Month: February 2018

South Africa aka Zimbabwe 2.0 made the worst nightmare of minority white population become a sad and scary reality.

Twenty-four years ago, the Whites accepted to end the apartheid system under a clear and explicit guarantee, written in the Constitution, that their land would never be stolen.

That was then and this is now: on Tuesday, February 27, 2018, the South African parliament voted to move forward and amend the Constitution to allow for confiscation of land from the white minority without compensation.

According to News.com.au “The motion was brought by Julius Malema, leader of the radical Marxist opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, and passed overwhelmingly by 241 votes to 83 against. The only parties who did not support the motion were the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party.

It was amended but supported by the ruling African National Congress and new president Cyril Ramaphosa, who made land expropriation a key pillar of his policy platform after taking over from ousted PM Jacob Zuma earlier this month.

“The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice,” Mr Malema was quoted by News24 as telling parliament. “We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.”

Whites own the land because they colonized it and built it from nothing starting in the 1600’s. They literally “drained the swamps” covering many parts of South Africa and built giant farms in their place.

We know how ‘well’ that went for Zimbabwe when President Mugabe did the same thing.In 2000 Robert Mugabe shocked the world when he made dramatic changes to land ownership laws in Zimbabwe which resulted in thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers being forced to give up their farms and many to leave the country.
Those white farmers owned 70% of the most arable land in the country which they had inherited from a colonial past built on racial hierarchy.
A few years later, the reality sinked in.
According to The Guardian‘During the election campaign in March, the president said he was disappointed that only 44% of the land seized from whites was being cultivated and that the remainder was lying fallow.

He has also had to admit that Zimbabwe, once called “the breadbasket of Africa”, needs to import food to feed its population. For months he had boasted that the country had a bumper harvest and would “choke” if it was forced to take international food aid’

Part of the white farmes moved to Zambia, bringing with them the know- how and the desire to succeed. Now, under the new President Mnangagwa, the land reform seems to be ‘inevitable’ considering that land management is key to economic recovery.
Earlier this month, deputy finance minister Terence Mukupe travelled to neighbouring Zambia to engage former white Zimbabwean farmers who have settled there.

One would think that South Africa would learn from their neighbour’s mistakes. Instead of that, they would go the same way while expecting different results.

As probably known by now, Schiff Memo made it to the distribution channels. The political gymnastics continued with the Democrat memo , which has been – as expected- heavily redacted.

The Schiff Memo is quite vague regarding ‘multiple independent sources’ and has the timeline altered to fit their narrative. For example it stated that Steele played no role in FISA warrant and started sharing information with FBI in October.Actually, Steele first contacted FBI in July and August.

The Intelligence Committee issued their response.
According to Chairman Nunes:
“What you’re not going to see is anything that actually rejects what was actually in our memo” he said, adding that  “What you basically will read in the Democratic memo is they are advocating that it is okay for the FBI and DOJ to use for political dirt paid for by one campaign and use it against the other campaign.”

Abstract from the document:

CHARGE: “Christopher Steele’s raw intelligence reporting did not inform the FBI’s decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016.” (p. 1)
RESPONSE: As stated in the declassified GOP memo on FISA abuse, information about Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos “triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in the late July 2016 by FBI agent Peter Strzok.” Once underway, the investigation was fueled by Christopher Steele’s dossier, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Carter Page. DOJ and FBI’s reliance on the DNC- and Clinton-campaign funded dossier in court filings, not the overall investigation, is the focus of the GOP memo.

CHARGE: The Page FISA application “made only narrow use of information from Steele’s sources about Page’s specific activities in 2016.” (p. 1)
RESPONSE: Senators Grassley and Graham’s January 4, 2018, criminal referral of Steele confirms that “the bulk of the application consists of allegations against Page that were disclosed to the FBI by Mr. Steele and are also outlined in the Steele dossier.” Moreover, the Steele dossier was the FBI’s only source for the allegations in the initial application that Page met with particular Russians in July 2016.

CHARGE: DOJ disclosed to the Court the fact of and reason for Steele’s termination as an FBI source. (p. 2)
RESPONSE: As noted in the GOP memo on FISA abuse, Steele was suspended and then terminated for unauthorized disclosures to the media in October 2016. However, four times DOJ repeated to the FISA Court (FISC) an incorrect assessment that Steele had not been a source for
an earlier, September 2016 Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff. In May 2017, before the final renewal application, Steele admitted in a publicly-available U.K. court filing to personally briefing numerous U.S. media outlets, including Yahoo News, in September 2016. Moreover, Isikoff has publicly confirmed that Steele was a source for the Isikoff article used in the Page FISA application.

CHARGE: DOJ provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting. (p. 4)
RESPONSE: At the time of the initial application, all of the Steele dossier’s specific claims about Page—including that he met with Igor Sechin and Igor Diveykin in Moscow in July 2016—were uncorroborated by any independent source, and they remain unconfirmed.

CHARGE: DOJ provided the Court with “more than sufficient information to understand the political context of Steele’s research.” (p. 5)
RESPONSE: As clearly stated in the GOP memo, none of the Page FISA applications “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts.”
Instead, the FISA application relies on a convoluted statement buried in a footnote. This is clearly an attempt to avoid informing the Court, in a straightforward manner that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. (Taking a cue from DOJ and FBI, the Democrat memo omits any reference to the DNC or Clinton campaign.)
Moreover, the footnote obscures, rather than clarifies Steele’s political motivation—and what DOJ and FBI officials actually knew about the dossier’s political origins. The footnote “speculates” on the “likely” motivation of “U.S. Person”—Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson—while intimating that “Source #1”—Steele—was unaware “as to the motivation

Chairman Devin Nunes has my immense admiration for all the work he has done and continue doing on behalf of American people.

Nunes Statement on Release of Democrat Memo

Washington, February 24, 2018

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes issued the following statement today on the release of the Committee minority’s memo:

“The American people now clearly understand that the FBI used political dirt paid for by the Democratic Party to spy on an American citizen from the Republican Party. Furthermore, the FISA court was misled about Mr. Page’s past interactions with the FBI in which he helped build a case against Russian operatives in America who were brought to justice. It defies belief that the Department of Justice and FBI failed to provide information to a secret court that they had provided to an open federal court regarding their past interactions with Mr. Page.”

Source: https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=868