IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Immigration System Must Finally Put Americans First Chain migration exemplifies wrong approach to immigration system. Michael Cutler

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

The failed terror attack on December 11, 2017 has called attention to “chain migration.”

We will consider chain migration momentarily, but first we need to consider the entire immigration system as a chain.

It has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Today the immigration system is comprised of extremely weak links and all must be addressed because failures of each and every element of the immigration system leave America and Americans vulnerable to the threat of terrorism and crime.

I addressed these concerns in an article awhile back, Immigration and the Terrorist Threat.

America’s immigration laws have nothing to do with race, religion or ethnicity but about national security, public health and public safety as well as the livelihoods of American workers.

Title 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens is a section of law that is contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act and enumerates the grounds for excluding aliens from the United States. The categories includes aliens infected with dangerous communicable diseases, suffer from extreme mental illness and are prone to violence, aliens who are criminals, human rights violators, war criminals, spies or terrorists. Finally that list also includes aliens who would likely become public charges or displace American workers. There is nothing in that list that relates to the race, religion or ethnicity of these aliens.

Every time there is a terror attack the focus turns to the specific visa under which the terror suspect may have entered the United States. This piecemeal approach is ineffective in understanding the true nature of the threats we face.

All categories of visas are problematic. Effective vetting is often not as effective as we would want it to be.

Young people may not have created a track record that could be uncovered during the course of the visa issuance process.

Our officials are forced to rely on watch-lists and databases that may not be complete or where translating names from one language to another further complicates the process as does our reliance of information furnished by foreign governments.

Sanctuary Cities attract aliens who seek to evade detection for a multitude of reasons- none of them in America’s best interests.

On July 13, 2011 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing article, “Visas reviewed to find those who overstayed / Aim is to find any would-be terrorists.”
On September 2, 2014 ABC News reported, “Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to “Track Missing Foreign Students.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

New National Securty Strategy Focuses On Real Threats To American People “Climate change” finally removed from list of national security threats.

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released on December 18th, is premised on the belief that America’s economic security is national security. In reordering the skewed priorities of the Obama administration, “climate change” is no longer listed as a national security threat. Instead, the new National Security Strategy document emphasizes the importance of “energy dominance—America’s central position in the global energy system as a leading producer, consumer, and innovator.” The document goes on to state that our nation’s “abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.” Climate policies cannot be so extreme that they risk undermining America’s strengths in energy, thus endangering America’s current and future economic security.

“The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection,” according to the National Security Strategy document. An anti-fossil fuel agenda not only is injurious to U.S. economic security. It fails to recognize the important role that fossil fuels must play for the foreseeable future, along with alternative forms of energy, in helping the developing world “power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

What a refreshing change from the last administration’s obsession with climate change, which former President Barack Obama had made the centerpiece of his national security agenda. “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change,” Obama declared during one of his weekly video addresses in 2015. At the climate change conference in Paris, which led to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change from which the United States is now withdrawing thanks to President Trump, Obama claimed that climate change is “akin to the problem of terrorism.” In September 2016, Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on Climate Change and National Security, establishing a policy that the impacts of climate change must be considered in the development of national security-related doctrine, policies, and plans.

In his single-minded preoccupation with climate change, Obama kicked the can down the road when it came to dealing with more pressing national security issues, including the looming existential crisis posed by North Korea’s rapid development of nuclear arms and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland. The Obama administration also facilitated the path for Iran to become a full-fledged nuclear power within a decade or so, by agreeing to the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry made the delusional claim that the Iran deal and the Paris climate change agreement he negotiated were vital to global security, during a speech he delivered on June 5, 2017 at Ploughshares Fund’s annual Chain Reaction event. In both cases, all that his deals managed to do was to undermine U.S. national security.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The US Embassy Move to Jerusalem vs. The “Peace Process” by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

The Palestinians do not want peace. They want victory, a victory that will lead to the elimination of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews.

The 1968 charter of the PLO has never been changed, despite decades of promises that it would be modified. Although secular in character, it advances much the same attitudes as those found in the Hamas charters. In Article 2, for example, it defines “Palestine” in boundaries encompassing the entirety of Israel: “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”. This means that calls for a Palestinian state based on that definition are also calls for the destruction of Israel.

All attempts at normalization between Palestinians and Israelis or between other Arab states and Israel are routinely dismissed as treachery, a position that endangers the lives of any Palestinian who seeks peace.

Meanwhile, Western leaders, including religious figures such as the Pope, are enchanted with the fantasy that a peace process exists, and forever chant the mantra that nothing must be done to interrupt it. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is the first time any world leader has stood up to the threats of anger and violence.

On December 6, US President Donald Trump fulfilled a promise that was made by Congress on November 28, 1995 in its Jerusalem Embassy Act — to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and to mark this by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city. That move, according to the Act itself, was to “be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999”. Trump’s declaration that the US will now implement the Act has been a historical démarche. So why has it taken so long to act on this agreement?

For more than two decades, this clear expression of the will of Congress had, in effect, been held in abeyance following an amendment (section 7) that introduced a waiver that allowed presidents to “suspend the limitation set forth in section 3(b) for a period of six months if he determines and reports to Congress in advance that such suspension if necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States”. Since then, every president who followed (including Trump, six months earlier) exercised this waiver.

Over the years, implementation of the Act was caught up in increasingly complicated legal and diplomatic issues that made deferment appear judicious and necessary in the belief that stalling it might help the so-called “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians: according to Time Magazine:

“though both the Clinton Administration and Israeli government ‘support the move to Jerusalem in principle, they would prefer to see the peace process more stabilized before confronting the explosive issue of Jerusalem’.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is It Really about Jerusalem? by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

It is worth noting that the campaign against US institutions also states that the Palestinians’ real goal is to “liberate Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river.” In other words, this means that the true goal of the Palestinians is to destroy Israel.

Why do Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks come as a surprise? He is simply reiterating the official, long-standing policy of the Palestinian Authority. Where has the West been when Palestinian leaders have declared outright, decade after decade, that Israel has no right to exist and Jewish history is nothing more than lies?

Let us get things straight, finally. The Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims cannot stomach the fact that Israel exists, period. Their real problem is not with Trump’s recognition of the reality — that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Rather, they have a problem with Israel’s very existence.

The protests that have swept the West Bank, Gaza Strip and large parts of the Arab and Islamic world in the aftermath of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital show that most Arabs and Muslims still have not come to terms with Israel’s right to exist.

The protests also provide further evidence that many Arabs and Muslims, including, of course, the Palestinians, continue to view the US as an enemy and “big Satan” because of its support for Israel. Trump’s announcement is just another excuse for Arabs and Muslims to vent their long-standing hatred for Israel and the US.

For the Palestinians, Trump’s announcement simply provided the latest opportunity to step up their violent and rhetorical attacks and threats against Israel. As such, there is nothing new about the Palestinian protests that erupted after Trump’s announcement.

Palestinian terrorism against Israel is one of the oldest stories in the book. The many shapes it takes, from rock-throwing to stabbings to shootings to suicide bombings and rockets, began long before Trump’s announcement and will continue long after it. Hardly a day passes without an incident of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

However, because most of the violent attacks do not injure or kill Israelis, they are ignored by the media. Clashes between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli soldiers are as old as the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have even become part of the norm. Shootings and car-ramming attacks? Well, they have been taking place almost every week for the past few decades.

It is disingenuous, then, to claim that Trump’s announcement triggered the latest spate of Palestinian violence. At most, the announcement catalyzed the Palestinians to amplify their ongoing terror attacks against Israel. The announcement has also contributed to exposing the Palestinians’ long-standing vicious hatred of the US, regardless of who is sitting in the White House — a Republican or Democratic president.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Mania: “Jerusalem is Muslim” by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

By rejecting Jerusalem’s Judaic history, Erdogan is ironically denying that his holy book, the Quran, recognizes the Land of Israel. The Quran does not say that the Israelites originated in Alaska.

The United States will not retract its decision just because it angered the already angry jihadists in Turkey or elsewhere in the realm of Islam.

“There is only one conclusion we can draw from this comparison: The ‘ummah,’ the Muslim religious community, is tired of the Jerusalem issue…. [F]or many years angry groups have been chanting ‘Down with Israel’ and nothing happens to Israel. The angry slogans and burned flags have been no use for many decades. Most leaders of Muslim-majority countries are wary of the issue, and the Palestinian cause is used in many other countries simply as an outlet to reinforce the ruler.” — Ahmet Hakan, columnist, Hurriyet Daily News.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has unveiled multiple hypocrisies that sadly capture the minds of Islamist leaders and their willing choruses of jihadists.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, not surprisingly, champions the global Islamist war on Trump’s move. In a latest show of “solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” Turkey spearheaded efforts at a summit of Islamic nations in Istanbul to declare “eastern Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine under occupation”.

Erdogan’s argument is too weak and unconvincing from the beginning. He has simply chosen to attack Israel although what has newly entered the political equation on Jerusalem was a sovereign U.S. pronouncement. The pragmatist in Erdogan wanted to ignore that simply because the U.S. is too big to bite for him.

Erdogan said of Jerusalem: “Al-Quds [Jerusalem] has been viewed as the prayer place of Muslims and Christians and, partially … as if it is the prayer place of Jews”. Partially? It is elementary history that Jerusalem’s pre-Islamic period of 3300-1000 BCE appeared in the book of Genesis — the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — when Erdogan’s ancestors were probably hunters in the steppe of Central Asia. The years 1000-732 BCE marked the period of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Simply put, Jerusalem’s Judaic history dates back to thousands of years before the birth of Islam. By rejecting Jerusalem’s Judaic history, in fact, Erdogan is ironically denying that his holy book, the Quran, recognizes the Land of Israel. The Quran does not say that the Israelites originated in Alaska.

BOOKS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

What Led Germany to Accept a Tsunami of Migrants? By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

To my astonishment, I see that it’s been a full six years since I reviewed Tuvia Tenenbom’s I Sleep in Hitler’s Room: An American Jew Visits Germany. The book, an account of the author’s encounters with anti-Semitism and Jew-obsession in a country that claims to have thoroughly repudiated its Nazi past, was, I wrote, “deeply sobering, depressing even,” yet “so chatty and engaging and laugh-out-loud funny that it’s hard to put down.” I praised Tenenbom as “an acute observer of his fellowman, but also a born entertainer, a comedian, who approaches his interview subjects – of whom there are dozens, ranging from leading political and cultural figures to folks he runs into on the street – as a combination inquisitor and tummler.”

And he does it all, I emphasized, “on a human level: he’s not a journalist taking notes but a fellow human being, intense in his curiosity and incapable of hiding his emotions. He challenges his interlocutors, posing questions nobody has ever asked them before, and he’s relentless, always demanding the truth, wanting to know what these people really think and feel, rejecting their canned answers, the things they say because they think that’s what he wants to hear.” And even when he doesn’t exactly like what they say, he often turns out “to like them anyway, able to separate his intellectual revulsion at their ideas from his personal response to them as human beings.” Indeed, although he’s revolted by German attitudes, he admits that “somewhere deep inside me…I love the Germans.”

Pretty much everything above applies as well to Tenenbom’s new book, Hello, Refugees! Like I Sleep in Hitler’s Room, it’s grim yet entertaining, and – most of all – supremely human. This time, as the title suggests, he’s concerned with the migrant issue – specifically, with the consequences of Angela Merkel’s decision to open the floodgates to undocumented foreigners. Journeying from one refugee camp in Germany to another, and to various hotels where migrants are being put up at taxpayer expense, he meets some newcomers who are gentle, civilized, educated, grateful to be in Europe, and absolutely in love with Germany, and others who are angry, violent, and seething with hostility and contempt toward infidels in general and Germany in particular. (In order not to earn the instant hatred of Muslim migrants, he speaks to them in Arabic and pretends to be one of their coreligionists.) CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

#17 The Humanitarian Hoax of Net Neutrality: Killing America With Kindness by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Barack Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His late term passage of FCC 15-24 the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order in the Matter of Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet, named Net Neutrality, was no exception.

Humanitarian hoaxes are deceitfully given positive sounding names that disguise their negative intent and mislead the trusting public. The Affordable Care Act was not affordable, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the enemy of free speech, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation funds anarchy all over the world. The deceptive names are the opposite of what the organizations and policies actually do. So, “Net Neutrality” sounds constructive and fair but it is actually a Leftist attack on Internet freedom designed to restrict freedom of speech – particularly the opposition speech of conservatives and libertarians. This is how it works.

The World Wide Web (WWW) for non-governmental commercial use has been an open unrestricted American business since its launch over twenty years ago. The WWW is the 21st century public square for information sharing in the world. Internet business is divided into two separate sections. There are Internet Service Providers (ISP) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T and there are Internet Content Providers like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter. In 2015 Obama disingenuously decided to “protect” the open Internet and passed regulation FCC 15-24 deceptively tagged “Net Neutrality.” Roger Stone has written an exceptional article on the subject explaining what it all means.

To summarize, the FCC has the authority and discretion to decide to apply rules or not to apply rules – it can choose who to regulate vigorously and who to disregard. The new rules were specifically written under Title II provisions that stipulate Internet Service Providers (ISP) are to be bound by Net Neutrality. So, “Net Neutrality” binds Internet Service Providers to the rules but exempts Internet Content Providers.

The Tech-Left was instrumental in the formulation of “Net Neutrality” and helped write the new rules. Not surprisingly, the consequence is that the Leftist content providers who currently dominate the WWW are “free to restrain content by censoring out all conservative and libertarian views at will, without so much as an explanation to anyone why the objectionable views were banned.” It is complete censorship and very dangerous – it is the Humanitarian Hoax of Net Neutrality.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Qatar Charities Support of Extreme Islamist Ideology By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Millard Burr

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

Qatar’s purposeful support of the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, Turkey, and radical Islamist terrorist groups led Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE to cut all ties with the Emirate last June. Indeed, it was no secret that “Qatar has a long history of harboring terrorist operatives and financing various extremist groups, including Hamas, the Taliban, al Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Nonetheless, Qatar has been protesting and arguing ever since that the “blockade” violates international law and human rights. But the Anti-Terrorist Quartet (ATQ) has put Qatar on their ‘terror finance watchlist’ and banned major Qatari charities. Among the terrorist-supporting charities named, is Qatar Charity that advertises its mission is “to participate in the preservation of Islamic culture through the construction of mosques. We spread our Islamic teachings with the world, and we invite you to be part of it in this achievement.” But the QC — that nation’s and one of the Arab World’s largest charities — has long been known to fund the very same extremists Islamists terror groups listed by the ATQ.

The ATQ designation was met with a furious reaction in Doha, where the allegations were rejected out of hand. It was stated that Qatar’s Ministry of Social Affairs evaluated all Qatar’s charities, “and monitors every penny they receive and send.” It was claimed that “Since its establishment in 1984, [it was actually founded in 1982] Qatar Charity (QC) has sponsored 213,750 young orphans into adulthood, and has built more than 621 schools worldwide.” The argument hardly countered the four-nation claim. Still, it was noted that in 2014, QC was ranked first by the United Nations for its relief efforts in the Syrian, Palestinian, and Somali crises. Of course, there was no mention of Qatar’s involvement in the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

It’s Official: North Korea Is Behind WannaCry The massive cyberattack cost billions and put lives at risk. Pyongyang will be held accountable. By Thomas P. Bossert

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another. They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the U.S. today publicly attributes the massive “WannaCry” cyberattack to North Korea.

The attack spread indiscriminately across the world in May. It encrypted and rendered useless hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses and homes. While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers. It was cowardly, costly and careless. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible.

We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either. Other governments and private companies agree. The United Kingdom attributes the attack to North Korea, and Microsoft traced the attack to cyber affiliates of the North Korean government.

The consequences and repercussions of WannaCry were beyond economic. The malicious software hit computers in the U.K.’s health-care sector particularly hard, compromising systems that perform critical work. These disruptions put lives at risk.

The world is increasingly interconnected with new technologies, devices, networks and systems creating great convenience. Unfortunately, that provides bad actors opportunities to create mayhem with the hope of anonymity, relying on the complex world of ones and zeros to hide their hand. They have stolen intellectual property and done significant damage in every sector.

North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious. WannaCry was indiscriminately reckless.

Stopping malicious behavior like this starts with accountability. It also requires governments and businesses to cooperate to mitigate cyber risk and increase the cost to hackers. The U.S. must lead this effort, rallying allies and responsible tech companies throughout the free world to increase the security and resilience of the internet.

Change has started at the White House. President Trump has made his expectations clear. He has ordered the modernization of government information-technology to enhance the security of the systems we run on behalf of the American people. He continued sanctions on Russian hackers and directed the most transparent and effective government effort in the world to find and share vulnerabilities in important software. We share almost all the vulnerabilities we find with developers, allowing them to create patches. Even the American Civil Liberties Union praised him for that. He has asked that we improve our efforts to share intrusion evidence with hacking targets, from individual Americans to big businesses. And there is more to come. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Lays Out World View in Which Economic Strength Bolsters Security President criticizes predecessors’ nation-building efforts in speech; carrots and sticks for China and Russia By Michael C. Bender

Posted By on December 19th, 2017

He said previous presidents “presided over one disappointment after another” when it came to protecting America.“They surrendered our sovereignty to foreign bureaus in far away capitals,” Mr. Trump said.“But last year,” he added, “all that began to change.”

Declaring that “economic security is national security,” President Donald Trump aimed to reframe a national debate over his domestic economic and trade policies by thrusting them into a national-security context.

“Economic vitality, growth and prosperity at home is absolutely necessary for American power and influence abroad,” Mr. Trump said on Monday as he unveiled his new national-security strategy. “Any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both.”

Recounting a year of stock-market gains and unemployment-rate decreases, Mr. Trump on Monday alleged that his predecessors prioritized nation building abroad over economic growth at home. He said his new national-security strategy—released on Monday as mandated by Congress—provided a needed contrast, and included plans for cutting taxes, rebuilding roads and bridges and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president on Monday also focused on a more-traditional definition of national security, including China and Russia in a list of threats he said included terrorist groups, transnational criminal networks and “rogue regimes,” a phrase the president has used to describe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The White House’s new national-security strategy calls for strengthening the U.S. military by expanding missile-defense capabilities and adding to the nuclear-weapons arsenal.

From the campaign trail, China was a frequent target of blame from Mr. Trump for the decline in some manufacturing sectors. But in the White House, the president has backed away from some of that criticism as he has sought to tighten his bond with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Trump also has maintained cordial relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompting criticism from within his own party amid revelations of Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election.
President Donald Trump speaks on national security on Dec. 18 in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

In the national-security strategy, Mr. Trump portrayed China and Russia as dangerous rivals that have exploited attempts at engagement from previous administrations. On Monday, he referred to them as “rival powers” seeking to “challenge American influence and wealth.” But in an indication of the fine line that the president is attempting to walk, he quickly pivoted to talk about cooperation.

“We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest,” Mr. Trump said. An example of that cooperation, he said, was the U.S. recently sharing intelligence with Russia about a pending terrorist attack in which “thousands could have been killed.”

“That is the way it’s supposed to work,” Mr. Trump said. CONTINUE AT SITE