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Wednesday, August 30, 2017

John Nolte: Antifa Teams up With Big Business and Big Media for ‘Corporate Fascist Rampage’

http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/08/29/john-nolte-antifa-teams-big-business-big-media-corporate-fascist-rampage/

John Nolte: Antifa Teams up With Big Business and Big Media for ‘Corporate Fascist Rampage’



Senior Writer John Nolte talked about his return to Breitbart News, the left’s war against free speech, and the current state of Hollywood with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily.

Marlow reminisced about how he and Nolte were among the first members of the Breitbart News team, with Nolte serving as inaugural editor for the Big Hollywood section. After a year and a half away, Nolte returned to Breitbart with an article on Monday entitled “5 Reasons Why Trump’s Pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio Is Awesome.”

Sizing up the current political environment, Nolte said: 
“There is no bottom the media is not willing to hit in order to take their version of the country back.” “I think that the great definer of how low the media is willing to go is Antifa,” he continued. “You have in Antifa what is basically a left-wing terrorist group, a vigilante group, spreading out across the country to shut down – through chaos, violence, and riots – any opinion they don’t agree with.”

“Now, none of us sympathize with neo-Nazis. But it’s not just neo-Nazis,” he observed. “And by the way, neo-Nazis should have a right to peaceably express themselves, no matter how noxious their views. But it’s not just neo-Nazis, it’s Trump supporters.” 

“One of the great undercovered stories during the whole Charlottesville episode was that the day after Charlottesville, in another city – I think it was Seattle – a bunch of Trump supporters held a rally, and Antifa also went over there and beat the hell out of those people, and shut them down,” Nolte recalled. “Those weren’t neo-Nazis. Those weren’t neo-Confederates. Those were just Trump supporters, and violence was used to shut them up and to stop it, and the media just doesn’t care.”

“This is the same media that freaked out because middle-aged people gathered together for the Tea Party, and I think the most violence we ever saw there was them picking up their own litter,” he said. 

“The media is part of the Antifa conspiracy because you can see it. You can see it across all media platforms: the ever-expanding definition of the ‘alt-right,’ the ever-expanding definition of ‘hate speech,’ the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling opposition to same-sex marriage ‘hate speech’ – which, by extension, labels the Christian church a hate group. As the media says ‘maybe it’s OK to commit violence against Nazis and the alt-right and haters,’ they’re also expanding the definition of the alt-right and hate to include traditional conservative views,” he warned.

Marlow played an astonishing audio clip of CNN hosts implying that Islamic terrorists were somehow inspired to use cars as murder weapons by the man who drove into a crowd in Charlottesville when of course the “car jihad” strategy was pioneered by Muslim terrorists long ago.

“Listen to the language that they use: the white supremacist who allegedly used his vehicle as a weapon, and the alleged white supremacist, they just label that ‘a white supremacist used his car to murder someone.’ But when it came to the Barcelona terror attack, they used the word ‘apparently,’” Nolte pointed out. “That’s another area where you’re seeing the left drift away from due process, from the rights of the accused.”

“We don’t know what happened in Charlottesville,” he elaborated. “We don’t know if that person who used his vehicle in that way, what his intentions were. Now, it looks to me like he’s guilty as hell, because he backed up and did it again. We don’t know what was in his mind, and intent matters.” 

“If I were going to write a headline at Breitbart about this, you would tell me to use the word ‘alleged,’ because he has not been convicted yet, and that’s the word we use,” Nolte told Marlow. “We all learned that during the Richard Jewell case, that no matter how guilty someone looks, you wait. The media’s just not doing that anymore.” 

“So maybe that guy was panicked. I don’t know. I doubt it very, very much. But as a journalist, these are the cautions that you use, and the media is even throwing those away while they wonder what the motive of a guy is who yells ‘Allahu akbar!’ before stabbing a bunch of people. That’s another area where we’re seeing the media devolve into what really is becoming a vigilante group,” he said.

Nolte agreed with Marlow’s proposition that the media has effectively become the party of the left, the primary force behind the left-wing policy agenda, as the actual Democrat Party fades away.

“You just don’t hear from Chuck Schumer. You just don’t hear from Nancy Pelosi,” Nolte noted. “Both of them are so bad on TV. I think that’s why the media said, ‘Okay, you guys need to hold my beer, we’ll take care of this.’”

“Every pretense of objectivity has been thrown out the window. You even have people who defended the objectivity of the media for years admitting that now. It’s just over. The fight now is at least out in the open,” he said. 

“It’s a fight between the media institution, which is still very powerful, and those of us on the Internet. That’s why they’re attacking those of us on the Internet. They’re trying to shut us down. They’re going after our advertisers. They want to give all these left-wing corporations a veto power over the First Amendment,” he cautioned. 

“It’s going to be a pitched battle. Like I said, when you have the media cheering on Antifa, when you have Chuck Todd bringing the guy on Meet the Press and treating him seriously as he talks about how it’s okay to meet peaceful neo-Nazis, peaceful white supremacists, peaceful quote-unquote ‘hate groups’ with force – meaning violence – you can see where this is all headed,” Nolte warned.

Marlow and Nolte discussed a topic of profound mutual interest, the control of free speech by corporate entities – once the subject of dystopian fiction, but now accepted without much complaint by the dominant media culture because the corporations in question have left-wing leadership.

“Corporations are given veto power over the First Amendment,” said Nolte. “It is now okay to fire someone if they went to a rally where a bunch of neo-Nazis got together to protest the taking down of a statue. Even though we don’t know what this person’s personal views are, even if the person is a neo-Nazi, I think the idea of firing someone – we’re not talking about a job where he expresses his opinions, we’re talking about a job where he bags groceries, or whatever it was. It’s a slippery slope of firing someone over his personal political beliefs, and we don’t even know if he’s a neo-Nazi.”

“That gives corporations a veto power over free speech,” Nolte argued. “Corporations that remove their sponsorship, these boycotts, that gives corporations a veto power over free speech.” 

“But the most troubling thing happening is that Twitter and Facebook, and most especially Facebook, have become the Ma Bells of the 21st Century,” he continued. “They’re the telephone. You know, when I grew up, all you had was the telephone. They are the means by which people communicate with one another now.” 

“Those two corporations are, again, aligned with media: expanding the definition of hate speech, expanding the definition of the alt-right, and using that sort of moral imprimatur to monitor our communications, to say ‘No, you can’t say this, and you can’t say that. If you do say that, we’re going to cut your telephone wire, and then you’re not going to communicate with anyone,’” he said.

“The lazy conservative argument to that is that a corporation should be allowed to run its company how it pleases. But what do you do when suddenly we’re living in the world of Robocop, and Demolition Man, where corporations have all this power, all this control, and are so necessary for us to communicate with each other?” Nolte asked.

“How many websites would die without the ability to post their posts on Facebook? And then there’s the issue of the Daily Stormer, which is a disgusting neo-Nazi website. No one will serve their site anymore,” he continued, prompting Marlow to interject with the news that the Daily Stormer has gone offline, evidently for good.
Marlow noted that the Daily Stormer has tried to boycott Breitbart News for employing gay writers. Nolte chuckled that they probably would not have a very high opinion of his own marriage to a Mexican, but the important point is defending free speech for one’s adversaries, not just for friends.

“You have the media ever-expanding these definitions, so if these corporations have the power to make the Daily Stormer disappear, what’s next?” Nolte wondered. “Because we’re slowly all being aligned with the Daily Stormer because of our opinion on gay marriage, or our opinion on statues. That is a huge veto power to give to these mega-corporations. It’s like a dystopia, like Robocop, where these corporations have this unbelievable power. The media goes right along with it and gives them the cover that they need to use that power in ways that continue to be more troubling.”

“No one sympathizes with neo-Nazis. No one sympathizes with the Daily Stormer. But the whole idea of American free speech is that we defend the worst of the worst because we understand the slippery slope argument,” he declared.

“Now that corporations have control of free speech, it’s a very sticky issue. The Supreme Court has already ruled that Facebook and Twitter can’t deny sex offenders a right to their site, so it should be interesting to see if this ends up going to the Supreme Court as well. Maybe it should,” he suggested.

“Whatever happened to that saying that I don’t agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it?” Nolte asked. “The liberal ideal of free speech, it’s gone. The liberal that Big Business is evil, it’s gone. The liberal ideal of due process for the accused, ask George Zimmerman. It’s gone.”

“It’s not Democrats. It’s not rank-and-file Democrats. It’s not everyday people. A lot of Democrats I know are pretty disgusted by this behavior,” he noted. But when you have the media on the side of this stuff, that is everything. That’s all that they need to continue this corporate fascist rampage.” 

“The media is totally out of control. I don’t know how you can fight the media except with more speech. I think the media understands that they’re losing the argument, and that’s why they’ve moved in this direction. That’s why Chuck Todd is giving cover to people who claim that violence is okay. That’s why they’re expanding these definitions and pressuring, pressuring, pressuring Facebook and Twitter, because they can’t win the argument, so they’re going to just shut the argument down,” said Nolte.

Nolte talked about his decision to return to Breitbart News after working happily at the Daily Wire with Ben Shapiro.

“It really was the best job I’ve ever resigned from,” he said. “But the two sites, the Daily Wire and Breitbart News, are two very different sites. Both are successful, both have hit the target of what they want to do. It just felt to me like choosing between the Army and the Navy.” 

“I was over there for about a year and a half. Like I said in my piece at the Daily Wire, I just feel better fighting on the water – in other words, joining the Navy as opposed to the Army. I have nothing but good things to say about Ben, and I have nothing but good things to say about the Daily Wire,” he declared.
“It’s just about where my very narrow skill set, which I think you can sum up with the word ‘belligerence,’ fits best, and where it can be the most effective,” Nolte said with a laugh. 

“I just thought it could be more effective at Breitbart. I think we’re at a point where all hands are on deck. We’re in a pitched battle now. They’re trying to take down Trump – in other words, they’re trying to overturn a duly elected president, remove a duly elected president and overturn an election through fake news, through lies. All hands have to be on deck,” he urged. 

“I just felt that I would be more effective – and I say this in the humblest way possible, I don’t want to pretend that I’m some sort of nuclear weapon or anything like that, but just whatever I can contribute, I would contribute more effectively at Breitbart,” he said. “It’s great to be back. It feels right.”
Speaking as a longtime film fan and critic, Nolte offered a bleak assessment of one of the left’s major cultural power bases, Hollywood. He said film studios have “painted themselves into a corner” with the summer-blockbuster model.
“They killed off the movie star: the idea that a face or a name on a poster can bring in people,” he explained. “They killed off these mid-budget movies, and they put all their marbles into these franchise films that cost $250 million to produce and promote, and they need $650 million in returns to make a profit. There’s only so many franchises out there, only so many universes you can create. People are tired of them.” 

“Now what’s Hollywood going to do? What do they have left? It’s not like they have some sort of a bush-league team out there that they can call up. Hollywood is in very, very big trouble. People are getting out of the habit of going to the movies. That’s their fault, and it’s a quality issue more than any other issue,” Nolte judged.

A. Z. Mohamed : Two New Totalitarian Movements: Radical Islam and Political Correctness


  • The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell's diseased society.
  • The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.
  • Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals.
Political correctness (PC) has been bolstering radical Islamism. This influence was most recently shown again in an extensive exposé by the Clarion Project in July 2017, which demonstrates the practice of telling "deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them in order to forget any fact that has become inconvenient" -- or, as George Orwell called it in his novel, 1984, "Doublespeak."



This courtship and marriage between the Western chattering classes and radical Muslim fanatics was elaborated by Andrew C. McCarthy in his crucial 2010 book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Since then, this union has strengthened. Both the United States and the rest of the West are engaged in a romance with forces that are, bluntly, antagonistic to the values of liberty and human rights.

To understand this seeming paradox, one needs to understand what radical Islamism and PC have in common. Although Islamism represents all that PC ostensibly opposes -- such as the curbing of free speech, the repression of women, gays and "apostates" -- both have become totalitarian ideologies.

The totalitarian nature of radical Islamism is more obvious than that of Western political correctness -- and certainly more deadly. Sunni terrorists, such as ISIS and Hamas -- and Shiites, such as Hezbollah and its state sponsor, Iran -- use mass murder to accomplish their ultimate goal of an Islamic Caliphate that dominates the world and subjugates non-Muslims.

The attempt in the West, however, to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell's view of a diseased society.

These rules are not merely unspoken ones. Quoting a Fox News interview with American columnist Rachel Alexander, the Clarion Project points out that the Associated Press -- whose stylebook is used as a key reference by a majority of English-language newspapers worldwide for uniformity of grammar, punctuation and spelling -- is now directing writers to avoid certain words and terms that are now deemed unacceptable to putative liberals.
Alexander recently wrote:
"Even when individual authors do not adhere to the bias of AP Style, it often doesn't matter. If they submit an article to a mainstream media outlet, they will likely see their words edited to conform. A pro-life author who submits a piece taking a position against abortion will see the words 'pro-life' changed to 'anti-abortion,' because the AP Stylebook instructs, 'Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and pro-abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.' It goes on, 'Avoid abortionist,' saying the term 'connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.'
"Words related to terrorism are sanitized in the AP Stylebook. Militant, lone wolves or attackers are to be used instead of terrorist or Islamist. 'People struggling to enter Europe' is favored over 'migrant' or 'refugee.' While it's true that many struggle to enter Europe, it is accurate to point out that they are, in fact, immigrants or refugees."
To be sure, the AP Stylebook does not carry the same weight or authority as the Quranic texts on which radical Islamists base their jihadist actions and totalitarian aims. It does constitute, however, a cultural decree that has turned religious in its fervor. It gives a glimpse, as well, into the intellectual tyranny that has pervaded liberal Western thought and institutions.

The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.

As far back as 2003, the Middle East Forum reported on the findings of a study conducted by the American Textbook Council, an independent New York-based research organization, which stated:
"[Over the last decade], the coverage of Islam in world history textbooks has expanded and in some respects improved.... But on significant Islam-related subjects, textbooks omit, flatter, embellish, and resort to happy talk, suspending criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or even alarming questions."
Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals. The relationship between the two must be recognized for what it is: a marriage made in hell.
A. Z. Mohamed is a Muslim born and raised in the Middle East.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour : The Fake News Media of Sweden


  • In most democratic countries, media should be critical of those who hold power. In Sweden, however, the media criticize those who criticize authorities. Criticism is not aimed at the people who hold power, but against private citizens who, according to the journalists, have the "wrong" ideas.
  • TV4 and all other media refused to report that it was Muslims who interrupted the prime minister because they wanted to force Islamic values on Swedish workplaces. When the Swedish media reported about the event, the public were not told that these "hijab activists" had links with Islamist organizations. Rather, it was reported as if they were completely unknown Muslim girls who only wanted to wear their veil.
  • The Swedish media are politicized to the extent that they act as a propaganda machine. Through their lies, the Swedish media have created possibilities for "post-truth-politics" in Sweden. Instead of being a neutral party, the mainstream Swedish media have lied to uphold certain "politically correct" values. One wonders what lifestyle and political stability Sweden will have when no one can know the truth about what is really going on.
In February 2017, after U.S. President Donald Trump's statements about events in Sweden, the journalist Tim Pool travelled to Sweden to report on their accuracy. What Tim Pool concluded is now available for everyone to watch on YouTube, but what is really interesting is how the Swedish public broadcasting media described him.

On Radio Sweden's website, one of the station's employees, Ann Törnkvist, wrote an op-ed in which Pool and the style of journalism he represents are described as "a threat to democracy".

Why is Pool "a threat to democracy" in Sweden?
He reported negatively about an urban area in Stockholm, Rinkeby, where more than 90% of the population has a foreign background. When Pool visited Rinkeby, he had to be escorted out by police. Journalists are often threatened in Rinkeby.

Before this incident, in an interview with Radio Sweden, Pool had described Rosengård, an area in the Swedish city of Malmö heavily populated by immigrants, as "nice, beautiful, safe". After Pool's negative but accurate report about Rinkeby, however, he began to be described as an unserious journalist by many in the Swedish media, and finally was labeled the "threat to democracy."

One might think that this was a one-time event in a country whose journalists were defensive. But the fact is that Swedish journalists are deeply politicized.
In most democratic countries, media are, or should be, critical of those who hold power. In Sweden, the media criticize those who criticizes those who hold power.

In March 2017, the public broadcasting company Sveriges Television revealed the name of a person who runs the Facebook page Rädda vården ("Save Healthcare"). The person turned out to be an assistant nurse, and was posting anonymously only because he had been critical of the hospital where he worked. Swedish hospitals are run by the local county councils, and thus when someone criticizes the healthcare system in Sweden, it is primarily politicians who are criticized. Sveriges Television explained on its website why it revealed the identity of the private individuals behind Facebook:
"These hidden powers of influence abandon and break the open public debate and free conversation. Who are they? What do they want and why? As their impact increases, the need to examine them also grows."
It is strange that Sveriges Television believes that an assistant nurse who wants to tell how politicians neglect public hospitals, is breaking "the open public debate and free conversation". This was not the only time that the mainstream Swedish media exposed private citizens who were criticizing those who hold power.

In December 2013, one of Sweden's largest and most established newspapers, Expressen, announced that it intended to disclose the names of people who commented on various Swedish blogs:
"Expressen has partnered with Researchgruppen. The group has found a way, according to their own description, without any kind of unlawful intrusion, to associate the usernames that the anonymous commentators on the hate websites are using to the email addresses from which comments were sent. After that, the email addresses have been cross-checked with registries and authorities to identify the persons behind them."
The term "hate websites" (hatsajterna) is what that the mainstream media uses to describe some of the blogs that are critical of Islam or migration.

It is one thing to be critical of bloggers who you may consider have racist opinions. But exposing the people who have written in comments sections of various blogs in one of Sweden's biggest newspapers is strange and terrifying.

Researchgruppen has clear links to Antifascistisk Aktion (Antifascist Action), a group which, according to the Swedish government, consists of violent left-wing extremists. For their efforts to expose private individuals in the comments section, Researchgruppen received the Guldspaden, a prestigious journalistic award in Sweden.

Jim Olsson was one individual exposed in Expressen simply because he wrote something in a blog's comments section. A 67-year-old docent in physical chemistry, Olsson received a home-visit from Expressen with a camera and microphone present. A private citizen with no connection to any political party or organization, he exposed by Sweden's media because he had written the following in the comments section:
"The Swedish asylum system rewards swindlers with a permanent residence permit. There are, of course, swindlers flooding Sweden."

The Swedish newspaper Expressen accessed databases of website commenters, targeted critics of immigration, and confronted them at home. The above screenshot is taken from a video on the Expressen website, published under the headline "Jim Olsson writes on hate sites."

Another private individual, Patrik Gillsvik, with no political links, was exposed and fired from his job because, in a blog's comments section, he wrote:
"I would like to join the structural prejudices of the majority in society and state that gypsies are inventive and witty entrepreneurs who can enrich our culture -- yes, and then they steal like ravens, of course!"
Although the statement can be criticized for being unacceptably racist, what is unique is that the mainstream media in a Western democracy can expose private individuals because they wrote something in a blog's comments section. Criticism is not aimed at the people who hold power, but against private citizens who according to the journalists have the "wrong" ideas.

Moreover, each of these private citizens, who have had their lives ruined because they wrote something distasteful in a comments section, serves as a warning, so that others will not dare to make the mistake of posting something politically incorrect on a blog.

It is shocking that in a democracy, the media acts this way, but that is how Swedish -- and, increasingly, other Western media -- operate these days.

In addition to punishing private individuals who, according to the them, communicate "wrong" ideas, the media celebrate and support people who have the "right" ideas.
On May 1, 2017, Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Löfven was interrupted by a number of hijab-wearing activists who were protesting a verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union that employers are entitled to prohibit staff from wearing a hijab. Given that Sweden's prime minister cannot directly influence the Court, and that one should not interrupt the country's prime minister when he speaks, one would think that these "hijab activists" might be criticized in the media.
TV4, a national TV-channel and one of the first media outlets to report this incident, refused to say that those who interrupted the prime minister were wearing the Islamic veil. The title of TV4's clip was "Demonstrators Interrupted Löfven speech". The sub-headline read as follows: "Female protesters screamed out their anger against the prime minister and wondered where the feminist government was."

From the text, it is not clear that these activists demonstrated against the verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union; that all activists wore a hijab, or that they screamed, "Stand up for Muslim women's rights!" However, information that these activists were wearing hijabs and protesting the verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union was on their Facebook page and YouTube. Nevertheless, TV4 and all other media refused to report that those who interrupted the prime minister were Muslims who were interrupting the prime minister because they seemingly wanted to force Islamic values on the Swedish workplace.

The day after their protest, in an interview with Radio Sweden, these activists had the opportunity to explain why they protested -- but were not asked any critical questions. The next day, an Expressen columnist, Maria Rydhagen, compared one of the hijab-activists glowingly with one of the founders of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Axel Danielsson. Rydhagen wrote the following about Jasmin Nur Ismail:
"Then, on Monday, the protest of the girls was perceived as only an incident. But imagine if it was the start of something big? Perhaps history was being written, there and then? Imagine if Jasmin Nur is the Axel Danielsson of 2017. Hero and rebel. In that case: Was it not a pity to remove her with the help of the police?"
As the media refused to write anything negative about the protest against the prime minister, this author began to investigate the matter. It took half an hour to find out several important things which were never mentioned by the Swedish mainstream media. Jasmin Nur Ismail had written about the incident on her Facebook page shortly after the protest. Who was behind the protest was not a secret.

The demonstration had been organized by the Hayat Women's Movement and a network called, "The Right to Our Bodies". The Hayat Women's Movement was founded by Aftab Soltani, who in March 2017 was one of the speakers at a much-criticized annual Islamic event in Sweden, Muslimska Familjedagarna (Muslim Family Days). The event was blamed by both the left and the right for inviting hate preachers, anti-Semites and Muslim radicals as speakers. Another speaker at this Islamic event in March 2017 was Jasmin Nur Ismail, a heroine of the Swedish media. Muslimska Familjedagarna was organized by the Islamist Ibn Rushd Educational Association, the Islamic Association of Sweden (Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige) and Sweden's Young Muslims (Sveriges Unga Muslimer).

Jasmin Nur Ismail, hailed as a heroine in Expressen, is a public figure. Southern Sweden's largest newspaper, Sydsvenskan, described her in an October 2016 article as an "activist, anti-racist and writer". According to Sydsvenskan, Jasmin Nur Ismail's political role-model is Malcolm X. During the Swedish Forum for Human Rights in 2016, Jasmin Nur Ismail was, in a panel discussion, the representative for Malmö's Young Muslims -- in turn, a subdivision of an Islamist organization, Sweden's Young Muslims.

Swedish newspapers did not write a single word that the person and organizations behind the protest against Sweden's prime minister had links with Islamist organizations. When the Swedish media reported about the event, the public were told that these hijab-activists were completely unknown Muslim girls who only wanted to wear their veil.

THE MALMO MOSQUE


Mainstream Swedish media outlets simply do not report some things. When the largest mosque in Scandinavia was opened in Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, the news about this was first published in the Qatar News Agency and The Peninsula on May 3, 2017. The reason that Qatar's media wrote about it was because Qatar financed a large part of the mosque. On May 5, an article about this mosque was published in Breitbart. On May 6, one day after Breitbart reported the news and three days after the Qatari media reported the news, the Swedish terrorist expert Magnus Ranstorp sent a tweet about this mosque, but he linked it to the Qatari media. At this time, there are still no Swedish media outlets that have reported anything about the largest mosque in Scandinavia.
On May 8, the Swedish blog Jihad i Malmö wrote about the mosque and its Qatari financing. On May 9, the Swedish blog Pettersson gör skillnad wrote about the mosque. At the same time, the Norwegian author and activist Hege Storhaug, who is critical of Islam, wrote about the mosque and noted that the Swedish media had not yet written about it:

"I had expected that the Swedish media at the very least would mention the opening of Scandinavia's largest mosque with positive words. But no, not a word in Swedish mainstream media, as far as I have noticed. You have to go to the English version of Arabic media to get some limited information, like Qatar News Agency."
By the time I tweeted about it on May 10, the mainstream Swedish media still had not widely reported it. On May 15, I wrote an article on it for the news website Situation Malmö, run by the Sweden Democrats party branch in Malmö. With one hour's research, I managed, through what the mosque had published on Facebook, to discover that one of the leading Social Democrat politicians in Malmö, Frida Trollmyr, a municipal commissioner with responsibility for culture, recreation and health, had been at the mosque's opening. Representatives of the Qatari government also attended, but the mainstream Swedish media still had not reported anything about it.

On May 17, two weeks after the Qatari media had written that Scandinavia's largest mosque had been built in Malmö, twelve days after Breitbart had written about the event, and two days after my article, the Sydsvenskan newspaper wrote about the mosque opening. You could not read the article, however, if you had not paid for "premium-membership" to this newspaper.

One can see this omission as an unfortunate coincidence, but it is strange when Breitbart succeeds in communicating more information about Malmö than southern Sweden's largest newspaper, Sydsvenskan, headquartered in Malmö. Why would the Swedish media not write about the mosque? It was certainly not a secret. There was no explanation from the Swedish media or anyone else. Yet, these media outlets did not hesitate to expose the names of private citizens who wrote inappropriate opinions on a public commentary page.

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There are journalists in Sweden who change their views as soon as the government changes its opinion. Göran Greider, a journalist and editor, active in the public debate in Sweden for more than 30 years, wrote the following in August, 2015, about migration policy:

"The European governments who say no to increasing the number of refugees received not only show a shameful lack of solidarity. They are also silent when they decline to rejuvenate their populations."

In November 2015, only three months later, when the Swedish Government was forced to change its position in migration policy because of the migration crisis, Göran Greider wrote:

"But even the left, including many Social Democrats and members of the Green Party, have sometimes been characterized by an unwillingness to discuss the great challenges that receiving refugees, in the quantity we have seen lately, implies for a society. No one wants to be a nationalist. No one wants to be accused of running the errands of Sweden Democrats, or racism. But in this way, people on the left, who are so broadly for bringing in refugees, have often locked themselves out of a realistic discussion."

There is nothing wrong in reconsider one's opinion. But it has become common for Swedish journalists frequently to have opinions that favor certain political parties – often the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green Party. The issue is not even about values. People who work for the mainstream Swedish media are ready to reconsider their values so long as it helps certain parties to stay in power. This is far from what is presumably the media's main task in a democracy.

How is it that no newspaper is rebelling against this order? It would be a good business proposition; such a media outlet could potentially gain financial benefits. The Swedish establishment is, after all, not popular. Well, we can look at the example of someone who tried.
In February 2017, a financier, Mats Qviberg, bought a free daily newspaper, Metro, usually distributed in subways and buses in Sweden. In May, he gave an interview to the newspaper Nyheter Idag, considered by the Swedish establishment to be "right-wing" or "populist". In his interview, Qviberg gave a slight playful hint that Metro might in some way cooperate with Nyheter Idag.

The consequence of the playful statement was that the Green Party in Stockholm County Council threatened that Stockholm County would stop handing out Metro in Stockholm's subways. A columnist stopped writing for the paper. Other media outlets started to wonder out loud if Metro were becoming a racist platform. Before the month of May was over, Qviberg had sold his shares in Metro. That politicians would punish an owner of a newspaper who had "wrong" views did not surprise anyone in Sweden; the situation was not worth mentioning. In Sweden, even owners of newspapers are supposed to follow the political order.

In June 2017, the leader of the Sweden Democrats (SD), Jimmie Åkesson, spoke in Järva, a district in Stockholm dominated by immigrants. The Sweden Democrats is a social conservative party in the Swedish parliament; it supports, among other matters, a restrictive migration policy. While Åkesson was speaking, there were protests against him; and among the protesters were various placards. In a photograph of Radio Sweden's van, inside it was an anti-SD placard. On it, one could read "Jimmie = Racist". The explanation from Radio Sweden was:
"Someone put a sign on Ekot's (a news program on Radio Sweden) car in Järva on Sunday evening. It was taken down and put into the car and then thrown away on the way from there."

You can have a discussion about why Radio Sweden spends its time discarding placards that left-wing protesters use. Is that what journalist are supposed to do when they are covering a story? In the end, however, it does not matter. The people's confidence in the mainstream media in Sweden is being eroded as we write.

A new study from Institutet för Mediestudier shows that 54% agree, or partly agree, that the Swedish media are not telling the whole truth about problems in society linked to migration. Instead of the media accepting that they are biased and starting to change their ways, the media continue to attack citizens who appear critical.

In June 2017, the editorial writer of Aftonbladet, Anders Lindberg wrote an editorial titled, "Hitler did not trust the media either," in which he equated the critics of the Swedish media with Nazis. Anders Lindberg, after working 10 years for the Social Democrats, resigned as the Communications Ombudsman for the Social Democrats in 2010, to start operating as an editorial writer for Aftonbladet. He is so well-known for what his critics view as unusual versions of the truth that he has the privilege of writing for Sweden's largest newspaper. In 2015, he described the issue of organized begging, a visible problem in northern Europe, as "legends and folklore". Today there is no party that denies that organized begging is a real problem.

I have often difficulties explaining to many of my American friends and colleagues how the Swedish media work. Often, there may be clear examples of antisemitism and other unsavory behavior. The first question I always get is: Why is the media not writing about this? The answer is simple.
 The Swedish media are politicized to the extent that they act as a propaganda machine.
It may not be a propaganda machine in the traditional sense of the word, with propaganda ministers and an official Ministry of Propaganda. In Sweden, many of the journalists and editors are either old established political party employees, as Anders Lindberg, or simply ideologically indoctrinated and therefore extremely biased. The Swedish propaganda machine punishes those who have the "wrong" opinions and celebrates those who have the "right" opinions.

What happened to Tim Pool was a part of how media works in Sweden. As long as he said the "right" things, the Swedish media gave a positive picture of him. When he started to have the "wrong" opinion, the propaganda machine started doing its work and Pool became "a threat to democracy".

There are of course more examples that show how sick the Swedish debate-and media-climate has become. In such a negative environment, there are many casualties. The first is obviously the truth. When people start to understand that the mainstream media are lying, they turn to alternative media. Alternative media outlets, however, also usually have political agendas. A democracy cannot survive well only on biased media. A democracy desperately needs mainstream media outlets that inform its citizens and criticize people who hold power. That is something Sweden does not have today.

A large portion of the Swedish population are apparently aware of this and do not trust the media. Through its lies, the Swedish media have created possibilities for "post-truth-politics" in Sweden.
Instead of being a neutral party, the mainstream Swedish media have lied to uphold certain "politically correct" values. 
The result is an atmosphere where many people believe that everything that the media says has a political agenda. When the mainstream media in Sweden lie shamelessly, where can one go to find the truth?
One wonders what lifestyle and political stability Sweden will have when no one can know the truth about what is really going on.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. He is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö, and is the author of the Swedish book "Därför är mångkultur förtryck"("Why Multiculturalism is Oppression").

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Soeren Kern : Spain: Barcelona Attack Was Preventable


  • The measures to place bollards or planters in public areas were never implemented in Barcelona because the leaders of the Catalan independence movement did not want to be seen as taking orders from the central government in Madrid.
  • Far more difficult to explain is why no one reported suspicious activity at the chalet.
  • Although some Catalans are having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting Muslim mass immigration as a strategy to achieve Catalan independence, at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years.
As details emerge of the August 17 jihadist attack in Barcelona, the evidence points to one overarching conclusion: the carnage could have been prevented if a series of red flags had not been either missed or ignored.
The failure to heed intelligence warnings, enhance physical security and report suspicious activity are all factors that facilitated the attack, which had been in the planning stage for more than six months.
The attack was also enabled by the idiosyncrasies of Spanish politics, especially the tensions that exist between the central government and the leaders of the independence movement in Catalonia, the autonomous region of which Barcelona is the capital.

Failure to Install Bollards on Las Ramblas

The Barcelona attack could have been prevented had municipal officials complied with an order to install bollards, vertical poles designed to prevent car ramming attacks, on the Rambla, the city's main tourist thoroughfare.
On December 20, 2016, one day after a Tunisian jihadist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 56, Spanish National Police issued a circular ordering all central, regional and municipal police departments in Spain to "implement physical security measures to protect public spaces" to prevent jihadist attacks "in places with high numbers of people." The circular advised:
"Municipalities should protect these public spaces by temporarily installing large planters or bollards at access points to hinder or prevent the entry of vehicles."
The measures were never implemented in Barcelona because the leaders of the Catalan independence movement did not want to be seen as taking orders from the central government in Madrid.

After receiving the directive, Catalan autonomous police, known as the Mossos d'Esquadra, accused the central government of "alarmism" and insisted that it would not order municipalities in Catalonia to implement this "indiscriminate measure." The Mossos also claimed to have the jihadist threat under control, that local police were trained to "detect symptoms or radicalization," and that there were "no concrete threats."

After the Barcelona attack, Deputy Mayor Gerardo Pisarello blamed the absence of bollards on the Catalan Interior Ministry. "The City of Barcelona has never refused to install bollards. Whenever it has been requested, we have done so," Pisarello said. Ada Colau, Barcelona's leftwing mayor, however, has repeatedly refused to "fill Barcelona with barriers," insisting that it must remain "a city of liberty."
El Periódico de Catalunya, a paper based in Barcelona, elaborated:
"The total absence of police collaboration between the Mossos d'Esquadra, which is the police force deployed on the ground, and the National Police and the Civil Guard translates into huge security deficiencies. The relationship between police forces — influenced by the political situation — is terrible and, in the case of the Mossos and the National Police, it is open war.
"The result is that the information services of the Mossos, on the one hand, and those of the National Police and the Civil Guard, on the other, do not exchange information. The cooperation is reduced to the personal relationships of individual agents who, without the knowledge of their superiors, exchange information and put safety first."
On August 19, hours after the jihadist attack in Barcelona, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido repeated that it would be "appropriate" for all municipalities to comply with the December circular. His ministry issued a new letter calling on municipalities to install safety measures in the neuralgic points of cities. It remains to be seen if Catalan officials will now implement the recommendations.


Too little, too late.
Police officers line the street on Las Ramblas on August 18, 2017, near the scene of the previous day's terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Failure to Heed Warnings

In June, the CIA reportedly warned Catalan police that Barcelona was being targeted by jihadists: "Two months ago the Central Intelligence Agency warned Catalan police of a threat to Las Ramblas," according to El Periódico.

Additionally, on June 30, two weeks before the Barcelona attack, a Twitter account associated with the Islamic State warned of an impending attack against al-Ándalus, the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France occupied by Muslim conquerors from 711 to 1492. Many jihadists believe that territories Muslims lost during the Christian Reconquest of Spain still belong to the realm of Islam and that Islamic law gives them the right to re-establish Muslim rule there.

It remains unclear why Catalan authorities failed to increase security in light of the warnings and threats. El Periódico wrote:
"In recent years Barcelona has become a city known all over the planet. Both because of its attraction as a tourist destination and because of the media impact of the Barça football club, the Catalan capital is a world icon. In the eyes of the jihadists, that makes it a priority objective, as they seek to attack sites that generate a great impact at the international level.
However, neither the authorities nor the citizens seems to have realized that their city is on the same list of targets as other major cities such as New York, Paris, London or Madrid."

Failure to Report Suspicious Activity

The jihadists prepared for the Barcelona attack at a chalet in the beachfront town of Alcanar, situated 200 kilometers (120 miles) south of Barcelona. A year ago, the terror cell "occupied" the property, which was foreclosed and had been vacant. Squatters are protected by Spanish law, so it is common for youth in Catalonia to take over vacant properties. This may explain why neighbors did not contact the police.

Far more difficult to explain is why no one reported suspicious activity at the chalet. During the course of several months, the jihadists collected more than 100 large gas canisters, which investigators believe were to be used as car bombs. An explosion on August 16, the night before the Barcelona attack, leveled the property. Investigators later found traces of the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), also known as the "Mother of Satan," a substance widely used by members of the Islamic State in Europe.

Failure to Follow-Up on Leads

Police found the remains of at least two people in the rubble of the Alcanar chalet. The head of the Mossos d'Esquadra, Josep Lluís Trapero, confirmed that one of the bodies was that of Abdelbaki Es-Satti, a Muslim cleric who is suspected of organizing the terror cell and radicalizing its members.
Es-Satti, a Moroccan national who lived in the Catalan town of Ripoll, served in a local mosque. He was a convicted drug trafficker who had spent four years at a prison in Valencia, where he is believed to have met Rachid Aglif, known as "The Rabbit," one of the main plotters of the 2004 Madrid bomb attacks that killed 192 people and wounded 2,000. Police are now looking into whether Es-Satti was involved in the ISIS attacks on the Brussels airport and metro in 2016.
Ali Yassine, the director of the mosque in Ripoll, said that he had reported Es-Satti to local police more than a year ago as part of a security protocol to monitor Muslim preachers. Authorities did not place him on a watch list, however, even though he had been convicted of trafficking drugs and violating Spanish immigration laws.

Catalan Migration Policy Fuels Radicalization

Catalonia not only has the highest Muslim population in Spain, it is also one of the most Islamized regions of the country. Catalonia has 7.5 million inhabitants, including an estimated 510,000 Muslims, who account for around 7% of the total Catalan population. In some Catalan towns, however, the Muslim population is above 40% of the overall population.

In his book "Jihadism: The Radical Islamic Threat to Catalonia," Catalan terrorism analyst Jofre Montoto estimates that at least 10% of the Muslims in Catalonia are "radicals" who are hardcore believers in the "doctrine of jihadism."

A five-page diplomatic cable, dated October 2, 2007, described the link between mass immigration to Catalonia and the rise of radical Islam in the region:
"Heavy immigration — both legal and illegal — from North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria) and Southeast Asia (Pakistan and Bangladesh) has made Catalonia a magnet for terrorist recruiters. ... The Spanish National Police estimates that there may be upwards of 60,000 Pakistanis living in Barcelona and the surrounding area; the vast majority are male, unmarried or unaccompanied, and without legal documentation.

There are even more such immigrants from North Africa. ... They live on the edges of Spanish society, they do not speak the language, they are often unemployed, and they have very few places to practice their religion with dignity. ... Individually, these circumstances would provide fertile ground for terrorist recruitment; taken together, the threat is clear....
"There is little doubt that the autonomous region of Catalonia has become a prime base of operations for terrorist activity. Spanish authorities tell us they fear the threat from these atomized immigrant communities prone to radicalism, but they have very little intelligence on or ability to penetrate these groups."
Many of Catalonia's problems with radical Islam are self-inflicted. In an effort to promote Catalan nationalism and the Catalan language, Catalonian pro-independence parties have deliberately promoted immigration from Arabic-speaking Muslim countries for more than three decades, in the belief that these immigrants (unlike those from Latin America) would learn the Catalan language rather than speak Spanish.

Although some Catalans are having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting Muslim mass immigration as a strategy to achieve Catalan independence, at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years.

It is believed that two out of every ten Catalan radicals who belong to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a far-left political party, are converts to Islam. The ERC, which now governs Catalonia, has vehemently refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the central government in Madrid to fight jihadist terrorism.
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute

Sunday, August 20, 2017

A.Z. Mohamed : McMaster's Misunderstanding of the Middle East

  • If H.R. McMaster, President Trump's national security adviser, were merely exhibiting a misunderstanding of how things work in the Middle East, it would be bad enough. Yet this is not the greatest problem with his attitude towards Israel and the Palestinians. More serious is his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias, as an article in the Conservative Report, based on comments by senior West Wing and defense officials, reveals.
  • According to the piece, "McMaster has emerged as a man fiercely opposed to strengthening the U.S. alliance with the Jewish state" -- one who "constantly refers to the [historically false] existence of a Palestinian state before 1947," and "who describes Israel as an 'illegitimate,' 'occupying power.'" More recently, as a source told the Conservative Report, after the terrorist attack on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on July 14, 2017 -- committed by three Arab Israelis against two Druze Israeli Border Police officers -- McMaster called Israel's placement of metal detectors at the site "just another excuse by the Israelis to repress the Arabs."
  • As Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes explains, peace is achieved through victory over one's enemies, not by appeasement or dangerous compromises.
In his address to the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum in Washington on June 4, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, pointed to a "reassessment of regional relationships, most notably between Israel and a number of our Arab partners -- all friends of America, but too often adversaries of each other."

McMaster was referring to the counter-terrorism initiative that President Donald Trump launched two weeks earlier in Saudi Arabia. McMaster called the move "an opportunity."

Judging by his previous statements -- for example, during a speech in honor of Israel Independence Day at the Israeli Embassy in Washington in May -- McMaster considers one aspect of this opportunity to be a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is where his approach is misguided, if not totally counter-productive.
In the first place, the Arab states have never been America's allies in the way that Israel has been. Israel and the U.S. not only share a Western value system, but the Jewish state is a technological, economic and military democratic power in an unstable Middle East ruled by dictatorships. Speaking about them in the same breath not only indicates a lack of understanding of the region, but necessarily hinders any attempt on the part of the U.S. administration to revive long-stalled negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, let alone achieve a peace deal. As Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes explains, peace is achieved through victory over one's enemies, not by appeasement or dangerous compromises.

If McMaster were merely exhibiting a misunderstanding of how things work in the Middle East, it would be bad enough. Yet this is not the greatest problem with his attitude towards Israel and the Palestinians. More serious is his anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias, as an article in the Conservative Report, based on comments by senior West Wing and defense officials, reveals.

According to the piece, "McMaster has emerged as a man fiercely opposed to strengthening the U.S. alliance with the Jewish state" -- one who "constantly refers to the [historically false] existence of a Palestinian state before 1947," and "who describes Israel as an 'illegitimate,' 'occupying power.'"

More recently, as a source told the Conservative Report, after the terrorist attack on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on July 14, 2017 -- committed by three Arab Israelis against two Druze Israeli Border Police officers -- McMaster called Israel's placement of metal detectors at the site "just another excuse by the Israelis to repress the Arabs."

This is in keeping with McMaster's ideology in general. During his first "all hands" staff meeting on February 23, 2017, he called terrorism "un-Islamic" and the term "radical Islamic terrorism" not helpful.

Prior to the meeting, retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Mansoor told Fox News that McMaster, with whom he served in Iraq during the 2007 surge of American troops, "absolutely does not view Islam as the enemy... and will present a degree of pushback against the theories being propounded in the White House that this is a clash of civilizations and needs to be treated as such."

In response to mounting criticism against the national security adviser in conservative circles, Trump said in a statement emailed to the New York Times, "General McMaster and I are working very well together. He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country."
This may be an attempt on Trump's part to mitigate the damage done by the manpower upheaval in the White House, and allay fears of further turmoil. However, if McMaster continues to view Israel and its Arab neighbors as comparable U.S. allies, and to consider the Jewish state to blame for a lack of peace with the Palestinians, the president would do well to re-examine whether his national security adviser is serving either his interests or those of the United States.



H.R. McMaster, pictured in 2013. (Image source: CSIS/Flickr)
A.Z. Mohamed is a Muslim born and raised in the Middle East.

Giulio Meotti : The West Betrays U.S. Heroes Who Prevented Another 9/11

  • "Those who work as spies know the risks from America's enemies, but they shouldn't have to worry about politicized retribution from its friends" — The Wall Street Journal.
  • These officials should have never be prosecuted in a court; they should be protected from such actions. This prosecution is a betrayal of those who worked hard to prevent more massacres and to cripple the infrastructure of jihad.
  • That is the most important lesson: our spies and officials involved in the war against Islamic terrorism, like those who prevented another 9/11, now fear not only the wrath of the jihadists, but also the witch hunt of our media and judicial system.
One of the most important chapters in the war on terror is being rewritten -- with a moral inversion. Islamic terrorists who were arrested and deported have become "liberal causes célèbres", while agents of the CIA who questioned them are not only being condemned but also financially crushed by punishment and legal bills -- for having tried, legally, to save American lives.

Guantanamo Bay has supposedly become "the Gulag of our time"; the psychologists who interrogated the murderer who sawed off Daniel Pearl's head have been charged with working "for money"; the "black sites" in the Polish and Lithuanian forests have been compared to Nazi concentration camps, and the U.S. jurists and officials who conducted the war on terror have been compared to the Germans hanged in Nuremberg.


"In just a few months, Obama had sent the CIA back to the September 10 culture of risk aversion and timidity that had contributed to the disaster of 9/11", Bruce Thornton wrote in his book, The Wages of Appeasement. A few examples of Obama's policy include a directive to release Justice Department memos on the process of vetting interrogation techniques for legality. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, appointed a special prosecutor to determine if the CIA officers involved in the interrogation program had been guilty of breaking the law.
A judicial condemnation, however, has begun only now. A federal judge in Spokane, Washington, has opened one of the most important trials in the recent U.S. history. For the first time after September 11, three American citizens involved in interrogating Islamic terrorists have been called to answer to a judge. The New York Times released the video of their testimony. The federal court in Spokane, Washington, heard Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell and Jose Rodriguez testifying on their role in the war on terror. They are among the heroes who prevented another 9/11; now they are on the bench.

"I'll tell you a story," Bruce Jessen testified.
"Two Christmases ago, I get a call from the CIA; my grandchildren and my daughter and son-in-law are living with us. You have 15 minutes to get out of your house because ISIS has found someone to come and kill you and your family... Now, those -- that isn't the only threat I've received over the years, I've received lots of them. And I'm not afraid, and I did my duty and I stood up and I went to war, and I'll stand up to any of them again, but I don't want them messing with my family... And when you stick your face in the public eye, you get people like the SSCI and [Senator Dianne] Feinstein and the ACLU and other people who accuse you of things you didn't do, who out your name, who give them your address, who print articles that are full of crap about you, and it makes it difficult."
Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA clandestine service, told the court what was at stake:
"George Washington did not face an enemy like Al Qaeda. These are people who want to die as martyrs and see the killing of thousands of innocent men, women, and children as justifiable to promote their cause. Making a few of the worst terrorists on the planet uncomfortable for a few days during their first month of imprisonment is worth it in order to save thousands of lives".
John Rizzo also testified. In 2002, when George W. Bush signed the executive order in which he argued that the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists, Rizzo was an interim legal advisor. "No, I can't honestly sit here today and say I should have objected to that", Rizzo said.

Now, Judge Justin L Quackenbush of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, cleared the way for the case to move to the trial phase, rejecting the psychologists' lawyers request for summary judgement. "This is a historic day for our clients and all who seek accountability for torture," ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said in a press release. "The court's ruling means that for the first time, individuals responsible for the brutal and unlawful CIA torture program will face meaningful legal accountability for what they did".

These officials should have never be prosecuted in a court; they should be protected from such actions. This prosecution is a betrayal of those who worked hard to prevent more massacres and to cripple the infrastructure of jihad.
Many former CIA directors explained that the program of enhanced interrogation techniques worked extremely well:
"It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield; it led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives; it added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it".
The CIA claimed the demonstrable successes of the interrogation program: the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed; the capture of José Padilla, accused of wanting to commit an attack in the United States with a dirty radiological bomb; preventing an attack on the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; a second wave of attacks after September 11 with a plan to hijack a plane and crash it into Library Tower in Los Angeles.

Jessen and Mitchell are not the only psychologists now in trouble for their involvement in this program. There are also the military psychologist Morgan Banks; Stephen Behnke, a former director of the American Psychological Association's ethics office; Joseph Matarazzo, a former chairperson of the Psychologist Association, who allegedly wrote an opinion for the CIA in which the deprivation of sleep would not constitute "torture".

One of the most important cases of rendition took place in the Italian city of Milan against Abu Omar; the verdict ended by condemning CIA agents. Robert Seldon Lady, the former head of the CIA in Milan, and involved in the Abu Omar case, was arrested and released in Panama. In a rare interview, the Wall Street Journal wrote:
"Mr. Lady, who had planned to retire and become a security consultant from a farm house he bought with his life savings in Italy's Piedmont region, received the stiffest sentence — eight years in prison, increased to nine on appeal. Before the case went to trial, Magistrate Armando Spataro sued to seize Mr. Lady's house and use the proceeds to pay damages to Abu Omar. Mr. Lady fled Italy in 2005 but lost his property. His 30-year marriage, he says, was another casualty".
Sabrina De Sousa, another CIA agent involved in the Milan rendition, avoided the jail only thanks to being pardoned by the Italian authorities.

The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Macedonia for the rendition of a German citizen. The European judges also condemned Poland for hosting one of the CIA's secret sites. Spanish judges opened a criminal file against some senior Bush administration officials, including John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee of the Justice Department, and William Haynes, a former senior Pentagon jurist. John Yoo, now a professor at University of California, Berkeley, wrote the 2003 memorandum authorizing the CIA's interrogation techniques. The German attorney Wolfgang Kaleck filed a criminal complaint against Yoo; Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Law School at the California University, asked to prosecute Yoo, who was also sued by José Padilla, a convicted American terrorist.


In 2009, Spanish judges opened a criminal file against some senior Bush administration officials, including John Yoo (pictured) of the Justice Department. Yoo, now a professor at University of California, Berkeley, wrote the 2003 memorandum authorizing the CIA's interrogation techniques. (Image source: Commonwealth Club/Wikimedia Commons)

Recently, attorneys of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, filed a criminal complaint against Gina Haspel, now the CIA's number-two person under Director Mike Pompeo, and charged her with being involved in directing a secret CIA detention facility near Bangkok, Thailand. Will U.S. officials fear that traveling in Europe might expose them to arrest?
The Wall Street Journal wrote last year, regarding the De Sousa case:
"The threat from terrorism is worse than at any time since 9/11, even as the West has limited its capacity for self-defense... Those who work as spies know the risks from America's enemies, but they shouldn't have to worry about politicized retribution from its friends. Sabrina De Sousa's abandonment by the U.S. government sends a demoralizing message to all who serve in the shadows, even as the war on terror enters a dangerous new phase."
That is the most important lesson: our brave spies and officials involved in the war against Islamic terrorism, like those who prevented another 9/11, now fear not only the wrath of the jihadists, but also the witch hunt of a Western media and judicial system.

As James E. Mitchell said, by prosecuting what the U.S. and the West have done in the war on terror, "we will be standing on the moral high ground, looking down into a smoking hole that used to be several city blocks".
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.