Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
Hat tip American Greatness
“The dossier holds up well over time, and none of it, to our knowledge, has been disproven,' wrote Chuck Rosenberg and Sarah Grant in a judgment that did not hold up well over time."
-Chuck Rosenberg and Sarah Grant
December 2018
I am cross-posting an article by Julie Kelly in American Greatness. It regards a December 2018 report published in Lawfare, a project of the liberal Brookings Institution think tank which actually defended the notorious Steele dossier. The report was authored by Chuck Rosenberg and Sarah Grant.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/23/brookings-institution-a-key-collusion-collaborator/
Mr Rosenberg, as noted by Kelly, was a US Attorney (Eastern District of Virginia), a high-ranking FBI official under former director James Comey, and later was appointed acting administrator of DEA. At odds with the Trump Administration, he stepped down in 2017. More recently, he has been one of MSNBCs legal contributors.
While I was long-retired from DEA when Rosenberg took over, I do know that he was not well-regarded within the ranks of the agency. Not only is he not missed since his departure, he seemingly doesn't even want to be identified as having served as DEA administrator.
Perhaps, Rosenberg and Grant should have waited until Robert Mueller came out with his report in April 2019 because we now know that the Steele dossier has not held up well over time. It was the product of a highly biased ex-British spy named Christopher Steele, who, by his own admissions, hates President Trump, and who under oath in a British court, could not attest to the accuracy of his own report. His work, which was based on sloppy, uncorroborated hearsay from dubious Russian sources, was actually financed and paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The FBI, even though they had ample reason not to trust the dossier and Steele himself, used it as a basis to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page, who was connected to the Trump campaign. The architects of that warrant (Comey, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and others) were colluding to destroy Trump as a candidate then as president-elect and finally as sitting president-all based on the lie that he and his campaign were colluding with Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election. Mueller's investigation failed to support any of the alleged charges. Subsequent revelations through release of FBI documents showed far worse details of what the FBI and Justice Department did to try and bring down a duly-elected president. That is just the first course. We now await the report of investigation by Attorney General William Barr into government misdeeds.
In all, time has shown that the article by Rosenberg and Grant is embarrassing-to themselves. As for Rosenberg, it buttresses my opinion of him as a partisan political hack. MSNBC is a fitting place for him.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
"The Most Important Election in our Lifetimes"? Yes, It Really is
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review.
seems like the past 20 years or so when presidential elections and/or mid-terms roll around, we are told by our pundits and political leaders that it is the most important election of our lifetimes. In spite of our occasional electoral mistakes, the country has survived. This time, I fear that November 2020 really will be the most important election of our lifetimes.
Who we elect as president and who we elect to the Senate and House of Representatives is going to have a huge impact on the direction this country is going to take. It is no longer just a choice between liberal policies and conservative policies because the liberals, represented by the Democrats and a presidential candidate who is clearly drifting into senility, has gone so far to the left that they literally want to tear down the country and start all over.
What do I mean by "tear down the country"?
The last election brought people into government (Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others) who truly despise the country and want to tear down the system. Omar said that as recently as this week. She and Tlaib are Muslim extremists and anti-Semites who oppose our alliance with Israel. They are ample proof of why we fear increasing Islamic influence in our politics and our culture.
Now, with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which no decent person is defending, we have gone back to the images of 1968. This time, it was not just riots and deaths, but an abject surrender of our police, mandated by their Democrat mayors and governments while shops were destroyed, synagogues attacked, police, Jews and whites physically attacked, and in the cases of Seattle and Minneapolis, precinct stations evacuated and handed over to the raging mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. This was followed by demands to either de-fund or abolish the police. Laughable, you say? The Minneapolis City Council voted to abolish their entire police force. Other cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York are massively cutting police funding. Police officers, totally disillusioned, are retiring and quitting in large numbers. And in virtually all of our major cities, the mayors are Democrats. These cities have been solidly in the hands of the Democrat party going back decades, and they are never held accountable by the voters.
In the streets of certain cities, it is open season on whites, be they men, women, children, or elderly. All in the name of "racial justice". How has it come to this, that after so many decades of progress, we are now back in the 60s with white and black citizens viewing each other with fear and distrust?
Now we have dopey TV personalities like Nick Cannon openly and publicly discussing with rappers why whites and Jews are "sub-human". Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver, Desean Jackson, has trashed Jews publicly. The reaction from the National Football League? Yawn. The Black Lives Matter organization, in spite of their benign-sounding name, openly talks trash about whites and Jews, praises Marxism, and shows itself to be nothing more than a supremacist organization hiding behind the mask of human rights.
And who is standing in the background applauding all this hate and lawlessness while egging them on? Not only Democrat politicians like Nancy Pelosi, but the media, the universities, and Hollywood. They will do anything-even keep our societies and economy shut down over the Covid virus- in order to defeat President Trump.
And don't be misled by Joe Biden's long history in Washington as a center-left moderate. He is folding like a house of cards as his mental capacity becomes weaker. Green New Deal? De-fund police? Sure, where do I sign? Joe Biden will be putty in the hands of the far-left wing, which is taking over the Democrat party. Odds are that he will not even finish his four years in office, which means say hello to whatever woman he chooses to be his vice presidential running mate, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, or some other nightmare.
Nothing I have said above should be construed to suggest that I have given up on race relations in America, and neither should you. Not all blacks are buying into BLM, and I for one, will never forget the blacks I served in the military and federal law enforcement with. Never forget the black men who laid down their lives for this country, especially in the Vietnam war.
I am not a Republican. I have never belonged to any political party, but we must turn out in record numbers in November and support President Trump and the Republican party. You may not like Trump, but hold your nose in that case because the alternative is much worse. We cannot allow these forces to take over our country under the banner of the Democrat party. I have usually been cynical on this point, but this time I really believe that only Trump, the Republican party, and We the People stand between the loss of our democratic freedoms and the eventual collapse of our great country.
For God's sake, vote.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review.
seems like the past 20 years or so when presidential elections and/or mid-terms roll around, we are told by our pundits and political leaders that it is the most important election of our lifetimes. In spite of our occasional electoral mistakes, the country has survived. This time, I fear that November 2020 really will be the most important election of our lifetimes.
Who we elect as president and who we elect to the Senate and House of Representatives is going to have a huge impact on the direction this country is going to take. It is no longer just a choice between liberal policies and conservative policies because the liberals, represented by the Democrats and a presidential candidate who is clearly drifting into senility, has gone so far to the left that they literally want to tear down the country and start all over.
What do I mean by "tear down the country"?
The last election brought people into government (Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others) who truly despise the country and want to tear down the system. Omar said that as recently as this week. She and Tlaib are Muslim extremists and anti-Semites who oppose our alliance with Israel. They are ample proof of why we fear increasing Islamic influence in our politics and our culture.
Now, with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which no decent person is defending, we have gone back to the images of 1968. This time, it was not just riots and deaths, but an abject surrender of our police, mandated by their Democrat mayors and governments while shops were destroyed, synagogues attacked, police, Jews and whites physically attacked, and in the cases of Seattle and Minneapolis, precinct stations evacuated and handed over to the raging mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. This was followed by demands to either de-fund or abolish the police. Laughable, you say? The Minneapolis City Council voted to abolish their entire police force. Other cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York are massively cutting police funding. Police officers, totally disillusioned, are retiring and quitting in large numbers. And in virtually all of our major cities, the mayors are Democrats. These cities have been solidly in the hands of the Democrat party going back decades, and they are never held accountable by the voters.
In the streets of certain cities, it is open season on whites, be they men, women, children, or elderly. All in the name of "racial justice". How has it come to this, that after so many decades of progress, we are now back in the 60s with white and black citizens viewing each other with fear and distrust?
Now we have dopey TV personalities like Nick Cannon openly and publicly discussing with rappers why whites and Jews are "sub-human". Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver, Desean Jackson, has trashed Jews publicly. The reaction from the National Football League? Yawn. The Black Lives Matter organization, in spite of their benign-sounding name, openly talks trash about whites and Jews, praises Marxism, and shows itself to be nothing more than a supremacist organization hiding behind the mask of human rights.
And who is standing in the background applauding all this hate and lawlessness while egging them on? Not only Democrat politicians like Nancy Pelosi, but the media, the universities, and Hollywood. They will do anything-even keep our societies and economy shut down over the Covid virus- in order to defeat President Trump.
And don't be misled by Joe Biden's long history in Washington as a center-left moderate. He is folding like a house of cards as his mental capacity becomes weaker. Green New Deal? De-fund police? Sure, where do I sign? Joe Biden will be putty in the hands of the far-left wing, which is taking over the Democrat party. Odds are that he will not even finish his four years in office, which means say hello to whatever woman he chooses to be his vice presidential running mate, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, or some other nightmare.
Nothing I have said above should be construed to suggest that I have given up on race relations in America, and neither should you. Not all blacks are buying into BLM, and I for one, will never forget the blacks I served in the military and federal law enforcement with. Never forget the black men who laid down their lives for this country, especially in the Vietnam war.
I am not a Republican. I have never belonged to any political party, but we must turn out in record numbers in November and support President Trump and the Republican party. You may not like Trump, but hold your nose in that case because the alternative is much worse. We cannot allow these forces to take over our country under the banner of the Democrat party. I have usually been cynical on this point, but this time I really believe that only Trump, the Republican party, and We the People stand between the loss of our democratic freedoms and the eventual collapse of our great country.
For God's sake, vote.
Saturday, July 11, 2020
The Red-Green Alliance on Campus
Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review.
We hear a lot of talk these days about the so-called "red-green alliance", which describes what I would call as the marriage of convenience between the radical left (red) and Islamists pushing the Islamic political agenda (green). Why red and green? Because red is the color of communism while green is the color of Islam. I expect, given the way the world is going, particularly the US, that we will hear much more on the red-green alliance in the years to come.
Perhaps, nowhere is this alliance more in evidence than on our politically-correct university campuses across the nation. Having taught for 18 years (1998-2016) on a major university campus (UC Irvine), I had a chance to see the growth of this alliance up close and personal when I began attending the ever-present anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian events (as well as their own disruptions of pro-Israel events).
Make no mistake: The pro-Palestinian movement, which includes BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions), has found solid support from the left, which does not hesitate to engage in their favored practice of "intersectionality", a convoluted thinking process that links every world problem (real or perceived) to each other, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most glaring example of this today is the theme that black Americans are being oppressed to some extent by Israel based on the fact that some American police have received training from their Israeli counterparts in counter-terrorism. For example, Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who killed George Floyd, was not taught that choking tactic by the Israelis (or anyone else in law enforcement), but it was revealed that some Minneapolis officers had received some sort of counter-terrorism training by Israeli police at a 2012 seminar in Chicago (which means absolutely nothing).
So the Palestinian movement and Black Lives Matter have discovered each other. You will see Palestinian flags at BLM protests, and BLM, the organization, has publicly voiced its support for the Palestinians. It is an example of how anti-Semitism has pervaded the ranks of BLM as perfectly exemplified by the May 30 pogrom in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles where synagogues were defaced with "Free Palestine" graffiti, Jewish shops were ransacked, and people yelled, "F--- Jews!" out their car windows. Was that in the name of Black Lives Matter or the Palestinians? Take your pick. It is a classic example of the cynical drive by Islamist activists to connect with other so-called victim groups.
Returning to the campus, however, it is here that intersectionality is actually being taught to our kids by leftist professors, especially those opposed to Israel. Of course, they won't talk about the intersectionality between anti-Israel campaigns and anti-Semitism. Their response is that it is not anti-Semitic, per se, to oppose Israeli policies, which is partially true depending how one acts out or speaks out that opposition. That is a topic for a different discussion. Suffice to say, I have personally seen and heard how opposition to Israel has spilled over into Jew hatred on campus.
It is on our campuses that anti-Israel agitation is at its worst, and, indeed, the skillful activists for the Palestinian cause have succeeded into making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into one of academia's biggest hot button issues, as if that conflict impacts the lives of your average college student in America. Every year, student governments have to spend hours and hours debating and voting on resolutions supporting BDS. As more and more Muslim students get into student governments (while Jews are often kept out), it is insured that BDS resolutions will be brought up over and over until they pass.
The two biggest purveyors of the pro-Palestinian campaign on campus are Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the various chapters of the Muslim Student Association-or Muslim Student Union as in the case of UC Irvine. SJP was co-founded by then- San Francisco State student-now UC Berkeley professor, Hatem Bazian, who for years, has been accused of making anti-Jewish statements. (Unlike the MSA, SJP consists of both Muslim and non-Muslim students). Aside from the Palestinian issue (He himself is Palestinian.) Bazian's other issue is "Islamophobia". He is co-founder of the Islamophobia Documentation and Research Center at UC Berkeley.
The above groups enjoy support from a number of leftist organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace, CAIR, Americans for Palestine (also co-founded by Bazian), and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA. Name a leftist cause, and they are there to support it, including the recent Occupy movement. You will see them at various leftist demonstrations as "legal observers", distinctive in their lime green baseball caps with National Lawyers Guild across the front. The Palestinian cause is one they are very active in. Their Los Angeles director, James Lafferty, headed up the Occupy LA movement and has spoken at various colleges on behalf of the SJP and MSA-including at UC Irvine, where I saw him speak once.
Incidentally, the NLG has an affiliation with the UC Irvine Law School (a left-wing activist training ground), as they do with many other law schools. The lime green hats have shown up at SJP-MSU disruptions of pro-Israel events on the UC Irvine campus in recent years including one in my presence in May 2017. They were also present that same week at UC Irvine as part of the SJP-MSU annual week of anti-Israel demonstrations.
It is also problematic that these groups also enjoy support from leftist faculty and entire, leftist-dominated academic departments, who love to bring in anti-Israel speakers like BDS founder Omar Barghouti, but will never sponsor a pro-Israel speaker. Those have to be invited by conservative or Jewish student groups-and they can expect to be disrupted. Likewise, universities will invite Muslim speakers to come and spread their disinformation about Islam on campus, but will not invite critics of Islam to speak. Similarly, they have to be invited by conservative student groups-and can expect to be disrupted.
As I have said many times, in the US, the focal point for the resurgence in anti-Semitism is on our college campuses. That aspect of anti-Semitism does not come from white nationalists or white hate groups as they have no currency on campus. It comes from the pro-Palestinian quarter. In my view, the issue is not so much about land as it is about religion. That is why the MSA, who have Muslim members with origins from countries far from the Middle East (like Pakistan, for example) uniformly line up behind the Palestinians.
As for the campus newspapers, they are invariably liberal and politically correct, in fact, embarrassingly so, given the youth and inexperience of the student journalists. The talking points of BLM are repeated as if gospel truth. In covering the Israeli-Palestinian flareups on campus, many campus papers will publish op-eds by both sides, but in doing a "straight news" report, they tend to quote Palestinian expressions like "occupation" and "oppression" without question or qualification.
With few exceptions, American college campuses are almost totally dominated by leftist ideology employing fascist methods of thought control to suppress conservative thought. It spills over into many issues of the day including abortion, political parties, President Trump etc. It also includes issues like Israel and Islamophobia. Unfortunately for Jewish students, anything pertaining to the Israel-Palestine issue impacts them-especially if they support Israel and identify with their Jewish identity. The fact that universities have been so blind to the problem of anti-Semitism on campus illustrates that the campuses support the Palestinian cause as they do every other liberal cause. They also fear lawsuits from groups like CAIR. All in all, it is a perfect example of how anti-Semitism today in America comes mostly from the left.
Of course, there are a few issues, like abortion, women's equality, or homosexuality, where the green cannot align with the red for religious reasons. The green has been largely successful, nonetheless, in muting the voices of feminist groups or gay rights groups in the US as to the obvious problems that exist for women and gays in Muslim societies. Why are most American feminists and gay activists so silent? Generally speaking, American feminists and gay activists tend to be on the left of the political spectrum. For the left, criticizing Islam (other than terror groups like ISIS) is not considered cool. Islamophobia, you know.
And if you want to know where all this thinking is incubated, it is right on our university campuses where our kids are being taught. The Palestinians, BLM, gays, Islamophobia, Democrat politics, Trump, abortion, immigrant rights, Dreamers, and on and on. It's all one big red and green grab bag.
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com
This article first appeared in New English Review.
We hear a lot of talk these days about the so-called "red-green alliance", which describes what I would call as the marriage of convenience between the radical left (red) and Islamists pushing the Islamic political agenda (green). Why red and green? Because red is the color of communism while green is the color of Islam. I expect, given the way the world is going, particularly the US, that we will hear much more on the red-green alliance in the years to come.
Perhaps, nowhere is this alliance more in evidence than on our politically-correct university campuses across the nation. Having taught for 18 years (1998-2016) on a major university campus (UC Irvine), I had a chance to see the growth of this alliance up close and personal when I began attending the ever-present anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian events (as well as their own disruptions of pro-Israel events).
Make no mistake: The pro-Palestinian movement, which includes BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanctions), has found solid support from the left, which does not hesitate to engage in their favored practice of "intersectionality", a convoluted thinking process that links every world problem (real or perceived) to each other, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most glaring example of this today is the theme that black Americans are being oppressed to some extent by Israel based on the fact that some American police have received training from their Israeli counterparts in counter-terrorism. For example, Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who killed George Floyd, was not taught that choking tactic by the Israelis (or anyone else in law enforcement), but it was revealed that some Minneapolis officers had received some sort of counter-terrorism training by Israeli police at a 2012 seminar in Chicago (which means absolutely nothing).
So the Palestinian movement and Black Lives Matter have discovered each other. You will see Palestinian flags at BLM protests, and BLM, the organization, has publicly voiced its support for the Palestinians. It is an example of how anti-Semitism has pervaded the ranks of BLM as perfectly exemplified by the May 30 pogrom in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles where synagogues were defaced with "Free Palestine" graffiti, Jewish shops were ransacked, and people yelled, "F--- Jews!" out their car windows. Was that in the name of Black Lives Matter or the Palestinians? Take your pick. It is a classic example of the cynical drive by Islamist activists to connect with other so-called victim groups.
Returning to the campus, however, it is here that intersectionality is actually being taught to our kids by leftist professors, especially those opposed to Israel. Of course, they won't talk about the intersectionality between anti-Israel campaigns and anti-Semitism. Their response is that it is not anti-Semitic, per se, to oppose Israeli policies, which is partially true depending how one acts out or speaks out that opposition. That is a topic for a different discussion. Suffice to say, I have personally seen and heard how opposition to Israel has spilled over into Jew hatred on campus.
It is on our campuses that anti-Israel agitation is at its worst, and, indeed, the skillful activists for the Palestinian cause have succeeded into making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into one of academia's biggest hot button issues, as if that conflict impacts the lives of your average college student in America. Every year, student governments have to spend hours and hours debating and voting on resolutions supporting BDS. As more and more Muslim students get into student governments (while Jews are often kept out), it is insured that BDS resolutions will be brought up over and over until they pass.
The two biggest purveyors of the pro-Palestinian campaign on campus are Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the various chapters of the Muslim Student Association-or Muslim Student Union as in the case of UC Irvine. SJP was co-founded by then- San Francisco State student-now UC Berkeley professor, Hatem Bazian, who for years, has been accused of making anti-Jewish statements. (Unlike the MSA, SJP consists of both Muslim and non-Muslim students). Aside from the Palestinian issue (He himself is Palestinian.) Bazian's other issue is "Islamophobia". He is co-founder of the Islamophobia Documentation and Research Center at UC Berkeley.
The above groups enjoy support from a number of leftist organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace, CAIR, Americans for Palestine (also co-founded by Bazian), and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA. Name a leftist cause, and they are there to support it, including the recent Occupy movement. You will see them at various leftist demonstrations as "legal observers", distinctive in their lime green baseball caps with National Lawyers Guild across the front. The Palestinian cause is one they are very active in. Their Los Angeles director, James Lafferty, headed up the Occupy LA movement and has spoken at various colleges on behalf of the SJP and MSA-including at UC Irvine, where I saw him speak once.
Incidentally, the NLG has an affiliation with the UC Irvine Law School (a left-wing activist training ground), as they do with many other law schools. The lime green hats have shown up at SJP-MSU disruptions of pro-Israel events on the UC Irvine campus in recent years including one in my presence in May 2017. They were also present that same week at UC Irvine as part of the SJP-MSU annual week of anti-Israel demonstrations.
It is also problematic that these groups also enjoy support from leftist faculty and entire, leftist-dominated academic departments, who love to bring in anti-Israel speakers like BDS founder Omar Barghouti, but will never sponsor a pro-Israel speaker. Those have to be invited by conservative or Jewish student groups-and they can expect to be disrupted. Likewise, universities will invite Muslim speakers to come and spread their disinformation about Islam on campus, but will not invite critics of Islam to speak. Similarly, they have to be invited by conservative student groups-and can expect to be disrupted.
As I have said many times, in the US, the focal point for the resurgence in anti-Semitism is on our college campuses. That aspect of anti-Semitism does not come from white nationalists or white hate groups as they have no currency on campus. It comes from the pro-Palestinian quarter. In my view, the issue is not so much about land as it is about religion. That is why the MSA, who have Muslim members with origins from countries far from the Middle East (like Pakistan, for example) uniformly line up behind the Palestinians.
As for the campus newspapers, they are invariably liberal and politically correct, in fact, embarrassingly so, given the youth and inexperience of the student journalists. The talking points of BLM are repeated as if gospel truth. In covering the Israeli-Palestinian flareups on campus, many campus papers will publish op-eds by both sides, but in doing a "straight news" report, they tend to quote Palestinian expressions like "occupation" and "oppression" without question or qualification.
With few exceptions, American college campuses are almost totally dominated by leftist ideology employing fascist methods of thought control to suppress conservative thought. It spills over into many issues of the day including abortion, political parties, President Trump etc. It also includes issues like Israel and Islamophobia. Unfortunately for Jewish students, anything pertaining to the Israel-Palestine issue impacts them-especially if they support Israel and identify with their Jewish identity. The fact that universities have been so blind to the problem of anti-Semitism on campus illustrates that the campuses support the Palestinian cause as they do every other liberal cause. They also fear lawsuits from groups like CAIR. All in all, it is a perfect example of how anti-Semitism today in America comes mostly from the left.
Of course, there are a few issues, like abortion, women's equality, or homosexuality, where the green cannot align with the red for religious reasons. The green has been largely successful, nonetheless, in muting the voices of feminist groups or gay rights groups in the US as to the obvious problems that exist for women and gays in Muslim societies. Why are most American feminists and gay activists so silent? Generally speaking, American feminists and gay activists tend to be on the left of the political spectrum. For the left, criticizing Islam (other than terror groups like ISIS) is not considered cool. Islamophobia, you know.
And if you want to know where all this thinking is incubated, it is right on our university campuses where our kids are being taught. The Palestinians, BLM, gays, Islamophobia, Democrat politics, Trump, abortion, immigrant rights, Dreamers, and on and on. It's all one big red and green grab bag.
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