ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

Blog

by

Al-Qaeda Glorify Steve Bannon so much they Honor him by making him the Face of their Newspaper

The way al-Qaeda tells it, the West is locked in an existential war with Islam. This is how the terrorist group justifies its violence and its fundamentalist ideology. And now it has found a Westerner to back them up — top Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Bannon graced the cover (above the fold!) of the most recent al-Qaeda-linked Al Masra newspaper. That prominence, University of Oxford researcher Elisabeth Kendall told Quartz, is “striking.”

The piece focused on Bannon’s views of Islam, saying he believes that “the forces of Islam cannot be stopped by peaceful means.” The paper cited a conversation Bannon had with a Danish journalist in May 2016. It also claimed that Bannon believes that the struggle is really between Christianity and Islam, not just Islam and the West. And it suggested that Bannon has “lost confidence in secular Europe, and sees Muslim immigrants as partially responsible for the retreat of traditional Christian values.”

On his radio show in 2015, he called for a complete halt to allowing Muslim immigrants into the United States. (“Why even let ’em in,” he asked Ryan Zinke, then a Republican congressman representing Montana). And as my colleagues have reported:

On one of the first Breitbart Radio shows, in early November 2015, Bannon praised the growing movement in Britain to exit the European Union. He said that the British had joined the E.U. merely as a trading federation but that it had grown into a force that had stripped Britons of sovereignty “in every aspect important to their own life.” Bannon has been supportive of similar movements in other European countries to pull out of the union.

“The fact that [Al Masra] would put this so prominently on the front page — as lead article — indicates it has traction, that this is a way to win support. It plays entirely into their narrative that they were right about the West’s war on Islam all along,” Kendall said. “It shows us how much al-Qaeda is trying to capitalize on some of the policies of the Trump administration.”

It’s true that Islamist militants have a soft spot for Trump — his rhetoric, they say, is a useful propaganda and recruiting tool. On Election Night, Muslim extremists around the world celebrated Trump’s win, suggesting that it might usher in a civil war. “Rejoice with support from Allah, and find glad tidings in the imminent demise of America at the hands of Trump,” said the Islamic State-affiliated al-Minbar Jihadi Media network, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. “Trump’s win of the American presidency will bring hostility of Muslims against America as a result of his reckless actions, which show the overt and hidden hatred against them.”

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State supporters said Trump’s win exposed America’s “hatred of Muslims,” SITE director Rita Katz told USA Today. They likened it to Brexit and suggested that it will lead to the downfall of the West.

Since then, America has featured much more prominently in jihadi media. Al Masra, in particular, has been tracking developments in America quite closely since November. Kendall noted that a February 2017 Al Masra issue mentioned America twice as often as one from January 2016.

“Trump has created an upsurge in militant jihadist attention on America —  it was previously on America but also on many other targets like Shiites in Yemen, Iraq and even Syria  —  but this has really refocused attention on America itself,” Kendall told ThinkProgress.

And indeed, there’s been no shortage of things to cover — data from jihadi discussion forums suggest that Islamic State supporters backed the travel ban, because it could be used to reinforce the idea that Islam is under attack by the West. “It’s far more potent than any video or other piece of propaganda,” Charlie Winter, a senior fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College in London, told CNN.

But Steve Stalinsky, who runs the Middle East Media Research Institute, says that terrorist sympathizers have been making the same argument — that the West hates Islam — for decades.

People are saying that Trump shows America’s true colors, he said. But it’s nothing new. These same sentiments existed under Obama, they say, even though his rhetoric was less inflammatory. “They’d rather Trump than Obama, a snake who hides what he’s doing,” Stalinsky said. Terrorists sympathizers say, “We’re grateful to have Trump removing Obama’s mask.”

The message, Stalinsky says, is this: “There’s a new fool in the White House.” But he’s just replacing an old fool. And the goal — “to ignite the ground under America’s feet” — remains the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/03/al-qaeda-likes-steve-bannon-so-much-they-put-him-on-the-cover-of-their-official-newspaper/?utm_term=.1ec1d7e7bdeb

 

by

Great Job ICE Police: Operation Eliminate all Illegals

Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter Tuesday morning at her Lincoln Heights school when two black, unmarked vehicles surrounded his car.

As he pulled away from the school and got back onto the main road, the vehicles’ lights flashed. Avelica-Gonzalez, with his wife and 13-year-old daughter in the car, pulled over. Agents for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wearing jackets that said “POLICE” on the back, detained the 48-year-old father of four.

ICE officials said the arrest was routine, citing a 2014 order for Avelica-Gonzalez’s deportation. But amid growing fears of mass deportations under President Trump, the arrest has roiled the largely immigrant community north of downtown Los Angeles.

The arrest so shook the school, a public charter called Academia Avance, that administrators held an assembly Tuesday afternoon to discuss what happened and to ease fears. The school’s executive director, Ricardo Mireles, has since ordered his teachers to talk to students whose parents are here illegally about creating a family plan in case they are detained or deported.

Since Trump took office, immigrant communities have been plagued by rumors — some true, many false. Recent targeted operations by ICE have resulted in hundreds of arrests. Such operations were common during the Obama administration but have garnered new scrutiny in recent months.

ICE has a long-standing policy directing agents to generally avoid conducting enforcement activities at so-called “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals and schools. But Avelica-Gonzalez’s arrest has sparked new concerns that ICE is loosening that policy — an accusation that federal officials deny.

The arrest this week has garnered widespread attention in part because Avelica-Gonzalez’s daughter captured parts of it on video.

Avelica-Gonzalez’s family says he was less than two blocks away from the school. ICE officials said he was arrested in the 3200 block of Pasadena Avenue, about half a mile from the school.

The 13-year-old, Fatima Avelica, is heard sobbing in the video. The Times matched video from the encounter with Google Maps images, which appear to show that the arrest happened about six blocks from Academia Avance, in the 3200 block of Pasadena Avenue. Another school, Hillside Elementary, is less than three blocks from where the arrest occurred.

There have been numerous reports of ICE arrests at schools, forcing officials to separate fact from fiction.

Earlier this week, a rumor surfaced that ICE agents had raided an elementary school in Cerritos. Last week, reports on social media said ICE detained three students at Venice High School. The week before, there were rumors that ICE had raided an Oakland college. The Times checked into those reports, which all turned out to be false.

But national cases have stoked fears. One involved a woman who was detained by ICE agents last month while seeking domestic abuse protection at a Texas courthouse. In Virginia, agents arrested men outside a church warming shelter.

An ICE official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said agents try to arrest people at locations that will involve the fewest bystanders. Historically, that meant arresting people at their residences or in jail, but fewer immigrants have opened their doors in the last few years unless agents have a warrant. Additionally, many jails across the country stopped collaborating with ICE requests to detain immigrants until agents arrive. Because of that, more arrests now happen on the street, said the official.

The official said agents had Avelica-Gonzalez under surveillance, followed him to the school then determined where to safely stop the vehicle. Agents didn’t realize his other daughter was still in the car. Because the arrest was not carried out on school grounds, the official said, it does not represent a shift in policy. The official also noted that arrests by ICE’s fugitive operations teams, who locate immigrants with deportation orders, have remained flat over the past year.

Avelica-Gonzalez, a citizen of Mexico, has lived in the U.S. for 25 years. His four daughters — the other two ages 24 and 19 — were all born in the U.S.

He has two prior criminal convictions, said Emi MacLean, an attorney for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. The organization put out a call to action the day he was arrested, asking supporters to tell ICE not to deport him.

MacLean said Avelica-Gonzalez was convicted of misdemeanor DUI and misdemeanor driving without a license in 2008. Another misdemeanor conviction, in 1998, was for receipt of stolen property when he bought a non-DMV-issued vehicle registration tag. Before 2015, immigrants living in California illegally could not get driver’s licenses.

In 2013, Avelica-Gonzalez filed paperwork with a “notario.” In Latin America, “notarios publicos” are qualified lawyers. In the U.S., people posing as notarios lack licenses and training and prey on immigrants.

The notario ran off with Avelica-Gonzalez’s paperwork and money, MacLean said, and he ended up with an order of deportation.

Avelica-Gonzalez is being held at the Adelanto Detention Facility near Victorville. His attorney filed an emergency stay of removal, preventing his immediate deportation, with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and expects a decision next week.

Despite Trump’s statements about mass deportations, the president’s actual immigration policies remain unclear.

Last month, his administration swept aside nearly all restrictions on the removal of 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, a vast expansion of the federal government’s deportation priorities. But there have been mixed signals from the White House over the scope of deportations and who would be covered by them.

Trump supporters and others applaud his administration’s measures, arguing that immigrants here illegally are a drain on the economy and take jobs away from citizens.

But immigration rights advocates say actions like the Avelica-Gonzalez arrest send a chilling message.

“The bigger issue is this really terrorizes the school community and these families if you think you run the risk of being deported,” MacLean said.

Brenda Avelica, 24, said her life has been turned upside down. She worries about how her mother and sisters will get by. Her father brought in the family’s only income from his job at a restaurant, she said.

“He came to this country for us,” she said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-immigration-school-20170303-story.html

by

Get Rid of all Obama’s Idiots via Administration!

Advisers to President Donald Trump are urging him to purge the government of former President Barack Obama’s political appointees and quickly install more people who are loyal to him, amid a cascade of damaging stories that have put his nascent administration in seemingly constant crisis-control mode.

A number of his advisers believe Obama officials are behind the leaks and are seeking to undermine his presidency, with just the latest example coming from reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice last year with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and apparently misled senators about the interactions during his confirmation hearing.

That was coupled with a New York Times story that Obama appointees spread information about the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia in an attempt to create a paper trail about the probe. Trump’s aides have also blamed Obama appointees for other damaging leaks, like Trump’s erratic phone calls with foreign leaders.

Inside the White House, the chatter about Obama officials in the government has heightened in recent weeks, one administration official said. And advisers are saying it is time to take action.

“His playbook should be to get rid of the Obama appointees immediately,” said Newt Gingrich, a top surrogate. “There are an amazing number of decisions that are being made by appointees that are totally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for. Who do you think those people are responding to?

The reality, however, is more complicated: The White House has thousands of open jobs across the agencies, many nonpolitical civilian employees are critical of the administration, and some Cabinet secretaries say they need the Obama people during a rocky transition.

Only a few dozen Obama political appointees remain in the federal government apparatus, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Many of them are in crucial positions, including Robert Work, a top official at the Department of Defense, and Thomas Shannon, the acting deputy at the State Department.

Even if Trump were to ax those remaining senior political appointees, he would still have to reckon with the hundreds of thousands of civilian employees, who stay with every administration. Many of them are skeptical of Trump because they resent his assault on Washington and its culture, his impulsive decisions and his seeming lack of intellectual curiosity about their agencies and work.

They have spent the past six weeks on edge. Many are quietly on the job market, but others have been clashing with Trump appointees, either in the open or privately among colleagues, according to officials across agencies. From Homeland Security to Defense and beyond, it’s become a regular conversation among employees about what lines they will not cross before quitting, and how best to slow-walk orders from above to frustrate implementation.

Amid those conversations is a running thread: how long they’d be willing to hold out to bear witness, and try to improve a climate they increasingly hate, or whether to leak information about changes they see in order to try and stop them. “I want to be able to tell people what’s happening here,” one State Department official said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-obama-appointees-advisers-purge-235629

by

Iranian Heathens make Russian-made air Defense System

Russian-S-300-Air-Defense-Systems

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran successfully test-fired a sophisticated Russian-made air defense system, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

The report said the test of the S-300 system came during a recent military exercise named Damvand, the name of Iran’s highest mountain.

It said the test targeted various flying objects including missiles. With a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) the S-300 is capable of simultaneously tracking and striking multiple targets.

State TV aired footage of the missiles launching from the back of trucks. It said the test was carried out in Iran’s central desert.

Russia delivered the S-300 system to Iran in 2016, nearly 10 years after the initial contract had been signed. Iran signed the $800 million contract to buy the S-300 missile system in 2007, but Russia suspended their delivery three years later because of strong objections from the United States and Israel.

In 2016 a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and world powers went into practice under which Iran limited its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-tests-sophisticated-russian-made-air-defense-system-090003917.html

by

U.S. Navy Encounter Iranian Idiots in the Middle East !

A U.S. Navy surveillance ship had a close encounter with an Iranian navy frigate in the Middle East, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-navy-iran-ship-close-encounter-middle-east/

by

Where the Hell is that Replacement Obamacare Lite Bill?!

Rand Paul

Washington (CNN)Following a chaotic day attempting to locate a copy of the House GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill, Sen. Rand Paul, said Friday he’s still on the hunt.

“When we heard it was secret, we wanted to see it even more,” the Kentucky Republican told CNN’s Kate Boldaun in an interview, noting, “As we speak, my staff is still going around Washington looking for the bill.”

Paul also tweeted about his search Friday.

 “We are continuing our search for the Obamacare Lite bill!” his Twitter post said. “Do you know where the secret location might be? Has anyone seen the bill?”

In the interview on CNN’s “At This Hour,” Paul said he thinks there is still “a lot of Obamacare lite in their bill,” which he described as elements like an individual mandate and a so-called Cadillac tax that would levy steep taxes on health plans considered generous. This, he said, could also be the reason for the secrecy.

When pressed on whether he has talked to House leadership about getting a copy of the bill, Paul declined to comment on specific conversations.

“I think everybody knows I want to see the bill and that I think they’ve had a PR disaster by putting it under lock and key and trying to keep it out of the view of legislators and the public,” Paul said.

Thursday, Paul tried to track down a copy of the draft, but he said he was denied access to a room when aides inside told the senator there wasn’t a bill to see. At one point, a GOP staff member allowed House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, of Maryland, Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy and a dozen or so reporters into the room to inspect it themselves to see that it was, in fact, bill-less.

“I am heading to the secure location where they are keeping the House obamacare bill, Paul tweeted Thursday morning. “I will demand a copy for the American people.”

“This should be an open and transparent process,” Paul said Thursday following his search. “This is being presented as if it were a national secret, as if this was a plot to invade another country, as if this were national security. That’s wrong.”

“If they’re not embarrassed about the Obamacare lite bill they have, they should show it to us,” Paul said Friday. “But they also need to realize they’re not going to be able to do this against the wishes of conservatives.”

Paul wasn’t alone in his health care escapade. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer went live on Facebook Thursday in search of the legislation and Rep. Nancy Pelosi also tweeted in support of the search.

“I’m looking for the House GOP’s secret ACA repeal bill since they are hiding it from Members and the public,” Hoyer posted on Facebook.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/03/politics/rand-paul-obamacare-bill-search-cnntv/