New Hillary Emails Warrant Special Prosecutor - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

Could this mean that - finally - the smoking gun has been found?

New emails unearthed by Judicial Watch confirm that the Clinton Foundation was in fact a pay-to-play influence peddling operation far more worthy of a special prosecutor than imaginary Russians colluding under Trump Administration beds. It is time for President Trump to keep the promise he made in the presidential debate to indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes:

About 20 minutes into the debate, Donald Trump delivered a menacing threat to Hillary Clinton. “If I win,” he warned, “I’m going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.” …
“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton observed.
“Because,” Mr. Trump replied “you’d be in jail.”

The emails fully incriminating Hillary are part of of documents obtained by Judicial Watch under a court order forcing the State Department to find the documents it said it couldn’t find, didn’t have or was too understaffed to look for:

Judicial Watch today released 1,617 new pages of documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing numerous additional examples of classified information being transmitted through the unsecure, non-state.gov account of Huma Abedin, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, as well as many instances of Hillary Clinton donors receiving special favors from the State Department.
The documents included 97 email exchanges with Clinton not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to at least 627 emails that were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradicting a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to department.

The emails show intentional mishandling of classified material and coordination between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation which involved the State Department granting favors and access to Clinton Foundation donors. Some of the emails were undoubtedly among the 33,000 Hillary Clinton and her operatives destroyed even though they were under Congressional subpoena.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who exonerated Hillary first and conducted a sham investigation later, concluded, usurping the authority of the attorney general, that Hillary Clinton could not be indicted for her crimes because she lacked “intent,” even though the law imposes no such requirement. These new documents and emails indicate clear intent and purpose and the failure to produce them was part of the cover-up for her crimes. Among the examples cited by Judicial Watch in the documents:

The new documents show that Clinton donors frequently requested and received special favors from the State Department that were connected to the Clinton Foundation.
On July 14, 2009, Gordon Griffin, a XL Keystone lobbyist, sent an email to Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band, asking if Band could get him into a Council on Foreign Relations dinner at which Clinton was speaking. Band forwarded the email to Abedin, saying, “Can u get him in?” Abedin replied: “Yes will get him in.” Band was a top aide to President Bill Clinton and co-founder of Teneo. Griffin was a major donor to
Hillary Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns….
On September 11, 2009, Terrence Duffy, chairman of futures brokerage firm CME Group, a donor to the Clinton Foundation, asked Clinton to arrange “government appointments” for him in Singapore and Hong Kong. Clinton, using her HDR22@clintonmail.com address, forwarded the request to Abedin, “fyi.” Abedin responded to Duffy’s email, saying she would “follow up” with Duffy’s secretary, Joyce. Duffy gave $4,600 to Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign; CME Group paid Hillary $225,000 for a speaking fee and has donated between $5,001 and 10,000 to the Clinton Foundation. …
On May 5, 2010, major Clinton Global Initiative member, Clinton Foundation donor and real estate developer Eddie Trump forwarded to “Dougie” Band a request for assistance from Russian American Foundation Vice President Rina Kirshner to get the Russian American Foundation involved in a State Department program. Band forwarded the request to Abedin, saying, “Can we get this done/mtg set.” As Judicial Watch previously reported, the State Department doled out more than $260,000 to the Russian American Foundation for “public diplomacy.”
Major Clinton donor Bal Das, a New York financier who reportedly raised $300,000 for Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign, asked Abedin on November 11, 2009 if Hillary Clinton could address the Japan Society at its annual conference in 2010. Clinton did speak to the Japan Society’s annual conference in 2011.

Collusion with the Russians, anyone? How about Hillary Clinton’s collusion with the Russians in the Uranium One deal which gave Russia control of 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation?

Clinton played a pivotal role in the Uranium One deal which ended up giving Russian interests control of 20 percent of our uranium supply in exchange for donations of $145 million to the Clinton Foundation. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a federal crime. As Clinton Cash author Peter Schweitzer has noted:

Tuesday on Fox Business Network, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Breitbart editor at large and the author of “Clinton Cash,” Peter Schweizer said there needs to be a federal investigation into the Russian uranium deal then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved after the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One….
Discussing the Clinton Foundation receiving $145 million from the shareholders of Uranium One, he continued, “Look there are couple of things that are extremely troubling about the deal we touched on. number one is the amount of money $145 million. We are not talking about a super PAC giving a million dollars to support a candidate. We are not talking about campaign donations. We are talking about $145 million which by the way is 75 percent or more of the annual budget of the Clinton Foundation itself so it’s a huge sum of money. Second of all we are talking about a fundamental issue of national security which is uranium -- it’s not like oil and gas that you can find all sorts of places. They are precious few places you can mine for uranium, in the United States is one of those areas. And number three we are talking about the Russian government. A lot of people don’t realize it now, in parts of the Midwest American soil is owned by Vladimir Putin’s government because this deal went through. And in addition to the $145 million Bill Clinton got half a million dollars, $500,000 for a 20-minute speech from a Russian investment bank tied to the Kremlin, two months before the State Department signed off on this deal. It just stinks to high heaven and I think it requires a major investigation by the federal government.”

As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, donations to the Clinton Foundation even played a factor in the refusal of Hillary Clinton’s State Department to designate Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist organization for two years:

Hillary's emails may be only the tip of an iceberg that could include Clinton Foundation donations to shield Boko Haram from being designated a terrorist group and her brother's involvement in a Haitian gold mine….
Last month, the Washington Post reported on another deal involving Rodham that could prove politically embarrassing and damaging for his sister. It seems that he sits on the board of a company that got a coveted gold-mining contract from the government of Haiti after the Clinton Foundation sponsored relief work in Haiti.
In interviews with the Post, both Rodham and the chief executive of Delaware-based VCS Mining said they were introduced at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, which seems more and more to be an unseemly mix of charitable work with the political and business interests of Clinton Foundation donors.
And then there's Hillary's strange dealings regarding the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, which just recently pledged its allegiance to the ever-expanding Islamic State -- dubbed the "JV team" by President Obama, who has yet to make good on his pledge to degrade and destroy them.
Last May, we wondered why for two years on Hillary Clinton's watch the State Department refused to designate a Nigerian Islamist group as a terrorist organization. This group has murdered thousands as it wages a real war on women. As Josh Rogin at the Daily Beast reports, the Clinton State Department "refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011" after the group bombed the United Nations headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last week asking for all of Hillary's records relating to Boko Haram and her reluctance to designate it a foreign terrorist organization.
Vitter also requested all of Hillary's communications with Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian construction tycoon who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation. Vitter noted that Chagoury had a financial interest in the potential impact of designating Boko Haram a terrorist group
How many of the more than 30,000 "personal" emails that Hillary deleted from her private account relate to these matters? Is that why she needed a private email server? We need to see that server. It might provide, er, a veritable gold mine of information.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch constitute an equally valuable gold mine of information. President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have a chance to right a great wrong here. Director Comey tried to put the fix in for Hillary by not convening a grand jury, moving to have a special prosecutor appointed, and by not showing up for a cursory interview of Hillary which was not done under oath. The infamous tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was merely the frosting on this cake.

Comey deserved to be fired for letting Hillary Clinton skate and he isn’t out of the legal woods himself yet. But Hillary’s crimes in fact cry out for a special prosecutor. As Judicial Watch concludes:

“The emails show ‘what happened’ was that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin obviously violated laws about the handling of classified information and turned the State Department into a pay for play tool for the corrupt Clinton Foundation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The clear and mounting evidence of pay for play and mishandling of classified information warrant a serious criminal investigation by an independent Trump Justice Department.”

Lock her up -- and while we’re at, how about Huma Abedin and James Comey as well?


Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/09/new_hillary_emails_warrant_special_prosecutor.html

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N. Korea and Iran: Regarding eventual nuclear attack upon Israel - Prof. Louis René Beres

by Prof. Louis René Beres

America's multiple mistakes on North Korea are being replicated by Israel's cascading failures on Iran.

"The existence of `system' in the world is obvious to every observer of nature...." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

The primary importance of "system" is obvious to all serious students of world politics. In this connection, what happens in the protracted American crisis with North    Korea could sometime have substantial or even profound implications for the Middle East. Most urgently, as ongoing crisis in northeast Asia has focused renewed attention on the risks and consequences of a nuclear war, a broadly "systemic" question should be raised in both Washington and Jerusalem:

Will Iran become the next North Korea?

For a short window of time, at least, selective preemptions against certain Iranian nuclear assets and corollary infrastructures might still have made overall strategic sense. Now, however, for Israel, the country most directly threatened by a prospectively nuclear Iran, rational self-defense options must be limited to narrowly reactive counter-measures. Above all, this means conspicuous reliance for Jerusalem upon long-term nuclear deterrence and  ballistic-missile defense.

There is more. If Israel's senior military planners operate according to a properly fashioned strategic doctrine, these still-remaining options should include a graduated end to Israel's policy of "deliberate nuclear ambiguity," or what is sometimes called the "bomb in the basement." Included, too, would be continuous engineering upgrades to all intersecting and multi-layered missile interceptors, and certain parallel efforts aimed at enhanced national plans for intelligence, counterintelligence, cyber-defense and cyber-war. In specific military parlance, because these plans would be inter-penetrating or "synergistic," they could suitably represent more-or-less powerful "force multipliers."
Earlier, a successful and timely preemption might still have prevented a nuclear Iran. Now, Israel's defensive anti-missile programs can do nothing toward slowing down Iranian nuclearization, but they could nonetheless become useful adjuncts to national nuclear deterrence. This reinforcing development would come about because the rationality of any contemplated Iranian attack upon Israel would likely be impacted by Israel's already-deployed hard-target protections.

With visibly capable Israeli ballistic missile defenses in place, Tehran would require a steadily increasing number of offensive missiles to ensure its presumptively necessary penetration capacity. Such defenses, therefore, constitute a vital component of Israel's overall deterrence posture.

It is true that Israel's active defenses could provide certain more-or-less limited physical protections for its civilian populations.  However, any such post-attack "soft-target" benefits would be plausibly less important than those defense-related Israeli gains associated with enhanced nuclear deterrence.

Whether rational, irrational, or "mad" - and there are genuinely crucial differences between these three decisional possibilities - any nuclear-capable Iranian leadership that eventually inclines toward military conflict with the "Zionist Entity" could initiate a nuclear war. Whether deliberately or inadvertently,  as a "bolt from the blue" or as an unintended result of escalation, in consequence of some inexorable religious commitment to Jihad against "unbelievers," or as a calamitous result of more mundane war-causes (for example, miscalculation, accident, coup d'état, or command-control failure), a nuclear Tehran could ignite a treacherously Dantesque excursion into fire, into the eternal darkness, into ice.

More than thirty-seven years ago, I published the first of twelve books that contained certain authoritative descriptions of the physical and medical consequences of any nuclear war. These earlier descriptions were drawn largely from a still-valid 1975 report by the National Academy of Sciences, and included the following very tangible expected outcomes: large temperature changes; contamination of food and water; disease epidemics in crops, domesticated animals, and humans due to ionizing radiation; shortening of growing seasons; irreversible injuries to aquatic species; widespread and long-term cancers due to inhalation of plutonium particles; radiation-induced abnormalities in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in the number of skin cancers, and increasing genetic disease.

Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of any Iranian nuclear attack upon Israel. These difficulties would extend beyond prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns could even occur in the eyes of persons very far from the actual explosions.

Tens of thousands of  Israelis could be crushed by collapsing buildings, or torn to shreds by flying glass. Others could fall victim to raging firestorms. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiations; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations; and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.

After an Iranian nuclear attack, even a "small" one, those medical facilities that might still exist in Israel could be taxed beyond meaningful capacity. Water supplies could quickly become unusable. Housing and shelter could become unavailable for hundreds of thousands of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages could be critical and long-term.

Israel's normally complex network of exchange systems would be shattered. Virtually everyone would be deprived of even the most basic means of livelihood. Emergency police and fire services would be decimated. All systems dependent upon electrical power could stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would likely be no available therapeutic services.

Normal human society would effectively cease. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry could quickly augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They could also expect premature death; impaired vision, and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable.

Extensive fallout could upset many delicately balanced relationships in nature. Israelis who survive the nuclear attack might have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes could spread en masse from the radiation-damaged areas, in which they arose.

Insects are generally more resistant to radiation than humans. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of unburied corpses, uncontrolled waste and untreated sewage, would generate tens of trillions of flies and mosquitoes. Breeding in the dead bodies, these insects could make it impossible to control typhus, malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis. Throughout Israel, tens or even hundreds of thousands of rotting human corpses would pose the largest immediate and also longer-term health threat. 

Assuredly, all of these same effects, possibly even more expansive and destructive, would be unleashed upon Iran. This is because an immediate and massive Israeli retaliation for any Iranian nuclear aggression would be a certainty. Still,  Iran's comparatively greater suffering could offer little meaningful solace for Israel.

In purely strategic terms, this greater enemy suffering would plainly be irrelevant.

In essence, nuclear war is like any other incurable disease. For Israel, the only reasonable remaining strategy must lie in prevention. Barring any unlikely eleventh-hour preemptions against Iran - protective first-strikes that would be known as anticipatory self-defense under international law - Israel will have to turn for its ultimate survival to a complex, well-reasoned and multi-layered survival strategy. Here, core emphases would be placed on improved anti-missile interceptions, and on steadily enhancing levels of nuclear deterrence.

Unsurprisingly, such remedies would closely resemble residual American options vis-à-vis an already nuclear North Korea.

One final "systemic" point should now be made about the North Korea-Iran connection. In addition to Pyongyang's likely technical assistance to Tehran (North Korea has long maintained tangible military relations with Damascus), any American crisis with North Korea that culminates in nuclear weapons use would put an immediate and obvious end to the longstanding "nuclear taboo." Among other things, this would almost certainly heighten the particular likelihood of a subsequent nuclear attack or exchange involving Israel and Iran.

World politics is best understood as a system. Presently, America's multiple mistakes on North Korea are being replicated by Israel's cascading failures on Iran. Significantly, what ultimately happens in either hot spot could have very grave consequences for the other. In this connection, Jerusalem should now pay exceptionally close attention to all probable crisis outcomes in Washington and Pyongyang.

LOUIS RENÉ BERES  was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), and is Emeritus Professor of  International Law at Purdue.  Born in Zürich, Switzerland,  on August 31, 1945, he is author of several of the earliest major books on nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including TERRORISM AND GLOBAL SECURITY: THE NUCLEAR THREAT (Westview,1979); APOCALYPSE: NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE IN WORLD POLITICS  (The University of Chicago Press, 1980);  PEOPLE, STATES AND WORLD ORDER (F. E. Peacock, 1981); MIMICKING SISYPHUS: AMERICA'S COUNTERVAILING NUCLEAR STRATEGY  (D.C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1983);  and SECURITY OR ARMAGEDDON: ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR STRATEGY (D.C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1986).  Dr. Beres was Chair of  Project Daniel, a private group that delivered an early report on a nuclearizing Iran (ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC FUTURE) to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on January 16, 2003.  Some of his articles on nuclear issues have appeared in The Atlantic; The New York Times; Israel National News; World Politics (Princeton); Yale Global Online; BESA Perspectives (Israel); Infinity Journal (Israel); Herzliya Conference Papers (Israel); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Special Warfare (DoD);Parameters: The Journal of the U.S. Army War College (DoD); and  International Security (Harvard). Professor Beres's twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2016.  http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/content/surviving-amid-chaos-israels-nuclear-strategy
Also in 2016, he coauthored a special monograph at Tel Aviv University with General (USA/ret.) Barry R. McCaffrey, Israel's Nuclear Strategy and America's National Security  https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf


Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21016

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Iraq: We will not allow creation of a second Israel - AFP

by AFP

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

Iraqi Vice President slams proposal to create independent Kurdish state in the Middle East.

Kurdish Autonomous Region President Massoud Barzani

REUTERS

An Iraqi vice president warned Sunday that Baghdad would not tolerate the creation of "a second Israel" after the Jewish state became the only country to support a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq.

The leaders of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must "call off the (September 25) referendum that is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds", said Vice President Nuri al-Maliki.

"We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq," Maliki, a Shiite former prime minister, said at a meeting with US ambassador Douglas Silliman, in a statement released by the vice president's office.

A country set up on a religious or ethnic base other than Islam, like the Jewish state established in 1948, would not be acceptable, Maliki said.

He warned that an independence vote would have "dangerous consequences for the security, sovereignty and unity of Iraq", and called for dialogue between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in the northern city of Arbil.

As opposed to Muslim countries in the region as well as the United States and Western allies, Israel has come out in apparent support of the referendum.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the Kurds' aspirations for a state of their own, without specifically referring to the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

"While Israel rejects terror in any form, it supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own," a statement from his office said.

An Israeli flag was flown alongside Kurdish flags at a rally in Arbil on Friday in support of the referendum.

The United Nations has urged Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani to drop plans for the controversial referendum and enter internationally-backed talks with Baghdad aimed at reaching a negotiated deal within three years.


AFP

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235633

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The Libyan Chessboard - Adel Karim

by Adel Karim

The Libyan phenomenon of the city-state has arisen. The separatist tendencies of the tribes has grown stronger.

Several power centers were formed in Libya as a result of the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the destruction of Libyan statehood. None of them has a national legitimacy. The pursuit of personal interests by some political leaders to the detriment of the general state is intertwined with territorial fragmentation. The historic regions -- Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan -- have de facto separated from each other. The Libyan phenomenon of the city-state has arisen (Misrata, Al-Zintan, Sirte, etc.). The separatist tendencies of the tribes has grown stronger.

The UN has attempted to stabilize the situation in the country. In December, 2015, the United Nations brokered the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA), the Presidential Council (PC) was set up and a Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj was formed. The agreement also confirmed the legitimacy of the House of Representatives (HoR) based in Tobruk in eastern Libya, while has the support of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan National Army (LNA) commander.

But the conflict between Islamist, anti-Islamist, secular, tribal, and simply criminal groups which resulted in another civil war is caused by historic, social, economic and political circumstances including the interests and interference of foreign parties and has simply overwhlemed UN efforts. NATO involvement in contravention of UNSC Resolution 1973 turned Libya into a perfect place for terrorist and extremist groups, a center for human trafficking, and a cheap resources market.

Today, the country is de facto divided on the East-West axis. The eastern regions are under LNA control. In early July, Marshal Haftar's troops recaptured Benghazi, partly stabilizing the situation in the East.

Meanwhile, in the West, the tension between the groups allegedly supporting Fayez al-Sarraj's Government of National Accord and those who were loyal to Khalifa al-Ghawil's Government of National Salvation grew into violent clashes. Rival militias have been battling one another heavily in Tripoli since December, 2016.

The south of the once rich and beautiful country became a battlefield for tribes and terrorists on othe the eastern and western sides. Haftar's supporters there were slain by the Misrata-based Third Force militants in early May 2017.

The crisis has been aggravated by various Salafist jihadi groups with different ideologies that are in constant conflict in western Libya. Such groups include Libya Dawn (Libya Fajr), the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council, Ansar al-Sharia, the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, the Libya Shield Force, the Libyan Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), etc.

More powerful elements destabilizing the region include ISIS, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Muslim Brotherhood.

A key part in counteracting IS and AQIM belongs to Marshal Haftar, who is taking measures to eliminate jihadists on Libyan soil, near Sabha and Sirte cities in particular. Having lost Sirte, the terrorists dispersed in three directions: to the southwest of Sabha, to the west of Sabratah, and to the southeast near the Sudan border. The main problem of neutralizing these groups is that they are being reinforced with volunteers from Tunis, Algeria, Mali, Chad, and Nigeria and the terrorists fleeing from Syria and Iraq.

However, while the situation in the east has stabilized, the western regions are less stable and prone to changes. Mostly, this is tied to the lack of political will of Sarraj and the GNA, and to the diversity of the ultra-conservative Salafist groups in the west.

Although these opposing factions are nominally loyal to Prime Minister Saraj, experience has shown that they are not associated with any political leader. The most telling example occurred at the end of October 2016, when the forces of Haitham Tajouri, who heads Tripoli’s largest militia and who was allegedly loyal to the Government of National Salvation, allowed the units of Khalifa al-Ghawil to seize a number of ministries in Tripoli. There is also a question concerning the legitimacy of supporting these essentially terrorist formations by Fayez al-Sarraj. Probably, the latter uses them as a force capable in the future to counter the rising popularity of Khalifa Haftar among the population of Libya.

Thus, unlike Prime Minister Saraj, Marshal Haftar is a serious military and political figure on the Libyan chessboard capable of uniting tribes and clans under his banners, limiting the flows of illegal migration to the EU, liquidating the terrorist organizations like ISIS, AKIM and Muslim Brotherhood, thus restoring statehood to the country.

Adel Karim

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/09/the_libyan_chessboard.html

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Facebook listed ‘Jew-hater’ as category for advertisers - JTA

by JTA

Investigative site discovers Facebook categories allowing advertisers to reach anti-Semites; Facebook removes categories.

A news site was able to target ads at Facebook users who expressed interest in “Jew hater” and “how to burn Jews.”

ProPublica, an investigative site, reported Thursday that Facebook’s advertisement algorithms generated categories including “Jew hater,” “How to burn Jews,” and “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world.’”

Facebook removed the categories after being alerted to their existence and said it would seek to prevent such categories from popping up for potential advertisers.

The categories on their own were too small to justify an ad buy, according to the Facebook system, so ProPublica added as targets the SS and the Nazi Party, available on Facebook’s generated list as “employers,” and the National Democratic Party of Germany, a current far right political party in Germany.

ProPublica paid $30 for three targeted posts, which reached 5,897 people.

In advising ProPublica on whom to add in order to reach enough users to justify an ad, Facebook’s automated system recommended “Second Amendment,” apparently correlating gun rights advocates with anti-Semites.

Facebook has been used in the past to encourage terror attacks against Israelis, prompting Israeli security officials to press Facebook to crack down on incitement to violence.


JTA

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235596

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Did Susan Rice Spy on Trump Officials for Muslim Brotherhood? - Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield

Imagine if Watergate had been about the White House spying on Democrats for the KGB.

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

After months of denials, the pretext for Susan Rice’s eavesdropping on Trump officials has finally been made public. It had been widely known that Obama’s former National Security Adviser had contrived to unmask the names of top Trump officials who had been spied on by the administration. And the same media that still treats Watergate as the Great American Scandal had claimed that there was nothing “improper” in an Obama loyalist eavesdropping on members of the opposition party.

Every time Obama Inc. was caught eavesdropping on opposition politicians, it presented its spin in a carefully packaged “scoop” to a major media outlet. This time was no different.

When Obama Inc. spied on members of Congress to protect its Iran nuke sellout, it packaged the story to the Wall Street Journal under the headline, “U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress”. The idea was that Obama Inc. was “legitimately” spying on Israel, that it just happened to intercept the conversations of some members of Congress and American Jews, and that the eavesdropping somehow meant that its victims, Jewish and non-Jewish, rather than its White House perpetrators, should be ashamed.

The White House had demanded the conversations between Prime Minister Netanyahu, members of Congress and American Jews because it "believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu's campaign." This was domestic surveillance carried out under the same pretext as in the Soviet Union which had also accused its dissident targets of secretly serving foreign interests.

Obama and his minions had used the NSA to spy on Americans opposed to its policies. Including members of Congress. They did this by conflating their own political agenda with national security.

Since Obama’s spin was that the Iran Deal was good for national security, opponents of it were a “national security” threat.

And its fig leaf for domestic surveillance was that a “foreign leader” was involved.

Now get ready for a flashback.

Susan Rice’s excuse for unmasking the names of top Trump officials in the Obama eavesdropping effort was that they were meeting with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates. The carefully packaged CNN story, which reeks of the Goebbelsian media manipulations of “Obama whisperer” Ben Rhodes, tries to clumsily tie the whole thing to the Russians. But for once it’s not about Russia. It’s about Islam.

The UAE has become best known for being the first regional Muslim oil state to turn against the Muslim Brotherhood and the entire Arab Spring enterprise. It helped mobilize opposition to the Qatari agenda. The ultimate outcome of that effort was that Egypt was stabilized under a non-Islamist president and the Islamist takeover in Libya is looking rather shaky. The Saudi coalition against Qatar, the sugar daddies of Hamas, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, has its origins in that effort.

When Obama Inc. spied on members of Congress before, it was to protect Iran. This time around, the gang that couldn’t spy straight was trying to protect the Muslim Brotherhood. The Iran Deal was never about stopping Iran’s nuclear program. It certainly does not do that. Nor was it ever meant to do it.

Instead the real goal of the Iran negotiations was a diplomatic arrangement with the Islamic terror state. The fruits of that arrangement can be seen from Beirut to Baghdad. They are written in blood and steel across Syria, Israel and Yemen. And that arrangement had to be protected at all costs.

Even if it meant spying on Americans. Even if it meant spying on members of Congress.

The arrangement that Susan Rice was protecting by spying on top Trump officials was even older and dirtier. It goes back to Obama’s Cairo speech and the resulting bloody horrors of the Arab Spring.

Both times Obama Inc. was caught spying on American officials to protect its dirty deal with Islam.

Obama officials had spied on Americans to protect Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s more than a mere crime. It’s treason. Imagine if Watergate had been about the White House spying on Democrats for the KGB. That is the sheer full scope of what we appear to be dealing with here.

Both high-level eavesdropping incidents involve an effort by Obama Inc. to protect Islamist enemies.

These efforts checked all the right and wrong legal boxes. The orders were carried out by men and women who know all the loopholes. Each decision was compartmentalized across a network. There were always pretexts. And a media eager to fight for the right of the left to spy on the right.

It is as unlikely that Susan Rice will be held accountable for pulling off a crime that makes Watergate into the gold standard of governmental ethics as it is that Hillary will ever go to jail for abusing classified information. The network, which some dub the swamp, has excelled at defending its own.  That’s why current National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster protected Susan Rice’s access to classified information and nurtured all the Obama holdovers behind the leaks while purging those who tried to expose them.

It is also why Susan Rice’s testimony did not leak until CNN was able to roll out its carefully packaged spin.

Conservatives excel at zeroing in on abuses like Hillary’s email account, the Rice unmasking and the Benghazi cover-up, but falter when it comes to exposing the motives behind them. And so the investigation of the abuses quickly vanishes into a thorny thicket of alibis, technical legalities, cover-ups and licenses. And a baffled public reads about hearings that delve into acts rather than motives.

It is vital that we understand not only what Rice did, but why she did it. It is important that we expose the pattern of misconduct, not just the individual act.

Susan Rice’s eavesdropping would have remained hidden if Flynn and his appointees hadn’t temporarily obtained the keys to the kingdom. And the network quickly worked to have Flynn forced out and replaced with McMaster. And McMaster has steadily forced out Flynn’s appointees so that there are no more leaks like the one that exposed the Rice eavesdropping. The swamp looks after its own.

Unless there are fundamental changes at the NSC and beyond, we will never know the full scope of the Obama eavesdropping operation. But we still do know a great deal about what motivated it.

Susan Rice and the White House didn’t just eavesdrop on the political opposition. There was an agenda so urgent that they were willing to pull out all the stops to protect it.

Even right down to committing what has become the ultimate crime in the White House.

It was the same agenda that dragged us into a war in Libya. The same agenda that was at the heart of the diplomatic efforts of the administration over eight years. That agenda was empowering Islamists.

The Obama edition of Watergate wasn’t committed merely for domestic political gain. It was carried out for a reason that was encompassed in his address to the United Nations after the Benghazi massacre.

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

This foul slogan led to the first arrest of a filmmaker for political speech in almost a century. It led to the sordid betrayal of our national security and our allies. And to domestic espionage against Americans.

The future must not belong on those who spy on Americans to protect Islamism.

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/267873/did-susan-rice-spy-trump-officials-muslim-daniel-greenfield

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Russian agree to keep Iranians only 3 miles from Israel border - Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom Staff

by Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom Staff 

Israel had asked Russia to forbid Iran and its terrorist proxies from crossing the Sweida-Damascus line, some 40 kilometers away from the northern border

IDF soldiers on the Golan Heights
Illustration: AFP 

 In the past month or two, the defense establishment has identified unprecedented Iranian activity north of the border. In light of this, perhaps last week's reports by foreign media outlets that Israel attacked a weapons facility in Syria on Sept. 7 seem more understandable.

Aside from the aforementioned alleged airstrike, the IDF carries out hundreds of operations year-round within the framework of its so-called "war between the wars." Only a small portion of the IDF's activities come to light in the foreign media, but these operations include special intelligence gathering, land-based missions and a variety of other measures aimed at staving off the next war.

In recent weeks, we have also heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman issue harsh statements about Iran's encroachment into Syria, along with reports that the Islamic republic is trying to build precision-missile factories in Lebanon and Syria. According to foreign reports, the target of last week's airstrike was one of these factories.

Thus far, terrorist organizations have been unable to acquire precision strike capabilities. The IDF, meanwhile, views Hezbollah's aspirations in this regard as a "severe strategic threat," because such missiles can accurately hit strategic installations in Israel, such as air force bases, the chief of staff headquarters and other sensitive sites. It is important to note that despite Israel's air-defense systems – Iron Dome, David's Sling – it is impossible to intercept every enemy missile.

Talking with the Russians

Israeli officials are perhaps discontented with Russia's handling of Iran in the region, but Israel and Russia have been wise enough to build a successful mechanism to prevent friction between their respective militaries in the Syrian arena. To maintain this mechanism, senior IDF officers meet every few weeks with their Russian counterparts.

Israel wants Russia to prevent hostile elements, such as Iran and Hezbollah, from establishing a presence along Israel's border. In its efforts to keep Iran away from the Golan Heights border, Israel has asked Russia to forbid Iran and its proxies from crossing the Sweida-Damascus line, but the Russians have agreed to allow the Iranians within 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of the border with Israel. The distance between Damascus and the Israeli border, incidentally, is about 40 kilometers (25 miles).

Israeli officials recently expressed considerable concern that the Iranians ultimately want to be "on Israel's fences" and will gradually try to move closer to the border.

Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2017/09/15/russians-agree-to-keep-iranians-only-3-mi-from-israel-border/

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IDF's Gaza Wall May Change Hamas Terror Strategies - Yaakov Lappin

by Yaakov Lappin

Hamas is most likely to respond to Israel's improved position against the tunnels in Gaza by upping attempts to generate terrorism from the West Bank.

Time may be running out for one of Hamas's main weapons against Israel: Its cross-border terror tunnels.
 
By 2019, according to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assessments, Israel will complete an underground wall that stretches along the 60-kilometer (37 mile) border with Gaza. The wall is the product of several years of research and development, and is designed to eliminate the tunnel threat to Israeli communities located near Gaza.

During the past three years, since the end of its last conflict with Israel, Hamas has invested big resources into its tunnel maze. One of its top goals is to rehabilitate an ability to inject murder squads into Israeli territory through the tunnels.

Once inside Israel, they could target IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians for murder or kidnapping, whenever the next conflict breaks out.

But Israel has invested far more than Hamas to try stopping that threat. It is paying 150 million shekels ($42.5 million) for each kilometer of the new wall.

Work began on the subterranean project in areas where Israeli communities were very close to the border. Then, gradually, other areas began receiving protection.

During a conference call held with reporters in August, the commander of the IDF's Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, said the wall will prevent "the digging of tunnels into our territory," adding that work is "advancing according to plan. In the coming months, this project is going to significantly accelerate. We will see an expansion in the scope of the works. Within two years, we will be able to complete work."

Many details about the wall remain classified. But IDF sources have previously indicated that the wall will come with electronic sensors. The sensors will issue alerts to military control centers, sounding the alarm about suspicious tunnel digging activity.

The control rooms, would, in turn, be able to order action if necessary.

Similar military control rooms are popping up along the Gaza border to handle intelligence coming in from Israel's above-ground border fence. Sensors installed on the barrier, together with units from the IDF's Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, are joined by drones, spy balloons, and radars, all feed the control centers with a flow of data, and alert them to suspicious activity.

The big question now is whether Hamas will sit back and watch Israel take away its offensive tunnel option, or whether it will feel cornered and strike out, risking a new conflict.

"We very much hope we will not be challenged as this [work] continues," said Zamir. "We hope that this quiet will continue, but continue to prepare. We are on high alert."

Hamas's military wing, the Izzadin Al-Qassam Brigades, issued a statement earlier this month saying that the underground wall "will not limit the ability of the resistance," and vowing to "find the solutions needed to overcome it."

But Hamas is unlikely to launch attacks in response to Israel's wall, Ely Karmon, a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

"They cannot initiate a military maneuver now. The timing is bad for them," he said, citing Hamas's financial woes, made worse by the fact that Qatar, under U.S. pressure, is cutting off the cash flow to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas wants to engage Egypt to improve its isolation and find a way out of its financial crisis. It just opened an office in Cairo. It cannot depend on friends like Turkey, which has a limited ability to provide assistance, Karmon said. "Beyond that, Hamas is under pressure from the Palestinian Authority. A new military clash with Israel will harm them," he said.

During his remarks, Zamir said that the "Gaza arena is stable," adding, "We have identified that Hamas remains deterred, and that it is restraining many attacks [by smaller Palestinian armed factions]."

At the same time, he said, Hamas is encouraging the flames of terrorism to spread in the West Bank, and is orchestrating terror cells remotely, as it prepares itself for future war in Gaza.

That's an assessment that was echoed by Karmon, who said Hamas is most likely to respond to Israel's improved position against the tunnels in Gaza by upping attempts to generate terrorism from the West Bank.

Hamas, together with Iran, could try to smuggle rockets into the West Bank, Karmon said, citing a directive by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to assist West Bank terrorist cells.

"The Iranians understood that Hamas is deterred in Gaza, and limited in what it can do," Karmon said.

As a result, Hamas likely will remain focused on igniting the West Bank, and using it as a launchpad for terrorist attacks on Israel, he said.

Karmon cited information unveiled by the chief of Israel's domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, in recent days, which told the government that about 200 terror attacks had been thwarted in 2017.

"Most of the big attacks [that were stopped by the Shin Bet] were organized by Hamas, not Fatah," Karmon said. "Hamas's whole campaign is focused on the West Bank, and includes using clans that support Hamas, and distributing propaganda for violent incitement. They are neutralized in Gaza, and are trying to heat up the West Bank."

Meanwhile, back in Gaza, Hamas continues neglecting the basic needs of the 2 million Palestinians it rules over, as it remains focused on its quiet military build-up, according to the chief of the IDF's Southern Command.

"Many resources in Gaza are going to the Hamas military wing. They could be used instead to improve the humanitarian situation," Zamir said. "We continue to prepare. Reality is explosive. It could deteriorate into a conflict at any time."

In addition to offensive tunnels, Hamas has built a maze of tunnels that crisscross Gaza City. Zamir described them as "an underground metro network," designed to move Hamas armed members, weapons, and logistics out of Israel's sight.

Yet Israel's Southern Command is watching these activities closely, and preparing a range of solutions designed to enable Israel to turn Hamas's underground city into a large death trap if a new conflict begins.

The IDF's Southern Command recently sent out images of civilian facilities in Gaza that Hamas uses as a cover for its military-terrorist activities.

One image is of a six-story residential building, which Hamas used to build an underground facility nearby, according to the military. The second photo is a of a home containing a family with five children, which is linked to a tunnel that leads to a mosque, enabling Hamas terrorists to move underground and use human shields as they do.

This type of activity "endangers the civilians of Gaza," Zamir cautioned. "We hope that this quiet will continue, but we are continuing to prepare, and are on high alert."

Yaakov Lappin is a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He also conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks, and is the Israel correspondent for IHS Jane's Defense Weekly. His book, The Virtual Caliphate, explores the online jihadist presence.

Source: https://www.investigativeproject.org/6683/idf-gaza-wall-may-change-hamas-terror-strategies

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Democrats Play Pak Man With National Security - Lloyd Billingsley

by Lloyd Billingsley

Another secret server expands the IT intrigue.

Back in July, when House Democrats’ mysterious IT man Imran Awan attempted to flee the country, authorities arrested him at Dulles airport on charges of bank fraud. For Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, “this appears to be a real conspiracy, aimed at undermining American national security.” Turns out, McCarthy was on to something.

“A secret server is behind law enforcement’s decision to ban a former IT aide to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the House network,” reports Luke Rosiak in the Daily Caller. Law enforcement has indicted Awan, charging that he “routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server.”

The data came from the House Democratic Caucus, once chaired by California Democrat Xavier Becerra, one of the five Caucus members who hired Awan back in 2004. Becerra and New York Rep. Gregory Meeks also put on the payroll Imran’s wife Alvi and his brother Abid. As Rosiak explains, Becerra, who became chair of the HDC in 2013, was personally responsible for “far more of the payments to the Awan family than any other member.”

In late January, after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Becerra left Congress to become Jerry Brown’s attorney general in California. As investigators told Rosiak, Becerra “wanted to wipe his server, and we brought to his attention it was under investigation.” When investigators asked for an image of the server, “they deliberately turned over a fake server.”

That amounted to “interference in a criminal investigation” and also served up evidence that Awan and his family associates, “knew exactly what they were doing and were going to great lengths to try to cover it up.” So what, exactly, were they covering up? The possibilities are rather extensive.

Awan could freely grab data from the computers of 45 House Democrats, including Henry Waxman, Jackie Speier, Tammy Duckworth, Hakeem Jeffries, Joaquin Castro, Gabrielle Giffords, Emmanuel Cleaver, Kendrick Meek and many others, including members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees.

To access that kind of information you need a security clearance, and as Andrew McCarthy noted, Awan and his gang could not possibly have qualified for such a clearance. On the other hand, for any foreign snoop, U.S. intelligence and foreign affairs information would be worth big bucks on the international market.

Awan also had free access to the computer of Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee. Wasserman Schultz hired Awan and brought aboard Abid Awan’s wife Natalia Sova and Awan’s brother Jamal. As the IT intrigue unfolded, Wasserman Schultz pushed back, threatening investigators when they sought to inspect a laptop that belonged to Awan.

He had already smashed up crucial hard drives before fleeing. Even so, as the intrepid Luke Rosiak noted, Wasserman Schultz refused to fire any of the Awans, even after they after they became targets of a criminal investigation. She further charged the Awans were victims of anti-Muslim profiling. Gregory Meeks likewise claimed Awan had been targeted because he was born in Pakistan.

Nick Fandos of the New York Times chased down Awan’s lawyer Christopher Gowen, who called the accusations “the product of an anti-Muslim, right-wing smear job.” The piece came headlined, “Trump Fuels Intrigue Surrounding a Former I.T. Worker’s Arrest.”  DNC mouthpiece Xochitl Hinojosa called the security charges “laughable,” and claimed Russia was behind the DNC hack.

Anti-Trump reactionary Xavier Becerra, who wanted the Democrats’ secret server bleached out, was once on Hillary Clinton’s short list as a running mate. The former First Lady and Secretary of State operated an unsecured private server in her home. When this became news, Clinton had the server wiped clean, her staffers smashed up other electronic gear, and nobody wanted to talk about it. 

FBI boss James Comey, who boasts a long history of helping the Clintons, found that Hillary had been extremely careless in handling classified information but chose not to bring any charges. That kept Clinton in the race, which she lost to Donald Trump. The former Secretary of State has since authored What Happened, but on her current book tour she fails to explain what, exactly, happened to the more than 30,000 emails she destroyed.

Like Clinton, the old-line media appear to believe that what, at this point, does it matter? In similar style, the establishment media show little curiosity about Imran Awan. What material did he steal from members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees?

What was on that secret server that House Democratic Caucus boss Xavier Becerra wanted wiped clean? And with so many reliable IT aides readily available, why did the Democrats choose Pakistani-born Imran Awan and his extended family? Why were they kept on the payroll and protected?

Did Imran Awan send any U.S. classified information to his homeland Pakistan? Did he sell it off to Russia, Iran, or perhaps North Korea? Nobody seems to know, not even James Comey and Robert Mueller, but some realities are clear.

“In Washington, it’s never about what they tell you it’s about,” explains Andrew McCarthy. They say the Awan affair is about bank fraud or Islamophobia, but it does appear to be a real conspiracy aimed at undermining American national security.

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/267879/democrats-play-pak-man-national-security-lloyd-billingsley

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