The State Department announced a new $600,000 taxpayer-funded study that suggests “ideals of masculinity” in Kenya are contributing to terrorism.
The department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism is seeking a nonprofit group to “explore gender identities of boys and men in Kenya.” The grant proposal states that men being “tough, heterosexual, aggressive, unemotional, and achieving” can make them vulnerable to joining Islamic extremist groups.
“Gender is increasingly recognized as an essential aspect to understanding and countering violent extremism throughout the world,” the State Department said. “To date, research and interventions on gender in Kenya have predominantly focused on the role of women and girls in violent extremism. However, men and boys are disproportionately recruited by and join terrorist groups and carry out terrorist operations. In Kenya, there currently exists no CVE [countering violent extremism] programming dedicated to the role of gender of boys and men and vulnerability to violent extremism.”
To remedy this, the State Department will spend up to $592,500 on the “Masculinity and Violent Extremism” study, which will be awarded to an American nonprofit or nongovernmental organization later this year.
The study will “determine existing knowledge and gaps on male gender and violent extremism as well as explore gender identities of boys and men in Kenya.”
The grant proposal blames Kenya’s “patriarchal” society of “tough, heterosexual” men for problems facing the developing country.
“In Kenya, boys and men are disproportionately recruited by al-Shabaab and more likely to be both operators and victims of terrorist acts,” the State Department said. “Kenyan society, while diverse in its ethnic and cultural composition, is uniformly patriarchal and highly prescriptive of gender expressions and identities.”
“Kenyan males are expected to head the household as well as provide for, protect, and maintain the family,” the department continued. “Socially, males are expected to be tough, heterosexual, aggressive, unemotional, and achieving. The practical and social pressures to fulfill these expectations can be immense and create vulnerabilities that are exploited by violent extremist groups who appeal to these characteristics and offer the opportunity to fulfil [sic] these roles.”
The State Department added that the research would involve fathers and community leaders in Kenya in the hopes to “shape existing cultural narratives on masculinity, gender, and violent extremism.”
“Funds will support male-to-male dialogue and training on issues of gender and encourage stronger social and familial support structures,” the department said.
Don’t hold your breath for anything more than an investigation.
Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop had 2,800 government documents that were sent to his computer by his wife Huma Abedin, according to investigators.
The blockbuster report was revealed by Judicial Watch after they sued the State Department for failing to respond to a FOIA request.
Weiner’s laptop was the focus of the presidential race in 2016, after new emails from her aide Huma Abedin and Clinton were discovered on his computer.
FBI Director James Comey clarified that the investigation of Clinton was ongoing, despite previously exonerating her in a press conference and testifying to congress that the case was closed.
“This is a disturbing development. Our experience with Abedin’s emails suggest these Weiner laptop documents will include classified and other sensitive materials,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement. “When will the Justice Department do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law?”
The emails on Weiner’s computer are of interest as some of them may have not been turned over to the State Department by Clinton, despite her insistence that she only deleted 33,000 emails that were “private.”
President Trump has decided to end a CIA program to arm rebels in Syria, according to a new report.
U.S. support for rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad was a bipartisan, if controversial, plank of American policy in the country as recently as last fall. Former President Barack Obama began the shipments in 2013 and a GOP-led Congress eased restrictions on the program in 2016. But Russia and Turkey, a NATO ally, have accused the United States of backing terrorist groups.
“Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests,” according to the Washington Post, which first reported the move. “The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.”
Russia has denounced U.S. support for the rebel groups throughout the civil war, accusing the U.S. of commiting a “hostile act” and claiming that the Obama team was trying to block a Trump-led rapprochement with Russia.
“Overall, it appears that the Authorization Act has been adopted by the outgoing Obama administration…to create problems for the incoming Trump administration and complicate its relations on the international stage, as well as to force it to adopt an anti-Russia policy,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in December. “We hope the new administration will be more sagacious.”
Trump’s decision to end might irritate the lawmakers who voted for the 2016 defense bill, however. Senate Intelligence Committee member James Lankford, R-Okla., for instance, recently praised U.S. intelligence efforts in Syria, albeit without naming any specific covert programs.
“The past few days of travel in the Middle East were another reminder that the United States of America has the best military and intelligence professionals in the world,” Lankford said in May. “We must work with allies in the region to destroy terrorist groups before they can bring additional terrorist strikes on Americans.”
The revelation follows a pair of meetings between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. The first meeting coincided with the announcement of a cease-fire in southern Syria, brokered by the U.S., Russia, and Jordan. The details of the second meeting, which was not announced publicly by the White House, are unknown; the presidents were attended only by a Russian translator. The decision predated the meeting, however.
“It’s probably a nod to reality,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration official, noting how Russia and Assad have a strong position in Syria.
he details of the decision to end the program — how it will be implemented, which groups exactly will lose access to resources — aren’t clear. The policy change “will not affect a separate Pentagon-led effort” to defeat the Islamic State in Syria according to the report.That suggests it might not pay dividends in the relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is chiefly angry about U.S. support for Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS. Turkey believes the Syrian Kurds are affiliated with a group of Turkish separatists that have been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department.”They give support to terrorist groups including [ISIS and the Syrian Kurds],” Erdogan said in December. “It’s very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos.”
Relatively moderate rebel groups and Kurdish fighters have been the main U.S. proxies in the fight against ISIS and to prevent Russia and Iran from controlling critical swathes of Syrian territory that could be used to threaten Israel.
“This is a force that we can’t afford to completely abandon,” Goldenberg told the Post. “If they are ending the aid to the rebels altogether, then that is a huge strategic mistake.”
The she-thing kept access to classified information. Investigate her skanky ass, damit!
Report: Hillary, 6 Aides Had Access to Classified State Dept Info After Leaving Office
Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” network correspondent Ed Henry reported Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had revealed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, and six of her aides retained their access to top secret and classified information after leaving the State Department in 2013.
“We’re learning from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that she and six staffers in 2013 retained clearances where they still had access to top secret and classified information,” Henry said. “Why? They were titled ‘research assistants.’ So the assumption on Capitol Hill is it was because she was writing her memoirs and saying, ‘Look, I still need access to this information in order to go through what happened in Syria, what happened with Russia. But obviously think back to what James Comey said in how Hillary Clinton handled classified information.”
Henry was referring to Comey’s July 2016 statement calling Clinton “extremely careless” in how she handled classified information.
Hillary Clinton and 6 aides had access to classified State Department information after she left office, lawmaker says | @edhenrypic.twitter.com/hJzHUaD7zC
“He obviously believes something needs to be done about this,” Henry added. “The only positive for Chuck Grassley at this point is, there’s no longer a Democrat at the State Department, obviously. You got Rex Tillerson, so if you have these documents on why she retained these clearances, and for example does she still have a clearance today? A lot of former officials get to keep these clearances for years — when they’re consultants … some of them like to retain it because they say I was in the middle of all of these important issues. I need to keep abreast of it. Been then some of these folks in Washington — they say drain the swamp.”
President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday evening and asked why aren’t congressional lawmakers probing the various deals, transactions, and connections former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have to Russia.
“Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech,” read Trump’s first tweet, which was followed by, “…money to Bill, the Hillary Russian “reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!”
Trump’s assertion that then-Secretary of State Clinton “allowed big Uranium to go to Russia” and Bill Clinton’s high-dollar “Russian speech” were allegations first reported by The New York Times (NYT) and based on research from the NYT bestseller Clinton Cash, authored by Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer.
The facts found in Clinton Cash, reported by the NYT, and deemed accurate by establishment media reveal how Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State coincided with the influx of tens of millions of dollars from foreign sources into the Clinton Foundation which resulted in favorable actions for Russia’s government.
Indeed the Clinton Foundation had received millions in donations from several investorsin Uranium One, a Canadian-based company in which a majority stake was sold to Russia’s nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, in a lucrative deal needing approval from Clinton’s State Department and eight other federal agencies.
“The sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States,” The New York Timesconfirmed.
The “deal,” as Trump points out, refers to how donations to the Clinton Foundation from executives of Russian-owned Uranium One had exceeded $145 million, according to the New York Times. In fact, those Clinton Foundation donations from uranium investors spiked just as the deal for Russia’s Rosatom to secure Uranium One was being finalized.
A troublesome series of undisclosed donations came from former Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer.
Telfer made four foreign donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation while the uranium deal was being negotiated. However, the Times noted, “those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”
“We made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them,” The Clinton Foundation admitted at the time. But Hillary Clinton’s failure to disclose the millions in donations her family foundation received from Teller was a direct violation of the Memorandum of Understanding she signed with the Obama administration promising to disclose all foreign donations during her tenure as Secretary of State.
More troubling still, was the $500,000 speech Bill Clinton delivered in Moscow that was paid for by “a Russian investment bank that had ties to the Kremlin” at the time of the Uranium One deal, the New Yorker confirmed.
“Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was Secretary of State?” asks the liberal publication.
Trump’s calls for a federal investigation into the Clintons’ Russia ties come amid a partisan push to link the President and his aides to Russian influence-peddling and collusion during the presidential campaign.
Flags of member nations flying at United Nations headquarters inNew York City. (U.N. Photo by Araujo Pinto)
(CNSNews.com) – The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents.”
No member state called for a recorded vote on the text, which was as a result adopted “by consensus.”
The resolution, an initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is based on one passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Genevalast spring. The State Department last week hosted a meeting to discuss ways of “implementing” it.
Every year since 1999 the OIC has steered through the U.N.’s human rights apparatus a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion,” which for the bloc of 56 Muslim states covered incidents ranging from satirizing Mohammed in a newspaper cartoon to criticism of shari’a and post-9/11 security check profiling.
Critics regard the measure as an attempt to outlaw valid and critical scrutiny of Islamic teachings, as some OIC states do through controversial blasphemy laws at home.
Strongly opposed by mostly Western democracies, the divisive “defamation” resolution received a dwindling number of votes each year, with the margin of success falling from 57 votes in 2007 to 19 in 2009 and just 12 last year.
This year’s text was a departure, in that it dropped the “defamation” language and included a paragraph that reaffirms “the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance.”
The nod to freedom of expression won the resolution the support of theU.S.and other democracies, with the Obama administration and others hailing it as a breakthrough after years of acrimonious debate.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity of the State Department-hosted talks with foreign governments, the OIC and other international bodies last week to stress the importance of freedom of speech in the U.S.She argued that “the best way to treat offensive speech is by people either ignoring it or combating it with good arguments and good speech that overwhelms it.”
Saudi initiative singled out for praise
Nonetheless, the resolution adopted in New York on Monday does contain elements that concern some free speech and religious freedom advocates.
It calls on states “to take effective measures to ensure that public functionaries in the conduct of their public duties do not discriminate against an individual on the basis of religion or belief.”
Governments also are expected to make “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.”
“Effective measures” to counter cases of religious stereotyping and stigmatization include education, interfaith dialogue and “training of government officials.”
And in the worst cases, those of “incitement to imminent violence” based on religion, the resolution calls on countries to implement “measures to criminalize” such behavior.
Also of note is the fact that the resolution singles out for praise only one interfaith initiative – and that initiative was established bySaudi Arabia, a leading OIC member-state with a long history of enforcing blasphemy laws.
The resolution commends the establishment of the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, “acknowledging the important role that the Centre is expected to play as a platform for the enhancement of interreligious and intercultural dialogue.”
(Another clause welcomes “all international, regional and national initiatives aimed at promoting interreligious, intercultural and interfaith harmony and combating discrimination against individuals on the basis of religion or belief,” but the Saudi one alone is recognized specifically.)
Monday’s adoption of the text took place without a debate. Earlier, when a General Assembly committee considered the draft resolution, a delegate of Poland – speaking on behalf of the European Union – raised concern about the fact it mentioned by name only one center for interreligious dialogue, even though there were numerous such facilities around the world.
The E.U. was also concerned that the resolution considered the world as “monolithic religious blocs,” while religious hatred was primarily a threat to individual freedoms, he said.
Despite those concerns, the E.U. was prepared to join consensus and support the resolution.
TheU.S.representative, John Sammis, said the United States was pleased to join the consensus.
It had been unable to support previous resolutions of this type because they sought to restrict expression and were “counterproductive,” he said, but the new one upholds respect for universal human rights.
“The United States welcomes all international, national, and regional initiatives that respect universal human rights and that recommend these types of measures to promote interfaith harmony and combating discrimination against individuals on the basis of religion or belief,” Sammis said. “Such initiatives can promote respect for religious diversity in a manner that respects universal human rights.”
