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2016

Who Is Putin’s Real Ally? By Roger L Simon

“Wait a minute. According to the sainted Times, one-fifth of U.S. uranium production now belongs to the Russians thanks to Ma and Pa Clinton?! If you wanted to talk treason, wouldn’t that be the textbook definition? Do the folks at the Democratic National Convention know about this?”

Oh, the vapors, the vapors! Donald Trump has done it again. He has a gone a bridge too far for the 150th time, but on this occasion taken us all the way across the Bering Straits to the very edge of the Gulag Archipelago. He has urged Vladimir Putin to reveal the contents of Hillary Clinton’s gazillion missing emails the FBI somehow couldn’t find.

Traitor! Traitor! yell the well-intentioned, like former SecDef Leon Panetta. This selfish yellow-haired plutocrat must be disqualified from the presidency!

Never mind that Putin would need no encouragement whatsoever from any outsider to hack the wide-open server of the former secretary of state, nor would the intelligence services of at least a dozen other first-world countries (they all do it—we were listening to Merkel’s cell phone ourselves, it will be recalled), not to mention the who-knows-how-many non-state actors and twelve-year-old high-tech whippersnappers with the skill to do this.

Never mind that Trump was undoubtedly far less interested in making friends with Putin than in calling attention to the obvious relationship between Hillary’s home-brew server and the similarly wide-open server of the DNC that Mrs. Clinton claimed to know nothing about. Her media lackeys on 60 Minutes made sure no one paid attention (hello, Scott Pelley!).

Meanwhile, discussion is curiously mute on a far more substantive alliance with Putin by, yes, the Clintons themselves that could actually change the balance of power in the world in a way far more dangerous than Trump mouthing off about Vladimir. It probably already has.

Michelle Obama and the Content of Her Character By Eileen F. Toplansky

Michelle Obama’s 2016 speech to the DNC stands in sharp contrast to an essay written in the early 1990s by Glenn Loury titled “Free at Last? A Personal Perspective on Race and Identity in America.” Loury recounts how, as a young black man growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he lacked the courage to stand up for a friend named Woody, who had “a Negro grandparent on each side of his family but looked like a typical white boy.” Woody never chose to pass as a white person yet, when both young men attended a political rally and Woody stood to speak “[h]e was cut short before finishing his first sentence by one of the dashiki-clad brothers-in-charge, who demanded to know how a ‘white’ got the authority to have an opinion about what black people should be doing. That was one of [the] problems, the brother said, we were always letting white people ‘peep our hole card,’ while we were never privy to their deliberations in the same way.” Loury explains that a

silence then fell over the room. The indignant brother asked if anyone could ‘vouch for this white boy.’ More excruciating silence ensued. Now was my moment of truth; Woody turned plaintively toward me, but I would not meet his eyes. To my eternal disgrace, I refused to speak up for him. He was asked to leave the meeting, and did so without uttering a word in his own defense.

In recalling this painful memory of “betraying someone he had known for a decade,” Loury describes how “…this desire to be regarded as genuinely black… dramatically altered [his] life. It narrowed the range of [his] earliest intellectual pursuits, distorted [his] relationships with other people, censored [his] political thought and expression, informed the way [he] dressed and spoke, and shaped [his] cultural interests. Some of this was inevitable and not all of it was bad, but in his experience the need to be affirmed by one’s racial peers can take on a pathological dimension.”

So what does this have to do with Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama? She and her husband have never evolved from their strident, all-consuming race-consciousness and “addiction to indignation.” As a student, “Miss Robinson wrote a senior thesis entitled ‘Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.'” Some excerpts from the thesis include the following:

“Predominantly white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments.”
“[My Princeton experiences] “will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”
“I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”
“In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community… I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture.”

Peter O’Brien: Blinded By The Sun

The solar-powered plane that recently concluded its much delayed and long overdue round-the-world flight was predictably touted as further ‘proof’ that green energy has come of age. The real-world appraisal is dour: a PR stunt to obscure the fact that ‘alternative technologies’ are going nowhere.
Just the other day, we were told history was made when the aircraft Solar Impulse 2 landed in Abu Dhabi after what was described as the first round-the-world flight by a solar powered plane. The epic journey commenced in March, 2015, and since that time the plane had spent a total of 23 days in the air. This was an achievement for which the aviation world waited a long time, quite literally, to applaud — both in the short and much longer-term.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted what is generally credited as the first sustained powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft, covering 39 metres. By 1905, the Wrights were able to cover 24 miles in 39 minutes 23 seconds. By 1916 the aeroplane had been matched the synchronised machine gun and become a potent instrument of war. A bare 65 years after the short hop at kitty Hawk, NASA put a man on the moon. The rapid progress was fuelled primarily by human imagination, wonderful new commercial opportunities and, of course, by two world wars. It was an extraordinarily rapid pace of development.

In 1925, John Logie Baird demonstrated his first prototype of a modern television set. His breakthrough, of course, relied on earlier technologies, the most important of which was the cathode ray tube first demonstrated in 1907. In 1928, the world’s first television station WGY commenced operation in Schenectady in upstate New York.

In 1932 the BBC commenced regular programming. TV broadcasts in London were on the air an average of four hours daily from 1936 to 1939. There were 12,000 to 15,000 receivers. Some sets in restaurants or bars might have 100 viewers for sport events. Broadcasts were suspended during the war and resumed in 1946. By the 1960s TV had become a ubiquitous part of modern life and by now its quality has improved exponentially.

A third example of technological advancement and commerce began in 1946, when ENIAC, the world’s first electronic general purpose computer was unveiled. It weighed 27 tons, occupied 167 square metres of space, used 150kw of electricity. Its construction cost almost US$7 million in today’s money, not least for its five million hand-soldered joints! It could multiply two 10 digit numbers in .0028 seconds. ENIAC was, of course, based on vacuum tubes and crystal diodes, which imposed a serious physical limitation on future progress. This impediment was overcome in 1955 with the development of the first fully transistorized computer, the Harwell Cadet, at the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment. The development if the integrated circuit in 1958 then opened the way to the rapid development of the microcomputer. The world went from ENIAC to Apple Mac in just 38 years! And the pace of technological advance in computing since then has been astronomical.

See where I’m going with this? Now consider other technologies, ones we are constantly told are on the very edge of becoming commercially viable.

Former Gitmo Detainee Shows Up in Venezuela Abu Wa’el Dhiab unexpectedly left his home in Uruguay, raising concerns By Taos Turner

A former Guantanamo Bay detainee who unexpectedly disappeared from Uruguay last month showed up in Venezuela on Tuesday, saying he wanted help traveling to Turkey, Uruguay’s Foreign Ministry said.

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, who was transferred by the Obama administration to Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2014, appeared at Uruguay’s consulate in Caracas and asked for assistance to fly to Turkey or some other country to be reunited with his family.

“He made it clear he has no interest in returning to Uruguay, but that he needs our country’s help,” the ministry said late Wednesday, adding that Venezuelan authorities were aware of the situation.

A spokesman for the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry in Caracas had said earlier that the office had no information about the former detainee’s arrival.

Uruguay’s foreign ministry said it wouldn’t fund Mr. Dhiab’s travel plans but that he could return to Montevideo, where his legal status as a refugee would still be valid.

Mr. Dhiab’s abrupt disappearance from Uruguay sparked weeks of speculation and concern about his intentions, leading several South American nations to try to determine his whereabouts. Brazil was especially interested as security is being heightened ahead of the Summer Olympic Games set to begin next week.

Once accused of being an al Qaeda militant, Mr. Dhiab is one of six former Guantanamo prisoners who were resettled in Uruguay as part a White House effort to close down the Cuba-based prison. The other five men remain in Uruguay.

Uruguayan officials have allowed the former detainees to move about freely.

Mr. Dhiab’s travel plans may raise additional concern, given Turkey’s porous border with Syria and its use as an entry point for volunteers looking to join Islamic State. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Other Clinton ‘Change’ No one in Philadelphia wants to talk about the Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton on Tuesday portrayed his wife as a “change maker” whose life has overflowed with good intentions and commitment to others. No one can spin a yarn like Bill, and for the believers it was a touching portrait. But if it’s true, why do the polls show that 68% of Americans don’t trust Hillary Clinton? That has to do with the rest of the story, which is how the Clintons have used politics to enrich themselves and retain power.

Nowhere is this clearer than at the words you didn’t hear Mr. Clinton speak: the Clinton Foundation. This supposedly philanthropic operation has become a metaphor for the Clinton business model of crony politics. The foundation is about producing a different kind of “change.”

No doubt the foundation does some charitable good, but this is incidental to its main purpose of promoting the Clinton political brand. Since its creation in 1997, the nominal nonprofit has served as a shadow Super Pac, designed to keep the Clintons in the national headlines, cover their travel expenses, and keep their retinue employed between elections.

The payroll has included Huma Abedin, who drew a State Department salary even as she managed politics at the foundation and is now vice-chairwoman of the Clinton campaign. Dennis Cheng raised money for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 bid, then became the foundation’s chief development officer and now leads Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 fundraising. Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff at State, sat on the foundation board. And don’t forget Sid Blumenthal, the longtime Clinton Svengali who was secretly advising Mrs. Clinton at State while drawing a foundation salary. This may not be illegal but the charity here is for the Clintons’ benefit.
The funding for this political operation has come from nearly every country and major company in the world. These contributors have the cover of giving to charity, when everybody knows the gifts are political tribute to a woman determined to be President. Donations to a charity aren’t governed by the same caps or restrictions as those that go to a traditional Super Pac. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren somehow overlooked this in their Monday night riffs against money in politics. CONTINUE AT SITE

Turkey: Good News, Bad News by Burak Bekdil

Turkish prosecutors are investigating people who allege on social media that the coup attempt was in fact a hoax.

In a massive purge, the government sacked more than 60,000 civil servants from the military, judiciary, police, schools and academia, including 1,577 faculty deans who were suspended. More than 10,000 people have been arrested and there are serious allegations of torture.

Witnesses told Amnesty International that captured military officers were raped by police, hundreds of soldiers were beaten, some detainees were denied food and water and access to lawyers for days. Turkish authorities also arrested 62 children and accused them of treason.

The good news is that the coup attempt failed and Turkey is not a third world dictatorship run by an unpredictable military general who loves to crush dissent. The bad news is that Turkey is run by an unpredictable, elected president who loves to crush dissent.

In 1853, John Russell quoted Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as saying that the Ottoman Empire was “a sick man — a very sick man,” in reference to the ailing empire’s fall into a state of decrepitude. Some 163 years after that, the modern Turkish state follows in the Ottoman steps.

Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, was staggering between a hybrid democracy and bitter authoritarianism. After the failed putsch of July 15, it is being dragged into worse darkness. The silly attempt gives Erdogan what he wanted: a pretext to go after every dissident Turk. A witch-hunt is badly shattering the democratic foundations of the country.

Taking advantage of the putsch attempt, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency that will run for a period of three months, with an option to extend it for another quarter of a year. Erdogan, declaring the state of emergency, promised to “clean out the cancer viruses like metastasis” in the body called Turkey. With the move for a state of emergency, Turkey also suspended the European Convention on Human Rights, citing Article 15 of the Convention, which stipulates:

Clinton Needs a Voice of her Own Unlike Hillary, Mr. Trump doesn’t know Obama-speak and doesn’t need deprogramming. Dorothy Rabinowitz

A lot can still happen at the Democratic convention, but nothing is likely to matter as much as Hillary Clinton’s look and tone, what she says—or perhaps more important—what she doesn’t say as she takes the stage Thursday night. Donald Trump, a man of iron predictability, faced no such test last week and delivered no surprises.

Not that there weren’t some striking moments in the glum enterprise that concluded in Cleveland, among them Melania Trump’s quickly famous speech. Also the contribution of Chris Christie, who functions periodically as the governor of New Jersey. Mr. Christie used his speaker’s spot to conduct a lengthy mock trial of Mrs. Clinton distinguished mainly for its unremitting tone of hysteria. It was a spectacle many Americans may remember should Mr. Christie become, as he apparently hopes, attorney general under Mr. Trump.

The Republican presidential candidate has one obvious advantage over Mrs. Clinton: He has never been in a position to absorb, as she has, the language, reflexes, certitudes, and high principles ready to be deployed on all occasions that are peculiar to the world of the Obama administration.

Not that Mr. Trump isn’t capable of embracing certain of the president’s views on America, first revealed in 2009 during Mr. Obama’s now-famous trip abroad to see heads of state and express regret for America’s offenses, known to history as the Obama apology tour. Those views of America as a nation in decline, virtually without allies, emerged ever more conspicuously during the president’s first term.

Last week Mr. Trump lashed out at NATO, then went on to argue that the U.S. shouldn’t be interfering in the business of other nations. And that we had so many failures of our own at home: Ferguson, the killing of police—so much. Who are we to tell the butchers and mass murderers of the world what to do?

Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump doesn’t know Obama-speak and doesn’t need deprogramming. He hasn’t absorbed the language that Americans recognize well after eight years. They have heard through all these years the nostrums, the reflexive high-minded oratory, that have come with every terror attack. They can hear it all over again in Mrs. Clinton.

Never was this clearer than in the days following the terrorist assault in Nice, when she described the attack as cowardly and vowed that we would never allow terrorists to undermine our egalitarian and democratic values. Such assertions always feel, and are, strangely off the point, which is the horror of the atrocity that has taken place.

The activism industry:Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

Earlier this month, the visitors’ log of the Jewish part of Hebron enjoyed a boost as activists, largely American Jews, ‎descended on the ancient Jewish city. Not as tourists to the Cave of the Patriarchs, or for contemplation ‎or prayer at the Avraham Avinu synagogue, but to organize a protest against “Israel’s crimes” and to support the Palestinian community.

There was no mention of the ‎fact that only 3% of Hebron is accessible to Jews and the remaining 97% is Palestinian, ‎with a small area functioning as a military buffer zone, or that Palestinian Hebron has ‎functioned as a terrorist hub for some time. The group’s main objective, ‎according to their spokesperson, was to take over an old Palestinian factory, now part of ‎the buffer zone, and turn it into a movie theater.

Some of the activists brought ‎popcorn labeled “Cinema Hebron” with them as a prop to drive the point home. ‎There were 45 American Jewish activists and a handful from various other countries. They did their best to provoke the authorities in the already volatile city, but while a ‎few activists with Israeli citizenship were detained and charged with presence in a ‎closed military zone and organizing an illegal protest, the others were merely banned from ‎entering Hebron for two weeks and then permitted to return to Tel Aviv. ‎No violence erupted, and despite a heavy media presence, the event could be ‎considered a calm affair. At around 2 p.m. the activists left Hebron to go have lunch, and, ‎according to their spokesperson, they have no plans to come back to complete the movie theater task.

The leaders of this pack were Peter Beinart, an American left-wing activist and self-‎proclaimed intellectual, and Amna Farooqi, the Muslim president of J Street U. The activists belonged to such well-known groups as J Street, the New Israel Fund and Jewish ‎Voice for Peace, an organization that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions ‎movement against Israel. During the hours spent in Hebron, Beinart said he was very happy with what they had achieved that day and that he saw this as ‎proof of not only the success of their message, but also of a “new leadership” emerging ‎within the Jewish world. ‎

Beinart has every reason to be happy and content, because he is a major player in ‎one of the world’s most lucrative and trendy industries — conflict and activism. I have ‎personally seen an example of this industry much closer to home, as my home of Sweden is also the home of the infamous Gaza flotilla, known as “Ship to Gaza,” involving well-known intellectuals, ‎politicians and pundits far more concerned with an idea than with actual results. This is clearly demonstrated by their cargo manifest, which includes 10-year-old antibiotics, a few footballs, canned goods, a second-hand fridge and a ‎generator — a considerably more humble contribution than the 700 trucks entering Gaza ‎every day from Israel, carrying building material, food, medicine and clothes.

The VA’s Luxury Art Obsession By Adam Andrzejewski **** must read

In the now-infamous VA scandal of 2012-2015, the nation was appalled to learn that 1,000 veterans died while waiting to see a doctor. Tragically, many calls to the suicide assistance hotline were answered by voicemail. The health claim appeals process was known as “the hamster wheel” and the appointment books were cooked in seven of every ten clinics.

Yet, in the midst of these horrific failings the VA managed to spend $20 million on high-end art over the last ten years – with $16 million spent during the Obama years.

A joint investigation by COX Media Washington, D.C. and our organization, OpenTheBooks.com found that the VA bought Christmas trees priced like cars and sculptures that cost more than five-bedroom homes. Then, there’s the two sculptures – with a price tag of $670,000 – for a VA center serving veterans who are blind.

Recently at Forbes, we released our oversight report entitled, “The VA Scandal Two Years Later.” The VA added 39,454 new positions to their payroll between 2012-2015, but fewer than one in 11 of these new positions (3,591) were ‘Medical Officers,’ i.e. doctors. Today, nearly 500,000 sick veterans are still wait-listed for an appointment because there just aren’t enough doctors.

Instead of hiring doctors to help triage backlogged veterans, the VA’s bonus-happy bureaucracy spent millions of dollars on art. During and immediately following its notorious scandal, the VA procured:
A twenty-seven foot artificial Christmas tree costing $21,000 (2011).

62 “local image” pictures for the San Francisco VA facility costing $32,000 (2014).
A “Ribbons of Honor” glass sculpture with five glass panels symbolic of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard by Weet Design for a VA outpatient center in Anchorage, AK costing $100,000 (2010). Artwork for the “interior commons wall” by Red Door Studio costing $65,000 (2009) and artwork for the “canteen” by artist David Deroux costing $30,000 (2009).
Fabrication and installation of the “Gradient Arc” for the VA Palo Alto Health Care System costing $330,775 (2014). “Harbor” glass and light art by Studio GH costing $220,000 (2014) – showcased in this video. A $482,960 “rock sculpture” procured during courtyard renovation and $115,600 spent on “art consultants” for the Palo Alto facility.

Nonie Darwish Moment: Facebook Punishes Me For Violating Sharia. I committed a thought crime about Islam.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Nonie Darwish Moment with Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.http://jamieglazov.com/2016/07/28/nonie-darwish-moment-facebook-punishes-me-for-violating-sharia/

Nonie discusses Facebook Punishes Me For Violating Sharia,sharing how she was banned for committing a thought crime about Islam.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Nonie discuss: Why is Obama Defending Islam at Any Cost?, revealing the true reason the Radical-in-Chief positions Muslims as victims in every speech on terror: