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HOMELAND SECURITY

The Trump Budget Still Shortchanges The Military After the stagnant ’70s, Presidents Carter and Reagan boosted spending by double digits annually. By Mac Thornberry

Mr. Thornberry, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Ask anyone who served in the U.S. military in the late 1970s, and he will tell you it was a miserable time. Morale was low. Training was deficient. Weapons and equipment didn’t work. Good people left the armed services in droves. At the same time the world was growing more dangerous, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and multiple nations falling to communism.

A decade later the situation had turned around. How did America go from the hollow military of the 1970s to the strength that helped drive the Soviet Union out of existence? Are there lessons we could apply today?

A few months ago the vice chiefs from each branch of the military appeared before the House Armed Services Committee, which I lead. Their testimony certainly got my attention. Only three of the Army’s 58 Brigade Combat Teams are “ready to fight tonight.” More than half the Navy’s airplanes cannot fly because they are awaiting maintenance and spare parts. The Air Force is short 1,500 pilots and 3,000 mechanics, and its fleet is older and smaller than ever. All that is alarming enough, but what surprised me most was testimony that pilots today get fewer training hours in the cockpit than during the dire days of the 1970s.

How did this happen? Since 2010 the defense budget has been cut by more than 20%, but the world has not become 20% safer. To get planes, ships and equipment ready to deploy to the Middle East or elsewhere, the military has had to take parts off other planes, ships and units. This cannibalization has diminished American readiness. The military is not prepared to carry out all the missions it may be asked to do in time of war.

What is the answer? Rebuilding the military after the 1970s took serious and sustained effort. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Carter administration raised defense spending by 12% in 1979 and 15% in 1980.

Ronald Reagan added even more: 17% in 1981 and 18% in 1982. After that the rate of growth slowed a bit, but in all there were five straight years of double-digit increases followed by three more of nearly 10%. At that point the defense budget was about 6% of America’s gross domestic product. Today it is only 3.1%.

Repairing the damage done to the military in our time will require a similar sort of response. It is wrong to send brave men and women out on missions for which they are not fully prepared or without the best equipment the nation can produce. CONTINUE AT SITE

How Muslims Take Control of America By Amil Imani

American Mosques: Warehouses of Jihad

They do it first by establishing mosques in every town and city. These meeting places are perfect warehouses of not only indoctrination, but future terrorists, who are made to read and understand the principles of jihad, martyrdom, and Dar-al-Harb (“land of war” – any place not Islamized).

Mosques cost money, and the money for these warehouses of hate is coming straight from Saudi Arabia. These mosques are being infused with an activist strain of Islam, Wahhabism. If you have to ask where the Saudis are getting their money, you are not paying attention…it’s coming from you. According to “The Mosque in America: a National Portrait,” a survey released in April 2001, there were at least 1,209 mosques in the U.S. Today, it’s estimated that that number has quadrupled.

Mosque Leaders Promote Sharia

Mosque elders tend to be sent to the U.S. with one clear mission: make sharia law the supreme rule within the United States, using any and all tactics necessary. Next, from within the safety of their local mosques, they begin to use their revolting practices, riotous youth, and wild sermonizing to force genteel Americans to relocate to safer, less threatening neighborhoods and cities. Of course, not all Americans will move or can afford to do so. To take control of a town, Muslims will not need to evict everyone. They probably need about 25% in order to make life very unpleasant for those who do not go along with their demands.

Political Islamist Infiltration

They will elect Muslims to all positions of local influence, who will create and enforce policy according to the Quran. Once they have control over a town, they will begin to establish informal sharia, and there’s nothing the government can (or will want to) do about it.

Sharia is the brutal means by which Islam controls its populations by force, intimidation, and punishments for offenses to Allah. Already, in many European countries, national governments have, out of fear, given Islamic fascists the right to establish their own shadow governments within the borders of countries like Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, and England, where they can control their own populations without accountability. Proposals for sharia are being taken seriously by Canada.

This is an admission that Islam is not just a religion. It is a cult. It seeks total control over a person’s mind and body. As such, our Constitution is totally incompatible with it. Muslims will push politicians for local control and self-determination of their own laws. In this way, America will become two nations: a weakened traditional one and a growing, menacing Islamized one.

Islamists Ally with Leftists

At the same time, Muslims will ally with leftist politicians, who will gladly cede some of their power to this group of enforcers, so conservative politicians and Christians who advocate self-defense and sane social policies are kept out of office. Money that was once used to build mosques will now be used to buy politicians. On university campuses, Islam will be portrayed as righteous and peaceful, while Christianity will be associated with evil Western and American values. Rebellious American youths (BLM, OWS, antifa, etc.) will eat it up.

There will be increasing local and regional incidents of crimes and threats against Christians, Jews, and anybody who speaks out against the religion of hate. Terrorism is a completely legitimate tool of Islam and was widely practiced and advocated by Muhammad. Remember: all words in the Quran are perfect, immutable laws defining an eternal ethic:

Against them (the unbelievers) make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly. (Quran 8.06)

FBI Raids Dearborn Home in Connection with National Security Investigation By Debra Heine

The FBI conducted a raid in Dearborn, Michigan, last Thursday night, taking one person into custody in connection with a national security investigation. Federal investigators reportedly blocked off the street and spent several hours at the home gathering evidence. They also told the local media that there was no immediate threat to public safety in metro Detroit.

Neighbors told Fox 2 that a Lebanese family consisting of a husband, wife, two kids, and an elderly woman moved into the house only about a month ago.

The multi-jurisdictional investigation started in New York, and according to sources, involved a target who might have been giving support to a terrorist organization.

Via Click on Detroit:

Residents watched and wondered what the FBI SWAT team was doing at the home on Jonathan Street. Several neighbors said dozens of law enforcement officials from multiple agencies blocked the street and searched the home.

Nobody answered the door, but Ken Donaldson, who cuts most of the lawns on Jonathan Street, said everyone on the street is nice. He said it shows that a national security operation can happen anywhere.

“Every time we catch one person, it’s a plus for the overall goal,” Donaldson said. “If they eliminate that kind of terrorism, every step is a plus.”

Former Detroit FBI boss Andy Arena said the fact that neighbors weren’t evacuated, and that there was no imminent threat, means there weren’t terrorist bombs or weapons in the home.

“If that was there, if there was a threat, the FBI would have gotten the neighbors, the people in the neighborhood, out of there,” Arena said.

Sources said the raid was a joint terrorism task force case of “providing money and/or material support to a terrorist organization.” The target lived in New York, but recently moved to Dearborn.

According to Arab America News, a local outlet in Dearborn, the man taken into custody is Samer ElDebek, who works as a truck driver.

Dennis Michael Lynch reported:

He was returned to New York “on federal charges of providing material support or resources to foreign terrorist organizations, and receiving military-type training from them,” the AAnews stated.

ElDebek reportedly had lived in New York, then went to Lebanon eight years ago. AAnews said he returned to New York last year, then moved to Dearborn about 10 months ago.

A warrant issued a day before the raid stated that the FBI believed ElDebek had explosive materials, and/or a manual on how to make them. Included in the dozens of boxes the agents seized from the home were reportedly “over 90 sparkling birthday candles and several high-powered Shot Grizzly fireworks.” The family denied owning the fireworks, claiming they belonged to a neighbor who shared the same garage.

Contrary to some reports from alt-right outlets, the raid had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

EMP Commission Chair Warns on North Korean EMP By John R. Moore

In April, PJMedia warned of an imminent threat to the US from North Korea – an electromagnetic pulse – EMP – attack from an orbiting satellite. We reported that North Korea already has two satellites orbiting the US and that a nuclear weapon detonated over the US from one could devastate our country, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions from the loss of critical infrastructure.

Shortly after our warning, the respected North Korea analysis site 38North published an article titled “A North Korean Nuclear EMP Attack? … Unlikely”. The author, relying on an incomplete and dated report, thought that North Korea would need a hydrogen bomb (thermonuclear weapon) in order to be a threat.

Now, 38North has a new piece on the topic – “North Korea Nuclear EMP Attack: An Existential Threat.” The author is the former head of the Congressional EMP Commission and is a foremost expert on EMP. This article adds to the PJMedia report by confirming that the yield of nuclear weapons already tested by North Korea is sufficient to be devastating. It refutes the prior article:

‘Thus, even if North Korea only has primitive, low-yield nuclear weapons, and if other states or terrorists acquire one or a few such weapons as well as the capability to detonate them at an altitude of 30 kilometers or higher over the United States. … the EMP Commission warned over a decade ago in its 2004 Report, “the damage level could be sufficient to be catastrophic to the Nation, and our current vulnerability invites attack.”’

Nuclear EMP from a high altitude detonation – H-EMP E-1 pulse – is caused when a massive flux of gamma rays strikes the upper levels of the atmosphere. These strip off and accelerate electrons, creating a sudden powerful electromagnetic pulse, which travels to the surface and destroys electronics and can damage power transmission equipment. The result would be a months-long loss of the electrical grid, transportation, computers and communication systems, causing a rapid breakdown of our transportation, food, water and healthcare delivery systems.

CONTINUE AT SITE

U.S. Charges Contractor With Leaking NSA Document on Russian Hacking Reality Leigh Winner was charged with removing classified information and mailing it to a news organization; U.S. official confirms outlet was The Intercept By Del Quentin Wilber and Lukas I. Alpert

A 25-year-old government contractor was arrested over the weekend and charged with leaking a secret report to a news organization that described some of Russia’s election-related hacking activities, according to court papers and U.S. officials briefed on the case.

Reality Leigh Winner of Augusta, Ga., was charged with removing classified information from her secure workplace and mailing it to the news organization.

The Justice Department didn’t identify the news organization in court papers, but a U.S. official confirmed it was the Intercept, which on Monday afternoon posted online a document that it said was produced by the National Security Agency and which concluded Russian spies hacked computers of a U.S. company “to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions.”

Ms. Winner is being held in federal custody until a detention hearing later this week, according to her attorney, Titus Nichols.

“She has no criminal history,” Mr. Nichols said. “She is holding up very well and trying to remain in good spirits. We are working to resolve this and put it behind her.”

Ms. Winner is a contractor with Pluribus International Corp. and is assigned to a government facility in Georgia, the Justice Department said. Calls to Pluribus weren’t answered.

The U.S. government learned about the alleged leak on May 30 when a news organization provided it with a copy of the secret document in an apparent effort to verify its authenticity, according to an affidavit filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In the court papers, the FBI said government experts examined the copy of the report and concluded it had been folded or creased, suggesting it “had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space.”

The government investigated who had access to the document and determined that six people, including Ms. Winner, had printed copies of it. An audit of her desk computer revealed she had an “e-mail contact with” the news organization, the affidavit says.

Ms. Winner was questioned Saturday by an FBI agent and admitted printing the report and then mailing it to a news organization, the affidavit alleged.

Her lawyer, Mr. Nichols, declined to comment on the allegations.

In an article published Monday, the Intercept said it had received the NSA report anonymously and had authenticated its contents. It said the NSA report details Russian efforts to hack the computers of a U.S. company and steal information about election-related software and hardware, data that was then likely used to launch cyberattacks against local U.S. governments.

U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials have said that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election to help the prospects of Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee. CONTINUE AT SITE

Counter-terror Lessons from America’s Civil War By David P. Goldman

The essay below first appeared a year ago in The Asia Times, under the headline, “Why the terrorists are winning the intelligence war.” There’s a tried and true American approach to suppressing terrorism, and it worked quite well during Gen. Sherman’s 1863 Kentucky campaign and Gen. Phil Sheridan’s subsequent reduction of the Shenandoah Valley. We don’t have to be particularly smart; we merely have to do some disgusting things. Sherman and Sheridan suppressed sniping at Union soldiers by Confederate civilians by burning the towns (just the towns, not the townsfolk) that sheltered them. In other words, they forced collective responsibility upon a hostile population, a doctrine that in peacetime is entirely repugnant, but that in wartime becomes unavoidable. By contrast, the peacetime procedure of turning petty criminals into police snitches has backfired terribly. No doubt we will learn that the perpetrators of tonight’s horror at London Bridge were known to police, like the Manchester Arena suicide bomber and most of the perpetrators of large-scale terrorist acts in Europe during the past several years. (Update: “At Least One London Bridge Terrorist Was a ‘Known Wolf'”) The remedy is time-tested and straightforward. We merely require the will to apply it.

Why the terrorists are winning the intelligence war

Yet another criminal known to security services has perpetrated a mass killing, the Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel. Why did the French police allow a foreign national with a criminal record of violence to reside in France? Apart from utter incompetence, the explanation is that he was a snitch for the French authorities. Blackmailing Muslim criminals to inform on prospective terrorists is the principal activity of European counter-terrorism agencies, as I noted in 2015. Every Muslim in Europe knows this.

The terrorists, though, have succeeded in turning the police agents sent to spy on them and forcing them to commit suicide attacks to expiate their sins. This has become depressingly familiar; as Ryan Gallagher reported recently, perpetrators already known to the authorities committed ten of the highest-profile attacks between 2013 and 2015.
The terrorists, in other words, are adding insult to injury. By deploying police snitches as suicide attackers, terrorists assert their moral superiority and power over western governments. The message may be lost on the western public, whose security agencies and media do their best to obscure it, but it is well understood among the core constituencies of the terrorist groups: the superiority of Islam turns around the depraved criminals whom the western police send to spy on us, and persuades them to become martyrs for the cause of Islam.

These attacks, in other words, are designed to impress the Muslim public as much as they are intended to horrify the western public. In so many words, the terrorists tell Muslims that western police agencies cannot protect them. If they cooperate with the police they will be found out and punished. The West fears the power of Islam: it evinces such fear by praising Islam as a religion of peace, by squelching dissent in the name of fighting supposed Islamophobia, and by offering concessions and apologies to Muslims. Ordinary Muslims live in fear of the terror networks, which have infiltrated their communities and proven their ability to turn the efforts of western security services against them. They are less likely to inform on prospective terrorists and more likely to aid them by inaction.

The terrorists, in short, are winning the intelligence war, because they have shaped the environment in which intelligence is gathered and traded. But that is how intelligence wars always proceed: spies switch sides and tell their stories because they want to be with the winner. ISIS and al-Qaeda look like winners in the eyes of western Muslim populations after humiliating the security services of the West.

As a result, western European Muslims fear the terrorists more than they fear the police. The West will remain vulnerable to mass terror attacks until the balance of fear shifts in the other direction.

Report: Global Terrorism Has Tripled Since 2011, Now at an All-Time High By Patrick Poole

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its annual “Global Peace Index” for 2017, reporting some shocking findings:According to the report, global terrorism has nearly tripled since 2011, and terrorism is now at an all-time high:

The Voice of America reports:

Worldwide terrorism is at an all-time high, and violence cost the global economy $14.3 trillion last year, with a $2.5 trillion impact in the United States alone.

These new figures from the latest Global Peace Index, a report on conflict and security, indicate that world peace has been deteriorating for the past decade, largely driven by terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

The study says the decline interrupts long-term improvements the world had been making since the end of World War II.

According to the report, the annual number of terrorism incidents has almost tripled since 2011.

Deaths from terrorism have risen more than 900% since 2007 in the 35 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Of those members, 23 nations experienced terrorism related deaths over the past year.

Those countries include Denmark, Sweden, France and Turkey.

One eye-popping graphic from the report (p. 36):

This is quite a turnaround from this time last year during the presidential campaign — when the media was trumpeting supposed major declines in terrorism:Only a few were willing to acknowledge the growing terrorism problem developing in the West:After last month’s suicide bombing in Manchester, among other recent attacks, it appears that another “Summer of Terror” may be in the offing:

Piling on Sheriff Clarke Plagiarism allegations the latest attack on the would-be DHS official. Matthew Vadum

Allegations of academic plagiarism are the latest weapon the left-wingers of the mainstream media are using in an effort to take down Milwaukee County, Wisc., Sheriff David Clarke.

The Left’s politics of personal destruction played no small role in the defeat at the polls last November of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R). More recently, the Left played a role in the departure of top-rated Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, and now that they smell conservative blood in the water, the character assassins at the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America are stepping up their efforts to force Sean Hannity off the airwaves.

These people are going after Clarke, a high-profile conservative and outspoken champion of law and order, because they view him as a threat to Democratic Party interests. Democrats, of course, think they hold a monopoly on black support and are threatened by strong black conservatives, so they attack and smear them at every opportunity.

Hitting Clarke, a longtime supporter of President Trump, became especially urgent for the Left after he announced a little over a week ago that he would be taking a position at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in June. The position, assistant secretary of DHS for partnership and engagement, does not require confirmation by the Senate.

Clarke, a strong Second Amendment advocate, was one of three black speakers to appear at the Republican National Convention last summer. He is also eminently quotable. He has told Black Lives Matter activists to “stop trying to fix the police, fix the ghetto,” and described Ferguson protesters as “vultures on a roadside carcass.”

Days after Clarke made the DHS appointment public, a team of CNN researchers led by serial exaggerator Andrew Kaczynski conveniently accused him of plagiarism with respect to his 2013 master’s thesis on U.S. security studies for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. (The thesis may be viewed here.)

How Sharia Supremacism and Judicial Imperialism Threaten National Security Having failed to define the real threat — sharia supremacism — Trump walked into a trap of his own making. By Andrew C. McCarthy

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling against President Trump’s so-called travel ban empowers both radical Islam and judicial imperialism. The combination portends lasting damage to the United States.

To rehash, the executive order (EO) proclaimed temporary restrictions (the main one, for 90 days) on travel to the United States by the nationals of six countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Those countries, along with Iraq (cited in Trump’s original executive order, but not the revised EO at issue), had previously been singled out by Congress and President Obama — not because they are Muslim-majority countries, but because a) the presence or promotion of terrorism in their territories makes their nationals suspect and b) their anti-Americanism and/or dysfunctional governments render it impossible to conduct background checks on visa applicants.

This Fourth Circuit’s en banc review of prior invalidations of the EO by “progressive” activists masquerading as jurists produced 205 pages of opinions. The outcome was about as uncertain as Secretariat at Belmont, with ten of the tribunal’s 13 judges joining Chief Judge Roger Gregory’s majority ruling to one degree or another.

Three judges filed compelling dissents that will prove quite useful when, as Trump promises, the case proceeds to the Supreme Court. The continuation of the litigation is an unfortunate outcome, even if conservatives and other rule-of-law types, buoyed by Justice Neil Gorsuch’s appointment, may be right that the EO has a better shot in the High Court.

That’s because the EO doesn’t matter. You may not have noticed, but sharia supremacism has already won, regardless of what the Supreme Court does.

See, the EO was never an end in and of itself. It is a means — a fatally flawed one — to a vital end. That end is a vetting system that enables our security services to distinguish pro-Western Muslims from sharia supremacists. That’s the goal. The EO was conceived as a temporary pause while the vetting system took shape.

From a security perspective, though, the EO was utterly ineffective: applicable to a negligible slice of the global anti-American threat. More significantly, as a strategy, starting with the EO rather than getting to vetting has been a catastrophe.

As we have previously observed, in order to install the vetting system we need, the challenge of Islam must be confronted head-on and without apology. That is unavoidable. You can’t flinch. It is a certainty that the Democrat-media complex — of which Islamist organizations are members in good standing — is going to smear you as a racist “Islamophobe.” (Yes, this is another race-obsessed “progressive” narrative, so Islam gets to be the “race,” so that defenders of the Constitution and Western culture can be cast as “the oppressor.”) You have to be content with knowing that you are not a racist, with knowing that you are defending religious liberty, including the religious liberty of pro-Western Muslims.

There is a single battle that must be won. American culture must be convinced that Islam, while it has plenty of diversity, has a mainstream strain — sharia supremacism — that is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology hiding under a religious veneer.

Muslim Brothers Arrested in MN After Arsenal of Guns, Ammo, Bomb-Making Materials, and DRONE Found in Car By Debra Heine

Earlier this month, Minneapolis police stumbled across an arsenal of guns, ammunition, and bomb-making materials — including a drone — inside the car of two brothers with ties to the Middle East. The pair were arrested, but now a concerned citizen is “outraged” because one of the men is already out of jail.

The police discovered the arsenal after the man reported 27-year-old Abdullah Alrifahe and 26-year-old Majid Alrifahe to law enforcement on May 11 following an incident outside a federally subsidized senior housing project. When the Good Samaritan confronted the brothers about littering from their car, they jumped out and “moved aggressively toward him,” WCCO reports.

Abdullah is being held in the Hennepin County Jail. His brother, Majid, has been released and is facing minor charges.

WCCO-TV has confirmed that both Homeland Security and the FBI are involved in the investigation, which started outside a federally-subsidized senior housing project. A good Samaritan confronted the men about littering from their car.

The man, who asked that his name not be used for fear of his safety, said the brothers jumped out of their car, moved aggressively toward him and used the N-word. He then called police.

Inside the brothers’ car, police found a loaded AK-47, another rifle, a handgun, a grenade, large amounts of ammunition, and what would later be identified as bomb-making materials, including a drone.

Abdullah Alrifahe had recently been released from jail after serving time for a weapons conviction. He is now facing a single felony weapons charge.

His brother, Majid, has been released from jail and is facing a low-level misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct.

The good Samaritan is outraged the charges aren’t more serious.

“For what they found in their car, that is way too light,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE