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Huma Abedin, Hillary’s Bribe Broker Strong evidence of Hillary and Huma’s pay-to-play conspiracy emerges in new email dump. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

Embattled Hillary Clinton enforcer Huma Abedin gave foreign leaders and activists special access to Clinton when she was secretary of state after they donated to the congenitally corrupt Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, according to newly released emails.

It is yet more evidence that in the event Hillary becomes president her administration will be at least as venal and crooked as her husband Bill’s was. Bill sold nights in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House while he was president but Hillary has been selling her presidential favors in advance for years through the tax-exempt Clinton Foundation, which is little more than an anticipatory bribe processing center. With Hillary installed in the Oval Office, the sky’s the limit.

The trove of newly released emails obtained by watchdog group Judicial Watch through the courts appear to show that Abedin served as a gatekeeper auctioning access to the would-be president in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation. When individuals wanted to meet with Hillary, Abedin would say no, and introduce them to the foundation. After the so-called donation was received access to Clinton would be approved.

Judicial Watch stated Monday that:

“In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of ‘Clinton family affairs.”

“Among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment,” Judicial Watch reveals. “Abedin advised Band that when she went through ‘normal channels’ at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours.”

The Clinton Foundation’s website indicates that in 2005 Salman committed to creating something called the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a project of the foundation.

By 2010, Salman’s organization had given $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly donated somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 to the foundation. Bahrain Petroleum also contributed an extra $25,000 to $50,000.

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FBI Investigating Possible ISIS-Inspired Stabbing Attack in Virginia By Patrick Poole

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

The random stabbing of a couple in Roanoke County, Virginia, on Saturday is now being investigated as a possible ISIS-inspired terror attack, according to reports.

Witnesses to the incident say that the suspect under arrest, Wasil Farooqui, was shouting “Allah Akbar” while attacking a man and woman at their apartment building Saturday evening.

Several media outlets are reporting the FBI’s involvement in the case:

Sources:FBI investigating weekend stabbing in Virginia as possible ISIS-inspired attack, looking at whether attacker wanted to behead victim

— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) August 23, 2016

The Roanoke Times reports:

Roanoke County Police arrested a man in connection with a Saturday night stabbing that injured a man and a woman at The Pines Apartments, off Virginia 419.

Wasil Farooqui, 20, went to a hospital to seek medical care for his own injuries. He matched the description of the suspect and, following further investigation, was arrested, according to a news release.

Farooqui is charged with two counts of aggravated malicious wounding and is being held at the Western Virginia Regional Jail without bond, according to the release.

Officers went to the 4300 block of Banbury Lane after receiving a call around 8 p.m. on Saturday indicating that a man and woman had been attacked with a knife while entering the apartment building. The man fought off the attacker, who then fled, according to the release.

Police believe the attack was random, and that Farooqui has no connection to the victims, according to the release.

WDJB7 adds these details:

The FBI is now involved in a stabbing investigation in Roanoke County.

Wasil Farooqui is charged in the incident that seriously hurt a man and woman at the The Pines Apartments on Saturday.

Witnesses told police that during the attack Farooqui was yelling “Allah Akbar.”

He remains in jail tonight without bond.

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Report: 30k Illegal Immigrants Came From Countries of Terrorist Concern By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

In 2015 alone, over 30,000 illegal immigrants from “countries of terrorist concern” entered the United States through the southwestern border with Mexico, Department of Defense Southern Command (Southcom) spokeswoman Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia told the Washington Free Beacon on Monday.

“Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security,” Garcia said. “There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico.”

Garcia reported that in 2015 alone, “we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of these were from countries of terrorist concern.”

She explained a new Southcom report found that Sunni extremists are infiltrating the United States with the help of alien smugglers in South America and are crossing the border with ease.

While many American security officials and private security experts have dismissed the idea that terrorists exploit alien smuggling networks as a myth, the report revealed terrifying evidence that Islamist infiltration may already have occurred.

“This makes the case for Trump’s wall,” a security official noted in the report. “These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

The Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz also quoted Southcom commander Adm. Kurt Tidd, who warned that a lack of information is hampering security efforts against alien smuggling. “Our ability to track people moving through transportation systems is an area that we must continue to devote efforts on, and the ease with which human traffickers are able to use our transportation systems to move people through the networks relatively undetected should give us all concern.”

The threat does not come from new relationships between Sunni extremists and alien smugglers, but from increased use of already existing networks, explained Joel Vargas, head of Continent Security Services and a consultant to law enforcement agencies. In an email statement, he warned that “existing smuggling networks from Central America are increasing their access.”

“Our Sunni illegal migration coming from [Latin America] is very small,” Vargas admitted. But “on the other hand, they can use the networks set up by the Shia.” He reported that law enforcement agencies have intercepted immigrants coming from Asia but have not been able to determine if they are extremists.

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What’s So Un-Islamic about ISIS? By Ayman S. Ibrahim

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

In each horrifying operation executed by ISIS, the radical terrorist group uses every possible way to convey its Islamic identity. They make sure the world sees and hears what they believe and seek, emphasizing plainly their religious motivation.

However, in each of these instances, we immediately, and almost automatically, hear some Western “scholars” insist that everything about ISIS is un-Islamic: ISIS reflects “societal ills, not Islamic doctrine,” as it “hijacks religion in order to legitimate, mobilize and recruit.” We also hear that ISIS’s version of Islam “is not in accordance with the Quran, the traditions of the Prophet or even with Islamic Law,” and that “No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents.”

This is puzzling. But, no, it should not be.

When some Western scholars deny that ISIS is “in any way” driven by rigorous Islamic ideology, this could hardly be attested, especially if you consider the insistence of prestigious Islamic institutes, like Egypt’s al-Azhar, on identifying the members of ISIS as true Muslims who are committing wrong deeds. For al-Azhar, ISIS’s members cannot be identified as unbelievers as long as they do not reject Allah’s strict monotheism and the apostleship of Muhammad.

Contrary to arguments set forth by these Western scholars, ISIS reflects a specific interpretation of Islam that is both legitimate and consistent with Muslim sacred texts and classical exegesis. Claiming that ISIS’s members are lunatics driven by lust or social evil is hardly plausible, and at best fanciful. Its members can establish rigorous convincing arguments based on the Quran and Islamic tradition to justify each action they take, as they affirm: “This is a fight against Muslims and Islam.” They rely on what Muslims consider divinely inspired and authoritative texts. Ideology establishes convictions and drives behavior.

While there are, of course, various political, sociological, and economic dimensions of the ISIS identity that make its radical image appealing, the religious appeal is exceptionally powerful and unmatched.

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Approaching the end point of the cycle of democracy By Earick Ward

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

One of my favorite quotes, which I believe accurately describes our current circumstances, is attributed to Scottish philosopher Alexander Tytler.

Cycle of Democracy

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage.

Is there a more accurate depiction of today’s Democrat politician than the promise of more benefits from the public treasury? Or the voters’ realization that they can vote themselves largess from the same said public treasury?

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Is the Antarctic Ozone Hole Really Mending? By S. Fred Singer

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

The AOH is an ephemeral (every Oct-Nov) thinning of stratospheric ozone at an altitude of 20-25 km, roughly covering the Antarctic continent; unanticipated, it was discovered serendipitously in 1985 but is now tracked with satellite-borne ozone meters. Its discovery created much panic about an epidemic of skin cancers that led directly to passage of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty stopping the manufacture and release into the atmosphere of ozone-depleting chemicals, including CFCs used in refrigeration and bromine-containing fire suppressants.

Recently, there have been many voices, suggesting that the AOH is shrinking, presumably as a result of the Protocol. I am somewhat skeptical of the evidence, but also for theoretical reasons. I am inclined to blame wishful thinking –- a desire to justify post facto the 1987 Montreal Protocol and the economic losses it has produced around the world since then. By implication also, this tends to support the concept of a (largely unrelated) global climate treaty that would severely reduce the release of the greenhouse gas CO2.

For evidence, I refer to a well-written semi-popular story in Eos of 15 August 2016, which relies mainly on a paper in Science magazine [of 30 June, 2016] by MIT chemist Susan Solomon et al. The credibility of the paper derives from the fact that its lead author had identified the correct mechanism for creating the AOH at a time when there was much dispute about its cause; it turned out to be ‘heterogeneous’ reactions of chlorine compounds on the surfaces of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), made up of ice particles created from stratospheric moisture by the extremely cold local temperatures. [Heterogeneous reactions involve both gas molecules and solid particles, while ‘homogeneous’ reactions involve only gas molecules.]

These reactions eventually release free chlorine atoms (able to destroy ozone catalytically) from the existing stratospheric chlorine reservoir, gaseous HCl –hydrogen chloride. The relevant chemical reactions commence when solar radiation reaches the Antarctic stratosphere in the beginning of Spring, i.e., in October, after a winter darkness lasting up to six months.

But the same Eos story also quotes NASA atmospheric scientist Susan Strahan, who points to the difficulty of identifying a trend in the presence of “noise,” the year-to-year variation in geographic extent of the AOH. Worse still, the AOH can also be characterized by other varying parameters, like depth of depletion and by its duration. Nevertheless, Solomon extrapolates the somewhat uncertain geographic trend and boldly estimates that the AOH will seal up and disappear by mid-century.

In the American Geophysical Union journal Earth Future, atmospheric chemist Guy Brasseur and colleagues suggest a faster way to “heal” the AOH – by actively releasing ice particles in the stratosphere to deplete HCl, the main reservoir of stratospheric chlorine. But they do not consider the continued existence of natural sources of chlorine compounds: frequent volcanic injections and possibly also oceanic salt spray carried into the stratosphere by convection. Worse still, they ignore the risks of their proposed geo-engineering scheme – the strong greenhouse effects of their ice particles, which would absorb and then re-emit (albeit at a much lower temperature) most of the outgoing long-wave radiation from earth into space, covering even the normally open atmospheric infrared “window” region (of 8 – 12 microns).

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In Clinton vs. Trump, the Overlooked Impact of Asian-Americans Republican nominee tries to court blacks and Hispanics, but another group that leans Democratic gets less attention Gerald Seib

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

Donald Trump has made overtures in the last few days to Hispanic and African-American voters, trying to whittle away the giant advantages Hillary Clinton enjoys among them.

There is a third group that gets less attention, but one that provides Democrats a similar strategic edge: Asian-Americans.

Asian-Americans are the nation’s fastest-growing racial group. More than nine million of them will be eligible to vote in November, up 16% from four years ago.

The bad news for Republicans is that this growth in the Asian-American electorate appears to be accompanied by an increasing tilt toward the Democrats. One national poll of Asian-American voters earlier this year found a 12-point increase in those who identify as Democrats since 2012, to 47% from 35%.

Can that matter? Ask Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. He won re-election two years ago by the narrowest of margins, defeating Republican Ed Gillespie by fewer than 18,000 votes out of 2.18 million cast. Virginia’s large population of Asian-Americans likely provided the difference. They make up 5% of the state’s electorate, and a pre-election poll showed them going for Mr. Warner by a 2-to-1 margin.

For Mr. Trump and his party, Asian-Americans are another example of how his get-tough stance on immigration represents a two-edged sword. It has helped galvanize support and drive up enthusiasm among working-class whites, many of whom think immigration has damaged them economically and undermined the American culture they have known. Meanwhile, on the sliding scale of the diverse American electorate, votes gained there are offset by votes lost to groups who hear chants of “build that wall” as an ominous sign.

Mr. Trump and his supporters insist that his policies are directed not at immigration generally but at illegal immigration specifically, but they have had a hard time getting that message across. Over the weekend, his campaign appeared to begin softening its tone; his new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Mr. Trump wouldn’t necessarily stick with his pledge to seek deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants.

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Federal Judge Sets Deadline on Clinton Email Review Order comes as new batch of correspondence shows Clinton Foundation sought access to State Department on donors’ behalf By Rebecca Ballhaus and Devlin Barrett

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

A federal judge prodded the State Department to quickly review a batch of 14,900 recently discovered emails as the controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s correspondence while she served as America’s top diplomat continued to simmer.

Judge James Boasberg, in an order, set a deadline for the department to complete the email review by Sept. 22 to determine which ones contain sensitive government information and which are strictly personal conversations. That could pave the way for the emails to be released as early as mid-October.

The emails were found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its probe of Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email when she was secretary of state. The FBI concluded in July that no crimes had been committed.

The judge’s request came on the same day as the release of a separate batch of emails showing a Clinton Foundation official seeking access to the department while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.

Those emails, obtained through a lawsuit by a conservative watchdog group, kept the Clinton family’s charitable foundation in the limelight as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was attacking its activities.

In one email exchange, from June 2009, Doug Band of the Clinton Foundation wrote to Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, seeking a meeting between the crown prince of Bahrain and Mrs. Clinton. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The New Dictators’ Club An echo of the 1930s in the budding alliance of Russia, Iran, Turkey and China.Bret Stephens

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

In the fall of 1940 the governments of Japan, Italy and Germany—bitter enemies in World War I—signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging mutual support to “establish and maintain a new order of things” in Europe and Asia. Within five years, 70 million people would be killed in the effort to build, and then destroy, that new order.

The Pact was the culminating act in a series of nonaggression, friendship and neutrality treaties signed by the dictatorships of the day, sometimes to deceive anxious democracies but more often to divvy up the anticipated spoils of conquest. So it’s worth noting our new era of cooperation between dictatorships—and to think about where it could lead.

The era began in July 2015, when Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani paid a visit to Moscow to propose a plan to save Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria from collapse. Iran and Russia are not natural allies, even if they have a common client in Damascus. Iranians have bitter memories of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the Kremlin has never been fond of Islamists, even of the Shiite variety.

But what tipped the scales in favor of a joint operation was a shared desire to humiliate the U.S. and kick it out of the Middle East. “America’s long-term scheme for the region is detrimental to all nations and countries, particularly Iran and Russia, and it should be thwarted through vigilance and closer interaction,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told Vladimir Putin during the Russian’s visit to Tehran last November.

Since then, Tehran has agreed to purchase $8 billion in top-shelf Russian weapons and is seeking Moscow’s help to build another 10 nuclear reactors—useful reminders of how the mullahs are spending their sanctions-relief windfall. The two countries have also conducted joint naval exercises in the Caspian Sea. Just last week Russia used Iranian air bases (a little too publicly for Tehran’s taste) to conduct bombing raids on Syria.

All this is happening as the nuclear deal was supposed to be nudging Iran in a more pro-American direction. It’s also happening as Moscow and Ankara are moving toward rapprochement and even a possible alliance, less than a year after the Turks shot down a Russian jet. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim allowed last week that Mr. Assad will remain in power for the foreseeable future, and Russian media outlets are touting the possibility that Russian jets might use the air base at Incirlik to bomb targets in Syria. That all but presumes U.S. withdrawal. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Hillary and Bill Clinton, Inc. No other couple in American politics can offer what the Clintons have to sell.By William McGurn

Posted By on August 23rd, 2016

Many Clinton scandals ago, when Hillary Clinton was trying to explain how she’d parlayed a $1,000 stake in cattle futures into $100,000 in 10 months (by talking to other people and reading The Wall Street Journal) folks were skeptical. How, they asked, could a novice make so much money in so short a time in such a risky market?

Turns out Mrs. Clinton is a better learner than she’s given credit for, and the Clinton emails released by Judicial Watch on Monday prove it. The emails were pried out of the system by Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, and they suggest why the Clinton Foundation could be so attractive to the rich and mighty. When a donor had a problem that required the secretary of state’s attention, there was Doug Band—a Clinton Foundation exec—emailing Hillary’s top staffers at the State Department to ask a favor.

Take a June 23, 2009, email from Doug Band to Huma Abedin. In his email Mr. Band noted that the Crown Prince of Bahrain (a “good friend of ours”) was asking to see Mrs. Clinton. There are, of course, many ways to be a “good friend,” but one sure way would be to contribute between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, as the kingdom of Bahrain had done. Not to mention that the prince had also spent $32 million on a scholarship launched through the Clinton Global Initiative.

Ms. Abedin responded that the prince had sought a meeting through “normal” channels but had been shot down. Less than 48 hours after Mr. Band had asked her, Ms. Abedin reported that “we have reached out through official channels.” The meeting was on.

It isn’t the only favor Mr. Band requested. A month earlier, he had emailed Ms. Abedin to ask her help in getting an English soccer player a visa to the U.S. The player was supposed to come to Las Vegas for a team celebration, but he needed a special interview with the visa section at the American Embassy in London due to a “criminal charge” against him.

Because of this, the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) had refused to intervene. Mr. Band’s email made clear the request was on behalf of Casey Wasserman, a sports and entertainment exec who had contributed between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation via the Wasserman Foundation.CONTINUE AT SIT