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Who Are the Jihadists Fighting alongside Turkey in Syria? by Sirwan Kajjo

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

The remaining 17 groups that make up the Syrian portion of Operation Olive Branch are a combination of Salafist, jihadist and ultra-extremist militants who have been either formed or supported by Turkey at various stages of Syria’s seven-year civil war.

In its offensive launched on January 20 against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, Turkey has deployed more than 25,000 Syrian rebel fighters who have been equipped and trained by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powerful military.

The offensive, code-named Operation Olive Branch, aims at dislodging the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. On March 18, Turkish military and allied jihadist rebels took control of Afrin’s city center. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an insurgent group that has been fighting for greater Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast. Backed by the United States, the YPG has been instrumental in the U.S.-led war on terror in Syria since 2014.

Nine days after the start of the operation, the pro-Turkish government website, Suriye Gundemi, published an infographic showing the Syrian rebel groups involved in the Afrin offensive. The website says that three divisions are part of the National Army that is under the command of the Syrian interim government, an anti-Syrian regime body based in Turkey.

This so-called army consists mainly of Islamist militants who were part of the most radical Islamic factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at some point during the Syrian conflict, and was formed only two weeks prior to the Afrin operation. Most of these fighters fled to Turkey after they were defeated in battles across Syria, including in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Hama. While in Turkey, they were recruited by Turkish intelligence agencies to be part of forces invading the Kurdish-held Afrin.

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Daryl McCann Deepstategate and the Anti-Trumpers

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

To make any sense of Russiagate the point to begin is an acknowledgement that today in America, and almost all Western nations, we are confronted by a Left elite which will stop at nothing to maintain the hold on institutions and cultural influence it has so assiduously pursued and achieved.

There are two very different narratives about Donald Trump’s first twelve months in the White House. From one perspective, Trump’s presidency has been illegitimate, the result of Vladimir Putin’s interference in America’s 2016 presidential race. This version of events is referred to as Russiagate. In a very different scenario—we might call it Deepstategate—Donald Trump is the modern-day populist outsider who has been ambushed by the Intelligence Community, the Department of Justice and key members of the Obama administration acting in concert with the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the mainstream media. All the two “gates” have in common is a conviction that American democracy has been sabotaged by misconduct “worse than Watergate”.

If the November 2016 election was stolen by the usurper-in-chief with the connivance of the Russians, then the reality of a booming economy during the first year of his tenure can be discounted. The creation of 1.7 million new jobs, an unemployment rate that fell to 4.1 per cent, the lowest in seventeen years, and the greatest stock-market rally in America’s history become mere background noise. That is why Russiagate remains critical for the Democrats. Were any of the salacious contents of Fusion GPS’s “Steele dossier” to be corroborated—for example, the engagement of prostitutes in Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton—it would be curtains for Trump. He would stand condemned not only as a reprobate but as a dupe who allowed himself to be co-opted by the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency. An exposé of this kind would also explain the motivation for President Putin’s alleged intervention in the presidential election. This could be reasonably described as “worse than Watergate”, since both wrongdoing and a foreign power were involved. No wonder Nancy Pelosi has displayed little enthusiasm for premature impeachment resolutions. The real showdown awaits the moment Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicts Donald John Trump for colluding with the FSB.

David Corn, of the progressive magazine Mother Jones, made the earliest public reference to the Steele dossier on October 31, 2016. Author of The Lies of George W. Bush and Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor and the Tea Party, Corn was doubtless considered a reliable conduit by whoever provided him with a copy of the thirty-five-page report. Corn withheld Christopher Steele’s name from his article, “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump”, but endorsed the reliability of the author of the report: “a senior US government official not involved in the case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government”. Corn acknowledged the Steele dossier had been funded by “a client allied with Democrats”, but it would be a full year before the client’s full identity became public knowledge: Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

Ken Bensinger, Miriam Elder and Mark Schoofs of BuzzFeed News went a step further than David Corn by publishing the Steele dossier in its entirety on January 10, 2017, just days before Trump’s inauguration. Although Bensinger et al admitted the report contained obvious errors and that none of the compromising material had been verified, they nevertheless posted the following “research” online: “According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.” BuzzFeed News justified its action in terms of helping Americans to “make up their minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government”. A little disingenuous, perhaps, given the record of BuzzFeed as an unapologetic Trump-hater.

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Intersectionality, Tribalism and Farrakhan A movement of bigotries can only divide us. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

A funny thing happened on the way to the intersectional future. The proverbial knapsack was unpacked in the Women’s March and inside wasn’t just racial tribalism, but racial and religious supremacism.

Why do Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March like Farrakhan and his hate group?

The Nation of Islam preaches that black people are the master race. It doesn’t just hate white people, Jews and a whole bunch of other folks. It hates them out of a conviction in its own superiority. According to its teachings, “the Blackman is the original man” and lighter skinned people were “devils” created by an evil mad scientist to rule over black people until they are destroyed by UFOs.

It even teaches that monkeys are descended from white people.

Progressive media essays defending Obama, Rep. Keith Ellison, Rep. Danny Davis, Mallory and other black leaders for their Farrakhan links have urged concerned liberals to look at the positive aspects of the Nation of Islam, its love for black people, not the negative, its hatred for white people.

But it is the “positive” that is the problem.

Intersectionality promises to package tribal identity politics into a utopia of social justice. But the essence of tribalism is the superiority of your people and the inferiority of all other groups. Tribalism doesn’t have to be violent, hostile or hateful. Most peoples are tribal after all. But when you combine the most radical identity politics elements, as the left does, then bigoted supremacism is certain.

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Gov’t ‘Fusion Centers’ Spying on Patriots in all 50 States Intimidation used against activist who sought information on mosque. Leo Hohmann

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Brenda Arthur received an unexpected visit on March 8 that, one week later, leaves her feeling more than a little uneasy.

At her door that day was an officer with the West Virginia State Police. He wanted to know about her involvement in a Freedom of Information request regarding a local mosque.

Arthur, who will turn 67 this summer, is leader of the West Virginia chapter of ACT For America, whose mission is to educate Americans about the advancement of Islamic principles in Western societies.

As a Jewish American, she was concerned about a major expansion of the Islamic Association of West Virginia in her hometown of South Charleston. This mosque has hosted an openly anti-Semitic preacher in the past, and so she went to city hall in late January to have a look at its construction permits and site plans, something that is within the right of every American citizen under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state open-records laws.

She had no idea that this perfectly legal activity, performed every day by citizen watchdogs across the U.S., would prompt a visit from the state police.

Arthur was not available to answer the door when Sgt. R.C. Workman came knocking, but Workman left his business card with a hand-written note on the back:

“Brenda: Please contact me at: 304-573-6190.”

Workman’s unit is part of the West Virginia Intelligence Exchange, a secretive outfit that works closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “intelligence fusion center” in West Virginia.

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Whacking Wax An Ivy League law prof is punished for speaking home truths. March 20, 2018 Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Until last week, I’d never heard of Amy Wax. She is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who landed in hot water after she co-authored a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed last August 9 with Larry Alexander, who teaches law at the University of San Diego. Under the headline “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture,” Wax and Alexander began their piece by listing some of the sociocultural pathologies currently plaguing America – low job skills, widespread opioid abuse, inner-city gang violence, one-parent homes, and high-school and college students who lack basic skills. They went on to attribute these problems to “the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture.”

They recalled the precepts by which Americans lived in the mid twentieth century: get married before you have kids; try to avoid divorce; get educated; work hard; be patriotic, neighborly, charitable, respectful, and law-abiding. Yes, they admitted, mid-century America was hardly perfect. There was racism; there were rebels who broke the rules. But the rules themselves were good. They resulted in “productivity, educational gains and social coherence.” Now they’re gone, replaced in many subcultures by “antisocial habits,” “rap culture,” “anti-assimilation ideas,” an obsession with group identity, and other destructive forces that do a terrible job of preparing young people for responsible adult lives.

Every word of that op-ed was sheer common sense. (As NYU professor Jonathan Haidt observed, Wax’s concerns about the black subculture were expressed in the 1960 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who at the time “was roundly condemned as a racist” but whose analysis is now echoed by countless sociologists.) Yet the op-ed was widely seen as scurrilous. The very next day, the Daily Pennsylvanian ran an interview with Wax in which she declared that “Anglo-Protestant cultural norms” were “superior” to others. “I don’t shrink from the word, ‘superior,’” she said. “Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans.” She underscored that Western norms “aren’t just for white people” but “can help minorities get ahead.”

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‘Social Justice’ Is About Anything but Justice By David Solway *****

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Most people are blissfully unaware of the havoc wrought by our misnamed “Social Justice” and “Human Rights” ideology until they are themselves hit by a summons, a legal suit or a ruling in law that deprives them of their peace of mind, robs them of productive time and leaves them substantially out of pocket. It is like being struck by a bolt of lightning while believing oneself to enjoy adequate shelter. My wife and I have been struck by such unexpected intrusions into our lives on three separate occasions over the last few years.

Indeed, the first strike was like a political klaxon alerting us to the perils of telling the truth in a climate of moral evasion and widespread hypocrisy. We received a notice of defamation from a large Muslim organization in response to a candid article my wife had written when she was editor of Freedom Press Canada, an online journal run by my publisher at the time. This was our first experience of lawfare in action. Apprized by legal council that a court case could set us back two or three years and up to a quarter of a million dollars with little to no prospect of winning, we had no choice but to settle. Since we live in a country in which Muslims are regarded as innocent victims of bigotry and anti-Islamophobia legislation is pending, the alternative would have been bankruptcy.

A short while later, my wife found herself once again under siege as the result of a complaint of discrimination brought by a disgruntled student before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The charges were baseless and plainly refutable by email records and other evidence. The fact that there was “nothing there,” as our lawyer commented, did not deter the HRT from pursuing a hearing. After two years of our living under a cloud of anxiety, the case went to mediation and the charges against Janice were “disappeared.” (The proceedings are described in her recently posted Fiamengo File series.) But the legal fees were astronomical and, since we were not engaged in a Civil Court trial but an HRT tribunal operating according to its own arbitrary laws, the costs were not reclaimable. We asked our lawyer whether we could counter-sue the student for defamation and related damages, but it turns out that, unlike the process in Civil Court, HRT complainants are protected from “reprisal.” “My experience was just a little glimpse,” Janice wrote in an introductory comment to the video, “into how a society becomes totalitarian when it decides to work outside the law (or too often, now, even within the law) to create ‘justice for the weak’ rather than justice for all.”

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U.S. Risks Return to Days of Segregation, Says Rep. Barbara Lee in DNC Fundraising Mailer By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Rep. Lee got a +7 from the Arab American Association for her anti-Israel bias…..rsk
A fundraising email from the Democratic National Committee today featured a member of the Congressional Black Caucus vowing that the country could not go back to the days of segregated schools and lunch counters.

The subject line of the email is Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) saying, “I boycotted Trump’s inauguration. Here’s why.”

Lee also skipped the State of the Union address in January, citing an “all-out assault on our democracy” being waged by President Trump from “relentless attacks on the press to outrageous statements that undermine the intelligence community and the Russia investigation, and repeated threats to our judicial system.” She also said his recent at the time comment calling El Salvador, Haiti and African nations “shithole countries” was “racist and further demonstrates a lack of respect for the office of the presidency.”

In the new DNC mailer, Lee said she skipped the inauguration because she “could not in good conscience celebrate an incoming president who had normalized the most extreme fringes of the Republican Party.”

“After riding racism and fear to the White House, Trump is now pushing policies that harm people of color, immigrants, and working people. For many of us, his presidency represents an attack on our very existence,” she said. “But we cannot afford to give up hope. There is far too much at stake for us to retreat from this fight.”

After the email asked for donations to aid Democrats’ midterm election campaigns, Lee said that “the rising tide of hate is a reality we must continue to grapple with — even at the highest levels of our government.”

“Let’s not forget that Donald Trump led the birther movement to question the legitimacy of Barack Obama — our first African-American president. Instead of rejecting Trump’s racist attacks, the Republican Party threw their support behind him,” she said. “Trump also sent a clear signal to white supremacists that it was time to ‘take their country back.'”

“We will not go back to the days where I could not enroll in a public school unless it was segregated,” said Lee, a 71-year-old Texas native. “The days when my dad, a World War II and Korean War veteran, was denied entry at restaurants due to the color of his skin. The days when my mother was refused the opportunity to buy a house because African-Americans weren’t allowed to purchase homes.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Michael Moore to Dems: ‘Never Forget’ You’re ‘Electing the Jury for Impeachment’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

WASHINGTON – Filmmaker Michael Moore urged Democratic voters to remember that they are voting for the impeachment of President Trump in the upcoming midterm elections.

“I am optimistic. I have a thread of optimism still in me. I believe we will, in November, see a tsunami of people coming to the polls and after that I hope you, both of you, and the other senators, do their job,” Moore said during a town hall on “Inequality in America: The Rise of Oligarchy and Collapse of the Middle Class” organized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) this evening.

“We have a Democrat running in my district in Michigan right now to unseat the Republican,” he added. “I went to hear him speak and the first words out of his mouth were, after he said he was for single-payer healthcare and all these other good things, and that he was an Iraq veteran, he said, I want you to know that in this election you are not electing a member of the House of Representatives. You are electing the jury for the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. Never forget that over these next few months.”

Moore urged the Democratic Party to also provide its “vision” to the voters rather than impeach Trump and go back to the day before he took office.

“If we just get rid of Trump and we just go back to the day before Trump, how are things then, Sen. Warren and Sen. Sanders, with our healthcare, with our job situation, with poverty? I don’t want to go back to that day. We’ve got to move forward and we have to provide that vision and provide that leadership to make that happen,” he said.

Moore said America’s capitalist economic system is not fair.

“These films I make are about a country that’s economic system is unfair, it’s unjust and it’s not Democratic,” he said. “You cannot call this a democracy if the democracy means we just get to go vote, but with the economy if we have no say in this then it’s not a true democracy.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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A ‘Higher Loyalty’ to Their Inflated Sense of Virtue By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Some portion of the reading public is eagerly awaiting A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, the aptly titled exercise in self-serving historical revisionism by James Comey, the disgraced former FBI director who was fired last May by President Trump.

The reading material in which I am most interested at the moment is the report by Michael Horowitz, the Obama-appointed inspector general of the Department of Justice who has been toiling away for the last year investigating the DOJ and the FBI for its handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

Comey’s aria, currently swaddled with embargoes, is due out April 17. Horowitz has said he aims to release his report “in the March, April time period.”

So there is a lot to look forward to. Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director, said that the report will contain “some pure TNT.” I have no doubt that’s true.

Adventures in “Ethical Leadership”
On Saturday, in the aftermath of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s sacking, Comey tweeted:

James Comey
✔ @Comey
Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.

Well, yes. Comey’s Twitter profile informs the world that these days he is “writing and speaking about ethical leadership.” It also notes that he is “taller and funnier in person.” I hope so.

As for “ethical leadership,” we needn’t even wait for his book to understand exactly how he embodies ethical leadership. When the College of William and Mary announced last month that Comey would be coming to teach a class on the subject, the announcement was accompanied by a statement from Comey. “Ethical leaders,” he said, “lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth.” The Wall Street Journal, digesting this declaration, published a useful classroom aid for students struggling with the question of ethical leadership.

Week One case study: The FBI is investigating a presidential candidate for mishandling classified emails as Secretary of State. The director decides on his own to violate Justice Department rules and exonerate that candidate in a public statement to the media, letting an aide replace the legally potent phrase “grossly negligent” in a draft of his statement with “extremely careless” in the final version.

Possible test question: When and under what circumstance may a federal official decide that the rules that bind others do not apply to him?

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Liz Peek: Hillary’s latest excuse: Stepford wives cost me the election

Posted By on March 20th, 2018

Great news! Hillary Clinton has finally figured out What Happened! It wasn’t, after all, James Comey or racism or Vladimir Putin or sexism or the hostile media that torpedoed her bid for the White House. Instead, it was…(drumroll please…) millions of Stepford wives, voting the way their husbands told them to.

In her insatiable thirst for redemption Hillary casts an ever-wider net, trying to scoop up those responsible for her defeat. Speaking in India recently, she again revisited her stinging 2016 election loss, this time hauling in white women, who vote the way “your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

What an offense to the millions of women who didn’t trust Hillary, didn’t like Hillary, and didn’t think she had earned the right to be our first female president. And what an embarrassment to her party, some of whom have disavowed her comments. Senator Claire McCaskill, for instance, who is battling to be reelected in red state Missouri, criticized Hillary’s remarks; nonetheless, the Republican opponent hoping to dislodge McCaskill wasted no time tying her to Clinton, whom she previously had endorsed.

Republicans hope Hillary will hang around, reminding Trump voters how delighted they are that she isn’t president. More and more Democrats would like her to disappear Stage Left, for good.

According to one survey, 61 percent of white women without a college degree voted for Donald Trump as did 45 percent of white women who graduated from college. Did all those tens of millions of females simply do as they were told by the men in their lives? Please, women are not that compliant or that stupid.

The irony is, of course, that Hillary would never have been a candidate for president but for the men in her life. It was husband Bill who pushed her forward from the start and, against all odds, became a beloved leader of the Democratic Party. And she would never have come close to cracking the glass ceiling but for the dogged efforts of President Obama, who saw her as willing to carry on his legacy.

Democrats who put gender ahead of the economy, or jobs, or national security, or who think that their dogmatic positions on abortion or equal pay are the only key to winning elections, are insulting women.