Category Archives: Jihad

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):

The Face Of Security And American Immigration

Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Political Correctness, Terrorism

“Can the K-1 fiancé visa system be made more secure?” asks the Idiocracy entrusted with YOUR life.

And the answer is no—not given the existing norms held by the officials doing the screening. To wit, the agents and agencies performing- and dictating how screening is carried out do NOT consider it the least bit incompatible or problematic for a blushing bride to be clad in a tent and a nose bag, to practice a religion some of whose tenets are violent, supremacist and antagonistic to the country into to which she is migrating; to have customs and habits so foreign as to be frowned on in America.

I would not voluntarily seek out a dentist, doctor, manicurist or florist who dressed like Tashfeen Malik. Clearly the K-1 package floating around in nose bag and tent goes straight into a ghetto, never to emerge.

And no, it is impossible to make the visa system more secure when the screeners consider Jihad to be nothing more than a peaceful pillar of the Islamic faith. But more about the FBI’s PC manuals on Islam later.

CBS News:

She was granted a K-1 visa, even though the FBI now believes she was radicalized before she met Farook.

The State Department says Malik was thoroughly questioned during an interview at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. She also filled out a questionnaire, where she was asked “Do you seek to engage in terrorist activity?” and “Are you a member of a terrorist organization?”

Five U.S. agencies also vetted her, checking her fingerprints against two databases. Neither her name nor image showed up on a U.S. terror watch list.

Malik did give an incomplete home address, which could have raised red flags, but it’s not clear if it was intentional. Now Congress is demanding to know what questions she was asked and to see her visa application.

“They say that the vetting process has got all these fail safes but apparently there aren’t enough fail safes, because she got through the system,” said House Republican Matt Salmon. “How many others have gotten through the system?”

No Wonder The Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity

Business, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Republicans, Terrorism

Yes, it’s scarcity—the thing politicians are incapable of grasping—that’s at work in Donald Trump’s thinking. “No Wonder The Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity,” now on The Unz Review, argues that Donald J. Trump’s Muslim moratorium is rooted in an aversion, so natural to a business man, to squandering scarce resources, money or manpower.

“… Good businessmen are programmed differently than politicians. As a tremendously gifted entrepreneur, Trump is averse to squandering scarce resources, money or manpower.

By contrast, politicians do not understand the natural economic reality of scarcity. They control the production of money for their promiscuous purposes, and they exert power over millions of interchangeable people in their territorial jurisdiction.

To a politician, 14 lives in 322 million is a small price to pay for “our freedoms.” Trump’s political rivals look at the price exacted by a Muslim like Syed Farook and his bride in the aggregate. Fourteen dead is not a steep price to pay for unfettered immigration from Islamic countries, peddled politically as “our values,” “our tolerance,” “our greatness.” This callous calculus is second nature to politicians like Lindsey Graham or Darth Vader Cheney. …

Not to Trump. “This must stop. We can’t have this,” he roared.

See, statistics are funny things. Insignificant probabilities, in this case an attack on each one of us, are immaterial unless they happen to YOU or ME. It is this calculus that politicians peddle. They rely on the fact that we’ll adopt their sloganeering because each one of us is unlikely to die by Muslim.

But to do nothing stateside, as Trump’s rivals imply, is to accept that lives lost are, in the grand scheme, insignificant.

The opposite is true for Trump. Taking losses offends his sensibilities. Trump, the consummate businessman, abhors and is angered by the preventable squandering of scarce assets: American lives. (Yes, Trump is an America Firster.) The death of a few Americans pains Mr. Trump, something that cannot be said about Obama, Hillary, Bernie or any of the insider GOPers.

How can you tell? The politicians – Rubio, Ryan – offer up platitudes; political niceties to excite the asses in the anchor’s chair. They propose nothing to stop the slaughter, stateside. Instead, they demand a leap of faith – that you believe dropping “daisy cutters” on Muslims in the Middle East (only on the bad ones, naturally) will reduce the danger to Americans at home.

The instincts of private enterprise and politics – never the twain shall meet. Private-enterprise driven considerations are aimed at conserving, not squandering, scarce resources. If it loses an asset, the Trump Organization hurts.

Read the rest. “No Wonder The Pols Think Businessman Trump’s Crazy; He Understands Scarcity” is now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

The Week’s Trump-Dominated Tweets (December 5 To 9)

Ilana Mercer, Islam, Jihad, Media, Politics, Terrorism, The State