heart indeed.

This isn’t Green’s first call for impeachment. A previous Green statement, which read like it was written by a high school dropout who had been watching too many legal dramas, (“A bedrock premise upon which respect for, and obedience to, our societal norms is ‘No one is above the law’”) concluded with “Our mantra should be I. T. N. – Impeach Trump Now.” That’s been the mantra ever since Trump won.

Sherman and Green are far behind Congresswoman Maxine Waters who has been calling for the impeachment of every Republican since Ulysses S. Grant. Last month, she complained that the public was “weary” that Trump still hadn’t been impeached. "I believe that this man has done enough for us to determine that we can connect the dots, that we can get the facts that will lead to impeachment."

If anyone ought to be impeached, it’s Waters who funneled $750,000 to her daughter and used her influence to help arrange for the taxpayer bailout of a bank linked to her husband.

But Waters has made it obvious that it’s not about the law, it’s about undoing the election results.

At the Center for American Progress, Waters rejected waiting until the next election. "We can’t wait that long. We don’t need to wait that long." Pointing to left-wing polls backing impeachment, she screeched. "What more do we need in the Congress of the United States of America?"

Maybe evidence?

Waters had already admitted that there was no actual evidence, but impeachment should move forward anyway. There isn’t any evidence for impeachment, but there is documented evidence that Waters can’t tell Crimea from Korea. Much as there is evidence that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who also called for Trump’s impeachment, can’t tell Wikileaks from Wikipedia.

Sheila Jackson Lee insisted that Trump should be impeached if he doesn’t prove Obama’s eavesdropping.

"If you do not have any proof," she rambled, "then you are clearly on the edge of the question of public trust and those actions can be associated with high crimes and misdemeanors for which articles of impeachment can be drawn."

The only high crimes belong to Sheila Jackson Lee, who had once declared on CNN, “I represent Enron.” She should have gone to jail along with its top bosses.

Lee had also claimed that the Constitution is 400 years old and that she was a freed slave.

“I’m concerned about what happened when we get that call about North Korea in the middle of the night,” she blathered. “You have in office an individual that is unread and unlearned.”

And this is coming from a woman who had confused North Korea and Vietnam.

Meanwhile Sheila Jackson Lee had been investigated by the House Ethics Committee for a trip to Azerbaijan paid for by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan. SOCAR has a joint venture with Rosneft. Back then that meant Vladimir Putin. Maybe Sheila Jackson Lee ought to impeach herself.

"I think about impeachment every single day,” Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson said.
And well she should.

Johnson pushed Congressional Black Caucus scholarships that were supposed to go to “deserving students” to her relatives. She even sent letters directing that the money be paid to them, not the colleges, in violation of the foundation rules.  And then she went on CNN and lied about it.

The loudest voices in Congress calling for impeachment don’t belong in Congress. That’s typical enough.

This was the second presidential election this century whose outcome Democrats decided to reject because it was won by a Republican. And they played the same exact game then too.

Eleven years ago, Maxine Waters had called for President Bush’s impeachment.

House Resolution 635 pushing for impeachment was sponsored by Congressman Conyers whose wife would be convicted of bribery charges. Congressional co-sponsors included Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jesse Jackson Jr., who was sent to prison for mail fraud, Charlie Rangel, who was found guilty of 11 ethics violations, Bernie Sanders, whose wife is under FBI investigation for the Burlington College fraud and Bob Filner, who was convicted of false imprisonment and battery.

The only consistent thing about Democrat calls for impeachment is that it’s the impeachers who are dirty and crooked as hell.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Source:  http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266995/impeach-trumps-impeachers-daniel-greenfield

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Palestinian officials openly admit: We won't stop paying terrorists - Erez Linn and Israel Hayom Staff

by Erez Linn and Israel Hayom Staff

Paying terrorists and their families is "a clear national duty that cannot be compromised," PA official Issa Qaraqe says

Head of prisoner affairs for the Palestinian Authority Issa Qaraqe |Photo credit: AP

The Palestinian Authority has no intention of suspending payments to terrorists and their families, a new report by the Middle East Media Research Institute has found. 

The Palestinian Authority spends millions of dollars annually paying stipends to the families of terrorists who are either jailed in Israel or were killed while carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis, a practice Israel has repeatedly condemned. 

In 2016, the Palestinian Authority's payments amounted to 1.15 billion shekels ($322 million) -- 7% of the Palestinian Authority's total budget for salaries and about 20% of the foreign aid it received. 

Ramallah officials told the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Quds that U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt was told that the Palestinian Authority would not change its policy, as it may create a "breeding ground" for terrorism. 

The MEMRI report, issued Friday, quoted the head of prisoner affairs for the Palestinian Authority, Issa Qaraqe, as saying that the stipends were "a clear national duty that cannot be compromised. ... The PA's allowances to the prisoners, the wounded and the families of martyrs are a red line and a fundamental principle on which we will in no way compromise." 

Qaraqe also criticized U.S. officials, saying that their announcements that Ramallah was considering suspending the payments constitute "U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the PA." 

The Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted Qaraqe as saying, "We will continue paying the families of the martyrs and prisoners and will not succumb to Israeli pressure. We will continue aiding them, for they are victims of the occupation."

PLO Executive Committee member Ahmad Majdalani was quoted by the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed network as saying, "The [Palestinian] leadership has not complied [with the demand] to stop the allowances of the prisoners, martyrs and wounded. Even if there was [such an] American demand, that does not mean that the PA would comply with it. 

"This issue is not subject to U.S.-Israeli extortion. ... Our duty to pay the allowances to the families of the martyrs, the wounded and the prisoners is moral, national and social, and it is a red line that no one will cross."

Senior Palestinian figures threatened to pursue legal action against Israel it if deducts these stipends from taxes and customs it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, which amount to over $100 million a month.

"The occupation authorities have no right to withhold tax revenues [owed to] the Palestinians," Qaraqe told Wafa. "We will sue Israel in international courts for deducting the sum paid to the prisoners and to the martyrs' families from the tax funds [it owes] the PA."

Erez Linn and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=43191

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Their Silence is Deafening - Paul V. Gerst

by Paul V. Gerst

-- even after a mass assassination attempt, there are two politicians who remain conspicuously silent – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Thanks solely to God’s Grace, America narrowly avoided a mass political assassination. One can argue about the degree of culpability, but it is undisputable that the Democrat “Resistance”, and its ongoing campaign of political intimidation and violence, was the major contributing factor behind the attack. For nearly a year, the Trump administration has been under investigation for a myriad of ever-evolving accusations; to date not one scintilla of evidence has been discovered of any crime committed by the President. Yet the cries of “Traitor Trump!” and “Impeach 45!” and “Blood in the Streets!” continue unabated from the Democrats while their campaign volunteers morph into black-masked thugs assaulting peaceful assemblies of citizens and mutate into political assassins targeting the opposition party.

Finally, the near entirety of our elected officials and political class have spoken out against the latest violence, albeit with varying degrees of conviction. After all, it did take an attempted assassination of members of Congress to get them to speak out at all; mere citizens being beaten with bike locks for exercising their constitutional rights of speech and assembly…meh. 
Yet even after a mass assassination attempt, there are two politicians who remain conspicuously silent – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. These two leaders of the “Resistance” could easily defuse the current situation. They could publicly accept the results of the election and acknowledge the “Russia” investigation is a fabricated dead-end – Donald Trump is the duly elected President and there is no “there” there. A joint Obama-Clinton televised statement accepting the election as valid and acknowledging the investigation as a political witch hunt would immediately remove the heat from the boil that America has become.

Yet Obama and Clinton both remain silent. No statement condemning the worsening political violence of the “Resistance” despite not one shred of evidence that its founding principle -- that Trump is a Russian stooge who stole Hillary’s election with Putin’s help -- is comprised of anything more than bong smoke. It is clear to all but the most extreme fringe that there is no act, no conduct, no crime committed by Trump that will overturn the election and hand the Presidency to the Democrats. One would also hope that neither Obama nor Clinton so hate and despise this country that they want it destroyed out of spite for their loss. So why no statement from Clinton or Obama condemning their “Resistance” as it has so completely spun out of control into insanity?

While nearly a year of FBI, Senate, and House investigations have uncovered exactly zero, zilch, nada evidence of any conduct by Trump that is even remotely illegal, some evidence has been discovered. Evidence that the Obama administration may have abused its power and used the national security apparatus to spy on the Trump campaign. Evidence that the Obama Justice Department likely put its thumb on the scale to end the Clinton email investigation. Evidence of preferential treatment by Secretary of State Clinton to Clinton Foundation donors. Evidence that Clinton likely benefitted financially from Russian entities in exchange for favorable treatment by the U.S. government while she was Secretary of State. 

Indeed, mounting evidence of collusion, corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power is slowly being discovered, yet Trump is not the culprit. Obama and Clinton are. Evidence now points directly at Obama, Clinton, and the leadership of the Democrat Party as the guilty ones. Guilty of colluding with the Russian government for financial gain to the detriment of America’s security; Clinton approved the sale of 20% of our uranium reserves to the Russians in exchange for millions in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Guilty of corruption for selling access to the Secretary of State to Clinton Foundation donors; anyone who would not “pay to play” for an audience went to the back of a very long and very slow line. Guilty of obstructing justice to stop the Clinton email “matter” in its tracks; it is hard to win an election when your party’s candidate for President is under indictment for intentionally exposing America’s secrets and threatening its security. Guilty of abusing the power of the Office of President to spy on political opposition; after all, Clinton was a shoe-in to win so who would ever know Obama committed an act of domestic spying that makes Watergate look like a bad fourth-grade class play. 

So why are Clinton and Obama silent? Why have they not openly accepted the results of the election and called for a halt to the endless investigations of nothing? Why have they not called off the “Resistance” to spare our nation and its citizens from its baseless and senseless violence? Why not? Because Obama and Clinton are the ones who are guilty of collusion, corruption, obstruction, and abuse of power. Because Obama and Clinton are the ones who are traitors to their country, engaged in open and violent acts of sedition. Because Obama and Clinton, when they no longer control an army of brown-shirts, goons, and assassins that constitute a credible threat of violence, will be the ones arrested and prosecuted for their crimes to the full extent of the law. And that is why Obama and Clinton stay silent and let the “Resistance” march onwards to its horrible and grotesque conclusion.

Paul V. Gerst

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/their_silence_is_deafening.html

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Soft Sharia in Turkey - Burak Bekdil

by Burak Bekdil

The bad news about the Turkish justice system is that it is increasingly religiously ideological, reminiscent of the Ottoman justice system where non-Muslims were legally inferior to the Muslims

• The bad news about the Turkish justice system is that it is increasingly religiously ideological, reminiscent of the Ottoman justice system where non-Muslims were legally inferior to the Muslims and were constantly reminded of their inferiority to the dominant community through restrictions and markers.
• The legislation reads that law enforcement officials cannot "intentionally marry a person who is known to be impure, or to stay in a marriage, or continue to live with such a person."
• In addition, the decree covers stricter rules against drinking, gambling, the vague and emphatic "going to places that would ruin your reputation," as well as "excessive spending".

The good news about Turkish justice is that despite 15 years of not-so-creeping Islamization, court verdicts do not yet sentence wrongdoers to public lashing, stoning, amputations or public hangings in main city squares. The bad news about the Turkish justice system is that it is increasingly religiously ideological, reminiscent of the Ottoman justice system where non-Muslims were legally inferior to the Muslims and were, in principle, expected to be constantly reminded of their inferiority to the dominant community through restrictions and markers.

In 21^st century Turkey, fortunately, there are not [yet] markers revealing non-Muslim citizens or laws discriminating against non-Muslims. Nevertheless, with or without markers, there is positive discrimination in favor of pious Muslims and against the others. Turkish law enforcement is embarrassingly pro-pious Sunni Muslim.

Turkey, nominally, is not a Sharia state. But it is becoming one on a de facto basis. In January, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government issued a decree stipulating that law enforcement officials, including security officials, police and coast guard officers, could lose their jobs if they marry a "known adulterer." The legislation reads that law enforcement officials cannot "intentionally marry a person who is known to be impure, or to stay in a marriage, or continue to live with such a person." The offense is punishable by up to 24 months' suspension from work. In addition, the decree covers stricter rules against drinking, gambling, the vague and emphatic "going to places that would ruin your reputation," as well as "excessive spending," all while off duty.

In January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government issued a decree stipulating that law enforcement officials could lose their jobs if they marry "a person who is known to be impure." (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Pool/Getty Images)

What do those new offenses have in common? Adultery, impurity, drinking, gambling and excessive spending? They are all sins mentioned in the holy book of Islam. This is not only problematic from the viewpoint of modern state and public administration, but also from a technical point of view. When the offense is defined in such vague and holy scriptural language, judgment will inevitably become arbitrary. Who is a "known adulterer," for instance? Who is a person "known to be impure?" How will the Turkish state define "purity" or "a pure person?" How would an officer know beforehand that a place he goes for the first time will "ruin his reputation?" And what percentage of one's salary will mean "excessive spending?"

Last year a Turkish man stood trial for seriously injuring [with the intention to kill, according to the indictment] his ex-wife by stabbing her with a screwdriver. The court sentenced the man to an aggravated life sentence. The judges then gave the defendant a shocking reduction: Just 11 years in jail instead of life. Why the generosity? Because the court found out that the victim had the habit of going out with her "divorced lady friends and drank alcohol". In other words, the Turkish court ruled that the woman had half-deserved to be murdered because of that.

In April, an apparently conservative Turk addressed Selina Dogan, a Turkish-Armenian opposition MP, with the words: "You are all whores ... You are the servants of Byzantium." Dogan sued the man for hate-speech and insult. A Turkish court admitted that the content shared in social media indeed was insulting but acquitted the defendant. Dogan said: "This [ruling] is a free pass for hate speech".

More recently, Nurettin Yildiz, a columnist for the Islamist Milli Gazete, declared that in Islam it was permissible for children at the age of six to get married. Normally one would expect psychiatric examination for the man or prosecution for pedophilia. But Turkish justice can sometimes be generously tolerant to freedom of speech -- as long as the content is Islamist. A prosecutor, citing freedom of expression, dropped charges against Yildiz. Meanwhile, a secular news site, Odatv, outraged by Yildiz's statement, placed the man in the news with the headline: "Religious Fanatics Perverting." This time, the prosecution was not as generous as in the case of Yildiz. A prosecutor is now demanding up to 28 months in jail for Baris Terkoglu, editor of Odatv, for insulting Yildiz. Defending the marriage of six-year-olds is fine, but calling that a perversion is an offense punishable by jail.

One important difference between a modern state and a religion-based state is that the former punishes offenses harmful to the public interest while the latter tends to punish the "sin". Turkey, once a semi-modern state, is now drifting fast into the Sharia order -- without the name Sharia.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was just fired from Turkey's leading newspaper after 29 years, for writing what was taking place in Turkey for Gatestone. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10541/soft-sharia-in-turkey

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BBC apologizes for headline incitement - Chana Roberts

by Chana Roberts

BBC apologizes, says there was 'no intention to mislead the audience.'

BBC on Sunday morning apologized for its misleading headline claiming three "Palestinians" were killed after a "deadly stabbing" in Jerusalem.

"We accept that our original headline did not appropriately reflect the nature of the events and subsequently changed it," BBC said in a statement.

"Whilst there was no intention to mislead our audiences, we regret any offense caused."

On Friday night, BBC tweeted, "Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem," ignoring the fact that the three were terrorists who killed a Border Police officer and injured four others.

The article went on to claim that, ""Israeli police have shot dead three Palestinians after a deadly knife attack outside the Old City of Jerusalem, in which a policewoman died."

Later, the headline was changed to, "Israeli policewoman stabbed to death in Jerusalem."





Chana Roberts

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/231180

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Palestinian terrorist groups, ISIS rush to claim Jerusalem attack - Daniel Siryoti, Lilach Shoval, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

by Daniel Siryoti, Lilach Shoval, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff 

Despite claim, Israeli authorities say no evidence links Islamic State to Friday's attack in which Israeli policewoman was killed and policeman injured

The Carl Gustav automatic rifle used in Friday's attack in Jerusalem | Photo credit: Israel Police

Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Islamic State terrorist group all rushed to claim responsibility for a deadly terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem over the weekend. 

Border Police Staff Sgt. Hadas Malka, 23, was fatally stabbed on Friday when a three-man terrorist cell staged two shooting and stabbing attacks in the Old City. Malka died in hospital shortly after the attack. A policeman sustained minor shrapnel injuries. The three terrorists were killed by security forces. 

Israeli authorities said on Saturday they had found no evidence of Islamic State involvement in the attacks, despite the group's claim of responsibility. Palestinian terrorist factions also denied Islamic State was involved in the attacks. 

On Friday, the Islamic State group's Amaq news agency said three "soldiers of the caliphate" targeted "a gathering of Jews" in Jerusalem. Calling the attack "revenge for God's religion and for the violated sanctities of Muslims," the jihadi terrorist group said that "with Allah's help, we succeeded in carrying out an attack in the heart of Jerusalem." 

The group warned that "this attack will not be the last."

This was the first time Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Israel.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Islamic State's claim, saying it was meant to spread confusion. 

Zuhri said that one of the terrorists -- later named as 18-year-old Adel Ankoush -- was a Hamas operative and the other two were PFLP operatives. 

A PFLP statement claimed the organization was behind the attack, naming 19-year-old Osama Ata and 18-year-old Baraa Ata as two of the terrorists involved. 

"The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ... is responsible for sending the shahids [martyrs] that carried out the heroic action against the soldiers of the Zionist occupation army," the group said. 

Israel Police spokeswoman Luba Simri said that so far the IDF had found no connection between the three assailants and any terrorist group.

"It was a local cell. At this stage, no indication has been found it was directed by terrorist organizations nor has any connection to any organization been found," Simri said.

Yesh Atid MK Yaakov Peri, former head of the Shin Bet security agency, said the coordinated assault marked an "escalation" in comparison to recent Palestinian violence against Israeli targets, and he hoped the incident did not mark the start of a fresh wave of attacks. He also said he doubted it had anything to do with Islamic State.

"The ISIS claim of responsibility is absurd," he said. "There are great differences and conflicts between ISIS and Hamas. Hamas wants to clarify that it is involved in a national battle of the Palestinian people with the 'Zionist occupier' and it is in its interest to present it as such."

Daniel Siryoti, Lilach Shoval, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=43179

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