Author: Brad Johnson

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TRUMP’S EMBARGO AGAINST IRAN: A LOOK AT THE AUTO INDUSTRY

On the 12th of August, 2019, al-jazeera.net published a report on how the American sanctions have affected the Iranian auto industry. According to this report, in 2017 Iran was the top country in the Middle East region for the production of automobiles, and number 12 in the World. In 2018 Iran had fallen to number 2 in the Middle East (behind Turkey) and to number 20 in the world.

The article mentioned such things as the difficulty of obtaining essential parts for the manufacture of automobiles, the rising prices for the consumer, and the decrease of quality. The American embargo has also halted Iran’s ability to export autos to other countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, and Lebanon.

COMMENT: For all the naysayers who said that a unilateral embargo by the United States would fail because too many other countries were already deeply entangled in trading with Iran, this article shows that at least in terms of specific industries, the embargo working very well. And, not only that, even some of Iran’s supposed allies have had to curtail at least some of their trade with Iran.

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IS A REBEL SUFI SERVING AS AN ADVISOR TO TRUMP?

Another al-jazeera.net report of 12 August talked about one “Hamza Yusuf” who is supposedly an advisor to President Trump. This individual was born in 1958 to a Christian family in the state of Washington. His real name was Mark Hansen. After an auto accident when he was 17 he began to think about mortality. In this vulnerable state a book by the title of The Book of Certainty fell into his hands which led him to begin reading the Qur’an.

To make a long story short he soon converted to Islam, learned Arabic, then spent several years studying Islam under shaykhs in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Morocco, and he rose from being a typical American Christian teenager to one of the most influential Islamic Imams in the West.

However, in the eyes of his Muslim critics, he has gone from being a defender and supporter of issues of concern to Muslims (prior to 9/11) to one of advising Muslims after 9/11 to hold firm to the rights granted to them by the nations of the West by rejecting the siren call of “radical Islam.”

“Prior to 9/11 he was one of the strongest critics of American domestic and foreign policies,” his critics say.

He also claims that the perpetrators of 9/11 and other “radicals” had “hijacked” the religion and advised Muslims to return to the “true Islam.”

He has also been criticized by (by some) Muslims for maintaining his ties to Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE even after the Kashoqji affair, and the events of the war in Yemen. This has led many to accuse him of being a “spy” for the UAE, and that he has influenced Trump to favor Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Qatar.

COMMENT: Any individual raised as a Christian in any Western country who then converts to Islam on his own volition as an adult is by definition mentally unstable. Such an individual understands neither Christianity nor Islam. Proof of his confusion is his call for Muslims to return to the “true Islam,” and blaming the “radicals” for “hijacking” the religion. What he does not realize is that it is the “radicals,” the 9-11 bombers, the ISIS, and al-Qaeda types who have, in actual fact, returned to the “real Islam.”

And, what “Hamzi Yusuf” and others like him don’t realize is that the “moderate” Islam that he wants to believe in is a “Disneyland Islam” as described in my book listed below. This moderate, or “Disneyland Islam,” was made possible, and in fact was a direct product of, the European colonization of most of the Arab world during the 19th and early 20th century. In other words, “moderate” Muslims are only imitating their Western colonizers. The further removed we get from the age of European colonization in terms of time, the more we are going to see increasing numbers of Muslims moving away from the Western-influenced “Disneyland Islam” to the real Islam of ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and prophet Muhammad.

There will never be any real progress in the war on terror until everyone, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, can come to recognize these truths.

Finally, while there are plenty of reasons to favor the lesser evil of Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the greater evil of Qatar and al-Qaeda, etc., the idea of someone as mentally unstable and poorly informed about world history as this individual being an advisor to the U.S. president is troubling to say the least.

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Also on the 12th of August, 2019, al-jazeera.net published an editorial by an Egyptian researcher and writer by the name of Khalil al-‘Anani. The title of the editorial was: Will the Eradication of the Islamists be Successful?

In this editorial, Mr. al-‘Anani complains about the huge sums of money that Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE are expending to found, and finance, think tanks, TV news channels and newspapers in the West and the East, the only function of which is to attack any (political) current based on Islamic authority. Meanwhile, these countries (KSA, UAE, and Egypt) claim that they are the only ones who represent a moderate, middle ground, Islam.

It is these countries, Mr. al-Anani says, which are goading the Western countries to declare Islamic groups and organizations as terrorist entities. As an example of this he pointed to the efforts of the KSA, the UAE, and Egypt to pressure the Trump administration to declare the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group.

In the body of the article Mr. al-‘Anani points out that all the attempts by Arab dictatorial regimes, from Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasr to Mubarrak and Qadhafi to crush the Islamic movement have failed, and each time it has come back stronger than before. And, it is these efforts to eradicate Islamist movements by these countries, and supported by the West, that has pushed the Sunni political Islam groups and Shi’a Iran into each other’s arms.

However, he says, that all of these people (meaning those trying to eradicate the Islamist movements such as the KSA, UAE, and Egypt) are “drunk and high” because of Donald Trump’s presence as president in the White House. Nonetheless, sooner or later, he says, there will be a different occupant in the White House and American Middle East policy could once again be turned on its head.

ANALYSIS

First off, this author sounds like he is probably a Muslim Brotherhood supporter, if not a full member. He certainly supports the Islamist movements. It is most interesting that his accusations against the KSA and UAE over the financing of think tanks and news entities comes on the heels of the publication of The Qatar Papers by a pair of French investigative journalists who document Qatar’s funding of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups and their activities in the West in general and France in particular. So, this is just a “tit for tat” argument. Both sides are obviously spending huge sums to influence Western opinions.

However, what Mr. al-‘Anani said about all previous efforts by dictatorial regimes to stamp out the Brotherhood and other Islamist movements, have only resulted in failure, and that each time the Islamist groups come back stronger than before, is true. However, there are a number of other reasons other than the brutality and repression of the Arab regimes. I identify and describe each of these other reasons in my book listed below. Hint: One of the chief reasons is listed above (i.e. the withdrawal of European colonization).

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Barry Webb had a 15-year career as an Arabist for the NSA, holds two MA degrees in related subject matter, and is the author of Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy: Why America and its Allies are Losing the War on Terror. His website is: www.barrywebbauthor.com
He is currently a senior fellow with the DC-based Americans for Intelligence Reform, website: www.intelreform.org

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The Sterling Law Building of the Yale Law School on Feb. 7, 2007. (Public Domain)

WASHINGTON—A new report suggests that Yale University, and other U.S. higher education institutions more generally, widely engage in “neo-segregation,” that is, “voluntary racial segregation of students, aided by college institutions, into exclusive dormitories, common spaces, classes, and events.”

The report is part of a larger project by the National Association of Scholars (NAS). It includes a survey of 173 colleges and universities, public and private, in all 50 states, finding 46 percent of schools segregate student orientation programs, 43 percent segregate residential arrangements, and a towering 72 percent segregate graduation ceremonies.

At the report’s rollout on April 29 at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center, Peter W. Wood, NAS president and the report’s co-author, quoted then-Gov. George Wallace’s 1963 inaugural address, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, and Segregation Forever,” noting Wallace was correct about “Segregation Tomorrow,” since “more than half a century later, racial segregation comes as easy as breathing to many American colleges and universities.”

Wood acknowledged neo-segregation differs from Jim Crow in that it is voluntary: “It invites students of color to separate themselves out from the rest of the campus.” A Wall Street Journal op-ed timed to correspond with the rollout, however, charged, “Though these arrangements are ostensibly voluntary, students can’t easily opt out.” Moreover, while accommodations might be open to other races de jure, history demonstrates those trying to cross racial lines face bullying, intimidation, and even violence, inevitably leading to continued de facto neo-segregation.

Wood quoted the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education verdict that argues, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal,” and thus segregated minority students were “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”

Separate Accommodations
Yet, according to Dion J. Pierre, co-author with Wood of the overall study, “Separate But Equal, Again: Neo-Segregation in American Higher Education,” the Brown decision included studies indicating black students in primarily white schools felt more inferior than those in segregated schools. Within a short time of Brown, accordingly, black students in predominantly white higher educational institutions began requesting separate accommodations and facilities.

As Pierre put it, this kind of segregation “has always been with us.” That is, “as soon as colleges began integrating, minority students demanded separatism in various forms.” Within 14 years of Brown, Pierre reported, students began to receive neo-segregated accommodations.

Center for African American Studies & Malcolm X House at Wesleyan University on March 28, 2012. (Joe Mabel/CC BY-SA 3.0)

For instance, Pierre said, The New York Times reported on segregated dorms in the article “The Two Nations at Wesleyan,” documenting John Wesley House’s 1969 metamorphosis to Malcolm X House. The article records that the house’s Afro American Institute, known as “Ujamaa” (“family” in Swahili), became the unofficial voice of Wesleyan’s black community, issuing “a cheerless form of invective, full of phrases like ‘racist institution’ and ‘white liberal swine.’”

A “white English teacher” quoted in the piece called Ujamaa’s diktats “the language of escalation. They have to be deciphered rather like statements from the Kremlin.” Setting aside Wesleyan administrators’ dreams of “many races, one community,” Ujamaa’s co-director told the Times, “I’ll keep 10 percent … just to remember that the white folks still exist. I haven’t found the button yet that will get rid of them.”

Pierre said Wesleyan’s struggle to assimilate black students “culminated in the Fisk Hall takeover of 1969.” Wesleyan rewarded that disruption with “a segregated dorm, one that was officially recognized,” not just the Afro-American Cultural House they already had. Black Wesleyan students had “their own library, they were hosting segregated dances,” but the Fisk Hall takeover won them Malcolm X House—symbolic, Pierre said, because, among blacks, Malcolm X was “one of the first mainstream American figures to condemn integration.”

Seeking a Cure
Wesleyan’s situation had a neo-segregation nexus in New Haven, where the Black Students Association at Yale (BSAY) was founded in 1964. That year, Yale’s president and admissions dean set out on an “effort to cure racial injustice,” including, according to Wood and Pierre, admitting minority students “regardless of their test scores or other evidence of academic achievement.”

Unfortunately, Wood and Pierre report, “the results were catastrophic for the students.” Over a third of the 35 black students Yale enrolled in 1966 dropped out their first year alone. Others “lagged behind academically and felt unwelcome.” Trying to triage the trauma, Yale established a “summer remediation program” for black students—which only “isolated the black students as a group and gave them a sense of solidarity and shared grievance,” Wood and Pierre argue.

That isolation led to BSAY demands for separate advisers, a separate orientation, a separate center in a separate building, and even a separate curriculum, the African-American studies program, which required separate faculty members with separate qualifications, the NAS authors report. Even then, say Wood and Pierre, Yale began to bear “a strange resemblance to the ‘separate but equal’” world pre-Brown. According to the authors, Yale met every new demand with accommodation, and BSAY “grasped that racial intimidation yields rich rewards.”

The result is on display at Yale now, says Wood, including the infamous 2015 mobbing of Nicholas A. Christakis, a Yale professor who found himself encircled for two hours by approximately 100 students after his wife Erika circulated an email in which she counseled students not to be so uptight about Halloween costumes.

A video of the confrontation went viral, featuring student Jerelyn Luther, screaming inter alia “who the [expletive] hired you?” at Christakis. Ironically, Pierre noted, Luther served on the committee that selected Nicholas and Erika Christakis as heads of Silliman College, the residential dorm at Yale, so the answer to Luther’s profanity-laced question was, in part, Luther.

Regardless, Nicholas and Erika Christakis were driven to resign from the university within a month or two, to the “glee” of those within the community that wanted them gone, according to Wood. Later that year, Yale President Peter Salovey reacted to the kerfuffle by devoting $50 million to spend on “diverse” faculty, which, in turn, has resulted in more than 60 hires so far—and, arguably, to the 2016 disclosure that no “underrepresented minority” faculty member had lost a tenure bid in five years.

Yale went on to award two of the mobsters, Alexandra Zina Barlowe and even Abdul-Razak Mohammed Zachariah—the student who came closest to physically attacking professor Christakis, according to Wood—its Nakashini Prize, supposedly for “two graduating seniors who, while maintaining high academic achievement, have provided exemplary leadership in enhancing race and/or ethnic relations at Yale College.”

Worse, argues a piece that Wood read from at the report’s rollout, “By perpetuating a false narrative about its own racism, Yale, like the vast majority of colleges and universities today, encourages its minority students to think of themselves as victims.”

The NAS project suggests that the early pattern at Wesleyan and Yale appears not only to have escalated within the schools, but also to have spread across the country, in ever-more cases manifesting not as successful diversity and inclusion, but instead as neo-segregation.

Beyond Yale’s walls, and those of the other schools following its lead, the piece Wood cited concludes, “it augurs a country ever more primed to see bias where none exists and ever more divided by group identity.”

 

Activists participate in a rally urging the expansion of Social Security benefits in front of the White House in Washington on July 13, 2015. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON–The latest Social Security Trustees report finds that the program faces large shortfalls and is only a few years from insolvency, a group of experts agreed at a Capitol Hill event April 26.

Overall, according to Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the takeaway from the latest report is that, “We are running out of time to fix Social Security.”

“Every year that we ignore the Trustees’ warnings, every year that we wait and punt” on making the necessary changes to the program, she said, it increases the cost of fixing the system. Every year, the trustees say “Social Security is unsustainable,” MacGuineas said.

According to the report, she said, “The combined trust funds would only be able to pay full benefits up until 2035, at which point there will be an abrupt, across-the-board benefit cut for everybody of 20 percent” if the problem is not addressed. The Trustees report reinforces that the imbalances that cause the problem are “large and rising every single year,” given Social Security’s demographics and structure, she said.

Better Economy
On the other hand, MacGuiness suggested, there is some good news this year: the disability portion of the Social Security system has significantly longer until those trust funds fall short than reported in the past. The change took place in part because “more people are staying in the work force” with the improved economy, she said.

Jason Fichtner, former acting deputy commissioner of Social Security, agreed, saying, “in general, this is a better report than we’ve had in previous years.”

Fichtner said it is important to remember that trust fund insolvency is not the same as “going bankrupt.” Millenials, Fichtner pointed out, tend to believe the program will not be there for them. Social Security is actually highly likely to exist in some form when Millenials reach retirement, he said. Yet once its trust funds are depleted, Fichtner emphasized, Social Security will only be able to pay out in benefits what it takes in in payroll tax revenue, “which is basically enough to cover 80 percent” of benefits as they are currently structured.

In addition, Fichtner said, the total cost of the program in 2018 grew to a towering $1 trillion, or “one thousand billion dollars,” as the report describes it. “That’s real money,” he said, and it has a real impact on seniors and the economy, so we cannot afford to ignore it.

Fichtner also agreed with MacGuineas that the longer policymakers wait to heal the program’s ailments, the harder it will be to heal them, and the more painful the impact will be when they finally do.

Finally, Fichtner argued, though the disability insurance trust fund showed a startling 20-year improvement in its projected insolvency from the prior year, “we don’t have three decades to fix” it. Its position improved because the economy improved, he said, but as soon as the United States has another recession, “that program’s going to face severe financial trouble.” Accordingly, he recommended, policymakers should use the “bandwidth” provided by the economy’s improvement to address the underlying problems within the disability program.

Retirement Security
When addressing those underlying problems in the Social Security program more generally, Marc Goldwein, vice-president of CFRB, suggested, policymakers should focus on improving Americans’ retirement security, not just fiscal balance for the program. For instance, he pointed out, many wealthy retirees receiving benefits are well into the spectrum of financial security, while many lower income retirees are off that spectrum, not getting the benefits they need.

Moreover, Goldwein argued, policymakers should remember to factor in economic growth to their Social Security reforms. One reason, he said, is that improvements in the program’s health this year are due in part to healthy rates of economic growth, over 3 percent in the most recent economic news, while an aging population suggests that America is more likely to grow at about 2 percent over time.

Thus, said Goldwein, to the extent Social Security can send workers signals that grow the economy, it will in turn improve the program’s health. For instance, raising the retirement age slowly over time and with adequate notice not only saves resources in Social Security, but encourages workers to remain in the workforce, which in turn improves their longevity and wellbeing and economic growth as well, thereby strengthening the program indirectly.

Likewise, Goldwein flagged “idiosyncrasies” in the Social Security program that discouraged work. For instance, he said, in the last few years of work, workers accumulate little additional Social Security benefits for their retirement, while in the first few years of work, the benefits accumulate very rapidly. According to Goldwein, policymakers need to flip that around to reward working longer when it is challenging to do so, not at the beginning of a career when virtually no workers consider retirement.

Finally, legislation and regulation to address the disability program’s problems, Goldwein underscored, also played a role in the insurance program’s improvement, including reallocation of funds within the program and getting under control the worst-acting Administrative Law Judges (ALJs), who were approving dramatically more applications than others, including higher numbers allegedly driven by fraud.

The Trustees’ “best guess,” Goldwein said, was that though the strong economy had led to more and more of those qualifying for disability staying in the work force, some of the improvement in the program’s outlook was structural. The “bad news,” said Goldwein, was that if in fact more of the improvement was economic than Trustees believed, the disability insurance program would deteriorate more quickly than expected were the economy to slow.

Ben Ritz of the Progressive Policy Institute said policymakers had not actually made significant financial improvements to the program.

When it is time to make such improvements, Ritz recommended “keeping in mind that when we raise taxes…those are tax dollars we could be using for other programs.” Likewise, Ritz asserted that to the extent benefit cuts take beneficiaries below the poverty line, “we have other areas of the federal budget that are going to have to pick up that slack.”

Asked by The Epoch Times about the potential for “means testing” Social Security, Fichtner said Social Security already includes a “back door means test.” He noted, “When people hear ‘means testing’ they think we’re going to reduce your benefits because you make income.”

Instead, he pointed out, for certain people who have over a particular level of gross income, “we tax your Social Security benefits up to 85 percent.” One of the proposals to increase revenue, Fichtner noted, would be to make 100 percent of benefits taxable for higher-income filers. Should we increase that level, Fichtner asked? “Probably,” because those most able to afford changes in the Social Security program are precisely those making additional income in any given year.

The event, “Unpacking the Social Security Trustees’ Report,” was sponsored by CRFB.

 

Last December when President Trump promised to pull all American Troops out of Syria and let the Turks keep the peace and take care of ISIS (a promise Trump made after a phone call with Erdogan), I said that this was Trump’s Neville Chamberlain moment.

Well now, the chickens have come home to roost.

Even though Trump back-peddled somewhat on his original promise by enacting only a partial pullout while leaving a small handful of advisors behind to continue helping the Kurds clean out ISIS holdouts, a token force will not be sufficient to stop a megalomaniac like Erdogan.

He has already annexed the N.W. Syria region of Afrin (which is part of the Aleppo province) and mostly ethnic-cleansed the place of all the Kurds, Christian, and Yazidis. And now he wants more. After assuming total control of Afrin he moved south into Idlib province where Turks are now being tested by the Assad regime and pressured by Russia to halt their advance.

Trump’s original withdrawal agreement with Erdogan was supposed to keep Erdogan from crossing the Euphrates into N.E. Syria, which is what he wants to do now. This is the territory of the YPG Kurds who formed the bulk of Syrian Democratic Forces we supported, along with some Christians and Yazidis.

Erdogan’s goal in Syria’s N.E. is the Hasaka province, where our YPG Kurds hold sway along with some Christians, and Yazidis. These people know what will happen to them when and if the Turks are allowed in.

In order for the Turks to reach the Hasaka province which lies east of the Euphrates is to pass through at least part of the Aleppo province that they haven’t conquered yet, and the Raqqa province.

Believe it or not, It sounds like someone in the administration has finally woken up to the fact that Turkey is a serious danger to regional security because:

News has recently broken that the U.S. has worked out a deal with the Turks for joint security patrols to ensure Turkey’s security. Yes, it is Turkish “security” that Erdogan has been using as his pretext for gobbling up Syrian territories for his imaginary neo-Ottoman Empire. This agreement is supposed to keep Erdogan on the west side of the Euphrates and out of the Kurd’s Hasaka province. Don’t hold your breath.

Here is why I don’t think that talks and “agreements” will keep the Turks out:

It is not just territory that Erdogan wants. Hasaka province boasts Syria’s richest agricultural region and most of its oil fields, not to mentioned more Kurds, Christians, and Yazidis to exterminate. But the real prize are the hundreds and probably thousands of ISIS fighters that the Kurds are holding prisoner (because their home countries don’t want them back). Erdogan wants to liberate these fighters so he can use them as spearheads for his additional conquest.

Why not? That is exactly what he did when he took the Afrin province. The so-called Syrian Free Army he used was composed of left-over ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Muslim Brotherhood fighters. They were his shock troops. He sent them into the Kurdish towns in Afrin region to exterminate the “undesirables” then had his regular Turkish forces enter later to “restore order” and convince the Americans that they are the “good guys.”

Getting their hands on a large, new, crop of jihadis would be a huge boon to Erdogan’s grandiose plans for conquest.

The only thing that can keep Turkey out of any more parts of Syria is a massive airlift of American forces into the region now. Talking and diplomacy will only be used by Erdogan to better position his forces for a blitzkrieg while we are asleep at the switch.

This situation is so like Hitler and Czechoslovakia.

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Barry Webb had a 25-year career as an NSA Arabist, holds two MA degrees in related subject matter, and is the author of Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy: Why America and its Allies are Losing the War on Terror. His website is: www.barrywebbauthor.com. He is currently a senior fellow with Americans for Intelligence Reform www.intelreform.org

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich speaks at a roundtable sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger: China in Washington on April 9, 2019. (Screenshot/Committee on the Present Danger: China)

WASHINGTON–The former speaker of the House of Representatives joined current members of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a former senior Trump White House official, Chinese dissidents, and U.S. national security experts in condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ruthless rule and drive to dominate the globe at a recent event in Washington.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued that the CCP already had secured three strategic victories: first, in its growing domination of the South China Sea; second, in its One Belt, One Road initiative gobbling up infrastructure into the heart of the West; and third, in its tipping-point technological triumph in the global 5G wireless market.

Overall, Gingrich said, the United States is “watching a revolution in strategic economic capabilities and a revolution in geographic location of power and all of it is being done while we sleepwalk.”

“This is going to be a long-term struggle between a civilization that believes in liberty and a civilization that believes in authoritarianism with Chinese characteristics,” a clear reference to “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the slogan used by CCP dictators from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

Asked by The Epoch Times to address any link between the fight against the CCP and the fight against self-described socialists in Congress such as presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Gingrich said, “Ronald Reagan defeated communism in Moscow but lost to it in Stanford [University].”

Members of the academic left in the United States and the reporters who grow out of it, Gingrich said, “pervade the whole system,” leading to “three generations now of teaching people lies.” The answer, Gingrich said, is “you’ve got to go beat them.” Americans “have a tendency not to vote for self-immolation.”

Joining Gingrich at the roundtable hosted by Committee on the Present Danger: China on April 9 at Reserve Officers Association national headquarters across the street from the U.S. Capitol Building was Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Ted Cruz (R-Texas). He echoed Gingrich’s concern, saying, “China is in my view, and in the view of many, the greatest long-term geopolitical risk that the United States faces.”

To eliminate that risk, Cruz said the United States needs to do three things: Turn the light of transparency and truth on Chinese totalitarianism; rebuild the United States’ military capabilities to face the Chinese threat, including with space-based missile defenses; and decrease rampant Chinese spying, manipulation, and theft inside the U.S. homeland.

Cruz concluded with the rallying cry, “Truth is stronger than lies, and light is stronger than darkness.”

Likewise, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence member Chris Stewart charged that China’s “intention is to dominate the United States and every other Western democracy.” He said the CCP is “moving methodically towards that goal,” and that “from the intelligence perspective, there is nothing that I worry about more.”

Finally, Steve Bannon, the former strategic adviser to President Donald Trump, said the “Trump Revolution” began with recognition among America’s working class of threats to the country’s republic, including that of communist China.

Bannon said, “The Chinese people are among the most noble people that have ever walked the earth, and they have been oppressed and abused for a millennium and are now under a ‘new emperor’—a radical cadre” of the CCP. In Bannon’s view, globalist elites know full well that the current government in Beijing perpetrates human rights abuses at home and economic destruction abroad, yet consistently “sell out the American people and the Chinese people.”

Bannon warned that the United States must defend itself against the threat of both communist China and its globalist enablers.

In the end, Bannon argued, it was liberty that would, in fact, make the Middle Kingdom great again. “When you have rule of law and freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Bannon said, “there is nothing that the Chinese people cannot accomplish.”

Brian Kennedy, chairman of the Committee for the Present Danger: China, said the Soviet Union’s fall “was not inevitable or even likely, instead it was well thought out, debated in forums like this and later implemented by men and women in the Reagan Administration who defended Reagan’s policies.” Likewise, he flagged a lack of awareness among Americans about communist China’s threat, but applauded Trump, who, “like Reagan before him, understands this threat and is taking actions to ensure our national survival.”

 

The weekend of 02-04 August the Saudi-owned al-arabiyya TV channel’s weekly program sina’at al-mawt aired a show they called “The Muslim Brotherhood’s war in Europe.” Highlights included the following:

The program focused mainly on the situation in Belgium where Muslims comprise 1/5 of the population of its capital city of Brussels. Of course, Brussels is also the capital of the EU, so it is representative of what is taking place throughout Europe.

Turkey, Iran, and Qatar are all vying for control of the Muslim diaspora in Europe, as are
ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other groups. But it is the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) that practices hegemony over all the Muslims, not just in Brussels, but throughout all of Europe.

One of the Muslim interviewees, a Mr. Ramdhan abu Jasser, the director of the Brussels Center for Research, noted that in Europe, there is a moderate stream promoting assimilation and toleration, and a radical stream, but the moderate stream is failing (he used the term khataab, which can mean either a sermon in a mosque, a public speech, or even general conversation).

As an example he added that when someone from one of the (radical) organizations holds a confab, thousands come . . . and this is without talking about Jerusalem, the right of return, martyrs, or Iraq. But when there is a moderate confab, like one they just had in Rotterdam a couple of weeks ago, speaking about dialogue and settling down in Europe (assimilation), only 10 or 15 show up.

When Rashid Ghanoushi (head of Tunisia’s MB clone an-nadhdah (renaissance) party, thought of by the experts in DC as part of the “moderate” wing of the MB) speaks or preaches in the Middle East, only a few hundred show up, but when he speaks, or preaches, in Europe thousands come together. They come from Germany, Denmark, elsewhere and spend lots of money on taxis, hotels, etc. And, what he talks about is hatred of Europe and the Arab regimes, and to avoid assimilation.

Mr. Jasser went on to say what the MB has failed to gain in the Arab countries, it has gained in Europe, noting in this regard that there are millions of MB members in France alone.

Both Turkey and Qatar (the top two state sponsors of the MB) are heavily involved in gaining influence among Europe’s Muslims. Qatar has especially expanded its efforts to gain control over the mosques, and to guide the strategy of the MB in Europe. The principle of “Money talks” gives Qatar a nice edge in this endeavor.

The results? The MB in Europe preaches the death cult of MB ideologue Sayyid Qutb.

Qatar also finances the “Muslim League” in Belgium, having donated a million Euros.

One of the interviewees also noted that there are many other Muslims and Islamic organizations that are not members of the MB but still help to spread the MB ideology. The overall primary goal is to “raise the next generation of jihadis” and to also attack moderate teachers and preachers.

Turkey is cooperating with Qatar in this effort to make the MB supreme in Europe.

ANALYSIS: Given the birthrate disparities between Europe’s native population and that of its Muslims (both those who are citizens and those who recently arrived as “refugees”), Europe, and the world, is looking at a Brussels that by 2050 will be majority Muslim and politically controlled by a MB that hates Europe and Western Civilization in general. Bear in mind also that native Europeans have been voluntarily converting to Islam in record numbers since 9/11.

Brussels is the capital of the EU and the HQ for NATO. Anyone still think it’s a good ideal to keep NATO around?

Furthermore, the rest of Europe will not be far behind Brussels in terms of turning their continent entirely over to the MB.

In other words, the game Qatar (and its allies Turkey and the MB) are playing in Europe, is one of waiting, rather than violent revolution now. That is, while they readily support active terrorism in the Middle East and Africa, their game plan in Europe is to just let the demographics do their job while promoting the MB’s increasing hegemony over the minds and allegiances of Europe’s Muslims–even those who are not actual members of the MB. That is why they play the “we’re fighting the war on terror” card in one hand to soft soap the westerners all the while laying the foundation for conquest from the inside out by their MB arm.

Sadly, there are serious risks that America will follow in Europe’s footsteps if corrective action is not taken now. That is why one of he chief goals of Americans for Intelligence Reform is to encourage our intelligence agencies (and our politicians) to learn how to indentify long term threats (non-conventional as well as conventional) based on past long-term history as well as ideology, and to provide guidance on how to deal with these threats.

KURDS/TURKEY/ISRAEL

On 02 August, an al-arabiyya TV news cast reported that Turkey has been selling oil to Israel. This is an interesting development because Turkey and Israel are so at odds on a number of issues (including Turkey’s drilling for oil in waters claimed by Israeli ally Cyprus, Turkey’s support of HAMAS, etc.) that they are on the verge of war.

The origins of this oil are the oil fields in Iraqi Kurdistan which are piped or trucked to a sea port in S.E. Turkey where it is loaded onto an oil tanker and shipped to an Israeli port.

LIBYA/EGYPT/TERRORISM

Back in October of 2018 the Libyan National Army led by General Khalifa Haftar captured the Egyptian terrorist Hisham al-‘Ashmawi. This capture took place in the town of Derna, Libya, a hotbed of terrorism before being cleaned out by General Haftar’s army.

Hisham al-‘Ashmawi was wanted in both Libya and Egypt for a string of terrorist actions in both countries. Egypt eventually won the legal battle for extradition which was accomplished a couple of weeks ago.

On the evening of 02 August, Egyptian talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb reported during his al-hakaya (the Story) show a number of details about Hisham ‘Ashmawi’s career. He had originally gone to Afghanistan where he became close to Ayman Azh-Zhhwahiri, current head of al-Qaeda. Then he went to Syria to become involved in the war there.

Tabbed to head al-Qaeda in Africa he left Syria, entered Turkey, and was smuggled by the Turks into Libya to set up shop there. However, in 2016 he ventured to Iraq to join ISIS there, and later also worked in upper (southern) Egypt and in the Sinai.

In Egypt he worked with a group called al-marabitun (garrisoned troops) which previous reporting had identified as a violent offshoot of the MB spreading like wildfire throughout the Egyptian army. He also started an al-marabitun chapter in Libya.

According to Mr. Adeeb, Mr. al-Ashmawi is singing like a bird and spilling his guts now that he is in Egyptian hands (not to mention fingernail pulling devices, racks, tongs, branding irons and other tools of the trade). There should be lots of good news forthcoming about the terrorism infrastructure throughout the Middle-East to Afghanistan sector.

ISIS

On 04 August al-arabiyya TV on their show panorama reported that ISIS still has billions of dollars in addition to 50-300 tons of Gold (depending upon whose estimate you choose). With Ayman azh-Zhwahiri’s deteriorating health and the recent death of Hamza bin Usama bin Laden, look for “flush with cash” ISIS to become the dominant international terrorist organization for years to come.

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Barry Webb has logged a 25-year career as an Arabist for the NSA, has two MA degrees in related subject matter, and is currently a Senior Fellow with Americans for Intelligence Reform www.intelreform.org. He is the author of Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy: Why America and its Allies are Losing the War on Terror. His website is www.barrywebbauthor.com