Another Crisis in Spookdom

In this mailing: - Amir Taheri: Another Crisis in Spookdom - Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Issues of Concern [] [Another Crisis in Spookdom]( by Amir Taheri • April 23, 2023 at 5:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - In other words, the overall effect of the secret reports was to confirm what everyone assumed to be true at the time. The intelligence analyst started from an already established assumption and then tried to confirm it. - Since then we have witnessed numerous examples of that bizarre method. Right to the end, Washington's Kremlin-watchers couldn't envisage the Soviet Empire falling like a house of cards. They focused on Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, in other words, repeated what they had read in the newspapers. An avalanche of "top secret" reports was produced on individuals who were to become embarrassingly irrelevant figures in the blink of history's eye. - The same intelligence community reported Russia's saber-rattling over the Crimean Peninsula as mere gesticulation by President Vladimir Putin in the context of the power struggle in Kyiv, presumably to endorse President Barack Obama's decision not to enter a fight with the Russians. When Putin did invade and occupy the peninsula in 2014, Obama tried to weasel out of a tight corner by declaring that Russia was a "regional power" and that its actions on its own were not a US "national security concern". - The intelligence community tailored its "top secret" reports to suit Obama's naïve analysis, effusively giving Putin the green light for his second invasion of Ukrainian territory over a year ago. The same reports overestimated Russia's military power, ignoring the fact that much of its weaponry consisted of antiquated hardware inherited from the Soviet era. - The intelligence community got it right when it predicted Putin's invasion last year. But that prediction did not result in Washington decision-makers shaping policies to deal with the crisis. - Maybe decision-makers would have done better to read the newspapers, rather that the "top secret" memos they received and ignored. Pictured: An image of Jack Teixeira, who is suspected of being behind a leak of classified US government information. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images) Two weeks after a massive leak of supposedly secret US government documents, the Biden administration seems to be still unable to explain what happened let alone suggest ways of avoiding a remake of the tragi-comic incident. On closer examination, this may not be surprising, as there is still no credible account of what happened when WikiLeaks published 700,000 secret documents almost 13 years ago. However, focusing on the policing aspects of these incidents may divert attention from other more pertinent issues regarding the classification of secret documents and the use made of them by decision-makers. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [Issues of Concern]( by Ayaan Hirsi Ali • April 23, 2023 at 5:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - Hamas is an enemy [of Israel], but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which is determined to go ahead and develop nuclear weapons with the sole objective of destroying Israel... Hamas is extreme in its ideology, which is radical Islam. They have absolutely no desire to resolve this conflict with Israel in the ways that Western leaders hope and expect -- which is settling the conflict by accepting what we have been calling a two‑part state for a very long time. That is not the objective of Hamas. The objective of Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel. - The Palestinians are unfortunate to have, on the one hand, a leader who is corrupt and really does not care very much about average Palestinians and may even want the conflict to continue so that he can continue to cash in on international handouts from the EU, America and others; then on the other hand, there is Hamas. This terrorist deadly group, also does not care about Palestinian lives. That is where the problem lies.... Both Hamas and the PA are deeply cynical: if they wished to increase the well-being of the average Palestinian, they would pursue peace.... One has to ask if peace with Israel is in their interest.... - Hamas is an enemy, but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which is determined to go ahead and develop a nuclear weapon with the sole objective of destroying Israel. - In terms of foreign policy, it is important to realize that the threat of radical Islam, it may have faded away from the desks of policy‑makers in the United States...but it has not gone away.... If anybody is paying attention, Islamists remain a force to be reckoned with in Africa: think of Somalia, the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger), Mozambique, and Egypt. - The Muslim Brotherhood and sympathetic groups are very much active on American soil, in the UK, and in many other Western countries. Their front organizations pretend to be humanitarian, charitable, educational or religious organizations. In its world view...the Brotherhood is not that different from that of violent groups such as Al‑Qaeda or ISIS. Where they differ is on the tactics to get there. Their activities are just coated in a language that is appealing to the leadership... and especially appealing to Westerners, often including support for "democracy". It is time that we expose the Muslim Brotherhood for what it is. - [A]ny human being who is suffering, regardless of their color, regardless of their geographical location, whatever language they speak, awakens your compassion, your empathy, and your sympathy. I hope that we can do that -- so an African, or an Arab, or anyone from any part of the world will feel empathy with a white person who is suffering and the other way around. That is where the message of common humanity is powerful. That is the only way to defeat these ideologues who are trying to divide us. - What we are seeing happen to women in Islamic communities in Western countries, as well as in majority-Muslim countries, is what has been happening for decades. Everyone has been looking away. There are a number of Muslim women, individuals, who were able to escape their families. The oppression really comes for these women... from their own families, from brothers, fathers, husbands, cousins, nephews.... It's just that there is this constant struggle within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the tools of emancipation and dismissing them as white supremacy, or colonialist, or ethnocentric. - Now, there are women who really want no trouble at all, they just want to emancipate themselves from this straight jacket. They want to go to school. They want to work. They want to pursue a profession of their choosing. They want to live like the average European woman or American woman -- fend for themselves and control their own destiny. Those are the women that are often regarded as abnormal by those around them. their immediate environment.... We can help them by empowering the women who want to emancipate themselves... their right to autonomy in their life. - What if you have hundreds of thousands of young men who come from a society with the opposite norms, and they come into various parts of Europe...? They just come, they are shocked, and then they act -- and people react. It is a huge problem. There have been lots of journalists, commentators, scholars who have been warning European leaders for decades about this collision of values....They have all been ignored or demonized as racists and xenophobes. - Parts of Paris, parts of Marseille are now completely locked in with this confrontation between what they call Islamist separatism, which for decades they pretended did not exist. Many French intellectuals were trying to sound the alarm for decades and were demonized. They continue to be demonized. If you look at some of the entrenched Islamist groups in France, the ideology is hostile towards the civil Republic just as the ideology of Hamas is hostile to co-existence with Israel. They reject the French Republic as much as Hamas rejects the Israeli government. They call it a parallel society. It is like having an alien state within the state.... [T]he objective of the leadership of that infrastructure is to create these parallel states. - With the Internet now, there are opportunities for women that we did not have before. Where we can connect like‑minded people with like‑minded people. It is just that there is this constant struggle within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the tools of human emancipation and dismissing them as based on white supremacy, or as colonialist or ethnocentric. - The problems we have been seeing in Europe is that the punishment and the legal frameworks -- prosecuting, sending people to prison, fines, and other corrections they have in place -- for whatever reason, do not seem to make an impression on some of the perpetrators. When I talk to men who have come to Europe, they say that what would make an impression on them is to be sent back to the country they came from. One of the reasons why, is that the families have invested so much in these young men to send them to Europe. For them to be sent back, the families are going to be met with shame and embarrassment that their child was sent back. - Also, a number of the men who are coming from Syria, Iraq, even as far as Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Somalia and Eritrea have entrenched prejudices against European women that reflect their societies of origin. They look at white women, and they see them from Hollywood, they see them in pornographic movies, and they think when they go to Europe, that is what they are going to encounter. They have an inaccurate picture. Women, they think, are going to have sex with them readily. Then the reality hits, and they see that this is not the case, then they use force and act in groups, and do not understand why they are being punished when the women are out and about. The women are in the parks. Women are going to work, they are dressed as they please. The men are very confused by that. - Now, if we take in hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, do we sit back and say, well, you can continue to treat women as you like, it is your prerogative, it is none of our business -- even though you now want to build a future within our societies? - Do we say, there are red lines that you cannot cross, and we are going to uphold our norms and values, and particularly, our laws? For me, integration or assimilation means that you uphold those laws, and values, and norms, and that you tie credible consequences to those who refuse to abide by the laws. - Where I grew up, I was raised to believe that unless you had almost your entire body covered, you were regarded as naked. When I first encountered women in parts of Germany and the Netherlands who were in tank tops, and shorts, and mini-skirts, and out and about during the day and all hours of the night I thought this was crazy. It was a revolution; it was shocking..... - I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of publishing papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear of being fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them are just speaking the truth. "I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of publishing papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear of being fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them are just speaking the truth." — Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images) Note to readers: Announcing a new series of webinars on free speech, The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Dialogues, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and expert guests. The first one will take place this Tuesday, April 25, at 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT/6 pm CET. You can register for it here. For more information on the webinar series, see here. Even if you can't attend, please sign up regardless to receive a recording of the webinar and future updates on the series. " The right to think, to speak, and to write in freedom and without fear is ultimately a more sacred thing than any religion. It matters more ...because without it all other freedoms are unattainable. How can you fight for any other freedom if you can't even speak up in defense of it?" — Ayaan Hirsi Ali. [Continue Reading Article]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [RSS]( [Donate]( Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved. You are subscribed to this list as {EMAIL} You can change how you receive these emails: [Update your subscription preferences]( or [Unsubscribe from this list]( [Gatestone Institute]( 14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022