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2016

Did Iran Launch Missiles at US Warships? By Stephen Bryen and Rear Admiral Norman Saunders

A big question surrounding missile attacks against two U.S. ships ( the USS Mason and USS Ponce) is whether it was the Yemeni rebel Houthis (also known as Ansar Allah) who did it? Or, instead, did Iran carry out the attacks? A related question is what were these U.S. ships doing near the Bab el-Mandab straits in the Red Sea? The Ponce is, admittedly, an at-sea forward staging base.

Iran has been harassing U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf for some time, and on each occasion the Iranians appear to have been bolder in what looks like a naval game of chicken. So much so that most recently Iranian fast boats equipped with missiles and torpedoes literally parked in front of the U.S. destroyer Nitze, forcing it to alter course to avoid a collision. But that is not nearly as serious the as events that unfolded starting on October 1st. Early in the morning the Houthis fired a C-802 missile that hit the HSV-2 Swift, a very fast and relatively large catamaran ship originally built by Incat in Australia. Acquired by the U.S. Navy in 2003, the Navy’s Sealift Command operated the vessel for ten years. Then it went out of service in 2013, replaced by another Incat-built catamaran. In an unusual move, in fact a strange one, the Sealift Command leased the Swift to a UAE organization called the National Marine Dredging Company. According to various news reports, the Swift was shuttling supplies and passengers between the UAE and Eritrea on the one hand and Aden on the other. So-called independent experts speaking on Iranian TV say that the Swift was moving troops from a training base in Eritrea to Aden, controlled by the Hadi government (Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi) backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies. According to Aden, the ship was evacuating wounded persons and bringing in humanitarian supplies.

The problem is that the Swift was nowhere near Aden. It was just off the coast of Houthi-controlled areas north of the Ban el-Mandab close to the Port of Mocha.

As acknowledged by the Houthis, they fired on the Swift and caused almost catastrophic damage. There is a video of the attack that appears to have been made from a small skiff. The video shows the missile launch and the missile hitting the target. The Swift is very close by. What follows is a terrific explosion and fire. The Swift did not sink, but it did burn. According to reports from some of the crew who survived the attack, another small boat fired at the survivors with a machine gun as they fled the Swift. The Houthis declared they used a C-802 missile to hit the Swift.

David Singer: Trump thrashes Clinton on Ending Sexual Violence in Syria and Iraq

Mainstream American media’s obsession with groping allegations against Donald Trump going back twenty years or more has papered over public discussion of major policy differences between Trump and Hillary Clinton on defeating Islamic State and end the horrific sexual violence perpetrated on women and children in Syria and Iraq for the last two years.

In a stark report to the UN Security Council on 30 September – UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon warned:

“ISIL [Islamic State] continues to systematically use sexual violence against Yazidi women and girls in Iraq and the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as against other minorities caught up in the conflict. Even though some women have managed to escape their captors, around 3,800 abducted Yazidis were still missing at the time of writing. This is a matter of grave concern. Those who have escaped have described the appalling conditions under which they were bought, sold, traded and abused. Both girls and boys are advertised online and traded for weapons, suicide vests, cars and a range of other commodities. Thus far, no formal mechanisms have been established to secure the release of those held captive by ISIL. Those who have managed to escape have done so with the help of their families and smugglers or by taking advantage of other opportunities. Some have resorted to suicide as their only escape. The children of women who commit suicide, or who attempt to escape, are beaten or killed as punishment”

You have to search high and low to find any American media discussion of these highly disturbing revelations.

America and Russia have become embroiled in these conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq and both bear a major role in ending this ongoing dehumanisation of women and children.

Yet American media has not critically examined Trump or Clinton’s views on what each would do under their presidency to defeat Islamic State and end such reprehensible sexual violence.

Co-operation with Russia to achieve these objectives – as espoused by Trump – has been rejected by Clinton, who promises to follow President Obama’s resolute refusal to co-operate with Russia in defeating Islamic State in Syria since November 2015.

Clinton made her policy crystal clear in the second presidential debate:

“It’s also important I intend to defeat ISIS, to do so in a coalition with majority Muslim nations.”

Who these Muslim nations are and how Clinton intends to defeat Islamic State in Syria without Russian co-operation remains unexplained. It is a pipedream the American media should be grilling her on every day until they get an answer.

Trump however indicated in the same presidential debate that he would welcome co-operation rather than confrontation with Russia:

“I don’t know Putin. I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an example.”

FBI Documents Show State Department Fought Classification of Clinton Emails Released pages suggest official pressured government bureaucracy into marking few, if any, emails as classified By Devlin Barrett

A State Department official in 2015 tried to keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation from marking a Hillary Clinton email as classified, according to documents that reveal the extent to which officials sought to reduce the number of messages judged to contain national secrets.

The move by the State Department, which came after questions were raised about Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, focused on a single email about the probe into the 2012 attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya. The newly released summaries of FBI interviews show one State official pressed the FBI not to mark one message classified, and that senior State officials exerted similar pressure within their own agency as it studied the Clinton emails.

Each email judged to be classified, even more than two years after Mrs. Clinton left the State Department, represented another potential mark against not just the State Department, but also Mrs. Clinton’s claims she did nothing wrong and didn’t compromise national secrets.

The FBI announced in July, after an investigation, that while it had found “extremely careless” conduct in Mrs. Clinton’s email use, evidence didn’t merit filing criminal charges.

Mrs. Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, has said her use of a private server was a mistake, and her aides have argued the email scandal was fueled by government officials aggressively overclassifying documents retroactively. Some Republicans have called for her to be further investigated.

Other emails, hacked by the WikiLeaks organization and involving Clinton campaign officials, continue to be released daily. A new batch Monday showed top advisers speculating about whether Vice President Joe Biden would launch a White House bid and mulling questions about how to address Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate.

The FBI began reviewing Mrs. Clinton’s State Department emails for possible classified material in 2015, after an inspector general raised concerns about her use of a private server to conduct government business. She left the agency in early 2013.

According to the newly released documents, Patrick Kennedy, a senior official at the State Department, repeatedly reached out to senior FBI officials seeking to get them to reverse their opinion that an email about the Benghazi attacks, which had no classification markings on it, should be classified.

FBI officials weren’t convinced the email should be unclassified, according to the written summaries of interviews. One official’s account said Mr. Kennedy suggested that in exchange for marking the email unclassified, “State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden,” according to a summary of the FBI interview of the unidentified witness.

Another FBI employee recounted it differently, saying a senior agency official suggested to Mr. Kennedy that he would look into the email matter if the State official “would provide authority concerning the FBI’s request to increase its personnel in Iraq.” That suggestion was ultimately rejected by others at the FBI, according to officials and the documents. CONTINUE AT SITE

Unrest Arrives in French Towns Ahead of Migrants Amid Plan to Raze Calais ‘Jungle’ Relocation plan threatens to spread crisis in Calais to corners of France untouched by the migrant flow By Noemie Bisserbe

ALLEX, France—President François Hollande’s plan to resolve the Calais migrant crisis is sowing social unrest across the country as dozens of towns brace for the arrival of refugees by the busloads.

By the end of the year—and as early as this month—Mr. Hollande plans to transfer thousands of migrants from the blighted port to shelters in far-flung corners of France.

The goal is to dismantle the Jungle, a sprawling migrant camp skirting the port that has become a symbol of Europe’s failure to manage the flow of migrants across its borders from conflict zones in Syria, Afghanistan and beyond. Waves of migrants seeking passage to the U.K. have become bottled up in the port on the French side of the English Channel, living in sordid conditions and hurting the local economy.

For people living in towns and villages such as Allex, a close-knit hilltop community of 2,500 people in Provence, the relocation plan threatens to spread the crisis in Calais to corners of France untouched by the migrant flow.

“We won’t let our town become another Calais,” said a 45-year-old mason and father of three. The man joined a hundred other townspeople who recently marched through Allex to protest the arrival of 50 migrants at a local château the government has converted into a shelter.

The anti-immigrant National Front party and other right-wing politicians are seizing on the public anger to build support ahead of presidential elections in May, organizing referendums and petitioning mayors to stop the spread of “mini-Calais.”

At times, the opposition has turned violent. In September, a shelter located in a bedroom community outside Paris was flooded and set on fire. Earlier this month, police found bullet holes in buildings slated to host migrants in two different towns.

So far, the government isn’t backing down, insisting the political firestorm won’t affect its plans. “We keep local officials informed of our plans, but we’re not asking for their opinion,” Housing Minister Emmanuelle Cosse said. The government hasn’t disclosed the complete list of towns and cities set to receive migrants for fear of new acts of violence, officials say. CONTINUE AT SITE

Russian influence evident in Palestinian militia in Syria BY AmirToumaj

Senior commanders in the Sunni Palestinian Quds Brigade, known as the Liwa al Quds or the Syrian Arab Army Fedayeen, have been photographed receiving medals from Russian military officers for battlefield action. The latest interaction further indicates the deep level of Russian involvement and impact they are having on the Syrian civil war.

The pro-government militia is drawn from the Palestinian diaspora in Aleppo province, and has openlyoperated as an auxiliary to pro-regime forces there since 2013. The unit numbers in the several hundreds.

Late last month, the Quds Brigade and the Syrian Arab Army succeeded in taking the strategic Handarat Palestinian refugee camp and Kindi Hospital north of Aleppo proper, following the launch of an offensive in late September and several rounds of intense back-and-forth with the Islamist-led Fatah Halab coalition. Pro-regime forces and the Quds Brigade have been fighting to control the camp since 2014.

Photo 2. Quds Brigade fighters following the capture of Handarat Camp, posted on October 1.

The capture of Handarat was a significant victory, particularly for the Palestinian militia, whose members are drawn from the town. Capturing that area and the adjacent Kindi Hospital consolidatespro-regime control over a key road north of Aleppo, and has opened a front to push toward the rebel-held area of the city. The Quds Brigade has reportedly continued to make gains in the surrounding areas.

Several days after the victory at Handarat, photographs surfaced of a Russian military officer bestowing medals to the militia chief Mohammad al Saeed, an engineer by vocation, and operations commander Mohammad Rafi (AKA “the Godfather”) (photo 1). Prior to launching the operation to fully retake the camp on Sept. 29, the two Palestinian commanders were photographed with what appears to be their Russian military advisor (photo 3).

Earlier in August, Rafi had received a medal from a Russian Lieutenant General (photo 4). The patch on the senior commander’s shoulder is the emblem of the 18th Guards Motor Rifle Division (photo 5), a unitstationed near Grozny, Chechnya. Members from this unit have operated in Ukraine and Syria.

Ex-Muslim Sarah Torrent Takes a Stand on Trump and Hillary — on The Glazov Gang

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/10/18/ex-muslim-sarah-torrent-takes-a-stand-on-trump-and-hillary-on-the-glazov-gang/This new special episode of The Glazov Gang was joined by Sarah Torrent, an ex-Muslim who came on the show to discuss her thoughts on Trump and Hillary, her suffering under and journey out of Islam, the importance of America’s closed borders, her goals in her activism and much, much more.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/10/18/ex-muslim-sarah-torrent-takes-a-stand-on-trump-and-hillary-on-the-glazov-gang/

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch the special Jamie Glazov Moment in which Jamie discussed The Question No One Dares to Ask Hillary and he wondered: Does it really not matter if her Chief of Staff will be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood?

NO ELECTION CONSPIRACY? SEE THIS VIDEO

Appalling….Democrat operatives planning disruption and violence at Trump rallies…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY

OH PULEEZ! THERE HE GOES AGAIN

The Plot Against America Donald Trump alights on the Compleat Conspiracy. Anti-Semites are thrilled. Bret Stephens (huh?????)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plot-against-america-1476745874

They meet in secret. Men of immense wealth; a woman of limitless ambition. Their passports are American but their loyalties are not. Through their control of international banks and the media they manipulate public opinion and finance political deceit. Their aim is nothing less than the annihilation of America’s political independence, and they will stop at nothing—including rigging a presidential election—to achieve it.

Call it for what it is: “A conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous venture in the history of man.”

Astute readers will note the quotation of a speech delivered in the U.S. Senate in June 1951 by the then-junior senator from Wisconsin. We’re in historically familiar territory. Joe McCarthy inveighed against Communists in control of the State Department. For Charles Lindbergh it was “war agitators,” notably those of “the Jewish race.”

And now we have Donald Trump versus what Laura Ingraham calls “the globalist cabal”—the latest enemy from without, within. In a speech Thursday in West Palm Beach the GOP presidential nominee painted a picture of a “global power structure” centered around Hillary Clinton that aims to “plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty” while stepping on the necks of American workers with open borders and ruinous trade deals.

“There is nothing the political establishment will not do,” Mr. Trump thundered. “No lie they won’t tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense, and that’s what’s been happening.”
More Global View

Where Clinton Will Take ObamaCare As with HillaryCare, a single payer, national health-care system has always been the goal. By Phil Gramm

In claiming earlier this year that the current U.S. health-care system “was HillaryCare before it was called ObamaCare,” Hillary Clinton was telling the truth—but not the whole truth. In 1993, while first lady, Mrs. Clinton led a task force to deliver universal health care to the voters who elected her husband. She failed. After many revisions, the final bill stalled in the Senate for lack of Democratic votes.

HillaryCare was a comprehensive plan for the government to take over the health-care system, with program details and cost-control measures precisely defined. Having learned from that defeat, the Obama administration left as many details as possible to be written during implementation after ObamaCare became law. With few details to defend and the clear falsehood that “if you like your health-care plan you can keep it,” President Obama pushed through his “signature” legislation.

While Bill Clinton recently denounced the Affordable Care Act’s effect on the health-care market as “the craziest thing in the world,” ObamaCare was never anything more than a politically achievable steppingstone. As with HillaryCare, a single payer, national health-care system has always been the goal.

Hillary Clinton’s Health Security Act of 1993 would have broken the nation’s health-care system into regional Healthcare Purchasing Cooperatives, which would have collectively set treatment guidelines and implemented cost-control measures. In the abstract, HillaryCare was just as popular as ObamaCare would be 16 years later, with some 20 Republican senators initially supporting an alternative plan that would have largely implemented HillaryCare.

That’s when Sen. John McCain, the late Sen. Paul Coverdell and I took our fight against the bill to regional media markets. When we attacked HillaryCare as inefficient, people yawned. When we showed that the program was unaffordable, people checked their watches. But when we focused on the extraordinary loss of freedom that HillaryCare entailed, where the federal government decided the doctor you could see and the services that could be provided, our rear-guard action became a crusade.

The stone that slew the HillaryCare Goliath was freedom. Even the Democrat-appointed head of the Congressional Budget Office was forced to conclude that under HillaryCare health-insurance premiums were federal revenues and all health-cooperative expenditures were federal outlays.

The Cheap Moralizing of Never Trump Trump voters get that the elite contempt for their man is a proxy contempt for them.By William McGurn

Three weeks out from Election Day, the Never Trump argument has been neatly summed up by Bill Maher. Not only is Donald Trump coarse and boorish, anyone who supports the man is as revolting as he is.

On his show last month, Mr. Maher put it this way to Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: “You are enabling pure evil.” The HBO comedian went on to amuse himself by adding that “Hillary was right when she called a lot of his supporters deplorable.”

Mr. Maher might have added that it is also a well-worn Democratic trope. After all, wasn’t it Barack Obama who described small-town Americans as bitterly clinging to guns and religion and disliking anyone who is different? As for Hillary Clinton, in her deplorables crack she dismissed half of Mr. Trump’s followers as “racist, sexist, homophobic.” Less well noted (but more telling), she also declared them “irredeemable.”
This is an old argument for the left. But Republicans are now hearing it from the right as well. Which puts conservative Never Trumpers in a curious position vis-à-vis government of, by and for the people: Are the tens of millions of Americans who will pull the lever for Trump come November evil too, or just invincibly stupid?
Give the Never Trumpers their due: Most do not shy away from the implication that anyone who would vote for Mr. Trump is as low and base as he is. Their problem is that the argument doesn’t seem to be having much traction with Republican voters. A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that while Mrs. Clinton enjoys the support of 78% of Democrats, Mr. Trump is supported by 74% of Republicans. Other polls show that even after all his fumbles and embarrassments, the vast majority of Republicans do not want Mr. Trump to drop out.

One reason may be that the argument about morally corrupt GOP voters is not really an argument. More precisely, it’s an argument Republicans typically hear from the left. Instead of weighing the prosaic facts—i.e., the practical ramifications of having Mrs. Clinton sitting in the Oval Office versus Mr. Trump—how much easier it is to try to end all discussion by pronouncing the GOP nominee repellent. CONTINUE AT SITE