Displaying posts published in

July 2018

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Iran Supports Palestinian Terror Groups by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12729/iran-palestinian-terrorism

The Iranian general did not offer to build the Palestinians a hospital or a school. Nor did he offer to provide financial aid to create projects that would give jobs to unemployed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. His message to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Iran will give you as much money and weapons as you need as long as you are committed to the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the “big Satan,” the US.

The same Hamas that is telling UN representatives that it wants to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is the one that is reaching out its hand to Iran to receive funds and weapons.

Now, someone needs to step in and stop Iran from setting foot in the Gaza Strip and using the Palestinians as cannon fodder in Tehran’s campaign against the US and Israel. How might someone do that? It is not so complicated. Any international aid to the Gaza Strip must be conditioned on ending Iran’s destructive effort to recruit Palestinians groups as its soldiers. It is that simple.

While the United Nations, Israel and the US are proposing plans to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Iran is pledging to continue its financial and military aid to Palestinian terror groups.

Iran’s meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians is not new. The Iranians have long been providing Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups with money and weapons. Were it not for Iran’s support, the two groups, which do not recognize Israel’s right to exist, would not have been able to remain in power in the coastal enclave.

Iran’s support for the Palestinian terror groups has a twofold goal: first, to undermine the Palestinian Authority, which is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and which Tehran sees as a pawn in the hands of the US and Israel; and second, to advance Iran’s goal of destroying Israel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Entity by Tom Quiggin

By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12730/muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-entity

It can be said that Hamas has more than mere “ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, its own documents point out that the Muslim Brotherhood has been intrinsically tied to Hamas and the entire Palestinian situation since as early as 1948.

Rather than “helping our enemies attract more recruits,” targeting the Muslim Brotherhood would weaken those organizations.

The greater point about the Muslim Brotherhood is that in its quest for domination, it is either violent or not yet violent. For this reason it should be designated as a terrorist entity.

The Congressional Subcommittee on National Security held a hearing on July 11 in Washington, DC “[t]o examine the threat of Muslim Brotherhood to the United States and its interests and how to effectively counter it.”

According to the background information provided by the Subcommittee,

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a radical Islamist organization that has generated a network of affiliates in over 70 countries. The Brotherhood has been designated as a terrorist organization by multiple countries including Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States has designated multiple Muslim Brotherhood affiliates as terrorist organizations, including Hamas.”

Among those testifying before the Subcommitte were: Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Hillel Fradkin, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute; Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; and the Honorable Daniel Benjamin, Norman E. McCulloch Jr. director from the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth University.

Perhaps the most startling testimony was that of Benjamin, who served as Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In his remarks to the Subcommittee, Ambassador Benjamin, whose stated position was that the Muslim Brotherhood should not be designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, advanced the belief that while Hamas has ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, it would be a mistake at this point to say that the group is an affiliate of the organization.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Facebook, Google, Twitter Don’t Know—or Don’t Care—if China Tried to Meddle in 2016 Election By Paula Bolyard

By on July 19th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-google-twitter-refuse-to-say-if-china-or-n-korea-tried-to-meddle-in-2016-election/

In a heated House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday investigating charges of anti-conservative bias by Facebook, Google, and Twitter, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) queried representatives of those platforms about whether they have found any evidence that countries other than Russia — namely China and N. Korea — had attempted to interfere in U.S. elections in 2016. The individuals representing the Big Three social media platforms couldn’t — or wouldn’t — say.

Gohmert asked, “You have been asked specifically about Russian use of your platforms. But did you ever find any indication of use of your platform utilized by the Chinese, North Korea, or any other foreign country, intelligence, or agency of that country?”

Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, attempted to evade the question. “I would note, congressman, that we are not in N. Korea or China,” she said, adding that Facebook has a “robust” security team.

Gohmert tried asking his question again. “We have foreign governments, intelligence agencies in this country. It seems to me you were each a little bit vague about ‘Oh yes, we found hundreds,’ or whatever, I’m asking specifically: were any of those other countries besides Russia that were using your platform inappropriately? It should be a yes or no.”

“I don’t have the details,” Bickert replied. “I know we definitely work to detect and repel attacks — ”

“I know that,” Gohmert interrupted, “but were any of them foreign entities other than Russia?”

“I can certainly follow up with you on that,” she said.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Antifa Suspect in South Dakota Found with ‘Concerning’ Amount of Weapons and Bomb-Making Materials By Debra Heine

By on July 19th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/antifa-suspect-in-south-dakota-found-with-concerning-amount-of-weapons-and-bomb-making-materials/

Sioux Falls Police arrested an apparent antifa radical on Tuesday after finding a “concerning” number of illegal firearms and bomb-making materials in his apartment while serving a search warrant in connection with three area burglaries. Police also found antifa-related items during their search, including an antifa jacket and an anti-police manifesto. Authorities reportedly evacuated the surrounding area and called the Sioux Falls Police bomb squad.

“The amount of explosives found was significant and concerning,” Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead said.

Mark Einerwold, 43, was arrested “on multiple burglary charges and for the sale or transportation of a destructive device,” KDLT News reported.

Authorities say they found multiple explosive devices as well as aluminum nitrate and aluminum powder, which authorities say have no use other than for an explosive device.

Authorities also seized multiple firearms and a homemade firearm silencer from the residence.

Einerwold said he was $350,000 in debt and had no assets in his application for a court-appointed attorney.

In court, prosecutors said that police found a pistol, sawed-off shotgun and a silencer in a backpack in Einerwold’s home. In addition, police reportedly found a “manifesto” that issued threats toward law enforcement and the government. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Watching Weather Waves, but Missing Climate Tides By Viv Forbes

By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/watching_weather_waves_but_missing_climate_tides.html

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda which is served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Earth’s climate is never still – it is always changing, with long-term trends, medium-term reversals and minor oscillations. Humanity is best served by those who use good science to study geology, astronomy and climate history searching for clues to climate drivers and the underlying natural cycles and trends hidden in short-term weather fluctuations.

For the last 10,000 years Earth has basked in the Holocene Interglacial which is the latest of many warm cycles within the Pleistocene Ice Age. There are small warm and cool cycles within the Holocene. Today we enjoy the Modern Warm Cycle (which started about calendar 1900) following the Little Ice Age which bottomed in about 1750.

What does the future hold? The past gives clues to the future.

In every warm era, glaciers retreat, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise. Coastal land, ports and settlements are lost under the rising seas but tundra, grasslands and forests expand. Some corals manage to grow as fast as the seas rise, but others are drowned in deep water. The warmth drives more carbon dioxide from the seas, plants thrive, deserts shrink and humans are well fed.

Then solar intensity wanes, solar orbits change, less solar energy is received by the big northern lands, and the warm Earth radiates more heat to space. It starts cooling.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

THE LEFT’S EMBARRASSING PLEA FOR OPEN BORDERS The real facts immigration anarchists try to hide from the public. Michael Cutler

By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270771/lefts-embarrassing-plea-open-borders-michael-cutler
Pro law-and-order immigration advocates in America whine about the emotional arguments and unhinged publicity stunts used by the open borders/abolish-ICE anarchists to sway public opinion.

But, when they use these emotional arguments, the abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) crowd are merely playing to their own personal strengths: irrationality, magical thinking, and projection. The important issue is that law-and-order advocates, like us, have failed abysmally to use our own emotional arguments in changing minds on the immigration topic.

Indeed, the most persuasive emotional arguments strongly favor secure borders and effective immigration law enforcement.

Let’s begin by understanding that a nation’s leaders should be most concerned about the safety, well being and futures of its own citizens the same way that rational parents must prioritize the safety and well being of their own children above all others. From a nurturing perspective, pro law-and-order immigration advocates will have an edge by using this argument.

While we are on the topic of children, consider how the DREAM Act and then DACA were sold to us on the lies that this legislative detritus was supposed to help “young immigrants” who were brought here as children and had no control over their situation.

Of course, those “young immigrants” could have been in their mid-thirties and simply had to claim to have been present in the U.S. prior to their 16th birthdays. Then, when that bill failed to pass, President Obama cobbled together DACA — again claiming that this was about the children because, “Congress had failed to act.” I wrote about this deception in my article, DACA: The Immigration Trojan Horse, How the original DREAM act was designed to cover 90% of the illegal alien population in the US.

Now the press, and the Democrats along with certain judges, have gone off the deep end where an estimated 3,000 children have been separated from their parents along the U.S. Mexican border when they were caught being smuggled into the United States.

Various religious and charitable organizations like T’ruah and Church World Services have turned this into a media circus. Psychologists have been rushed in to help treat these “traumatized” children.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Must Navigate in a Wilderness of Mirrors By Michael Walsh

By on July 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/19/trump-must-navigate-in-a-

So the Straight Arrow has now gone and indicted a dozen members of the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, on charges relating to—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—meddling in America’s internal affairs. That such meddling entirely fits their job description, and that Mr. Well Respected has exactly zero chance of ever bringing them to “justice” in an American courtroom is beside the point.

The partisan clown car that is the Robert Mueller investigation into something—anything!— continues to roll along, excreting great columns of smoke behind it in the hope that an even more partisan media can convince the public that it’s the result of fire, instead of hot air.

When the best you can do is bark at the canine for biting the man, you know your “investigation” has descended to a level of self-parody physically embodied by its hangdog front man, the Real Inspector Hound. Mueller has doggedly gone about accomplishing exactly nothing since (follow the bouncing ball): Rod Rosenstein wrote the memo that president Trump used as justification for firing former FBI chief and sanctimonious scold James Comey; who had succeeded his pal Mr. Incorruptible in that office; who then wrote some memos to himself and leaked them to the New York Times, in order to; motivate Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to look into wholly (and still) unsubstantiated charges of Trump’s putative “collusion” (not a statutory crime, by the way) with the Russians; to the cheers of former members of the intelligence community, including Comey, as well as its long-time laughingstock, former CIA director John Brennan, whose antipathy for Trump is daily on display.

In short, the whole mess stinks to high heaven and has since the bumbling Jeff Sessions mysteriously recused himself from anything to do with the Russians and has basically vanished since. This has left the president pretty much at the mercy of his enemies on both sides of the aisle (Rosenstein the butler; Brennan the saboteur) and unable effectively to fight back except via Twitter. For the truth is, the most virulent opposition Trump has faced since his surprise election has come from the Intelligence Community—which, at the top, is largely a left-leaning collection of malignant bureaucrats entirely intent on career advancement.

And how do these left-leaning IC bureaucrats assure their career advancement? By not upsetting the cozy arrangement they’ve long had with … the Russians.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NATO’s Challenge Is Germany, Not America By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/19/natos-challenge-is-germany-not-

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound—one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War.

In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as “indispensable” and “essential” to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Does NATO still protect the West? Does it prevent destructive European feuding? Does it ensure the postwar global order of free trade, commerce, travel, and communications? And is NATO—or the United States and its leadership of NATO—the real reason there has not been a World War III or a return to global tribalism and chaos?

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion to 29 nations and to the border of Russia meant the alliance became more expansive at the very time the old existential Soviet threat disappeared. Larger membership tended to weaken common ties, even as common dangers disappeared.

The result was that the idea of NATO membership became more important to the countries that are part of it than the reality and responsibility of actual military readiness.

Polls show that in most NATO countries, the idea of fighting on behalf of another country receives scant public support. The notion that the Dutch would march into Estonia to save its capital, Tallinn, from Russia is a cruel joke.

NATO’s 21st-century problem is not the United States, which provides a large percentage of its wherewithal, but Germany. As the most populous and most affluent of European nations, Germany still insidiously dominates Europe as it has since its inception in 1871.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

TED KENNEDY AND THE KGB A reflection on the late Democratic Senator’s outreach to the Kremlin to undermine President Reagan. Jamie Glazov (2008)

By on July 19th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270783/ted-kennedy-and-kgb-jamie-glazov

Editors’ note: In light of the Left’s deranged hysteria in response to President Trump’s recent press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, marked by pathological accusations that Trump has engaged in “treason,” Frontpage has deemed it important to bring attention to a forgotten story of verifiable scheming with the Kremlin — by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy against President Ronald Reagan. We are reprinting below Frontpage editor Jamie Glazov’s 2008 interview with Dr. Paul Kengor, who unearthed documentation detailing Kennedy’s outreach to the KGB and Soviet leader Yuri Andropov during the height of the Cold War, in which the Democratic Senator offered to collude with the Soviets to undermine President Reagan. There were no screams of moral indignation, or accusations of treason, about this matter from the Left at that time — nor since.

Ted Kennedy and the KGB.
Frontpage Magazine, May 15, 2008.

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Paul Kengor, the author of the New York Times extended-list bestseller God and Ronald Reagan as well as God and George W. Bush and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is also the author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College.

FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie.

FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit.

Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book, as well as all the documentation affirming its authenticity. Even with that, today, almost 25 years later, it seems to have largely remained a secret.

FP: Tell us about this document.

Kengor: It was a May 14, 1983 letter from the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, to the head of the USSR, the odious Yuri Andropov, with the highest level of classification. Chebrikov relayed to Andropov an offer from Senator Ted Kennedy, presented by Kennedy’s old friend and law-school buddy, John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California, to reach out to the Soviet leadership at the height of a very hot time in the Cold War. According to Chebrikov, Kennedy was deeply troubled by the deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he believed was bringing us perilously close to nuclear confrontation. Kennedy, according to Chebrikov, blamed this situation not on the Soviet leadership but on the American president—Ronald Reagan. Not only was the USSR not to blame, but, said Chebrikov, Kennedy was, quite the contrary, “very impressed” with Andropov.

The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped. It was Ronald Reagan who was the hindrance to peace. That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as “misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes.”

Even more interesting than Kennedy’s diagnosis was the prescription: According to Chebrikov, Kennedy suggested a number of PR moves to help the Soviets in terms of their public image with the American public. He reportedly believed that the Soviet problem was a communication problem, resulting from an inability to counter Reagan’s (not the USSR’s) “propaganda.” If only Americans could get through Reagan’s smokescreen and hear the Soviets’ peaceful intentions.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Glazov Gang: Avi Jorisch on “Thou Shalt Innovate”. How Israeli ingenuity repairs the world. VIDEO

By on July 19th, 2018

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/07/19/glazov-gang-avi-jorisch-on-thou-shalt-innovate/

This new edition of The Glazov Gang features Avi Jorisch, the author of Thou Shalt Innovate.

Avi discusses Thou Shalt Innovate and unveils How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World.

Don’t miss it!

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