Displaying posts published in

October 2019

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

John Durham obtains key BlackBerrys connected to origins of Russia-Trump probe Tom Tillison

By on October 18th, 2019

www.bizpacreview.com/2019/10/18/john-durham-obtains-key-blackberrys-connected-to-origins-of-russia-trump-probe-840904

 

Reading like the greatest spy novel ever written, leaving followers salivating over the next chapter, regardless of allegiance to the players involved, the targeting of then-candidate Donald Trump by the U.S. intelligence apparatus under former President Barack Obama just keeps getting better.

Following special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings that allegations of collusion between the president’s campaign and Russia were little more than a hoax, Attorney General William Barr tasked John Durham, the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, with investigating the investigators — in effect, to determine how Trump had become a target.

On Thursday, the Washington Times reported Durham has acquired two BlackBerrys used by Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, who’s intricately linked to the whole story.

More from The Times:

Sidney Powell, attorney for retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, filed a court motion on Monday disclosing the phones’ existence while tying them to Western intelligence.

She told The Washington Times on Thursday that she has confirmed that it was Mr. Durham’s office who obtained them.

Powell filed a motion in district court to have the government turn over the data on the BlackBerrys. Flynn is facing a tentative sentencing hearing on Dec. 18.

“This information is material, exculpatory, and relevant to the defense of Mr. Flynn, and specifically to the “OCONUS LURES” and agents that western intelligence tasked against him likely as early as 2014 to arrange—unbeknownst to him—‘connections’ with certain Russians that they would then use against him in their false claims. The phones were used by Mr. Joseph Mifsud,” the motion reads, according to The Times.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK: Last Call for Boris Johnson’s Brexit Bus by Andrew Ash

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15042/brexit-last-call

Having put everything on the line by staking his reputation and premiership in defiance of his detractors’ shameless cynicism, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to be energised by the new Brexit deal. With a bit of luck, his tenacity might just pay off — and the agonising wait to be free of the EU will finally be over.

“We’ve got a great new deal that takes back control,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted after last minute negotiations with European Union leaders in Brussels. The deal will now require the approval of both the European Parliament and UK Parliament – who have so far tried everything they can to derail the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU). According to the BBC:

MPs have voted to hold an extra sitting in the Commons on Saturday to discuss the next steps.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove said the government would hold a vote on the deal and was not “not contemplating defeat”.

But, he added, if the plan did not get the backing of MPs, the alternative was leaving without a deal.

The no-deal Brexit mentioned by Gove is something with which many might be quite happy.

Those who voted to leave the EU in 2016 might well find it hard not view the latest proceedings with a cynical eye, but it finally looks as though a departure from the EU could be real — despite one half of the Conservative Party’s coalition government — Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — failing to support it. Stating the obvious by insisting that the Johnson is “too eager by far to get a deal at any cost”, Nigel Dodds, the leader of the Conservatives’ DUP bedfellows, appears not quite to get the point. After releasing a statement stating that the DUP could not back the proposals “as things stand,” they somewhat unhelpfully failed to provide much further information.

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Who Gets Blamed if ISIS Fighters Come Back? by Con Coughlin

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15038/isis-prisoners-return

US President Donald Trump personally made a number of appeals to European leaders requesting they do more to take responsibility for their ISIS-affiliated nationals… the Europeans refused to budge, arguing that having them return home would increase the risk of Islamist-inspired acts of terrorism….

There is now the very real prospect that ISIS, which only a year ago had suffered a catastrophic defeat with the destruction of its so-called caliphate, will be able to regroup as hordes of liberated fighters from Europe and elsewhere rejoin its ranks.

If that happens, and ISIS succeeds in launching a new wave of terror attacks against Western targets, European leaders will have only themselves to blame for failing to accept responsibility for the actions of their citizens, no matter how reprehensible they might be.

Ever since the US-led coalition succeeded in destroying most of ISIS in Syria, one vital issue has left been unresolved, namely: what to do with the thousands of ISIS fighters who were taken prisoner and confined to Kurdish-run detention centres.

The problem is particularly acute with regard to the estimated 2,500 foreign fighters — the majority of them holding European passports — and their dependents who abandoned their home countries for fight for ISIS.

Given the depth of their betrayal — turning their backs on nations where they have been raised and nurtured to join the barbarians of ISIS — it is quite understandable that Western governments should recoil in horror when defeated ISIS fighters and their associates then announce they want to return home.

In Britain, for example, there was much controversy earlier in the year concerning the case of Shamima Begum who, as a 15-year-old teenager, left her home in east London in 2015 to become the bride of an ISIS fighter.

Earlier this year, she resurfaced, languishing in a Kurdish-run camp, from where she made an impassioned call to be allowed to return home, even though, during her absence, the British government had already cancelled her British citizenship. Her request received short shrift from London, which insisted she had lost her right to be a British citizen by dint of her decision to join a banned terrorist organisation, one of whose prime objectives is to carry out terrorist attacks against British targets.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

The Adventures of Commodore Levy, U.S.N. William Bryk *****

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/the-adventures-of-commodore-levy-u-s-n

A sailor of great professional skill and courage, he was proud, arrogant, and self-righteous.

Born April 22, 1792 (Nissan 30, 5552), Uriah Phillips Levy was 10 years old when he ran away to sea. He returned two years later, as he’d promised his mother, to prepare for his bar mitzvah. Then he apprenticed to a Philadelphia ship owner. In our day of wooden men and iron ships, “learning the ropes” is a cliché. To Levy, it was life and death. A square-rigger has more than 200 ropes (called lines), each has a name and a function, and Levy had to know them all. To confuse a clew line with a halyard, or a lee brace with a weather backstay, could mean a dismasted ship and the endangerment of all aboard her.

Within nine years, as Levy wrote, “I passed through every grade of service—cabin boy, ordinary seaman, able-bodied seaman, boatswain, third mate, second mate, first mate, to that of captain…” In 1809, while on shore leave in Tortola, a British press gang seized him. He was carrying his papers. However, a Royal Marine sergeant sneered, “You don’t look like an American to me. You look like a Jew.” Levy replied, “I am an American and a Jew.” “If the Americans have Jew peddlers manning their ships, it’s no wonder they sail so badly,” the Royal Marine replied. Levy hit him full in the face. Hitting a Royal Marine in the face is almost invariably a mistake. When Levy came to in the brig of HMS Vermeer, the officer of the watch was shoving a New Testament at him and demanding he swear himself into the Royal Navy. Levy refused, saying, “I am an American and I cannot swear allegiance to your king. And I am a Jew, and do not swear on your testament, or with my head uncovered.” Somehow, he gained an audience with Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, who agreed that his papers were valid and ordered him released.

In 1811, at 19, he became master and part owner of the brig George Washington. He nailed a mezuzah outside his cabin door, a small box containing Biblical verses that signified his cabin was a Jewish home. When the United States declared war on Great Britain in 1812, Levy entered the U.S. Navy as a sailing master. Levy was captured when his ship was taken by a British warship. He was imprisoned at Dartmoor for 16 months, during a winter so cold the Thames froze solid to the bottom. He learned French and fencing; he failed only in organizing a congregation among the prisoners for want of a minyan, the traditional quorum of 10.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bloody murder is not ‘normative’ Ruthie Blum

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Bloody-murder-is-not-normative-605035
32-year-old Michal Sela’s killing is a perfect example of pundits and the public trying to make sense of it by adopting a socio-political stance before the ink of the printing presses are dry.

With new details emerging about the recent murder of 32-year-old social worker Michal Sela at the hands of her husband, Eliran Malul, many initial judgments about the case require reevaluating.

As frequently happens when faced with unfathomable evil in Israeli society, pundits and the public try to make sense of it by adopting a socio-political stance well before both the blood of the victim and ink of the printing presses are dry. Sela’s killing is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

Her story, or at least what we know of it so far, is one that lends itself to individual and collective speculation for seemingly contradictory reasons.

On the one hand, the young wife and mother – whose social media photos and posts show a beautiful and vibrant woman beaming with gratitude for her blessings – could be any one of us. Or any of our married daughters. We therefore identify with, if not partly envy, her life.

On the other, her tragic end is incomprehensible. Beyond the pale. The stuff that crime novels and movies are made of. After all, Sela was stabbed multiple times and left to bleed to death in her home by the father of the ostensibly happy couple’s eight-month-old baby girl. An infant not yet weaned from breast milk, who witnessed her daddy slash her mommy with a butcher knife and then turn the weapon on himself.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Wanting the Worst by Peter Wood

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.lawliberty.org/liberty-classic/wanting-the-worst-helmut-schoeck-envy/

Peter Wood is President of the National Association of Scholars. He is the author of A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (Encounter Books, 2007) and of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books, 2003). He is also the 2019 recipient of the Jeane Kirkpatrick Award for Academic Freedom.

“Let’s talk about envy. Give us some more beer…”

That’s Ivan, in Yuri Olesha’s short novel, Envy, published in 1927. Ivan is drawing the young and envious Nikolai further into a plot to disrupt Soviet society. His protégé, Nikolai Kavalero, dreams of glory but is stuck on the margins of society. He stews over the privileges and honors bestowed on others. Ivan feeds Nickolai’s envy, his sense of unfair exclusion.

Olesha’s novel is cited by Helmut Schoeck in his magisterial work, Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour, originally published in German in 1966 and republished by Liberty Fund in 1987. According to Schoeck, Olesha’s novel is a rarity in openly addressing this powerful and disruptive emotion. Envy, says Schoeck, is something we all feel but hardly ever talk about. Other negative emotions are granted a degree of public respect. We can admit to hatred, fear, and even jealousy, but envy is a quality we attribute only to others, whose envy is to be feared.

That’s because the envious have only one real goal: to see the people they envy brought low. In Schoeck’s telling, the envious man doesn’t want the good things—the house, the farm, the wife, the children—of the person he envies. He simply wants that person to lose those good things. The pleasure he looks forward to is the misery of his rival. The rival, moreover, need not even know he is the target of envy. The man who envies hides his resentment, typically by dressing it up in the clothes of altruism. He calls for “social justice,” for example, when what he really wants is to inflict suffering on the people he resents.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

A Democrat, and Social Conservative, Challenges Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez By Jack Crowe

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/fernando-cabrera-social-conservative-democrat-challenges-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/ernando

Cabrera is running to unseat her in next year’s primary in New York.

D emocratic city councilman Fernando Cabrera sounds like a New Yorker. He’s speaking fast when I reach him by phone Monday, rattling off the myriad differences between himself and the woman he’s challenging for the Democratic primary nomination for New York’s 14th district: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

As a well-known New York Democrat who is unconcerned about jeopardizing a future career in national politics, Cabrera is the most serious primary challenger to enter the race, and the media have taken notice. His announcement was covered in the New York Post last week, and he was headed to an interview with Fox News as we discussed his plans to upset a political phenom.

While the cosmetic differences between Cabrera — a 55-year-old Pentecostal pastor —and his 29-year-old former bartender opponent abound, he’s convinced that the primary distinction between himself and Ocasio-Cortez is his willingness to do the work of government. He rapidly details his record as a three-term city councilman: falling crime and unemployment rates in his district, coupled with increased graduation rates and high-school STEM achievement. He juxtaposes this record with the way that Ocasio-Cortez has spent her first year in office.

“The ‘o’ in Ocasio stands for ‘zero,’” he says impatiently. “She has brought home zero money, she’s advanced zero bills.” His frustration is obvious. Cabrera explains that he had no intention of running for the congressional seat. “I would’ve retired,” he says, but then he saw how Ocasio-Cortez derailed Amazon’s plan to bring its headquarters, and 25,000 jobs, to Queens.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Used the Options He Had in Syria By Jim Talent

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/trump-used-the-options-he-had-in-syria/

There was no reason to leave a few Special Forces in the middle of an armed conflict when, yes, Erdogan might be willing to risk war with the U.S.

There has been a great deal of outrage expressed over the fact that the United States did not prevent Turkey from initiating the military operation to create a “buffer zone” in northern Syria. The major objection seems to be that in withdrawing the 100 or so American Special Operations forces who had been stationed in the area, the United States was giving permission for the operation and abandoning the Kurds who have helped us in the fight against ISIS.

I don’t see the criticism; in fact, far from abandoning the Kurds, the United States has consistently opposed the Turkish buffer-zone operation and used every means to prevent it that were consistent with America’s overriding national interests in the region.

The Kurds are tough fighters and were indispensable in supplying the ground component against ISIS. They had their own reasons for doing it, of course. Apart from not wanting to become victims of ISIS themselves, the Kurds are a stateless people and they have been trying to carve out a self-governing enclave for themselves in Syria or Iraq or Turkey or wherever they can get it. The success of the war against ISIS, and the prominent role of the Kurds in the effort, raised at least the prospect of such an enclave in northern Syria.

The United States does not support Kurdish separatism in Syria, but the Trump administration did try for months to get Turkey to agree to joint patrols and shared control in northern Syria; the purpose was to prevent further conflict and instability in the region, enable a continued focus on the fight against ISIS, and ensure effective security over captured ISIS soldiers. But it would have been at least a small step toward Kurdish autonomy.

Recep Erdogan was impatient, to say the least, with the American negotiating position. Erdogan is no fool, and he was aware that the Kurds were developing a significant measure of de facto control in northern Syria. Turkey and the Kurds have a long and checkered history, and Erdogan is as opposed to Kurdish separatism and statehood as the Kurds are in favor of it.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Why Mexico Is Cooperating with Us on Immigration By Mark Krikorian

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/immigration-enforcement-mexico-cooperating-with-us/

‘No one will come to trample our country, our land!’

One of the reasons border apprehensions have dropped from their alarming peak in May is that Mexico has been pretty aggressive in stopping third-country nationals from traversing its territory on their way north to make bogus asylum claims so they can be released into the U.S.

But why has Mexico been willing to work with us like this? It’s especially curious because in the past, Mexico was not at all eager to help us limit illegal immigration, a pattern we might have expected to intensify with last year’s election as president of left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (commonly known as AMLO, pronounced as a word rather than initials).

No doubt President Trump’s tariff threats had some effect. Three-quarters of Mexico’s exports go to the U.S., and despite increased integration of our economies over the past couple of decades, they still need us a lot more than we need them. Also, Trump’s mercurial temperament clearly has the Mexicans worried that he could do something rash (similar to Iran’s fears about Reagan if the hostages weren’t released before he was inaugurated).

But it’s unlikely that these things would be enough to move a sometimes touchy nationalist like AMLO. Rather, I think a big part of the explanation is that the current flow of illegals is mainly made up of foreigners, not Mexicans. Earlier waves of mass infiltration across our southern border consisted mainly of Mexicans, and while Mexico quickly took back its people who had been nabbed by the Border Patrol, it did little if anything to reduce the flow. They did establish a police-like unit of the country’s immigration agency called Grupo Beta, which worked on Mexico’s northern border (opposite our southern border), but its remit was to help potential illegals with water and first aid and protect them from criminals.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Barr Got Right — and What He Might Add By Howard Husock

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/william-barr-remarks-notre-dame-decline-religiosity/

He singled out for criticism those who believe that, in effect, government social programs could replace the virtues instilled by religion.

Attorney General William Barr finds himself the target of criticism for remarks he made at the University of Notre Dame in which he made the case that a decline in religiosity — and, indeed, attacks on the beliefs of the religious — might have something to do with personal and social dysfunction in the United States.

For this — and his expressed view that “militant secularists” might actually prefer to replace the “traditional moral order” — Barr stands accused of endorsing some sort of Christian theocracy.

Barr, of course, hardly endorsed the idea the church–state divide should be erased in the United States. Nor did he insist that only the religious could live a healthy and productive life. Rather, he singled out for criticism those who believe that, in effect, government social programs could replace the virtues instilled by religion. It’s an important distinction. Since the New Deal, and increasingly since the Great Society, we have done exactly what Barr asserted: We have “called on the state to mitigate the social costs of personal misconduct and irresponsibility . . .”

One tends to think in this regard of financial social-safety-net programs — the social-welfare state. But much more is involved in what might be termed the social-service state — the huge constellation of social-service “providers” who claim they can use counseling techniques to improve the lives of the addicted, the promiscuous, the domestic abusers. The distribution of federal funds to these not-for-profit organizations has, as Barr suggested, reflected a dramatic shift in values.

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