Category Archives: Homeland Security

Sean Hannity’s Thrice Daily, Religiously Repeated, Stock Talking Points

Christianity, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Media, Republicans

Sean Hannity, on radio and TV, has developed three stock talking points. I hear them twice a day when in the car: on the way to my destination and back. The oldest is less in vogue these days. It has Mr. Hannity recite the number of Americans out of the work force, no longer looking for work, on food stamps, and living in poverty since Barack Obama. The facts are staggering and bear repetition but not 3 times a day (factoring in the Fox News, TV evening slot), over years, and when mouthed loudly over more edifying information imparted by some guests on Mr. Hannity’s shows.

The next two stock talking points are when Mr. Hannity rattles off all the top intelligence and military brass who’ve all proposed this safe, foolproof proposition: ISIS or its proxies will try to infiltrate the Syrian refugees.

So, urges Mr. Hannity 3 times a day, let’s hit “pause” on this otherwise without blemish immigrant intake.

Over and over does Sean recite this old hat religiously, almost always drowning out more valuable, less easily “available” information.

The last of Hannity’s thrice daily talking points is where he recites a vastly truncated smidgen of Samuel P. Huntington’s clash of civilizations concept. The peerless Harvard scholar drew on modern history to chronicle “Islam’s bloody borders.” “Islam’s borders are bloody, and so are its innards,” Huntington wrote in his wonderfully learned book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).

The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the US department of Defence. It is the West, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.

But Hannity uses the clash-of-civilizations idea to forge forth with a non sequitur. How do we know what’s in the hearts of Muslim migrants from hostile, terrorism-riddled countries, asks Hannity thrice daily and he invariably answers himself irrationally.

But here’s the deal: We don’t and we can’t know what’s in anyone’s heart. Immigration, like all policy—legislation being an unavoidable reality—ought to aim, at the very least, to do no harm. Any migrant who comes from Islam is more likely to do harm to his hosts than, say, an Afrikaner migrant who worked the land in South Africa and worshiped, Sundays, in the Dutch Reformed Church.

The Fiorina Anti-Terrorism Algorithm

Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Republicans, Technology, Terrorism

Barely A Blog’s grumpy resident rocket scientist, Myron Robert Pauli, PhD, complains about the foolishness of the false choices set up by politicians.

The Fiorina Anti-Terrorism Algorithm
By Myron Pauli

Given a choice between “doing something stupid” and “doing nothing,” our messianic politicians and their voters will opt for stupid like passing another ‘Patriot Act.’ Where is the more benign Gerald Ford when you need him?

So after the traditional TSA nudie-scan, grope, and mass spectrometer scan at Denver Airport, on my way to another aircraft survivability meeting, I settled in my hotel room to watch a rerun of CNN’s “Republican debate” on how to survive San Bernardino. The politicians were angry about the immigrants Tsarnaevs granted asylum in America (despite warnings by Big Bad Vlad Putin that they were Chechen terrorists) under the “Brother of Jeb!” Bush administration. They were angry about Major Malik Nidal Hasan who was publicly ranting Jihad for years – e-mails from him to Anwar al-Awlaki under both the Bush and Obama administrations were read by the FBI, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Army, and Joint Terrorist Task Force did not even result in taking away his ID badge!

The shoe-bomber happened under Bush and the underwear bomber (who traveled from Nigeria to the US via Yemen and whose father warned the CIA he was a terrorist) was allowed to fly to the US under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Perhaps under Clinton or Cruz, we’ll get the necktie bomber. At least Gerald Ford would just have us wear a KAT (Kill All Terrorists) button to go with the WIN (Whip Inflation Now) button instead of eviscerating the Bill of Rights.

How to respond? “Moderates” like John Kasich want to punch Putin in the nose while Christie wants to shoot down Russian planes. World War III – oh goodie! “Moderate” Rubio attacks Cruz for being “soft on terrorism” by not wanting to monitor billions of e-mails and calls every year. Carly “high-tech” Fiorina, who got $100,000,000 for wrecking HP, calls for an “algorithm” from the “high-tech” community to spot terrorism!

So let’s “read” this “decrypted and translated” e-mail from “Abdul” to “Ishmael,” shall we?

My mother wants me to wear this hideous yellow sweater … I ate falafel, ful medames, and lamb shisk-kebab at Suleiman’s café last Wednesday … My cousin Fatima is marrying Yussef, who I know from 8th grade, in Hoboken on July 15th at 8 pm

As opposed to:

“My grandmother insists I wear this grotesque blue vest … I enjoyed beef shish-kebab, lentils, and tehina at Achmed’s bistro last Tuesday … My niece Jazmine is marrying Farouk, whom I went to school with in 6th grade, in Dearborn on June 11th at 4 pm”.

Do you honestly think that the people who can’t spot Hasan and Tsarnaevs and Underpantsabomber can understand how pre-arranged terrorist instructions can be translated by perfectly innocuous e-mails? Carly, you are a complete fraud!

Naturally, I trust President Hillary Clinton with reading my e-mails! She would NEVER NEVER NEVER turn this on her political enemies! (Sure!) Just as the government rounded up grave threats like Clement Vallandigham (Lincoln), Eugene Debs (Wilson), and Fred Korematsu (FDR), Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio can spot the terrorists with the Fiorina algorithm.

Perhaps Fiorina’s “algorithm” can connect Muslim sounding names with lethal things like “gunfire” or poisonous chemicals like arsenic. Aha, I can envisage the peer-reviewed journal article soon to be workable technology (NOT):

“Infrared Detection and Geolocation of Gunfire and Ordnance Events from Ground and Air Platforms” By the Turkish-born Mehmet Ertem and Myron Pauli. Further investigation may discover Iranian-born Manijeh Razeghi working with Myron Pauli on InAsSb photodetectors. Find the common name and we can spot the terrorist mastermind – me!

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

The Bogus Bush Doctrine Alive And Well-Exploited By All Demopublicans

Bush, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, Terrorism

The aversion Americans have of dying by Muslim in America, all politicians assuage by promising to bomb Syria and Iraq or to brainwash Middle Eastern populations about democracy. Tying attacks like San Bernadino in the US to a war on ISIS and proxies in the Middle East is The Bush Doctrine.

The dumb Bush dictum of fighting them over there so they don’t come here is alive and well-exploited by every fork-tongued politician on the Republican and Democratic sides, other than Donald Trump, who distills the issue logically.

Barack Obama routinely deflects questions about death by Muslim in San Bernadino with answers about keeping “up the pressure, our air campaign will continue to hit ISIL harder than ever.” And oh, “It is very difficult for us to detect lone wolf plots or plots involving a husband and wife, in this case, because despite the incredible vigilance of our law enforcement and homeland security, it’s not that different from us trying to detect the next mass shooter. You don’t always see it.”

Every time John Kasich or Chris Christie or Marco Rubio and the interchangeable rest are asked about death by Muslim in the US; they too whip out the Bush Doctrine. Over to the disgusting Kasich:

BLITZER: Governor Kasich, one of the killers in San Bernardino was an American who was not on anyone’s watch list. How are you going to find that radicalized person and stop another such attack?

KASICH: Well, first of all, Wolf, I said last February that we needed to have people on the ground, troops on the ground in a coalition similar to what we had in the first Gulf War.

I remember when the Egyptian ambassador to the United States stood in the Rose Garden and pledged Arab commitment to removing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Before we came out here tonight, I am told that the Saudis have organized 34 countries who want to join in the battle against terrorism.

First and foremost, we need to go and destroy ISIS. And we need to do this with our Arab friends and our friends in Europe.

And when I see they have a climate conference over in Paris, they should have been talking about destroying ISIS because they are involved in virtually every country, you know, across this world. …

Americans must reject this illogic.

UPDATED: Muslim Public Affairs Council Shapes FBI Counterterrorism Training

Homeland Security, Intelligence, Islam, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Terrorism

When they touch on the topic, media use milquetoast words. They should use the word treason to describe what the White House and FBI leadership did: Invite the Muslim Public Affairs Council to shape American counterterrorism training on matters Islam.

In Feb., 2012, WIRED magazine, in particular a bloke writing on security matters, published an article: “FBI Purges Hundreds of Terrorism Documents in Islamophobia.” In the article (hashtagged #Islamophobia), the magazine appears to take some credit for urging the FBI to scrub couterterrorism training manuals of what thinking human beings would view as broad trends in Islam and in the proclivities of its practitioners. Boasts the author: “The White House ordered a government-wide review of counterterrorism training late last year [2011]. A Pentagon document responding to the order cited Danger Room’s series as an impetus for the effort.”

To better defend you and know thy enemy, your defenders have purged honest scholarship like that of Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes from training protocols.

An internal FBI investigation into its counterterrorism training has purged hundreds of bureau documents of instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.

The bureau disclosed initial findings from its months-long review during a meeting at FBI headquarters on Wednesday with several Arab and Muslim advocacy groups, attended by Director Robert Mueller. So far, the inquiry has uncovered and purged over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 — some of which were similar to briefings published by Danger Room last year describing “mainstream” Muslims as “violent.” And more disclosures may be forthcoming, as the FBI continues its inquiry and responds to Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents themselves.

FBI spokesman Christopher Allen confirms to Danger Room that the bureau found some of the documents to be objectionable because they were inaccurate or over-broad, others because they were offensive. Allen explains that the documents represent “less than 1 percent” of over 160,000 documents reviewed by the inquiry, which was prompted by a Danger Room investigation in September. The FBI purged documents according to four criteria: “factual errors”; “poor taste”; employment of “stereotypes” about Arabs or Muslims; or presenting information that “lacked precision.”

Danger Room uncovered several such documents in the fall, including some instructing FBI counterterrorism agents that “mainstream” Muslims sympathized with terrorists; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult” leader; and that the more “devout” a Muslim was, the more likely he would be to commit a violent act. Some documents even purported to graph the correlation. The FBI initially said the instruction occurred “one time only.” But when Danger Room uncovered additional anti-Islam materials — in briefings that compared Islam to the Death Star; in books on the shelves of the FBI training library at Quantico; and in pages hosted on internal FBI websites — the bureau began an extensive internal review.

Salam al-Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, attended the FBI meeting. He came away worried that the volume of anti-Muslim training documents hands al-Qaida an unnecessary win.

“People will report criminal activity to the authorities, that’s been proven time and again,” Marayati tells Danger Room. “But if we are giving propaganda to al-Qaida, resuscitating this dying ideology that al-Qaida is promoting, by continually exposing anti-Muslim propaganda published by the government, that undermines our pluralism, which is the best defense against any transnational ideological threat.”

Others think that the FBI can’t stop at purging internal documents. “It’s a bit hard to avoid the conclusion there isn’t a problem of culture in the [FBI] training division,” says Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, whose subordinates also attended the meeting. “It’s one that appears to have some built-in biases when it comes to the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities.” Allen declined to respond.

But the FBI isn’t finished. The bureau plans to publish a “touchstone document” in the coming weeks that explains its criteria to ensure new anti-Islam documents won’t enter counterterrorism training in the future. Similarly, the Justice Department plans on March 21 to release “Cultural Competency” guidelines for dealing with Arab and Muslim communities on counterterrorism, according to Xochitl Hinojosa, a department spokeswoman.

Several civil-rights advocates said they appreciated Mueller’s personal attention. The Wednesday meeting had been scheduled by the FBI’s public-affairs arm, whose deputy assistant director, Jeff Mazanec, briefed the groups for about 40 minutes before Mueller unexpectedly joined.

“Director Mueller acknowledged the seriousness of our concerns and expressed a commitment to maintaining contact with the inter-religious community,” says Rev. C. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, another attendee at the meeting. Mueller “seemed to understand the hurt and pain as well as the fear, engendered by the offensive, inappropriate and insensitive materials.”

But the worst may not have passed. Allen acknowledged that the internal review, assisted by the Army’s counterterrorism specialists at West Point, hasn’t yet concluded. Several additional organizations have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the specific offending documents; attendees came away with the impression that their disclosure will be ugly.

The White House ordered a government-wide review of counterterrorism training late last year. A Pentagon document responding to the order cited Danger Room’s series as an impetus for the effort.

Berry says she could “see the seriousness with which [the FBI] has approached this.” But she calls the problem a “systemic” one, with urgent implications for U.S. domestic counterterrorism — a concern voiced by Attorney General Eric Holder as well.

“They’ve never owned this problem. It’s not a problem of outside contractors,” she tells Danger Room. “They’re producing these kind of documents that inhibit our counterterrorism efforts. We need our communities engaged, and these have done nothing but alienate us.”

UPDATE (3/7/016):