The Political Horror of the Deep State Steele Dossier, and the Political Challenge to Christians as They Celebrate the Assumption

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the Genoa bridge collapse, and to their families and the Italian nation. • • ON WEDNESDAY EUROPE FACES THE POLITICAL SIDE OF RELIGION ON THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION, WHILE AMERICA PONDERS DOJ'S BRUCE OHR. But, the right of Christians to celebrate anything is in danger. And, if it were up to Ohr and his Deep State Department of Justice, Americans would only be able to 'celebrate' Hillary & Hacks. • • • THE DEEP STATE FBI / DOJ AND THE STEELE DOSSIER. American Thinker's Clarice Feldman wrote on Sunday : "The Internet is full of information, some of it not well researched or considered, but every now and then a star appears on the horizon. To my mind the new star is Yaacov Apelbaum, who, using his considerable technical skills, has produced a masterpiece of well-documented analysis underscoring the nonsensical and partisan nature of the Mueller operation. He compares this effort by the anti-Trumpers to the plot line of the Dreyfus affair, where falsified evidence and suppressed evidence led to Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s conviction for treason. It’s lengthy and detailed...but if this subject is of interest to you, I strongly suggest you bookmark the article and study it at your leisure. [You can read it here and it is well worth the time it takes : < https://apelbaum.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/the-mechanics-of-deception/ >. ] • Apelbaum points out that : "The real Dossier story is not the scandalous insinuations that it makes, but rather it’s the funding sources, the teams that worked on it, and its compilation and distribution channels. At peak capacity, the Dossier team must have consisted of at least 25 individuals who worked on it for over 6-12 months. Assuming a modest $200 per hour rate per person, some first/business class travel and accommodations, media, consulting, IT, and legal services, this project most have cost an upwards of 5-10 million dollars. According to Simpson’s testimony and documents, Fusion GPS was only paid about a million dollars by the DNC and Clinton campaign, which begs the questions of what was Hakluyt’s [Ed: another private UK intelligence operation closely connected to Hillary Clinton] cut and where did the rest of the money go?" • BUT, that is only a part of the Apelbaum article, as Feldman says -- "it really deserves the attention of readers, investigators, and reporters. Using open source intelligence materials, he’s pinpointed the source(s) of the deeply flawed Steele Dossier, which formed the basis for the FISA warrants used by the FBI and Department of Justice to gather intelligence on the President and his associates." • Apelbaum details the organization and staffing of GPS Fusion : "The political makeup of the team was exclusively Democratic with many of the employees and interns having a strong political connection to the Clinton or Obama administrations. Jason Raymond, the Research Director, came from John Kerry’s press office and was affiliated with USAID; Laura Seago, a senior analyst, came from the Brennan Center for Justice and was also affiliated with USAID....the senior management had a documented history of misconduct and ethical-related issues. Glenn Simpson has a Profane Cursing and Public Intoxication conviction; Jason Felch, a former reporter and the managing partner of the LA office, was fired from the LA Times for deceitful reporting. He was also cheating on his wife on multiple occasions with his Occidental College investigative source." • The main author of the Dossier, Christopher Steele, is not ignored by Apelbaum, who lays out his MI6 background and connection along with fellow MI6-retiree Chris Burrows and Nicholas Butcher to other outfits after his cover was blown as a British spy. Apelbaum also notes that those contributing to the Dossier included Nellie Hauke Ohr, wife of Bruce Ohr, and a British-French national, and Edward Emil Baumgartner, who also has his own private intelligence consulting business in the UK. Feldman notes that : "Using a variety of methods and tools which he describes, Apelbaum has shown the interconnections between media figures and the Dossier authors. His research indicates : 'The [Dossier] network graph analysis indicates that the fellowship of the Dossier is a close-knit group; everyone knew each other long before embarking on the quest to find the alleged Russian collusion. All of the project key players are related through marriage, family relations, or work affiliations....this team collaborated in various member configurations on many other ‘Dossier projects’ and utilized the same collection methods, materials, resources, political network, and publication channels." • Apelbaum gives a detailed chart of the Dossier participants and documents their work with intelligence operatives inside and outside US channels. Feldman notes Apelbaum's string : "Halper, Clarke, Downer, Smith, Dearlove, Crawford, Lobban, MI6, LAD, and Hakluyt Linkage. Steele worked with the FBI as early as 2010 on the FIFA investigation. In 2016, he met them several times including at two meetings with agent Michael Gaeta, a leading FBI ‘Russia corruption expert,’ in Rome and in London to discuss the Dossier. Gaeta coordinated and got clearance for these meetings from Victoria Nuland at the State Department. Gaeta was the FBI case officer in Europe and controlled Orbis, Stefan Halper, and the Hakluyt Dossier assets....Baumgartner, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, and David Kramer are all Harvard alumni. Nellie Ohr knew Stefan Halper since at least 2000. Nellie Ohr also worked in the MITRE Corporation with Halper’s son Marin Halper for six years from 2002-2008. He establishes Hillary Clinton's close associate Sidney Blumenthal’s connections to and contacts with media, which promoted the Dossier charges. Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby, also had extensive contacts with key figures in the media and federal apparatus, including Blumenthal, with whom she had worked at Salon. Two months before the Dossier was released, Jacoby spent several hours in the White House with five people (Apelbaum identifies them) all of whom were related to the Dossier team. Key figures in Democratic circles, detailed by the author, were heavily involved in promoting Ukrainian interests here. Also passing around unverified dirt was Strobe Talbott, who handed off Cody Shearer’s trash Dossier (he’s Shearer’s brother-in-law, a former Deputy Secretary of State for Bill Clinton and the husband of Brooke Shearer known to have dug up dirt against Bill Clinton’s accusers.)" • Apelbaum also notes : "the continued mischaracterizations in the FISA warrant application of Steele’s motivation and role in an earlier FIFA investigation, for which Steele himself did no investigative work but merely repackaged work done by others but was paid $270,000 by the FBI. This is critical because in the application, these omissions undercut the credibility of the work on which the application was based. In fact, in producing the Dossier, Steele had no direct contacts inside Russia. He relied on “[Nellie] Ohr, Baumgartner, and Ukrainian sources to generate his so-called ‘raw intelligence.’ ” • Almost from the start, reports Feldman ; "the Dossier operatives, through their friends, were feeding tidbits of this unverified nonsense to willing accomplices in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, MSNBC, The New Yorker, and CNN....Fusion appears, in fact, to have paid reporters five-digit figures in three cases. We still don’t know which publications or reporters were on the take." • In fact, just last Friday Molly Hemingway of The Federalist and Fox News tweeted : @MZHemingway. Some media fell hook, line and sinker for the Clinton/DNC information campaign -- CNN, WP, NYT, NBC among them. They are understandably embarrassed to cover the real story. But they should. Better late than never.12:06 PM - 11 Aug 2018." • Apelbaum reveals somthing I had not read before -- Nellie Ohr had a ham radio license that only allowed her to operate in a 10-mile radius and was obviously designed to preclude NSA from recording her contacts over the phone or internet. The range of her operations was sufficient to allow her to communicate with all the offices of the federal government located in downtown DC. And she could extend its reach up to 20 miles if she needed to. • The Dossier Cabal thought of everything. As Feldman says : "Once you see the vast network of Democratic operatives, officials, former officials, media, foreign intelligence operatives, and former operatives involved in this Big Lie and how they used it to spy on the opposition and tar and beset the President you can only wish that the reports that he’s about to declassify what so far has remained obscured, especially the FISA warrant applications, comes to pass sooner, rather than later." • • • BRUCE OHR, CHRISTOPHER STEELE AND THE DOSSIER CABAL. Chairman Bob Goodlatte of the House Judiciary Committee has reportedly subpoenaed Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, and GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson, as well as former FBI and DOJ officials including Jim Baker, Jonathan Moffa, and George Tosca. • Breitbart picks up the threads of the Dossier Cabal story, reporting on Monday that : "Justice Department Official Bruce Ohr is expected to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee on August 28 about his relationship with Trump Dossier author Christopher Steele, according to Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC). 'DOJ official Bruce Ohr will come before Congress on August 28 to answer why he had 60+ contacts with Dossier author Chris Steele, as far back as January 2016. He owes the American public the full truth,' Meadows tweeted Friday." • Breitbart says lawmakers "believe Ohr is key to finding out how the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid Fusion GPS and Steele to fuel a conspiracy of Trump campaign collusion with Russians at the top levels of the Justice Department and the FBI." • House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) dropped a bombshell on Sunday to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo : "So here you have information flowing from the Clinton campaign from the Russians, likely -- I believe was handed DIRECTLY FROM RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA ARMS TO THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN, fed into the top levels of the FBI and Department of Justice to open up a counter-intelligence investigation into a political campaign that has now polluted nearly every top official at the DOJ and FBI over the course of the last couple years. It is absolutely amazing..." • Russian propaganda fed directly to the Hillary campaign...THAT is a real table-turner. Breitbart says : "During the 2016 election, Ohr served as associate deputy attorney general, and as an assistant to former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein....He was also dual-hatted as the director of the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Ohr’s contacts with Steele, an ex-British spy, are said to date back more than a decade. Steele is a former FBI informant who had helped the FBI prosecute corruption by FIFA officials. But it is Ohr and Steele’s communications in 2016 that lawmakers are most interested in. Emails handed over to Congress by the Justice Department show that Ohr, Steele, and Simpson communicated throughout 2016, and Steele and Simpson were being paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump." • Breitbart cites the Washington Examiner that obtained the emails : "Steele emailed Ohr on January 12, 2016, about Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska. Steele seemed to be working for Deripaska, who was seeking a visa to attend an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in the United States. The US had revoked Deripaska’s visa years earlier, reportedly on the basis of his suspected involvement with Russian organized crime. 'I heard from Adam WALDMAN [a Deripaska lawyer/lobbyist] yesterday that [Oleg Deripaska] is applying for another official US visa ice [sic] APEC business at the end of February,' Steele wrote Ohr. He mentioned that Deripaska was being 'encouraged by the Agency guys who told Adam that the [US government] stance on [Deripaska] is softening....A positive development it seems.” • According to Breitbart and Washington Examiner : "Steele would again email Ohr on February 8, 2016, to tell him that 'our old friend [Oleg Deripaska] apparently has been granted another official visa to come to the US later this month.' He added, 'as far as I’m concerned, this is good news all round although as before, it would be helpful if you could monitor it and let me know if any complications arise.' Ohr promised Steele 'to the extent I can I will keep an eye on the situation.' Steele wrote Ohr again on February 21, 2016, telling Ohr that he had talked to Waldman and Paul Hauser, Deripaska’s London lawyer, and said that there would be a US government meeting on Deripaska that week, which he expected Ohr would be attending. He told Ohr he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested the Russian magnate was not a 'tool' of the Kremlin....Steele next wrote Ohr on March 17, asking if he had any plans to visit Europe in the near future, where they could meet up. Ohr said there were no plans, but asked if he wanted to chat via phone. There would be no contact again for another three months." • Breitbart states that during those three months, a lot would change : "Candidate Donald Trump looked to be gaining momentum to become the presumptive nominee. Manafort would join his campaign. Trump would announce his foreign policy team, which included Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, who were virtually unknown to the nation. Conservative donor Paul Singer would stop funding Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump. In April, Fusion GPS would approach the Clinton campaign and the DNC about continuing the research. The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through their law firm Perkins Coie, would hire Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s ties with Russia. Fusion GPS would hire Steele to conduct that research." • When Steele began to communicate with Ohr next, Breitbart states that : "it would increasingly be about the research he was doing on Trump, that would come to form the Dossier. He contacted Ohr on July 1, 2016. 'I am seeing [redacted] in London next week to discuss ongoing business,' he wrote, 'but there is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon! [Deripaska]' Steele said he would be coming to the US in August, but needed to talk to Ohr in the next few days. They spoke over the phone on July 7, 2016, between 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Steele would file installments of the Dossier on July 19 and 26, 2016. On July 27, 2016, Steele wrote Ohr to say he would be in Washington, DC, on business later that day, and asked if he and his wife Nellie would be free for breakfast on Saturday morning. They met for breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. According to investigative journalist Sara Carter [national and international award-winning investigative reporter whose stories cover national security, terrorism, immigration, etc, and who is a contributor on Fox News], Steele later wrote Ohr on July 30, 2016 : 'Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce. Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issue/s. Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help,' in reference to Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. The next day, on July 31, 2016, the FBI formally launched its investigation into the Trump campaign." • At some point, Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion GPS and receiving payments from Fusion GPS during the summer and fall of 2016. Breitbart says : "Nellie Ohr is a former professor and Russia expert. Steele would finish another installment of the Dossier on August 22. That same day, Fusion GPS’s Simpson would email Ohr on August 22, 2016, with the subject line, 'Can u ring,' with a phone number in the message. Ohr had some kind of contact with Simpson that day. Steele would finish another installment of the Dossier on September 14, 2016. Steele would write Ohr on September 16, 2016, to say he would be back in Washington soon 'on business of mutual interest.' Ohr said he would be out of town until September 21, 2016. Steele would contact him again on September 21, 2016, to say he was 'keen to meet up with you.' The two had breakfast on September 23, 2016." • Breitbart states that : "Steele would email Ohr on October 18, 2016, requesting to discuss, preferably by Skype, 'something quite urgent.' They spoke immediately thereafter. A few hours later, Steele emailed Ohr again, saying that Deripaska’s London lawyer, Paul Hauser, had asked Steele to forward to Ohr information about a dispute between the government of Ukraine and RUSAL, Deripaska’s aluminum company. 'Naturally, he [Hauser] wants to protect the client’s [Deripaska’s] interests and reputation,' Steele wrote. 'I pass it on for what it’s worth.' Ohr then asked Steele if they could talk again via Skype. They spoke again that day and the next day, October 19, 2016. Steele would finish Dossier installments on October 18, 19, and 20. The October 18 installment would allege that Russians offered Carter Page millions of dollars, and the October 19 and 20 installments alleged Manafort’s role in a collusion scheme." • • • THE DOSSIER CABAL FEEDS AN FBI / DOJ FISA SURVEILLANCE WARRANT REQUEST. In late October, the FBI would seek a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, using Steele’s research, which consisted of unverified allegations made by second and third-hand sources. Senior officials at the FBI and the DOJ signed off on the application. We know that the FBI cut ties with Steele sometime in early November 2016 for disclosing his relationship with the FBI to the media. The FBI told Steele he could not longer “operate to obtain any intelligence whatsoever on behalf of the FBI.” However, Ohr and Steele would remain in contact, according to the communications. • Investigative journalist Sara Carter says a handwritten note suggests that in November 2016, Ohr may have met with FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, who would later interview former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Breitbart states that : "On November 21, 2016, Ohr would receive an email from a State Department official who worked in the Bureau of European Affairs in the State Department, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec. She sent Ohr information on a Russian-born executive, Simon Kukes, who contributed more than $250,000 to Trump-supporting organizations. Kavalec told Ohr in a follow-up email that she was 're-looking at my notes from my convo with Chris Steele' and that that Kukes had a connection to a Russian emigre, Serge Millian, who was the head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. Millian is reportedly the source for the 'golden showers' allegation. [He was in contact with George Papadopoulos.] Ohr would call Simpson on December 8, 2016, to set up a coffee meeting for the next day, December 9, 2016. Two days later, Simpson would send Nellie Ohr an email, on December 11, 2016, with a ThinkProgress article headlined, 'Why has the NRA been cozying up to Russia?' She responded, 'Thank you!' Simpson responded the next day with, 'Please ring if you can.' Ohr forwarded the email to her husband, saying, 'I assume Glenn means you not me.' Ohr spoke with Simpson on December 12, 2016. Steele finished his final Dossier installment on December 13, 2016, which alleged that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague as part of the collusion scheme." • The amazing string of Ohr / Steele contacts goes on. Breitbart reports that : "Steele would next email Ohr on inauguration day, January 20, 2017, with 'Can you call me please?' He reportedly texted Ohr on January 31, 2017 : 'B, doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re-SY,' in reference to President Trump’s firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. 'Just want to check you are OK, still in the situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues,' Steele texted. Ohr reportedly replied, 'I’m still here and able to help as discussed....I’ll let you know if that changes.' Steele reportedly wrote back : 'If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can’t allow our guy [we don't know who this is] to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous.' " • Breitbart raises a key question -- was Steele working for Deripaska at the same time he was putting together the Dossier dirt on Trump, which could mean that Deripaska, close to Vladimir Putin, may have fed him disinformation to include in the Dossier. Deripaska’s London lawyer, Hauser, has refused to clarify whether Steele worked for Deripaska, but has said that neither he or his firm was involved with the Dossier. • Sara Carter also reported that the emails and handwritten notes suggest that the FBI used Ohr as a conduit to Steele, even after he was terminated as a source. She wrote : "These revelations raise many serious questions, among them : Who at the FBI authorized the continued use of Steele? And who at the DOJ allowed Ohr to be used as a source in an FBI investigation spun from a document produced by a foreign spy at the behest of Fusion GPS, who employed Ohr’s wife?” • In July, under questioning by Representative Jim Jordan, Strzok admitted that the FBI had gotten parts of the Dossier from Ohr. Jordan told Sara Carter about Ohr : “I think he’s a key guy that we just have to depose for questioning.” • House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has called on President Trump to declassify information so it can be released, such as the document the FBI used to launch the investigation into Trump, which allegedly did not include any intelligence showing collusion. He has also called for the whole surveillance application on Carter Page -- included parts redacted by the DOJ -- to be declassified, so that Americans can see what the FBI included and did not include to justify spying on the Trump campaign. Nunes says : “We’re going to have to have, I think, an unprecedented amount of information declassified because the media is just not covering this topic. Nunes says the DOJ and FBI are “slowly” providing information : “But we’re going to have to have all of this information declassified. And, really, we need an investigation into these top level people as to how somebody concocted the idea that it’s OK to take information from one political campaign and use it to open up an investigation on the other political -- on somebody else’s opposing political party. We have to have a strong Department of Justice and a strong FBI that stays out of politics....the Department of Justice and the FBI need to decide whether or not they want to be part of the clean-up crew or the cover-up crew.” • American Thinkler's Clarice Feldman goes a step farther : "If the Department of Justice balks at permitting the testimony of those still in its employ, Rod Rosenstein should be forced to give an open explanation of why this cover-up is continuing. If it’s to hide malfeasance and incompetence in the agency, as it appears to be, the President should and likely will declassify and release it all. This game has gone on too long. Indeed, the majority of Americans want this Mueller dog and pony show (now floundering in yet another court in the Manafort 'non-collusion' case) over. The longer this goes on, the more the FBI suffers public disaffection." When President Trump tweeted : "?Verified account @realDonaldTrump. Will the FBI ever recover it’s once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!" Clarice Feldman said : "It’s impossible for me not to agree with the President’s sentiments." • President Trump leveled a hammering attack Saturday on Dossier author Christopher Steele, the media, and DOJ's Bruce Ohr, but also on Attorney General Jeff Sessions : "....Do you believe Nelly worked for Fusion and her husband STILL WORKS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF “JUSTICE.” I have never seen anything so Rigged in my life. Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action. It is all starting to be revealed - not pretty. IG Report soon? Witch Hunt!" • • • EVIDENCE THAT TRUMP TOWER MEETING WAS SET UP BY HILLARY OPERATIVES. WND reported on Tuesday that : "Newly released records and a pattern of efforts by Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures to connect the Trump campaign to Russia indicate the infamous Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign staff may have been a set-up. Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations reported the first line of evidence includes emails, texts and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice. The records, he said, show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, the research firm paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to create the still-unverified 'Dossier' of dirt on Trump obtained from Russian operatives. Smith noted the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking Trump campaign staff, including Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer is cited as key evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton. But Smith contends a growing body of evidence indicates 'the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it.'....Beginning in March, 2016, FBI and Western intelligence sources, along with the Clinton campaign, approached the Trump team promising dirt on Clinton. The Trump Tower meeting apparently was the one instance in which the Trump campaign expressed a willingness to receive incriminating information on the Democratic Party nominee....Smith wrote. 'At the center of it all was Fusion GPS, which had two clients whose interests were served by the Trump Tower meeting : the Russians and the Clinton campaign.' Smith pointed out that in sworn Senate testimony last year, Simpson claimed the Trump Tower meeting corroborated one of the key claims made in the reports filed by Steele : 'Trump and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.' Simpson, however, also testified he had no knowledge of the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others until it was reported a year later. Smith said there is reason to doubt that account, because the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was his client. Veselnitskaya has publicly stated that in the discussion at Trump Tower she used talking points developed by Simpson for the Russian government. Simpson also has testified that he had dinner with Veselnitskaya the night before the Trump Tower meeting and the night after, Smith noted. The Dossier, however, claims Donald Trump himself, campaign manager Paul Manafort and Carter Page were in clandestine contact with the Russian government. If that were the case, former FBI agent Mark Wauck told RealClearInvestigations, it’s not clear why the Russian government needed British music publicist Rob Goldstone to entice Donald Trump Jr. to the meeting. 'And why would Moscow need to send a Russian lawyer who didn’t speak English to Trump Tower? That tends to confirm that the meeting was intended as a set-up.' ” • WHY, indeed. And, the new-to-Swamp-politics Donald Jr fell into the set-up trap. • • • THE FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION AND POLITICS. In the last two days, we have had an enormous amount of information opened to us about the illegal collusion of the FBI / DOJ Deep Staters and the Hillary campaign and Democratic National Committee and their paid political smear experts. But, August 15 has a separate importancel. It is the day when Catholics celebrate the direct assumption of the Virgin Mary into the presence of God at her death. In most of Europe it's a national holiday. But, this year, we are reminded that even religion has political connotations. • Gatestone Institute's Giulio Meotti, an Italian author, wrote last Friday : "That 140,000 Moslems recently gathered in England for a public prayer event organized by a mosque known for its extremism and links to jihadi terrorists, should not only alarm the British authorities, but those in other European countries as well. A few months ago, a global media tempest erupted after Polish Catholics held a mass public prayer event across the country. The BBC deemed it 'controversial,' due to 'concerns it could be seen as endorsing the state's refusal to let in Moslem migrants.' The same controversy, however, did not erupt in Britain when 140,000 Moslems prayed in Birmingham's Small Heath Park, in an event organized by the Green Lane Mosque to mark the end of Ramadan." • In addition, said Meotti : "France is debating whether or not to block prayer on the street. 'They will not have prayers on the street, we will prevent street praying,' Interior Minister Gerard Collomb announced. 'Public space cannot be taken over in this way,' said the president of the Paris regional council, Valérie Pécresse, who led a protest by councilors and MPs. In Italy, hundreds of Moslems prayed next to the Colosseum, and Moslem prayers were held in front of Milan's Cathedral." • Meotti says the numbers are large : "When Moslems throughout Europe celebrated the final day of Islam's holy month of Ramadan with public prayers, city squares -- from Naples (Italy) to Nice (France) -- overflowed. The annual Birmingham event began in 2012 with 12,000 faithful. Two years later, the number of the faithful rose to 40,000. In 2015, it was 70,000. In 2016, the number was 90,000. In 2017, it was 100,000. In 2018, the number was 140,000. Next year? 'While the two [local] churches are nearly empty, the Brune Street Estate mosque has a different problem -- overcrowding,' noted The Daily Mail, exposing the situation in London. 'The mosque itself is little more than a small room rented in a community centre, and it can hold only 100. However, on Fridays, those numbers swell to three to four times the room's capacity, so the worshippers spill out onto the street, where they take up around the same amount of space as the size of the near-empty St Mary's [Church] down the road.' " • As Meotti points out, public prayer is not a "normal" manifestation of the legitimate Western freedom of worship. Through these public events, some extremist Moslems seem to be presenting an alternative to Europe's secularism. And Meotti asks : "How does this compare to the Middle East and North Africa? In Tunisia, praying in the street has been banned. And in Egypt, preaching from 20,000 'storefront mosques' was banned throughout Ramadan. 'Salafis and Moslem Brotherhood members took control of many of these mosques and have continued to use them as platforms to broadcast their religious misconceptions,' Jaber Taya, spokesman of Egypt's Ministry of Religious Endowments, said. These Arab countries know better than Europe that to contain extremism, it is crucial to control the street." • Yet, in Birmingham, which Meotti calls "one of England's most Islamized cities, the annual mass public prayer has taken place under the leadership of the Green Lane Mosque, headquarters of the radical Markali Jamat Ahi Hadith organization, which is affiliated with the supposedly 'moderate' Moslem Council of Britain. Not only does the Green Lane Mosque forbid women to wear trousers or use Facebook; its speakers preach hatred for non-Moslems. Abu Usamah, one of the primary imams at the mosque, was recorded saying, 'Osama Bin Laden, he's better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he's a Moslem; Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete; and advocating that homosexuals should be 'thrown off' mountains." • Meotti asks if it is just a coincidence that many British jihadists have come from Birmingham, which has also been called "the jihadist capital of Britain." • BUT, Giulio Meotti's questions about Brimingham and Britain should not be taken in isolation. WND reported last Thrusday that Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the Brooklyn imam whose son has been accused of training children at a New Mexico compound to commit school shootings contends the incident is being used as propaganda against Moslems, characterizing his son as “high strung” but not a religious extremist. WND states : "In a video posted Thursday on Facebook, Siraj Wahhaj of the At-Taqwa mosque insisted it amounted to a domestic situation that has nothing to do with Islam. As WND reported, the son of Siraj Wahhaj, Sirah ibn Wahhaj, is being held without bail with four other adult relatives for alleged child abuse and for training children to commit school shootings. Court documents say authorities who raided the compound Friday found 11 hungry children living in filthy conditions along with assault rifles. The elder Imam Siraj Wahhaj was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and, as WND has reported, is on record urging a violent overthrow of the 'filthy' US government, assisted by jihad warriors armed with Uzis. In the Facebook video, mosque spokesman Ali Abdul-Karim Judan asked Wahhaj to comment on how media is characterizing him, including references to the World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj called it 'fake news' and warned 'Allah is watching.' 'It’s not just against me, it’s against any Moslem group, any Moslem leader. So, today is Imam Siraj....Then you find out that it’s ICNA, it’s MAS, it’s CAIR. It’s this leader, it’s that leader,' he said, referring to the Islamic Circle of North America, the Moslem American Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, groups formed in the US by the Moslem Brotherhood that were named as co-conspirator in a plot to fund Hamas." In the Facebook interview, WND notes that the elder Wahhaj -- an unindicted co-conspirator who invited the infamous 'blind sheik' convicted in the bombing, Omar Abdel-Rahman, many times to address his congregation and who declared numerous times his support for violent jihad and the overthrow of the US government -- said he is trying to find out "What made my children act that that way?" It couldn't be his influence, could it ??? Taos County prosecutor Timothy Hasson charged the imam’s son “poses a great danger to the children found on the property as well as a threat to the community as a whole due to the presence of firearms and his intent to use these firearms in a violent and illegal manner.” Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe of Taos County said in a statement the children had been at the site for months without food and were so skinny their ribs were showing. • • • POPE BENEDICT XVI SPOKE ABOUT THE PROBLEM. But, he was not talking about unassimilated Moslems in our Christian countries. Father Robert P. Imbelli wrote an article in The Catholic Thing last Saturday. In it Father Imbellis quoted Pope Benedict, who was speaking to a German Church audience in 2011 : "We live at a time that is broadly characterized by a subliminal relativism that penetrates every area of life. Sometimes this relativism becomes aggressive, when it opposes those who say that they know where the truth or meaning of life is to be found. And we observe that this relativism exerts more and more influence on human relationships and on society. This is reflected, among other things, in the inconstancy and fragmentation of many people’s lives and in an exaggerated individualism. Many no longer seem capable of any form of self-denial or of making a sacrifice for others....The Church in Germany is superbly organized. But behind the structures, is there also a corresponding spiritual strength, the strength of faith in the living God? We must honestly admit that we have more than enough by way of structure but not enough by way of Spirit. I would add : the real crisis facing the Church in the western world is a crisis of faith. If we do not find a way of genuinely renewing our faith, all structural reform will remain ineffective." Pope Benedict, surely one of the 20th century's great Christian theologians, concluded : "To put it another way : for people of every era, and not just our own, the Christian faith is a scandal. That the eternal God should know us and care about us, that the intangible should at a particular moment have become tangible, that he who is immortal should have suffered and died on the Cross, that we who are mortal should be given the promise of resurrection and eternal life -- for people of any era, to believe all this is a bold claim. This scandal...cannot be eliminated unless one were to eliminate Christianity itself..." • • • DEAR READERS, Pope Benedict was not speaking only to a German audience. He was speaking to the Christian world. And, today, as Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, we are facing an assault on President Trump who defends Christianity, and also a worldwide assault on Christianity and Christians that must be countered with a reply of renewed faith -- faith in the unique role of Chrisitianity in bringing to people everywhere the Christian reality of God-given individual liberties -- a Christian axiom that is also the foundation of the American Republic, and of European democratic political institutions -- a faith that should not passively accept those who demean the individual human spirit created by God.