The CIA is now just another inefficient Left-dominated bureaucracy

It now works at best only half-heartedly in America's interest

The story of the US government's bungling in the case of Nada Nadim Prouty - "Jihad Jane" - gets worse and worse. Here are two more danger signs in her background that got overlooked: her cousin the terrorist, and her family's involvement in the Syrian National Socialist Party. That's right: It's not just Prouty's links to the terrorists of Hezbollah that got missed, but her ties to a Nazi party.

Since Prouty pleaded guilty last week to naturalization fraud and conspiracy, as well as unauthorized computer access at her FBI and CIA jobs, the two agencies have launched probes of how they bungled background checks before employing her. Then came reports that her sister, now a commissioned Marine officer, pulled a similar sham-marriage scam to gain US citizenship. But the scandal will only grow with this new information.

The failure of the background checks on Prouty puzzles sources familiar with her family's background in Lebanon. The Syrian National Socialist Party is actually an organization in Prouty's native Lebanon, where everyone knows it's a pawn of Syria's Baathist dictatorship; its stated goal is the formation of a greater Arab state, including Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Cypress and part of Turkey.

Prouty's maiden name is Al-Aouar - and the Al-Aouar family is noted back in Lebanon for its extremist political activity on behalf of the SNSP. That activism is all the more notable, because they are members of Lebanon's Druze minority - distinct from Syria's usual Shia Muslim allies there, and generally at odds with Hezbollah. And intelligence sources from Israel and its old ally, the South Lebanese Army, say that Prouty's cousin, Nidal Al-Aouar, was a terrorist - one who trained in North Korea and the old USSR and went on to set roadside car bombs in Lebanon on behalf of Syria.

That the CIA did not uncover these elements of Prouty's background is cause for concern, since it is hardly a secret in Lebanon and Syria.

Source

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Brookes News Update

Is the US economy facing a credit crunch? : Every time an economic crisis seems to be on the horizon you can bet your last dollar that scores of advisers will be warning that a drop in consumer confidence will cause a fall in consumer demand which will drive the economy into recession. So what is really happening?
Australia's plummeting jobless: miracle or good economics?: The economy is booming, unemployment is dropping, capacity utilization is at a record level and China's demand for our resources is rising. What could possibly be wrong with this picture? Unfortunately, quite a lot
Put the carbon killers last: Saturday's election could be crucial to Australia's future. Fanatical greens are making fantastic demands that would send the economy reeling into a permanent recession - and Mr Rudd promised to accommodate them
Hollywood's Red Decade: The current crop of Hollywood anti-victory movies is nothing new. Hollywood leftists have a long history of making anti-American films
Hillary Clinton's corruption and the mainstream media's treason: Electorates are generally known for having short memories. Unfortunately this kind of memory loss can be hazardous to the body politic and a nation's economic welfare. This is why electorates need to be periodically reminded of the misdeeds and inordinate ambitions of those who lust for power
The Golden Compass has no moral compass: It seems the most militant anti-theist are either arrogant scientists or unrestrained licentious types whose main obstacles to faith are not intellectual, but moral - and that moral obstacle seems invariably to be sex

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ELSEWHERE

Economist Arnold Kling has a good article on Race, IQ and Education. He implicitly accepts what any non-political person could see after not much observation at all: That blacks are on the whole less intelligent. He quite correctly, however, points out that this should not in general matter. Some blacks are highly intelligent and some whites are dumb so each person should be treated on his individual merits rather than on the basis of his race. It is only the race-obsessed Leftists who get hysterical over statements about groups. Conservatives have always held that it is the individual that matters. The KKK were Democrats, not Republicans. And Hitler was a socialist, not a conservative. It has ALWAYS been the Left who obsess about race. And via "affirmative action" etc they still do. They are incapable of treating people as individuals. That would be too complex for their simplistic style of thinking. Saletan covers much the same ground as Kling and comes to much the same conclusion but links a lot more to the scientific evidence on the subject. Note that even the super-correct American Psychological Association had to acknowledge that the AVERAGE black-white gap in IQ is one SD (15 points).

Strange Justice has had a lot of meaty articles up lately.

So much for that story about tourists avoiding the USA: "A record number of foreigners visited the United States this summer and spent unprecedented amounts of money, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Monday. "These robust summer travel numbers highlight the vitality of the American travel industry," U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said in a statement applauding the role international tourism plays in boosting U.S. economic growth. Six years after the September 2001 attacks put a big dent in visits to the United States, the weak U.S. dollar has made foreign travel in the United States a better bargain and helped to bring overseas travelers back." [The earlier story is here]

The Left's idea of "scary": "But of course there was nothing scary about Reagan. What frightened his opponents was his refusal to let them forget what they were really afraid of: an evil empire with weapons of mass destruction pointed at all of us, including Tony Lewis. Likewise, today's Angry Left is afraid of Giuliani (and George W. Bush) because he reminds them of a threat they are trying desperately to deny--a threat that will actually be greater if the cowardly deniers are allowed to make policy.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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