The United States in many ways in the anti-Europe. No where is this more so than in the freedoms enumerated in our Bill of Rights. Many countries pay lip service to human rights until you practice them in such a way that makes the far left uncomfortable. No matter how accurate or truthful one is, they will seek to persecute and silence such truths.
Wilders is being charged with…and bust out the Orwell for this one folks….”Inciting discrimination” for the “crime” of accurately pointing out the murders, rapes and massive problems unchecked Islamic immigration has caused in parts of Europe, none of which is in serious factual dispute.
Wilders is the leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands and serves as a member of parliament. His party is growing in popularity and to say that this “trial” is political is perhaps the understatement of the century. The globalist elites are desperate to shut him up.
Zara-Jayne Moisey, 25, from Widnes, has spoken about her “nightmare” and is facing jail in the Middle East after reporting that two men allegedly attacked her in a hotel.
A British woman facing jail for extra-marital sex after reporting an alleged gang rape on holiday in Dubai has told of her “nightmare” and said she’s “petrified”.
Zara-Jayne Moisey, 25, told police in the United Arab Emirates she was violently raped by two British men in the city last month.
But instead of being treated as a victim, Zara, from Widnes, who is single after splitting from her husband, was reportedly locked up on suspicion of extra-marital sex and later charged with the offence.
Her passport has been confiscated and she now faces a trial, claim her family and friends.
Her desperate family have now launched an online appeal to raise £25,000 for the legal fees needed to pay for her defence. So far nearly £15,000 has been raised.
Migrants in Germany have committed 142,500 crimes in just six months, police figures have revealed
This was the equivalent of 780 crimes a day – an increase of nearly 40 percent over 2015, according to data from Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office
It comes as German chancellor Angela Merkel remains under pressure over her open-door policy on immigration amid concerns over how to integrate 900,000 newcomers who arrived last year.
According to the Gatestone Institute, an international policy council, police in some parts of the country fear they are being stretched to the limit amid climbing crime figures.
Their report said: ‘During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40 per cent over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught.
‘Migrant crime statistics for all of 2016, when they become available, are likely to show a significant increase over the 2015 numbers. One reason for this is that thousands of migrants who entered the country as ‘asylum seekers’ or ‘refugees’ have gone missing.’
RT has an interview with Julian Assange where he demonstrates that Clinton & ISIS terror groups are funded by the same money. Hillary sent arms to both countries.
Hillary put above Top Secret information on her illegal private server that was hacked multiple times.
Charles McCullough, the Deputy Inspector General at Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) testified that the emails were TOO TOP SECRET even for Congress to see. The Deputy Inspector General didn’t even have the security clearance to see those emails. He couldn’t even tell Congress the name of the agency that the emails came from.
Watch the video:
Retired DIA and State Department career employee Greg Davis posted on his Facebook page:
Here’s a conundrum.
Hillary’s “negligence” allowed the dissemination of the most sensitive Intelligence material — i.e., Sources and Methods of Human Intelligence, Signals Intelligence, Imagery Intelligence, and Electronic Intelligence to an unlimited number of unidentified, uncleared individuals and groups — including our enemies — around the world. By now, that would include thousands of unauthorized recipients.
The Intelligence information falls into a dual category;
1) It is ORCON [Originator Controlled] meaning the parent agency solely determines who should have access on a NEED TO KNOW basis; And
2) It is SCI [Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence] which is accessible to a very limited audience.
This is Intelligence information So Sensitive that not even staff members of THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE were aware of its existence, much less its content.
But, now, it is in the hands of thousands of unauthorized people, and the disclosure of the Sources and Methods of this Intelligence puts both Intelligence programs AND personnel at risk.
The conundrum is that the Committee members who have to pass judgment on Hillary’s criminal activity can’t be cleared for access to this information in the tim available — even though the SCI/ORCON material is now ostensibly in the Public Domain.
This breach by Hillary is perhaps the most serious in the history of US national security.
Hillary, as Secretary of State, sold American uranium to the Russians and signed off on weapons deals to foreign countries, but only after they donated money to the Clinton Foundation (CGI). And even though this story has been reported in the NYT, Washington Post, AP, ABC, and a host of others, the elite media simply reported it and dropped it, thus most people are simply unaware of it.
The United States should not be for sale. Weapons for bribes. How much worse can it get? Even the very left wing Mother Jones reported this story.
Hillary Clinton Oversaw US Arms Deals to Clinton Foundation Donors. An investigation finds that countries that gave to the foundation saw an increase in State Department-approved arms sales.
Now we know from Clinton Campaign emails that Hillary’s top staff and her marketing team were well aware of this corruption and discussed how to make it go away. Read the email for yourself HERE.
On October 25th 2012 this very writer made a lengthy case that the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton at the State Department, were deliberately undermining Middle East peace by ousting secular governments who wanted peace with Israel and replacing such governments with Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda, yes, the same people who hit us on 9/11.
This very scenario did indeed come about with secular governments in Egypt and Libya being replaced with Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda while the ousting of the secular Syrian government was underway.
The Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt immediately threatened war with Israel and started exterminating Christians and other minorities. President Obama’s response to the new Muslim Brotherhood government was to sell them F-16 fighter planes, in this writer’s opinion and also quite obviously, to use against Israel.
Fortunately the Egyptian military, which is largely secular, trained in the United States, and knows very well that war with Israel is hopeless if not suicidal, overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government, took power, and worked to stop the persecution of said minorities. President Obama’s “punishment” was to demand that the Muslim Brotherhood government be restored and he halted the sale of the fighter planes.
Fast forward to Benghazi, Libya where four Americans were killed and dozens injured, secret documents in both our consulate and CIA annex were exposed, national security compromised. It was all avoidable.
We know that in spite of the fact that they asked for better security hundreds of times, Hillary stripped their security from them and Hillary actually hired an offshoot of Al-Qaeda to provide security for our consulate.
[See our previous Benghazi and Libya coverage HERE]
One of the weapons dealers the State Department used was Marc Turi. After they used him and after things went bad as they did in Benghazi, the Obama Administration decided to “tidy up” and moved to prosecute Turi and accuse him of dealing weapons to terrorists, even though he was doing so on orders from the United States Government, in particular, Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
So in order to fight back, Turi, who apparently kept meticulous records and evidence, threatened to expose Hillary’s role in all of this highly illegal activity. The Department of Justice then petitioned the Court to drop all charges against Mr. Turi and made it clear that the petition to the court was for political reasons.
Remember when Democrats Laughed at Romney when he said Russia was a geopolitical threat? Now Hillary and the Democrats can’t stop saying it.
By the RSC:
On Russia, Obama Has Completely Flipped From His 2012 Viewpoint: 7 Key Points.
The media thought President Obama’s best zinger in the October 22, 2012 debate was telling Mitt Romney “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
He also said Romney “acts like he thinks the Cold War’s on. I don’t know where he’s been.”
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev backed up Obama and said Romney was stuck in a Cold War mentality.
The Democratic Party described it as an example of “Romney vs. reality”, and claiming Russia is a foe demonstrates “Romney’s not ready.”
Gen. Joe Dunford was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Obama, and agreed with Romney’s warning. Russia’s UN envoy has said that relations with America are at their tensest in 40 years.
Romney’s position has become the conventional view, and Vladimir Putin is constantly scaring the world.
The important point is what Obama is saying today. The President has completely reversed himself and now says Russia:
1) Is hitting us with constant cyber attacks and has hacked into election sites. He claims they are trying to undermine our democracy.
2) Sanctions on Russia expire next month, and Obama is urging European leaders to keep and increase them.
3) He says Russia has broken many of their promises and is guilty of mass slaughter of innocent civilians in Syria, where over 500,000 have died.
4) He says they illegally annexed Crimea and are threatening eastern Ukraine where 10,000 have died.
5) The State Department says Russia has moved nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad and is threatening the Baltic states and Europe.
6) Russia’s state owned television news is full of nuclear threats, and reports on ballistic missiles and bomb shelters.
7) Putin has learned that he can defy America and come out on top. Mild Western sanctions make ordinary Russians worse off, but they also give the people an enemy to unite against.
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
But they don’t and never wanted any special favors right?
UPDATE – And after the million Hillary Clinton used her power as Secretary of State to approve arms deals to Qatar in spite of their known abuses. IBT:
The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.
New emails released by WikiLeaks in connection with its dump of John Podesta’s email server indicate that Qatar, an Islamist state in the Persian gulf, gave former President Bill Clinton a check for $1 million for his birthday.
The email indicates foundation officials also met with representatives from Brazil, Peru, Malawi and Rwanda to discuss donations and philanthropic strategies for the Foundation.
“[Qatar] Would like to see WJC ‘for five minutes’ in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC’s birthday in 2011,” Ami Desai, director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, wrote in 2012.
The email was sent to a number of Clinton aides, including Doug Band.
In another email two years later, Hillary Clinton noted that Qatar aides and abets the Islamic State and Sunni terrorist groups.
“While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region,” Clinton wrote.
The emails are coming out so fast that it is getting hard to catch up with them all as they are being released in chunks of 1000-4000 at a time. We will post the exact email link soon.
In her secret speeches to Wall Street bankers, Hillary Clinton backed free trade and claimed politicians need leeway to make backroom deals — and may have disclosed classified details of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, according to the latest emails disclosed by WikiLeaks.
As is made self-evident in the trailer Steve Rogers (Captain America) is working for SHIELD with Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow). Rogers begins to question SHIELD’s motives and extra-constitutional way of business.
Rogers visits a WWII museum which features some of his exploits from the war. Rogers seems to be reflecting on who he is and what Captain America really stands for. Notice the kids idolizing him just as they did back in WWII.
Rogers, at some point in the film, decides that he has to part ways with SHIELD and they try to take him into custody. The people Rogers fights in the elevator are SHIELD agents who work for a division of SHIELD called STRIKE. They have STRIKE pins, badges and one has a a STRIKE patch on his arm. Notice that the two men in the quinjet with Rogers and Romanoff at the beginning are two of the men in the elevator.
In the screenshot below you can see both Rogers and Romanoff in civilian clothes. This seems to take place after Rogers leaves SHIELD. Does Romanoff agree with Rogers and decide to go with him or is Romanoff just playing along to keep tabs on Rogers? We will have to wait for the film to find out. Romanoff is a ruthless liar and killer, but as we saw in The Avengers she is trying to find and establish a moral compass.
Below we see an old SHIELD logo from the late 1940’s. Notice it has the Stars & Stripes shield in the center much like Captain America’s first shield made of iron.
Cap sheds his new SHIELD issued uniform and puts on his old 1940’s uniform. Cap is obviously making it clear that he is Captain AMERICA, he is Captain Steve Rogers U.S. Army; not Captain SHIELD and not Captain international surveillance state. All surveillance state’s become states ran by fear, just as we are seeing in our own government here in the real world. In the trailer Falcon is also seen in battle against a SHIELD quinjet.
As a matter of absolute clarity, SHIELD is an agency with much more than its fair share of liars and killers; they most certainly do violate human rights (in the Marvel Universe). As far as we know, little stands in SHIELD’s way other than people such as Agent Coulson who do have some moral compass.
In episode one of Agents of SHIELD, Agent Ward asked Coulson if he should “scratch off” – meaning murder – members of “The Rising Tide”, an idealistic hactivist group. Coulson’s reaction was one of shock…fortunately.
Those who watch Agents of SHIELD on ABC television are being lulled into a false sense of security. Agent Coulson is a good man, and I suspect that because he IS a good man they have him working assignments on The Bus to keep him, and any would be objections from him, out of the way. Coulson is a threat to SHIELD because if any one man has the influence to turn the Avengers against SHIELD it is Phil Coulson.
While SHIELD is the hero in the show, let us not forget that in several ways they are also an anti-hero (a key dynamic that makes SHIELD so interesting). Power corrupts …and not every SHIELD authority figure is Agent Coulson.
Stark, Banner, Rogers and Thor were and do remain skeptical of SHIELD. SHIELD Director Nick Fury lied to their faces about just wanting the Tesseract to be a “warm light for all mankind”. Fury was in mid-sentence lying to Rogers’ face about using the Tesseract to make weapons when Jarvis finished hacking SHIELD and Stark said, “What were you lying?”
This writer has always liked Captain America because he keeps it real, he keeps things in perspective, he does not let agendas trump principles – in short he IS good. I am impressed that Joss Wheadon is exploring how truly on the edge of dangerous SHIELD is to its own charter.
The Obama administration often touts the Iran sanctions it once opposed. In the final presidential debate Oct. 22, President Barack Obama said his administration had “organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy.”
The new Iran sanctions still must survive a House-Senate conference over the defense authorization bill, during which conferees may try to change certain portions of the new sanctions regime. Hill aides predict the White House will try to alter the new sanctions during that process, in what they would likely see as an effort to water them down.
“The truth is that the U.S. Congress continues to lead a comprehensive and unrelenting international sanctions program against the Iranian regime despite a comprehensive and unrelenting campaign by this administration to block or water down those sanctions at every move,” a senior GOP Senate aide told The Cable. “We beat them 100-0 last year and while they tried to kill this amendment more quietly this time, we beat them again 94-0. Hopefully House and Senate negotiators will stay strong and resist the administration’s strategy to dilute these sanctions in conference.”
The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday.
The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.
Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2 percent drop in the second quarter.
Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone’s 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy back into recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.
A rebound in Europe is still far off. The debt crisis that began in Greece in late 2009 is still reverberating around the globe and holding back a lasting recovery.
Analysts said even the euro zone’s top two economies were likely to succumb in the final three months of the year.
Christians, veterans, church goers, and people who are pro-life are dangerous militants according to Obama’s Department of Homeland Security. Radicalized Muslims are not even mentioned.
When you are done reading be sure to see Benghazigate Part I and the following link has all of our coverage on this emerging scandal.
In a nutshell what is new:
More evidence on the timeline and what the White House knew and when they knew it.
New documents discovered show that Chris Stevens told the State Department that Al-Qaeda forces were gathering in Benghazi and that he believes the consulate was next. His warning was ignored.
Ambassador Chris Stevens called and spoke with Gregory Hicks, The Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli, begging for help as the attack began. We had TWO drones overhead. Hicks notified Washington.
Ed Klein reports that Hillary Clinton also asked President Obama to send in help and he said no.
CBS News releases information form confidential emails showing that Obama would not even assemble the counter terrorism group and reports that they were told to stand down.
Ambassador Stevens’ emails to State Department: Al-Qaeda forces are gathering in Benghazi and this consulate is the next target.
His warnings, which were classified by the Obama Administration but leaked, came in the weeks and even hours before the attacks so why were his security teams taken away, even under protest? Previous requests for more security were not only denied, but they were told to stop making the requests.
Catherine Herridge in the video below: The State Department has culpability in the deaths of these four Americans. The warnings were specific, they were direct, they named the enemy and they said that this consulate needed more support. Stevens said that the Consulate should move long term into the CIA Annex. [Diana West has a transcript of Heridge’s remarks in the video below as well as more details on the terror groups mention. Nice work Diana – Editor.]
Also in this video Intelligence Committee member Jason Chaffetz: Ambassador Chris Stevens called and spoke with Gregory Hicks, The Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli, begging for help as the attack began. Hicks notified Washington.
Chaffetz says that he spoke with (former as of a few days ago) AFRICOM commander Gen. Carter Ham personally. Chaffetz says Ham told him, “he did not get a directive from the White House, from the president of the United States to engage in the fire fight to help protect those people.”
“Mr. President, you can’t have it both ways,” Chaffetz added. “You can’t say that you are doing everything you can to protect the people in Benghazi when we are under attack — a fire fight that starts at 9:40 at night and goes to the wee hours of the morning — and say you did everything when the military did not engage.” Says Cheffetz, we had proximity, we had capability, and we had opportunity and the President would not pull the trigger.
Emails from the embassy staff to the State Department, local military commands such as AFRICOM, the CIA, DoD, DNI, and the White House Situation Room were sent DURING the attack. They watched the attack in real time via the drones flying overhead.
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer along with Col. David Hunt said that his sources say that Obama was one of the people in the room watching the Benghazi attack. Col. Hunt explains how and who was watching the live feed from the two drones overhead. Says Col. Hunt, “This was also the fourth embassy in 24 hours to come under attack so the entire U.S. Government was paying attention”.
[Editor’s Note – Col. Hunt says that the President or the Secretary of Defense could have ordered the military to intervene, but it didn’t happen. President Obama said that he ordered the military to do all that they could to help, did the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta disobey that order or is Obama lying again? Remember that after the “it was the video” lie was busted the next lie was “it was the fog of war, we had no communication, then we had too much communication” then after that the story was that we didn’t know what was going on and we didn’t want to send our guys into an ambush. But what better data is there than contact with people on the ground and two drones giving a live feed?
There are standing orders to preserve American life when such a call comes in. Why were those orders not followed or were commands ordered to stand down?
Local CIA teams were told to stand down multiple times during the attack while in contact with Washington. The AC-130 gunship was certainly overhead because one of our people on the ground was painting the mortar target with a handheld laser designator that works with the fire control system of an AC-130. You do not waste batteries on the laser designator and make yourself a target in the process if you are not in direct contact with close air support.]
Two U.S. officials tell Eli Lake at The Daily Beast that the State Department never requested military backup the night of the attack.
Arab TV is reporting that documents found at the site confirm that Stevens was sending emails about the security situation HOURS before the attack. Foreign Policy Magazine also has the story:
BENGHAZI, Libya — More than six weeks after the shocking assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi — and nearly a month after an FBI team arrived to collect evidence about the attack – the battle-scarred, fire-damaged compound where Ambassador Chris Stevens and another Foreign Service officer lost their lives on Sept. 11 still holds sensitive documents and other relics of that traumatic final day, including drafts of two letters worrying that the compound was under “troubling” surveillance and complaining that the Libyan government failed to fulfill requests for additional security.
When we visited on Oct. 26 to prepare a story for Dubai based Al Aan TV, we found not only Stevens’s personal copy of the Aug. 6 New Yorker, lying on remnants of the bed in the safe room where Stevens spent his final hours, but several ash-strewn documents beneath rubble in the looted Tactical Operations Center, one of the four main buildings of the partially destroyed compound. Some of the documents — such as an email from Stevens to his political officer in Benghazi and a flight itinerary sent to Sean Smith, a U.S. diplomat slain in the attack — are clearly marked as State Department correspondence.Others are unsigned printouts of messages to local and national Libyan authorities. The two unsigned draft letters are both dated Sept. 11 and express strong fears about the security situation at the compound on what would turn out to be a tragic day. They also indicate that Stevens and his team had officially requested additional security at the Benghazi compound for his visit — and that they apparently did not feel it was being provided.
One letter, written on Sept. 11 and addressed to Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ office in Benghazi, reads:
“Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission. The police car stationed where this event occurred was number 322.”
The account accords with a message written by Smith, the IT officer who was killed in the assault, on a gaming forum on Sept. 11. “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures,” he wrote hours before the assault.
White House has disclosed that President Obama was informed about the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi at roughly 5pm by his National Security Adviser Tom Donilon as he was in a pre-scheduled meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. At that meeting, senior administration officials say, the President ordered that the U.S. begin moving military assets into the region to prepare for a range of contingencies.
We believe this is misinformation. We know that there was a previously scheduled meeting with President Obama at 5pm, which is an hour and twenty minutes into the attack. What we do not believe was that this was the first that the President knew about the attack. As Col. Hunt said, this was September 11th and three of our embassies had already been attacked that day. The entire US Government was watching. Everyone was on a heightened state of readiness.
Remember when we said that the Obama administration may be in denial of terrorism because they were caught up in a “mission accomplished” mentality? Today there are reports that President Obama said in a speech in Ohio that bin Laden is dead and Al-Qaeda is finished. After Al-Qaeda killed our people in Libya they flew the Al-Qaeda flag over our consulate.
Did Barack Obama have a “Mission Accomplished” moment with dreadful consequences in Libya? Libya’s former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril believes he did.
Perhaps you’ll recall when George W. Bush stood on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and a banner positioned behind him read “Mission Accomplished” regarding Iraq on May 1, 2003. It was a moment that haunted him throughout the rest of his presidency and beyond, as the Iraq War continued on for eight and a half more years.
And just as many Democrats say Bush made a premature call after the sacking of Baghdad and the toppling of the Hussein regime, so too the former Libyan PM says Obama counted his eggs before they hatched.
Jibril has “accused the United States and its NATO allies of high-tailing it out of [Libya] as soon as dictator Moammar Gadhafi was disposed a year ago.” He says the quick departure created “a power vacuum” that has allowed radicals, like those who attacked the Benghazi consulate, to strengthen their numbers and flourish.
According to Jibril:
After the collapse of the regime, the immediate task of our friends was to help us rebuild the government before they withdrew from Libya. [But] the moment the regime fell down, they felt that their mission [had] been accomplished. I think it was a premature decision.
Ed Klein, a confidant of Bill Clinton (known as one of the Clintonista’s) tells Andrew Wilkow that Hillary Clinton asked President Obama to respond as the attack happened and Obama refused. See the video interview HERE.
CBS News: Counterterrorism Security Group told to stand down
CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG).
“The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,” a high-ranking government official told CBS News. “They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.”
Information shared with CBS News from top counterterrorism sources in the government and military reveal keen frustration over the U.S. response on Sept. 11, the night ambassador Chris Stevens and 3 other Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya.
The circumstances of the attack, including the intelligence and security situation there, will be the subject of a Senate Intelligence Committee closed hearing on Nov. 15, with additional hearings to follow.
Counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News express frustration that key responders were ready to deploy, but were not called upon to help in the attack.
Now read carefully – from CBS:
Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.
“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” says an official referring to top officials in the executive branch. “My fellow counterterrorism professionals and I (were) not consulted.”
This of course is a bomb shell. What is interesting is that Speaker Newt Gingrich said that he knows of two major news agencies that have these emails, including the story about the stand down order, and that a Senator told him of this [probably the same Senator who leaked it to CBS and Glenn Beck in the first place who is almost certainly an Intelligence Committee member – Editor].
What is even more interesting is that Glen Beck not only said the same thing but he threatened that if said major news network waited until after the election to release these emails that he would out them, name names, etc. Hours later CBS released the story above.
Greg Davis, a retired DIA and State Department official tells Political Arena, “I think this is the first time in modern history where we can absolutely NOT trust our President to protect our troops; in this case, we need to protect them from him”. Davis has a light hearted blog where he talks about deadly serious things and offers up some of his speculation and what information he is still able to glean. He is not happy that our people were allowed to die while the White House situation room watched.
UPDATE – Followup report from Jennifer Griffon: More on the ground sources confirm they asked for help and were ordered to stand down – LINK:
On Sunday’s political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration’s response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here’s Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS’s Face the Nation:
You know, this administration is very good at touting and giving all the details like when they got Bin Laden. But now, we know that there were tapes, recordings inside the consulate during this fight, and they’ve gotten—they came—the F.B.I. finally got in and took those, and now they’re classified as “top secret.” Why would they be top secret? So the president went on various shows, despite what he said he said in the Rose Garden, about terrorist acts, he went on several programs, including “The View” including “Letterman” including before the U.N., where he continued to refer, days later, many days later, to this as a spontaneous demonstration because of a hateful video. We know that is patently false. What did the president know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?
McCain said for “literally days and days” the White House “told the American people something that had no basis in fact whatsoever.”
Newt Gingrich, on ABC’s This Week:
But the bigger issue is, whether it’s unemployment or it is what happened in Benghazi, where we’ve had this strange situation over the weekend that the Secretary of Defense apparently refused to obey the President’s order, if the president is telling the truth and he actually instructed his assistants to get aid to Benghazi, we’re now being told that the Secretary of Defense canceled that. And I think these kinds of things all drag down the Obama campaign.
Ohio senator Rob Portman talked on Fox News Sunday about a “shocking breakdown” with regard to the Obama administration’s response:
This is not about politics. This is about a huge national security issue that affects all of us and there was a shocking breakdown, operationally, not to have the security there in the first place. And then not to respond to these guys, in their pleas for help for 7 hours, during a firefight. It’s unbelievable and now, we are hearing that the president of the United States, based on his own words, issued a directive immediately after he found out about the firefight, saying that he wanted to be sure those people on the ground were safe and they were getting what they needed. It didn’t happen. This means either that the president’s order was not followed, which would be a breakdown in terms of the White House procedure, or, it means the order wasn’t issued. We need to find out about this, it is not about politics, it is a very serious situation. After the fact, of course, there’s also been a lot of confusion about what happened and why it happened.
Here’s Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, also on Fox News Sunday:
Chris, the American people have the right to know. And that is what they are demanding here in Wisconsin. I mean, let’s face it. What was the president doing during those 7 hours? Did he give that directive? Or didn’t he? Did Leon Panetta directly defy his directive? I mean, what happened? Who sent out, who sent Ambassador Rice out five days later when they knew it was a terrorist attack, that it was pre-planned, sent her out on the Sunday talk shows to say that in fact this was a spontaneous reaction to of course the video?
Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, on CNN’s State of the Union:
The mishandling of the situation in Benghazi. No answers, no transparency, 45 days after the fact is a great concern. Either the president gave an order that was disobeyed by the Secretary of Defense to provide support in Benghazi or he didn’t, and I think people want answers before this election on that, so that’s what’s going to determine the outcome.
The “it was the video” concocted story was a manufactured lie for political reasons that we explained previously HERE.
Emails from the administration are being leaked and it is now clear that members of the Obama Administration and likely members of the intelligence community have turned against Obama and his concocted story. Obama scolded Governor Romney in the debate how he resented having his truthfulness questioned when it comes to national security.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.
U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.
MISSIVES FROM LIBYA
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”
The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”
A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.
Related:
Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video) – LINK
White House Timeline Video of Lies About Embassy Attacks – LINK
Complete transcript fact-check of the debate – LINK
Frank Luntz Reaction From Undecided Voters Immediately After Final Presidential Debate – LINK
Hi all. I live blogged it while I was listening to it on the radio. I will outline my thoughts and clean it up later as I am dead tired.
I had three initial observations.
1- Obama is trying to posture Romney by talking down to him.
2- On some issues such as Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood neither of them is willing to say what needs to be said about the leadership and our strategy there. It is the elephant in the room that they are both dancing around.
3 – Obama’s strategy is smart as a matter of rhetoric: Find every slight inconsistency in every statement Romney has ever made on these issues over the last few years and make a mountain out of it…. thus distracting people from the “its because of the video” lie and other lies coming from this administration (like fast and furious and other issues). Of course as time goes on the situation on the ground changes and thus what Obama’s critics say will change in light of that…. so 100% statement consistency over the course of several years would show foolishness and Romney should have said so.
Romney was smart to ding Obama on skipping Israel on his apology tour. Obama, responds by talking about about what he did much later, not even addressing the apology tour. Of course what he did much later doesn’t help the bad message that Obama sent when he did that as it set an attitude that shaped what has happened in the middle east since. I think that to the uninformed Obama won. Obama’s narrative on the middle east was such utter nonsense and so easily demonstrated so and Romney really failed to capitalize on that. I think that Romney went in with a strategy of being agreeable and safe, but is THAT the kind of leadership we are looking for?
And Obama takes credit for the Iron Dome missile defense shield in Israel when he and his party opposed this technology from minute one?
On Mubarak and Egypt:
Leave him there or side with him? First of all let’s be clear, the people especially women and Christians were better under Mubarak. Muslim Brotherhood is seeking out political enemies and crucifying them, using armored vehicles against Christians etc.
When we worked with Britain and The Vatican to undermine the communists in Eastern Europe we cultivated that resistance over the course of years. We knew who they are and we were ready for the big push when the time came.
But in the so called “Arab Spring” we didn’t know who we are helping and the Muslim Brotherhood played the State Department and the White House like a Stradivarius.
And after it became obvious that we were helping the bad guys who were talking peace and democracy and never meant it this White House was committed and wouldn’t change course…probably for political reasons…or worse.
Obama worked to set up a narrative or vision of his policy in the middle east, of course it was wishful thinking and a total coverup of the evils that are going on there as perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood whom Obama helped bring to power. Romney was weaker on the battle of the narratives. I sorta wish we had Newt tonight because this would have been such a one sided blowout if he was there.
Also, foreign policy debates like this require boldness and the ability to construct/deconstruct a narrative expertly. What if you face a situation like the old Iran/Iraq war when it served global interests to make sure that neither side won that war? Or what if you have the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda vs Assad in Syria and a “bait & bleed” strategy serves interests best? Sometimes there are no good answers and the options are “terrible and “more terrible”.
Mitt had a few good moments, but not enough to warrant a sweeping win:
Obama’s crack “The Cold War is Over” may sound cute, but someone forgot to tell Putin
On a side note – I am watching a video of Sarah Palin’s post debate analysis and she has this thing nailed pretty well. I want to know who is advising her because she has been hitting home-runs for about the last 20 months on this stuff.
My worst fear with Mitt Romney is that he may have failed into the Bill Kristol/State Department false narrative which I wrote about HERE:
There are/were many in the State Department, elite media and some in the Republican Party who have totally bought into the propaganda from the Muslim Brotherhood–that they want peace, free elections, and so forth–when anyone who studies their history going back to WWII knows very well what their agenda is. Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard, as well as some on the famed internet Republican Security Council, fell for the “Arab Spring” false narrative. How quickly we forget history. The Mullah’s in Iran spoke to the Carter Administration about freedom, democracy and social justice; look at what they did as soon as they got into power. The same goes for what happened in Lebanon, and then Gaza when they had elections. Now look at the disaster that is Egypt and Libya, and yet some Republicans continue to say we should help Syrian rebels with arms, which would essentially be handing Syria as well to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda.
Republicans would love to see a genuine democratic, pro-western revolution in the Muslim world as we had in Eastern Europe, but today many forget that it took years of cooperation between Reagan, Thatcher, and the Vatican to cultivate pro-western forces and influences in secret right under the communist’s nose. We were ready to come in with monetary, logistical and other support when those forces made a major push. We knew very well who it was we were supporting, and we had an overall strategic concept in mind. Many Republicans jumped on the Arab Spring bandwagon because they bought the pie in the sky narrative from the State Department and they really wanted to believe it. Why? Because the false narrative targeted the freedom loving sensitivities of most Republicans perfectly. In short, they selected tidbits of truth, omitted others, and made a false reality that fit ever so perfectly into an ideological box.
I am concerned because Dan Senor is Mitt Romney’s chief foreign policy adviser and Kristol is one of Senor’s mentors, but that is as far as I can go with my concern’s with Senor because the sins of the mentor do not necessarily fall on the student and I have no idea what Senor is telling Romney. In my opinion, based on what I saw tonight, it is clear that Niall Ferguson has a much more objective and more intelligent view on middle east policy.
Here is a fact check of the debate from Chris Wallace:
This is not the first time the Obama Administration has helped these groups with arms. He helped them take over Egypt and he helped them take over parts of Libya – VIDEO (Megynn Kelley and Marc Thiessen from AEI). The Muslim Brotherhood is the most organized group in Syria at the moment.
The situation is portrayed as a crazed dictator indiscriminately slaughtering his own people who want democracy – and that description is a load nonsense if their ever was one. We were told the exact same thing about Libya and Egypt, and as soon as we helped the Muslim Brotherhood take over the freedom crowd vanished instantly. The Muslim Brotherhood is now murdering Christians in Egypt, murdering black Africans in Libya, imposing Sharia Law and abusing women. The now Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt is sabre rattling at Israel
The dictators in the Middle East kept the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Qaeda’s at bay. Mubarak was critical to maintaining the Israeli/Egyptian Peace Treaty and many of the worlds terror groups want to replace the Arab dictators with Sharia inspired regimes.
Now President Obama is arming the Middle East to the gills, including modern M1 battle tanks to Egypt in spite of the fact that the new authorities are engaging in Taliban like behavior such as attacking peaceful Coptic Christians with armored military vehicles.
If our entire policy is designed to undermine Israel’s security it explains why Obama was not interested in helping the Iranian freedom movement.
There has been every indication, as Prof. Niall Ferguson (video) pointed out as the Egyptian protests began in early 2011, that the so called “Arab Spring” is being coordinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
With all of this information now known so publicly, advocacy of Syrian intervention is not only irrational, it aids our enemies and Israel’s enemies in the middle-east.
Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria
October 15, 2012 6:03 pm
By DAVID E. SANGER / The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.
The assessment of the arms flows comes at a crucial time for Mr. Obama, in the closing weeks of the election campaign with two debates looming that will focus on his foreign policy record. But it also calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.
In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that rebel groups “who share our values” would “obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.” That suggests he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them.
But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.
American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.
Those problems were central concerns for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said.
The C.I.A. has not commented on Mr. Petraeus’s trip, made to a region he knows well from his days as the Army general in charge of Central Command, which is responsible for all American military operations in the Middle East. Officials of countries in the region say that Mr. Petraeus has been deeply involved in trying to steer the supply effort, though American officials dispute that assertion.
One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the U.S. thinks it can work with.” According to American and Arab officials, the C.I.A. has sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence about many rebel figures and factions.
Another Middle Eastern diplomat whose government has supported the Syrian rebels said his country’s political leadership was discouraged by the lack of organization and the ineffectiveness of the disjointed Syrian opposition movement, and had raised its concerns with American officials. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing delicate intelligence issues, said the various rebel groups had failed to assemble a clear military plan, lacked a coherent blueprint for governing Syria afterward if the Assad government fell, and quarreled too often among themselves, undercutting their military and political effectiveness.
“We haven’t seen anyone step up to take a leadership role for what happens after Assad,” the diplomat said. “There’s not much of anything that’s encouraging. We should have lowered our expectations.”
The disorganization is strengthening the hand of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, some with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda, he said: “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength.”
American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed. That depends on what happens in the arms bazaar that has been feeding the rebel groups. In several towns along the Turkey-Syria border, rebel commanders can be found seeking weapons and meeting with shadowy intermediaries, in a chaotic atmosphere where the true identities and affiliations of any party can be extremely difficult to ascertain.
Late last month in the Turkish border town of Antakya, at least two men who had recently been in Syria said they had seen Islamist rebels buying weapons in large quantities and then burying them in caches, to be used after the collapse of the Assad government. But it was impossible to verify these accounts, and other rebels derided the reports as wildly implausible.
Moreover, the rebels often adapt their language and appearance in ways they hope will appeal to those distributing weapons. For instance, many rebels have grown the long, scraggly beards favored by hard-line Salafi Muslims after hearing that Qatar was more inclined to give weapons to Islamists.
The Saudis and Qataris are themselves relying on intermediaries — some of them Lebanese — who have struggled to make sense of the complex affiliations of the rebels they deal with.
“We’re trying to improve the process,” said one Arab official involved in the effort to provide small arms to the rebels. “It is a very complex situation in Syria, but we are learning.”
Robert F. Worth and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
This is likely unprecedented. A president has never, so far in my research, prevented the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee in Congress from asking a member of the military direct questions. This is stonewalling.
Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, a California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stopped short Saturday of calling President Obama a liar. But he says the administration is keeping the American people in the dark when it comes to the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
McKeon tells Fox News’ “America’s News Headquarters” he doesn’t know why the Obama administration is dodging questions and blocking the efforts of some lawmakers to get answers.
“They ought to just tell everything they know,” says McKeon. “When there is a cover-up, it’s always worse than the incident itself. They ought to just come clean and tell us what happened. Admit that mistakes were made and make corrections for the future because this is just going to be a deeper and bigger hole they’re digging.”
To add more fuel to the fire, a spokesman for McKeon tells Fox News that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta office stepped in and prevented four senior military officers from answering McKeon’s questions concerning security at the consulate, effectively blocking the investigation. McKeon’s spokesman calls this “nearly unprecedented.”
While on Fox, McKeon acknowledged that he has questioned “senior commanders” within the military about the Benghazi terror attacks and says they’re stonewalling.
“Essentially what I wanted to know was had they or anyone in their command warned the State Department of any problem that they had in Libya or had offered any help,” says McKeon.
The congressman went on to say he gave those commanders 24 hours to respond. On Friday, they did saying they would not and could not respond in a timely manner. McKeon says just thinking Ambassador Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi without adequate protection “sickens him.”
People like to believe in the veracity of their own perceptions; literally they want to believe what they believe is in fact true. That has always been a fact of life, and this writer isn’t going to change it. However, what has changed is that our culture and society no longer reinforces practices, ideas and daily rituals that helped to keep that particular problem in check, making Americans better critical thinkers, and gave Americans a special collective wisdom.
Years ago Professor Christopher Lasch penned an article in Harpers titled “The Lost Art of Argument” where he lamented the so called “objective journalism” (which is anything but) model (from Walter Lippmann) as a tool for elites to set agendas and control the conversation on main street. The power of the elite media narrative is difficult to overstate, as it is much like group think. Everyone wants to be included and accepted, and if you stand out against such group narratives some will resent it. Most people do not realize just how easily they are persuaded by manufactured group narratives. Allow me to demonstrate with a few examples of popular group think narratives that many people still believe.
“Gravitas”. For those who are politically aware, and were so before the 2000 election, the word gravitas conjures up an image of former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Why? Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it well:
RUSH LIMBAUGH has been having some fun lately, playing back recordings of politicians and media people, who have been repeating the word “gravitas” like parrots, day after day. Before Dick Cheney was announced as Governor George W. Bush’s choice for vice presidential candidate, practically nobody used the word. Now everybody and his brother seems to be using it.
The political spin is that Governor Bush lacks “gravitas” — weight — and that Dick Cheney was picked in an effort to supply what the governor lacks.
In other words, the fact that Bush picked somebody solid for his running mate has been turned into something negative by the spinmeisters. The fact that media liberals echo the very same word, again and again, shows their partisan loyalties — and their lack of originality.
How many people believe that “former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is ignorant”?
Perhaps some of you who are reading this very piece continue to buy into this false narrative. Just so you realize how much you have been effected I will pose the following: did you know that in her infamous interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson ABC had edited out portions of her substantive answers to make her look ignorant? Did you know that ABC did this again in her interview with Barbara Walters. Remember when Charlie Gibson asked her a question about the Bush Doctrine that “Palin got all wrong”? Well, depending on what political historian you talk to there are five or six Bush Doctrines of which Governor Palin and Charlie Gibson each described one accurately. Atlantic Monthly, a left-wing political magazine, went back and did an exhausting review of her time as governor and concluded that she did a great job and pointed out how she was an innovative and competent executive. Odds are that people who buy into the false narrative that Palin is ignorant don’t know any of this.
“Republicans want to gut Social Security.”
The truth is that Reagan (Republican) saved the program with key reforms without decreasing benefits. It was President Clinton (Democrat) who increased the tax on Social Security benefits on the middle class which amounted to a benefit cut. It was George W. Bush (Republican) who tried to get at least a part of Social Security put into individual growth accounts so that Congress couldn’t spend your money (Democrats in Congress stopped him), and it was President Obama (Democrat) who has kept up a Social Security payroll contribution cut that is blowing an even bigger whole in the program. Odds are that people who bought into this narrative didn’t know any of that.
“Republicans want to get rid of Medicare.”
I regularly encounter uninformed voters who buy into this particular false narrative. It was Democrats, with Obamacare, who gutted $716 billion (over 10 years) from an already in trouble Medicare program without a single Republican vote. It was Republicans who added the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit (Part-D) which is not only popular, but gives seniors a choice of plans. This was accomplished at 40% under budget because the program was designed so well. One current Republican idea is to redesign the other parts of Medicare to work in a way that is similar to Medicare Part-D, so that it too can be more efficient and save money to help rescue the program. Democrats say no. Odds are that people who bought into this narrative didn’t know any of that (gee I am getting repetitive).
“Democrats want to tax the rich.”
This is perhaps the biggest false narrative of all. The Democratic Party leadership has never been interested in taxing the very rich. They have been “taxing the rich” for 50 years. Is it just a coincidence that they just happened to keep missing the target? President Obama gave the speech at Google, which paid 2.4% federal tax on 3.1 billion in income. In that speech he trashed the Chamber of Commerce for fighting against raising the tax on most small businesses which actually employ people from 35.5% to 39.9% . In the 2008 elections President Obama railed against Wall Street, but not only did he take more money from Wall Street and “the big banks” and such, but as if to add insult, their executives became the who’s who of those running his administration (LINK – LINK). Keep in mind that CNN once said Obama attacks private equity at 6am and is fundraising with private equity at 6pm. Wall Street and the big banks made more under three years of Obama than they did under eight years of Bush. His Treasury Secretary says that taxes on small businesses must rise so that government doesn’t shrink, and Obama’s new health care taxes target you, not just the rich. All of the stimulus and spending and so forth all in the name of the poor sounded nice, but look who got rich. Odds are that people who buy into this narrative know none of this (really there is a point to this).
Such false narratives are not merely myths that people fall into, they become emotionally invested in them, to the point where some people will say anything to support them:
MORE – Watch people lie about the political debate they never saw – VIDEO
False narratives rely on three crutches:
1 – The first is the selective promotion of key facts, combined with the suppression and/or omission of key fundamental truths. The use of a key fact that is partially true, when inserted into the false narrative, creates clear disconnects from the fundamental truths of the situation or event.
Politicians are masters of this. The second Obama/Romney debate is a classic example. In the debate section on the brutal slaughter of Americans at our consulate in Libya, the administration knowingly put out a false narrative that our people were killed by a flash mob upset by a video on YouTube. The White House created this deception because it was caught in a “Mission Accomplished” moment from having created a false narrative which stated that because Usama bin Laden was out of the picture, Al-Qaeda was beaten (The truth is that Al-Qaeda’s umbrella organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been actively helped by this Administration) . When caught, the White House tried to rewrite history, and focused on a key assertion–that Obama used the word terror in one speech describing the attack, as if that somehow dismantles two weeks of willing deception.
2 – Delivery of the few selected facts delivered with an attitude (an emotional trigger) that creates the false narrative.
A good example of this comes from a piece I read in the Washington Post some years ago. The article stated there had been documented misuses of the Patriot Act in order to wrongly access the private information of innocent citizens, and the Attorney General refused to state whether he would press criminal charges. This sounds quite ominous doesn’t it? Thirteen paragraphs later we learn that the error rate had been about 1.5%, comprised of honest mistakes, and all were caught by the internal Justice Department Inspector General whose job it is to find and correct errors. Consider the entirety of the pertinent facts, remove the emotionally charged delivery, and the message is quite different from the headline, would you not agree? Most newspaper editors know that the majority of readers never get passed the fifth paragraph in a newspaper piece. This type of deception is known as attitude change propaganda. Attitude change propaganda is not produced by accident.[Note – today reported abuses of the Patriot Act are higher. We are aware of this, so please do not blow up our inbox – Editor]
3 – Repetition. Joseph Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie”.
This is why truth itself can become an enemy to some, and why those telling the truth are often disregarded, maligned and ridiculed. Once again we can look to the Washington Post for an example. Remember the Valerie Plame story? Remember when the White House outed a CIA Agent because her husband, Joe Wilson, had written a letter saying that President Bush made false claims in a speech? Well there was one problem; this entire story was based on a small stack of lies, and virtually none of the narrative that was repeated over and over in the Washington Post and the elite media was true, and the Post well knew it. This very writer wrote a 40 page article on the Washington Posts’ coverage of this story. Day after day, on page one, the Post repeated Joe Wilson’s lies and perpetuated the false narrative, while at times even on the very same day on the editorial page or buried in the paper, they would tell the truth about what was going on and explain how the evidence clearly showed that Wilson lied about nearly every aspect of his story.
I have been pretty tough on the left in this article because deception and propaganda is fully endorsed by many leftist/progressive thinkers such as Mao, Walter Lippmann, Joseph Goebbels, nearly all writers from the Frankfurt School, and Saul Alinsky. The progressive leadership in this country uses lies as a tool for calculated aggression.
This is not to say that the American right is free of the problems of false narratives, group think, and ideological boxes either.
There are/were many in the State Department, elite media and some in the Republican Party who have totally bought into the propaganda from the Muslim Brotherhood–that they want peace, free elections, and so forth–when anyone who studies their history going back to WWII knows very well what their agenda is. Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard, as well as some on the famed internet Republican Security Council, fell for the “Arab Spring” false narrative. How quickly we forget history. The Mullah’s in Iran spoke to the Carter Administration about freedom, democracy and social justice; look at what they did as soon as they got into power. The same goes for what happened in Lebanon, and then Gaza when they had elections. Now look at the disaster that is Egypt and Libya, and yet some Republicans continue to say we should help Syrian rebels with arms, which would essentially be handing Syria as well to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda.
Republicans would love to see a genuine democratic, pro-western revolution in the Muslim world as we had in Eastern Europe, but today many forget that it took years of cooperation between Reagan, Thatcher, and the Vatican to cultivate pro-western forces and influences in secret right under the communist’s nose. We were ready to come in with monetary, logistical and other support when those forces made a major push. We knew very well who it was we were supporting, and we had an overall strategic concept in mind. Many Republicans jumped on the Arab Spring bandwagon because they bought the pie in the sky narrative from the State Department and they really wanted to believe it. Why? Because the false narrative targeted the freedom loving sensitivities of most Republicans perfectly. In short, they selected tidbits of truth, omitted others, and made a false reality that fit ever so perfectly into an ideological box.
Some so called “neo-cons” (by their critics) of the GOP may like to shape reality into something neat and tidy, but they aren’t the only ones. Many Ron Paul supporters are just as guilty of this. They argue that the U.S. should adopt some form of neo-isolationism. While it is clear that for the sake of finances we need to have a foreign policy that is less flamboyant, trade still needs to be protected with a serious Navy; the diplomatic credibility of the United States must still be backed up with military capability. If you want to see an economic collapse like the world has never witnessed, park the US Navy at home and it won’t take long. Many Ron Paul supporters say that “neo-cons” are “chicken-hawks” who have never served in the armed forces, and who would never send their sons to die “in some Middle East hell hole” (their words not mine). While it is true that some who may be labled as neo-cons have never served, the truth is that many who agree with at least some of that policy have served and have family who are serving.
Another example of taking reality and manipulating it is the often heard claim from Ron Paul supporters that militant Islamists attack us because of our foreign policy, and the argument that if it wasn’t for “neo-cons” we would not get attacked. When I run into people who say this I ask them, “Militant Islamists attack and kill Hindus in India. What is it about Hindu foreign policy that makes Islamists do this? How about the Buddhists who lived in Afghanistan? In Afghanistan the Islamists ran the Buddhists out and blew up their monasteries and artifacts. What about the Islamists in Southern Thailand who like to kill school teachers who dare to educate little girls? When the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt with the aid of the Obama Administration, what is it that Coptic Christians did to cause the Muslim Brotherhood to attack them with armored vehicles? This is usually about that time where I start getting called all sorts of colorful names. The most experienced Middle-Eastern war correspondent says that those who believe the “its because of our policy” argument are fooling themselves.
We are experiencing a wholesale breakdown of critical thinking in this country and most of the learned academics I know have confided this to me directly. I have noticed this myself in my studies. How did this happen? Professor Lasch was rather fond of the old fashioned “partisan press” that we used to have before the “Lippmann Objective Model”. In those days each town had two or more newspapers, each with its own partisan or philosophical viewpoint. Each day citizens would read them all and discuss the arguments of the day at the local barber shop, soda shop, or even at work. There is no better exercise for creating an informed, thinking electorate. Today we live in an electronic society where people can just push a button and anything that puts them out of their comfort zone vanishes instantly.
American society has become a place where people get beyond offended when told that they are wrong. We have teachers who too often cannot understand the difference between being presented an inconvenient truth that scuttles their narrative and a personal attack. We have people who refuse to take the argument of another seriously, so any truths another may have will not be accepted or even considered. Truth has become the new hate speech.
This must stop.
The sting in any rebuke is the truth – Ben Franklin.
[Editor’s Note – For a short video followup on this story click HERE – you won’t regret it.]
A group of students leaving the annual conference of the National Association of the Deaf in Louisville had a rather awful experience courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration in that city’s airport. One of the travelers wrote about it on his blog:
It was a very public week-long event downtown, make no bones about it. As such, the shirt very clearly identified me as deaf.
While I was going through the TSA, some of them started laughing in my direction. I thought it might’ve been someone behind me, but I found out otherwise.
They went through my bag (for no reason), and found a couple bags of candy I brought. I was told I wasn’t allowed to fly with that (wtf? I’ve flown with food before — these were even sealed still because I brought them right in the airport). I was then asked if I would like to donate the candy “To the USO”. Since I know the airport there has an Air National Guard base, and I figured it would go to the soldiers, I (annoyed) said sure, why not?
The guards, as I was getting scanned, started eating the candy they just told me was for the soldiers. In front of me, still laughing at me (very clearly now). One of them asked why they were laughing, and one of them came up to me, pointed at my shirt, laughed at me and said, “Fucking deafie”. The Louisville TSA called me a “fucking deafie” and laughed at me because I was deaf, and they expected wouldn’t say anything back (or wouldn’t hear them). Make no bones about it — she was facing me and I read her lips. There was no mistake. I would later find out that they had called at least 4 other individuals the same thing.
Creepy. The camera in the nose costs $2.3 million and has infrared and ultraviolet capabilities that allow it to see into structures as well as tell if you have narcotics in your pocket from nine miles away. Coming to a city near you….
Federal judges approve about 30,000 secret warrants to spy on people in the USA every year, and the innocent probably will never know they were watched, says a U.S. jurist involved in issuing the orders.
The secret orders are authorized by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, known as ECPA. Smith writes that the volume of such cases “is greater than the combined yearly total of all antitrust, employment discrimination, environmental, copyright, patent, trademark and securities cases filed in federal court.”
The warrants and the court’s proceedings are not open to public scrutiny. A three-judge panel reviews denials of applications for the warrants, but the court is not adversarial or open, and many orders are never unsealed.
Few readers will be surprised to learn that decades of incompetence and entrenched corruption in Detroit’s government have not only helped wreck the city; firms linked to former Democratic mayorKwame Kilpatrick also looted the pension fund.
The latest scandal, which leaves even hardened observers of the abysmal Democratic machine that has run the city into the ground bemused, involves a real estate firm which gave the felonious mayor massages, golf outings, trips in chartered jets and other perks as this enemy of the people went about his hypocritical business of pretending to care about the poor while robbing them blind. The firm, apparently run by a sleazy low class crook named by the reprehensible Kilpatrick to be the Treasurer of what was left of Detroit’s finances, used Detroit pension funds to buy a couple of California strip malls. Title to the properties was never transferred to the pension funds, and they seem to be out $3.1 million.
Kilpatrick’s partner in slime is his ex-college frat brother Jeffrey Beasley, who is accused of taking bribes and kickbacks as he made bad investments that cost pension funds $84 million. Overall, a Detroit Free Press investigation estimates that corrupt and incompetent trustees appointed by Democratic officials over many years in Detroit are responsible for almost half a billion dollars in investments gone wrong.
I honestly don’t know why there is so little national outrage about this despicable crew and the terrible damage they have done. The ultimate victims of the crime are Detroit’s poor and the middle class and lower middle class, mostly African-American municipal workers who may face serious financial losses in old age.
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American cities have been festering pits of graft and bad governance since at least the early 19th century, but there is a difference between the “honest graft” of Tammany Hall and the nihilistic destruction practiced by some of today’s urban machines. Today’s situation, in which some city machines are so dysfunctional that the parasite is literally killing the host (and not just in Detroit), is new and, again, the most vulnerable in our society suffer the worst consequences. Minority children are the greatest ultimate victims of this loathsome corruption: they attend horrible schools and grow up in decaying, unsafe urban landscapes where there is no growth, no jobs and no opportunity for the young.
How is it anything but racist not to care about that — and not to burn with the desire to put the scabrous thugs who misgovern our cities and waste our social funds in prison where they belong?
The Obama administration rebuffed a senior Chinese police official in southern China who sought to defect, turning him away after his presence became known to Chinese security forces.
An administration official familiar with China affairs said the botched defection of Wang Lijun, a vice mayor and chief crime investigator in Chongquing, was mishandled not only by local American officials in China but also by White House and State Department officials in Washington unwilling to upset China by granting Wang refuge in the consulate.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said in an interview last night that the administration’s handling of the Wang case is something the subcommittee will investigate.
“There seems to be repetitive examples of people trying to help the United States who end up suffering,” Rohrabacher said, noting Pakistan’s prosecution of a Pakistani doctor who helped U.S. intelligence locate and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin.
In the case of Wang, it appears “the State Department is either clueless or duplicitious regarding the very nature of the gangster regime in Beijing.”
The official said Wang’s defection would have provided a windfall for U.S. intelligence agencies that currently lack insight into the secretive world of Chinese leadership politics.
The attempted defection of Wang played out amid international intrigue involving what officials say is a major power struggle within the senior ranks of the outwardly placid Chinese Communist Party.
The struggle pits a hardline nationalist faction headed by Wang’s boss, regional Party Secretary Bo Xilai, and central authorities in Beijing, led by current President Hu Jintao.
Two U.S. officials said Wang supplied the consulate with information related to corruption within the highest ranks of the Party, including information about Bo.
Bo is the son of a founding communist revolutionary who is a hardline anti-American, neo-Maoist leader and is seeking a seat on the nine-member collective dictatorship that rules China. The officials cautioned that details of the attempted defection and power struggle are murky.
Imagine what the Chinese government will do to this man. Read more HERE.
Congressman Allen West gives a lecture at the Heritage Foundation. Readers who follow global security issues should watch.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 
