Thursday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

[Rudy Tirre]

TheFrontPageCover

~ Featuring ~

THE POST-9/11 CYCLE OF CYNICISM

by MICHELLE MALKIN 

.

How Anti-Trump Leakers Moved From Offense to Defense

by Lee Smith

{ saraacarter.com } ~ A trail of evidence appearing in major news outlets suggests a campaign to undermine President Trump from within the government through illegal leaks of classified information... and then thwart congressional investigators probing the disclosures. On Monday the Justice Department released a handful of texts and other documents that included two former officials known for their anti-Trump bias – Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI – discussing the DOJ’s “media leak strategy.” Strzok now says, through his lawyer, that that strategy was aimed at preventing leaks. Nevertheless, days later he and Page approvingly mention forthcoming news articles critical of Trump associates. “The leaks that have been coming out of the FBI and DOJ since 2016 are unconscionable,” said retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano. “There’s a difference between whistleblowing and leaking for self-serving or partisan purposes.” Past and present U.S. officials say the template for the leak campaign can be traced back to the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s efforts to sell the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which made the press reliant on background conversations and favorable leaks from government officials. scumbag/liar-nObama adviser Ben Rhodes told the New York Times in 2016 that “we created an echo chamber” that “helped retail the administration’s narrative.” “That same configuration,” said Michael Doran, a senior official in the George W. Bush White House, “the press, political operatives, newly minted experts, social media validators—was repurposed to target Trump, his campaign, transition team, then the presidency.” The echo chamber’s primary instrument in attacking the current White House said Doran, “is the Russia collusion narrative.”...

https://saraacarter.com/how-anti-trump-leakers-moved-from-offense-to-defense/

.

New Reports of Abuse Reinforce Case

for Sanctions on Iran’s Prisons 

by Tzvi Kahn

{ defenddemocracy.org } ~ An exiled Iranian Dervish activist accused Tehran on Saturday of violating its own prison regulations by allowing seven Dervish women to suffer “appalling” conditions in jail... “The Dervish women are weak physically after having been beaten before and after their transfer to the prison,” said Alireza Roshan, whose community practices a form of Islam considered deviant by the clerical regime. “But prison officials are not allowing them to receive needed medical treatment.” These allegations remain consistent with systemic patterns of abuse by Iran’s Prisons Organization and its director, Asghar Jahangir. It’s long past time for Washington to sanction them for their history of repression. In a March 2018 report, the office of the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran described Iran’s penitentiaries as “inhuman and degrading.” According to the report, prisoners have endured “the denial of medical care” as well as “inadequate accommodation; imprisonment in cramped cells; inadequate provision of food and water; unhygienic conditions; and restricted access to toilet facilities.” In Evin Prison, for example, one shower serves up to 200 people, while as many as 28 prisoners reside in a cramped 20-square-meter cell. At the same time, physical and psychological torture by prison officials, including rape, is common. Jahangir has attributed some of the hardships in prison to financial constraints. “Our budget is not enough to run the prisons properly,” he said  in a moment of candor in December 2017. “Prisons in the Islamic Republic have two times more inmates than their capacity. We are incapable of properly feeding our prisoners three times a day.” Yet as the experiences of countless detainees suggest, Tehran deliberately deprives inmates of basic needs – conduct that violates the Prisons Organization’s own regulations...  Wheres the UN on this issue?  http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/tzvi-kahn-new-reports-of-abuse-reinforce-case-for-sanctions-on-irans-prisons/

.

David French Contradicts Himself

by Sally Zelikovsky

{ americanthinker.com } ~ National Review’s David French penned an article in which he calls on the New York Times op-ed author, Anonymous... to reveal himself and present evidence that the nation’s security is at stake, the president is unhinged, and the minions in his administration are concerned. “If you truly believe the president is unfit, basic patriotism demands nothing less” than Anonymous show the courage to come forward and present his case, under oath with evidence before the American people, who have a right to know. I used to admire David French -- ex-military, an accomplished attorney, a prolific contributor to National Review, a pundit extraordinaire. But his article starts out with the admonition “For the good of the nation, you must identify yourself and back up your claims about the president with hard evidence.” Throughout the article, French repeatedly demands that Anonymous present the evidence for his or her claims. Evidence, evidence, evidence! I couldn’t agree more. For such a diehard #NeverTrumper as Mr. French, I cannot help but wonder if deep down he actually hopes Anonymous complies. It certainly would vindicate the #NeverTrumpers and their compatriots on the left. And, I say this, fully acknowledging that he does include in his article room for doubt, questioning whether there is “real fire behind all this smoke” and covering his behind with the acknowledgement that Anonymous’s claims just might not be truthful.  But here is where David French contradicts himself and loses the reader as well as credibility as the brilliant legal mind he is supposed to be. There is a lot of talk about the kind of behavior that’s “priced in” with Trump. Aside from the cultists, millions of voters cast their ballots knowing that he was a flawed man. They knew, and still know, that he’s cheated on his wife. They wished, and still wish, that he wouldn’t rage on Twitter, that he showed more self-discipline, and that he had more integrity. But they preferred him to liar-Hillary Clinton, another corrupt candidate. [Emphasis added.]...

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/david_french_contradicts_himself.html

.

Hungary Defiant in the Face of EU Censure

by Soeren Kern

{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ The European Parliament has voted to pursue unprecedented disciplinary action against Hungary over alleged breaches of the European Union's "fundamental values."... The EU has accused the Hungarian government of attacks against the media, minorities and the rule of law. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has denied the charges, and said they are a retaliation for his government's refusal to take in migrants from the Muslim world. The censure represents another salvo in a showdown between pro- and anti-EU forces over populism and nationalism ahead of European Parliament elections in May 2019. During a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on September 12, MEPs voted 448-to-197 — by a margin of more than two-thirds — to trigger Article 7 against Hungary. It was the first time that such parliamentary action has been taken against an EU member state; the move can ultimately lead to Hungary losing its voting rights in EU institutions...

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12998/hungary-eu-censure

.

WaPo: If You Don’t Think Diversity is

America’s Greatest Strength, You’re a Racist

by patriotnewsdaily.com 

{ patriotnewsdaily.com } ~ We’d love to know what you “get” for yourself when you dedicate your life to calling out people for their racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc... We’re not saying there isn’t a proper time and place for such accusations; there are. It’s called:  When someone actually says something bigoted. The great thing about those times is that they are pretty damn obvious to everyone when they happen. You don’t have to write a 1400-word column explaining why the statement was racist. It just IS racist. It’s self-damning. That’s not the case with “racism” or sexism, etc. in 2018. No, today the whole point is to see who can be the first one to issue the Big Call Out. A terrible trend that began on social media and migrated quickly to college campuses has now become a permanent fixture of our politics. As Jonathan Haidt theorizes in his new book, there is a certain amount of “social prestige” that comes with calling someone out for this invisible racism. And we suppose that prestige isn’t just craved by insecure college kids; apparently Erik Wemple at the Washington Post wants his share of it as well. That’s why he spent his time on Tuesday telling readers all about how Tucker Carlson is a racist for even daring to question the value of American diversity. On his show last Friday, Carlson asked some extremely pertinent questions about the topic. “How, precisely, is diversity our strength?” Carlson asked after playing clips of dummycrats-Democrats proclaiming it to be the most important factor in American success. “Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don’t know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?”...I guess I am racist.  http://patriotnewsdaily.com/wapo-if-you-dont-think-diversity-is-americas-greatest-strength-youre-a-racist/
.

. 

THE POST-9/11 CYCLE OF CYNICISM

by MICHELLE MALKIN 

{ wnd.com } ~ For 17 years, America has engaged in a collective ritual every Sept. 11: Hang flags, light candles, bow heads and make vows to “Never forget.”

Then, every Sept. 12, it’s back to business as usual: See something, do nothing.

Did you remember that five of the 9/11 hijackers – Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Satam al-Suqami – carried out their killer plot after overstaying their visas, evading detection and avoiding deportation?

Did you remember that other radical Muslim members of the Terrorist Visa Overstayers Club? They include 1997 New York subway bomber Lafi Khalil; 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil; 1993 New York landmark bombing plot conspirator Fadil Abdelgani; convicted Times Square bomb plotter Faisal Shahzad; and U.S. Capitol bomb plotter Amine El Khalifi, whose visa expired in 1999 and who escaped Homeland Security’s notice for 12 years before he was arrested in 2012 – just blocks from the Capitol building donning what he thought was a suicide bomb vest.

Did you remember that a year after the jihadist attacks that stole nearly 3,000 innocent lives, the 9/11 Commission urged our government to build a biometric entry-exit program to track and remove visa overstayers – who comprise an estimated 40 percent of the total illegal immigrant population?

Did you remember that Congress had already mandated exactly such a system for all ports of entry – land, sea and air – in 1996 as part of the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act?

Janice Kephart, former border counsel on the 9/11 Commission, testified five years ago that “tracking the arrival and departure of foreign visitors to the United States is an essential part of immigration control, with collateral effects on law enforcement and national security.” Without both arrival controls and departure records, she warned, “there is no way to know whether travelers have left when they were supposed to.”

At least eight separate federal statutes, passed with bipartisan support, have established the parameters and appropriated funds for a foreign visa holder entry-exit system over the past two decades. But as I reported in my book “Invasion” 16 years ago, lobbyists for the travel and tourism industries, airlines, universities, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and illegal immigrant amnesty banded together to undermine the implementation of this most basic national security program, which every sovereign country needs to defend its borders.

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, GOP House Homeland Security Chairwoman Candice Miller reported on the federal backlog of more than 750,000 unvetted visa overstay records: “If we are serious about controlling who comes into the nation and preventing another 9/11 attack, we need to get serious about an exit program,” she testified.

Spoiler alert: The swamp creatures in Washington are not serious.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security reports a whopping 700,000 foreigners overstayed their temporary tourist, business or student visas in fiscal 2017. Most alarming, among the countries with the highest overstay rates are the terrorist breeding grounds of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya.

An estimated 40 percent of the 700,000 student/exchange visa overstays on record last year came from four countries: China, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. In case you’d forgotten, Saudi Arabia sent 15 of the 19 hijackers to America 17 years ago this week. Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed the data and flagged five “countries where we need to critically examine visa issuance processes” because of overstay rates of more than 30 percent: Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Liberia and the Solomon Islands.

Last year, a DHS inspector general’s audit concluded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot account for all visa overstays because its 27 different databases are a stove-piped mess. ICE arrested a measly 0.4 percent of visa overstays (3,402 out of 500,000) it could account for – in part because investigators couldn’t access information or weren’t even aware of available national security databases.

President Donald Trump called on Congress to expedite completion of the long-delayed biometric exit program, and several pilot programs at airports are now in place. But Trump faces the same open borders/big business roadblocks that have stymied the system ever since the Twin Towers came crashing down. If Congress wanted to, it could immediately pass measures to make overstaying a visa a felony, to impose re-entry bars on visa violators and to require bonds for foreigners entering through the highest-risk temporary visa programs or from countries of concern.

But annual pretension is so much easier than actual prevention. All remembrance and no action dishonors the 3,000 who died 17 years ago – and endangers us all.

https://www.wnd.com/2018/09/the-post-911-cycle-of-cynicism/