RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/brilliant-pebbles-sdi/2019/06/21/id/921504/

Good News. Defense News reports that, unlike the previous Air Force Secretary, currently Acting Secretary Matt Donovan supports President Trump’s Space Force initiative. And there’s potentially more good news associated with his arrival.

Several of my recent articles have lamented that my favorite service was slow-rolling President Trump’s Space Force initiative — in spite of support given by many former USAF and other leaders — witness a May 23, 2019 open letter by43 of us saying it was prime time to make it so.

Even though Previous Undersecretary Donovan is only acting as Secretary, his advocacy is most welcome, and there are hopeful signals that the rumored Secretary to be nominated by President Trump, former Aerospace Corporation Chairwoman Barbara Barrett, will also be supportive.

Moreover, Donovan is quoted as wanting “to build a mesh network of inter-networked communications satellites, that’s absolutely foundational with what we’re trying to do with our advanced battle management system, which will lead us to multi-domain command and control.”

At the recent Paris Air Show, he also noted his support for the new Space Development Agency (SDA) — opposed by the former Air Force Secretary—and its head Dr. Fred Kennedy, as well as Kennedy’s boss Dr. Mike Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

From my perspective, these are very good signs, indeed — if Donovan and his follow Air Force leaders follow through.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274015/muslim-federation-removes-name-fb-manager-fb-page-joe-kaufman

It appears Abdur Rahman al-Ghani’s job as Facebook Manager for the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) Facebook page may be over. Following two FrontPage articles written by this author, exposing al-Ghani’s hatred for Jews and America and support for an Islamic State, SFMF has removed the ‘Team Member’ section from its Facebook page (SoFlo Muslims), which listed al-Ghani as its sole team member. At the same time, al-Ghani removed from the ‘Intro’ section of his own Facebook page that he “Manages SoFlo Muslims.”

The South Florida Muslim Federation has only been around for just over two years, and in that short period of time, major issues have been exposed regarding the terror and hate-related groups and individuals involved with it.

The Executive Director of SFMF is Nezar Hamze. Prior to leading the Federation, Hamze was the Regional Operations Director for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization with foundational and financial ties to Hamas. Wilfredo Ruiz, the Public Relations Director of SFMF, is also the current Communications Director of CAIR-Florida and the legal advisor for the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group that has been cited by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for anti-Semitic activity.

Both CAIR and AMANA are member organizations of SFMF. Indeed, SFMF is an umbrella group for most, if not all, of South Florida’s radical Muslim organizations, including all of South Florida’s radical mosques.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274052/7-years-later-trial-benghazi-attacker-ends-daniel-greenfield

Arresting Islamic terrorists and bringing them to trial was a signature policy of the Obama years.

Despite his end zone dance after OBL’s death, Obama’s actual plan was to arrest Osama bin Laden and put him on trial. The arrests of terrorists, instead of their battlefield elimination, is still continuing on as a policy even after Obama is out of office.

Here’s how well that plan worked out in the Benghazi Islamic terrorist attack that killed 4 Americans, including an ambassador..

 A U.S. judge has declared a mistrial on 15 remaining charges against a Libyan militant who was found guilty last week of playing an instrumental role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

The mistrial in the case of Mustafa al-Imam was declared Monday in Washington after a jury could not reach a decision on 15 counts. The same jury last week found al-Imam guilty of two different counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

That’s two to fifteen. Great track record.

Mustafa will be spending plenty of time in prison. But the entire process is a pointless farce. 

Benghazi was an enemy attack. Its perpetrators should have been taken out, not put on trial at a cost of millions to taxpayers, with indecisive results are best.

This was not a sign of strength, but of weakness.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/illhan-omar-declines-to-address-terrorist-recruitment-in-her-district/

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) declined to address a report that found the highest level of terrorist group recruitment has taken place in her congressional district.

According to a Fox News report from February, “More men and boys from a Somali American community in Minneapolis have joined – or attempted to join – a foreign terrorist organization over the last 12 years than any other jurisdiction in the country.” The city of Minneapolis is located in Omar’s district.

“FBI stats show 45 Somalis left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab, or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined. And as of 2018, a dozen more had been arrested with the intention of leaving to support ISIS,” stated the report.

Omar, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked about the report’s findings on Capitol Hill.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273955/terror-dc-stephen-brown

In a vastly under-reported story by the mainstream media, the capital of the United States barely missed being the target of a Nice-like terrorism attack that killed 86 people and plunged France into grief and shock.

In that French city, in July, 2014, a Muslim terrorist drove a large truck down a popular promenade, deliberately smashing into as many innocent people out for a walk as possible, killing 86.

Jihadists have a bitter history of using vehicles to kill infidels in the West. Besides Nice, the Berlin Christmas market truck attack in 2016, for example, left 12 dead, while in 2017 a jihadist drove a van down a pedestrian promenade in Barcelona, killing 13.

It was now America’s turn.

In Washington, D.C. last March, Rondell Henry, 28, a native of Trinidad inspired by Islamic State videos of violence and death, was planning a Nice-like attack by running over a crowd of innocent people.

Henry, a naturalized American citizen who lived in Germantown, Maryland, had first driven to Virginia on March 26 where he stole a U-Haul truck he had tailed and which he intended to use as his murder weapon. He actually left his BMW parked near the parking garage where he stole the truck, probably considering it too small for his murderous purposes.

“The defendant appears to have formed a plot to harm large numbers of people and taken concrete steps to execute that plot,” said the U.S. attorney for Maryland.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273961/students-justice-palestine-supporter-plotted-daniel-greenfield

Times Square has been a popular target for a number of Muslim terrorist plots and attacks.

The latest one was allegedly the work of Ashiqul Alam, a Muslim settler living in Queens.

Sources told CBS2 that Ashiqul Alam was taken into custody by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes both the NYPD and FBI.

The 22-year-old man from Queens allegedly bought guns and wanted to use a suicide vest and grenades to attack Times Square to kill police officers and civilians.

Authorities say Alam bought two guns with their serial numbers removed from undercover agents.

“Mr. Alam discussed guns, suicide vests, hand grenades, and surveilled crowded New York targets such as Times Square”, said Police Commissioner James O’Neill. “Our job is to prevent these terrorist attacks whenever we can before they are carried out. This case is another example of the tightly-knit teamwork of the JTTF and the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau. Mr. Alam is charged with illegally purchasing untraceable firearms from undercover officers. That was a clear indicator of his intent to move his plot forward.”

Authorities say Alam wanted to either attack Times Square or Washington D.C., with an eye toward killing a “senior government official.”

Alam reportedly went to Times Square for reconnaissance and made videos as he was researching potential targets.

Authorities say Alam underwent laser surgery to correct his vision and allegedly linked his decision to get surgery with his plot.

“Let’s say we are in an attack, right, say that my glasses fall off. What if I accidentally shoot you? You know what I mean. Imagine what the news channel would call me the ‘Looney Tunes Terrorist’ or the ‘Blind Terrorist,’” Alam allegedly said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273971/isis-border-joseph-klein

The staggering numbers alone prove there is an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. In just May of this year, 132,887 people were apprehended between ports of entry on the southwest border with Mexico, the highest monthly figure since March 2006. The number of U.S. Border Patrol southwest border apprehensions for the first 5 months of 2019 is more than 2.6 times greater than the number of apprehensions during the same period last year. “We are bursting at the seams,” Randy Howe, executive director of Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations, told reporters last week. “It’s unsustainable and this can’t continue.”

As far as open border Democrats are concerned, however, the only crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico is the plight of the many thousands of migrants themselves as they try to manipulate our loophole-ridden asylum system or otherwise try to enter the country illegally. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives refuses to fix the asylum mess, or to provide monies for effective border security that must include barriers erected in vulnerable locations. Instead, they passed an amnesty bill last week for more than 2 million so-called “dreamers” whose parents brought them to this country illegally as children and individuals who had been designated for “Temporary Protected Status.”

Beyond the sheer number of illegal migrants overrunning the border and straining our resources, the surging flow of migrants traversing Mexico into the United States poses a serious national security risk. Open border Democrats could care less. They say not to worry about terrorists crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since no terrorist attack linked to such migration has happened yet. Beto O’Rourke said during a campaign rally, for example, “[Z]ero, precisely zero, terrorists, terrorist groups, or terror plots have ever been connected with the U.S.-Mexico border to do harm to people within the United States.” Proponents of such a pre-9/11 attitude are either clueless or, in the case of the radical left, are part of the red-green axis. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pentagon-condemns-russian-conduct-near-collision-american-cruiser/

The Department of Defense on Friday condemned the near collision of a Russian destroyer and an American guided-missile cruiser and said the U.S. will file a formal demarcate against the Russians for their part in the incident.

“The behavior’s unsafe and unprofessional,” Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan told reporters on Friday. “We’ll have military-to-military conversations with the Russians, and of course we’ll démarche them.”

On Friday morning, the Russian destroyer Udaloy came within 50 to 100 feet of the USS Chancellorsville in the Philippine Sea’s international waters, executing “an unsafe maneuver” that put “the safety of her crew and ship at risk,” according to Commander Clayton Doss, a Navy spokesman. “This unsafe action forced Chancellorsville to execute all engines back full and to maneuver to avoid collision,” Doss said. The Navy also alleged that the Russian ship had violated the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.

Like Doss and Shanahan, top Navy admiral John Richardson blamed Russia for the incident, saying in a statement that:

This unwise maneuver, combined with the unsafe maneuvers by the Russian aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean earlier this week, make it clear that these dangerous actions by Russian military forces across the globe do not match what the world expects from a responsible and trustworthy world power.

“The U.S. Navy will not be deterred from supporting the free and open use of the seas and skies where international law clearly allows all to operate,” Richardson added.

https://www.newsmax.com/henryfcooper/spacex-strategic-defense-initiative-sdi/2019/06/06/id/919214/

Ambassador Henry F. (Hank) Cooper, Chairman of High Frontier and an acknowledged expert on strategic and space national security issues, was President Ronald Reagan’s Chief Negotiator at the Geneva Defense and Space Talks with the Soviet Union and Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Director during the George H.W. Bush administration. Previously, he served as the Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Deputy Assistant USAF Secretary and Science Advisor to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory.

On the eve of the D-Day celebrations, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule returned from the International Space Station (ISS), completing the private launcher’s 17th resupply mission to the manned orbital research facility. Its June 4 “splash down” completed the Commercial Resupply Services mission 17 (CRS-17) — that delivered 5,500 pounds of supplies for the astronauts and materials for ongoing experiments and research.

Dragon docked at the ISS for about a month, while the crew unloaded its cargo, and then began its de-orbit burn. SpaceX has provided an informative 30-minute recap of the CRS-17 mission, complete with an infrared capture of the return of the Falcon’s first-stage booster for a perfect landing on the drone landing ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean.

This reuse of launchers for space operations was the objective of an important effort in President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known for its advocacy for space-based defenses against ballistic missiles and still the most cost-effective, but as yet unrealized, defense against ballistic missile attack for Americans at home and our overseas troops, friends and allies.

Lest you doubt that impressive SDI efforts preceded the impressive SpaceX achievements, consider the 1993-94 demonstration of SDI’s Delta Clipper-X, or DC-X, and later dubbed the Clipper Graham, after USA Lt. General Danny Graham who persuaded Vice President Dan Quayle and my predecessor SDI Director USAF Lt. General George Monahan to initiate the effort.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273920/gun-toting-cair-leader-hassan-shibly-wants-terror-joe-kaufman

CAIR Representative Hassan Shibly is not happy that his and his radical Muslim brethren’s names are found on the United States government terrorist watch list, so he and his organization are suing the federal government to get rid of the list. However, there is a good reason that the list exists and many good reasons for Shibly to be on it, and he just made that case even stronger by meeting with and helping to fundraise for convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad member, Hatem Fariz.

The terrorist watch list or Terrorist Screening Database was established by the US to protect Americans from potential dangers. According to the FBI, the agency that maintains the list, the list includes those who are “known or suspected terrorists.”

Apparently, one of those “suspects” is the Executive Director of CAIR-Florida, Hassan Shibly. Shibly is a plaintiff in a lawsuit put forward by CAIR, in 2016 and continuing to this day, claiming anti-Muslim harassment by authorities and attempting to eradicate the watch list. Indeed, according to reports, Shibly has admitted to having been “searched dozens of times” because of his watch list status and “was once handcuffed” at a border crossing in Detroit, Michigan.

Just being affiliated with CAIR is a ‘red flag’ on Shibly. CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations has both financial and foundational ties to Hamas. The US government has stated as such. Various CAIR representatives have served prison time and/or have been deported from the US for terrorist-related activity, and CAIR, itself, in November 2014, was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.