In Her Majesty’s Disservice - Clarice Feldman

by Clarice Feldman

-- this story is rapidly unfolding -- and promises to be far more explosive than the Watergate story

My focus this week is on the “wiretapping” (electronic interception of communications, if you insist) of President Trump and his associates during the campaign. It seems to me this story is rapidly unfolding -- if only mostly in overseas press and online -- and promises to be far more explosive than the Watergate story, an account that says frightening things about our intelligence agencies and those of some of our allies, most particularly Great Britain. It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual -- it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent. And it is equally clear that the nonsensical post-election tale that Russia colluded with Trump so that he could beat Hillary Clinton was a coverup tale to justify the unmasking and leaking of some of the information -- particularly about General Flynn -- which has taken place. The prior administration was so confident Hillary would win that they left their tracks uncovered and afterward were desperate to hide the truth so they projected and whispered the Russians were colluding with Trump.

Carter Page and the FISA Order

The Washington Post reported that the FBI and the Department of Justice (read Loretta Lynch and James Comey) got the FISA order for the purpose of monitoring a campaign foreign policy adviser to Trump, Carter Page, who had earlier worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch and had invested (but sold his stock) in Gazprom, the large Russian energy outfit. It is unclear where the Post obtained this information, as the FISA request and order are still secret.

In any event -- and I assume this was an inside leak (probably by someone on the staff of Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee) to justify Lynch and Comey’s action -- there was no basis for the order. The nub of the charge -- which likely originated in the now-discredited “dossier” by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele (originally hired by Hillary Clinton) was that Page had met with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant. Both Page and Sechin’s company deny such a meeting ever took place. (This echoes an earlier charge in the dossier that a Trump attorney met in Prague with a Russian aide, which has been credibly debunked.) Page also had some minor contact with Russian “diplomat” Victor Podobny, to whom he provided on request “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.” Page has asked to be allowed to testify before the investigating committee.

Catherine Herridge on FOX interviewed him:

Page: I have nothing that I want to hide, and the more that the truth comes out the better, because there has just been so much lies, and now potentially false evidence, which is the next step beyond lies, when it is potentially used in a Court of Law, so that will be very interesting to see how this all plays out.

The opposition research firm that engaged Steele to compile the ”Dossier” (Fusion GPS) is refusing to answer questions posed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, inexplicably claiming, attorney-client privilege.

Linking anyone however remotely connected with Trump was key to the wiretapping as a correspondent with knowledge of such things reports:

The key part is where they apparently claim that Page "was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow"
I can easily imagine that the incident where he was asked for some open source material would be characterized in the application as "responds to tasking requirement from known FSB agent" or something like that. Almost any act could be interpreted in that fashion. Page's eagerness to testify strongly suggests that he thinks he has nothing to hide.
The thing is, of course, that the Russian, as the representative of a foreign power that is placed in the highest category of threat to National Security, would have already been subject to a Full Investigation and all his communications with the rest of the world would have been subject to collection -- including communications with Donald Trump. Thus there wouldn't normally be any need to collect Page's communications with Russians because they were already being collected from the other end. Problem: I doubt that the Russian ever communicated with Trump, and if political intel on Trump was your true goal then collecting communications with the Russian and Page wasn't good enough. You'd need to have a full [full investigation]and do FISA collection from some American who was in touch with Trump or Trump's circle. Thus the need to identity some American as "an agent... " Not to belabor the obvious, but being contacted by a Russki and asked for open source material isn't evidence of someone being an agent of a foreign power -- it's evidence of the foreign power's interest in recruiting that person. Two very different things. And it simply doesn't approach predication for a FISA order. It's predication for a Preliminary Inquiry (under which you can't even apply for a FISA) to check further on the nature of the relationship, but it won't get you a Full Investigation, which you need for a FISA. Unless they had some much better info -- which, as Hinderaker [Powerline blog cited below] says, probably woulda been leaked by now -- there was some serious fudging going on."
[Snip]
But of course, these people all worked for Obama, so there's a big red flag there.
In any event, if the FISA court could be (and likely was) hoodwinked into allowing Page’s communications to be captured and monitored, the government could collect all his communications with everyone without limit.

My friend Harry Lewis reminds us of the consequences of using a pretext to obtain a FISA order to invade the privacy American citizens:

The technical term for pretextual collection of intelligence by deliberately misidentifying the target to fool the FISA court -- which seems to have happened here-- is "reverse collection". I'm thinking perjury on the misleading affidavit to the court, and also by Lynch, who had to sign every application. Maybe obstruction of justice if there's a coverup. Rice hasn't yet been questioned under oath, so that will be her big chance to perjure herself or to take the Fifth.

Evidence of Other Western Intelligence Agencies Corroboration in the Snooping on Trump
John Hinderaker of Powerline, whose work my correspondent referred to above, notes that there was a cabal of Western intelligence agencies working with Obama to spy on Trump.

The Guardian adds to our knowledge of how the Obama administration and its allies overseas tried to discredit Donald Trump. (For purposes of this post, I assume that everything the Guardian says is true, even though it is based on anonymous sources who are pursuing their personal and political interests.)

Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.

The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence -- known as sigint -- included Germany, Estonia and Poland. Australia, a member of the “Five Eyes” spying alliance that also includes the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, also relayed material, one source said.

Another source suggested the Dutch and the French spy agency, the General Directorate for External Security or DGSE, were contributors.

So just about every Western intelligence service was collaborating with the Obama administration in trying to elect Hillary Clinton. Yet, amazingly enough, they failed.
The blindingly obvious point that the Guardian tries to obscure is that the combined assets of all of these agencies failed to find any evidence of collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia. We know this, because the Democrats have pulled out all the stops. Both before the election, and especially after the election, they have leaked furiously to try to discredit President Trump. If there were any evidence of collusion between Trump (or even obscure, minor “advisers” like Carter Page) and Russia, there would have been nothing else in the Washington Post or the New York Times for the past five months. But they have nothing.

As Hinderaker also notes, the cabal thought there’d be no consequences for this dirty game because having read the Washington Post and New York Times, they were sure Hillary was going to win and they’d be rewarded for their treachery.

It’s also true, as Snowden revealed in 2013, that the British Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) had been partly funded by the U.S. NSA to the tune of over 100 million British pounds. So they had even more incentive to play ball with Obama. Three days after Trump’s inauguration the head of that outfit unexpectedly resigned for “personal reasons.”

There’s every reason to believe that the head of NSA Mike Rogers did not participate in this scam and eight days after the election met with Trump, doubtless to apprise him of the skullduggery that had occurred. On that same date, then-defense secretary Ashton Carter and then-director of national Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. recommended Trump fire Rogers. Trump got rid of them instead, accepting their resignations.

FISA’s not the only way the Spying May Have Occurred

The great reporter Sharyl Attkisson, herself a victim of Obama’s spying operation, notes he had at his disposal other tools for spying on his opponents. (Given his history of winning by snooping, I can’t believe he didn’t use them all.)

Besides the FISA court, “wiretapping” or electronic surveillance can also be done under Title III authority. The government used this authority, for example, in the Justice Department’s secret Fast and Furious “gunwalking” case. Additionally, U.S. presidents have the power to issue secret presidential directives that can authorize otherwise illegal acts (theoretically in the country’s best interests). These directives may come with pre-planned cover stories to be used in the event the operation is exposed, and they come with indemnity for those involved, giving them permission to lie about the operation or their involvement without fear of prosecution.
The public will rarely know about such presidential directives since most who see them must sign agreements that promise nondisclosure and consent to polygraphs. [snip] There are “back-door” ways to collect and report on a target without Title III or FISA court authority. If it’s for political purposes or blackmail, this may consist of “inventing” an excuse to surveil the target. If the work of targeting an individual cannot be accomplished by government intel officers, it can be contracted out to third parties or to foreign parties who aren’t bound by U.S. law. Incidental collection of a U.S. citizen target may be “orchestrated” for political reasons by those who have tools and tradecraft available to them because of their positions of power. There are ways to do it with no fingerprints.
For example:
1. Locate a foreign target already under CIA surveillance.
2. Have a government agent use the foreign target’s phone and/or computer to make it look like the foreigner contacted the U.S. citizen whose communications are sought. The contacts can be benign, but they establish a record that falsely implies a relationship exists between the U.S. citizen and the foreign target.
3. The government agent can also mimic a communication back from the U.S. citizen to the foreign target, creating an appearance that the U.S. citizen initiated contacts. This could be favorable to justifying a warrant on the U.S. citizen later.
4. The U.S. citizen is now tied to the foreign entity and is now an “incidental” collection target that can be surveilled in a “masked” format. Although “masked,” the surveilling agency knows the U.S. citizen’s identity.
5. If the U.S. citizen does anything that can be construed as illegal or suspicious, it’s possible the intel agency can then receive approval to surveil him directly rather than only “incidentally.”
Possibly inappropriate requests to “unmask” names of U.S. citizens captured during surveillance of a foreign target may be preceded by a chain of communications intended to provide a pretense or cover story to justify the unmasking.

Do you see a pattern here? I do.

The Russian Role

In his well-considered post linked above, John Hinderaker offers the most likely explanation for the hacking of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s email account and sending it to Wikileaks -- if that is how Wikileaks got it and Assange denies they were the source -- it was not to help Trump win; it was to bedevil her after Hillary won.

Rich Lowry writes in the NY Post that Obama’s record of bowing to Russian interests provides circumstantial evidence that he was the real Russian stooge. There’s no reason to believe that his long-time Secretary of State would have proven less so than he was.

There’s every reason to believe that Trump, on the other hand, will not be. There’s also every reason for the heads of the Western allies whose intelligence agencies cooperated in the electronic eavesdropping of Trump and his associates to come clean and apologize, and for those in the U.S. who orchestrated this to suffer fully the legal consequences of unlawful acts.

Clarice Feldman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/in_her_majestys_disservice.html

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The Electronic Intifada - Discover the Networks

by Discover the Networks

An Internet platform for anti-Semitism & anti-Americanism.

Launched in February 2001 as a project of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society, the Electronic Intifada (EI) is a nonprofit independent website that publishes news articles and commentary focusing on “the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's … occupation of Palestinian territories.” Specifically, EI seeks to provide an alternative to what it calls “the prevailing pro-Israeli slant in U.S. media coverage by offering information from a Palestinian perspective.”

EI’s executive director and principal founder is the Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah, who contends that Palestinian terrorism is nothing more than a rational response to Israel's “land confiscation,” its “ongoing orgy of violence,” and its “routine human-rights abuses.” To address Israel's alleged transgressions, Abunimah has openly called for “a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada.”

Closely allied with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), EI not only refers to Israel’s creation in 1948 as Al Nakba (Arabic for The Catastrophe), but claims that “the … Nakba is ongoing” even to this day. Articles published by EI routinely smear Israel as a “racist” nation that practices “apartheid” and targets its Palestinian neighbors with all manner of “atrocities” such as “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” “extermination,” “human rights violations,” “state terrorism,” and “massacres.”

EI strongly supports the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that aims to use various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and court rulings to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

For a number of years, EI extended sympathetic treatment to Samir Kuntar, an Islamic terrorist with ties to the Palestine Liberation Front and Hezbollah. In April 1979 Kuntar shot Danny Haran, a young Jewish father, to death in front of his four-year-old daughter before crushing the child's skull against a rock with his rifle butt. Notwithstanding these atrocities, EI in 2006 provided a link to Kuntar's personal website which featured pictures of the smiling killer, personal notes he had written, and an opportunity to purchase his book, My Story. When Kuntar was eventually killed by an Israeli air strike in December 2015 – twelve years after Israeli authorities had released him along with some 400 other Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the bodies of two dead Israeli soldiers – EI benignly referred to Kuntar as a “political prisoner.”

In August 2014, EI writer Rana Baker condemned the “despotic tactics” of the “Israel-trained” police officers who were being “deployed to crush unarmed protesters demanding justice for the brutal murder of eighteen-year-old black American Mike Brown” – a Ferguson, Missouri man who had recently been shot and killed by a white police officer whom he was violently assaulting and trying to disarm. “Although Ferguson and Palestine are two different contexts,” wrote Baker, “both places and their people are fighting against white supremacist regimes of oppression which continue to view them as 'disposable others.'”

Similarly, in a March 2014 report on the supposed parallels between Palestinian Arabs and Hispanic Americans, EI stated that “[a]s long as Latinos in the U.S. are subjected to racial profiling, the deportation of undocumented loved ones, and the effects of colonialism in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and in the southwest states, comparisons will be made between Latinos and Palestinians.”

In EI's calculus, free-market economic systems are inherently associated with all manner of injustice and oppression. In October 2007, for instance, EI published an article asserting that capitalism works mainly for “the benefit of multinational corporations and the detriment of ordinary people.” In October 2011, an EI piece lauded the anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement's crusade against “greed” and “corporate power” as a corollary to the Palestinians' “decades-old struggle against Israel’s occupation of our land, its system of discrimination that matches the UN’s definition of apartheid, and its denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return home.” And in 2016, an EI article praised “the social movements sprouting in Central and Latin America” to “struggle against ... capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, militarism and environmental destruction.”

The Electronic Intifada is a classic embodiment of what David Horowitz has dubbed “The Unholy Alliance” between the radical Left and radical Islam. Radical Islam seeks to promote societal purification and “social justice” by means of jihad, or holy war, whose highest ideal is martyrdom achieved while attempting to conquer evil worldly powers like the United States and Israel – the Great Satan and the Little Satan, respectively. The radical Left similarly advocates revolution – be it of a political, social, or violent nature – as a means of punishing so-called “oppressor” nations like America and Israel.

Central to both radical Islam and the radical Left is an inclination to overthrow the existing order and create a paradise on earth, whether that paradise be based on Sharia Law or on socialist economic principles. Western leftists may find the bigotry and intolerance of Islamic radicals repugnant, but their desire to rid the world of U.S./Israeli “imperialism” and “racism” overrides this revulsion and thus beckons them to forge the unholy alliance.

Discover the Networks

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266429/electronic-intifada-discover-networks

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California Sanctuary Surge - Lloyd Billingsley

by Lloyd Billingsley

Governor Jerry Brown pardons criminal deportees.

California governor Jerry Brown has pardoned “three veterans deported to Mexico,” as the Sacramento Bee reported. Hector Barajas Varela, who came to the United States “without authorization,” served more than year in prison for shooting at an occupied home. Brown also pardoned Erasmo Apodaca, who served 10 months in prison for burglary, and Marco Chavez, who spent 15 months in prison for reasons the report did not specify.

Brown issued the pardons as Easter approached, and shortly after President Donald Trump authorized more than $500 million in emergency relief for California, including $274 million for the damaged spillway on Oroville Dam. That federal largesse, after Brown’s tsumani of anti-Trump rhetoric, did not alter the governor’s determination to reinforce California as a sanctuary state for violent criminals. His pardon of criminal foreign nationals, after they had been deported, is merely the latest wave in the surge.

Major California cities and counties have long defied federal efforts to arrest and deport illegals, even violent criminals. Now San Francisco is appealing to a federal judge to block the Trump administration from withholding federal funds from such cities.

When repeatedly deported felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez gunned down Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier in July, 2015, that deadly act of gun violence had no discernable effect on Tani Cantil-Sakauye, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, headquartered in San Francisco. The state’s Chief Justice, who like Brown has sworn to uphold the law, reserves her wrath for “meanspirited” ICE agents, whom she accused of “stalking” illegals in courthouses. As attorney general Jeff Sessions, explained, it is entirely legal and proper for federal agents to make arrests in public places.

Had Mexican national Luis Bracamontes been arrested, deported and not allowed to return, he might not have gunned down Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy Danny Oliver and detective Michael Davis in 2014. Even so, illegals in the region claimed to fear ICE agents, so this year Sacramento County sheriff Scott Jones invited ICE director Thomas Homan to explain how the federal agency aims to enforce the law.

Hermandad Mexicana, founded by the late Stalinist Bert Corona, organized a demonstration proclaiming “resiste.” Local Democrats denounced, “discriminatory efforts to divide families” and “hate-filled attacks against immigrants.”

After the election of Donald Trump, California attorney general Xavier Becerra proclaimed: “If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us.” For the task of defending “unauthorized immigrants,” Becerra is well qualified.

At Stanford, where he earned his bachelor and law degrees, Becerra was a member of MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano De Aztlan. A belch from the sixties’ left, MEChA calls the southwest portion of the United States “Aztlan” and seeks to regain the territory for Mexico.

In Congress, the MEChA veteran faithfully supported amnesty for those in the country illegally. Though turned down as a running mate for Hillary Clinton, Becerra is the ideal choice for Jerry Brown’s attorney general, and he remains uncritical of sanctuary cities that shelter violent criminals.

For his part, Brown began harboring violent criminals back in the 1970s. American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks, convicted of riot and assault for a courthouse gun battle in South Dakota, fled to California and governor Jerry Brown refused to extradite him. That set the tone for Brown’s second go-round as governor.

In late 2015, after radical Islamic terrorists Syeed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino, Brown said “we have to be on guard and we have to do whatever we can do.” Brown also said he would spend time “making sure that our federal-state collaboration really is working.” The governor did just the opposite, actively opposing federal enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and his motives are stronger than Xavier Becerra’s.

Three times Jerry Brown ran for President of the United States and three times he failed, with good reason. The partisan Democrat appointed unqualified ideologue Rose Bird as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, and the people booted her out, also tossing Brown’s court picks Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso.

Brown’s pick for Health and Welfare secretary was Mario Obledo, an open-border advocate and co-founder of the California La Raza Lawyers Association. In 1998, Obledo announced that “California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave.”

President Trump, by contrast, wants those who entered the nation illegally to leave and he seeks to deport the violent criminal illegals the governor of California seeks to protect. So no surprise that the election of Donald Trump would send three-time loser Jerry Brown into a reactionary rage.

Jerry Brown’s Easter pardon of three criminal foreign nationals is the governor’s attempt to appear presidential in the twilight of his career. On the other hand, the pardons are redundant. All government indulgence of illegals is in effect a pardon for those who violated U.S. immigration laws.

As attorney general Jeff Sessions explained over the weekend, what sanctuary cities are doing “makes no sense” and “we’re going to battle them every step of the way.”

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation, and Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266430/california-sanctuary-surge-lloyd-billingsley

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Chemical Weapons and U.S. National Interest - Michael Curtis

by Michael Curtis

U.S. participation in international affairs is central because of its political assets, wealth, and military power.

Perhaps the most moving poem with imagery evoking the horror of the first World War is "Dulce et Decorum Est" written in October 1917 by Wilfred Owen, the British writer who was killed in action a year later, aged 25. His condemnation of the use of gas against people haunts us today.

It is not clear which country, France or Germany, first used poison gas in that war. But the most memorable occasion was the use on April 22, 1915 by Germany of lethal chlorine gas against French colonial, mostly Algerian, divisions, at the second battle of Ypres. About this horror of the use of gas, Owen wrote, "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning." Chlorine did produce choking and suffocation, but the contending armies in the war soon used stronger gases, phosgene and above all, mustard gas.

Revulsion at the use of gas was quickly expressed officially after the end of the war. In 1919, the Versailles Treaty forbade the use of poison gas. in 1925, the League of Nations approved the Geneva Protocol that banned the use of chemical weapons, and also banned bacteriological weapons. Yet, it did not ban the production or stockpiling of chemical weapons.

The world is now aware of at least one country which has stockpiles of such weapons and uses them against so called enemies of its regime. Syrian President Hassan Assad has the dubious honor of being champion of this activity, and has illustrated this on a number of occasions, spreading terror by targeting civilians with chemical weapons.

President Assad is one of the world's great prevaricators and a ruthless individual. He has denied ever using chemical weapons, but in fact has killed his foes with chemicals that are nerve agents. These include sarin, which is almost impossible to detect because it is clear, colorless, and tasteless. His first event of international significance was the use of rockets filled with gas fired at rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on August 21, 2013 killing more than 1,400.

This was the moment of truth for President Barack Obama, who had stated that the use of chemical weapons was a "red line" that would lead to "serious consequences " for the Assad regime. When the red line was crossed, Obama did not engage in any meaningful consequences, serious or not. As recently as April 14, 2017, Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense under Obama, stated that the Obama administration "failed to enforce the red line but sent a message of weakness to the world." This inaction of Obama indeed became symbolic of his whole foreign policy.

That weakness was not mitigated by the deal arranged by Russia and the U.S. that Assad would not be punished but would give up his stockpile of chemical weapons. Predictably, Syria gave up some of them, but still controlled a certain amount. Some of these were used on April 4, 2017 when Syria attacked a rebel-held town, Khan Sheikhoun in northwest Syria. Aircraft dropped bombs filled with sarin on that area, killing more than 80 people.

President Donald Trump responded, two days later, to the use of gas by ordering a direct attack by 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Shayrat airbase that, according to the Pentagon, has been used to store chemical weapons and was the base from which Syrian aircraft had left to kill people with nerve gas. The base, parenthetically, was notable for other reasons: it is the base where Russian-made Su-22 and MiG-23 planes were housed; it is used by Hizb’allah and Iranian-backed Iraqi fighters.

The president did not seek Congressional approval for his action, but he did explain his change of heart in dealing with Syria. He was moved by the affront to humanity with the "killing of women, small children, and beautiful little babies." Trump, alluding to his predecessor, and evidently moved by the use of gas, declared the Syrian attack crossed "many, many, lines beyond a red line." It is generally accepted that Trump had used U.S. military power in a precise and proportional manner against the use of chemical weapons.

However laudable the Trump response on April 6, the U.S. action raises important questions, especially because Trump has not yet formulated a broad statement of U.S. policy or the means by which it will be implemented. One can anticipate certain strikes in Yemen, continued fighting in Syria and Iraq, possibly more strikes on Assad, and above all the war against ISIS.

Nevertheless, the country needs to speak with a unified voice, and decide on the desirability or not of global action and international commitments. Trump is not an isolationist, but clearly, according to campaign rhetoric, does not wish to be drawn into the affairs of other countries, and is not anxious to be involved in foreign entanglements, responsibilities, and alliances. Hence the contradictory positions of Trump on the U.S. role in NATO.

In this regard, the issue of the national security of the U.S. comes to the forefront. In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which established the National Security Council to advise the president. But the act did not define national security, and the problem remains for each administration to define and implement it in relation to specific issues. After the strike on April 6, Trump declared, "it is in the vital national security interest of America to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons." The action sent a signal, but does a signal make a policy?

U.S. participation in international affairs is central because of its political assets, wealth, and military power. It is worth considering some complex issues. Does everyone agree that the April 6 attack was in the nation's vital national interest? Should the U.S. take the lead in preventing and deterring the spread of deadly chemical weapons, a task in which all civilized nations should be involved? Should U.S. policy be based on upholding justice, and on establishing stability over disruption? Should policy be influenced, if not based on humanitarian intervention for violations of human rights, and providing aid where necessary? Or should the U.S. concentrate on preventing the emergence of a threat to world order as well as to the U.S. itself?

A difficult problem, which the Bush administration tried to confront, is whether the U.S. has a mission to bring about democracy in the world. Altruism and empathy are desirable in international affairs as in life, but force is often necessary as well as diplomacy and soft power to deal with offenders. What one can say with assurance is that the outlawing and action against the use of poison gas in any of its forms is an essential moral imperative. In this case Trump has upheld desirable values.

Michael Curtis

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/chemical_weapons_and_us_national_interest.html

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More Anti-Trump Rioting at Berkeley - Matthew Vadum

by Matthew Vadum

If you want to beat up Trump supporters with impunity, Berkeley is the college for you.

Left-wingers violently attacked Trump supporters at a UC Berkeley rally for at least the third time in recent months, according to media reports.

The riot at Berkeley on Saturday occurred as “Tax Marches” took place in cities across the nation aimed at pressing President Donald Trump to release his personal income tax returns, something the law does not require.

The unrest came days after Berkeley campus Republicans withdrew an April 12 speaking invitation for David Horowitz, saying that the college administration had gone out of its way to make the planned event untenable by placing burdensome, Kafkaesque restrictions on it.

While UC Berkeley and “universities like it discourage conservatives, they open their arms to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist support groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, [along with] a range of radical organizations,” Horowitz wrote last week.

But on this past April 15 (Saturday), Trump supporters chose Berkeley to express their support for the president, dubbing that date, traditionally when federal taxes are due, “Patriots Day.” The Berkeley rally was sponsored by pro-Trump group Liberty Revival Alliance.

“I got hit in the back of the head with some sticks,” a bloodied Ben Bergquam of Fresno, Calif., a “Patriots Day” rallier, told reporters as he clung to a crumpled sign reading, “Stop Liberal Intolerance.”

“I don’t agree with everything Trump says, but I don’t agree with violence,” Berquam said.

Not all the rallies Saturday descended into violence.

"I don't respect this president,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told the crowd at a considerably calmer march far away in Washington, D.C. “I don't trust this president. He's not working in the best interests of the American people."

"I will fight every day until he is impeached," she said.

Waters led marchers in a chant of "impeach 45" against the nation's 45th president. "No more secrets, no more lies" emerged as another popular chant. "Show the people your taxes. Stop stonewalling, stop hiding," Waters said.

In Waters’s hometown of Los Angeles, demonstrators filled streets while chanting, “Donald Trump has got to go.” They carried signs reading: “Prove you have nothing to hide,” “Donald Ducks his Fair Share,” “No 1040, no peace” and “I pay for your golf trips. Do you?”

Trump may not have released his tax returns, a voluntary practice followed by most presidential candidates in recent decades, but no evidence of tax improprieties by Trump has surfaced. Quite the opposite, in fact. Trump's unlawfully leaked 2005 tax returns proved he paid an impressive $36 million in taxes that year.

Back at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, about 250 police officers, including some from neighboring Oakland, eventually made their way by mid-afternoon Saturday to where Trump supporters and so-called “antifa,” or anti-fascists who use fascist methods, were turning up the temperature. Sticks, fireworks, smoke bombs, pepper spray, and rocks were thrown around during the melee.

There were 21 reported arrests, including for suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, said Officer Byron White of the Berkeley Police Department. Eleven people were injured. At least six were sent to a hospital, including a stabbing victim. Police seized poles, stun guns, and knives, White said.

A.J. Alegria, 31, reportedly from Sacramento, said he showed up Saturday in Berkeley to defend Trump supporters. At one point during the day a dozen people in black masks attacked him with pepper spray and sticks, he said.

“These people create violence all the time ... somebody has to stand up to them,” he said after being injured.

One Trump backer whose head was wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, stood in the middle of Center Street shouting “Stand up, America! Stand up!”

Violence against conservatives is nothing new at Berkeley. It is tolerated, and in some cases, even encouraged by local authorities. The local government is very slow to order police into action when conservatives are being beaten or otherwise having their civil rights violated. City and campus police often sit on the sidelines when Republicans get roughed up.

Left-wingers attacked Trump supporters at a pro-Trump rally in Berkeley on March 4, making costumed Trump backer Kyle Chapman, also known as Based Stick Man, a viral video star, for fighting back against antifa. Ten arrests were reported.

Alternet contributor Ken Klippenstein thought it was hilarious when an anarchist incapacitated an elderly Trump supporter with pepper spray. “tfw (this face when) you realize real life isn’t the internet,” he wrote on Twitter beside photos of the old man having water administered to his eyes.

There were the riots Feb. 1 that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a David Horowitz Freedom Center-sponsored speech demanding the end of “sanctuary campuses” that harbor illegal aliens. Milo's address, which was canceled amid violent mob attacks, fire-setting, and wanton property destruction, had been scheduled to mark the launch of the Freedom Center’s #nosanctuarycampusforcriminals campaign.

“One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down,” Yiannopoulos said after being safely evacuated from the campus.

“This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,” Mike Wright, a Berkeley College Republicans member told reporters at the time as smoke bombs exploded nearby. He said paint was thrown on his person. “It’s sad.”

To make matters worse, University of California President Janet Napolitano, formerly President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, is deliberately harboring hundreds of illegal aliens attending UC system schools. She has forbidden campus police from working with immigration law enforcement and provided $5 million to aid the illegals UC is sheltering from ICE. The UC system even provides legal aid to illegal alien students who wish to keep breaking U.S. immigration laws through the University of California Undocumented Legal Services Center at the UC Davis School of Law.

Which makes Berkeley the place to be if you’re an illegal alien or an anarchist who enjoys bloodying Trump supporters.

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: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266433/more-anti-trump-rioting-berkeley-matthew-vadum

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US defense secretary to visit Israel as part of Mideast trip - Shlomo Cesana, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

by Shlomo Cesana, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

James Mattis embarks on first regional tour since taking office, will visit Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Djibouti to discuss efforts to defeat terrorism • Mattis to meet with PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Lieberman and President Rivlin.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis | Photo credit: Reuters

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis is scheduled to visit the Middle East this week, his first regional tour since taking office, the Pentagon said Saturday. Mattis is set to visit Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Djibouti between April 18 and April 23.

The Defense Department said the purpose of the trip was to "reaffirm key U.S. military alliances," and "discuss cooperative effort to counter destabilizing activities and defeat extremist terrorist organizations."

The Pentagon chief is expected to arrive in Israel on Thursday. He is scheduled to meet with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. 

Mattis is also scheduled to meet with President Reuven Rivlin and visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

Lieberman and Mattis met in Washington on March 7, where both underscored the close defense ties between the U.S. and Israel. 

Mattis' visit to Israel will take place against the backdrop of efforts by Washington and Jerusalem to reignite the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Mattis has said in the past that he believes the Judea and Samaria settlement enterprise was "obstructing the possibility of a two-state outcome" between Israelis and Palestinians. 

According to the Pentagon, Mattis' first stop in the Middle East will be Saudi Arabia, where he will hold a series of meetings with key international counterparts "to strengthen commitments to the U.S.-Saudi security partnership."

He will then travel to Egypt to discuss regional security issues and participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Unknown Soldier Memorial in honor of fallen Egyptian soldiers.

After concluding his visit to Israel on Friday, Mattis will continue on to Qatar. From there he will travel to Djibouti, where he will meet with President Ismail Omar Guelleh to further the U.S.-Djibouti commitment to promoting regional stability.

Shlomo Cesana, Yoni Hersch, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=41791

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Iran's Elections: Black Turbans vs. White Turbans - Mohammad Amin

by Mohammad Amin

Whatever the results of the upcoming Iranian elections, there will be no shift in Tehran's human rights violations or core aims of regional hegemony and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

• Any distinction between "extremists" and "moderates" in Iran's political establishment is false.
• Whatever the results of the upcoming Iranian elections, there will be no shift in Tehran's human rights violations or core aims of regional hegemony and pursuit of nuclear weapons.
• What does matter is the behavior of the West, particularly the United States, in the near future. If it again resorts to cooperating with Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria, Khamenei will not only be able to pursue his regional and global interests unfettered, but will be better equipped to contain crises at home.

The presidential elections in Iran, scheduled for May 19, have observers wondering whether the "white turban" incumbent, Hassan Rouhani, will retain his position, or be defeated by his likely contender, the "black turban" mullah, Ebrahim Raisi, known for his key role in the 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners.

Iran's elections have observers wondering whether the "white turban" incumbent, Hassan Rouhani (left), will retain his position or be defeated by his likely contender, Ebrahim Raisi (right), the "black turban" mullah. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons).

More importantly, the question on Western minds is how and in what way the Islamic Republic will be affected by either outcome.

The two periods in Iran's recent history that need to be examined in order to answer this question are that of the tenure of former firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005 to 2013), who also announced he is running again, and the one that has followed under Rouhani.

At the outset of the Ahmadinejad era, Iran's GDP (using purchasing power parity) soared beyond $1 trillion, and two of the country's greatest threats -- Iraq under Saddam Hussein and Afghanistan under the Taliban -- were eliminated. Both enabled Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to solidify his stronghold.

Midway through this period, however, Iran's economy fell sharply. Iran became the country with the fifth highest inflation rate in the world. Iran fell into a serious recession, and millions of Iranians found themselves unemployed. All this was going on even before the international community imposed sanctions on the regime in Tehran.

In the years that followed Ahmadinejad's replacement by the so-called "moderate" Rouhani, sanctions were lifted; oil exports reached pre-sanction levels; billions of dollars' worth of assets abroad were unfrozen; and hundreds of agreements were signed to expand business transactions with the West.

Nevertheless, the last year of Rouhani's first term was characterized by yet another economic crisis, summarized in March by Iranian Road and Construction Minister Abbas Akhoondi as: banks going bankrupt, crippling national debt and low economic efficiency.

Iran's economic crises mirrored its political ones. Despite a series of measures that the West imagined would usher in a new era, the opposite happened.

Indeed, although Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with world powers in July 2015 -- and then-U.S. President Barack Obama persisted in attempts at easing tensions -- the regime in Tehran, exceeding its own 30-year record, outdid itself in fundamentalist activities.

More than 3,000 executions of Iranians, for "crimes" such as "insulting Islam," have taken place under Rouhani; Iran got involved in three Middle East wars -- in Syria, Iraq and Yemen; and the regime's semi-official Mehr news agency said that the Rouhani government has done more to advance strategic weapons development recently than in the past decade.

All of the above indicates that any distinction between "extremists" and "moderates" in Iran's political establishment is false. As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously put it: "An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition."

This is still true, which means that whatever the results of the upcoming Iranian elections, there will be no shift in Tehran's human rights violations or core aims of regional hegemony and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

In the event of a Rouhani victory, the country's economy will remain crippled as factional disputes continue and divisions widen.

If Raisi becomes president, Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps(IRGC) will tighten their grip on the economy, thereby causing an even greater depression as they allocate the bulk of the country's coffers to fuel regional wars and fund global terrorism.

As the late leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping, said during a speech in 1962: "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice."

In today's Iran, it does not matter whether the president's turban is black (signifying its wearer is a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed through one of the 12 imams of Twelver Shi'ism) or white (meaning its wearer is not a descendant of the Prophet and is of non-Arab origin), as long as he remains loyal to the theocracy.

What does matter is the behavior of the West, particularly the United States, in the near future. If it again resorts to cooperating with Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria, Khamenei will not only be able to pursue his regional and global interests unfettered, but will be better equipped to contain crises at home.

If, on the other hand, the U.S. adopts a policy of ending Tehran's Middle East meddling (as its missile strike a Syrian regime airbase on April 6 indicates it might), the Islamic Republic's domestic powder keg could explode, spelling disaster for the mullah-led regime, no matter which candidate wins the presidency.

Mohammad Amin, born in Tehran, is a prolific author and expert in Iranian international affairs, and a fellow researcher at the Foundation of Studies for the Middle East (FEMO) in Paris.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10209/iran-elections

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Repudiating the Obama Vision for Higher Education - E. Jeffrey Ludwig

by E. Jeffrey Ludwig

It is a “social justice” model, a progressive model. Universities should fill in gaps where existing institutions have failed communities.

Statistics, systems, and social engineering threaten our liberty in the USA and throughout the world. There has been an ongoing attempt for decades to shift the focus in our society away from faith, family, and freedom, to an agenda where individual rights are suppressed or altogether obliterated in the name of “collective rights.” 

The shift in focus has been especially evident in the field of education. We are all aware of the undue influence the federal government has had on local control of K-12 education. This began with No Child Left Behind under President George W. Bush, and moved to new levels of federal control under Common Core. No Child Left Behind was at least a legislative initiative, passed by Congress. But Common Core was initiated through the Executive Branch and was developed and implemented through state departments of education – composed of appointed, not elected, officials -- that got on board because of Race To The Top moneys being used as an inducement for participation.

All of this was unconstitutional because the Tenth Amendment relegates control of all powers not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution to the several states. Common Core got around this by saying the federal government is not telling the states what to teach, but if the states would get on board (they all got on board), the federal government would supply the standardized tests that would give the states greater feedback about whether they were meeting “standards.” Thus, states would begin teaching to the tests, the tests would be controlling, but the federal government on a technicality would not be literally “in control” of state education.

Not content with excessive control of K-12, the administration of Barack Obama took this radicalization to a new level of implementation. In 2012, there was a White House forum to discuss the remaking of our institutions of higher learning. The forum was based on a 136 page volume A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future by The National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement. The National Task Force was composed of 11 individuals. The writers or supervisors of the writing were these eleven individuals, so we shall never know who is responsible for which section of the report. The writing of books by committee is another sign to this writer of the dilution of individual responsibility as well as individual rights. It is a collective manuscript. And if you ask teachers in our schools, they will tell you that increasingly textbooks are “written” by a large committee of scholars. This report reflects this trend. However, chief spokesman for this report at the 2012 White House Forum was Carol G. Schneider, then President of the American Association of College and University Professors.

This report should send a chill up the spines of every citizen in the United States. Why? It represented nothing less than an attempt to turn institutions of learning away from preparing students for careers and professional employment and away from the unbiased search for truth, which presumably is a scientific and philosophical goal in our colleges. According to the vision of this report, institutions of higher education should be engaged in community development and promoting engagement. It is a “social justice” model, a progressive model. Universities should fill in gaps where existing institutions have failed communities.

This sounds like an updated version of John Dewey who insisted that democracy was our “common faith” (spirituality was displaced into socio-political commitment). For him, K-12 should be community oriented and practical in its preparation of the population to be workers and participants in the turn of the century industrial economy. He was successful in reorienting education away from the classics and great books towards a more practical vocational and interpersonal emphasis. This writer believes that one important effect of this reorientation over time is a weakening of independent thought by the individual students, and a weakened sensitivity about what goodness really is. The task force that compiled this report wants to take this Deweyan practicality and expand it to include more practical actions to promote progressive and globalist values. The report explicitly acknowledges its global thrust, but this writer, after reading the report, is interpreting their terms such as “engagement” to mean “progressive engagement.” Thus, unspoken, the reality is that colleges and universities would become agents of federal social policy. 

At one point, the report said the following, “Where generative partnerships exist…interdependency, innovation, multiple perspectives, and a commitment to a long-range investment in the public good define the partnership’s core values; higher education no longer sees itself as going out into the community, but as part of the community, whether that community is local, national, or global.” (p.64) You see in this quotation that the colleges and universities are not to prepare individuals for higher levels of competency to participate in society, nor to enhance their individual opportunities once they leave higher ed. Rather, the goals of the community – the collective goals of their local community, the nation, or the globe – are their raison d’être. This premise is completely antithetical to our goals as liberty loving individuals.

Why is this reorientation necessary? The answer might amaze you. In her remarks to the assembled forum, AACUP President Schneider stated, “We have always thought of ourselves as an opportunity society; now we face the reality of deepening economic divides and of growing worry that too many of our fellow Americans really are being left behind.” Thus, the entire basis for this report was that we are no longer the land of opportunity which was our self-image up until a couple of generations ago. Now we know better. We are the land of the exploited. We are a land where the top 1% are giving the shaft to the other 99% (“deepening economic divides”). The report implicitly proposes that we are being wiped out by capitalism, the very system we had expected would lead us to thrive. In this one sentence, we can see through all the platitudes and murky phrasing of this group think document. Schneider says that colleges and universities can no longer see themselves primarily as serving individual students, but must mobilize under new collective goals.

This report has fed into the leftist agenda on our nation’s campuses. In a 2016 update report, we learn that over 500 campuses have incorporated many of the ideas in this report into their curricula, and various projects have also been started on select campuses. How can this be an acceptable vision for an educated, freedom loving people?

Yet, we have voted for change. We have a new administration. This leftist agenda for higher education was embraced by a leftist White House and a leftist U.S. Department of Education under Arne Duncan. Now we have some new, freedom-loving leaders in the Executive Branch, presumably people who believe that we are still the land of opportunity and wish to enlarge that opportunity. The vision in the report must be repudiated and replaced. Hopefully, in the months ahead, we shall see the government publicly embrace other visions of education based on traditional concerns about the knowledge needed for citizenship, vocation, and rational individuality. Instead of collective consciousness, let us rely upon traditional patriotism and upon character building based on ideals such as “love your neighbor as yourself.” 

E. Jeffrey Ludwig

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/repudiating_the_obama_vision_for_higher_education.html

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The Failure of Open Borders in Germany and Sweden - Joseph Klein

by Joseph Klein

Chancellor Merkel finally admits the obvious connection between refugee flows and increased security concerns.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just woken up to the fact that terrorists have been entering her country under the guise of would-be asylum seekers. “There is no doubt that among the so many people who have sought shelter in our country were also persons who have become the focus of the security authorities,” Chancellor Merkel acknowledged. However, as if to exculpate herself from any responsibility, she added, “we should not forget that our country was already in the sights of Islamic terrorism before the many refugees came to us.” Her latter observation begs the question as to why she was so reckless in opening up Germany’s borders to a veritable flood of refugees, without any careful screening, in the first place.

With the upcoming election in mind as she seeks a fourth term, Chancellor Merkel was most likely trying to appear strong in reacting to the latest in a string of radical Islamic terrorist attacks in her country. Terrorists linked to ISIS are suspected of having detonated three bombs on Tuesday, next to a German soccer team bus in the town of Dortmund, which the chancellor called a "repugnant act."

In September 2015, Chancellor Merkel boasted of how welcoming Germany was to the self-proclaimed refugees pouring in from the Middle East, Afghanistan and North Africa. "The right to political asylum has no limits on the number of asylum seekers," she said.  "As a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary." She opened Germany’s borders to nearly a million migrants and refugees from the world’s most terrorist ridden regions.

In 2016, Germany began to reap the horrors of the seeds of radical Islam and jihad that Chancellor Merkel had so enthusiastically planted.  For example, ISIS claimed responsibility for the deadly December 19th truck assault on an outdoor Christmas market near a landmark church in Berlin, which killed 12 people and injured nearly 50 other victims. The individual who had allegedly carried out the attack was a 24-year-old Tunisian man whom had traveled to Italy from Tunisia in 2011 and spent time in an Italian jail before arriving in Germany in 2015. Last summer, there were four violent attacks in Germany within just a week’s time, which resulted in deaths and serious injuries. Two of them were committed by Syrian migrants. A third was committed by an Afghan asylum seeker. The fourth, a mass shooting in Munich, was committed by the German-born son of Iranian asylum-seekers.

Like Chancellor Merkel’s Germany, Sweden opened its borders to so-called refugees, only to find its once peaceful society turned into a haven for radical Islamic terrorists. Sweden has become “a place to Islamize," as the Gladstone Institute put it. The Swedish Security Service, according to the Gladstone Institute report, “admitted great concern over the possibility that foreign jihadis might take advantage of the Swedish asylum system -- through which more than 90% of refugee claimants gain permanent residency status, despite lacking passports or identifying documents -- by ‘hiding among the refugees.’”

Sweden had admitted 80,000 asylum seekers in 2014. It admitted more than 160,000 in 2015, which exceeded any other European Union state per capita. The 2015 total included 51,338 asylum seekers from Syria, 41,564 from Afghanistan, 20,857 from Iraq and 5,465 from Somalia. Instead of assimilating into Swedish society, asylum seekers and other migrants from Muslim majority countries have re-created their violence prone, Islamist culture in Sweden.

Sweden has since begun placing more restrictions on admission of asylum-seekers in response to jihadist-inspired acts of violence. But the die has been cast. 

In February, a riot broke out in the largely immigrant Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby. According to a report in Nordstjernan, Rinkeby is known as “’Little Mogadishu’ because of the number of Somalis living there. Rinkeby is also the center of the recruiting efforts of al-Shabab, a group with ties to al-Qaida.”

Last Friday, a truck was driven into a crowd of people in a Stockholm shopping center, killing 15 people and injuring at least 15 others. “Sweden has been attacked,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven declared. “This indicates that it is an act of terror.” The suspect is said to be an ISIS sympathizer from Uzbekistan. The attack followed the pattern of prior ISIS-inspired acts of terrorism weaponizing vehicles, which were seen in Nice, Berlin and London.

Germany and Sweden have been the most open in welcoming would-be “refugees” from terrorist-prone Muslim majority countries. Their reward has been jihadist-inspired acts of terror and spikes in violent crimes by individuals from an alien culture who refuse to assimilate into their host countries. While the pro-refugee and open border progressives try to obscure the truth, the failure of the German and Swedish experiments in opening their borders to refugees and migrants from terrorist-prone countries proves that President Trump’s extreme vetting approach is the correct one.

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: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266412/failure-open-borders-germany-and-sweden-joseph-klein

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