RUTHFULLY YOURS

The hot-button topic today is whether or not the Russian government hacked into the email servers of the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and whether or not they did so to support one candidate or detract from another. While the CIA has declared it as “quite clear” that electing Donald Trump was Russia’s goal, the FBI calls the evidence “fuzzy” and “ambiguous.” The only thing that is clear is that there is no definitive evidence to deduce anything.

These divergent conclusions by the FBI and CIA reflect the cultural differences in the two organizations. While the CIA is adept at drawing conclusions based on probability, inference and established behavior, the FBI – who recently came under-fire for not acting on overwhelming evidence of criminal acts in the Clinton email scandal, in true law enforcement form, relies on the weight of evidence; evidence required at a threshold to “convict.” The CIA’s conclusion, additionally, demonstrates that the Agency is willing to delve into American politics through the advancement of its conclusions.

While the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities debate the merits of the facts that have brought them to their respective conclusions, the mainstream media has already decided that the Russian did, in fact, commit cyberattacks and hacks upon the DNC and Clinton campaign. The only question they are asking is what the Russian motives might have been: To damage Clinton, aid Trump or attack the American election process as an institution.

It is undeniable that the Russian hacks – if in fact it was the Russians who hacked into the DNC and not “black hat” independent hackers or another nation State using Russian hacker fingerprints – exposed a wholly unethical and, in fact, criminal mindset deemed acceptable for American electoral politics by the Democrats, Progressives and the Clintons.

In the hacking of the DNC it was exposed that the Democrat hierarchy was quite alright with weighting the Primary Election in favor of one candidate over another. In stepping down from the post of DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tacitly acknowledged that a culture of oligarchic corruption schemed to disenfranchise almost half of the Democrat rank-and-file. This conspiracy to defraud the Democrat voters is, at the very least, unethical to the maximum degree. At its worst it could be criminal, although not a soul called for a criminal investigation into the matter.

Only a few weeks ago Hillary Clinton’s campaign was denouncing Donald Trump as un-American for saying the election might be “rigged.” We criticized Mr. Trump at the time. But now that Mrs. Clinton has lost, her campaign is claiming the election really was rigged, albeit for Mr. Trump by Russian meddling, and it wants the Electoral College to stage what amounts to a coup.

That’s the only way to interpret the extraordinary statement Monday by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta endorsing a special intelligence briefing for electors a week before they cast their ballots for President on Dec. 19. He released the statement hours after 10 members of the Electoral College sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeking information on foreign interference in the election to judge if Mr. Trump “is fit to serve.” One of those electors is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security. Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed,” Mr. Podesta said. “We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

What should really distress Americans is that the losers are trying to overturn the election results based on little more than anonymous leaks and innuendo. Whatever Russia’s hacking motives, there is no evidence that the emails it turned up were decisive to the election result. Mr. Podesta is citing a CIA judgment that Americans have never seen and whose findings are vaguely public only because one or more unidentified officials chose to relate them to a few reporters last week.

Much of the press is reporting these as the gospel truth, though it isn’t clear that the CIA’s judgment is even shared across the intelligence community. The FBI doesn’t share the CIA’s confidence about Russia’s hacking motive, and our sources say the evidence is thin for the CIA’s conclusion.

https://www.jcrcny.org/2016/12/7722/Attacks on Jews in the U.S. 1969-2016 « Jewish Community Relations Council

FULL REPORT:http://www.jcrcny.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CSS-Report-2016.pdf

Take a look at the important new CSS publication, Terrorist Incidents and Attacks Against Jews and Israelis in the United States, 1969-2016, by our talented, good friend, Yehudit Barsky, with a forward by another friend, Mitchell D. Silber. The publication supplements the JCRC’s own Selective Threat Scan which was designed to assist Nonprofit Security Grant Program applicants complete the “Threat” and “Consequences” sections of the Investment Justification.

Here’s the Executive Summary of the document which aligns with JCRC’s ongoing advice:

It is vital that the American Jewish community, together with our law enforcement partners, learn the lessons of the past, understand the nature of the challenges arrayed against it, and take the proper precautions to ensure that violent acts against Jews and Jewish institutions can be prevented in the future.

Jewish targets often serve as precursors to larger attacks: Perpetrators of well-known larger attacks, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were first involved in anti-Jewish incidents.
Awareness is critical: In many of these incidents, perpetrators conducted pre-operational surveillance. Training and engagement of community members to detect suspicious activity is thus essential.
A need to invest in community security infrastructure: The Jewish community can ill afford passivity and apathy against security threats. The community should broaden its understanding of what effective security entails, and invest in initiatives that provide tangible results. Foremost amongst these strategies is ensuring community members have the training and capacity to assist in securing their own communities, and partnering more closely with law enforcement agencies.

Unfortunately, much as we do not care to admit it to ourselves, the threats are real; there have been too many incidents to deny that. Now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in an era where those who promote anti-Jewish rhetoric and instigation have the technical tools to reach a broader audience in less time than ever before. In fact, as recently as March 2016, the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) publicly encouraged its followers to attack Jews and their allies, “wherever they find them.”

It is vital that the American Jewish community, together with our law enforcement partners, learn the lessons of the past, understand the nature of the challenges arrayed against it, and take the proper precautions to ensure that violent acts against Jews and Jewish institutions can be prevented in the future.

In 2010, when I was on the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I attended a committee hearing on the North Korean nuclear program. That hearing epitomized the failure of post-9/11 reforms of U.S. intelligence and showed why the Trump administration must take aggressive steps to streamline American intelligence. Only then can it can return to being the great institution that provides the intelligence support our presidents need to protect our nation against national-security threats facing our nation today.

This process should start by sharply scaling back or eliminating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The lead witness at this hearing, seated at the center of a long witness table, was the ODNI North Korea issue manager. Seated next to him on each side were the ODNI issue manager for WMD proliferation and the director of the ODNI National Counterproliferation Center.

Joining them were the National Intelligence Council (NIC) officers for WMD proliferation and East Asia, both part of the ODNI. The CIA sent two witnesses, from its proliferation and North Korea–analysis offices. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department, and the Department of Energy sent one witness each.

In addition to these 10 witnesses, other senior intelligence officials attended as backbenchers. There also was a gaggle of aides, handlers, and congressional liaison staffers. There were so many that they could not all fit into the hearing room.

The hearing seemed to go on forever, since the lead witness kept inviting all his colleagues to weigh in on every question asked by committee members. Some of the backbenchers spoke too. This became monotonous, since every witness (except for the one from DIA) parroted the same watered-down consensus view. Making this worse, the witnesses’ consensus statements were proven to be completely wrong a few months later.

This mob of intelligence officials spouting the same watered-down pablum exemplified why the reform of U.S. intellig

Having said that he only found out about many of the numerous scandals in his administration by watching it on TV, it shouldn’t surprise us that the president is blaming his intelligence agencies for not telling him about the capabilities of Islamic State.

If only the press had reported on the rise of the terrorist’s back in 2011.

Washington Times:

Mr. Obama told CNN in an interview that aired late Wednesday, “The ability of ISIL to not just mass inside of Syria, but then to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul [in Iraq], for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen.”

But some critics are pointing to claims that the administration ignored warning signs from intelligence sources and allies such as Kurdish leaders about the Islamic State’s growing strength after 2011, when Mr. Obama withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Sherkoh Abbas, chairman of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, said in 2014, “We approached the State Department about ISIS before ISIS was in the headlines, and we were ignored.”

In September 2014, Fox News reported that Mr. Obama had been told about the rise of the terrorist group in his classified daily intelligence briefings throughout the previous year.

In February 2014, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee on the emerging threat of the Islamic State.

The group “probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014, as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah, and the group’s ability to concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria,” Gen. Flynn testified. “Since the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011, [Islamic State] has exploited the permissive security environment to increase its operations and presence in many locations and also has expanded into Syria and Lebanon to inflame tensions throughout the region.”

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Gen. Flynn to serve as his national security adviser.

Jay Sekulow, general counsel at the American Center of Law and Justice and a frequent Obama critic, called the president’s latest assertions “unbelievable.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington could begin with the Agriculture Department. Federal aid to farmers is forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to soar to $19 billion in 2017. Farmers will receive twice as much of their income from handouts (25%) this year as they did in 2013, according to the USDA. Whoever Mr. Trump names as his agriculture secretary should target wasteful farm programs for spending cuts.

Here are a few of the most egregious examples:

• Cotton. Incredibly, the U.S. government has paid $750 million to subsidize Brazilian cotton production since 2010. This is the result of a 2002 World Trade Organization complaint brought by the Brazilian government claiming that the U.S. unfairly subsidized cotton producers and depressed world cotton prices. The WTO justifiably ruled against the United States. To deter Brazil from imposing penalty tariffs on U.S. exports, the U.S. paid a king’s ransom to Brazil so it could perpetuate handouts to American farmers.

The federal cotton program was revised in 2014, but farmers continue reaping roughly $1.5 billion a year in aid—more than 40% of the market value of U.S. cotton production, according to a 2015 study by the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development. The same study estimated that the U.S. program suppresses world cotton prices by up to 7%, costing foreign cotton growers up to $3 billion a year.

• Sugar. The U.S. maintains a regime of import quotas and price supports that drive U.S. sugar prices to double or triple the world price. Since 1997 Washington’s sugar policy has zapped more than 120,000 U.S. jobs in food manufacturing, according to a 2013 study by Agralytica. More than 10 jobs have been lost in manufacturing for every remaining sugar grower in the U.S.

• Peanuts. In 2002 Congress abolished the quota system that required farmers to possess a federal license to grow peanuts. Yet rather than trust free markets, Congress created a new price-support program. In 2014 Congress sharply increased peanut subsidies. Federal peanut outlays are forecast by the USDA to increase eightfold between 2015 and 2017, reaching almost $1 billion a year. As a result, the USDA is drowning in a sea of surplus peanuts that farmers dump on the government. CONTINUE AT SITE