Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Intro to ‘America Withdraws From Syria’


Intro by John R. Houk, Blog Editor

By Justin O. Smith

Posted October 22, 2019

 

President Trump wants to pull out of Syria for the very valid reason of stopping involvement in “endless wars.” The difficulty President Trump is facing is one of our staunchest allies against Islamic terrorism has been a group of stateless Kurds that are located in multiple Muslim nations that include Turkey, Iraq, Iran and of course Syria. The none of those nations have ever had any sympathy for the Kurdish people to form an independent Kurdistan with Turkey being the most vehement AGAINST an independent Kurdistan. Turks and Kurds have ethnic commonality and the Turks have jealously protected their land mass and cultural heritage left over after losing WWI. A Jealousy that during and after WWI has led to genocides of non-Turks residing in former Ottoman Turkey and present Republic of Turkey. Armenian and Greek Christians were the initial genocidal victims. YET because Muslim Kurds did not desire to assimilate to Turkish Islamic culture, Kurds also had and have become victims to Turkish genocidal efforts.

To be realistic though, my guess is Arab and Iranian (history’s Persians) efforts of committing genocide against Kurds has more to do with the lack of power than the lack of will to terminate Kurdish-Cultural Muslims. So, I do have sympathy for stateless Kurds. BUT the problem I have with 21st century Kurds is their independence efforts have been led by Communists. In case you missed the history-memo, Communism is a despotic political movement favoring a State-dominated dictatorship ending political Liberty, Individual Liberty, Religious Liberty (favoring atheism), Market Economies AND not least of all – ENDING National Sovereignty.

 

The Turks are going to exterminate any people they feel is a threat to Turkish-Muslim Culture. That includes Christians, Jews, Shi’ites (primarily Iranian threats) and sadly stateless Communist-oriented Kurds fight for independence which would include some Turkish territory.

 

Supporting today’s Kurds is a complicated proposition. Here are some titles that might lead President Trump to say something like, “Forget about it!”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am I defending Turkish instituted genocide? GOD NO! If Muslim-Turks thought they could get away with it, they’d exterminate Americans too. If you doubt that, take a look at Ottoman Turk empire building history.

 

Justin Smith gives me choices of titles for his submissions. The Kurdish issue is so complicated I couldn’t decide. So I chose a primary title and italicized the rest.

JRH 10/22/19

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Blog Editor: Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you belong to.

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America Withdraws From Syria:

Trump Lets the Fires of Chaos Consume Syria

 

Why Is America Still In Syria?  

U.S Abandons Syria to Russia and Iran

 

By Justin O. Smith

Sent 10/20/2019 4:38 PM

 

President Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would be withdrawing from northeast Syria, after a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan and a tweet, created a flurry of condemnation from former military leaders, politicians and the media, who called it a betrayal of the Kurds, “precipitous” and a move that would allow ISIS to renew itself. They act as though our alliance with the Kurds was based on a treaty when it wasn’t, and they ignore the fact that this was a loose alliance of United States and Kurdish interests coinciding on the ISIS terrorism issue; the fact remains that both the United States and the Kurds understood that America wasn’t staying in Syria forever and this withdrawal day was coming one day.

 

No doubt, President Trump could have handled this situation a bit more adroitly, by intensely planning our disengagement through the Pentagon and the State Department, rather than announcing it on October 7th and starting the withdrawal the next day, something that was strongly opposed by the Pentagon. There should have been a plan in place to be implemented that would have afforded the Kurds a safe position, minimizing the “betrayal”, since they have shed blood and lost 11,000 fighters in the fight against ISIS, at the behest of the U.S.; and, Turkey’s concerns should have been met too, since the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] communists, a designated terrorist organization, were the operational head of the Kurdish forces in the north even though sixty-five percent of the population in that area are Christian Arabs and Yazidis.

 

Obviously, the Kurds have been useful partners in the fight against ISIS, but they have also destabilized surrounding governments, to the best of their ability, and Leftist Democrats and “Conservative” Republicans suggesting Trump is betraying consistent allies is essentially a load of bull. The Kurds regularly taunted and attacked Turkey, making the situation in Syria more tumultuous and they constantly used their ISIS prisoners as leverage against the U.S. by constantly threatening to release ISIS prisoners and their families.

 

Until a few weeks ago, a joint U.S-Turkish effort effected border patrol, demilitarized the Syrian Democratic Forces along the border and the U.S. was attempting to provide Turkey the security guarantees it required. And as of yet, I have not heard why that was not enough for President Erdogan, other than his demand of 6,000 square mile “buffer zone”, within Syria, that Erdogan would control. This shouldn’t be a requirement for repairing Washington’s and Ankara’s relations, but Turkey’s miscalculations in diplomacy with Russia and Iran pushed the issue, since three million Syrian refugees in Turkey have become a political problem; some 115 million more now appear ready to breach the Turkish border under the current Russian-Syrian-Iranian drive to fill the power vacuum that is underway, and this is more than likely why security mechanisms created four months ago were not enough to satisfy Erdogan.

 

If the U.S. had attempted to construct a KRG model in Syria, we might not be here, but we never attempted to build such a construct. It also greatly angered Erdogan that we inverted our relationship through disjointed policy makers on the ground, who forgot the mission was to simply eradicate ISIS, while they started acting as agents for their PKK proxy — only a splinter group of all Kurdistan — and representing the Kurds’ cause to our Turkish ally as if the PKK was representative of all Kurds and worthy of equal footing with the nation state of Turkey.

 

Essentially, we elevated a small splinter terrorist organization of a minority to equal stature of one of the strongest nations in the entire Middle East and a NATO ally, albeit a flawed allied of late. This was one-hundred percent untenable to the Turks.

 

The world is witnessing invading Turkish forces moving to secure and control the area, while Russia and Syria move into areas abandoned by the U.S., now aligned with the Kurds who signed an agreement with Syria on October 13th, and whoever is trapped within the current blockade of the area is in a terrible situation; Turkey’s President Erdogan, an Islamist and aspiring caliph, will not discriminate between PKK and the rest of the population, that was supposed to have been given five days to evacuate the area, so Turkey can control a twenty mile deep and three hundred mile long “buffer zone” within Syria, even though some of the five million Kurds in the area have lived there for a century or more.

 

Fighting was ongoing between various militia’s and the Turks on October 17th despite the “cease fire”, and air and artillery strikes continued to hit the Kurdish fighters, civilian settlements and a hospital in the border town of Ras al-Ayn, in northeastern Syria.

 

In recent days, Sinam Mohamad, U.S. Representative for the Syrian Democratic Council, offered an impassioned statement and observation: “The Syrian situation is not only with the PKK.  What’s going on in Syria is not related to PKK. It’s the Syrian people, Arabs, Kurds. In this region, we have five million people living there. They are not all PKK — they are not (all) Kurds. They are Arabs. Do you think these Arabs are accepting to be a puppet in the Kurds hands? … So who is the alternative here? (The Turkish soldiers) who came to the region killing (civilians) after arresting them as it happened to (the secretary general of Future Syria Party) Hevrin Khalaf? So this is the alternative?”

 

On October 12th 2019, Hevrin Khalaf, the secretary general of Future Syria Party, was murdered by the Turkish backed Ahar al-Sharqiya fighters near the M4 Motorway in northern Syria, during the Turkish military operation against Syrian Democratic Forces and its YPG militia in Rojava, largely led by Kurds.

 

To be fair, President Trump had been telling his advisors for months to get this withdrawal planned out and prepared for implementation, since he was adamant about keeping his promise to “end forever wars”, and even Erdogan, as evil a man as he is, showed restraint over the past months, as he continuously warned he wouldn’t tolerate a PKK base of operations in northern Syria, that had the capability of being used against Turkey, at a later date, in a continuation of the Kurds century old fight to create a united Kurdistan, of 30 million Kurds, taking regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

 

However, modern day Turkey under Erdogan is no longer the secular Turkey that it was, when it joined NATO. Erdogan has facilitated the return of Islamic fundamentalism, even to the point of allowing ISIS to operate from Turkey, when the U.S. fought ISIS in Iraq, and buying black-market oil from ISIS, essentially funding their continued war in the region. He murders his opposition, he has gone around embargoes and sanctions facilitating Iran’s nuclear program, he has purchased the S-400 from Russia, and his security people actually beat opposition protesters during one visit to D.C.

 

This is not a good ally. This is not a regime the United States should be aiding, and America damned sure shouldn’t be facilitating the extraterritorial aggression of Turkey either in Iraq or Syria.

 

Americans must always ask the important questions. Why are we in Syria and what’s the benefit and the U.S. interests in Syria? Please recall, the only mandate there was to address ISIS, not to aid the Kurds in their fight against Turkey or create a Kurdish state.

 

Many in U.S. leadership positions, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are uncomfortable leaving the fate of the area and the continued fight against ISIS in the hands of Russia, Syria and Turkey, since the Kurds have had to shift to focus from the prisons housing thousands of ISIS fighters — with approximately 1000 already having escaped — to defending the entire area against Turkish soldiers who will not hesitate to kill them on the spot, as Erdogan has already made clear, by way of his statement that he would “crush their [PKK] heads”. Through a phone call and a tweet, President Trump essentially set this all in motion and gave Erdogan the green light to invade, so Trump is apparently comfortable leaving the region to America’s enemies, Russia and Syria.

 

On October 13th 2019, President Trump spoke in a laissez-faire manner, stating: “The Kurds and Turkey have been fighting for many years. Others may want to come in and fight for one side or the other. Let them!”

 

The only winners here for the moment are ISIS and Russia with a side benefit for Iran.

 

President Trump should have at least forced Erdogan to give the U.S. something in return. The U.S. received no concessions. This is what America gets when Her president operates by the seat of his pants on a wing and a prayer.

 

On a humanitarian level, the world is looking at approximately a third of Syria cast into chaos once more, while nearly half of Syria’s entire population is already internally or externally displaced, with millions having migrated to Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere. And yes, some affiliate themselves with pro-Syrian defense forces, even though their ranks cut across all ethnic lines and walks of life, filled with Christians, Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen and tribes that have followed their tribal leaders into so very much a tribal geopolitical fight. These people are being slaughtered, while living under already absolutely horrific circumstances; missing is the up-close and intimate coverage of the substantial numbers of women and children who are literally dying of malnutrition, and with the approach of winter, many thousands will freeze to death; and, in more acts against humanity, the YPG, Turkish proxies, remnants of ISIS, Al Nusra and others still use these civilians, women and children in particular, as shields and political victims for their fight: And this must be stopped regardless of what the United States does.

 

With that said, there was a lack of any long term strategic purpose and logical policy for keeping U.S. forces in Northern Syria. Surely no one could seriously expect us to keep a thousand soldiers, or more with mission creep, in country for the next fifty or seventy-five years — Could they?

 

Despite President Trump’s assertion that this was a move to keep his promise to “end forever wars”, a U.S. presence is currently still deployed in eastern Syria along the border with Jordan. Those 700 soldiers being removed from the north are simply being redeployed in western Iraq and joining 2000 more in Saudi Arabia where they will act as a contingent deterrence to Iran’s continued expansion, across the Middle East. So, as everyone can see, this isn’t really a “withdrawal”, as 300 Special Forces troops will remain in the southern Syrian outpost of Al-Tanf, to fight an ISIS resurgence, and America still isn’t ending Her forever wars.

 

Had this been a true professionally conducted withdrawal, rather than this fiasco, and President Trump not spoken out of both sides of his mouth and spoken frankly to the American people, many might not now be faulting him, even though pulling back for Erdogan’s march into Syria was an unnecessary move that removed one more tool to fight Iran’s aggressive expansion, that now has forced every group and nation that has an implied or an actual treaty guarantee that the U.S. will fight on its behalf to take a second look at its arrangements. The American public no longer has the will to fight the Long War in Syria or anywhere else, at a time when Congress is moving to continue operations in Syria as a firewall against Islamic terrorism, and in the meantime, President Trump will rightly take criticism over his handling of Syria and the shuffling of troops. And at a time he should have been reconciling U.S. national security interests to proper strategies through the constitutionally mandated process, Trump has instead decided to let this fire consume what it will and burn itself out.

 

By Justin O. Smith

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Blog Editor: Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you belong to.

_____________________

Edited by John R. Houk

Source links and text embraced by brackets are by the Editor. In full disclosure I could not source some of the content in Justin Smith’s submission. Which frankly is part of the reason for an untimely submission to post discrepancy. Also the issue of the Kurds is very complicated leading for both sympathy and disdain for them from this Blog Editor. On a personal level I hate such inner conflict.

 

© Justin O. Smith

 

ACT for America Cancelled by Trump’s Mar-a-Lago!


What the HECK!?

John R. Houk

© October 13, 2019

 

You’ve probably heard by now that President Trump’s private enterprise at Mar-a-Lago (though probably not controlled by Trump while President) cancelled an annual event hosted by Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT for America event due Leftist/Muslim pressure.

 

The irony is Gabriel’s Counterjihad work too often goes out of its way to emphasize ACT for America is not Anti-Muslim but IS anti-radical Islam especially as it leads to Islamic terrorism.

 

In that sense it has always been my opinion Gabriel has been too soft on Islam yet still doing great work in exposing the nefarious actions of Muslim terrorists and educating on Islamic history, a history though accurate you will rarely hear or read about due to Multiculturalist/Muslim-Apologist whitewashing.

 

Especially since I am still in Facebook Jail, I have no qualms in saying ISLAM is freaking EVIL according to its own revered writings instructing Islamic adherents to despise ALL non-Muslims specifically naming Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians (mostly killed off by early Muslims), with some vehement hatred toward adherents of polytheistic religious beliefs. From Hugh Fitzgerald on Islamic revered writings displaying hate against non-Muslims:

 

The main texts of Islam are the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira. The Qur’an is the Uncreated and Literal Word of God. It cannot be changed. It contains contradictions within itself, which long ago were resolved in favor of what are thought to be the later, and harsher verses. The “harsher” verses are said to date from Muhammad’s time in Medina, after he conquered that city. No longer needing to curry favor with anyone, as he had had to do in Mecca, he could afford to be as harsh as he pleased. The interpretive vehicle for dealing with contradictions in the Qur’an, and favoring the later verses, is “abrogation” or naskh. The doctrine dates back more than a millennium. Nonetheless, some have suggested that the doctrine be abandoned, so that the harsher verses no longer would be held to abrogate the softer verses from Muhammad’s “Meccan” period. This is unlikely to be accepted by more than a handful of would-be “reformers of Islam.” (A Vademecum On Islam: Five Pillars, Qur’an, Hadith, Sira; By Hugh Fitzgerald; Geller Report; 8/2/17)  

 

Here is a link to specific portions of Islamic revered text expressing adversarial instructions for Muslims to apply: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Dhimmitude

 

And those are a mere few there are much-much more. YUP I am definitely Anti-Islam. AND I am Anti-Muslim toward any who abides to Islamic writings revered as Islamic truth yet detrimental to my existence. From what I’ve read and heard, Brigitte Gabriel is NOT on that same anti-Muslim train. She is only on the anti-Radical-Islam train.

 

Consider Brigitte Gabriel’s justified dismay upon learning a Meeting Place owned by President Trump – whom Gabriel has ardently supported through thick and thin! – cancelled her paid-for contractual event under accusations of being “Anti-Muslim”:

 

VIDEO: Mr. President, Stand for Free Speech!

 

 

Posted by ACT for America

66K subscribers – Oct 12, 2019

 

Mar-a-Lago Cancelled ACT for America’s 11th Annual Dinner Gala. We are asking for President Trump to stand with free speech and overturn the decision.

 

Below are a couple of articles you can place in the dismay realm from Understanding The Threat and One News Now.

 

JRH 10/13/19

Your generosity is always appreciated: 

Please Support NCCR

Support this Blog HERE. Or support by getting in 

the Coffee from home business – OR just buy some healthy coffee.

 

Blog Editor: Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you belong to.

**************************

Administration Officials Welcome Senior Muslim Brotherhood Leader to White House

 

Posted By John Guandolo

October 8, 2019

Understanding The Threat

 

In the face of public criticism from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and Hamas doing business as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Trump Organization shut down an Act for America event scheduled at the President’s Mar a Lago resort in November featuring Michelle Malkin.

 

If that were the only surrender to the suit-wearing jihadis, it would be bad enough. But it is worse than just a cancelled event.

 

On September 25, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security and Administration officials hosted an event in the White House entitled “Faith Based Safety and Security Symposium” attended by Vice President Mike Pence and senior DHS officials.

 

Senior Muslim Brotherhood Leader Oussama Jammal (green tie) inside the White House.

 

Unfortunately, Oussama Jammal, a man UTT identifies as one of the top two Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the United States, also attended.

 

Jammal is the Secretary General of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the Muslim Brotherhood’s mothership in the United States. The USCMO is a conglomerate of Muslim Brotherhood organizations which identifies itself as a “political” entity.

 

Oussama Jammal – Sec Gen USCMO

 

Days before the White House event, Oussama Jammal along with U.S. Hamas Leader Nihad Awad – a man UTT identifies as the General Masul or Leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood – met with Turkish President Erdogan in New York.

 

Yellow Identifies: Erdogan (Left) & Jammal (Right)

 

Yellow Identifies- CAIR Natl Exec Dir Nihad Awad

 

Understanding the Threat (UTT) assesses Turkish President Erdogan is the likely next Caliph for the global Islamic Movement, and assesses the enemy is in their final stages of preparing to announce the caliphate.

 

The Administration’s participation with leaders of the hostile Islamic Counter-State like Oussama Jammal reveals a gross lack of understanding of the true nature of the threat, and dangerous surrender to their efforts.

 

This should be a clear call to all Americans that this war will be won or lost at the local level. Citizens must know and understand the threat from the Islamic Counter-State at the LOCAL level, and force local officials to take actions to dismantle the jihadi networks and keep future networks from being established.

 

UTT is a leader in the counter-jihad and is the only organization in America giving citizens, police, elected officials and local/state leaders tools to identify and dismantle jihadi networks in local communities.

 

Reach out to us at UnderstandingtheThreat.com.

 

About John Guandolo

John Guandolo is a US Naval Academy graduate, served as an Infantry/Reconnaissance officer in the United States Marines and is a combat veteran, served as a Special Agent in the FBI from 1996-2008, and was recruited out of the FBI by the Department of Defense to conduct strategic analysis of the Islamic threat. He is the President and Founder of Understanding the Threat (UTT).

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Left works to shut down conservative group at Mar-a-Lago

 

By Steve Jordahl

 October 11, 2019

One News Now

 

Lean Left Button

A conservative national grassroots organization was kicked out of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after liberals complained.

 

ACT for America has one gala dinner a year to raise money for its mission to ensure the safety and security of Americans against foreign and domestic threats – including Islamic terrorism.

 

ACT for American Chairman Brigitte Gabriel pointed out that this year’s event was reserved earlier in the year at Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.

 

Brigitte Gabriel

“We signed a contract with Mar-a-Lago back in April that we were going to have this dinner gala,” Gabriel stressed. “We had elected officials invited to be honored, [and] we had Michelle Malkin as the keynote speaker.”

 

The nationally syndicated columnist, Malkin, blasted activist groups on the left for shutting down and silencing conservatives.

 

“I planned to talk to ACT for America’s gala attendees about the ongoing national security threat that jihad-coddling Muslim grievance groups and other identity politics agitators in the ‘Open Borders, Inc.’ infrastructure pose to our country’s very existence,” Malkin wrote in her op-ed published on ONN. “But thanks to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Council on American Islamic Relations, Miami Herald, copycat journalists and the Trump Organization, the event was banned from Mar-a-Lago.”

 

She said it isn’t hard these days for liberals to keep those with opposing views from meeting and speaking.

 

“All it took was a noisy little echo chamber of lazy media lemmings in search of weekend clickbait,” Malkin continued. “On Saturday morning, the Miami Herald published an inflammatory attack masquerading as ‘breaking news’ with the headline: ‘Anti-Muslim extremist group says it will host $1,500-a-plate gala at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.’”

 

Gabriel echoed Malkin’s concern, recounting what happened once the usual suspects on the left got wind of the event.

 

“The Southern Poverty Law Center put an article out on Friday at midnight are basically saying that we are an anti-Muslim hate group,” the leader of ACT for America explained. “And then, of course, the Miami Herald put it out and within a couple hours we got an email on a Saturday morning from the Trump organization saying we are cancelling the event.”

 

In fact, the Trump Organization – not to be confused with the Trump Campaign or administration – said, “This event will absolutely not be taking place at Mar-a-Lago.”

 

Gabriel indicated that lawyers at the resort simply panicked.

 

“Of all organizations, the Trump Organization … should understand what it’s like … for people to accuse an innocent person by calling them names,” she argued.

 

Gabriel is very clear that she does not blame the president for the cancellation and that the still supports him.

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Blog Editor: Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me. Recently, the Facebook censorship tactic I’ve experienced is a couple of Group shares then jailed under the false accusation of posting too fast. So I ask those that read this, to combat censorship by sharing blog and Facebook posts with your friends or Groups you belong to.

_______________________

ACT for America Cancelled by Trump’s Mar-a-Lago!

What the HECK!?

 

John R. Houk

© October 13, 2019

_______________

Administration Officials Welcome Senior Muslim Brotherhood Leader to White House

 

Copyright 2019. Understanding the Threat. All rights reserved.

____________________

Left works to shut down conservative group at Mar-a-Lago

 

All Original Content Copyright ©2006-2019 American Family News Network – All Rights Reserved. “OneNewsNow”, “OneNewsNow.com“, and the “OneNewsNow World” logo, are Trademarks of the American Family News Network – All Rights Reserved.

 

A peek inside Military Intelligence Ops.


Ted Belman of Israpundit posted a series of articles he stipulates was sent to him by “MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE”. It seemed to me at least one theme of the combined articles was that America’s Intelligence Community shares an affinity with the American Left. The first article I found particularly disturbing was about former CIA Director John Brennan (a one-time CPUSA voter [perhaps at least a closet member] and rumored convert to Islam). That article shows Brennan to be an imbecile or an egregious traitor. Two extremes I do realize – you decide.

 

JRH 3/6/19

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Please Support NCCR

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A peek inside Military Intelligence Ops.

 

Posted by Ted Belman

March 5, 2019

Israpundit

 

This is a collection of articles which were, today supplied to me by MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE who follow Israpundit daily. I am not sure how to describe them but they consists of senior military Intelligence specialists who continue to follow events in the Middle East. They are regular readers of israpundit Daily Digest and often circulate my posts.

 

All of the materials, below are unclassified.

 

These articles are:

1) examples of some of the robust exchanges that go on within the US intelligence community;

2) the personal opinions of the authors;

3) are distributed  for discussion.

4) None of the articles represent the official view of  any agency of the United States government.

 

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MIL-OPS INTELLIGENCE Friday, March 1, 2019

 

PENETRATIONS OF US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES BY HOSTILE SPY SERVICES DURING  JOHN BRENNAN’S CIA DIRECTORSHIP CRIPPLE US OPERATIONS WITHIN CHINA, IRAN, RUSSIA LEBANON During John Brennan’s directorship of the CIA, many brave foreign nationals who risk their lives inside extremely brutal regimes to provide the United States with essential information have been detected, imprisoned,  tortured and executed. Public examples:

 

  1.     The loss of all recruited agents in China  [Between 20 and 30 of  the US   recruited agents in China were killed or imprisoned.] Media sources blamed the loss on a former CIA officer, Jerry Chung Shin Lee, who was arrested in January 2018 and is suspected of passing along their names to China

 

  1.     In  May 2011 , according to Iranian state media,  30 people were arrested as CIA spies and 42 others were suspected of involvement with U.S. intelligence. Insiders attribute this failure to information that  was  provided to Iran by Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence officer (and later an intelligence contractor) who defected to Iran 1n 2013 [where she is immune from any US criminal prosecution.]

 

Ms. Witt worked at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations from 2003-08 and then as a contractor, running an ultra secret Special Access Program, or SAP, until August 2010. The program gave her access to details about counterintelligence operations, true names of recruited agents, and identities of U.S. intelligence operatives in charge of recruiting foreign agents. Ms. Witt left the contractor in August 2010 for unspecified reasons.

 

Witt  provided Iran  with the details of a secret communications system American handlers use to talk to their recruited agents. Other texts reveal she “told all” to an Iranian ambassador in Central Asia. As she boarded the plane, she texted her handler: “I’m signing off and heading out! Coming home.” The FBI’s assistant director for national security, stated that Witt became an “ideological” defector after converting to Islam. Her actions, he added, inflicted “serious damage to national security.”

 

The FBI fumbled the case in 2012 by warning Ms. Witt she might be targeted for recruitment by Iranian intelligence. A trained counterspy, she knew that the tip-off meant she was under investigation and surveillance. It likely set in motion her flight to Iran a year later.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

 

SHOULD WASHINGTON HEED INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ABOUT NORTH KOREA?

by Peter Huessy   February 11, 2019

 

Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at their first summit in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (Image source: White House/Wikimedia Commons)

 

United States intelligence chiefs told Congress on January 29 that Pyongyang is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in any deal with Washington. This assessment was made a month ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s February 27-28 second summit — to be held in Vietnam — with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the purpose of which is to make strides in achieving the very denuclearization that FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats consider improbable.

 

One would have thought that if these intelligence chiefs disagreed with Trump’s efforts to reach a deal with North Korea, they would have presented an alternative. They might have explained what a deal with Pyongyang is liable to do to America’s relations with Japan and South Korea. They might have provided a future scenario for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea signed in 1968, then violated and withdrew from in 2003.

 

Trump might, however, actually be acting sensibly. During a speech on January 31 at Stanford University, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said that when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim in Pyongyang in October 2018, Kim committed for the first time to dismantling and destroying his plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities.

 

Although the media has been highlighting the disagreement between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community as though it is a huge scandal, such disputes have occurred in the past.

 

The most notable example was President Gerald Ford’s Team B project, launched in May 1976, to challenge the conventional intelligence community assessments of the Soviet threat. George H.W. Bush, who was director of the CIA at the time, had approved the project, which enlisted a group of foreign policy and security professionals who strongly disagreed with the policy of détente. Team B was convinced that the Soviet Union was spending 40% of its GDP on defense, as opposed to the 5% projected by the U.S. intelligence community.

 

After Team B released its report, the CIA conceded that Soviet defense spending was probably higher than it had thought, but nevertheless pushed for détente, a policy Ford supported, as well as for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

 

Ronald Reagan’s 1976 Republican Party primary campaign against Ford focused on this very issue, with Reagan taking a much harsher view of the Soviet Union and the battle against communism. As Reagan predicted, détente led not to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, but to Soviet expansion. Still, Reagan lost the Republican primary to Ford, and Ford lost the presidential race to Jimmy Carter.

 

Upon assuming the presidency in 1980, Reagan reversed most of the policies of the previous decades, and went against the consensus of a majority of the U.S. intelligence community.

 

Reagan turned out, of course, to be right, while the conventional wisdom of economists and intellectuals, such as John Kenneth Galbraith — who considered communism to be superior to capitalism because it supposedly made better use of “manpower” — was revealed to be spectacularly wrong.

 

Another key fight between the administration in Washington and its intelligence community took place at the outset of Reagan’s presidency, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig accused the Soviet Union of “training, funding and equipping” international terrorists. Reagan backed up Haig on this assessment — much to the chagrin of the intelligence community, which held a different view.

 

Yet, as former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who headed the CIA under President George H.W. Bush — revealed in his 1996 book, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Haig and Reagan were not only correct; the extent to which the Soviets supported terrorism was even greater than they had thought.

 

In spite of the fact that Reagan ultimately won the Cold War – and the Soviet Union subsequently fell – his policies and extraordinary global achievements were partially discarded by the failures and laziness of the U.S. intelligence community. Starting in 1993, the US cut back excessively its military defenses. The US also failed to help Russia secure the Duma’s ratification of the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), signed by Yeltsin and Bush but not ratified by the Senate. And the US allowed China both militarily and non-militarily to run rampant.

 

Almost worse, the intelligence community failed to recognize the rise of Islamic terrorism in Iran and elsewhere, which would culminate in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

 

These failures are not surprising, given the history of American intelligence assessments. In early 1950, for example, President Harry Truman was told by his intelligence chiefs that there would not be a North Korean invasion of South Korea. They reached this conclusion based on the assumption that North Korea could only invade South Korea with the help of the Soviet Union, and there appeared to be no sign of such assistance.

 

In June 1950, however, North Korea invaded South Korea, and an unprepared United States lost over 35,000 soldiers in the Korean War.

 

Whether Trump is able, through a combination of toughness and street-smarts, to succeed where others have failed with North Korea remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.

 

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He was also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.

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Thursday, February 7, 2019

 

VALARIE JARRETT, OBAMA and the IRAN DEAL

 

We have been  tracking Valerie Jarrett from the time that  Jarrett  worked for Mayor Richard Joseph Daley’s Housing Authority where she functioned  as his personal bagman for donations from builders, architects, developers, etc. Subsequent to that Jarrett went into public housing development as a private developer.  Her group received generous  government funding. However, their  work was so shoddy that it had to be torn down.

 

We closely followed Jarrett’s  early involvement with Michelle Obama whom she employed in Chicago city government and then later Jarrett  hired  Michelle as a $300,000 a year VP for University of Chicago Hospital.   Jarrett was  the original discoverer  of Barak [sic] Obama  as a potential  political candidate  and  Jarrett raised significant funding for Obama  from the Muslim community.

 

Other participants in Valerie Jarrett’s Muslim brotherhood in group included Rashid Khalidi and Robert Malley.  A glimpse into the thinking of these key individuals was provided by the tape of the farewell banquet for Rashid Khalidi where the participants, including Barack Obama, participated in the  toast: “death to Israel”.  [Although the wording of the toast was clear on the tapes and  Obama is shown actively participating, it is impossible ,without further analysis of the acoustics and other  local factors, to determine whether the microphones  that clearly picked up the text of the toast were actually  tuned and located in a position where the reception was clear, but the acoustics of the room may have muffled the actual text…. and Obama’s claim that he never heard the wording might be, In fact, correct.]

 

During the Obama  presidential years Valerie Jarrett was a key  presidential assistant and Obama advisor at the  White House.  Although Pres. Obama promised the Jewish community that he would not in any way engage Robert Malley in anything to do with the Middle East, Obama later  not only  hired Robert Malley for the National Security Council staff, he actually placed  O’Malley in charge of the entire National Security Council Middle East effort.

Meanwhile,  Rashid Khalidi was a very frequent visitor to the White House  [presidential visitor logs].

 

For six months to a year prior to  the JCPOA  [Iran  deal] negotiations, Jarrett spent full time in Iran in  close discussions with the Iranian clerical leadership relating to not only the nuclear deal but also establishing Iranian leadership in the Middle East.   It was the content of these discussions that served as the directions for the US delegation. This was noted by Amir Hossein Motaghi when he  defected and publicly complained that Secretary of State Kerry and Wendy Sherman were  more enthusiastic  in supporting the maximum Iranian position than was the Iranian delegation.

 

Valerie Jarrett is now a full- time resident in the Obama post-president home [compound] in Washington DC with the announced function of  continuing Obama’s programs and legacies [which hopefully do not include  “death to Israel”].

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Tuesday, January 8, 2019

 

ERDO?AN + Rep.  SCHIFF +NY TIMES + WASH POST JOIN TO DEMOLISH CURRENT SAUDI – ISRAEL COUNTER IRAN WORKING RELATIONSHIP 

 

Top intelligence sources revealed the concerted joint efforts by Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, and US leftists [Washington Post, New York Times, representative Adam Schiff, etc. ] to disrupt the current Saudi Arabian – Israeli working relationship to  forestall Iran’s  aggresive [sic] drive  to dominate the Middle East.

 

Question:
Is the murder of Jamal Khashoggi [K] a brilliant plot by Eerdo?an to in one swoop become a more favored US ally than Saudi Arabia, restore fundamentalist government to Saudi Arabia by eliminating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman [MBS] and at the same time disrupting/destroying the US-Saudi-Israeli confluence which is the major obstacle to Iranian dominance of the Middle East?

 

Some factors for consideration:

 

Turkish tapes. Saudi Arabia was aware of the surveillance of their embassy in Turkey. Was the on the record on camera murder of K  engineered by fundamentalist enemies of  MBS    within the Saudi royal family/government?

 

If the purpose was to kill K, then a 15 man team was far too obvious for the mission. Further, a sniper operating at a distance from the embassy on a day other than K’s  visit would have easily accomplished the mission

 

If the mission was similar to other Saudi mission, to kidnap K, then his death might have been from natural causes, or  accidental, or part of a plot to embarrass  and entrap MBS.

 

Examination of K.s father’s political affiliation and business dealings show that he was deeply involved the most Islamic elements of Islam and the most” conservative” elements of the Saudi royal family/government.

 

Examination of  K’s  previous affiliationss [sic] show that he was deeply involved with the most Islamic elements of Islam and the most “conservative” elements of the Saudi royal family/government

 

Here  is today’s Washington Post’s assault on Saudi Arabia and on MBS

 

Saudi Arabia’s trial for Khashoggi’s murder is a travesty. Congress must insist on justice.

If the United States is to uphold its values by insisting on justice in the Khashoggi case, Congress must take the lead.

 

By Washington Post Editorial Board

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Tuesday, December 25, 2018

 

RUSSIA’S 2016 DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN

 

Russia’s 2016 disinformation campaign targeted both pro-Trump and pro-Hillary supporters.

 

Russia spent just $6,000 in the last six weeks of the 2016 election on ads.

 

Russia spent only $4,600 on Google ads in the 2016 campaign.

 

The Russian influence in the 2016 election was minimal.

 

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

 

IS ADAM SCHIFF THE RUSSIAN MOLE? [Blog Editor: In an admittedly only a cursory search, this LINK is the only source close to Belman’s submitted articles.]

 

First, the Soviet Union and now the Russian government has sought to disrupt the American political process. Currently, they are succeeding beyond their wildest imagination thanks to representative Adam Schiff, a prominent leader of the let’s lynch Trump movement. Now that” Russian collusion” is fading as a possible pretext, Mr. Schiff must dream up some other ways to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible back glow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.

 

 

Interpreting the Trump Meteor

 

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Wall Street Journal   12-18-18

 

His survival fight may at least buy time for a few important lessons to sink in.

 

Recall that we started down today’s investigatory whirlpool as a direct result of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats’ seizing on Russia as an excuse for their loss to a president whom many considered a joke. Now poor Adam Schiff, incoming head of the House Intelligence Committee, is trying to catch up with the new Democratic theme: Mr. Trump’s real sin is not Russian collusion after all. It’s his tawdry but well-known business and personal life.

 

Not only must Mr. Schiff dream up some way to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible backglow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.

 

Sadly, he would have benefited from an aide whispering in his ear when he was making his pitch to a New Yorker writer. “What should concern us most,” he explained to the magazine, “is anything can have a continuing impact on the foreign policy and national-security policy of the United States, and, if the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization, that would be totally compromising.”

 

Huh? For the Russians to be laundering money for him, Mr. Trump would need a large source of under-the-table cash from somewhere (his NBC show?). What the confused Mr. Schiff presumably means is that Mr. Trump was laundering money for Russians—i.e., selling them condos. Never mind that the entire Western financial system also participated in this business opportunity. Now it will be one more legal jeopardy in the swirl of investigations around the White House.

 

Still, the media will have to work hard to flap away the odor of selective prosecution. Mr. Trump was already an unusually heavily scrutinized figure. Now he’s attracting the kind of subatomic legal scrutiny reserved only for presidents of the opposite party when the press is inveterately hostile too. Example: the New York Times re-auditing his family’s heavily audited tax returns to find a welter of abuses that somehow escaped the IRS and New York tax department.

 

You can argue whether this is fair or wise, but that’s our system, and a U.S. political party was poorly advised to nominate somebody with Mr. Trump’s baggage in the first place.

 

This column has long maintained that a high-level Russian criminal conspiracy is the one thing investigators won’t find when loosed on Mr. Trump’s colorful business and personal history. I especially have to laugh over the somber and knowing suggestions that the Russians have “dirt” on Mr. Trump. Every third-tier swimsuit model and ex-Playmate from here to Las Vegas probably has dirt on Mr. Trump.

 

Michael Cohen’s reported admission that the Trump Organization was pursuing Russian opportunities well into 2016 campaign is a smoking gun, all right, but not of Russian collusion. Why did Mr. Trump run for president in the first place? To become more famous, to add gaudy luster to his brand. He had no expectation of winning. Of course he used the campaign spotlight to market himself for deals in which others would pay to use his name.

 

Winning was his big mistake, a colossal if propitious miscalculation. Nobody would care about Stormy Daniels if he weren’t president. His decades-long pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow would be a non-story. Nobody would be raking him over the emoluments coals for owning a hotel in Washington.

 

Unfortunately, it will also occur to Mr. Trump now that his best move is to cling to the White House at all costs. That’s because under Justice Department guidelines he can expect not to be indicted as long as he remains in office. I wonder if his Torquemadas have taken this into account.

 

The moment is turning weird. Even President Obama stepped forward to tidy up the scene by claiming that the inconvenient Trump boom is really the Obama boom. By all lights, the media should have treated this as laughable. Had a Republican leg of lamb been victorious on election night 2016, markets would have priced upward on the news that the Obama agenda was finished. Investors aren’t clairvoyant but they respond to unexpected information. And seldom in history have circumstances conspired to give so clear a verdict on an outgoing administration.

 

When it’s all over, this will be one lesson worth holding on to. Mr. Trump’s personal fight for survival is likely to dominate our politics for the foreseeable future. And yet if anything justified his election in the first place, it was the wake-up call from 63 million voters to America’s leadership class. Alas, it’s hard to listen to people like James Comey and Mr. Obama himself and not see our political system trying hard to expel Mr. Trump so it can go back to doing exactly what it was doing before he was elected.

______________________

Some Editing (much left untouched) by Blog Editor John R. Houk.

 

Copyright © 2017 [Mr. Belman should update his copyright] – Israpundit – All Rights Reserved

 

USA Under Islam?


I haven’t posted an expose Islam piece in awhile. I’m a bit pressed for time so I’m reaching back a couple of days from my Facebook Group with the long unwieldy name to post a couple of Justin Smith observations (Social Media Jail Conversations for Conservatives & Counterjihadists — Feel free to join if you’ve come close to the edge of Facebook’s Community Standards Censorship).

 

As the Editor I took the liberty in making the title. I have a suspicion Justin’s thoughts on Islam may have appeared elsewhere under a different title, perhaps even on one of my blogs.

 

JRH 3/2/19

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USA Under Islam?

 

By Justin Smith

February 25, 2019 11:14 AM 

 

Islam cannot reform itself. It is structured precisely to reject any such attempts; several have been tried and failed from the 12th century to the present, all due to doctrines that block any reform, such as the doctrine of abrogation and the Muslims’ acceptance of their “prophet” as the highest example of the “perfect” man.

 

To attempt to reform Islam is to admit that Mohammed was flawed and so too is Islam, and this they will not and cannot do; it goes against everything they are taught from birth, and yet, the intelligent few independent thinkers that arise within its ranks, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and my dear friend Sam Solomon will escape its clutches from time to time.

 

Sam is now a nationally renowned author here in Nashville and a convert to Christianity who tours the nation speaking about the lies and fallacies in Islam and gives a comparative analysis translating the Arabic verses to English while explaining that Islam is not of the Word and the Abrahamic people of the Bible.

 

I feel confident in saying that no matter how hard modern day reformers such as Irshad Manji and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser try, they will NEVER be able to reform Islam, not in this lifetime and not in a thousand.

 

Just look at Turkey and all the reforms initiated in the early 1900s by Kemal Ataturk [Blog Editor: Armenian perspective – Greek perspective] . Today we see them destroyed and Erdogan bringing back Islam in its most traditional form. Erdogan wants the old Turkish Ottoman Empire restored with himself as its Caliph [CBN, International Policy Digest & Breitbart].

 

Now look at Muslims in America, such as Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Omar has been in America for the past 28 years, from the age of eight, and yet she sounds more like a foreign agent advocating for the “Palestinian people” than any American citizen raised in Minneapolis, as she trashes the United States each time she makes a statement. Tlaib was born here in the U.S., but one would never know it by the way she celebrated her election to Congress by waving a “Palestinian” flag; and she too is an advocate for Palestine, as are most of her constituency in Michigan.

 

And so America must ask, “Why are we still allowing Muslims to enter our country?”

 

What is the endgame here, if not our own national suicide at the urging of America’s communists, who hide their politically correct tripe and their agenda behind a guise of diversity, multiculturalism and “humanitarian concern”?

 

The U.S. Constitution isn’t a suicide pact.

 

HALT ALL MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES NOW.

 

DEPORT ALL FOREIGN BORN MUSLIMS FROM OUR COUNTRY NOW (including Ilhan Omar).

 

DEPORT ALL U.S. CITIZENS WITH ANY TIE TO ISLAMIC TERRORISM, AND EXECUTE THE ONES WHO ARE CAUGHT IN REAL PLOTS TO COMMIT HEINOUS TERRORIST ATTACKS.

 

I hope I have made my position clear. I’ve mailed this to Congress and the President. You too should make Yourself clear to Your elected representatives.

 

~ Justin O Smith

______________________________

Edited by John R. Houk

Text embraced by brackets and source links are by the Editor.

 

© Justin O. Smith

 

New Anti-Semitic Film All the Rage in Turkey


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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Mexico circa 2012

 

If you can’t tell this load of garbage being broadcast en masse on Turkish television and pro-Erdogan website is a bunch of Antisemitic fiction issued to inspire Jew-hatred then you are probably a Muslim, a Left Wing Israel hater or a White Supremacist. AND YET I doubt the Obamasiah Administration, the Democratic Party and American Mainstream Media is telling anyone this is unacceptable.

 

The film, titled “The Mastermind,” first aired on March 15, 2015 and has been broadcast repeatedly since then; in addition, the Turkish Islamist pro-AKP media are circulating the film on their own websites.

 

According to this film, Jewish “domination of the world” goes back 3,500 years, to the days of Moses. The film presents three Jewish historical figures who, it claims, shaped the Jews’ hunger for power: the medieval Spanish philosopher and Torah scholar Moses Maimonides, Charles Darwin (who was not in fact a Jew), and German-American philosopher Leo Strauss… (Islamist Turkish President Erdogan Says A ‘Mastermind’ Is Plotting Against Turkey; Antisemitic ‘Documentary’ Says Jews Have Been ‘Mastermind’ For Over 3,500 Years; By Frau Katze; BlazingCatFur.ca; 4/14/15)

 

Mastermind opens with the speech, in which Erdoğan describes “operations” against Turkey. “Behind all these there is a mastermind,” he explains, before telling his audience “you know who it is.”

 

The narrator then says this mastermind, who “rules, burns, destroys, starves the world, creates wars, organizes revolutions and coups, establishes states within states, [and is] the curse of the entire world,” can be found “in Jerusalem, where the sons of Israel live,” before delving into a conspiratorial tirade of historical manipulation.

 

“This is pretty much the worldview in the AKP now,” says writer and political commentator Mustafa Akyol, referring to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party.

 

“The message they’re pumping into society is [that there is] a global Jewish conspiracy against the AKP.” (Turkish Film “Mastermind” Purports to Reveal Jewish Conspiracy: By Nick Ashdown; The Media Line; 4/26/15)

 

JRH 4/28/15

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New Anti-Semitic Film All the Rage in Turkey

 

By Burak Bekdil

Originally from: The Gatestone Institute

April 27, 2015

Middle East Forum

 

Originally published under the title, “Turkey’s Supposed Nemesis: “The Mastermind.”

 

'The Mastermind' title screen

 

Turkey’s biggest enemy, according to its Islamist rulers, is not the fanatical jihadists who now neighbor their country in large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq; nor is it the thousands of “sleepers” at home — the same jihadists who have not staged a sensational act of terror, but might yet.

 

The enemy is not the political and military advance of Shiite radicals in the region, or a nuclear Iran. It is not extreme left-wing terrorists who only recently murdered a state prosecutor. It is not Russia, China or Western civilization. It is what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says is “the mastermind” that tirelessly plots against Turkey.

 

In a December 2014 speech, Erdogan said:

 

I am emphasizing this: Do not think that these are operations that target me personally. Do not think that these operations are against our government or any [political] party. My friends, the target of these operations and initiatives is Turkey, Turkey’s existence, her unity, peace, and stability. They are especially against Turkey’s economy and its independence. As I have said before, behind all these there is a Mastermind, which has now become part of our national conversation. Some ask me, ‘Who is this mastermind?’ and I say, ‘It is for you to research this. And you do know what it is, you know who it is.’

 

Orders taken, a fiercely pro-Erdogan television news channel, A Haber, decided to research “that.” Thus, the documentary “The Mastermind” came into being. The film was first broadcast on March 15, 2015 and has been repeatedly aired since then, in addition to several pro-government media outlets posting it on their websites.

 

The main theme of the film is the 3,500-years of “Jewish domination of the world.” It focuses on three “Jewish” historical figures (one of whom was not Jewish): the medieval Spanish philosopher and Torah scholar Moses Maimonides, Charles Darwin (who was not a Jew), and German-American philosopher Leo Strauss.

 

Here are some narrative excerpts from the film, which opens with images of the Star of David and a replica of the Temple in Jerusalem:

 

The Mastermind, whose roots go back thousands of years, who rules, burns, destroys, starves the world, creates wars, organizes revolutions and coups, establishes states within states — this ‘intellect’ is not only Turkey’s curse, but the curse of the entire world. Who is this mastermind? The answer is hidden inside truths and facts that can never be called conspiracy theories. …

 

This story begins in the very old days, 3,500 years ago, when Moses brought his people out of Egypt to Jerusalem. The only guide he had was the Ten Commandments… We have to look for the mastermind in Jerusalem where the sons of Israel live. …

 

Maimonides… who lived in the Middle Ages believed that ‘the Jews are the Masters, and all other people are to be their slaves'”

 

The film then features several pro-Erdogan pundits, academics and journalists, commenting on the mastermind. “As they destroy the entire world, the Jews are searching for [the lost] Ark of Covenant.” says one. “The Jews use Darwin’s theory [of evolution] to assert that God created them – but everyone else evolved from apes,” says another. One claims that the Jews believe that they, the descendants of Isaac, consider themselves the masters, and that “all of us,” the descendants of Ishmael, are created to serve the Jews. And another blames “the mastermind” — whom he identifies as the Jews as well as the U.S. (which the film earlier claims is dominated by the Jews) for both the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and for the coups in modern Turkey aimed at ousting Islamist leaders and parties.

 

Finally, an advisor to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claims that all anti-government activity in Turkey was, in fact, attempts by “a mastermind” to bring down Turkey and its government.

 

Sounds surreal? Not in Turkey in the year 2015. “The Mastermind” is not the product of a bunch of crazy fanatics. It is a calculated move by a bunch of smart politicians who want to win votes (and often succeed) from an inherently anti-Semitic, religiously devout Muslim population.

 

According to the findings of a survey by Switzerland-based pollster WIN/Gallup International, 79% of Turks identify themselves as religiously devout, compared to 75% of people in the Palestinian territories and just 30% in Israel.

 

Among many Sunni Turks, anti-Semitic sentiment is often a prerequisite to piety. Therefore, the film “The Mastermind” [theoretically but most likely practically too] directly targets an audience that makes 79% of Turkey — more than 60 million people — ahead of critical parliamentary elections on June 7.

 

It is an ugly but clever move, reminiscent of the various methods applied by the Nazi propaganda machine in the 1930s, to abuse millions of minds.

 

All you need, in this evil scenario, is a theory linking every evil to the Jews, and a large enough audience ready to buy your fraudulent conspiracy theory.

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Edited by John R. Houk for this Blog.

 

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

 

©1994-2015 The Middle East Forum

 

Is Erdogan Setting Stage for Turkish Caliphate?


Sultan Erdogan

Sultan Erdogan

 

John R. Houk

© June 27, 2014

 

Caroline Glick has written a very interesting editorial: “Turkey’s high-risk power play”. Glick’s observations are about Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdogan seems to be a mystery to Washington DC. For years the PM’s Radical Islamic beliefs seemed to be second to governing a secular pseudo-democratic Muslim State. His initial actions appeared supportive to the Ataturk vision for Turkey but with only a slight reform of bringing Islam to the fore of Turkish society. HOWEVER, in recent years, Erdogan’s governing actions have begun to match his Radical Muslim beliefs. Thus Glick posits in no uncertain terms that Erdogan is trying to revive Turkey’s Muslim domination a la Ottoman style of the old empire days prior to WWI.

 

Erdogan has moved Turkey away from being a rare Muslim friend of Israel to joining the rest of the Muslim world in Jew-hatred. Erdogan is openly supporting Hamas that has the agenda of destroying Israel, killing Jews and establishing a Radical Muslim State called Palestine. The interesting point that Glick brings up is that Erdogan has reversed decades of a policy of Turkification (ok, I don’t know if this is an actual word but you get the idea) of Turkish society to encouraging non-Turkish yet Muslim ethnic groups to seek the historical identity. One stunning example is Turkey’s treatment of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

 

After the U.S. finished liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party oppression of Iraq a debate began on how Iraq should exist politically. Saddam always favored Iraqi Sunni Muslims over the majority Shia Muslims and the ethnic Kurdish Muslims. Saddam retained power via extreme repression of Shias and Kurds. There was talk of dividing Iraq into three independent nations controlled by the three major players of Iraq; viz. the Kurds in the north, the Sunni minority that gravitated toward the west and the Shias that gravitated toward the eastern part of Iraq bordering Iran.

 

American conventional wisdom quickly abandoned the three State scenario due American National Interests of the location of oil fields and the legitimate concern that the Arab Shia population of Iraq would be absorbed into Iran which are ethnically Persian yet also are Shias. So the Bush Administration tried to build a new Iraq nation under the auspices of shared governance by the three Iraqi groups. Unfortunately for the shared governance concept the Western concept of democratic elections placed a Shi’ite as the governing Prime Minister. PM Maliki slowly moved away from shared governance to Shia domination by the purging of Sunni political leaders. It may be a bit more complicated but you get the idea.

 

Enter Erdogan’s Turkey agenda change toward non-Turks. She believes Erdogan is taking a page from the old Ottoman playbook of divide and conquer to maintain political power via the unifying effects of Sunni Islam.

 

Glick paints a picture of Turkey under Erdogan reasserting Islamic rule under Turkish power to rival the Islamic rule agenda of Shia Iran.

 

For U.S. National Interests this provides a scenario that has definite pluses and minuses. In the short run letting Sunnis under the aegis of Turkey duking it out with Iran over who controls the Islamic world probably benefits the U.S. by staying out of it. The U.S. would be in an ironic Byzantine situation of throwing support back and forth to keep the violent Muslims in one area more than islamifying the West. The Byzantine factor is the long run. If one group Muslims gains the ascendancy over their the West again could face crazy Muslims trying to conquer the world forcing an Islamized civilization as the Christian Middle East experienced under early Arab conquests and Europe faced from the Ottomans right up to the 17th century (See Also HERE).

 

Before proceeding to Caroline Glick’s essay I thought you might benefit from a snapshot of how the Ottoman’s maintained a huge Islamic empire for some time. If find that tiresome feel free to skip it, but you really should read Glick.

 

In addition to their traditions of family sovereignty, the Ottomans drew strength from their origins as ghazis. The ghazi principle fueled their urge for conquest and then helped them to structure their developing society. The social structure of settled, urban Islamic society consisted of four social groupings: 1) the men of the pen, that is, judges, imams (prayer leaders), and other intellectuals; 2) the men of the sword, meaning the military; 3) the men of negotiations, such as merchants; and 4) the men of husbandry, meaning farmers and livestock raisers. Life on the frontier was far less structured; society there was divided into two groups, the askeri (the military) and the raya (the subjects). Besides protecting the realm and the raya, the askeri conquered new territories, thus bringing more raya and wealth into the empire.

 

… By late in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the men of the pen were the bureaucrats of the empire, while the judges and imams made up a separate group called the men of religion. The men of the pen, the men of religion, and the men of the sword all were classified as askeri. As such, they were exempt from taxes and lived off of the wealth produced by the raya. Each of the three groups had its own educational system, its own internal practices, and its own values. In Ottoman society there was a place for everyone, but one of the functions of the sultan was to keep everyone in their place.

 

There was even a place for the non-Muslim. In classical Islamic tradition, non-Muslim religious communities that possessed an accepted, written holy book were granted a covenant of protection, the dhimma, and were considered to be protected people, the dhimmis. In return for this status they paid a special poll tax, the cizye. The Ottomans continued this tradition during the reign of Muhammad the Conqueror (reigned 1451-1481). The three leading non-Muslim religious communities—the Jews, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Armenian Church—were established as recognized dhimmi communities known as millets. Each millet was headed by its own religious dignitary: a chief rabbi in the case of the Jews, and patriarchs in the case of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian communities. In the millet system, each community was responsible for the allocation and collection of its taxes, its educational arrangements, and internal legal matters pertaining especially to personal status issues such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. In the pre-modern Middle East, identity was largely based on religion. This system functioned well until the European concepts of nationalism and ethnicity filtered into the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the 19th century.

 

…

 

…The Ottomans modified the ghulam system by instituting the infamous devshirme, in which young Christian males between the ages of 8 and 15 were removed from their villages in the Balkans to be trained for state service. The youths were brought before the sultan, and the best of them—in terms of physique, intelligence, and other qualities—were selected for education in the palace school. There they converted to Islam, became versed in the Islamic religion and its culture, learned Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, and were trained in the military and social arts. They owed absolute allegiance to the sultan and were destined for the highest offices in the empire as they rose through the ranks of the school. When members of this select group graduated at about the age of 25, they assumed positions in the provincial military structure or took up service in the palace guards regiments. They could then work their way up the system and become its military-administrative head, the grand vizier. Those not selected for the palace school converted to Islam, worked for rural Turkish farmers, learned vernacular Turkish and folk Islamic culture, and became members of the sultan’s elite military infantry, the Janissaries.

 

This division in the devshirme, between those who received the best available education in the high Islamic tradition and those who followed the folk tradition and served as Janissaries, reflected a significant development within the society as a whole: the definition of the Ottoman identity. By the early 16th century the term Ottoman, which had first indicated the men around Osman and then the dynasty itself, had become a cultural-political-sociological term. Only a minority of the askeri class could be called “true” Ottomans. To be an Ottoman one had to serve the state and the religion and know the “Ottoman way.” Serving the state meant having a position within the military, the bureaucracy, or the religious establishment that carried with it the coveted askeri status and tax exemption. Serving the religion meant being a Muslim. Knowing the “Ottoman way” meant being completely at home in the high Islamic tradition. It also meant being fully trained in Arabic and Persian—languages that were, along with Turkish, the constituent elements of Ottoman Turkish, the language vehicle of all Ottomans. By this definition, the bulk of the Janissary corps—made up of devshirme youths who were not trained in the palace school but rather in the traditions of folk Islam—could not be considered Ottomans. … (The Ottomans: From Frontier Warriors To Empire Builders: Ottoman Society – Part 4; By Robert Guisepi; International World History Project – About IWHP; 1992 [Bold text is author’s])

 

JRH 6/27/14

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Turkey’s high-risk power play

 

By Caroline Glick

June 24th, 2014

CarolineGlick.com

 

For most Westerners, Turkey is a hard nut to crack.

 

How can you understand a state sponsor of terrorism that is also a member of NATO?

 

How can you explain Turkey’s facilitation of Kurdish independence in Iraq in light of Turkey’s hundred-year opposition to Kurdish independence?

 

What is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan trying to accomplish here?

 

Is he nuts?

 

 

On the terrorism support front, today Turkey vies with Iran for the title of leading state sponsor of terrorism.

 

First there is Hamas.

 
Last week an Israeli security official told the media that the abduction of Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah was organized and directed by Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas commander operating out of Turkey.

 
Turkey has welcomed Hamas to its territory and served as its chief booster to the West since the jihadist terror group won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. Erdogan has played a key role in getting the EU to view Hamas as a legitimate actor, despite its avowedly genocidal goals.

 
Then there is al-Qaida. As Daniel Pipes documented in The Washington Times last week, Turkey has been the largest supporter and enabler of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

 

Erdogan’s government has allowed ISIS fighters to train in Turkey and cross the border between Turkey and Syria at will to participate in the fighting. Moreover, according to Pipes, Turkey “provided the bulk of ISIS’s funds, logistics, training and arms.”

 
Similarly, Turkey has sponsored the al-Nusra Front, ISIS’s al-Qaida counterpart and ally in Syria.

 
The Assad regime is not the Turkish- sponsored al-Qaida-aligned forces’ only target in Syria. They have also been engaged in heavy fighting against Rojava, the emerging Kurdish state in northwest Syria. Yet the same Turkey that is sponsoring al-Qaida’s assault on Syrian Kurdistan is facilitating the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan.

 
In breach of Iraqi law that requires the Kurds to sell their oil through the central government and share oil revenues with the central government, earlier this month Turkey signed a 50-year deal allowing the Kurds to export oil to the world market through a Turkish pipeline. The Kurds are currently pumping around 120,000 barrels of oil a day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

 
Top Turkish officials have in recent weeks come out openly in support for Iraqi Kurdish independence from Baghdad.

 
Following ISIS’s takeover of Mosul, Huseyin Celik, the spokesman for Erdogan’s ruling AKP party told the Kurdish Rudaw news service, “It has become clear for us that Iraq has practically become divided into three parts.”

 
Blaming Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for Iraq’s instability Celik said, “The Kurds of Iraq can decide where to live and under what title they want to live. Turkey does not decide for them.”

 

To date, most Western analyses of the Erdogan regime’s behavior have come up short because their authors ignore its strategic goal. In this failing, analyses of Turkey are similar to those of its Shi’ite counterpart in Iran. And both regimes’ goals are wished away for the same reason: Western observers can’t identify with them.

 
Iran is not a status quo power. It is a revolutionary power. Iran’s goal is not regional hegemony per se, but global supremacy.

 

 

As Lee Smith recently noted, two decades before al-Qaida and its goal of establishing a global Islamic caliphate burst onto the scene, Ayatollah Khomeini had already made the Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War the basis for Iran’s foreign policy. He viewed his Shi’ite theocracy as the rightful leader of the Islamic empire that would destroy all non-believers and their civilization.

 
Iran’s first act of foreign policy – the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran – was a declaration of war not only against the US, but against the nation-state system as a whole.

 
Iran uses terror, irregular warfare and subversion to achieve its ends because such tactics induce chaos.

 
As Iran expert Michael Ledeen wrote last week, to defeat the US in Iraq, “the Iranian regime provoked all manner of violence, from tribal to ethnic, because they believed they were better able to operate in chaos.”

 

The US failed to understand Iran’s strategy because the US was unable to reconcile itself with the fact that other actors do not seek stability as it does.

 
Like Iran’s mullahs, Erdogan and his colleagues also reject the nation-state system. In their case, they wish to replace it with a restored Ottoman Empire.

 
Spelling out his goal in a speech in the spring of 2012, Erdogan described Turkey’s mission thus: “On the historic march of our holy nation, the AK Party signals the birth of a global power and the mission for a new world order. This is the centenary of our exit from the Middle East [following the Ottoman defeat in World War I]. Whatever we lost between 1911 and 1923, whatever lands we withdrew from, from 2011 to 2023 we shall once again meet our brothers in those lands.”

 
To achieve this goal, like Iran, Turkey seeks to destabilize states and reduce peoples to their ethnic, sub-national identities. The notion is that by dividing societies into their component parts, the various groups will all be weaker than one unified state, and all of them will feel threatened by one another and in need of outside support.

 
This is the same model Erdogan is following in Turkey itself as he remakes it in his Ottoman mold.

 
As Amir Taheri explained last October, Erdogan has been encouraging members of ethnic groups that long ago melted into the larger Turkish culture to rediscover their disparate identities, learn their unique languages and so separate out from the majority culture of the country. At the same time he is repressing the Kurds, Alevis and Armenians, minorities that have maintained their identities at great cost.

 

In parallel to his attempt to subsume the Kurds, Alevis and Armenians into a wider morass of separate sub-Turkish ethnicities, Erdogan has been assiduously cultivating hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood associations to enable their takeover of mosques and other key institutions to build a countrywide support base for Islamic supremacism.

 
By fragmenting Turkish society into long-forgotten component parts while uniting it under radical Islam, he wishes to unite the country under his Sultanate rule while dividing its various factions against one another to maintain support for the regime over the long haul.

 
A large part of repressing the Kurds at home involves denying them outside assistance. This is where Iraqi Kurdistan comes into the picture.

 

 

By acting like Iraqi Kurdistan’s best friend, Erdogan hopes to attenuate their support for Turkish Kurds.

 

 

While Turkey and Iran are rivals in undermining the international system, their goals are the same, and their strategies for achieving their goals are also similar. But while their chaos strategy is brilliant in its way, it is also high risk. By its very nature, chaos is hard, if not impossible to control. Situations often get out of hand. Plans backfire.

 

What we are seeing today in Syria and Iraq and the wider region demonstrates the chaos strategy’s drawbacks.

 

As Pinchas Inbari detailed in a recent report for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Syrian civil war is causing millions of Syrians to leave the country and their migrations are changing the face of many countries.

 

For instance, their arrival in Lebanon has transformed the multi-ethnic state into one with a preponderant Sunni majority, thus watering down Hezbollah’s support base.

 
The Kurds in Iraq may feel they need Turkey today, but there is no reason to assume that this will remain the case for long.

 

Kurdish unity across Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran will destabilize not only Turkey, but Iran, where Kurds make up around ten percent of the population. Iranian Kurdistan also abuts the Azeri provinces. Azeris comprise nearly half the population of Iran.

 
As for ISIS, it is scoring victories in Iraq today. But its forces are vastly outnumbered by the Baathists and the Sunni tribesmen that defeated al Qaida in 2006. There is no reason to assume that these disparate groups won’t get tired of their new medieval rulers.

 
Many commentators claimed that Erdogan’s recent foreign policy setbacks in the Arab world convinced him to abandon neo-Ottomanism in favor of more modest goals. But his cultivation of Iraqi Kurdistan, and his sponsorship of ISIS, al-Nusra, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas tell a different story.

 

Erdogan remains an Islamic imperialist.

 

Like Iran he aims to destroy the global order and replace it with an Islamic empire. But like Iran, if his adversaries get wise to what he is doing, it won’t be very difficult to beat him at his own game by using his successes to defeat him.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

______________________________

Is Erdogan Setting Stage for Turkish Caliphate?

John R. Houk

© June 27, 2014

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Turkey’s high-risk power play

 

All right reserved, Caroline Glick. 2013

 

About Caroline Glick

 

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