Displaying posts published in

July 2019

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum Schadenfreude and the UNRWA scandal

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/schadenfreude-and-the-unrwa-scandal/

UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl collected money for business-class trips with his mistress, whom he fast-tracked into a role he invented for her so that she could accompany him around the world in style.

Revelations of rampant wrongdoing in the corridors of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) couldn’t have shamed a more worthy organization. Though normally it’s not nice to gloat over the misfortunes of others, the schadenfreude elicited by the news of inappropriate behavior going on behind the walls of this particularly vile organization was warranted.

Oddly, the damning internal UNRWA report dealing with the corrupt and abusive behavior of senior staff was exposed on Monday by Al Jazeera and AFP—media outlets that bemoaned the Trump administration’s cut in funding to the body whose mandate is to “provide relief, human development and protection services” to the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. You know, those Arabs who were displaced in 1948 as a result of the Arab assault on the Jewish state, otherwise known as Israel’s War of Independence.

Of course, only members of the far-left continue to harbor and spread the illusion that UNRWA is anything but what U.S. President Donald Trump called an “irredeemably flawed operation,” whose sole purpose has been to perpetuate a manufactured “Palestinian refugee crisis.”

As a side gig, the U.N. body that placed Palestinians in a fraudulent category all their own—one that enables them to remain “refugees” for generations, rather than helping them resettle quickly—also abets terrorists. It does this does technically, by allowing Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stockpile weapons in and under its schools, and ideologically, through revisionist textbooks and other methods that teach Palestinian children to hate and aspire to kill Jews.

Continue reading →
HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Trump tweets arrests of Somali ISIS sympathizers in Arizona

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/07/30/trump-tweets-arrests-of-somali-isis-sympathizers-in-arizona/23782684/
DYLAN STABLEFORD

President Trump on Tuesday used the megaphone that is his Twitter feed to draw attention to the arrest of two Somalia refugees in Arizona who authorities say were planning to travel from Tucson, Ariz., to Egypt to join the Islamic State.

Ahmed Mahad Mohamed, 21, and Abdi Yemani Hussein, 20, were charged with providing support to a terror group. They were arrested Friday at Tucson International Airport.

According to federal authorities, Mohamed had told an undercover FBI agent during social-media exchanges that he was “thirsty” for the blood of disbelievers and that “the best wake up call is [for the] Islamic State to get victory or another 911.”

“Somali refugees arresed in Tucson on way to Egypt,” Trump tweeted. “They were in touch with an agent posing as a terrorist. One of them stated, ‘The best wake up call is Islamic State to get victory or another 9/11.’ Get smart people! #MAGA #KAG”

“#KAG” refers to Trump’s reelection slogan, “Keep America Great.”

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Gruesome Tale of Jihadi John By Kyle Smith

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/jihadi-john-documentary-review/

A new documentary raises important questions about the journey of the Kuwait-born British terrorist to ISIS.

On August 19, 2014, a masked man with a London accent appeared on a video, boasting that he was a soldier for ISIS, and proceeded to behead American journalist James Foley. Security services almost immediately identified the murderer as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwait-born British man of 26. His captives, noticing the British accents with which he and three other captors spoke, referred to the four as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Emwazi’s media nickname became “Jihadi John.”

Built around interviews with MI5 and CIA officials, leading soldiers such as General David Richards of the U.K. and General David Petraeus of the U.S., and survivors of Syrian hostage camps from the era, director Anthony Wonke’s penetrating HBO documentary Unmasking Jihadi John: Anatomy of a Terrorist makes unfortunate, distracting use of cheesy dramatic reenactments in telling this awful story. But it also raises important questions about Emwazi’s journey to terrorism. The documentary is tinged with a sense of regret that the spooks could have done more to give Emwazi an exit ramp from evil.

As a boy, Emwazi immigrated to England at age six, his family winning asylum because they had been, in Kuwait, members of a persecuted minority, the Bedoon. Emwazi attended a Church of England school in London and seemed well-adjusted. As an adolescent, he began to disengage, to seem “slightly strange” in the words of one of his teachers. Footage of his youth shows him constantly covering his mouth; apparently the other boys liked to tease him about his breath. As a teen, he took up drinking and marijuana, but in college he started adopting Islamic dress and habits. Such faith “gives structure where there was none,” says one observer interviewed in the doc.

Online jihadist recruitment tools began to catch Emwazi’s eye, and he went to Somalia and Tanzania for indoctrination in Islamism. In the latter country he was locked up, beaten, and questioned. On the way back to London, he was stopped again in Amsterdam and again in Dover. British spies tried to steer him to be a double agent and threatened to make life difficult for him if he didn’t cooperate. “Whether we contributed to his further radicalization . . . by stopping him from travel is an interesting question,” notes Commander Richard Walton, Scotland Yard head of counterterrorism.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ilhan Omar Suggests Rand Paul Deserved to Be Assaulted, Get 5 Cracked Ribs By Tyler O’Neil

By on July 30th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ilhan-omar-suggests-rand-paul-deserved-to-be-assaulted-get-5-cracked-ribs/

On Monday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) retweeted a message effectively endorsing the violent 2017 assault against Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), which left him with five cracked ribs. She retweeted deranged actor Tom Arnold, who has incited President Donald Trump to a fight, leading Secret Service to intervene.

“Imagine being Rand Paul’s next door neighbor and having to deal with [Rand Paul] lying cowardly circular whiney bullcrap about lawn clippings. No wonder he ripped his toupee off,” Arnold tweeted.

Omar retweeted this message to her 376,000 followers.

Omar deleted the retweet after conservatives noted it.

Fifty-eight year old Rene Boucher attacked Paul from behind on his own property in Bowling Green, Ky. Paul was wearing headphones. He succeeded at throwing Boucher off, but not before sustaining injuries. The senator suffered five rib fractures, including three displaced fractures, and later required medical attention for pneumonia.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Shocker: Immunity Agreements with Hillary Aides Show ‘Disposing’ of Laptops with Possible Evidence of Wrongdoing By Rick Moran

By on July 30th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/shocker-immunity-agreements-with-hillary-aides-show-disposing-of-laptops-with-possible-evidence-of-wrongdoing/

The American Center for Law and Justice finally got some satisfaction from its numerous FOIA requests to the Department of Justice. It took a specific court order from a federal judge to release long-secret documents that might raise a few eyebrows among those who are still interested in matters pertaining to Hillary Clinton’s aides and the former secretary of state’s missing emails.

The ACLJ has obtained the DOJ’s infamous immunity agreements with Hillary Clinton’s top aides  Cheryl Mills and  Heather Samuelson – documents previously unreleased to the public and which include the DOJ attempting to enter an  agreement not to comply with the requirements of FOIA, and which confirm it agreed to  “dispose” of evidence, including Mills’ and Samuelson’s “culling laptops” which contained all of the missing emails from Hilary Clinton’s private homebrew server.

The immunity agreements signed by Mills and Samuelson are, to say the least, overly generous to their legal interests:

As we have advised you, we consider Cheryl Mills to be a witness based on the information gathered to date in this investigation. We understand that Cheryl Mills is willing to voluntarily provide the Mills Laptop to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, if the United States agrees not to use any information directly obtained from the Mills Laptop in any prosecution of Cheryl Mills for the mishandling of classified information and/or the removal or destruction of records as described below.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why the Mystery of Russiagate Hinges on the Mystery of Joseph Mifsud By Eric Felten

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/30/why_the_mystery_of_joseph_mifsud_is_the_mystery_of_russiagate_119761.html

For many, trying to follow Robert Mueller’s testimony was like someone whose Italian is limited to grazie and ciao taking in an opera in Venice: You might grasp the action but sorting out the story through the lyrics is another thing altogether.

The former special counsel was peppered with questions phrased in a shorthand of names – Veselnitskaya, Simpson, Kilimnik – each with a backstory it was assumed viewers, or at least the witness, would know. One of the most significant and dramatic – but also cryptic – exchanges occurred when Rep. Jim Jordan (R, Ohio) fired off a series of heated questions about a name few viewers are likely to have been familiar with: a Maltese professor invariably described as “mysterious,” Joseph Mifsud.

Rep. Jim Jordan on Joseph Mifsud, top photo: “Three times, he lied to the FBI; yet, you didn’t charge him with a crime. Why not?”
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Jordan began: The “FBI interviewed Joseph Mifsud on February 10th, 2017. In that interview, Mr. Mifsud lied. You point this out on page 193, Volume I. Three times, he lied to the FBI; yet, you didn’t charge him with a crime. Why not?”

Mueller was still looking for the page in his binder: “Did you say — I’m sorry, did you say 193?”

“Volume I, 193,” Jordan repeated impatiently. “He [Mifsud] lied three times, you point it out in the report, why didn’t you charge him with a crime?”

Mueller found his footing: “I can’t get into internal deliberations with regard to who or who would not be charged.”

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump’s truths about Baltimore The Democrats can’t resist Trump’s provocations, and they keep making his case for him Dominic Green

By on July 30th, 2019

https://spectator.us/trumps-truths-about-baltimore/

‘You would think you were in a Third World country,’ the millionaire white New Yorker of retirement age said of Baltimore’s heavily black Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in 2015.

There is nothing remotely racist about this statement. We know that because Bernie Sanders said it. Yes, the Bernie Sanders who lives in whites-only Vermont and whose inability to connect with a key group of the Democratic base means that he has what the pollsters call an ‘African American problem’.

It was, however, disgracefully and irredeemably racist of President Trump to refer to Rep. Elijah Cummings’s Baltimore district as a ‘disgusting rat and rodent infested mess’ and a ‘very dangerous & filthy place’. It was racist not because Baltimore has the highest murder rate of any large American city, a corrupt and violent police force and, according to posts from residents and public-spirited enquiries by the London Independent, rats and mould in apartment complexes owned by Jared Kushner’s family. It was racist because Trump said it about a Democratic-controlled city with lots of African American, Democratic-voting inhabitants.

If you believe that what white millionaire New Yorker Donald Trump said about Baltimore was racist, then you should believe that what white millionaire New Yorker Bernie Sanders said about Baltimore was racist too. We’ll give Sanders a pass on the detail that the Third World ceased to exist around the time his beloved Soviet Union went under, and cut to the key question: is there, was there, a single ‘Third World’ country that was majority white?

Race is the third rail of American life, but the Democrats and their massed supporters in the media think that their way of talking about race is the only way. This is an insult to the rights of their fellow Americans, and an affront to common sense. Sanders and Trump both said what everyone knows, but fears to admit because the penalties for talking candidly about race in the United States are so high. The truth is that Baltimore’s poverty, violence and sustained failure make it an embarrassment to the United States.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

DCCC faces mass staff upheaval after uproar over diversity

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/29/top-dccc-staffer-out-amid-diversity-uproar-1439525

By HEATHER CAYGLE, JAKE SHERMAN and LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ

The departures comes as chairwoman Cheri Bustos faces accusations that she has done little to address the lack of diversity in the upper ranks of the campaign arm.

The top echelon of staffers at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee left their jobs Monday, a shakeup following a pair of POLITICO stories detailing deep unease with the party’s campaign apparatus over a lack of diversity.

On Monday morning, Allison Jaslow, DCCC executive director and a close ally of Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) — chair of the committee — resigned during a tense meeting at the party’s Capitol Hill headquarters. And in the next 10 hours, much of the senior staff was out: Jared Smith, the communications director and another Bustos ally; Melissa Miller, a top DCCC communications aide; Molly Ritner, political director; Nick Pancrazio, deputy executive director; and Van Ornelas, the DCCC’s director of diversity.

Jacqui Newman, the chief operating officer for the campaign arm, will serve as interim executive director and facilitate the search for a permanent replacement, Bustos said in a statement late Monday.

“Today has been a sobering day filled with tough conversations that too often we avoid,” Bustos said. “But I can say confidently that we are taking the first steps toward putting the DCCC back on path to protect and expand our majority, with a staff that truly reflects the diversity of our Democratic caucus and our party.”

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

U.S. Deal with China Saves Huawei, Threatens America by Gordon G. Chang

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14629/us-china-deal-huawei

This is the worst possible time in what is called the “cold tech war” to give relief to Huawei. Huawei is vulnerable to American measures for only a short period, so this is the time for the Trump administration to exert leverage.

[W]hen it comes to harm, we haven’t seen anything yet. Beijing will undoubtedly use Huawei to control the networks operating the devices of tomorrow, remotely manipulating everything hooked up to the Internet of Things — in other words, just about everything.

So far, the U.S. has had little success in persuading other countries not to buy low-cost (subsidized) Huawei equipment for their 5G networks (the fifth generation of wireless communication). The Philippines, a treaty partner of the United States, has decided to buy 5G Huawei gear, and Italy, another ally, is almost certainly going to make the same decision soon.

The Trump administration, by crippling Huawei, can make up for the failure to convince other countries to shun its equipment… Huawei cannot market its phones without Google’s Android operating system…. Outside China, Huawei’s phones would be commercially unmarketable because they would not be able to connect to the Google Play Store.

So, if the Trump administration is going to move against Huawei as a national security threat, it has to do so now. Beijing is now stalling, hoping to buy time for Huawei.

American and Chinese trade negotiators, meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Shanghai, are cooking up an interim deal that is deeply injurious to U.S. national security.

There is growing pessimism that Washington and Beijing can reach a comprehensive agreement, given the fundamental differences over, among other things, industrial policy, intellectual property protection, and restrictions on foreign investment.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Adopts Eurasianism by Burak Bekdil

By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14625/turkey-adopts-eurasianism

Few observers back then warned that Erdoğan’s pro-West façade was fake and his deep adherence to political Islam, an enemy of the Western civilization, would one day urge him to seek non-Western alliances.

Turkey’s choice of a Russian-made air defense system that is primarily designated to hit NATO aerial assets is a reflection of its anticipation of an aerial military conflict with a NATO member in the future.

No doubt, the S-400 is also a sign of Erdogan’s disregard for Turkey’s increasingly problematic place in the Western alliance. Erdoğan’s ideologues keep on portraying the U.S. as an “enemy country,” and many Turks increasingly buy that line. Seven out of 10 Turks now report feeling threatened by U.S. power….

Ironically, it was an anti-Islamist, Kemalist Turkish general who first suggested that Turkey should align its foreign policy with the rising powers of Eurasia — all of Europe plus Asia. It was just eight months before President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) first came to power, and since then, has remained undefeated. The U.S. at the time was busy with the final touches on the military operation that would oust Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, in March 2003.

General Tuncay Kılınç, the powerful secretary general of Turkey’s National Security Council, said that Turkey should seek an alternative alliance with Russia and Iran. In November 2002, Erdoğan’s AKP came to power, pledging to pursue pro-EU, pro-West, liberal governance, and wrongly accusing Kemalist ideology of being an obstacle against liberal democracy — an incredible political story, to judge it 17 years later. Few observers back then warned that Erdoğan’s pro-West façade was fake and his deep adherence to political Islam, an enemy of the Western civilization, would one day urge him to seek non-Western alliances.

Continue reading →