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January 2018

MEDIA Comments turned off

How Trump Really Beat the Media By letting the media beat itself. Daniel Greenfield

By on January 3rd, 2018

President Trump’s end year remarks to the New York Times acerbically summed up his relationship with the media. “I’m going to win another four years… because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there.” The answering outburst of rage and contempt from the media burned all the hotter because the statement was not only intentionally provocative; it was also true.

The media has never been able to quit Trump. Its conviction that it can destroy him through coverage has repeatedly proven false. But that hasn’t stopped the media from throwing more coverage at him. And its motive for the non-stop coverage has always been the selfish pursuit of ratings, clicks and sales.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN are all busy playing Trump-slayers when what they really want is four more years of rising subscriptions, ad sales and profits. Few politicians understand that conflict of interest better than Trump who has spent most of his adult life playing the media.

These days the media needs Trump more than ever. Its old purpose, reporting the news, is as dead as the telegraph. Reporting is expensive. It requires infrastructure and personnel. And it isn’t very profitable. In the age of the internet, few people will sit around and watch the pointless reporting from the scene of an event that was once the staple of local news and cable news.

And repurposing viral videos and stories can only fill so much of that hole. But the media doesn’t really report news either. Mostly it repurposes it to create narratives that it can then milk for days or months. Whether it’s a missing airliner, #MeToo or Russian collusion, the best narratives are part mystery, scandal and thriller. The news isn’t just fake: It’s metafictional. It turns real life into fodder for fiction.

The media has crossed the mirror’s edge where reality television, recreations of crimes and movies based on true stories once lived. It lives and dies by turning the news into a fictional narrative. And narratives are cheap. Every news network can run video of Mueller slowly walking down a hallway while a panel of experts discusses what the latest leak really means for President Trump. For the cost of a green room, a limo and a little promotion, CNN can have its very own House of Cards drama.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The View of the Blinkered By Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 3rd, 2018

When a director of the FBI admits he deliberately leaked to the press the contents of his own private notes, written on government time, of a confidential conversation with the President of the United States—a possible criminal offense—for the sole purpose of eliciting the appointment of a special counsel (a gambit which resulted in the selection of his friend Robert Mueller), then most Americans have no compunction about seeing FBI leadership as ethically compromised and something gone terribly wrong at the highest echelons of the once hallowed agency.

That is not “bashing the FBI,” but admitting that the current generation of leaders at the FBI and the Justice Department by their very behavior have bashed their own agencies and loyal and professional subordinates.

All the brilliantly degreed economists of the past decade could not craft policies to achieve even 3 percent growth. All the wittiest and “in the know” advisors had little clue about how to radically reduce illegal immigration. All the supposedly empathetic and moral crusaders more or less wrote off a broad swath of America as clingers, deplorables, and irredeemables—losers in a preordained global world—whose lack of the right stuff earned them deserved oblivion.

The result is that the deities of Washington and New York still do not quite know how and why Trump was elected, or why he well might be reelected—the result of half the country’s profound lack of confidence in the morality and competence of the coastal and gentry managerial classes. And to the degree our elite think they know why many Americans believe that their reputations are undeserved, it is a revelation so disturbing that they are not by background, education, and experience capable of understanding, appreciating, or responding to it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Never-Ending Mueller Witch Hunt: An Affront to the Constitution By James Lewis

By on January 3rd, 2018

Over the holidays, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, leaked word to the hate-Trump media that in the coming year of 2018, he would not stop with a simple failure to find any truth in the “Russian collusion” charges against POTUS Trump. In a display of truly Stalinist police abuse, Mr. Mueller will keep going until he finds a crime, any crime at all.

The FBI, apparently led by Trump-hater Strzok, performed a raid on the Paul Manafort home while the family was still asleep, a surprise intimidation tactic commonly used by Hitler’s Gestapo against innocent civilian families, with the purpose of frightening and punishing unarmed victims without due process. In the absence of a pattern of illegal defiance of the law by Manafort, the Strzok team flagrantly violated the law and should be disciplined, if not fired altogether. But Manafort was apparently cooperating.

Also over the holidays, the New York Times tried to revise its previous story about the Steele dossier, claiming that the fraudulent “evidence” presented to the FISA court was not based on the Steele dossier at all, but was confessed by a minor Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, and attributed to Russian sources. By revising the narrative to make Papadopoulos responsible for a report on Russian disinformation to Australian officials, who passed it on to the U.S., the Times is erasing the timeline of its previous allegations. The Russia collusion accusation has collapsed, and the NYT is busily revising history. The public has previously been told that Christopher Steele, the “former” MI6 spy, was hired by various Trump enemies to make up the Russian collusion dossier.

Mueller’s witch hunt is a blatant affront to the United States Constitution, especially Amendments I-IV. It is unconscionable, and if the Executive Branch cannot intervene due to political pressure, the United States Supreme Court must step out of its role of passive bystander and permit a direct appeal to the highest court by the legally abused parties, prominently (but not solely) Paul Manafort and family.

Previous special prosecutors have been allowed to blackmail scapegoats like Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby into confessions of process crimes for which they were never initially charged. This is the logic of a “bill of attainder” and “ex post facto law,” legal snares to enable a conviction on anything the victim is accused of, even if it is a process crime obtained as a result of double-binding the victim into lying under oath. It is the legal logic of bloody witch-hunting mobs, which wants to see a bloody carcass, any carcass at all for any reason at all. It is repugnant to the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Damage Control Level at ELEVEN: Fusion GPS Speaks Out By Liz Sheld

By on January 3rd, 2018

Two Fusion GPS cracker jacks have penned a curious editorial for The New York Times to try and repair their business image (honestly, who would hire these guys? Clients aren’t keen on hiring firms at the center of federal and congressional criminal investigations) and to re-calibrate the RUSSIA collusion investigation yarn which is in tatters.

No matter what spin these dervishes are spitting out in the Times, here’s what you need to know: Fusion GPS, paid by a cut out for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, hired a former British spook to get dirt on President Trump. The Ex-spook got his information from RUSSIAN government operators and then the Trump hating spooksuits at the FBI and DOJ used this RUSSIAN propaganda to trick the FISA court into permission to spy on Hillary Clinton’s political opponent.

It’s that simple.

The garbage editorial tries to make the case that there are mountains of evidence of Trump’s relationship with the RUSSIANS and how their “salacious and unverified” dossier merely corroborated “credible allegations” of a Trump-RUSSIA partnership to win the election for Trump.

BUT WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?

Such evidence is only ominously hinted at in the op-ed but never provided and it’s certainly not apparent based on the information leaked by Trump-foes like Rep. Adam Schiff and former director of national intelligence James Clapper. Even holier-that-thou former FBI director James Comey has admitted the details in the dossier remain “salacious and unverified.” So how exactly did their work product corroborate this phantom evidence that has never been revealed?

But the Times set up this partisan stinkbomb op-ed with a sad attempt at narrative shift the day before. In a story titled “How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt” the Times wants you to forget that back in April 2017, they reported a lengthy and detailed story all about purported RUSSIAN collaborator Carter Page as the center of the RUSSIA collaboration nexus. Now, with this new story, The New York Times introduces RUSSIA collusion reboot.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Terrorism Shows Its Ugly Face Again By Herbert London

By on January 3rd, 2018

Two weeks ago, a Bangladeshi man reportedly inspired by ISIS set off a pipe bomb strapped to his body sowing mass chaos in New York’s Port Authority, but fortunately causing few, if any injuries. It is believed the terrorist detonated his low-tech device prematurely.

Governor Cuomo said, “This is New York, the reality is that we are a target by many who would like to make a statement against democracy, against freedom.” Yes, but this was not a statement. This was an act of terror designed to instill panic.

Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said the terror suspect entered the U.S. in 2011 from Bangladesh on a chain migration visa and is a legal permanent resident. The suspect had a history of extensive overseas travel.

This most recent explosion is the second ISIS inspired attack in New York City in less than two months. On October 31 a terror attack killed eight people and injured eleven others after a man drove a rented truck into people walking and cycling on a bike path in lower Manhattan.

Sadly, many New Yorkers are growing accustomed to violence. As one person noted this is “the new normal.” However, the best way to combat terrorism is to be conscious of your surroundings and observe that which is different or unusual.

Cuomo noted that people should go back to work, “we are not going to allow them to disrupt us.” But disrupt they have. The entire west side of Manhattan was paralyzed. If panic is the goal, this terrorist met his mark. Chaos prevailed.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Moment of Contempt Justice and the FBI continue to flout House subpoenas.

By on January 3rd, 2018

The House Intelligence Committee has set a deadline of Wednesday for the Department of Justice and FBI to turn over documents related to the Christopher Steele dossier purporting to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. If they fail to comply, Speaker Paul Ryan will need to back up Congress’s institutional prerogatives and hold the individuals responsible to contempt proceedings and possible impeachment.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray have had the subpoenas since Aug. 24, but they have responded with excuses, delays and misdirection. The Justice Department has refused to provide Congress with the most basic documents demanded under the subpoenas. These include reports detailing the FBI’s interactions with sources such as Mr. Steele, who was hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was funded by associates of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Justice also refuses to make available crucial witnesses, including FBI agent Peter Strzok (a lead investigator in the Trump-Russia probe), former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr (whose wife worked for Fusion GPS) and FBI attorney James Baker (former FBI Director Jim Comey’s right-hand man). Justice is also still sitting on months of anti-Trump text messages between Mr. Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

This isn’t acceptable, and neither Justice nor the FBI has offered a valid reason for their resistance. Senior Intelligence Committee members and staff are cleared to read classified information, and Congress has the constitutional authority to oversee the executive branch whose offices it funds. The excuse that such requests interfere with a Justice Department Inspector General probe wouldn’t pass a middle-grade separation-of-powers exam.

A contempt brawl would not be fun, but Congress has already abandoned too much power to the executive. Mr. Ryan risks turning oversight into a power without enforcement ability. A Republican Congress holding Republican office-holders responsible for flouting subpoenas would send a useful signal across the government. And it might give President Trump or White House Counsel Don McGahn new incentive to intervene with Justice and order compliance.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Busting Illusions About Iran Trump puts America on the side of the people, not the Ayatollahs.

By on January 3rd, 2018

Anti-government protests continue across Iran after six days, and the ruling mullahs and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are threatening a crackdown that could get ugly. The world should support this fight for freedom, which is exposing the illusions about Iran that dominated the Obama Administration.

Start with the claim that signing a nuclear deal with the Tehran regime would moderate its behavior. Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s chief foreign-policy salesman, said in June 2015 that “a world in which there is a deal with Iran is much more likely to produce an evolution in Iranian behavior, than a world in which there is no deal.”

Mr. Obama said the pact “could strengthen the hands of more moderate leaders in Iran.” And Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl said in 2015 that the Iranians “are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter.” Toward that end, the nuclear pact lifted international sanctions and unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets.

Yet instead of using the money to improve the lives of Iranians, Tehran has used its windfall to back clients making trouble throughout the region. The mullahs have spent billions propping up Syria’s Bashar Assad with troops, weapons and energy shipments. Iran funds Shiite militias in Iraq, Hezbollah terrorists in Syria and Lebanon, and Houthi fighters in Yemen.

The protesters in the streets of Tehran, Qom, Shiraz and other cities are explicitly rejecting this adventurism, shouting slogans like “Leave Syria, think of us!” They want a better economy and more opportunities for their children, not campaigns to build a Shiite empire across the Middle East.

Another busted illusion is that there is a difference in policy between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the supposedly moderate President Hasan Rouhani. Mr. Rouhani talks about listening to the protesters, but that will last only until the Ayatollah gives other orders. The Rouhani government has responded to the nuclear deal by arresting democracy advocates and taking American hostages like Xiyue Wang, a Princeton PhD student, and father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi. The protesters are making no distinction between Mr. Rouhani and the mullahs.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘White-Informed Civility’ Is the Latest Target in the Campus Wars The rules of collegiate debate are also coming under attack as racist and patriarchal. By Steve Salerno

By on January 3rd, 2018

From the land that irony forgot—which earlier gave us microaggressions and trigger warnings—comes a new and surprising movement, this time to combat civility. Civility, you see, is a manifestation of the white patriarchy. Spearheading this campaign are a duo of University of Northern Iowa professors, who assert that “civility within higher education is a racialized, rather than universal, norm.”

Their article in the Howard Journal of Communications, “Civility and White Institutional Presence: An Exploration of White Students’ Understanding of Race-Talk at a Traditionally White Institution,” describes a need to stamp out what they call “whiteness-informed civility,” or WIC. The pervasiveness of WIC, it seems, erases “racial identity” and reinforces “white racial power.”

Their thesis can be a tad hard to follow, unfolding as it does in that dense argot for which academia is universally beloved. But their core contention is twofold: One, that civility, as currently practiced in America, is a white construct. Two, that in a campus setting, the “woke” white student’s endeavor to avoid microaggressions against black peers is itself a microaggression—a form of noblesse oblige whereby white students are in fact patronizing students of color. Not only that, but by treating black students with common courtesy and expecting the same in return, white students elide black grievances, bypassing the “race talk” that is supposed to occur in preamble to all other conversations. Got it?

Something similar is happening in collegiate debate, where historically high standards of decorum are under siege as manifestations of white patriarchal thinking. So are the factual and logical proofs that debaters are normally expected to offer in arguing their case. Some participants are challenging the format, goals and ground rules of debate itself, in some cases refusing even to stick to the topic at hand.

Again the driving theory is that all conversations must begin by addressing race. As one top black debater, Elijah J. Smith, writes, debate must, before all else, “acknowledge the reality of the oppressed.” He resists the attempt on the part of white debaters to “distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day.”

Mr. Smith and his think-alikes seek to transform debate into an ersatz course in Black Studies. In a major 2014 debate finals, two Towson University students sidestepped the nominal resolution, which had to do with restricting a president’s war powers, in order to argue that war “should not be waged against n—as.” Two other students decided that rather than debate aspects of U.S. policy in the Mideast, they’d discuss how the common practices of the debate community itself perpetuate racism. Other recent debates involving black participants have devolved into original rap music. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: WOMEN OF IRAN: THROW DOWN YOUR HEADSCARVES JUNE 2009

By on January 2nd, 2018

When the French résistance was fighting the Nazis in 1940, the British and the Americans encouraged them with oratory but withheld any material help. This led the French to say “the British will fight the Nazis to the last drop of French blood.”
I hesitate to encourage the women to resist to the last drop of their blood, but I am dismayed by a number of stylish, well coiffed, décolleté and manicured “feminists” in America, including Iranian expatriates, who urge the courageous women of Iran to continue their bloody struggle against the regime in Iran without naming the real enemy….Sharia. It is like telling them to die in vain.
The poster-boy for the rebellion is Moussavi and he and his “reformist” wife, who dresses in hijab, utter not a single word of opposition to Sharia, the cruel, misogynist Islamic law that oppresses women and reduces them to the status of animal.
The women of Iran were led down this path before by their mothers and grandmothers who encouraged them to overthrow the Shah and plunged that nation into the repressive hell-hole ruled by the Ayatollahs.
Revolution cannot be successful if sacrifice brings more Islamic repression and degradation with another face and a new set of Ayatollahs. Their jail is Islam and changing the warden from one thug to another will not set them free.
Women of Iran:
Freedom is what I see daily in my supermarket…women in saris, in hijab, Orthodox Jewish women in wigs or headscarves, girls in miniskirts, girls with navel rings who live and play and love and pray without fear of “honor killings” or stoning or lashing or rape, or forced marriages even at the pre-puberty age of nine.
Freedom is not just the right to vote for candidates that are both sides of the same coin. It is the right to live without fear that your father or your brothers will murder you for committing adultery or apostasy or a perceived insult to the Prophet. It is the right to read books…porn if you choose….see movies from musicals to erotica….to dance and to kiss in public….to divorce or marry …to drive and to travel and to choose how and when and if you must wear that scarf, all with the protection of the state and not the religious dictates of the state.
You are being compared to the crowds of oppressed people who brought down the Soviet Empire. They named their enemy. It was an evil ideology named Communism. Your enemy is an evil ideology named Sharia, which enables your tormentors.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

An Indian Embassy in Jerusalem, Please by Jagdish N. Singh

By on January 2nd, 2018

New Delhi should now appreciate this American logic and refrain from opposing the current US administration’s decision on relocating its own embassy wherever it likes. New Delhi would have done better to vote against the resolution and support Washington on the capital transfer also to improve its ties with its two important natural democratic allies — the United States and Israel.

In the post-Cold War landscape, relations between Washington and New Delhi have attained new heights. India today needs American support for defence platforms and membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. US President Donald Trump has already described India as a leading global power and expressed his readiness to support it in reaching this status.

India’s vote in favour of the recent UN General Assembly resolution critical of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shift its embassy to the holy city is most unfortunate. The resolution, adopted with 128 in favour to nine against, with 35 abstentions, expressed “deep regret” over this decision and stressed that Jerusalem “is a final status issue to be resolved through negotiations in line with relevant U.N. resolutions.”

The Trump administration’s decision on Jerusalem is very much in harmony with the morality of American democracy and the resolution of its Congress, and that if there are 56 Islamic states in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC); seven officially Roman Catholic states (Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Liechtenstein, Malta and Monaco); four officially Protestant states (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden); one Eastern Orthodox state (Greece), and one Anglican state (Great Britain), surely there is room for one Jewish state for a people who have continuously lived on that land for nearly 4,000 years.

Jerusalem has been in the heart of Jews. Israeli Ambassador to India Daniel Carmon repeated the claim to Jerusalem: “Jerusalem always was the capital of the Jewish people, is and will continue to be the capital of modern Israel. No vote at the General Assembly can change that.”

Ironically, the holy city was not part of Israel in the original 1947 UN Palestine partition plan. Under this plan Jerusalem was to be ruled by an international trusteeship. Confronted with the opposition of many Arab and Muslim countries to the very idea of a Jewish state, (not to speak of Jerusalem), the Jews in 1948 declared Israel as an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. Israel liberated so-called East Jerusalem in 1967 from Jordan, which had illegally captured in the 1948-49 war. In June 1980, the Israeli government passed a “Basic Law” declaring Jerusalem “complete and united” as its capital.

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