2016 Journalists Predictions in Foreign Affairs

Not too sure anyone can argue with the 2016 predictions below except the one pertaining to climate change. Sheesh. There are in fact a couple of items missing with particular note hacking by rogue foreign regimes.

What Will Be the Big Story of 2016?

Islam vs. the Rest: Religious Revolution?

 

Supreme Court Justice Scalia has it right:

TheHill: The idea that the U.S. government should be neutral about religion is not supported by the Constitution and is not rooted in American history, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday. “God has been very good to us,” Scalia said at a speech at a Catholic high school in Louisiana, according to the Times-Picayune. “One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor.”

Scalia, a Catholic, is one of the court’s more conservative members. He recently caused uproar over remarks on affirmative action.

On Saturday, he said the First Amendment prohibits the government from endorsing one religion over another. But, he added, that doesn’t mean the government has to favor non-religion over religion.

He argued that’s a more modern reading originating in the courts in the 1960s.

He also said there is “nothing wrong” with presidents and others invoking God in speeches, according to The Associated Press.

If Americans want to the government to be non-religious, he said, they should vote on it instead of courts deciding.

“Don’t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it,” he said, according to the Times-Picayune.

The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050

Why Muslims Are Rising Fastest and the Unaffiliated Are Shrinking as a Share of the World’s Population

PewResearch: The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by people switching faiths. Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion. If current trends continue, by 2050 …

  • The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world.
  • Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion – though increasing in countries such as the United States and France – will make up a declining share of the world’s total population.
  • The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.
  • In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.
  • India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.
  • In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.
  • Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

These are among the global religious trends highlighted in new demographic projections by the Pew Research Center. The projections take into account the current size and geographic distribution of the world’s major religions, age differences, fertility and mortality rates, international migration and patterns in conversion.

 Projected Change in Global Population
As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth. Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

If current demographic trends continue, however, Islam will nearly catch up by the middle of the 21st century. Between 2010 and 2050, the world’s total population is expected to rise to 9.3 billion, a 35% increase.1 Over that same period, Muslims – a comparatively youthful population with high fertility rates – are projected to increase by 73%. The number of Christians also is projected to rise, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35%) as the global population overall. A must read on the rest of the article from Pew Research here.

Terror threats, the New Normal

When the Washington Post publishes an item explaining that Barack Obama has left his terror strategy and messaging to his deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, America is in trouble. Obama think he has a strategy and that all of us across the country ‘just don’t get it’.

Obama thinks his Syria strategy is right — and folks just don’t get it

Throughout the nine-day trip, which had begun less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, they had all heard critics at home and abroad charge that he had no coherent game plan, Obama said. There had even been suggestions that France, with tough talk and a series of retaliatory airstrikes, was now leading the anti-terrorism fight.

Aides agreed that the message they had heard on the road was “jarring,” said a senior administration official who was on the flight.

But while many outside the administration found the strategy itself lacking, Obama felt what they really needed was to do a better job of explaining it. He ordered what the official called an “uptick in our communications tempo.” More here.

Terror threats are the new worldwide normal standard. The question is when will leaders take forceful action both militarily and begin to profile, collaborate and train? Let us not forget, just this past May, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced expedited travel ‘preclearance’ programs with at least 9 foreign countries.

Terror threats will be the new normal for Europe, experts say

Guardian: Terrorism experts believe Europe faces a “new normal” of more threats and disruption to major events as security fears remain high in the months ahead.

Following the attacks in Paris, analysts in the UK and Europe say security services are coming to terms with the fact that Islamic State appears to have the intention and capability to hit European targets in professionally planned and executed attacks.

Munich was partially evacuated following a terror threat on New Year’s Eve, and events in other European cities were either cancelled or scaled down because of security concerns.

Margaret Gilmore, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said more disruption was likely.

“For the last 15 years there have been terrorist organisations who have wanted to carry out attacks in crowded places, so in that sense this is nothing new. And since the attack in 2008 in Mumbai we have been aware of the possibility of the marauding multi-site gun attacks.

“But what is new now is that Isis has proved they are capable, after Paris, of carrying out terrible attacks beyond its traditional arena of the Middle East.”

She said the attack on the French capital had underlined how quickly the group had grown. She said security services in each country would still have to judge each threat on its merits, but the knowledge that Isis has the capability to carry out large-scale attacks would mean more security – and potentially more cancellations of high-profile events.

“It is clear from what we saw in Paris that they are capable of controlling the process – able to train, plan and execute these attacks – and that is something that the security services across Europe will be taking very seriously indeed.”

Prof Rik Coolsaet, a terrorism expert at Ghent University in Belgium, said that although there was nothing new in terrorist groups wanting to attack high-profile public gatherings such as New Year’s Eve, Isis’s appeal meant Europe was entering a new era.

He said the group had become the “object of all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of individuals, from thrill-seekers to the mentally unstable”, who wanted to be part of the Isis, and that made the security services’ job much harder.

“In the months ahead we are going to be facing a new normal,” Coolsaet said. “One day the hype surrounding Isis will have vanished, but until that happens I fear there will be more threats, more disruption, more houses raided and more arrests as countries come to terms with the scale of this group and its intentions … It is something we will have to get used to.”

He also warned there was a danger of people conflating Europe’s refugee crisis with the growing terror threat.

“What I do fear is the combination of these two things into something near hysteria. We must not confuse these two separate issues and we must be wary of any politicians who try and do that for their own ends, to the detriment of the very fabric of our society.”

NYE Hillary Email Drop, Missed the Court Order

As a primer, due to the recent charges and arrest of Bill Cosby:

Bill Cosby Donated To The Clinton Foundation. Will The Charity Return The Money?

 DailyCaller: Numerous organizations had disassociated themselves from Bill Cosby even before the comedian was charged with a crime for any of the alleged sexual assaults he committed over the years. Colleges and universities have scrubbed the formerly-beloved TV dad’s name from their buildings. Others have rescinded honorary degrees given to Cosby and more have returned donations he has provided.

But one organization that has yet to make a move regarding Cosby is the Clinton Foundation.

As was reported earlier this year, the “Cosby Show” creator gave between $1,001 and $5,000 to the non-profit organization operated by former president Bill Clinton and his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Even as dozens of women came forward to accuse Cosby of sexually assaulting them over the past several decades, the charity declined to relinquish the Cosby cash. And in a particularly awkward interview in July, Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri hemmed and hawed when asked whether the Foundation would return the money.

Hillary Clinton emails: Kissinger, Photoshop and ‘Texts from Hillary’

(CNN)The State Department on Thursday afternoon released new emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but the tranche was smaller than required for this month.

“We have worked diligently to come as close to the goal as possible, but with the large number of documents involved and the holiday schedule we have not met the goal this month,” the State Department said in a statement to reporters Thursday morning.

The State Department was supposed to release over 8,000 pages of emails Thursday — 16% of Clinton’s total available emails — but released approximately 5,500. Additional emails will be released “sometime next week,” the department said.

Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find in the final email dump of 2015:

Mark Penn suggested HRC ‘consider resigning’ after Obama’s ‘more flexibility’ hot mic moment

During a meeting at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, President Barack Obama was caught on a live mic telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate sensitive issues, like missile defense, “after my election.”

The content of their discussion was quickly transmitted around the world, eventually making its way to Clinton by way of an enraged former aide and longtime pollster Clinton family pollster Mark Penn.

“This could be about the stupidest thing ever said by a president in foreign policy,” Penn wrote in an email to Clinton, then suggesting she “consider resigning” if the kerfuffle compromised her politically.

“What is this referring to?” a puzzled Clinton asked, forwarding Penn’s message to foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan, who explained the situation, adding a dose of calm: “It is not good — at all,” he writes, “but I think Mark may be pushing it a bit far.”

‘You look cute’

When a photo Hillary Clinton went viral — “The Texts from Hillary” meme, which repeatedly featured an image of her wearing sunglasses and thumbing away on her Blackberry — all chief of staff Cheryl Mills said was, “You look cute.”

Clinton was tipped to the viral hit in an April 5, 2012 email from Russell Potter, a State staffer, who wrote “Not sure if you’re aware of this and its recent ‘life’ on Facebook. “Seems everyone is posting it.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton checks her PDA upon departure in a military C-17 plane from Malta bound for Tripoli, on October 18, 2011.  AFP PHOTO/KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL (Photo credit should read KEVIN LAMARQUE/AFP/Getty Images)

Clinton replied later “Why now? That was on way to Libya?”

Clinton later rode the hit to some fame but also saw it used by opponents after it was discovered she had been using a private email server.

Who gets to ride with Hillary?

As flow charts and organizational structures go, perhaps none was as important as the one top Clinton aide Philippe Reines set up to determine who rides with the former secretary of state.

Looking like it was punched up on a MS-DOS word processor, it starts with one simple question: “Is Huma here?” and ends, more than a page later with the ever-important question of whether Reines himself gets in with Clinton.

And if Reines is already in the limo/SUV? “Chutzpah!”

And when nobody showed him any love, Reines sent it around again to show how much work he put into it.

“I did NOT/NOT receive sufficient appreciation for the below. Only Jake reacted. It took HOURS to get the formatting right. Literally hours to ensure it would work on every size font,” Reines wrote. “Without positive reinforcement I’m not sure I can continue to really invest myself in these missives/diatribes.”

Sullivan forwarded the chart to Clinton with just one line “See below.”

Kissinger gets impatient

For anyone out there thinking it takes too long to declassify old State Department email, you’ve got a friend in Henry Kissinger.

The former secretary of state and top foreign policy adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford wrote to Clinton in February 2012 complaining that, despite having paid $150,000 to have his files digitized in an effort to to “accelerate” the process, “that has clearly not happened.”

“Let me show you the magnitude of the problem” he continued. “Jeff Smith has been advised by the National Declassification Center that, of the 559,679 pages I donated and are on the RAC, the State Department has responsibility to review 259,402 pages. Of that total, the Department has declassified only three pages (yes, three) that are ready for public release.”

‘Why is being on a cruise ship a dangerous or difficult situation!’

In one chain from 2011, Clinton and senior aide Sullivan seem to mock an American citizen stranded in Egypt after the embassy closed amid escalating protests.

Clinton was forwarded excerpts from an interview that vacationer Laura Murphy gave to CNN, in which the latter woman called U.S. response “grossly insufficient” and “quoted the ambassador as saying, ‘You’re on a lovely cruise ship, I suggest you stay there.'”

“What’s this about?” Clinton asks.

“Dissatisfaction by (American citizens) with our support in helping them leave,” Sullivan says in his response, suggesting the State Department send out a “good comms person.”

“Agreed,” says Clinton. “But, why is being on a cruise ship a dangerous or difficult situation!”

“A fine question!” Sullivan replies.

Murphy was stranded on a river cruise that had been anchored in Luxor after the captain was warned that stops along the Nile could be dangerous for tourists.

Murphy wasn’t the only person on the cruise to express frustration.

PBS travel-show host Regina Fraser told CNN at the time that the U.S. embassy transferred her call for assistance to an automated message, which advised her to go to their website — this despite the fact that she had no Internet access.”

‘Good info, sadly’

Here’s an inside look at some delicate negotiations between the administration and the New York Times over new details emerging from Benghazi in the days after the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attack.

Following what appears to be some high level back-and-forth, at least one official seems to shrug and concede a disputed story is going to be published. Why’s that? The emailer concedes that the reporter “had good info, sadly.”

Who’s the “biggest jerk” in all of foreign service?

Of the many notes and memos Sidney Blumenthal passed Clinton, this one may carry the greatest insight but with the clawing realization the world will never find out who is one of the “biggest jerks” in diplomacy.

Blumenthal passed along this advice from John Kornblum, who was an ambassador to Germany under Bill Clinton:

“‘Just for the record, if she does not already know it, (redacted) is one of the biggest jerks in the foreign service. Not only can he not get along with people or think clearly on anything, he also went totally over to the dark side during the Bush administration. He is in a league with (redacted) on this one. He once literally shouted me down at a conference where I suggested the Bush administration was hurting U.S. relations with Europe.'”

Team Clinton speculates over Obama hit

It was summer of 2010 and Democrats were getting anxious — rightfully, as it turned out — about the coming midterm elections. In a Financial Times story, one unnamed White House adviser put the onus on the President himself.

“I never thought I would say this, but even I’m unsure what President Obama really believes,” the individual is quoted as telling reporter Henry Luce. “Instead of outsourcing decisions to Congress, he should spell out his bottom line. That is what leaders are for.”

In an email flagging this to Clinton, while piling scorn on top Obama political aide David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Blumenthal suggested Tom Daschle and John Podesta as potential sources.

“Why do you think it might be Daschle?” Clinton asks. “Or Podesta?”

We don’t see his response, but we do know this: Podesta is currently the chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Clinton reaction to being photo-shopped out of Situation Room pic

Remember when Der Tzitung, a Brooklyn-based Hasidic newspaper, photoshopped Clinton out of that now-famous photo of a packed White House Situation Room during the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound?

Clinton was on that story early, apparently reading about it on a blog, which cited an item in the Jerusalem Post, and not pleased.

They’d done it, she told her aides, “perhaps because no woman should be in such a place of power or that I am dressed immodestly!!”

Then, signing off drolly, Clinton writes:

“And so, Happy Mother’s Day.”

What’s confidential and what’s not

The emails released on Thursday included 275 that had been upgraded in whole or part to “classified,” and redacted accordingly, a State Department official told CNN.

However, the official added that none of the emails contained information that was classified at the time they were sent of received — something Clinton has repeatedly emphasized as she campaigns for the presidency.

Most of those emails were upgraded to the lowest classified level, “Confidential,” but two were upgraded to the higher level of “Secret.”

Why are we getting these emails now

The State Department was ordered to release all of Clinton’s work-related emails by Judge Rudolph Contreras as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by journalist Jason Leopold. The case came after it was revealed that Clinton used a private email server to conduct official business while leading the department.

In May, Contreras ordered the State Department to “aspire to abide” to a monthly production schedule, releasing specified numbers of emails at the end of each month up until January 29, 2016.

While the schedule is aspirational, the department must also submit reports each month to explain its progress. State Department attorneys will therefore have to explain the failure to meet the December quota in a filing to Contreras next week.

Muslim Brotherhood in U.S. Gets Millions in Grants

The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States document is here.

The House Intelligence Committee Testimony on the Muslim Brotherhood is here.

Mosque Linked To Muslim Brotherhood Has Received Millions In Federal Grants

DailyCaller: A Kansas City mosque owned by an Islamic umbrella organization with deep ties to the U.S. arm of the Muslim Brotherhood has received millions of dollars in federal grants over the past several years, according to a federal spending database.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has received $2,739,891 from the Department of Agriculture since 2010, a Daily Caller analysis has found. The money largely went to the mosque’s Crescent Clinic to provide services through the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program, known as WIC.

The most recent federal payment — in the amount of $327,436 — was handed out Oct. 1.

Property records show the mosque is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which acts as a financial holding company for Islamic organizations. It offers sharia-compliant financial products to Muslim investors, operates Islamic schools and owns more than 300 other mosques throughout the U.S.

Founded in 1973 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Muslim Students Association, NAIT’s most controversial connection is to the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing cases. Along with other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), NAIT was named a co-conspirator in the federal case but was not indicted.

At the Holy Land Foundation trial, evidence was presented that ISNA diverted funds from the accounts it held with NAIT to institutions linked to Hamas and to Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader.

Federal prosecutors introduced evidence in the case that “established that ISNA and NAIT were among those organizations created by the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks drawn from ISNA’s account and deposited in the Holy Land Foundation’s account with NAIT were made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahadeen,” which is the original name for Hamas’ military wing.

While Hamas was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 1997 and is considered the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the larger Muslim Brotherhood is not itself designated as a terrorist group.

NAIT has other ties to the Holy Land Foundation case. Its newly-appointed executive director, Salah Obeidallah, was a founding member and former president of the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, N.J.

In the 1990s, the imam at that mosque was Mohammad El-Mezain, a founding member of the Holy Land Foundation who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping fund Hamas. Obeidallah has said that he was not aware of El-Mezain’s terror funding activities.

In being owned by NAIT, the Kansas City organization is in company with numerous mosques with ties to known terrorists, terror sympathizers and fundamentalist Islamists.

Purportedly backed by money from Saudi Arabia and supporting a fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, NAIT holds the deed to the Islamic Society of Boston, which operates the mosque attended by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the so-called Boston Marathon bombers.

It also controls the Islamic Center of San Diego, which was attended by Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two al-Qaeda members who helped fly American Flight 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to a 2002 Newsweek investigation, members of the San Diego mosque helped the two terrorists obtain housing, driver’s licences and social security numbers. They claimed not to have known about the men’s terror plans.

NAIT also owns the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Fairfax Co., Va. — a known hotbed of terrorist activity. Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki served as imam at that location in 2001 and 2002. He was killed by an American drone in Yemen in 2011.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has its own loose links to terrorist activities. The mosque made news earlier this year when it held the funeral for Nadir Soofi, one of the two jihadis who attempted to pull off a terrorist attack in Garland, Tex. Soofi, who was 34, and his accomplice, 30-year-old Elton Simpson, opened fire outside of an art exhibit featuring cartoons of Muhammad, but were killed by a security guard.

Both Soofi and Simpson attended the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, which land deeds show is owned by NAIT.

That particular mosque posted $100,000 bond for Simpson following his 2010 arrest for lying to FBI agents about his plans to travel to Somalia to join a terrorist group. Simpson was given three years probation in that case.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has also hosted Imam Khalid Yasin, an American-born convert to Islam, who has publicly supported sharia law and claimed that homosexuals should receive the death penalty.

As a May 2010 Yahoo! message board post shows, Yasin visited the Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City and other area mosques that month to hold a series of lectures and workshops about Islam.

That was nearly two years after Yasin touted the virtues of sharia law and capital punishment in a speech at a British mosque. Full article here.