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December 2017

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MY SAY: DECEMBER 2017 A MEMORABLE MONTH

By on December 29th, 2017

Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks is a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and politician. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013

Following the announcement of United States Government’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, Rabbi Sacks issued the following statement:

“I welcome today’s decision by the United States to recognise as the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, whose name means “city of peace.” This recognition is an essential element in any lasting peace in the region.

“Unlike other guardians of the city, from the Romans to the Crusaders to Jordan between 1949 and 1967, Israel has protected the holy sites of all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and guaranteed access to them. Today, Jerusalem remains one of the few places in the Middle East, where Jews, Christians and Muslims are able to pray in freedom, security and peace.

“The sustained denial, in many parts of the world, of the Jewish connection with Jerusalem is dishonest, unacceptable and a key element in the refusal to recognise the Jewish people’s right to exist in the land of their origins. Mentioned over 660 times in the Hebrew Bible, Jerusalem was the beating heart of Jewish faith more than a thousand years before the birth of Christianity, and two-and-a-half millennia before the birth of Islam.

“Since then, though dispersed around the world, Jews never ceased to pray about Jerusalem, face Jerusalem, speak the language of Jerusalem, remember it at every wedding they celebrated, in every home they built, and at the high and holiest moments of the Jewish year.

“Outside the United Nations building in New York is a wall bearing the famous words of Isaiah: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Too often the nations of the world forget the words that immediately precede these: “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.””

“Those words, spoken twenty-seven centuries ago, remain the greatest of all prayers for peace, and they remain humanity’s best hope for peace in the Middle East and the world.”

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Peter Smith The Boat People of Bethlehem

By on December 29th, 2017

Ah, Christmas, when the air rings with sleigh bells and carols, the laughter of families gathered and the happy squeals of small children destroying their new toys. Oh, and from the left side of the Yuletide table, more nonsense about the Holy Family being the original refugees.

You may have noticed the recent propaganda in support of the West absorbing unlimited numbers of Muslim refugees. It starts with the Bible and with Matthew 2:13-23 were it is told that Joseph, Mary and their children escaped to Egypt from Bethlehem in Judaea for fear of King Herod. Only when the King was dead did they return to Israel; settling in Nazareth rather than Bethlehem, because they remained wary of Herod’s son who ruled in Judaea.

Thus, so the story goes, Jesus was for a time a time a refugee in Egypt. A tenuous and tendentious leap of logic follows: if Jesus was indeed a refugee how can anyone in good conscience not welcome all refugees with open arms and generous hearts.

As an example, here is Martin O’Malley – the ex-governor of Maryland and short-lived competitor with Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president – talking with Fox News front man Tucker Carlson. “Remember Jesus too was a refugee child. What would you do if he came to your border?”

I liked Carlson’s reply: “That’s so stupid, it’s hard to respond.”

It’s monumentally stupid. Or, alternatively, is it part of a duplicitous plan to undo our civilisation and culture? Christianity being used to destroy Christendom. The devil quoting scripture for his purpose. But that can’t be right when the Archbishop of Canterbury is on board. Can it?

Here is an extract from Justin Welby’s Christmas sermon preached at Canterbury Cathedral on December 25.

Yet after the moments of miracles life goes on almost as before – the shepherds return to their sheep, Joseph settles back as a carpenter, Mary raises children. They flee as refugees, like over 60 million people today.

Get the point? Joseph, Mary and Jesus are just like tens of millions of Mussulmen from, say, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, or Somalia. The fact that the latter follow a poisonous creed which denies the divinity of Christ; who follow a false prophet as prophesised by Christ; and who have allegiance to a god who instructs them to disdain and kill infidels, is all by the way to the Archbishop apparently.

But let’s be practical as well as spiritual. Germans, Belgians, Swedes, Italians, the French, the British, Americans and Australians, and other Westerners, face heavy costs of providing accommodation, health, welfare, education and policing in trying to absorb millions of refugees. And that is the least of it. Their very culture and values are at stake. Their safety is at stake through additional crime and, of course, through Islamic terrorism.

In Cologne, for example, separate train carriages have been set aside for women and young children. Nothing of course to do with asylum-seekers assaulting women. God forbid the authorities would ever concede that. And, yes, don’t you know, Melbourne pedestrians allegedly were mowed down by a drug-addled madman who just happened, coincidently, to be an Afghan refugee expressing grievance at the world-wide treatment of Muslims. Obviously, we are being taken for saps by the powers that be and by Christian church leaders

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Clouding the Cause of Islamic Terrorism by A. Z. Mohamed

By on December 29th, 2017

The practice of substituting political correctness for scholarship, namely educating the public in the West about actual the contents of Islam, has become so prevalent that it is undermining our ability to recognize, let alone rectify, any problems.

“Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories… [M]isrepresenting findings in science to achieve desirable social goals will ultimately harm both science and society.” — Nathan Cofnas, writing in the journal Foundations of Science.

Many people who need structure prefer every activity proscribed for them. In addition, many people with sadistic wishes might be lured by being given permission to act on these wishes; and not only that, but they are told that these acts are, indeed, obligatory and good, and that the person acting on them is, in the view of many Islamic tenets, heroic.

Responding to findings of a recent study on what motivates both ISIS fighters and those who combat them, Arie W. Kruglanski, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and former co-director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said:

“The ideology component addresses individuals’ need to matter and feel significant. … It tells people what to do, such as fight and make sacrifices, in order to gain respect and admiration from others.”

Kruglanski, whose 2014 article, “Psychology Not Theology: Overcoming ISIS’ Secret Appeal,” argues that religion (in this instance, Islam) plays a smaller part in what makes terrorists tick than “the [human] need for… personal significance.” He added:

“Especially when it comes to violence that is shunned by most religions and most cultures, you need validation from a group of people that would then become your reference group. So the group component is very important, particularly when it comes to antisocial activities that are forbidden or shunned.”

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Threats of 2017 – Mideast, Terror, Weapons – Will Linger in the New Year by John R. Bolton

By on December 29th, 2017

Domestically and internationally, President Trump finished 2017 in dramatic fashion. Obtaining the most sweeping tax cuts in 30-plus years (and repealing ObamaCare’s most philosophically oppressive aspect, the individual mandate) was a landmark achievement. And, by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, then suggesting major changes in U.S. funding of the United Nations, he disrupted foreign-policy conventional wisdom on both the Middle East and “global governance.”

The administration’s national security strategy, published this month, centered its foreign policy in the conservative mainstream, but there is little time for complacency. On Inauguration Day, the president inherited acute dangers and longer-range strategic challenges, ignored or mishandled for years. While Trump has emphasized his intention to reverse course, the national security agencies have a mixed record in actually following his lead. Events in 2018 could well determine whether America resumes control of its international fate, or whether it continues to be buffeted by threats it could overcome but chooses not to.

In this article today, we review the administration’s 2017 record and 2018 prospects in three critical near-term areas: Middle East turmoil, international terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Tomorrow, we consider the longer-term risks posed by China and Russia, and the overarching issue of U.S. sovereignty.

Trump’s Jerusalem decision had the virtue of recognizing reality and simultaneously erasing libraries of arid scholasticism on the “Middle East peace process.” The long-predicted violent reaction by the “Arab Street” largely failed to materialize, despite palpable efforts by Turkey’s President Erdogan and Tehran’s ayatollahs to foment trouble. And the inevitable efforts in the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly were essentially charades, ritualistic theater that now makes even the participants weary. The lasting consequences of bashing America in New York will more likely be felt within the United Nations, as we will see tomorrow, rather than in the Middle East.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are undergoing sweeping changes, the full dimensions of which cannot yet be confidently predicted. These changes have, in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view, opened prospects for resolving the Palestinian and broader regional issues heretofore beyond reach. The behind-the-scenes White House peace initiative, also unconventional, has given the foreign policy establishment a case of the vapors.

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FBI Still Considers Dossier Credible Devin Nunes demands answers from Andrew McCabe. Matthew Vadum

By on December 29th, 2017

The FBI admits the Left’s electoral collusion conspiracy theory is unsubstantiated but still refuses to distance itself from the discredited Russia propaganda dossier Democrats paid Fusion GPS to create to undermine President Trump’s candidacy.

Testifying behind closed doors in Congress the week before Christmas, embattled FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly “declined to criticize the dossier’s 35 pages of salacious and criminal charges against Donald Trump and his aides, but he said it remains largely unverified, according to a source familiar with ongoing congressional inquiries.”

According to the Washington Times, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is broadening the scope of its investigation into the collusion theory. The panel is looking at who funded the dossier and whether it was used by the FBI. It is also examining recent misconduct inside the Justice Department and the FBI, as well as the Obama administration’s unmasking of Americans caught up in foreigner-surveillance.

As for McCabe, his entanglement in Democrat politics has had President Trump crying foul. McCabe has said he will retire from the FBI in the spring. He served as acting director of the FBI from May 9 when President Trump fired then-director James Comey until Aug. 2 when new director Christopher Wray took over. While serving as acting FBI director, McCabe was involved in the email investigation.

McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, was a Democratic candidate in 2015 for the Virginia State Senate. Her campaign received nearly $675,000 in donations from the Virginia Democratic Party and Common Good VA, a political action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a slippery longtime Clinton flunky. Mr. McCabe failed to recuse himself from the Hillary Clinton email probe until Nov. 1, 2016, which was four days after Comey, then the FBI director, announced the agency had reopened the investigation into the emails after finding new data on computer hard drives belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), the now-imprisoned sex-offender husband of Hillary’s top lieutenant, Huma Abedin. It was also eight days after the ties between Mrs. McCabe and McAuliffe became public knowledge.

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Frontpage Magazine’s Man of the Year: President Trump “Are you better off than you were last year?” Daniel Greenfield

By on December 29th, 2017

It’s that time of the year when media outlets write up the people and trends who defined the year while ignoring the man who redefined it.

2017 was the year that the United States of America got up off its knees. It was the year that we stopped following the world and started leading it. It was the year that our booming economy accomplished the impossible. It was the year that we became a great nation again.

And one man is responsible for that.

President Trump promised to make America great again. And every day, it’s happening. Factory workers and small businessmen, farmers and ranchers, soldiers and police officers are waking up to a renewed America. Time chose a social justice hashtag as its ‘Thing of the Year’. We’re choosing the man who turned the country around as our “Man of the Year”.

When President Trump promised 4% economic growth, the media herded together economists to prove it couldn’t happen. CNN surveyed 11 economists and Bloomberg asked 80 economists. They agreed it was impossible. 2% growth was the best that we could hope for. And we would have to get used to that.

And then the GDP growth estimate for the fourth quarter of 2017 approached 4%.

Americans are realizing that maybe we don’t have to just get used to dividing up the last torn shreds of a failing economy between leftist crony billionaires and their officially entitled victim groups.

Maybe we can do better.

The S&P 500 Index has gone up 20% this year and the Dow is up 25%. Holiday shopping season sales are up almost 5% over last year. Consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. The unemployment rate is at a 17-year low. The manufacturing industry just had its best month of job gains for the year.

All of this isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents. It’s the knowledge that things are getting better. You can’t fake it. The media spent eight years promising a recovery that no one believed in. Obama announced that the recovery had happened more times than he ended the Iraq War. And just like the end of the war, it never happened. It’s happening now because people are living a better future.

Call it… making America great again. Not for government officials, but for ordinary Americans.

Obama made life great for government bureaucrats. In the era of hope and steal, the bedroom communities of Washington D.C. became the wealthiest counties in the country. Americans lost their jobs, veterans lost their lives and the government bureaucracy grew fat on their misery.

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A Tale of Two Presidents and One Newspaper By Michael Walsh

By on December 29th, 2017

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/28/a-tale-of-two-presidents-and-one-newspaper/

The stench of failure hangs over Mr. X’s White House. The people know it, judging by the opinion polls. Corporate titans know it and whisper disenchantment with a fellow conservative. Washington knows it when an Administration official calls the budgeting process ”an unmitigated outrage” and when Mr. X’s closest friend in the Senate pronounces the President ”as very close to set in concrete.”

Mr. X’s loss of authority only halfway through his term should alarm all Americans. The economic nostrums he brought to office have not had the predicted effect. Only by recognizing his errors will he find better ideas. To rationalize the failure so far, or to blame his predecessors, the media and Congress, is to condemn the nation to two more years of destructive confusion.

By his own reckoning, Mr. X became President for one basic reason: to restore the morale and power of America. By his own analysis, that meant above all ”the rejuvenation of our economy” so that America could regain industrial strength, put all its people to work and defend its interests around the world.

Sound familiar? It should—it’s the opening three paragraphs of a New York Times editorial about Ronald Reagan’s first administration, published on January 9, 1983. So if you think the Times is repeating itself, you’re right. For the past half-century, the Times and other Democratic Party house organs have adopted a single unwavering posture toward Republican and conservative presidents: they’re against them, no matter what.

Hence their reliance on boilerplate editorials such as the one quoted above; presidents may come and go, editorial writers may pass through the pages of the Good Gray Lady, and times may change, but the rhetoric remains the same. If you think this is accidental, however, you must have been born yesterday.

The point of the cultural Marxist project, for which the Times is, and long has been, the chief spokesman, is to keep hammering home the same points about its enemies, until they are simply accepted as fact and no longer even contended or questioned. Do you honestly think, at this point, that there is a single soul on the staff of the New York Times who would today disagree with the sentiments expressed in 1983—or not endorse them if the editorial board substituted the name of Trump for Reagan?

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The Islamic Brew of Racism, Apartheid, and Slavery By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on December 29th, 2017

While the world is in a dither about America recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it is, predictably, totally unconcerned about the constant and ongoing practice of “legally or culturally enforced discrimination and/or persecution based on a person’s race or national identity” – to wit, apartheid – in the Muslim world. Consider that:

Arab League states discriminate against and exclude Palestinians because of their national identity.
Palestinian refugees have been denied citizenship for two generations or more in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
Palestinians have been expelled from many Middle Eastern countries – e.g., Kuwait, Jordan, Libya, and Iraq.
In Lebanon, Palestinians must live in designated areas, cannot own homes, and are barred from 70 occupations.

And yet, every year, universities across America host Israel Apartheid Week despite the fact that “Israel actually is the only apartheid-free state in the Middle East – a state whose Arab population enjoys full equality before the law and more prerogatives than most ethnic minorities in the free world, from the designation of Arabic as an official language to the recognition of non-Jewish religious holidays as legal days of rest.”

Contrast this with the fact that Muslim religiously based apartheid continues, since “Muslims historically view themselves as superior to all others and consider non-Muslims or kuffars as dhimmis.” Thus, Christians, Jews, and Bahá’í remain second-class citizens throughout the Muslim world. Racism is rampant in the Arab world, and “Africans of sub-Saharan descent are held in deep contempt, a vestige of the region’s historical role as epicenter of the international slave trade.”

And while Palestinian refugees are championed by the Arab world, they are treated like outcasts. Khaled Abu Toameh writes, “[I]t was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.” In sum, “[t]he hypocrisy of the Arab countries is in full swing. While they pretend to show solidarity with their Palestinian brothers, Arab governments work tirelessly to ethnically cleanse them. Palestinian leaders, meanwhile[,] care nothing about the plight of their own people in Arab countries. They are much too busy inciting Palestinians against Israel and Trump[.]”

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A Big, Beautiful Trump 2018 Issue Civil-service reform could get bipartisan support, even in a rough election year.By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on December 29th, 2017

President Trump is on the hunt for a 2018 issue—a strong follow-up to his tax-cut victory that will motivate voters and gain bipartisan support. Democrats are pushing for an infrastructure bill, inviting the president to spend with them. House GOP leaders are mulling entitlement reform—a noble goal, if unlikely in a midterm cycle.

Fortunately for the president, there’s a better idea out there that’s already a Trump theme. It’s also a sure winner with the public, so Republicans ought to be able to pressure Democrats to join.

Let 2018 be the year of civil-service reform—a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.

When Candidate Trump first referred to “the swamp,” he was talking about the bog of Beltway lobbyists and “establishment” politicians. But President Trump’s first year in office has revealed that the real swamp is the unchecked power of those who actually run Washington: the two million members of the federal bureaucracy. That civil-servant corps was turbocharged by the Obama administration’s rule-making binge, and it now has more power—and more media enablers—than ever. We live in an administrative state, run by a left-leaning, self-interested governing class that is actively hostile to any president with a deregulatory or reform agenda.

It’s Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits. It’s the “anonymous” officials who leak national-security secrets daily. It’s the General Services Administration officials who turned over Trump transition emails to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the absence of a warrant. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Leandra English, who tried to stage an agency coup. It’s the EPA’s “Scientific Integrity Official” who has taken it upon herself to investigate whether Scott Pruitt is fit to serve in the office to which he was duly appointed. It’s the thousands of staffers across the federal government who continue to pump out reports on global warming and banking regulations that undermine administration policy.

More broadly, it is a federal workforce whose pay and benefits are completely out of whack with the private sector. A 2011 American Enterprise Institute study found federal employees receive wages 14% higher than what similar workers in the private sector earn. Factor in benefits and the compensation premium leaps to 61%. Nice, huh?

These huge payouts are the result of automatic increases, bonuses, seniority rules and gold-plated pensions that are all but extinct in the private sector. The federal workforce is also shielded by rules that make it practically impossible to fire or discipline bad employees, to relocate talent, or to reassign duties. These protections embolden bureaucrats to violate rules. Why was Ms. Lerner allowed to retire with full benefits? Because denying them would have cost far more—and required years of effort. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Birds of Regulatory Prey Interior reverses an Obama rule punishing accidental bird killings.

By on December 29th, 2017

Animal spirits revived this year after the Trump Administration halted its predecessor’s regulatory predations. Consider the Interior Department’s legal memo last week that rescinds an Obama Administration policy of criminalizing citizens who accidentally kill migratory birds.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 makes it a federal crime to “pursue, hunt, take, capture or kill” migratory birds. Offenders can be punished with up to six months in prison and fined $15,000 per violation. The law was originally intended to protect birds migrating between Canada, Mexico, Japan, Russia and the U.S. from poachers who sold their feathers for a profit.

Over the last 100 years, the list of protected birds has grown to more than a thousand species including crows, ducks and finches. President Obama added nearly 200 bird species to the list while calling open season on energy companies whose activities “incidentally” harm birds. In 2011 federal prosectors charged seven oil companies in North Dakota after more than two dozen birds flew into their tar pits.

An equal opportunity business harasser, the Obama Administration targeted wind farms operated by Duke Energy and PacifiCorp Energy that were found to have maimed hundreds of birds. Individuals also wound up in the government’s crosshairs—for instance, a tree-trimmer in Oakland was investigated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014 after accidentally injuring five black-crowned night herons.

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