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August 2017

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Ishmael Jones: Phoniness of the Trump Dossier

By on August 2nd, 2017

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/07/ishmael-jones-phoniness-of-the-trump-dossier.php

Ishmael Jones writes to comment on the infamous Trump “dossier.” It is one of the keys to the “collusion” hysteria and related “fake news” with which we have been inundated since the 2016 election. Mr. Jones is the pseudonymous former CIA officer and author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. He notes that his comments here are based upon his experience in writing “lots of intelligence reports” and that they have been approved by the CIA for publication. Mr. Jones writes:

The media continue to produce smoke in their efforts to accuse President Trump of collusion with the Russian government. But the founding document – the core set of beliefs – of the collusion story remains the infamous Russian Dossier, which is a fabrication.

I have written before on the nothingness of the reporting on Russian collusion and I want to make it clear how phony this Dossier is from the point of view of an intelligence officer.

I do not have a magical espionage sixth sense. Rather, it is the same instinct that we all have. If you know how to fly a plane, or plant roses, or collect stamps, or play the saxophone, you have an instinctive and visceral awareness when you encounter false information involving your specialty.

For fun, you can click on these photographs, which will instinctively make you think something’s not right here. That’s the same feeling I get when I watch CNN’s reporting on intelligence issues.

Spies don’t even use the word “dossier.” They keep information in “files,” just like everybody else. English is such a rich language that we can use different words for the same object when we want to gussy things up. We don’t “eat raw cow,” we “dine upon steak tartare.” “Dossier” makes this fabrication sound better.

The heading on the Dossier says CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE which sounds official except I’ve never seen such a heading.

The first page of the Dossier gets right down to business with the golden showers accusation, that Donald Trump had women urinate upon him for his personal enjoyment. Sure, crazy things can happen, but the professional’s first instinct is skepticism. Crazy accusations with no details, no proof, no names, and no sourcing mean it didn’t happen.

The CIA has professional reports officers who review intelligence reporting. It’s as if they carry rulers, ready to rap the knuckles of any CIA case officer who writes a report like the Dossier. They demand details and the who, what, when, why, and where.

Fabrications are everywhere in both espionage and journalism. Fabricators create this stuff relentlessly for profit. Even before Al Gore invented the Internet, fabricated stories were everywhere.

Many journalists have the same standards as CIA reports officers, which is why so many journalists had already seen and dismissed the Dossier, before CNN finally took the bait.

The Dossier occasionally uses the passive voice such as “The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones …” or “there had been talk in the Kremlin…” The passive voice makes CIA reports officers howl, “Who knew it, why did they know it, how did they know it!” Reports officers hate the passive voice because it is misleading and weaselly. No professional spy writes in the passive voice.

The Dossier is sprinkled with words like “kompromat” and “plausible deniability” which sound like spy words but spies don’t write this way.

Fabricators try to include a bit of truth in their reporting to make the false reporting appear true. Some of the Dossier’s observations, such as that the Russians spy on other nations, are true but add nothing. Those few details that the Dossier contains have been disproven. Trump’s lawyer did not travel to Prague for a meeting with Russians, for example. Trump associates and acquaintances mentioned in the Dossier turned out to have no connection to the described events.

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MY SAY: RUSSIAMON

By on August 2nd, 2017

Remember the movie “Rashomon” where four people recount totally different versions of the same incident? Now we have “Russiamon” where depending on who and what you read and who and what you watch we get totally different versions.

Which collusion colluded the most?

A.Did Hillary collude with the Russians by selling them high grade uranium?

B.Did Jared and Donald Trump Jr. collude by listening to a a “high level” lowlife from Russia?

C.Did Debbie Wasserman Schultz collude with Russia through an aide?

D. Was Melania Trump confessing collusion by wearing a bright red suit in France? Red is the color symbol for Communism.

As I said, depends what you watch and what you read…..

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LSU Conference Forces Engineers to Take ‘Microaggression’ Workshop “At one point they had us write a microaggression that we gave or someone gave us.” Mark Tapson

By on August 2nd, 2017

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267454/lsu-conference-forces-engineers-take-mark-tapson

Louisiana State University hosted its second annual Consortium for Innovation in Manufacturing and Materials (CIMM) RII Symposium last week, and some engineering students were confused by the addition of an hour-long workshop on microaggressions, according to Campus Reform.

A befuddled graduate student who went by the user name “CuseTiger” at TigerDroppings, a forum for LSU fans, posed the question, “Who all has had implicit bias, sterotypes, microinsults, microaggressions, and [T]itle IX training? Cause I’m at an engineering symposium in lod cook today and have been dealing with snowflakes and trigger warnings all morning. They scheduled an hour for us to learn about all this.”

CuseTiger added a screenshot of the Symposium’s agenda, which included the “workshop/panel discussion” on “implicit bias, stereotypes, microinsults, microaggressions, [and] Title IX” just before the conference broke for lunch.

“At one point they had us write a microaggression that we gave or someone gave us,” the post continued, providing several pictures of a bulletin board covered with sticky notes.

“When people learn that I am from Colorado, they assume I smoke weed,” wrote one participant, while others complained about stereotyping such as “I thought all Asians were good at math” and “You probably lived on the west side of campus, right?”

Campus Reform has more:

Sara Hernandez, the Associate Dean for Inclusion and Student Engagement at Cornell University, and Dr. Jenna Carpenter, the Dean of Engineering at Campbell University, presented the implicit bias workshop as part of their roles with CIMM’s Diversity Advisory Council (DAC).

Carpenter told Campus Reform that the DAC recommends everybody be educated about the impacts of implicit bias, asserting that “When faculty and students aren’t aware of implicit bias, they unwittingly engage in behaviors that continue the discrimination and discouragement of women and underrepresented minorities in science, mathematics, and engineering disciplines.”

Dr. Pedro Derosa, who chaired the panel discussion, agreed that “social stereotypes” are the main reason for the lack of women and minorities in STEM fields, explicitly rejecting the notion that the observed differences have anything to do with qualities inherent to any of those groups.

“When implicit biases result in entire groups being underpaid or being subjected to higher scrutiny or standards or being excluded from opportunities altogether, we have a problem,” Derosa said.

Emory University professor Scott Lilienfeld, who published a research paper earlier this year calling for “a moratorium on microaggression training” and “abandonment of the term ‘microaggression,’” told Campus Reform that this approach is more likely to “exacerbate racial tensions” by “sensitizing” students to perceived offenses. Exactly.

Rather than trying to promote diversity through such workshops on microaggressions and implicit bias, notes Campus Reform, Lilienfeld suggested that a more effective approach would be for individual professors to lead by example, saying, “Faculty need to invest more time, energy, and effort in mentoring and encouraging minorities and women.”

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Kill the Alligators, Then Drain the Swamp Deeds, not words, are the best defense. Bruce Thornton

By on August 2nd, 2017

Donald Trump campaigned on the promise to “drain the swamp” ––the D.C. establishment made up of most Congressmen from both parties, employees of executive agencies and bureaus, the political appointees who head up those agencies, and the hordes of lobbyists, fundraisers, Congressional staffers, “consultants,” “journalists,” and pundits. These are the “Beltway insiders” or the “political establishment” whose natural habitat is the swamp. These are the alligators Trump needs to get rid of.

Of course, many of these D.C. denizens of the establishment are permanent dwellers in the swamp, beyond the reach of the president or even Congress. Besides, monitoring Congressmen should be the business of their constituents, who should hold them accountable. But too often voters like the pork their alligators bring back to their states or districts. As for pundits, consultants, lobbyists, fundraisers, and journos, they are employees of private businesses, with the right of political free speech and association. Keeping them in line is the responsibility of citizens trading in the market-place of ideas, and imposing ballot-box accountability to punish the office-holders corrupted by these parasites.

Then there are 2.1 million federal employees. They manage the federal government’s agencies, execute the laws that they, not Congressmen, actually write, and judge whether the rest of us comply––collapsing together and usurping the separation of powers central to our Constitutional order. And they do so without any accountability to the voters who pay their handsome salaries and Cadillac benefits (85% higher in value than private employees’). They are, no surprise, stalwart supporters of big-government Democrats, to whom this last election they gave 95% of their political donations. And don’t forget the 3.7 million federal contract-workers who also do the federal Leviathan’s bidding.

Something could be done about reducing the size and intrusive scope of this bureaucratic behemoth. Trump has made a good start. He has left many vacancies open with a hiring freeze, and has proposed reducing some agency budgets in order to starve the beast and prune the regulations that empower it. In his 2018 budget proposal he also called for eliminating cost of living raises for employees in the Federal Employee Retirement System, cutting the Civil Service Retirement System’s COLAs by 0.5%, and making employees contribute more to their retirement annuities. If Congress approves, of course. Good luck with that. But he has not yet tackled reducing the more shadowy contract workers, although some are a legitimate resource for the military. When it comes to domestic affairs, however, they carry out the bidding of the federal agencies while most of us citizens have no clue who they are or what they’re up to.

As for Congress, it could pass legislation changing the laws that make federal employees almost untouchable. Like unionized teachers and professors, federal employees benefit from both union protections and virtual tenure––the civil service regulations that make disciplining or firing federal workers time-consuming and costly. There’s nothing to keep Congress from abolishing unions for federal employees, which were created 55 years ago by John Kennedy through an executive order. One of Ronald Reagan’s boldest and most consequential domestic actions came in 1981 when he fired nearly 12,000 air traffic controllers and decertified their union. A Republican Congress should likewise defang this reliably Democrat voting bloc.

Political appointees are another matter, since they’re easier to get rid of. They serve at the pleasure of the Chief Executive. There is no law that keeps the president from firing political appointees. There may be political costs, as Richard Nixon found out, but there are no Constitutional limits, outside of criminal behavior, on the reasons why he fires a political appointee. This is where Trump has been remiss.

Start with former FBI director James Comey, who immediately after the inauguration should have heard Trump’s trademark “You’re fired!” Comey’s careerism and arrogance made him mishandle the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s patent violations of the laws governing classified material, and her probable obstructions of justice. An indictment could have been justified based simply on the information already made public. Indeed, Comey himself laid out the predicates for indictment in his infamous July 2016 announcement. Then he rewrote the relevant statute to let Clinton off the hook, simply to spare AG Loretta Lynch, who had met with Bill Clinton in a private confab in an airplane, the pretext Comey used for usurping the prosecutor’s role. Along the way he violated the foundation of any free government––equality before the law.

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Genetically Engineered Wheat Reduces Need for Fertilizer, Helps Environment Alex Berezow

By on August 2nd, 2017

One of the troubles with agriculture is the need for farmers to apply fertilizer. The plants don’t soak up all of it, which inevitably results in fertilizer running off into lakes and rivers.

That’s problematic not just because it is wasteful of the farmer’s precious financial resources, but because it is also wasteful of the planet’s finite supply of phosphorus. Worse, when phosphorus and other nutrients make their way into bodies of water, they can trigger nasty algal blooms, which kicks off a chain reaction known as eutrophication. As the algae die off, they are decomposed by bacteria that use up much of the oxygen, suffocating animals and resulting in massive fish kills. (See image, below right1.)

Decreasing the amount of applied fertilizer is therefore a goal that farmers and environmentalists should support. Now, a team of Pakistani researchers has genetically engineered a strain of wheat that should require less fertilizer.

Transgenic Wheat Is More Phosphorus Efficient

Depending on the type of soil, a phosphorus-containing compound called phytate may be in abundant supply. However, plants are largely unable to use it. The researchers turned to a fungus, Aspergillus japonicus, which produces an enzyme, called phytase, that breaks down phytate. The authors figured that this enzyme could help free up the phosphorus locked up inside phytate.

So the team inserted the fungal gene for phytase into wheat. They tweaked the gene so that it was only “turned on” in the roots, and they added another tweak that caused the enzyme encoded by the gene to be secreted into the environment. The result was the creation of wheat plants with high phytase content in their roots, some of which was oozed into the soil. The enzyme would then break down phytate and release the phosphorus, which the wheat could soak up.

When compared to control plants grown in the presence of phytate, the genetically engineered plants grew bigger and contained more phosphorus. The best-performing plant had 118% greater phosphorus efficiency than the control plants2.

Therefore, the authors successfully demonstrated that their transgenic plants could grow quite well in soil containing phytate, a condition that would be considered “phosphorus deficient” for other plants. The next step would be to conduct field trials to verify that, under real-world conditions, their plants require less fertilizer than other crops. Furthermore, they should examine how secreted phytase affects the soil microbiome and soil quality. Finally, the team should strongly consider commercialization, assuming they can find a company interested enough3.

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Trump’s Win Squelched the Anti-GMO movement Out: meaningless warning labels. In: science and innovation. By Julie Kelly see note please

By on August 2nd, 2017

There is a tragedy here. The anti genetically modified crops movement relegated millions in Africa to malnutrition and famine. Nobel Laureate, and Congressional Medal of Freedom Winner, Dr. Norman Borlaug whose life mission was to end hunger was quoted “Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.Almost certainly, however, the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.” His efforts to introduce genetically modified food crops that would thrive and grow even in arid soils, were thwarted by the junk scientists and faux environmentalists…….I was fortunate to hear him speak at a small luncheon organized by the late Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, former founder and director of The American Council of Science and Health (http://www.acsh.org/)
rsk

What a difference a year makes.

Last summer, the anti-GMO movement was riding high. The nation’s first GMO-labeling law had kicked in July 1 in Vermont, forcing companies to disclose whether their products contained ingredients that were genetically modified. A few weeks later, Congress passed — and President Obama signed — a controversial bill requiring mandatory GMO labels for all food products nationwide. The legislation was the result of years of successful lobbying by the organic industry and environmentalists to alarm consumers about GMOs in their food. (Organic food cannot contain genetically modified ingredients; the organic industry wants to make GMOs sound dangerous so people will buy more non-GMO, organic goods.) It was supported by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred in a press conference on Capitol Hill to endorse the measure, and it is strongly backed by Democratic politicians including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Even though the bill did not require the on-package label that activists wanted, most figured they would get their way under Hillary Clinton’s department of Agriculture. (The USDA had two years to figure out all the details before food companies would have to comply.) Many labeling crusaders were Clinton donors and supporters; the main funder of the GMO-labeling movement was rumored to be vying for a top post at the USDA. With GMO foes populating Clinton’s USDA, FDA, and EPA, activists would have the power to demonize and perhaps even halt progress on this promising technology and necessary agricultural tool. Their future looked bright.

Then November 8 happened.

Since the election, the anti-GMO movement here has mostly fallen apart, thought it is still strong in Europe. Their dream of using a government-sanctioned, GMO warning label to scare consumers into buying organic food has been crushed. President Trump’s USDA is already delaying the label’s timeline; the agency has posted 30 questions seeking input from “stakeholders” and has now extended the deadline for replies into late summer. The final rule might require companies only to print a QR code or a 1-800 number that consumers can use to get information about GMO content, a far cry from the skull-and-crossbones symbol that activists envisioned. There is even a slim chance the law could be quashed entirely thanks to Trump’s pledge to drastically reduce federal regulations.

That would be a major blow, perhaps even death knell, to this anti-science, anti-farmer, anti-common-sense crusade. Yes, there are still plenty of GMO-related tags on everything from orange juice to popcorn, but it is becoming so ubiquitous that it’s essentially meaningless. It could be the least useful and informative label on the market. Many products that have a non-GMO label, such as canned tomatoes and even salt, have no GMO alternative — so the label is akin to marketing water as “fat-free.” Processed goods, such as soup and cereal, could have several ingredients sourced from genetically modified crops, including corn, soybean, or sugar-beet derivatives, and a GMO label does not indicate which ones are GMOs. Despite the pro-labeling faction’s claim that people have a “right to know what’s in their food,” the label as it now stands largely fails to tell consumers anything.

Companies disingenuously use a GMO label to virtue-signal to consumers that their products are healthier and safer, even though every scientific study affirms that GMOs are safe and pose no threat to human health. Most consumers could not begin to explain what a GMO is, nor do they care. According to a Pew survey last year, only 16 percent of adults in America said that they “care a great deal about the issue of genetically modified foods.”

So after nearly a decade of activism and tens of millions of dollars spent on a politically motivated fear campaign to demonize a perfectly safe technology, the anti-GMO movement has come up empty-handed. They can expect more troubles ahead as the Trump administration pushes GMOs here and abroad. In April, Trump announced via executive order the formation of an “Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity,” headed by USDA chief Sonny Perdue, who is a strong proponent of genetically engineered crops. One goal of the committee is to “advance the adoption of innovations and technology for agricultural production.” It is also tasked with making sure “regulatory burdens do not unnecessarily encumber agricultural production, harm rural communities, constrain economic growth, hamper job creation, or increase the cost of food for Americans and our customers around the world.” Supporters are hopeful that the approval process for new genetically engineered plants and animals, often delayed under the Obama administration, will now be accelerated.

The FDA is preparing to launch a public-awareness campaign to educate consumers about the benefits of genetically engineered crops and counter misinformation about the technology. More than 60 business and agricultural groups have applauded the move: “Dedicated educational resources will ensure key federal agencies responsible for the safety of our nation’s food supply are able to more easily convey to the public science- and fact-based information about food.” (Although the $3 million price tag should be picked up by industry, not taxpayers.)

And under a new trade agreement with the Trump administration, China will expedite its approval of several genetically engineered seed varieties; four have already been green-lighted, and four more are under consideration. This has major international consequences because many countries follow China’s lead on accepting GMO seeds.

There were plenty of political losers after November 8. Fortunately, the anti-GMO movement is one of them.

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Race Hysteria Erupts over a Commonsense Casting Decision on Broadway Everyone associated with The Great Comet will soon be out of work if the show doesn’t find a way to boost ticket sales. By Kyle Smith

By on August 2nd, 2017

There are times when watching progressives try to grapple with their own conceptual contradictions is like watching a blind man with Crisco on his hands trying to juggle chainsaws. Broadway theater, an aggressively leftist institution, is today presenting the following spectacle: A white actor has been shamed out of playing a white character in a Broadway show because it would have been hurtful to black actors.

Mandy Patinkin, a reliable box-office attraction on Broadway going back to the 1970s (Evita) and a star of television (Criminal Minds, Homeland) and film (The Princess Bride), was set to take over the lead male role in the musical Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, replacing Josh Groban, whose popularity is widely credited with making the oddball show a success. Great Comet, with original songs and a story based on (a small slice of) War and Peace, wasn’t an obvious candidate for box-office glory, but Groban’s huge fan base filled the seats. “It wasn’t Leo Tolstoy who turned out the crowds,” notes New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel, the definitive Broadway observer. “It was Josh Groban.” Post-Groban, advance ticket sales for late summer and fall were “catastrophically low,” the show’s composer, Dave Malloy, said.

When Groban left the show on the expiration of his contract on July 2, the boyish baritone was temporarily replaced by an unknown, Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan, whom Patinkin would have replaced. Onaodowan is black. Patinkin isn’t. So an utterly routine fact of Broadway life — star replaces non-star — was dressed up in racial outrage. Social media seethed. The Daily News headline read “‘Great Comet’ actor Okieriete Onaodowan shoved aside for Mandy Patinkin, causing outcry.” One actor, Rafael Casal, tweeted, “Telling lead actors of color to #makeroom? Really? @greatcometbway #makeroom is the new code for ‘still not your turn.’” Actress Cynthia Erivo, who won a Tony in 2015 for The Color Purple, also took exception, tweeting, “This has been handled badly. Ticket sales shouldn’t override a person doing his job” and “Oak worked extremely hard for this. Which makes this occurrence distasteful and uncouth.”

Patinkin withdrew from the show, groveling. The producers who hired him also scraped and begged forgiveness, as did the composer. All did much agonizing about how they should have better understood the “optics.” Then Onaodowan himself quit, announcing that August 13 would bring his last performance.

So Great Comet, which now doesn’t have a big-name star in either lead role, is in even more severe danger of closing soon. “Ticket sales shouldn’t override a person doing his job?” Soon, everyone associated with The Great Comet will be out of a job if the show can’t find a way to boost ticket sales. Onaodowan, by the way, would have received full pay for the lead role after yielding to the bigger star. So no one would have suffered any economic loss in the event that Patinkin had taken the stage. A major social-justice win in this instance amounts to probably throwing a bunch of left-wing showbiz people of color out of work.

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Flight and Fancy by Mark Steyn

By on August 2nd, 2017

RussiaRussiaRussiaRussiaRealbitofnewsRussia
RussiaRussiaRussia…

Wait a minute, what was that?

On Monday night Imran Awan, the principal IT aide to former DNC honcho Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was arrested at Dulles Airport attempting to flee the country. “IT” means information technology, as in computers, as in hacking, as in what the Democrats insist happened to the election.

Mr Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, has already flown the coop. In March, she pulled their three kids out of school and skipped back to Lahore, with (according to the FBI) “numerous pieces of luggage” and over $12,000 in cash.

Monday’s airport arrest follows the seizure of broken hard drives from the garage of the Awans’ former home. The hard drives had been smashed with a hammer. Whether it was the same ceremonial DNC hammer used to smash Hillary’s Blackberries has not yet been determined.

What we have here, for the benefit of American reporters who may be unfamiliar with the concept, is an actual news story – an unusual event that’s happened in recent times. It thus stands in contrast to, say, speculative fancies about whether or not money-no-object special counsel Robert Mueller is expanding his “Russia investigation” to set the many Hillary donors on his payroll into investigating Trump’s sale of some property in Florida in 2008.

What connects the “fake news” and the real news is the DNC. The Russia “story” exists because the election wasn’t hacked but the DNC was. Wikileaks released the Democrats’ embarrassing emails to the world, although, helpfully, the US media mostly declined to report on them, and, in fact, CNN’s Chris Cuomo lectured America that it’s totally illegal for you mere citizens even to glance at these leaked emails. As it happens, the world’s most inevitable presidential victor somehow managed to lose the election, and casting around for a reason the Dems decided that blaming it on a stiff tired unlikeable legacy candidate with no message and a minimal campaign schedule was too implausible. So instead they decided to blame it on Russian “hacking”.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks says the Russians had nothing to do with the DNC email leaks. Take that with as many grains of salt as you want: he is, of course, a fugitive from justice, just like the DNC chair’s IT aide and his wife and various relatives of theirs.

The Awan story has many interesting elements: The Pakistani-born Imran Awan, his wife, his brothers Abid and Jamal, and Abid’s wife Natalia have provided IT services to Debbie Wasserman Schultz and dozens of lesser Democrat congressmen since about 2004. The family salaries totaled some $5 million, because supplying computer services to prominent Democrats is so vital and specialized a skill that it requires a rare and exceptional skill.The Awans’ services were so critical that in March last year eight Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter demanding that these staffers be granted access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI).

Yet at the same time the Awans ran a full-time Virginia car dealership amusingly called Cars International A – or “CIA” – and were almost continually short of cash, requiring loans from all kinds of people including – Collusion Alert! – the Iraqi politician Ali al-Attar.

For inept broke car-dealers, the Awans somehow made themselves indispensable to powerful Democrats, among them those on sensitive committees such as Intelligence and Foreign Affairs including Andre Carson, Joaquín Castro, Lois Frankel, Robin Kelly, Ted Lieu and Jackie Speier. That’s a lot of Democrat computers to wind up in the hands of one family of Pakistani immigrant car dealers. And it wasn’t the full extent of the Awans’ connections: that’s Imran up above with putative First Gentleman Bill Clinton.

But who cares? It’s not like Trump’s son or son-in-law or vaguely connected former campaign advisor being in a room for 20 minutes with a Russian lawyer.

Meanwhile, Mr Awan’s counsel says his client has been arrested for “working while Muslim”. That line’s so desperate it’s bound to take off big-time.

Five months ago, as the coppers began closing the net on the family, other Democrats began distancing themselves from the Awan clan, notwithstanding their peerless IT skills. Representative Gregory Meeks of New York fired Mrs Awan on February 28th. Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio fired Mr Awan on March 1st. But Debbie Wasserman Schultz did not fire Awan until yesterday – after his arrest at the airport. Indeed, she has spent five months digging in with the guy. You want powerful politicians interfering with federal investigations? Forget about Trump hinting to Comey that he’s really hoping for some loyalty, and consider a powerful member of a House sub-committee threatening the head of the Capitol Police that “you should expect that there will be consequences” for refusing to return one of her laptops set up and controlled by Awan:

Why did Debbie Wasserman Schultz not do as her fellow congressmen did and dump the Awan clan as no longer politically convenient?

Occam’s razor: Because she was head of the DNC and thus Awan knew too much for her to cut him loose.

Until yesterday. After his capture at the airport, while fleeing back to Pakistan.

The enterprsing lad is said to have been trusted by Debbie with her iPad password and other access codes. So in other words – unlike speculation about Putin’s FSB being in DNC computers – we know this guy was in them.

Are the “Russia investigation” and the Awan story comparable? Well, they’re both about hacking, and both about DNC computers. One of them has actual arrests, on-camera political interference, destroyed evidence, and a proven money trail from foreign politicians. The other has no arrests, and a meeting with a minor Russian lawyer arranged by an Azerbaijani pop star’s publicist.

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Professor coins term ‘white priority,’ says white people think they’re better than others (University of North Carolina-Charlotte)

By on August 2nd, 2017

A philosophy professor argues that white people enjoy a “sense” of importance, calling it “white priority,” a term the scholar coined to summarize her claim that people with white skin feel superior to others. https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/35063/

“White priority concerns a white person’s felt conviction about herself (however egregious or misplaced, and often unconscious) that no matter the quantifiable, statistical details of her life, she is not on the very bottom run of society’s ladder,” writes Professor Shannon Sullivan.

Sullivan, department chair of the philosophy department at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, made the comments in a recent scholarly article in “Critical Philosophy of Race.”

The piece takes issue with the term “white privilege,” with Sullivan writing that it doesn’t quite hit the mark in describing the “advantages of whiteness.” But “white priority” describes a white person’s “sense of coming before someone else,” noted Sullivan, who is white.

“As a poor, struggling white person, I might not be financially privileged or very high up in social circles and many people might disparage me, but at least I’m not the lowest of the low. I come before someone else: people of color and black people in particular,” Sullivan wrote.

The article, headlined “White Priority,” was published in a special issue of “Critical Philosophy of Race” dedicated to “Race after Obama.” A listing of Sullivan’s academic papers shows she’s written on whiteness multiple times throughout her career.

Sullivan did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment. An automatic reply said she’ll have “irregular access” to her email account until Aug. 10.

In “White Priority,” Sullivan argued that the word privilege suggests one’s lived an easy life and it doesn’t quite fit for white people who’ve faced hardships. White privilege is “the right term to describe middle-class and affluent white people’s particular racial advantages,” but she argued that white priority applies to all white people no matter their financial standing.

This nuance is important, she wrote, because “life after Obama is a time for greater nimbleness and dexterity as we think about race and its intersections with class.” She argued there was a “white backlash” against President Barack Obama during his tenure in the Oval Office, an alleged backlash that stemmed from what individuals saw as his “extremism.” This extremism wasn’t based on Obama’s policies but rather that a black man was president, Sullivan wrote.

“It is as if a black intruder broke in and was allowed to stay, and we could say this almost literally given the white imaginary understanding of blackness as inherently criminal,” Sullivan stated.

As for proof that white priority exists, Sullivan stated she does not exactly have any, noting “white priority is not something that can be empirically verified or disproven.”

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The One Reason the UN Climate Change Panel Cannot Be Trusted By Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris

By on August 2nd, 2017

It is time for governments to wake up to this scandal, and withdraw funding to UN organizations that promote the climate scare.

Comment period for the next UN climate report has begun.

As of July 31, climate experts from around the world are providing comments to the authors of a new special report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Entitled “Global Warming of 1.5°C”, the report will address:

… the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.

The IPCC claims that:

The purpose of this expert review is to help ensure that the report provides a balanced and comprehensive assessment of the latest scientific findings.

In reality, the report will almost certainly be highly biased, and will ignore scientific findings that do not conform with the UN’s man-made climate change disaster scenario.

There are a number of reasons to expect such an outcome from any IPCC process.

First, consider the panel’s mandate. Most people think that the IPCC studies all climate change, and indeed, in response to the direction of UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of December 6, 1988, that was the original purpose of the panel. But the IPCC itself admits that that is no longer the case.

Today, the IPCC’s role is defined differently in “Principles Governing IPCC Work”:

[T]o assess … the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. (emphasis added)

With this narrow focus, if human-induced climate change is found to be trivial, then there would be no reason for the IPCC to exist. The IPCC will therefore always support the climate scare, no matter what their examination of the science reveals.

The IPCC’s mandate change is apparently the result of the definition of “climate change” given by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention asserted:

Climate Change means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.

Since the IPCC “Principles” state that the panel “shall concentrate its activities … on actions in support of the UNFCCC process,” then clearly the IPCC had to adopt this unduly restricted definition — and this means that policymakers, not scientists, lead the process.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor Richard Lindzen was not exaggerating when he said that the supposed scientific consensus was reached before the research had even begun. Indeed, this was clear from the very start. The 1990 IPCC First Assessment Report stated:

[I]t is not possible at this time to attribute all, or even a large part, of the observed global-mean warming to the enhanced greenhouse effect on the basis of the observational data currently available.

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