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October 2019

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Police Arrest Over 800 Climate Change Protesters Trying to Shut Down Airport By Mairead McArdle

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-police-arrest-over-800

London’s Metropolitan Police arrested over 800 climate change activists this week throughout the city, some of whom attempted to shut down London City Airport on Thursday.

Demonstrators with Extinction Rebellion, a climate activism movement that says it encourages civil disobedience to compel government action, have cropped up around London over the past four days. Activists said they planned a “Hong Kong-style occupation of the terminal building,” a reference to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong who shut down the city’s international airport in August.

The group targeted the London airport over the travel hub’s £2 billion expansion plan, which activists say does not comply with Britain’s goal to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

At least 29 people have been charged with crimes. The protests have so far not forced the airport to close but have caused some delayed flights.

One protester, former Paralympic cyclist James Brown, even climbed on top of a British Airways plane. Another activist refused to resume his seat on a plane as the flight was preparing to depart and began lecturing the other passengers on climate change before police removed him from the plane for “disruptive behavior on board,” the airline said.

The London protests come as climate change emerges at the forefront of the political debate in the U.S.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Turkey and the Kurds: It’s More Complicated Than You Think By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/turkey-and-the-kurds-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/

We are grateful for the Kurds’ help, and we should try to help them in return. But no one wants to risk war with Turkey.

O n Monday, President Trump announced that a contingent of fewer than 100 U.S. troops in Syria was being moved away from Kurdish-held territory on the border of Turkey. The move effectively green-lighted military operations by Turkey against the Kurds, which have now commenced.

Some U.S. military officials went public with complaints about being “blindsided.” The policy cannot have been a surprise, though. The president has made no secret that he wants out of Syria, where we now have about 1,000 troops (down from over 2,000 last year). More broadly, he wants our forces out of the Middle East. He ran on that position. I’ve argued against his “endless wars” tropes, but his stance is popular. As for Syria specifically, many of the president’s advisers think we should stay, but he has not been persuaded.

The president’s announcement of the redeployment of the Syrian troops came on the heels of a phone conversation with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This, obviously, was a mistake, giving the appearance (and not for the first time) that Trump is taking cues from Ankara’s Islamist strongman. As has become rote, the inevitable criticism was followed by head-scratching tweets: The president vows to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey,” which “I’ve done before” (huh?), if Turkey takes any actions “that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits.” We can only sigh and say it will be interesting to see how the president backs up these haughty threats now that Erdogan has begun his invasion.

All that said, the president at least has a cogent position that is consistent with the Constitution and public opinion. He wants U.S. forces out of a conflict in which America’s interests have never been clear, and for which Congress has never approved military intervention. I find that sensible — no surprise, given that I have opposed intervention in Syria from the start (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The stridency of the counterarguments is matched only by their selectiveness in reciting relevant facts.

I thus respectfully dissent from our National Review editorial.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Is It Possible For The United States To Withdraw From Any Foreign Engagement?  Francis Menton

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-10-8-is-it-possible-for-the-united

Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the news cycle seems to have shifted away from IMPEACHMENT!!! and over to TRUMP IS ABANDONING OUR KURDISH ALLIES IN SYRIA TO A CERTAIN SLAUGHTER!!!!

On Sunday the Trump administration announced plans to withdraw most or all U.S. troops from the Northeastern part of Syria. There are currently about a thousand U.S. troops in the area, working with allied Kurdish forces.

Within hours, the official talking point — that Trump was abandoning the Kurds to be slaughtered by Turkish forces, and thereby sending a dangerous message to all U.S. allies everywhere — had taken universal hold.

From the Washington Post: “Trump abandoning Kurdish partners in Syria sends a chilling message to every other American ally. . . . President Trump’s erratic foreign policy gives allies good reason to doubt America will follow through on its security commitment.”

From the New York Times: “The Kurdish forces in the area, part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., have been the most reliable American allies in the region for years, a critical element in recapturing territory once controlled by the Islamic State.”

From Business Insider: “Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds in Syria sends a dangerous message to US allies around the world.”

Even a collection of Republican Congresspeople got in on the act of accusing President Trump of abandoning one of our best allies.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Don’t Romanticize The Kurds: Longstanding jihadist butchery; PKK Marxist terrorism evolved to fight Ataturk’s ethno-racist Turkey; Created sharia-based Iraqi “Kurdistan” Andrew Bostom

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/10/dont-romanticize-the-kurds-longstanding

Johny Messo, is head of the World Council of Arameans. In 2014 Messo issued this statement when Israel’s Minister of Interior, H.E. Gideon Sa‘ar, signed a document that recognizes “Aramean” as a distinct national identity in Israel’s population registry: 

We greatly commend Israel for being the first state in the world to recognize our people in keeping with international law. This fantastic news has had a major impact on the global Aramean population. It encourages us to continue our legal struggle for recognition by our home countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon”  

Messo, was quoted from this story published today (10/10/19) from about the depredations and duplicity of the Kurdish Marxist brigades operating within Northern Syria:

“The PYD/YPG is threatening Syriacs and still forcibly detaining some children to join them,” Johny Messo, head of the World Council of Arameans (Syriacs), told Anadolu Agency on Thursday. Telling how the terrorist PYD/YPG fought other terrorist groups only to pursue its own territorial aims, he explained: “The aim of the PYD/YPG in its struggle against Daesh was to seize their territories and integrate them as part of the autonomous Kurdish region envisaged by them.” The U.S. had enlisted the PYD/YPG to fight Daesh, while Turkey objected that using one terror group to fight another makes no sense. Messo said the PYD/YPG and Daesh are both terror groups, differing only in aims, and sometimes even working together. “For example, the BBC showed that the PYD/YPG signed an agreement with Daesh. And, according to our own sources, the PYD/YPG took former Daesh members with them,” he added. Messo said it is the PYD/YPG — the Syrian branch of the [MARXIST] terrorist PKK….

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Put the burden of uncertainty on your opponent: more advice from Richelieu By David P. Goldman

By on October 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/columnist/david-p-goldman/

Turkey has begun an offensive against America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria, and warned it will send a flood of refugees into Europe if anyone complains. Few leaders in recent memory have bluffed so successfully with such a weak hand. The “Turkish” part among American strategists, e.g. the Wall Street Journal’s Walter Russell Mead, have argued that we need Turkey in the NATO alliance and therefore have to do a lot of what Turkey demands. Dr. Mead has a point, and makes his argument in good faith, but I do not think this approach will succeed. China already has bailed out Turkey and Russia is becoming its most important supplier of military systems. The choice appears to lie between abandoning the Kurds, our allies in the fight against ISIS, and “losing” Turkey.

There is another way to go about this. It isn’t pretty, but if I were Secretary of State, I would consider it carefully.

The following interview with the late Cardinal Richelieu materialized in Asia Times on Feb. 5, 2018. Of course, I would never advocate the terrible things that the butcher of the Thirty Years War proposes, but I thought his point of view worth recalling to public attention. He ridicules American policy for seeking stabiity in the Middle East and proposes instead to embrace the instability and turn it to America’s advantage.

Guidance from the Ghost of Richelieu

Five years ago I interviewed Cardinal Richelieu, the evil genius of the Thirty Years War and best known as the bad guy in ‘The Three Musketeers.” Richelieu is long dead, to be sure, and Asia Times does not print interviews with ghosts, so I had to make up the answers for him. But I tried to do so in the spirit of Europe’s supreme grand strategist, who undermined the hegemony of the Hapsburg Emperors and established France as Europe’s dominant power for a century and a half, albeit at an unspeakable human cost. Now that a new ‘Thirty Years War’ is underway in the Middle East, I returned to the secret places beneath Paris to interview Richelieu once again. As a matter of full disclosure, I made up the answers this time, too.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

By on October 10th, 2019

www.nydailynews.com/news/world/photos-life-child-bride-article-1.1182062

PICTURED: Agony of the child brides forced to marry as young as SIX to men up to EIGHT TIMES their age

https://abcnews.go.com/International/photos/pregnant-child-brides-15157730/image-15157834

Child Brides from Pregnant Child Brides: Frightened and Vulnerable

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Right from Wrong: Merkel’s shameless deflection The killer, since identified as 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, is a white, right-wing extremist/neo-Nazi, not one of the flood of Muslim migrants German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed. Ruthie Blum

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Merkels-shameless-deflection-604267

Israelis were jolted on Wednesday night by the news of a shooting attack outside a German synagogue and Jewish cemetery earlier in the day, during Yom Kippur services. 
 
When all the Hebrew TV channels opened their 8:00 p.m. broadcasts – after the customary annual airwave blackout in honor of Judaism’s highest and most somber holy day – the national sigh of “here we go again” accompanied the meal that ended the 25-hour fast. The frightening increase in the frequency and degree of antisemitic violence in Germany has become a topic of international reportage, after all. So this latest disturbing assault, which left two people dead and two others wounded, did not come as a complete surprise.
 
Another upsetting and predictable aspect of the incident – involving a man clad in military fatigues and equipped with a GoPro camera trying to shoot his way into the locked and guarded synagogue to massacre Jews – was the way in which Israeli anchors stressed repeatedly that the perpetrator “is a native German, not an immigrant.” 
 
In other words, the killer, since identified as 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, is a white, right-wing extremist/neo-Nazi, not one of the flood of Muslim migrants from the Middle East whom German Chancellor Angela Merkel has welcomed into her country. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Unreasoned Impeachment Dysfunction Is Trashing Democrats Lewis K. Uhler and Peter J. Ferrara

By on October 10th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/09/how-unreasoned-impeachment-dysfunction-is-trashing-democrats/

This puts the party in a new direction.”

These words were uttered by no less than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would formally seek President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

How prophetic, how true … and how deadly for the traditional Democratic Party of blue-collar workers and their families.

The socialist/progressives whom AOC represents are now in charge of the “blue” party, whose character is clearly defined by the most left-wing New York and California politicians and voters. While these progressives love their unfounded impeachment dreams, they have no sense of what it is doing to the traditional, common-sense, family-oriented center of the Democrat party.

Their claim that Trump committed an impeachable offense in his conversation with the Ukrainian president when the resident discussed Joe Biden and his son’s payoff to enormous personal benefit is not a Trump problem. It is a Biden problem that Biden must deal with. 

Neither the Ukrainian phone call transcript which the White House released, nor the whistleblowers’ version, suggest that the president sought a “payoff” for himself or anyone in his administration. The conversation just involved pursuit of Biden’s actions for a big Ukrainian “payoff” for his son, which is the actual violation of law.

The Ukrainian president had just won in a landslide on an anti-corruption platform, the U.S. has an anti-corruption treaty with Ukraine, and Trump is the top law enforcement officer in the United States. So the phone conversation was more than justified. Following Hillary Clinton with Biden as the nominee would cement Democrats as the party of corruption.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Bidens: “Stone Cold Crooked” (Part 2) Francis Menton

By on October 10th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-10-6-the-bidens-stone-cold-crooked-2

After posting the first installment of this series last night, I had a few more inspirations that I thought deserved an additional post.

I’ll start with this Washington Post defense of Biden’s conduct with respect to Ukraine, that appeared September 27. It’s an unsigned editorial, headline “The Ukraine facts are clear. But does truth still matter?” As to the Bidens and Ukraine, here is the key quote:

Mr. Trump has thrown up a smokescreen of denials, insults — and blatant lies. Over and over, he and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, have repeated the easily disproved claim that Mr. Biden sought to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son. Senior Ukrainian officials, including one of Mr. Giuliani’s own sources, have publicly stated that the story is false; multiple media investigations have definitively debunked it.

Recall that the issue we are examining here is whether Joe Biden had the corrupt motive of benefiting his son Hunter when he used the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees to force the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. The Post says that the allegation of Biden’s corruption is “easily disproved” because “senior Ukrainian officials” (unnamed) have “publicly stated that the story is false.”

And what is it that these “senior Ukrainian officials” have stated is false? Certainly not that Joe Biden forced Shokin’s firing by the threat to withhold U.S. aid; and certainly not that Hunter Biden got the $600,000/yr directorship at Burisma within 30 days after Joe Biden became the “point person” for U.S. policy to that country; and certainly not that after Shokin was fired the investigation of Burisma was disrupted and Hunter Biden continued to receive his director fees there for several more years.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anti-Trump Whistleblower Wrote ‘Dramatic’ Memo After Ukraine Call; Has Ties to 2020 Dem Candidate

By on October 10th, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/10/08/anti-trump-whistleblower-wrote-dramatic-memo-after-ukraine-call-has-ties-to-2020-dem-candidate/

The anti-Trump “whistleblower” is a registered Democrat who reportedly has a significant tie to one of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Also, according to Fox News,  he wrote a “dramatic” but inaccurate two-page memo on July 26, the day after the Trump-Zelensky phone call.

Immediately following his chat with an unidentified White House official about President Trump’s telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the so-called IC whistleblower wrote what Fox News described as a “dramatic personal memo,” alleging that the White House official characterized the call as “crazy” and “frightening.”

The whistleblower alleged that Trump improperly pressured Zelensky to investigate potential 2020 election rival Joe Biden, whose son Hunter once sat on the board of a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy firm. The allegation helped spark House Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into the president, who is steadfastly denying any wrongdoing.

“The following is a record of a conversation I had this afternoon with a White House official about the telephone call yesterday morning between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the complainant wrote in his memo.

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