An IRS Political Timeline
President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the 'threat' to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups.
Perhaps the only useful part of the inspector general's audit of the
IRS was its timeline. We know that it was August 2010 when the IRS issued its
first "Be On the Lookout" list, flagging applications containing key
conservative words and issues. The criteria would expand in the months to come.
What else was happening in the summer and fall of
2010? The Obama administration and its allies continue to suggest the IRS was
working in some political vacuum. What they'd rather everyone forget is that
the IRS's first BOLO list coincided with their own attack against
"shadowy" or "front" conservative groups that they claimed
were rigging the electoral system.
Below is a more relevant timeline, a
political one, which seeks to remind readers of the context in which the IRS
targeting happened.
Barack Obama warns the country about conservative groups,
Aug. 9, 2010
Aug. 9, 2010: In
Texas, President Obama for the first time publicly names a group he is obsessed
with—Americans for Prosperity (founded by the Koch Brothers)—and warns about
conservative groups. Taking up a cry that had until then largely been confined
to left-wing media and activists, he says: "Right now all around this country
there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity,
who are running millions of dollars of ads . . . And they don't have to say who
exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a
foreign-controlled corporation."
Aug. 11:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sends out a fundraising email
warning about "Karl Rove-inspired shadow groups."
Aug. 21:
Mr. Obama devotes his weekly radio address to the threat of "attack ads
run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don't know who's behind
these ads and we don't know who's paying for them. . . . You don't know if it's
a foreign-controlled corporation. . . . The only people who don't want to
disclose the truth are people with something to hide."
Week of Aug. 23:
The New Yorker's Jane Mayer authors a hit piece on the Koch brothers, entitled
"Covert Operations," in which she accuses them of funding
"political front groups." The piece repeats the White House theme,
with Ms. Mayer claiming the Kochs have created "slippery organizations
with generic-sounding names" that have "made it difficult to
ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington."
Aug. 27:
White House economist Austan Goolsbee, in a background briefing with reporters,
accuses Koch industries of being a pass-through entity that does "not pay
corporate income tax." The Treasury inspector general investigates how it
is that Mr. Goolsbee might have confidential tax information. The report has
never been released.
This same week, the Democratic
Party files a complaint with the IRS claiming the Americans for Prosperity
Foundation is violating its tax-exempt status.
Sept. 2:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee warns on its website that the
Kochs have "funneled their money into right-wing shadow groups."
Sept. 16:
Mr. Obama, in Connecticut, repeats that a "foreign-controlled entity"
might be funding "millions of dollars of attack ads." Four days
later, in Philadelphia, he again says the problem is that "nobody
knows" who is behind conservative groups.
Sept. 21:
Sam Stein, in his Huffington Post article "Obama, Dems Try to Make Shadowy
Conservative Groups a Problem for Conservatives," writes that a
"senior administration official" had "urged a small gathering of
reporters to start writing on what he deemed 'the most insidious power grab
that we have seen in a very long time.' "
Sept. 22: In
New York City, Mr. Obama warns that conservative groups "pose as
non-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups," even though they are
"guided by seasoned Republican political operatives" who might be
funded by a "foreign-controlled corporation."
Sept. 26: On
ABC's "This Week," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod declares
outright that the "benign-sounding Americans for Prosperity, the American
Crossroads Fund" are "front groups for foreign-controlled
companies."
Sept. 28:
The president, in Wisconsin, again warns about conservative organizations
"posing as nonprofit groups." Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee, writes to the IRS demanding it investigate nonprofits. The
letter names conservative organizations.
On Oct. 14, Mr. Obama calls
these groups "a problem for democracy." On Oct. 22, he slams those
who "hide behind these front groups." On Oct. 25, he upgrades them to
a "threat to our democracy." On Oct. 26, he decries groups engaged in
"unsupervised spending."
These were not off-the-cuff
remarks. They were repeated by the White House and echoed by its allies in
campaign events, emails, social media and TV ads. The president of the United
States spent months warning the country that "shadowy," conservative
"front" groups—"posing" as tax-exempt entities and
illegally controlled by "foreign" players—were engaged in
"unsupervised" spending that posed a "threat" to democracy.
Yet we are to believe that a few rogue IRS employees just happened during that
time to begin systematically targeting conservative groups? A mere coincidence
that among the things the IRS demanded of these groups were "copies of any
contracts with and training materials provided by Americans for
Prosperity"?
This newspaper reported
Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they
took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics,
that was obvious from the start
The IRS Can't Plead Incompetence
If the agency didn't know what it was doing, it wouldn't have done it so well.
By Peggy Noonan
Quickly:
Everyone agrees the Internal Revenue Service is, under current governmental
structures, the proper agency to determine the legitimacy of applications for
tax-exempt status. Everyone agrees the IRS has the duty to scrutinize each
request, making sure that the organization meets relevant criteria. Everyone
agrees groups requesting tax-exempt status must back up their requests with
truthful answers and honest information.
Some ask,
"Don't conservatives know they have to be questioned like anyone else?" Yes,
they do. Their grievance centers on the fact they have not been. They were targeted, and their
rights violated.
The most
compelling evidence of that is what happened to the National Organization for
Marriage. Its chairman, John Eastman, testified before the House Ways and Means
Committee, and the tale he told was different from the now-familiar stories of
harassment and abuse.
In March
2012, the organization, which argues the case for traditional marriage, found
out its confidential tax information had been obtained by the Human Rights
Campaign, one of its primary opponents in the marriage debate. The HRC put the
leaked information on its website—including the names of NOM donors. NOM not
only has the legal right to keep its donors' names private, it has to, because
when contributors' names have been revealed in the past they have been harassed,
boycotted and threatened. This is a free speech right, one the Supreme Court
upheld in 1958 after the state of Alabama tried to compel the NAACP to surrender
its membership list.
The NOM did
a computer forensic investigation and determined that its leaked IRS information
had come from within the IRS itself. If it was leaked by a worker or workers
within the IRS it would be a federal crime, with penalties including up to five
years in prison.
In April
2012, the NOM asked the IRS for an investigation. The inspector general's office
gave them a complaint number. Soon they were in touch. Even though the leaked
document bore internal IRS markings, the inspector general decided that maybe
the document came from within the NOM. The NOM demonstrated that was not true.
John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for
Marriage, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 4, 2013, before the
House
Ways and Means Committee hearing of organizations
that say they were unfairly targeted by the Internal Revenue Service while
seeking tax-exempt status.
For the
next 14 months they heard nothing about an investigation. By August, 2012, NOM
was filing Freedom of Information Act requests trying to find out if there was
one. The IRS stonewalled. Their "latest nonresponse response," said Mr. Eastman,
claimed that the law prohibiting the disclosure of confidential tax returns also
prevents disclosure of information about who disclosed them. Eastman called this
"Orwellian." He said that what NOM experienced "suggests that problems at the
IRS are potentially far more serious" than the targeting of conservative
organizations for scrutiny.
In hearings
Thursday, Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat who disagrees with the basic
stand of the NOM, said that what had happened to the organization was
nonetheless particularly offensive to him. The new IRS director agreed he would
look into it.
Almost a
month after the IRS story broke—a month after the high-profile scandal started
to unravel after a botched spin operation that was meant to make the story go
away—no one has been able to produce a liberal or progressive group that was
targeted and thwarted by the agency's tax-exemption arm in the years leading up
to the 2012 election. The House
Ways and Means Committee this week held hearings
featuring witnesses from six of the targeted groups. Before the hearing,
Republicans invited Democrats to include witnesses from the other side. The
Democrats didn't produce one. The McClatchy news service also looked for
nonconservative targets. "Virtually no organizations perceived to be liberal or
nonpartisan have come forward to say they were unfairly targeted." it reported.
Liberal groups told McClatchy "they thought the scrutiny they got was fair."
Some
sophisticated Democrats who've worked in executive agencies have suggested to me
that the story is simpler than it seem—that the targeting wasn't a political
operation, an expression of political preference enforced by an increasingly
partisan agency, its union and assorted higher-ups. A former senior White House
official, and a very bright man, said this week he didn't believe it was
mischief but incompetence. But why did all the incompetent workers misunderstand
their jobs and their mission in exactly the same way? Wouldn't general
incompetence suggest both liberal and conservative groups would be abused more
or less equally, or in proportion to the number of their applications? Wouldn't
a lot of left-wing groups have been caught in the incompetence net? Wouldn't we
now be hearing honest and aggrieved statements from indignant progressives who
expected better from their government?
Some person
or persons made the decision to target, harass, delay and abuse. Some person or
persons communicated the decision. Some persons executed them. Maybe we're
getting closer. John McKinnon and Dionne Searcey of The Wall Street Journal reported this week that IRS employees in the Cincinnati
office—those are the ones tax-exempt unit chief Lois Lerner accused of going
rogue, and attempted to throw under the bus—have told congressional
investigators that agency officials in Washington helped direct the probe of the
tea-party groups. Mr. McKinnon and Ms. Searcey reported that one of the workers
told investigators an IRS lawyer in Washington, Carter Hull, "closely oversaw
her work and suggested some of the questions asked
applicants."
"The IRS
didn't respond to a request for comment," they wrote. There really is an air
about the IRS that they think they are The Untouchables.
Some have
said the IRS didn't have enough money to do its job well. But a lack of money
isn't what makes you target political groups—a directive is what makes you do
that. In any case, this week's bombshell makes it clear the IRS, from 2010 to
2012, the years of prime targeting, did have money to improve its processes.
During those years they spent $49 million on themselves—on conferences and
gatherings, on $1,500 hotel rooms and self-esteem presentations. "Maliciously
self-indulgent," said chairman Darrell Issa at Thursday's House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee hearings.
What a
culture of entitlement, and what confusion it reveals about what motivates
people. You want to increase the morale, cohesion and self-respect of IRS
workers? Allow them to work in an agency that is famous for integrity, fairness
and professionalism. That gives people spirit and guts, not 'Star Trek" parody
videos.
Finally,
this week Russell George, the inspector general whose audit confirmed the
targeting of conservative groups, mentioned, as we all do these days, Richard
Nixon's attempt to use the agency to target his enemies. But part of that
Watergate story is that Nixon failed. Last week David Dykes of the Greenville
(S.C.) News wrote of meeting with 93-year-old Johnnie Mac Walters, head of the
IRS almost 40 years ago, in the Nixon era. Mr. Dykes quoted Tim Naftali, former
director of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, who told him the IRS
wouldn't do what Nixon asked: "It didn't happen, not because the White House
didn't want it to happen, but because people like Johnnie Walters said
'no.'"
That was
the IRS doing its job—attempting to be above politics, refusing to act as the
muscle for a political agenda.
Man—those
were the days.
Why Collect So Much Information if Obama Refuses to Use It Against Terror
As Mark Levin observed yesterday in an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, Russian intelligence had contacted the U.S. and warned our government directly about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI interviewed him directly and decided to close the file. How would more information have helped stop the Boston Marathon bombing when the law enforcement agencies that had been provided information did not or could not act?
On Sep. 11, 2012, President Barack Obama was informed that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was under attack. Warning signs had been detected by U.S. intelligence but had been ignored. And yet even when told about the live threat to U.S. diplomats, President Obama failed to act and the directors of several national security agencies failed even to speak to each other that night. How would more information have helped?
The creation of the mammoth Department of Homeland Security was meant to promote the sharing of information across government agencies after the intelligence failure of the first 9/11. And yet those agencies failed to share information necessary to stop the Christmas Day bomber from boarding a flight in 2009. President Obama criticized his own government's failure--then proceeded to repeat it, over and over.
A correspondent to Breitbart News writes in frustration: "The FBI and NSA were reading [Nidal] Hassan's emails to [Anwar] Al Awlaki and monitoring his phone calls and didn't think he was a threat at Ft. Hood. The FBI was also monitoring the phone calls of the Times Square bomber and didn't do anything. So much for the value of phone call and email monitoring. Check the old news clips on these stories. It's all there."
The problem is that President Obama does not want to believe that radical Islam is at war with us. He told the nation last month that "this war, like all wars, must end," promising to repeal--not refine--the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Al Qaeda. And yet he has increased the federal government's snooping--dramatically. What use is that information, if it will not be used against terror?
And then comes a reminder of which information the government has been most interested in: information about Tea Party and conservative groups, information about individual activists in the conservative movement, information about the prayers of pro-life groups--information, in other words, about its political opponents, who have been treated since the beginning of the Obama administration like the real national enemy.
Kimberly Strassel observes of the IRS scandal--which now seems almost quaint in the context of Verizon and Prism--that President Obama set the tone from the beginning with vicious rhetorical attacks on conservative non-profit groups and their donors, calling them "a threat to our democracy." Meanwhile, the Obama administration missed real threats--blind to the danger its own behavior poses to our democratic republic.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/06/07/Why-Collect-So-Much-Information-if-Obama-Refuses-to-Use-It
Obama's Bat Cave: $1.9 Billion Data Center Set to Open In October
There is no question that the big winners from last week were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two men vilified for years by the left, the media, and Barack Obama as eager to use the War on Terror as an excuse to violate the Constitutional rights of everyday Americans. Obama ran for president as the anti-Bush in many respects, but especially on the issue of surveillance and snooping.
Well, we now know -- no thanks to the American mainstream media -- that Obama's hypocrisy on this issue is as vast and wide as the dragnet he is using to snoop into our computers and phone calls (and those of the media during those rare times they don't play White House stenographer). Moreover, Obama not only embraced his predecessors anti-terror surveillance policies, he has gone a step further in declaring the War on Terror pretty much over even as he expands on those policies.
For instance… this:
-
--
The Daily Mail:
The personal data and private online
conversations that the National Security Administration is accused of
mining could be stashed in a one million square-foot, $1.9 billion
facility in the Utah Valley.
Concerns over what the government will
store at the Utah Data Center have been reinvigorated by the revelation
that U.S. intelligence agencies have been extracting audio, video,
photos, e-mails, documents and other information to track people's
movements and contacts. …
Plans released by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, which is handling the construction, show the center will have
four 'data halls' to store information and two substations to power the
facility.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/08/Obamas-bat-Cave-19billion-data-center-set-to-open-in-october
Soldier Told Not to Read Levin, Limbaugh or Hannity in Uniform
A veteran member of the U.S. Army Band said he is facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party.Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran and conservative Christian based at Fort Myer in Washington, believes his outspoken opposition to gay marriage prompted higher-ups to take a closer look at his beliefs. The recipient of an Army Commendation Medal and a soloist at the funeral of former First Lady Betty Ford, Sommers said his core beliefs are enough to mark a soldier for persecution in today’s military.
“It seems like with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – that the Christians have been the ones who’ve had to go underground and in the closet – for fear of retaliation and reprisals,” Sommers told Fox News. “Christians feel like they can’t be forthright with their faith. They have to hide.”
Ret. Navy Commander John Bennett Wells is representing the master sergeant. He said there is no doubt in his mind that the U.S. military is discriminating against Christians – and specifically his client
.
“There’s no question about it,“ Wells told Fox News. “Because he is religious, because he feels that homosexual conduct is wrong for religious reasons, he is basically being persecuted.”
Lt. Col. Justin Platt, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon released a statement to Fox News noting that the military branch cannot comment on ongoing investigations or administrative actions.
“With respect to the political activities, soldiers are expected to carry out their obligations as citizens in accordance with applicable regulations,” Platt said.
Army documents obtained by Fox News indicate Sommers was told that his actions bordered on being disrespectful to President Obama and the “slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.”
“You should strive to express your opinion while being aware of the overall ramifications of your statements,” the Army noted.
Sommers’ troubles began last April when he was told to remove pro-Republican, anti-Obama bumper stickers that were on his privately owned car.
The stickers read: “Political Dissent is NOT Racism,” “NOBAMA,” NOPE2012” and “The Road to Bankruptcy is Paved with Ass-Fault.” That sticker included the image of a donkey.
His superior officer told the solider that the bumper stickers were creating “unnecessary workplace tension.”
“The types of stickers on your car were creating an atmosphere detrimental to morale and were creating unnecessary workplace tension,” the officer wrote in an Army document obtained by Fox News. “A Soldier must balance their personal feelings with the mission of the U.S. Army. Even the slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.”
Attorney Wells said once he got involved, the military backed off of filing a formal reprimand.
“He’s allowed to have those bumper stickers on his car,” he said. “The DoD regulation allows it. There was nothing obscene about it.”
During the summer months, Sommers came under fire for reading the works of Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and David Limbaugh.
Sommers was reading Limbaugh’s “The Great Destroyer” backstage at a U.S. Army Band concert at the U.S. Capitol. A superior officer told him that he was causing “unit disruption” and was offending other soldiers.
“I wasn’t reading aloud,” he said. “I was just reading privately to myself. I was told they were frowning on that and they warned me that I should not be reading literature like that backstage because it was offensive.”
In another episode, he had been caught backstage reading a copy of Levin’s “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.”
Sommers said he was told to refrain from reading the book “while in uniform or within sight of anyone from the band.”
“This is the first time since (my superior officer) indicated I had offended others with my choice of reading material, that I was officially counseled about it,” he said. “The statement took my breath away. I was speechless.”
In spite of those incidents, the Army promoted the soldier in September to the rank of master sergeant. But the promotion would also mark the launch of an effort by the military to punish the soldier.
His promotion coincided with a controversy surrounding Chick-fil-A. The company’s president told a reporter that he was “guilty as charged” when it came to supporting traditional marriage. Gay rights activists pounced- calling for a boycott of the Christian-owned company. And some Democratic officials vowed to block Chick-fil-A from opening restaurants in their cities.
In response to that, Fox News Channel host Mike Huckabee launched a national Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day to rally support for the restaurant chain.
“I was inspired by Gov. Huckabee’s appreciation day,” Sommers told Fox News. “And since I wasn’t able to participate in the event, I decided to serve Chick-fil-A at my promotion party.”
It’s a long-standing tradition within the U.S. Army Band for promoted soldiers to host a party for their fellow troops. So the soldier decided to have Chick-fil-A cater the meal.
“My family likes Chick-fil-A and we like what they stand for,” he said. “I can make a statement and at least express a religious point of view at my promotion party – theoretically without any fear of reprisal.”
The soldier also tweeted about the party: “In honor of DADT repeal, and Obama/Holder’s refusal to enforce DOMA act, I’m serving Chick-fil-A at my MSG promo reception for Army today.”
He also tweeted to radio host Mark Levin: “@Marklevinshow ‘luv ya, Mark! Fellow Virginian & MSG, Army. Being promoted today, serving Chick-fil-A @ reception in honor of DADT repeal.”
Both tweets were cited in an official military document.
“As a Soldier you must be cognizant of the fact that your statements can be perceived by the general public and other service members to be of a nature bordering on disrespect to the President of the United States,” the document stated.
Sommers said he paid for the party with personal money, not government funds.
“I had no idea a Chick-fil-A sandwich would get me in trouble,” he said.
He was later summoned by a superior officer, who the soldier said is openly gay, and was told that unidentified individuals were offended by the tweets and some considered them to be racist.
Sommers was reprimanded, threatened with judicial action and given a bad efficiency report. An investigation was also launched.
“It’s an obvious attempt to set him up and force him out of the military,” Wells said. “They recently did an NCO evaluation that effectively torpedoed his chance at promotion and he could be forced out of the Army.”
During the course of their investigation, the military unearthed a tweet from 2010 that included a derogatory word for homosexuals. The soldier admitted that he had retweeted someone else’s original tweet.
“Lordy, Lordy, it’s faggot Tuesday. The lefty loons and Obamabots are out in full force,” the retweet read.
The soldier was hauled in to explain himself before a superior officer.
“He explained to me that homosexual Soldiers were now afraid of me,” Sommers said. “He showed me a letter from an Army Band colleague that demanded that I publicly apologize (to) the band for my statements and that I should be removed from positions of leadership and influence.”
Sommers admitted the retweet was a case of bad judgment on his part, but he said he believes that a group of homosexual soldiers are on a witch hunt and they were “attempting to dig up any negative information they could in order to silence me or ruin my career.”
Attorney Wells said Sommers is taking a “courageous course.”
“He’s not going to abandon his beliefs,” he said. “It would be easy for him to stand up and say, ‘Oh, I’ve seen the light. Yes, I was wrong – and I’m going to do everything I can to embrace the political correctness and all will be forgiven.’
But Wells said the soldier’s “conscience won’t allow him to do that.”
Sommers said he has worked alongside gay soldiers for quite some time and does not have a problem serving with them.
“My point is everybody has a right,” he said. “Christians also have a right to express their points of view and that’s what’s being squelched here. There is no tolerance or dissent from the military’s point of view.”
The soldier fears that the military is becoming less tolerant.
“Ironically, the liberals are preaching tolerance,” he said. “They are saying, ‘We can tolerate you.’ But if you have a certain belief that doesn’t align with what the military wants you to believe – particularly religious beliefs – you’re no longer welcome in the U.S. military.”
Attorney Wells said his client is not going down without a fight – and they are vowing to file a federal lawsuit and reach out to Congress if necessary.
Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty said stories like this are becoming commonplace in the military post-repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
“These stories are the ones that have not been told – about some of the more subtle ramifications of the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy,” he said.
One service member received a severe reprimand for expressing his faith’s religious position about homosexuality in a personal religious blog.
A chaplain was relieved of his command over a military chapel because he could not allow same-sex weddings to take place in the chapel.
And a chaplain who asked senior military officers whether religious liberty would be protected in the wake of the repeal of the law against open homosexual behavior in the military was told to “get in line” or resign.
Crews said they are sharing these stories to let other service members know there is a place to get help. He said Chaplain Alliance publishes a religious liberty palm card – explaining constitutionally protected liberties to service members.
“If you believe your religious liberties have been violated, here’s what you can do,” he said. “We will see that you get the help that you need.”
And what about Sommers?
“We’re going to stand with this soldier who did nothing wrong,” Crews said. “There is nothing wrong in saying he wants to celebrate DOMA – which happens to be federal law.
UPDATE: After this story was published, the Military District of Washington issued the following statement:
A public affairs spokesperson said Sommers did have the right to display a political sticker on his private vehicle.
“Accordingly, the Soldier was not prohibited from displaying a political bumper sticker. Instead, the Soldier’s supervisor discussed the appropriateness of the bumper stickers with him and potential perceptions of others in light of the regulatory guidance.”
“The Soldier is not, and never has been, “facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party,” the spokesperson added.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/soldier-told-not-to-read-levin-limbaugh-or-hannity-in-uniform.htm
Rising Red tide: China encircles U.S. by sailing warships in American waters, arming neighbors
China has been quietly taking steps to encircle the United States by arming western hemisphere states, seeking closer military, economic, and diplomatic ties to U.S. neighbors, and sailing warships into U.S. maritime zones.The strategy is a Chinese version of what Beijing has charged is a U.S. strategy designed to encircle and “contain” China. It is also directed at countering the Obama administration’s new strategy called the pivot to Asia. The pivot calls for closer economic, diplomatic, and military ties to Asian states that are increasingly concerned about Chinese encroachment throughout that region.
“The Chinese are deftly parrying our ‘Pivot to the Pacific’ with their own elegant countermoves,” said John Tkacik, a former State Department Asia hand.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to question President Barack Obama about the U.S. pivot during the summit meeting set to begin Friday afternoon in California. Chinese state-run media have denounced the new U.S. policy as an effort to “contain” China and limit its growing power.
The Chinese strategy is highlighted by Xi’s current visit to Trinidad, Costa Rica, and Mexico where he announced major loans of hundreds of millions of dollars that analysts say is part of buying influence in the hemisphere.
U.S. officials say the visit to the region has several objectives, including seeking to bolster Chinese arms sales to the region amid efforts by Russian arms dealers to steal market share.
States including Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Mexico recently purchased Chinese arms but are said to be unhappy with the arms’ low quality. For example, Chinese YLC radar sold to Ecuador in 2009 did not work properly and sales of Chinese tanks to Peru also ran into quality problems. Both states are now looking to buy Russian weaponry, a U.S. official said.
Venezuela, a key oil-producing U.S. adversary, announced Thursday that China agreed to a $4 billion loan for oil development.
And in Mexico this week, Xi announced China is extending a $1 billion line of credit for oil development and pledged another $1 billion trade deal.
A joint Mexico-China statement said Mexico pledged not to interfere in China’s affairs on Taiwan and Tibet, a reference to the previous government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon who in 2011 invited exiled Tibetan leader the Dalia Lama, a move that angered Beijing.
U.S. officials say there are concerns that the pro-Beijing shift by the current government of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who visited China in April, will be exploited by China for such political goals, and could be used to generate support for China’s claims to Japan’s Senkaku Islands.
U.S. officials said there are growing fears that some type of military confrontation could break out between China and Japan over the disputed islands that are said to contain large underwater gas and oil reserves.
North of the U.S. border, Canada this week concluded a military cooperation agreement with China during the visit to Beijing by Canadian Defense Minister Peter G. Mackay. The agreement calls for closer cooperation between the two militaries, including bilateral military exchanges.
Chinese ambassador to Canada Zhang Junsai said China is deepening ties to Canada for infrastructure development, in Calgary last month. Chinese state-run companies have spent $30 billion for Canadian oil sands and natural gas, he said.
At a security conference in Singapore last month, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Locklear, confirmed the earlier disclosure by a Chinese military officer that China’s military has been conducting naval incursions into the 200-mile U.S. Economic Exclusion Zone around U.S. territory.
The locations of the incursions were not given but they likely included submarine or warship visits to the western Pacific island of Guam, a key U.S. military base.
A Chinese military official initially stated at the conference that the incursions were part of a People’s Liberation Army Navy effort at “reciprocating” for frequent U.S. Navy transits through China’s 200-mile EEZs along the coasts. The zones are technically international waters and China has claimed U.S. transits are “illegal” under international law.
It is not clear why China is conducting naval operations it considers illegal for its maritime boundaries inside U.S. EEZs.
“They are, and we encourage their ability to do that,” Locklear said, without explaining why the activity was encouraged or where the Chinese vessels had transited.
Larry Wortzel, a former military intelligence official and specialist on China, said the Chinese military has sent intelligence collection ships into Guam’s economic zone and also the zone around the Hawaiian islands.
“The EEZ transits may indicate that in the future they could revise their position on the Law of the Sea and military activities,” Wortzel said.
Wortzel said he does not see China’s efforts in South and Central America as a counter to the U.S. Asia pivot.
Chinese arms sales, military exchanges, investment and developmenet has been underway for a decade, he said.
The Financial Times, which first disclosed the Chinese EEZ forays, quoted one Chinese military source as saying, “we are considering this as a practice, and we have tried it out, but we clearly don’t have the capacity to do this all the time like the U.S. does here.”
On Chinese inroads in the western hemisphere, Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said China is moving strategically on Latin America, working methodically as part of a decades-long effort to build economic and political clout there.
“It has cultivated far better military relations with the openly anti-American regimes in the region and could become a sort of political-economic godfather to ensure the survival of the Castro dictatorship system in Cuba,” said Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Intelligence cooperation with Cuba is “substantial,” Fisher says, and will expand sharply in the region through the activities of its state-run telecommunications firms such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE in the region.
China currently is “promoting almost all of its non-nuclear weapons in that region,” Fisher said.
“It has promoted the Chengdu J-10 4th generation fighter in Venezuela and Argentina, and even Peru may be considering the J-10 for its future fighter program,” he said.
A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
At a recent arms expo in Peru, China was selling a 22,000-ton helicopter amphibious assault ship and an export version of its relatively advanced Yuan-class attack submarine.
In Venezuela, China is helping the Caracas government circumvent U.S. arms embargoes by helping repair Venezuela’s U.S.-made gas turbine engines on frigates, he said.
“Another company was marketing several short range ballistic missiles—with no apparent consideration about how it might promote a regional missile arms race,” Fisher said. “The basic U.S. policy is to ‘welcome’ China’s growing influence in Latin America but it is now time for Washington to use both positive and negative pressures to limit China’s strategic military reach into this hemisphere.”
Tkacik said China is quietly evolving on the global stage and implanting itself across the map with major overseas Chinese communities.
“And if they [Chinese nationals] get in trouble, as they did in Libya in 2011, China’s navy and air forces can coordinate to support them,” he said. “This support of émigré Chinese communities around the world has become an overt dictum of China’s new security policy.”
China also has set up commercial bases in key chokepoints around the Caribbean, through its Chinese-run port facilities in Panama, Bahamas, Trinidad, and Venezuela over the past decade.
Tkacik said those facilities are partly aimed at drawing American attention and easing U.S. geopolitical pressure in Asia.
China also is investing heavily in Africa, the Middle East, and Indian Ocean region.
“At bottom, however, China’s strategic targets are closer to home: East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific,” Tkacik said. “That’s why Washington’s Pivot to the Pacific unsettles Beijing so. It threatens to check Beijing’s rising new influence in the Asia-Pacific.
Tkacik said Chinese naval patrols in U.S. economic zones have been carried out for years through Chinese ocean fishing fleets.
“It doesn’t need to send out military vessels to Guam or Hawaii or the Aleutians except to ‘tweak’ the U.S.,” he said.
Internet surveillance foiled NY terrorist plot - or did it?
An anonymous US government source claims that internet surveillance helped thwart a plot to bomb the New York city subway system.But Buzzfeed is reporting that public documents contradict that claim.
Reuters:
A secret U.S. intelligence program to collect emails that is at the heart of an uproar over government surveillance helped foil an Islamist militant plot to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009, U.S. government sources said on Friday.
In February 2010, Zazi pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, to charges that included conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to terrorists.
Miller said authorities traced the sender of the email to a suburb of Denver. At the time of Zazi's arrest, U.S. authorities revealed that he had been tracked from Denver to New York, where, after a brief interlude during which U.S. investigators lost track of him, he was arrested by the FBI.
The sources said Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, was talking about a plot hatched by Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident, when he said on Thursday that such surveillance had helped thwart a significant terrorist plot in recent years.
President Barack Obama's administration is facing controversy after revelations of details of massive programs run by the National Security Agency for collecting information from telephone and Internet companies.
On Friday, CBS News correspondent John Miller, a former U.S. intelligence and FBI official, reported that U.S. authorities had discovered the Zazi plot after running across an email sent to a rarely used al Qaeda address that was associated with a notorious bomb-maker based in Pakistan.
Was the internet surveillance program responsible for the capture of the terrorist? Not so fast:
But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don't exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi. The public documents confirm doubts raised by the blogger Marcy Wheeler and the AP's Adam Goldman, and call into question a defense of PRISM first floated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who suggested that PRISM had stopped a key terror plot.
Not exactly a ringing defense of the program.
Stopping terrorist attacks is an excuse that has been used by both the Bush and Obama administration to justify these intrusive intel programs. Usually, the claims are impossible to verify - or debunk. In this case, public records would seem to show that the administration official responsible for leaking this info is fudging the truth, at best.
The Totalitarian Left is Back
The New York Times is the fountainhead of the Leftist propaganda machine in the United States. It is therefore significant that its Editorial Board, stocked with Boomer radicals, has just made a fundamental admission against interest. In reaction to Obama's massive and systematic abuse of executive power, the NYT editorialized thatMr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.But this is of course a lie. Nothing in the Patriot Act authorizes the government-wide abuse of power by the IRS, EPA, FBI, DOJ, and other agencies with the coercive powers against Americans and foreigners. The fault is not in the Patriot Act, but in Obama's Chicago-style one-party machine style of governance. And rather than defending our freedoms, the leftist media colluded with abuse of power until after the election of 2012. The New York Times is the biggest gear in the Obama Machine and they know it.
Contrary to the last desperate defense spun by the Times, the Bush Administration never abused the press immunities of reporters; it never used the IRS to initiate hostile investigations of its domestic political enemies, no matter how poisonous and hateful those enemies became; it did not peddle the massive transnationalist fraud of global warming through the EPA; it did not aggress against private corporations as a routine practice; it did not blackmail medical corporations to fund its piratical takeover of 1/7 of the American economy just to benefit its own political clout; it did not practice billion-dollar corruption for its favorite corporate cronies; it did not abuse the coercive powers of the Department of Justice in pursuit of a racialist revenge agenda; it did not indulge in daily White House lies the way Mr. Obama does; and it did not try to establish a Chicago political machine at the Federal level.
Moreover, Republicans never publicly wish for one-party rule in the United States, the way prominent Democrats do so often. They do not engage in monopolistic media collusion, as exposed by the under-covered Journolist scandal. Republicans never engage in the vicious high-tech mob lynching of good and decent human beings, the way the radical Left has done so many times, from Justice Clarence Thomas to the racialist outcry against Hillary and Bill Clinton at the Democratic Convention of 2008.
Since the Boomer Left conducted its concealed Long March through the Institutions of the 1970s and 80s to conquer the organs of propaganda in the United States and Europe, the radical left has pursued a near-totalitarian agenda. The result has been a gradual coup d'etat that is visible in the one-party reign of Europe's new appointive ruling class, retaining only the outer mask of electoral legitimacy. In America we have seen the same concealed coup through the regular abuse of racial, gender, ideological, and sexualist preferences in hiring and promotion in government, education, and media. The result is not totalitarian in the killing sense, not yet -- but it is totalitarian in spirit, because its aim is total control over the lives of a free people.
The New York Times hides this reality to cover up its own complicity in the radical Long March through the Institutions, the most important operating manual for the Boomer Left next to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. It was "Pinch" Sulzberger, after all, who introduced ideological hiring and editorial corruption of a formerly decent (though leftist and politicized) newspaper. Pinch is a Boomer radical, and he brought in his own kind to bring the standards of reporting at the Times to its lowest level in modern history. Faithful readers of the Times are either abandoning it in droves or are clinging to it in a pure act of faith that has no basis in adult reality.
The totalitarian left is not new in American life, and we have survived previous outbreaks of this plague. That does not mean we will survive the current assault, however, since, like the HIV virus, each outbreak learns from the mistakes of the previous one.
Before Joe McCarthy there was Josef Stalin, and the McCarthyist campaign against Communist infiltration makes no sense without understanding the threat of Stalin. FDR's advisor Harry Hopkins is now known to have hopped into a KGB car driving around Washington, and FDR himself surrendered much of Europe to Stalin's Soviet Empire at Yalta, against Churchill's urgent advice. The Manhattan Project was penetrated by Soviet agents, including German physicist Klaus Fuchs, who stole nuclear secrets and went back to East Germany in triumph to become a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Fuchs' nuclear espionage was hardly disguised. He was given a medal for it. Even the left admits today that the Rosenbergs and the Cambridge spies in Britain were Soviet agents. France was even worse, if anything. West Germany's governments were penetrated by East German spies. Vladimir Putin was the Soviet KGB head in East Germany.
Call that Chapter 1 of the totalitarian left in America. It did much harm, but the country survived.
After FDR died, the American public rebelled against Stalinist penetration of American institutions, especially after the Soviets exploded nuclear devices based on plans stolen from the Manhattan Project. Anti-communism drove the Stalinist left out of public life, and gave room to mainstream liberals to flourish. The liberal AFL-CIO drove out Stalinists, and Ronald Reagan (an FDR Democrat) came face to face with Stalinists in Hollywood when he was president of the Screen Actors' Guild. That experience shaped the rest of his life.
Chapter 2 of the new totalitarian left came to a head in 1968, both here and in Europe, when a new generation of totalitarians staged a comeback. This is hardly a secret anymore. Bill Ayers was one of them: "Kill your parents" being one of his contributions to the lexicon of political philosophy. Saul Alinsky provided the working manual, Rules for Radicals, which guides this administration more than the Constitution. Like the Stalin generation, New Left totalitarians want a one-party system -- it could be called the Democratic Party, since "democracy" is also a lie for the Left.
Since radical leftists -- the Stalinists of yore -- like to celebrate their victories. The New York Times nowadays celebrates the passing of yet another good old Stalinist whenever one kicks the bucket. As for the New Left totalitarians, they were the Sixties radicals who received decades of worship from our radicalized media.
Barack H. Obama is a lifelong product of the radical left, beginning with his communist mother, his Kenyan biological father, and his Hawaiian mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, the race hater and porn writer, who was the Communist Party representative in Hawaii. Frank Davis lived in rage against whites, particularly Americans. Obama picked up much of the same racialist biases. Barry Soetoro lived in the heated aftermath of the Indonesian Civil War, where Muslims, Communists, and the military slaughtered each other by the hundreds of thousands.
Obama looks foreign to Americans because ideologically he is foreign. Marxism is a product of European imperialism of the 19th century, updated by Lenin, Stalin, Mao and all the rest. It is a wacky totalitarian dream; it is not an American set of beliefs; it is profoundly alien to American values.
The Sixties Left gained power using its semi-secret March Through the Institutions, as prescribed by Italian Communist ideologue Antonio Gramsci. In the U.S., the radical left was able to drive a stake through the Equal Protection clause, first for black people, then for women, gays, Muslim "victims," and coming soon, for illegal immigrants. The newly-privileged rulers instantly created a corrupt spoils system, in which only they were given crucial jobs in education, media, and government. That racial leftist spoils system still rules the United States, which is why we are in the fix we see today.
We even know who runs the party line propaganda machine, through the "Journolist" leaks, which saw the UK Guardian (home of the totalitarian left in the UK) sitting at the same electronic table with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the other degraded journolistas. Hundreds of times Rush Limbaugh has played the identical words coming from different sock puppets at NBC, CBS, ABC, and the other imitation media. Those identical words are no accident. They are the same because the source and control mechanism is the same. Europe is run by the same gang. The UK Guardianista who sits at the Journolist table coordinates the socialist party line with Der Spiegel and Liberation, and with all the little media outlets that peddle the EUSSR Party Line.
The radical left is now in power in both America and Europe, and whenever they get a chance they act as totalitarians. The single euro currency and the global warming fraud were produced by the same radical ruling class. In America the racial spoils system is used to divide and conquer the country by race, gender, sexual habits, and all the rest. The Supreme Court has surrendered equal rights before the law. The Court claims it is a temporary relief to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. But the totalitarian left will never give up the giant axe it can now wield to cut down the Constitution. There will never be a solution to "racism" as defined by the left because there will never be an end to its lust for power.
The totalitarian left is reflected in Obama's purposeful abuse of the IRS, the FBI (in spying on journalists), the National Security Council (in making secret alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaida), the EPA (in conniving in massive "global warming" extortion). Obama believes in a Democrat Machine to govern the United States, just the way it runs Chicago.
Obama has nothing but contempt for the democratic opposition, and shows it every chance he gets. When Obama was asked whether Congress should not even be consulted after the US-NATO assault on Libya, his reply was to laugh. He does not hide his contempt for the Constitution and for electoral democracy. It now appears that the Bamster has never won an election without leaking legally secret information about his opponents, either sealed divorce records, or, as now seems likely, sealed IRS information about Romney donors.
What the country is facing today is therefore not some accidental mistakes made by a well-intentioned U.S. administration. We are facing a totalitarian ideology driven from the top.
The Stalin time was bad. The Obama time is bad. American democracy reco
vered from the Stalin period. Will we recover from Obama?
Nobody knows the answer today.
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