HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Study: 72 Convicted Terrorists Who Live in U.S. Came from Countries Covered by Vetting Order By Rick Moran

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

This should come as a rude shock to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges who justified overturning Trump’s “extreme vetting” executive order covering seven mostly Muslim countries by claiming there is “no evidence” those countries have produced a terrorist.

The Center for Immigration Studies compiled a list of 72 U.S. residents from those seven countries who were convicted of terror-related charges.

In June 2016 the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, then chaired by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, released a report on individuals convicted in terror cases since 9/11. Using open sources (because the Obama administration refused to provide government records), the report found that 380 out of 580 people convicted in terror cases since 9/11 were foreign-born. The report is no longer available on the Senate website, but a summary published by Fox News is available here.

The Center has obtained a copy of the information compiled by the subcommittee. The information compiled includes names of offenders, dates of conviction, terror group affiliation, federal criminal charges, sentence imposed, state of residence, and immigration history.

The Center has extracted information on 72 individuals named in the Senate report whose country of origin is one of the seven terror-associated countries included in the vetting executive order: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The Senate researchers were not able to obtain complete information on each convicted terrorist, so it is possible that more of the convicted terrorists are from these countries.

The United States has admitted terrorists from all of the seven dangerous countries:

Somalia: 20
Yemen: 19
Iraq: 19
Syria: 7
Iran: 4
Libya: 2
Sudan: 1
Total: 72

According to the report, at least 17 individuals entered as refugees from these terror-prone countries. Three came in on student visas and one arrived on a diplomatic visa.

At least 25 of these immigrants eventually became citizens. Ten were lawful permanent residents, and four were illegal aliens.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Al-Shabaab Magazine: ‘We’ll Keep Marching Till We Reach the State of Maine’ By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

A news issue of Al-Shabaab’s magazine calls on jihadists to emulate the British converts who murdered a soldier on a Woolwich street in 2013, along with a poem warning that jihadists would be “marching” to Maine.

The issue of Gaidi Mtaani also features a lengthy story about late al-Qaeda recruiter and cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose lectures are cited by American terrorists to this day, playing paintball in San Diego in the 1990s.

The Somali terror group, allied with al-Qaeda, has previously urged Western jihadists to draw inspiration from the attack on 25-year-old Fusilier Lee Rigby, who was first struck by a car and then stabbed and hacked by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. London-born Adebolajo, 28, who was raised Christian before converting to Islam, filmed a statement before police arrived at the murder scene, vowing “you people will never be safe.” Both are serving life in prison.

Al-Shabaab’s magazine dubs Adebolajo 2013’s “Muslim of the Year,” declaring “good men are hard to find.”

“In an age stained with defeatism and cowardice, a room full of Mujahid Adebolajo is exactly what today’s world needs,” the article, bylined Abu Maryam, states. “…If a pictures speaks a thousand words, then blood in British streets speak a million words. Knowing that the British Government only understands the language of violence, instead of writing his letter on paper, Adebolajo decided to write his letter on the streets of Southeast London using the blood of a British soldier.”

Adebolajo was “practically teaching the British public and the world in general, the elementary principle of universalism” through the murder, the terror group argued, with eye-for-an-eye reasoning.

“World media and left wing conservatives can deceptively portray Mujahid as a psychopathic slayer if they please, but after watching the video and hearing his words, deep down inside everyone knew he was making perfect sense. Amidst the hustle and bustle of London streets, specifically targeting a British soldier once stationed in Afghanistan clearly expresses the political motives behind the killings and disproves the fallacy that the attack was a haphazard intent to randomly slay Britons,” the article continues.

“It’s quite ignorant and presumptuous of non-Muslims and Muslims alike to think that the driving force of Mujahid’s actions were fueled by an inherent disdain for British culture or values,” the terror group argues, noting that if Adebolajo just wanted to kill fellow Britons there were more people at the scene he could have attacked.

“Their message couldn’t be any simpler, ‘We swear by Allaah the All-Mighty we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.’ These same axioms expressed by Mujahid in England, were reiterated by Nidal Hasan, Mohamed Mirah, and the same concepts that will continue to be personified through bloodshed in Western streets, unless taken seriously.” Hasan killed 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, while Mohammed Merah killed French soldiers and Jewish children during a 2012 shooting spree in Toulouse and Montauban.

Merah was born in Toulouse while Hasan was born in Virginia, keeping with the article’s theme of urging attacks at home by jihadists native to Western countries.

A poem bylined by the same author of the article says to “tell the West we’re a roaring flame/That can’t be doused that can’t be tamed/And until you cease your bombs and planes/We’ll keep marching till we reach the State of Maine.” CONTINUE AT SITE

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Times Manipulates the Climate Science Scandal Data By Tully Borland

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

If you were only to read the New York Times’ latest article on the most recent Climate Change scandal first reported by the Mail and the Daily Mail, you would never know that there was any scandal to speak of in the first place. Headline: “No Data Manipulation in 2015 Climate Study, Researchers Say.” Well, not all researchers. The background of the data manipulation story revolves around accusations made by David Bates, a recently retired scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Among his several accusations is that NOAA “rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris agreement on climate change,” a paper which would have been welcomed with open arms by the Obama administration. On February 4, Bates wrote a lengthy blog post at his website detailing the accusations. Here is a brief list of some of the charges:

1. Climate scientist, Tom Karl, failed to archive the land temperature data set and thus also failed to “follow the policy of his own Agency [and] the guidelines in Science magazine for dataset archival and documentation.”

2. The authors also chose to “use a 90% confidence threshold for evaluating the statistical significance of surface temperature trends, instead of the standard for significance of 95%,” and according to Bates, the authors failed to give a justification for this when pressed.

3. Karl routinely “had his ‘thumb on the scale’ — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.” Bates adds, “[a] NOAA NCEI supervisor remarked how it was eye-opening to watch Karl work the co-authors, mostly subtly but sometimes not, pushing choices to emphasize warming.”

4. Experimental datasets were used that were not run through operational readiness review (ORR) and were not archived.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Betsy DeVos became the Trump cabinet nominee Democrats most loved to hate Amber Phillips

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

Washington: It took a historic tie breaking vote cast by Vice President Pence on Tuesday to get President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, confirmed by the Senate.

A few months ago, very few people would have predicted DeVos would be confirmed on a 51-50 vote, the narrowest confirmation vote of a Cabinet nominee ever. Two Republicans, Senator. Lisa Murkowski , Alaska, and Susan Collins, Maine, joined the entire Democratic caucus to oppose her.
Pence breaks Senate tie to confirm DeVos

The Senate has confirmed school choice activist Betsy DeVos as Education secretary, with US Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-50 tie. It was the first time a vice president had to break a tie on a Cabinet nomination

But in retrospect, what happened to DeVos makes sense. Her inexperience in public schools, her alienation of some moderate Republicans, a powerful populist movement against her and Senate Democrats’ will to oppose Trump at every turn came together to create the perfect storm.

There are several dynamics going on here, so let’s break down DeVos’ troubled confirmation into four factors.

1) She’s a one-issue nominee

DeVos, a Michigan billionaire philanthropist, is a national figure on the cause of giving vouchers to parents so they can choose whether to send their kids to private or public schools. That is mostly a non-starter for Democrats. But the school-choice-above-all-else narrative also doesn’t fit with some red-state Republican senators, whose rural states don’t necessarily have a ton of private or charter schools to choose from.

“If you are a senator who disagrees with DeVos on the issue of school choice and vouchers,” said Elizabeth Mann of the Brookings Institution, “there aren’t a lot of other places to find common ground.”

2) She doesn’t have experience in public schools

DeVos has not attended, sent her children to, or worked in public schools. And that’s a big problem for people who see the education secretary’s primary role as managing public schools, which a majority of American students attend.

“[L]ike all of us, Mrs. DeVos is the product of her experience,” Collins said on the Senate floor explaining why she’d be voting against DeVos.

Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, poses with boy and his sign for a family member during a rally in Portland, Oregon. Photo: AP

DeVos’ viral confirmation hearing – where she seemed unfamiliar with basic laws and suggested guns in schools could help protect students “from potential grizzlies” — did nothing to assuage those concerns. And it even added a few more, like whether she’d support students with disabilities.

3) A united opposition, a split front of support

The increasingly nationalised debate over school reform has propped up a sizable, well-organized and often powerful coalition of labour and progressive groups that are opposed to DeVos’ school choice position.

But it’s not just teachers unions opposing DeVos. The Washington Post’s Emma Brown talked to parents across the country who opposed Devos and found them to be part of a surprisingly diverse group:

“[A] small army of parents, teachers and others around the country who have risen up against DeVos as President Trump’s nominee heads toward a breathtakingly close confirmation vote. They come from places as diverse as rural Alaska, inner-city Detroit and — suburban Nashville.”

“Vouchers don’t come with any oversight of the schools in which they’re spent,” Anna Caudill, a Tennessee mother of two, told Brown.

Very few Cabinet nominees have such a built-in and well-organized opposition, said Frederick Hess, a DeVos supporter with the American Enterprise Institute. “I don’t know who has that kind of mobilisation on the secretary of state, no matter how much more high-profile the position is,” he said.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

U.K. Defense Chief, Following Prime Minister, Praises Trump Approach Michael Fallon said Trump has likely galvanized U.S. and U.K. efforts to strengthen NATO By Ben Kesling

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

ERBIL, Iraq—U.K. Defense Minister Michael Fallon said Saturday that the British-American defense partnership has never been stronger and that President Donald Trump has likely galvanized the two countries’ efforts to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to push allies to contribute more to mutual defense.

Mr. Fallon, who is scheduled to speak with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis next week, said in an interview that the longstanding defense alliance between the U.S. and U.K. hasn’t been affected by turmoil within the U.S. or internationally following Mr. Trump’s election.

Mr. Fallon became the most recent U.K. official to offer public support for Mr. Trump’s administration, despite widespread concern among Britons over a broad range of domestic and foreign stances. British Prime Minister Theresa May drew criticism at home after she invited Mr. Trump to visit London, extending the offer during her January visit to Washington.

Mr. Fallon said during a trip to the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil that the U.S. and U.K. agree that NATO partners must do more to contribute to the alliance. Mr. Fallon was due to visit British troops training Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

“The president’s remarks have clearly turbocharged that process,” Mr. Fallon said of the push for increased defense commitments. “If President Trump has galvanized the alliance, then we’re in his debt.”

Mr. Fallon said, in particular, the historically strong relationship between the two countries continues to this day.

“The British-American defense partnership is the deepest, strongest defense partnership anywhere in the world,” Mr. Fallon said. “It was the British prime minister who was the first foreign leader into the White House. And defense and security were right at the top of the agenda. Indeed, it was our prime minister who confirmed the United States’ 100% commitment to NATO.”

When asked if Mr. Trump has caused consternation in the British defense firmament, he said that is in no way the case.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Yale Renames Calhoun College Over Slavery Ties College named for ardent supporter of slavery will instead honor computer scientist who was awarded posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom By Melissa Korn

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

Yale University will change the name of Calhoun College, a residential college named for an ardent supporter of slavery, and replace that moniker with one honoring computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper.

University trustees, known as the Yale Corporation, voted in favor of the renaming on Friday, reversing a decision last year to keep the name. Keeping the name had been defended as a way to confront rather than paper over the legacy of slavery.

The change will go into effect in time for the 2017-2018 academic year.

“John C. Calhoun’s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values,” President Peter Salovey said in a message sent to the Yale community on Saturday. He said depictions in the college celebrating plantations and the Old South suggest that Calhoun was honored in part because of his support for slavery, not in spite of it.

Yale is among a number of colleges that have grappled with how to honor their histories without offending modern sensibilities. Vanderbilt University last year said it would pay $1.2 million to remove the word “Confederate” from a residence hall’s facade, while Princeton University said it would keep Woodrow Wilson’s name on its school of public and international affairs and a residential college, while increasing discussion of the former president’s support of segregation.

The naming of Yale’s Calhoun College, one of a dozen residential colleges across the campus, to which students are tied for their undergraduate experience, dates to 1931. Calhoun was a Yale graduate, former U.S. senator, secretary of war, secretary of state and vice president. Yale is adding two more residential colleges this year.

In announcing the name change, Mr. Salovey on Saturday called Ms. Hopper “a visionary in the world of technology” and trailblazer in historically male-dominated fields.

She received her master’s degree in mathematics from Yale in 1930 and her Ph.D. in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1934, then taught mathematics at Vassar College for a decade before enlisting in the U.S. Navy.

Ms. Hopper worked on early computer software and helped develop COBOL, a computer language that became ubiquitous by the 1970s. Ms. Hopper retired as a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy at age 79 and was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama.

A task force composed of two Yale professors and a university alumnus recently recommended the name-change. Trustees chose from among names that had been submitted as alternatives to Calhoun, and as options for the naming of two new residential colleges on campus.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Can Israel rely on foreign peacekeepers and security guarantees? Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

Video#34 http://bit.ly/2kWV8OS; Entire mini-seminar: http://bit.ly/1ze66dS

Israel is urged to concede the historically and militarily most critical mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, in return for a US, or a multinational, peacekeeping force, as well as US security guarantees or defense pact.

2. In order to be effective, defense pacts, and security guarantees – including peacekeeping monitoring or combat forces – must be reliable, durable, specific and politically/militarily sustainable. It must serve the interests of the foreign entity, which dispatches the force, lest it be ignored or summarily withdrawn.

3. However, the litany of US commitments, guarantees and defense pacts are characterized by four critical attributes – escape routes – designed to shield US interests in a way which undermines the effectiveness of the commitments: 1. non-specificity, vagueness and ambiguity, facilitating non-implementation; 2. Non-automaticity, facilitating delay, suspension and non-implementation; 3. Non-implementation if it is deemed harmful to US interests; 4. Subordination to the US Constitution, including the limits of presidential power.
4. For example, the NATO treaty – the tightest US defense pact – as ratified by the US Senate, commits the US to consider steps on behalf of an attacked NATO member, “as it deems necessary.” Moreover, in 1954, President Eisenhower signed a defense treaty with Taiwan, but in 1979, President Carter annulled the treaty unilaterally, with the support of Congress and the Supreme Court.

5. The May 25, 1950 Tripartite Declaration, by the US, Britain and France, included a commitment to maintain a military balance between Israel and the Arab states. However, on October 18, 1955, Secretary of State Dulles refused Israel’s request to buy military systems – to offset Soviet Bloc arm shipments to Egypt – insisting that the facts were still obscure. In 1957, President Eisenhower issued an executive agreement – to compensate for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula – committing US troops should Egypt violate the ceasefire and Sinai’s demilitarization. But, in 1967, President Johnson claimed that “[the commitment] ain’t worth a solitary dime,” while the UN peacekeepers fled upon the Egyptian invasion of the Sinai, the blockade of Israel’s port of Eilat, and the establishment of intra-Arab military force to annihilate Israel. In 1975, President Ford sent a letter to Prime Minister Rabin, stating that the US “will give great weight to Israel’s position that any peace agreement with Syria must be predicated on Israel remaining on the Golan Heights.” But, in 1979, President Carter contended that Ford’s letter hardly committed Ford, but certainly none of the succeeding presidents.

6. In an April 1975 AIPAC Conference speech, the late Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson dismissed security guarantees as harmful delusion: “Detente did not save Cambodia and it will not save Vietnam, despite the fact that we and the Soviets are co-guarantors of the Paris Accords. And that is something to keep in mind when one hears that we and the Soviets should play the international guarantee game in the Middle East.”

7. According to Prof. Noah Pelcovits, Political Sicence, UCLA: “[In the context of security arrangements] there is only one chance in three that the protector will come to the aid of its ally in wartime, and then only at the discretion of the protector…. What counts is the protector’s perception of self-interest. Otherwise, the commitment is not honored….”

8. Prof. Michla Pomerance, International Relations, Hebrew University, stated that US defense commitments, including the NATO Treaty, “are uniformly characterized by vagueness, non-specificity… and the explicit denial of any automatic obligation to use force… [in] accordance with the desire of the US, as promisor, to keep its options open…. Evasion by means of interpretation would not be a difficult task….”

9. The stationing of foreign peacekeeping tropps on Israel’s border would cripple Israel’s defense capabilities, requiring Israel to seek prior approval in preempting or countering belligerence, which would also strain US-Israel ties. At the same time, appearing to have enabled Israel to act freely, would damage US-Arab ties.

10. The assumption that inherently tenuous, intangible, open-ended and reversible US security commitments constitute an effective compensation for critical Israeli land, tangible, irreversible concessions – such as a retreat from the strategically and historically critical mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria – reflects detachment from the Washington constitutional labyrinth and recent precedents, engendering a false sense of security, thus compromising the existence of the Jewish state, transforming Israel from a robust national security producing asset to a frail national security consuming liability, undermining US interests and US-Israel relations.

11. The next video will expand on the inherent non-reliability of US and international security guarantees.

IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU MIGRATION NUMBERS 2016: 490.547 IMMIGRANTS, 1.205 MILLION ASYLUM APPLICANTS By Vincent van den Born

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

EU migration numbers 2016: 490.547 immigrants, 1.205 million asylum applicants

From the offices of EU Parliament’s think tank, comes another publication on migration. Though it claims the document is not the official position of EU parliament, the numbers cited are from official Frontex and Eurostat sources and it represents the documents MEP’s work with. The entire document can be downloaded from here in PDF format. These are the highlights:

Routes and numbers of illegal immigration January-November 2016

The total number of illegal migrants in the mentioned eleven month period: 490,547. The total number of asylum applicants is almost 2.5 times higher at 1.205 million, which is a modest drop from 2015’s 1.323 million.

‘Applicants’ refers to anyone applying for asylum or similar protection or included in an application as a family member.

So while there may have been a sharp decline in – recorded – illegal immigration, the number of applicants has not gone down substantially.

Meanwhile, the geographical displacement of asylum applicants, per capita, remains focused on Germany and Sweden, with countries on the route there (Greece, Hungary and Austria) also taking on substantial numbers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DUTCH CONSERVATIVE MP SAYS “MUSLIM IMMIGRATION MUST STOP”, GETS SCORNED BY PARTY LEADER By Willem Cornax

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

On February 9th Ybeltje Berckmoes, MEP for the Dutch Torries (VVD), was invited to a public discussion on women in North-Africa and the Middle East (MENA), called “women in the MENA-region and their role in processes of peace and democracy, as well as civil rights”. The main speaker was Sigrid Kaag, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon.

Afterwards, Berckmoes was interviewed about her remarks during the discussion. She said:

“It’s not mixing for one bit. I see a threat. Because of their population explosion, angry young men from Africa and the Middle East are coming over here, this needs to stop. In Wester Europe, some sort of Eurabia seems to be developing.”

The VVD’s chairman, Halbe Zijlstra subsequently derided her, saying:

“This is a good explanation on why she is not on the electoral list anymore. The way she says it, that’s why she’s not on the list.”

Two things are stingy about that statement. Had she put in different, more politically correct terms, would it have been acceptable then? This would mean Zijlstra thinks the same, but does not find it politically expedient to say so. What is worse?

Apart from this, the suggestion that these views are the reason she is not on the list for the upcoming election, is bogus as well. Berckmoes herself already indicated last year she would not be running as a candidate anymore.

Berckmoes says she’s “very much drawn to the fate of these women”. Her statements are based on her experiences in NATO and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). She stated, “different cultures can co-exist together.” However, Berckmoes observes women encounter the same problems here as they do in the MENA-region. Why? Because “we’re seeing a mixing of cultures that do not mix”.

Meanwhile, in the real world, more than 50% of Europeans agree with Mrs. Berckmoes and want an immigration stop.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump State Department Document Recognizes Jerusalem as Israeli; New York Times Ignores It by Ira Stoll

Posted By on February 12th, 2017

The Trump administration, breaking with Obama administration precedent, has issued an official State Department document recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel.

And the New York Times, as is typical, entirely missed the news, preferring instead to obsess about Israeli settlements and to portray the Trump administration, inaccurately, as truckling to pressure from Arab monarchs.

The State Department reference to “Israel, Jerusalem” amid a list of countries and capital cities — such as “Egypt, Cairo,” “Lebanon, Beirut” and “Iraq, Baghdad” — came in an appendix to an obscure government document — a report from the State Department’s inspector general detailing a review of the US government’s Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Though it was initially labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” and intended for internal State Department use, the document was distributed by the department this week to a public email list that included The Algemeiner.

According to three judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, legal precedents by the Supreme Court doomed…

The 20-page report, dated February 2017, mostly concerns mundane regulatory matters, such as the disclosure that the Middle East Broadcasting Networks“had not conducted a fire drill at its headquarters in Springfield, Virginia since occupying it in 2004.”

Buried in Appendix B, on page 17 of the pdf, is a list detailing the staffing and funding of the broadcasting networks, which provide television, radio and internet news directed at Arab-language audiences. That list includes 16 full-time employees and two contractors in “Israel, Jerusalem.”