[GP] In one of the first reactions from Ankara to the Dutch election result, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that Europe was heading towards the abyss and that ’holy wars’ would soon begin on the continent ‐ this coming despite the fact that nationalist Geert Wilders, a vocal critic of Islam, was pushed into second place by the center right Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.
Holy wars™ have been fought by the Turks since well before Constantinople fell...
Cavusoglu, who has been addressing Turkish crowds across Europe ahead of a constitutional referendum in Turkey next month, was refused permission to land in Holland for a campaign rally on Saturday, sparking a heated diplomatic row and street protests which dominated the final days of the Dutch election campaign.
The dramatic war of words, which saw Ankara accuse the Dutch government of ’fascism’ and of being a ’Nazi remnant’, has grown in recent days to include other Western European nations which have restricted Turkish political rallies on their soil, most notably Austria and Germany, but also Denmark and Switzerland.
Recent months have seen mass demonstrations and rallies, with seas of red ’star and crescent’ flags greeting Turkish ministers campaigning in Europe on behalf of their government’s referendum proposal. The sheer size of some rallies has caused unease, highlighting the scale of Europe’s burgeoning foreign populations and offering a glimpse of the continent’s demographic future.
Of the millions of Turks living in Europe, some five million ‐ many of them dual citizens ‐ are eligible to vote in the referendum, set for April 16th, which seeks to significantly increase the powers of authoritarian Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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Of the millions of Turks living in Europe, some five million – many of them dual citizens – are eligible to vote in the referendum, set for April 16th, which seeks to significantly increase the powers of authoritarian Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Europhiles must have a yen for collective suicide. File under Jonestown.
How will we know when the holy war begins? It seems a bit one-sided at the present. Does that mean that Euros will pick up arms?
[Wash Times] Turkey, once a dependable ally of the West, is on the verge of becoming an authoritarian dictatorship.
As the NATO alliance ponders how to protect its citizens from an avalanche of refugees, humanitarian catastrophe, and terrorists on its eastern door, Turkish voters ponder the referendum of referendums.
The question before them is whether to vote on April 16 to give Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan authority to rule by decree, lifetime immunity from prosecution and extra-judicial powers that totalitarian dictators all say they can’t live without.
Although the controversial, radical political Islamist president has been ruling by state of emergency since an aborted coup last July, he insists he needs a revised Constitution. By his lights, only radical constitutional amendments will enable him to vanquish fanatical extremists of diverse types, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Islamic State. Oh yes, and the new constitution supposedly will pave Turkey’s path to the "great nation" status it held during the Ottoman times.
But since the president’s referendum drive is trailing in the polls, Mr. Erdogan has been making a full-court press to rally a "yes" vote among the Turkish diaspora. He sent his top cabinet ministers in the last two weeks to stump for the referendum among the 2-million strong Turkish vote base in Germany and the Netherlands. To his disappointment, first Germany and then the Netherlands denied permissions to his Justice and Development Party (AKP) ministers to energize the base at his campaign rallies.
Mr. Erdogan marshaled national pride and personal pique to counter-attack. He openly called the politicians in those countries "remnants of Nazis," while orchestrating large, angry demonstrations on the steps of Dutch and German embassies and stopping the Dutch ambassador’s return to Ankara. AKP supporters in Rotterdam took to the streets in violent clashes with police.
[CNN] Washington - The White House has apologized to the British government after alleging that a UK intelligence agency spied on President Donald Trump at the behest of former President Barack Obama.
National security adviser H.R. McMaster spoke with his British counterpart on Thursday about press secretary Sean Spicer's comment from the White House podium about a Fox News report that said British intelligence helped wiretap Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, a White House official said Friday.
The official described the conversation as "cordial" where McMaster described Spicer's comment as "unintentional." McMaster also told his counterpart that "their concerns were understood and heard and it would be relayed to the White House."
The official said there were "at least two calls" from British officials on Thursday and that the British ambassador to the United States called Spicer to discuss the comment. "Sean was pointing to the breadth of reporting, not endorsing any specific story," the official said.
A senior administration official told CNN that Spicer and McMaster offered what amounted to an apology to the British government. Earlier Friday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Theresa May said senior UK officials had protested to the Trump administration after the claims were repeated by Spicer.
"We've made clear to the US administration that these claims are ridiculous and should be ignored. We've received assurances that these allegations won't be repeated," May's spokesman said.
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Given how many reports there were from the hearers in Israel and elsewhere that their intelligence counterparts had told them to be very careful around Mr. Trump and his team becaus they were proved to be tools of Putin, one must ask where did the Americans get their evidence? Either there was none, in which case they lied to everyone and should be ounshed for that, or they acquired it somehow, and revealed it to everyone except Congress and their boss President Trump, and should be punished for that.
[Townhall] The Senate Intelligence Committee said that they have found zero evidence to suggest Trump Tower was wiretapped. President Trump has made the allegation that the Obama White House ordered the action, which sent Congress scrambling for answers and evidence.
Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," said Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who serve ad the chairman and ranking member respectively of the senate Intelligence Committee.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said there is no physical evidence of a wiretap, but added that the tower could have been under surveillance (via Washington Examiner):
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., pushed back against his Senate counterparts' categorical conclusion that Trump Tower was never under surveillance during the campaign or presidential transition.
Nunes stood by his Wednesday assertion that there was no "physical" wiretap on then-candidate and President-elect Trump. But beyond that, he said, is unknowable.
There was no physical wiretap on Trump but "you can't rule out surveillance because we know for a fact that they picked up incidental collection on General Flynn--now we don't know if that was it," Nunes told reporters on Thursday.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz that Trump is probably right to think that Trump Tower was under surveillance, but added that the president was wrong to accuse Obama of being behind the action.
[Townhall] There is more judicial tyranny to warn you about. The latest - Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii - he blocked President Trump's temporary immigration ban.
The president called Judge Watson's decision unprecedented judicial overreach.
Critics say it's a ban on Muslims. But that's not true. It's a ban on refugees from countries infested with jihadists. What in the name of Don Ho is wrong with these people? Judge Watson's decision puts all of us in grave danger.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions says around three hundred of the FBI's active domestic terror investigations involve people who came here as refugees. That's a lot of potential jihadists. How many more Americans must die in the name of political correctness? So I say send all the refugees to Honolulu. Every last one of them.
Let them put on a grass skirt, toss back a Mai-Tai and sing Tiny Bubbles on Waikiki Beach. Just keep them out of the Lower 48.
[LI] Payback is a . . . Rand Paul. After John McCain, speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, accused Paul of "working for Vladimir Putin," Paul had a crushing comeback on today’s Morning Joe.
Said Paul of McCain, "he makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe he’s past his prime. I think maybe he’s gotten a little bit unhinged."
McCain’s nose was put out of joint when Paul had left the Senate floor after objecting to McCain’s call for Montenegro to be admitted to NATO. Whatever you think of it Paul’s objection, it was based on principle: a desire to have the US avoid additional military entanglements and obligations. The notion that the senator from Kentucky is a secret Kremlin agent is absurd.
[Reader Supported News] The New York Times said this week that President Trump’s insistence that former president Barack Obama tapped his phone and that the CIA and FBI are leaking information to embarrass him and his administration is evidence that Trump believes there is a "deep state" within the U.S. government working against his presidency. The tone of the article is mocking, and the Times dutifully interviews the likes of former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden and a handful of think tank nobodies who served in the Obama and Bush White Houses. Indeed the Times also says that the term "deep state" is used frequently by Breitbart, the alt-right "news" site run by presidential counselor Steve Bannon, and by other right-wing media sites.
But is it so hard to believe that there are elements of the government that don’t like the fact that Trump is rocking their boat or not allowing them primacy in policymaking, a status they enjoyed under both Obama and Bush? As Intercept columnist Glenn Greenwald noted, disliking and distrusting Trump and disliking and distrusting the CIA are not mutually exclusive. It’s not a zero-sum game. Same with the FBI. It’s possible to have a scenario with no good guy.
First, what is a "deep state?" It is generally defined, according to the Times, as "a shadowy network of agency or military officials who secretly conspire to influence government policy. It is more often used to describe countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan, where authoritarian elements band together to undercut democratically-elected leaders." I think that description is a gross generalization. And I think the CIA, NSA, and FBI are far more sophisticated than to be so obvious as to invite comparisons to Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan.
One of the things that most observers don’t understand is that the CIA will do anything ‐ anything ‐ to survive. All CIA officers are taught to lie. They lie all the time, about everything, to everybody. And they justify it by trying to convince themselves that they are doing it in the national interest, for national security. From my very first day in the CIA, it was drilled into me, as it is into every other employee, that "the primary mission is to protect the Agency." That was the mantra. Couple that with the CIA’s ability to intercept and take over virtually any communications device, and you have a Frankenstein monster. Is it really hard to believe that such an organization would resist a president who challenged it? Is it hard to believe that it would do so surreptitiously? I don’t think so.....
About the author: John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.
[Right Scoop] Sharyl Attkisson was on with Fox and Friends this morning discussing the different ways president can surveil someone in the wake of Trump’s accusation that Obama had him surveilled.
First she tells her story about Obama surveilling her, but then says something at the end of the interview that caught my attention:
"Here’s a really strange, weird thing that a source firsthand has told me. Presidents can issue directives that make legal or allow people to do things that are otherwise illegal ‐ almost anything."
"That means we would never know about it because the directive, I’m told, comes with a cover story, indemnity for those involved and the permission for them to lie about it if they’re ever caught."
Wow. If this is true, then what’s the point of a FISA court? It sounds like the President can just have someone surveilled and no one would ever know because everyone involved has permission to lie about it.
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"Here’s a really strange, weird thing that a source firsthand has told me. Presidents can issue directives that make legal or allow people to do things that are otherwise illegal ‐ almost anything."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[GP] In one of the first reactions from Ankara to the Dutch election result, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned that Europe was heading towards the abyss and that ’holy wars’ would soon begin on the continent ‐ this coming despite the fact that nationalist Geert Wilders, a vocal critic of Islam, was pushed into second place by the center right Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.
[LI] Payback is a . . . Rand Paul. After John McCain, speaking on the Senate floor yesterday, accused Paul of "working for Vladimir Putin," Paul had a crushing comeback on today’s Morning Joe.
I recommend 'Troll Spray.' 
[Right Scoop] Sharyl Attkisson was on with Fox and Friends this morning discussing the different ways president can surveil someone in the wake of Trump’s accusation that Obama had him surveilled.
