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Ruth King

Steele Testimony: FBI Coordinated Closely With State Department on Russia ProbeIvan Pentchoukov

https://www.theepochtimes.com/steele-testimony-fbi-coordinated-closely-with-state

The Department of State worked closely with the FBI on the bureau’s investigation of the Trump campaign and its work with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier, according to Steele’s recent testimony in a UK court.

Steele told the court he became convinced over the course of the summer and fall of 2016 that the two departments were closely coordinating. By the time he met State Department official Kathy Kavalec in October of that year, it was “very clear that FBI and State Department were both consulting each other and discussing the whole issue of engagement with us and our investigation,” Steele said, according to court transcripts obtained by The Epoch Times.

Steele was questioned at the Queen’s Bench court in London on March 18 as part of a lawsuit against his company, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., brought by three Russian businessmen affiliated with Alfa Bank. One of the installments of Steele’s report accused the men of funneling large amounts of “illicit cash” to then-Saint Petersburg Mayor Vladimir Putin in the 1990s. 

“My understanding was that Kathy Kavalec, who raised I think the Alfa issue with us in this meeting in October, had been closely coordinating with the FBI and the FBI knew that we were having the meeting and so on and so forth and that they were jointly working on this material.”

EU Still Trying to Fund Palestinian Terror-linked NGOs by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16177/eu-funding-palestinian-terror

It is easy to understand why Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now furious with the European Union. Recently, the EU and its member countries have had the audacity to demand that EU taxpayer money not end up in the hands of terrorists or terrorist organizations.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, Western donors are not entitled to demand that their taxpayer money not go to EU-designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

There are signs, however, that the EU is about to surrender to Palestinian pressure and threats.

This opaque language means that even if a Palestinian NGO applying for EU grants is an affiliate of terrorist groups, or employs individuals from those groups, the EU will, after all, provide it with taxpayer funding –whether designated for emergency responses to COVID-19 or for regular programs, according to NGO Monitor….

For many years, Palestinians have received unconditional funding from Western donors.

Here is how it worked: Palestinian organizations would submit an application for funding, and the donors would automatically sign the check or approve the wire transfer of millions of dollars or euros to the Palestinians’ bank accounts.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian attitude regarding Western funding has always been along the following lines: “You Westerners owe us this money because you contributed to the establishment of Israel after World War II. Thus, you have no right to set any conditions for the funding. Just give us the money and shut up. Any refusal to comply with our demands will result in our rage, and possibly terrorism and other forms of violence, not only against Israel, but also against you [non-Muslim] ‘infidels’ in the West.”

The Future of Israel’s Borders: International Law and Islamic Law. Part II by Denis MacEoin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16173/israel-borders-islamic-law

This is where the plan for extending Israeli law over more territory becomes simpler to resolve both legally and morally. However many times the Palestinian Arabs have been offered a state, they have chosen to turn it down, rejecting generous peace offers. They have preferred to use terrorism and three wars launched from Gaza in pursuit of their fantasy of destroying Israel. By 2017, they had rejected no fewer than seven peace offers, and this year Mahmoud Abbas turned down the new US-Israeli peace plan.

Fortunately, if Israel were to extend Israeli law to more land, the move could present a great opportunity to end the conflict. The decisive end by Israel to a Palestinian fantasy that should never have been humoured in the first place might finally enable Palestinian leaders finally to start their citizens on a constructive — rather than a destructive — path.

In part one, we identified several ways in which international bodies, states, and individuals interpret the US-Israeli plan for Israel to extend Israeli law in the ancient Jewish homeland of Judaea and Samaria. There is widespread, and misguided, agreement that such a move would be illegal under international law, which regards occupation and “annexation of territory” in a negative sense.

However, as we have seen, much of this interpretation is based on confusion about the history of the region, the origins of the state of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian rejection of a state for their own people. It is also a contradiction between Western-inspired international law and earlier Islamic law.

Let us start with a look at the original 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, a territory designed to be administered by Great Britain until it could emerge as an independent state. Even a brief glance at a map of the territory shows that the Mandate made the whole of Palestine, including Gaza and what is now the West Bank with Judea and Samaria, the region designated for the future Jewish homeland. Writing in Israel Hayom recently, Dr. Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, argues that this original designation means that it is not appropriate to term Israel’s coming move to place the Jordan Valley of the West Bank an “annexation”. Aggressive annexation of territory through war is, he agrees, unacceptable and illegal — but Israel only entered the West Bank in 1967 during a defensive war.

Summer of Unrequited Love Seattle prepares to roll up its experiment in violent paradise.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/summer-of-unrequited-love-11593559035?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

City officials on Tuesday began removing the barricades surrounding Seattle’s self-styled Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, potentially spelling the end of that three-week experiment in alternative urban living. Supporters lost no time identifying the malign force responsible for that fledgling nation’s quick descent into lawlessness and violence: “capitalism.”

So declared City Council member Kshama Sawant, in response to four shootings in 10 days within CHOP, a six-block area in Seattle that occupiers had cordoned off and blocked police from entering. The most recent shooting, on Monday, killed a 16-year-old boy and left a 14-year-old in critical condition.

Ms. Sawant explained on Twitter that the “tragic” killing “highlights capitalism’s brutality & endemic violence.” A CHOP supporter, Ms. Sawant declared: “Our movement rejects insinuations & falsehoods perpetuated by corporate & conservative media that this violence is outcome of CHOP or of our movement.” And here we thought CHOP was a demonstration of what was possible when men and women abandoned the evils of democratic capitalism.

Congress Launches Bipartisan Bill to Give Refugee Status to Certain Hong Kong Residents New bill is aimed at Hong Kongers at risk of persecution under Chinese territory’s new national-security law by Kate O’Keefe

https://www.wsj.com/articles/congress-launches-bipartisan-bill-to-give-refugee-status-to-certain-hong-kong-residents-11593553499

Lawmakers of both parties launched a bill to give refugee status to Hong Kong residents at risk of persecution under the Chinese territory’s new national-security law, which local rights activists and many Western countries have decried as a tool for Beijing to suppress civil liberties in the semiautonomous city-state.

The bill, introduced hours after the text of the new security law was released, is being led by Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) in the Senate and John Curtis (R., Utah) and Joaquin Castro (D., Texas) in the House of Representatives, along with around a dozen co-sponsors from both chambers.

The legislation would require the State Department to designate as refugees of special humanitarian concern Hong Kong residents who suffered persecution, or have a well-founded fear of it, due to their expression of political opinions or peaceful participation in political activities. The privileges would extend to those individuals’ spouses, children and parents, provided the parents are Chinese citizens, the text says.

The paperwork could be completed in Hong Kong or in a third country, and refugees would then be able to apply for permanent residency and citizenship. The opportunity, which wouldn’t be restricted by the current U.S. cap on refugees, would be valid for five years from the date of the bill’s passage.

DANIEL PEARL’S MURDERER HEADED FOR RELEASE- CATHERINE SMITH

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/30/wall-street-journal-reporter-daniel-pearls-murderer-headed-for-release/

The New York Post reports that a British-born man sentenced to death for kidnapping and beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl could walk free.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was found guilty of masterminding Pearl’s murder, and sentenced to death in 2002. He has been in jail ever since awaiting the outcome of a series of appeals and legal arguments. His death sentence was overturned in April after Pakistani prosecutors failed to prove he was the killer, The Guardian reported at the time.

“The court has commuted Omar’s death sentence to a seven-year sentence. The murder charges were not proven, so he was given seven years for the kidnapping. Omar has already served 18 years, so his release orders will be issued sometime today. He will be out in a few days,” defense lawyer Khawaja Naveed told Reuters back in April, according to The Guardian.

Pearl’s family, the U.S. Government and media rights groups were outraged over the decision and appeals were filed to reverse the ruling, the outlet reported.

In response, Saeed Sheikh was instead held on a 90-day detention order, expiring Thursday, under a public ordinance that allows defendants to be held in custody longer if their release could lead to violence and chaos, the outlet reported.

However, Pakistan’s supreme court refused a government request to suspend the lower court’s decision to release Saeed Sheikh on Monday and refused to promptly hear an appeal on the ruling, which is now scheduled for Sept. 25, the outlet said.

Pakistan’s prosecutor, Faiz Shah, declined to say whether they will seek an order extending Saeed Sheikh’s detention, meaning the man could be walking free as early as Thursday, the outlet reported.

“The prosecution’s cases are won or lost not on the basis of emotion, they are won or lost on the basis of evidence and in this case the prosecution did a woeful job,” Mahmood Sheikh, Saeed Sheikh’s lawyer, no relation, told The Guardian.

“If Daniel Pearl’s parents have any grievance or complaint it should be against the Pakistani authorities for the prosecution’s failings.”

In January 2002, Pearl was an intrepid journalist investigating Islamic militants in Karachi when he was kidnapped by Saeed Sheikh. He was eventually beheaded in a filmed execution that was shared around the world, according to The New York Post.

Don Feder 10 Things for Which I’ll Never Apologize A memo to the legion of the chronically aggrieved.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/10-things-which-ill-never-apologize-don-feder/

There are people who live to be offended. They’re called progressives. They are offended by Confederate statues, by monuments that they say celebrate white supremacy and colonialism, by Trump supporters, by Trump himself, and by those who refuse to get on their knees and grovel before Black Lives Matter.

Well, I’ve got news for them.

An Open Letter to the Legion of Lamentation:

I don’t give a rodent’s rear end if you’re offended by the following:

1. I’m white – I don’t feel guilty about slavery, segregation, the Trail of Tears or the treatment of Chinese railroad workers – because (now get this) I didn’t have anything to do with any of this. I’m no more responsible for these injustices than the Indian of today is responsible for the Black Hole of Calcutta. The idea of racial guilt is absurd. White privilege is a myth. Where is the White Miss America Contest, White History Month and White Entertainment Television? Where are the quotas and set-asides for Caucasians?

Has This Present Moment Set Black Americans Back a Half-Century? The damage the Left is perpetrating may be mortal. Dennis Prager

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/present-moment-has-set-blacks-back-half-century-dennis-prager/

The “protesters” who destroy and loot think their victim status allows them to destroy and loot. The man identified as the president of the greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, recently told Fox News: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.”

In a report yesterday on a police shooting of a robber who resisted arrest and reached for an object in his waistband, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted a protest organizer: “If this young man was robbing, that means his state and his government failed to provide him with the resources he needs.” When you feel you are a victim, you are allowed to rob.

Take the constant, often absurd, charges of racism at the most benign comments. If you say, for example, that you see nothing wrong with the picture of Uncle Ben on a box of rice, you will be accused of racism. As a result, most whites understand they can no longer speak truthfully or from the heart in the presence of a black American. It is hard to imagine a worse recipe for genuine relationships between the races. Whereas the great majority of whites, and even most blacks, thought white-black relations were good and improving when Barack Obama assumed office, a minority of both groups think so today.

Universities Commit to Racism By Philip Carl Salzman

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2020/06/30/universities-commit-to-racism-n587609

One of the famed universities in the world, Cambridge University, knows which side it is on. When one of its lecturers tweeted, “White lives don’t matter,” and then “Abolish whiteness,” the university defended her, and then promoted her to the rank of professor. When another instructor tweeted “White lives matter,” his contract was terminated. The anti-white lecturer was a female of color, while the instructor who thinks white lives matter was a white male. White males, as woke “social justice” activists tell us, are wrong, they are oppressors, and inherently toxic racists. Females, especially females of color, are deemed to be victims of white male oppression, and are always right. 

Is there a word for thinking about people of different races differently? Ratism, raverism, ragusism? What about for treating people of different races differently? Discresionism, depressionism, deterentism? Whatever you want to call them, Cambridge University has them down pat, and so does every other university in North America and Western Europe. Racism has become official policy in every university, policed by the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” commissars who command thought and re-educate or exile dissidents, and by the woke politicians who give them their marching orders. And discrimination in favor of preferred categories of people is the new standard of “justice.”

Professors and administrators who speak out against woke orthodoxy are attacked and hounded out of their jobs by “social justice” warriors. The Michigan State University Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation was summarily fired for daring to question the benefits of diversity and the costs of canceling merit in science. Anyone today daring to recommend “colorblind” admissions and hiring, or saying “all lives matter,” is immediately labeled a RACIST! and fired. Only “correct” speech is acceptable to woke academics and cowardly administrators. 

Flowers for Teddy R By Marion DS Dreyfus

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/flowers_for_teddy_r.html

As the wacko Evangelical guy across the street from our Defend Teddy Roosevelt rally Sunday afternoon loudspeakered: “It ain’t the color of your skin, it’s the color of your sin,” a clever assonance-rich meme that sounds good and means not that much, except to say that in his considered religious consideration, we were “worshiping a graven image” (!) and had better repent.

Something finally roused the conservatives from their  pandemic poufs and couches. The media were there, certainly, interviewing such firebrands as Gavin Wax, whose NY Young Republicans blast emails  say they spearheaded the rally. Ages were everything from teenagers to hoary-headed, bushy-bearded elders. All ethnicities were represented.

And thanks to social media and  high-temperature-stoked choler, hundreds showed up in the hottest day, at the hottest hour, without a cloverleaf of shade, in front of the revered (until now) American Museum of Natural History, whose high-salaried pooh-bahs had decided, without permission or notification of the city — on whose land the museum has long stood — to remove the equestrian statue of our most popular president, who died 21 years before the statue made its iconic appearance on the noble plinth greeting millions from all corners of the world.

The president of AMNH, Ellen Futter, has become as toxic as a thrice-used face mask.