Displaying posts published in

May 2019

What are the odds that the Durham investigation is for real and will bring the bad actors to justice?By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/what_are_the_odds_that_the_durham_investigation_is_for_real_and_will_bring_the_bad_actors_to_justice.html

Following the disclosure that U.S. attorney John Durham has been tasked with investigating and prosecuting potential crimes in the origin of the Russia Hoax, we learned some very encouraging facts that suggest that the Russia Hoax will be fully aired and miscreants brought to justice. Like Howie Carr, who had a front-row seat when John Durham went after corruption in the FBI Boston office, I am “cautiously optimistic” (Howie’s term) that Durham and his boss A.G. Barr want to get to the bottom of the hoax and put those who may have committed crimes in prison.

In Boston, Durham faced a gigantic scandal that was very damaging to the FBI and did not blink. He got John Connelly, Whitey Bulger’s protector, sentenced to 40 years in prison. This does not sound like a prosecutor who can be persuaded to lay off getting to the truth in order to protect the reputations of important people and institutions.

But we must concede that there are plenty of reasons to worry that that the biggest political scandal in American history — the political weaponization of both the federal intelligence and law enforcement communities to spy on political opponents of the sitting president and remove a duly elected president from office — will be swept under the rug. Even a sober-minded man of integrity like William Barr might be persuaded that the harm to public trust in our system would be too profound and that our allies and foes overseas might see us as so weakened that they would take actions inimical to our interests.

Vermont Replaces Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/vermont-replaces-columbus-day-with-indigenous-peoples-day/

Vermont on Friday became the sixth state to eliminate Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day.

Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, signed a bill designating the second Monday in October a day honoring Native Americans rather than the 15th-century Italian explorer.

“Vermont was founded and built upon lands whose original inhabitants were Abenaki people and honors them and their ancestors,” the state’s new law reads.

“I know it’s controversial from many standpoints, from many people, but you know, it’s just a day, and we’ll get through it,” Scott said last month after the state legislature passed the measure.

Vermont’s move comes on the heels of similar bills in Maine and New Mexico, whose Democratic governors signed the holiday change into law last month. Hawaii, Oregon, and South Dakota had already chosen to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day.

Some modern Native American tribes object to the celebration of Christopher Columbus, who led several expeditions to Central and South America and spearheaded the European colonization of the New World.

Nazis and Communists: A Talk with Vladimir Bukovsky, Part III By Jay Nordlinger

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/vladimir-bukovsky-conversation-nazis-communists/

Editor’s Note: Jay Nordlinger recently interviewed Vladimir Bukovsky, the legendary Soviet-era dissident, at Bukovsky’s home in Cambridge, England. For the first two parts of this series, go here and here.

Talking with Bukovsky, I ask him to give me a comment or two on Yeltsin — Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the new Russia. He does.

“He was a tragic figure. He was kind of half born — I don’t know how to put it. He was part and parcel of the Communist regime, and he suddenly realized that the whole thing was wrong — and then he was on both sides at the same time. That was the trouble with Yeltsin. That’s what made him a tragic figure. He couldn’t decide what to do with his life. He couldn’t go all the way against the Communists. He went against them, but did not finish it. Yes, he was a tragic figure.”

• Bukovsky’s book Judgment in Moscow: Did he mean it to be a Nuremberg? A partial Nuremberg? A mini-Nuremberg? “Theoretically, that’s what I tried to achieve, but there is nothing like an actual trial, a real trial. We all know the difference: One is moral, the other actual.”

Along with many others, Bukovsky would have liked to see an actual trial, in any form. “Someone asked me — a member of Yeltsin’s entourage — ‘Well, who’s going to be the judges?’ A very tricky question. I said, ‘Look, I don’t care. Choose twelve people off the street, and that would be okay with me.’”

I think of the old phrase, about juries: “twelve good men and true.”

Actor Stephen Fry Accused of White Supremacy for Making OK Gesture By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/actor-stephen-fry-accused-of-white-supremacy-for-making-ok-gesture/

Last week the Chicago Cubs banned a fan for playing the Circle Game, claiming he was actually being a white supremacist. They fell for the hoax that the OK gesture is actually something bad. And NBC News even blurred out the guy’s hand so the infection wouldn’t spread, or maybe so the audience couldn’t see that it was just an OK sign.

“Chicago Cubs fan, who appeared to flash a hand gesture that has become associated with white supremacy behind a black sports reporter while he was on air, has been banned from Wrigley Field. https://nbcnews.to/2HcgNeJ ”

Emma Kelly, Metro (UK):…While Stephen was just trying to raise awareness and drum up support by sharing the universally recognisable OK symbol, others piped up to claim it was a sign of the alt-right.One person wrote: ‘Stephen and friends – You might want to be super careful using this symbol if you don’t want to be confused with white supremacist creeps. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that even the kindest of intentions can be taken out of context.’ Another replied: ‘Are you aware that this hand symbol can be misinterpreted as support for white supremacy?’, while one reply said:‘Didn’t have you down as part of the alt-right.’

NYU Journalism Teacher: The GOP Is ‘A Terrorist Organization’ By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/nyu-journalism-teacher-the-gop-is-a-terrorist-organization/

She seems nice.

No stranger to controversy, the 28-year-old Fordham grad and author of How to Start a Revolution tweeted last year on the death of evangelist Billy Graham, “The big news today is that Billy Graham was still alive this whole time. Anyway, have fun in hell, bi*ch.”

Controversy, vindictiveness masquerading as commentary, potato, poTAHto.

Me, I’m with Twitter user “VillainsMatter” who replied, “You know this whole acting like a complete asylum inmate bit, people look at it and vote trump 2020 because of it.”

This summer, Duca will teach a class at NYU called “The Feminist Journalist.” According to Wikipedia, the class will “focus on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism.” If Duca’s work is any indication, feminism and journalism — at least as journalism was once practiced — make up a Venn Diagram of two circles with zero overlap. That NYU finds someone so viciously partisan worthy of training tomorrow’s journalists tells you everything you need to know about the actual worth of an NYU journalism degree.

No, Rashida Tlaib, Palestinians Aren’t Israel’s Victims By P. David Hornik ****

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/no-rashida-tlaib-palestinians-arent-israels-victims/

The Palestinian rage and victimhood machine has been running in high gear this week. First, there were Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s semi-coherent, counterfactual words basically crediting Palestinians for saving Jews from the Holocaust while portraying Palestinians as its ultimate victims. And on Wednesday, on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, there was another Nakba—or “Catastrophe”—Day, an annual negative commemoration of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the failure of Palestinian forces and five Arab armies to strangle it at its birth.

“In Gaza,” The Times of Israel reported,

[A]t least 10,000 people flocked to the border between Israel and the coastal enclave…. “The rioters are setting tires on fire and hurling rocks,” the army said. “A number of explosive devices have been hurled within the Gaza Strip, as well, and a number of attempts have been made to damage the security fence. IDF troops are responding with riot dispersal means.”

…Several balloon-borne incendiary devices landed in southern Israel, where they sparked at least nine blazes, according to area firefighters.

…In a speech at the border area, senior Hamas official Fathi Hamad…warned Israel that “The day of your slaughter, extermination and demise is approaching.”

As for the West Bank: “In Ramallah…, hundreds of people marched from the grave of the late Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat to a rally downtown, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to lands that are now a part of Israel.”

But was Israel’s creation really a nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinian Arabs?

Suspect arrested in stabbing of Jewish woman in Sweden Danish police nab Muslim man suspected of stabbing Jewish northwest of Malmo in Sweden. Authorities not treating incident as hate crime.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/263184

Police in Denmark have arrested a man suspected in the stabbing attack on a Jewish woman in Sweden.

Swedish authorities had released a warrant for the man’s arrest Tuesday, after a Jewish woman was stabbed nine times in the city of Helsingborg, roughly 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) northwest of Malmo.

The victim, a woman in her 60s who is the wife of the leader of the local Jewish community, was on her way to work Tuesday morning when she was attacked.

The assailant stabbed the woman nine times, then fled the scene, eventually escaping to Denmark.

Authorities identified the suspect as a Muslim man known to local police.

On Wednesday, Danish police announced that the suspect had been taken into custody. He is expected to be extradited to Sweden for prosecution.

Secretary Of State Michel Pompeo Denounces Leaders ‘Eager To Delight Davos’-

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/13/pompeo-america-first-foreign-policy-is-inspired-by-the-founders/

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo gave the following remarks at the Claremont Institute’s 40th Anniversary Gala on May 11.

‘President Trump believes it is right – indeed more than right – for America to unashamedly advance policy that serves our interests and reflects American ideals.’

There is literally, as I travel the world, there is nothing more distinctive about the United States than our politics, and wonderfully so. We are the truly greatest experiment in human freedom that the world has ever seen, and I, as America’s senior diplomat, benefit from that every day.

I want to do a little bit of the history, because the foreign policy of the early republic reflected the attitude of a free nation which has thrown off an imperial power, which, frankly, I just left. And look, I think there’s three words that characterize that. They would be realism, restraint, and respect, and I’ll talk about each of them just for a moment.

First, realism. The Founders were keen students of human nature and history. They saw that conflict is the normative experience for nations. Hamilton put this Federalist 34. He said, “To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and [beneficial] sentiments of peace.”

I’ll simplify: The Founders knew peace wasn’t the norm. And in response to this reality, the Founders knew the first duty of the federal government was to provide for the safety of its citizens. Madison said, “[Security] is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.” You all know that.

Dispute erupts over whether Brennan, Comey pushed Steele dossier, as DOJ probe into misconduct begins By Gregg Re, Catherine Herridge

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dispute-erupts-over-whether-brennan-comey-pushed-steele-dossier-as-doj-probe-into-misconduct-begins

A high-level dispute over which senior government officials pushed the unverified Steele dossier amid efforts to surveil the Trump campaign has broken out into the open again, after it emerged that Attorney General William Barr appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if the FBI and DOJ’s actions were “lawful and appropriate.”

Sources familiar with the records told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated then-FBI Director James Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as the ICA.

Fox News was told that the email chain – not yet public — referred to the dossier as “crown material,” but it was not clear why this apparent code was used. On Tuesday night, former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy said on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that “Comey has a better argument than Brennan, based on what I’ve seen.”

A day earlier, Gowdy told Fox News, “Whoever is looking into this, tell them to look into emails” from December 2016 involving Brennan and Comey. Gowdy, who is now a Fox News contributor, said his assessment was based on sensitive Russia records he reviewed as then-chairman of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.

Harvard Magazine Apologizes for Lewd Lampoon of Holocaust Icon Anne Frank -Allyn Fisher-Ilan

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/harvard-magazine-apologizes-for-lewd-lampoon-of-holocaust-icon-anne-frank-1.7242672

The incident followed a sharp rise in anti-Semitic violence in the United States, punctuated by two synagogue shootings in the space of six months.

Following social media outcry and protests from students and Jewish officials, The Harvard Lampoon, a campus satirical magazine, apologized Tuesday for printing a doctored photograph mocking one of the most iconic of Holocaust victims, Anne Frank.

The caricatured picture featured a headshot of Frank, who died at 15 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after her family’s Amsterdam hideout was divulged to the Nazis, photoshopped atop a buxom bikini-clad woman.

A headline above the picture blared: “Gone before her time: Virtual aging technology shows us what Anne Frank would have looked like if she hadn’t died.” A caption continued, “Add this to your list of reasons why the Holocaust sucked.”

Paulette Schuster, a student at Harvard whose grandfather survived the Holocaust, lashed out at the magazine in a Facebook post. “What a feeling it must be to be part of an organization in which sexualizing a victim of genocide is not surprising,” Schuster wrote.

“I’m appalled at that such an unfunny, hateful, ignorant, pedophiliac, and dehumanizing image could be published,” Schuster added.