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Ruth King

Could his protests over annexation be Mahmoud Abbas’s last whimper? Abbas is a one-trick pony who keeps himself relevant by pretending that his main mission in life is to obtain Palestinian independence from the “occupation.” By Ruthie Blum BLUM

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/could-his-protests-over-annexation-be-mahmoud-abbass-last-whimper-628910

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs new material. Even the flies on the wall at his compound in Ramallah must have yawned on Tuesday night when he announced – for the umpteenth time – that the PA is no longer bound by previous agreements with Israel.

The only twist to his tired mantra was the inclusion of the United States in the chant.

“We hold the American administration fully responsible for the oppression befalling the Palestinian people, and we consider it a primary partner with the Israeli occupation government in all its aggressive and unfair decisions and measures against our people,” he declared to PLO officials summoned to the emergency meeting to listen to his televised rant.

Though the honchos in attendance must have doubted that Abbas was actually going to make good on his threat to halt economic and security cooperation with the Jewish state, they couldn’t have admitted it aloud. In fact, as Khaled Abu Toameh reported on Wednesday, those who dared to inquire about a timetable for the action were warned by Abbas’s aides that if they didn’t shut up, they would be banished from the premises.

Naturally.

The last thing that Abbas wants, after all, is to put his money where his mouth is, except when it comes to funding terrorists. That is one policy he proudly upholds, no matter how often certain countries urge him to stop.

Multiple Universities Refuse to Cooperate with Federal Investigations into Ties to China by Tom Ciccotta

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/21/multiple-universities-refuse-to-cooperate-with-federal-investigations-into-ties-to-china/

Several universities around the nation are currently under investigation by the Department of Education over their alleged financial ties to the Chinese government. A report published this week suggests that many universities are refusing to comply with a standard request to produce internal documents.

According to a report by the College Fix, several universities and colleges that are under investigation by the Department of Education are refusing to release internal documents that may contain evidence of undisclosed financial grants from the Chinese government.
The report claims that lawyers for several universities refused to comply with a request to produce documents, arguing that they were entitled to privacy under “Freedom of Information Act exemptions and legal privileges.” A letter from the Department of Education did not name the universities and colleges that have refused to comply with the request for documents.

Department of Education General Counsel Reed Rubinstein believes that many American universities and colleges have been compromised by foreign governments, China being one of the primary governments in question.  “However, the evidence suggests massive investments of foreign money have bred dependency and distorted the decision making, mission, and values of too many institutions,” Rubinstein said.

The Asian century began in May 2020 The region has emerged as an economic zone as closely integrated as the European Union

https://asiatimes.com/2020/05/the-asian-century-began-in-may-2020/

Economic historians may date the start of the Asian century to May 2020, when most Asian economies bounced back to full employment while the West languished in coronavirus lockdown. Asia has emerged as an economic zone as closely integrated as the European Union, increasingly insulated from economic shocks from the United States or Europe.

Google’s daily data on workplace mobility uses smartphone location to determine the number of people going to work – by far the most accurate and up-to-date available reading on economic activity. As of May 13, Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam were back to normal levels. Japan and Germany had climbed back to 20% below normal. The US, France and the UK remain paralyzed. Google can’t take readings in China, but the available evidence indicates that China is on the same track as Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam.

Asian economic recovery is consistent with success in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have Covid-19 death rates a tenth of Germany’s and a hundredth of the rate in the US, UK, France or Spain. As I reported May 21, the US is struggling to re-open its economy despite a much higher rate of new infections than the Asian countries or Germany. That entails substantial risk. Two Ford Motor plants in the US that had re-opened May 17 shut yesterday after employees tested positive for Covid-19, for example.

Asia’s short-term surge followed its success in disease prevention. But the long-term driver of Asian growth is China’s emergence as a tech superpower. This week’s session of the People’s Congress in Beijing is expected to pass a $1.4 trillion of new government investments in 5G broadband, factory automation, self-driving cars, artificial intelligence and related fields. 

Will 2020 be ‘the Summer of Stupidity’? Erik Rush

https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/will-2020-summer-stupidity/

As I’ve managed to chronicle since the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, certain circumstances have prompted a lot of people to reveal their true colors, as it were. Many of these revelations can be summed up in two words: Dangerous and stupid.

 Not all of those who’ve displayed dangerous tendencies have evidenced stupidity, nor vice-versa, although some have exhibited both of these dubious qualities.                   

On the dangerous side, we have numerous newsworthy examples. Certainly, many who didn’t suspect that having uber-progressive governors in their states carried the potential for serious civil rights violations in the face of a crisis situation are now painfully aware of this. Prior to social distancing, a lot of us weren’t aware that so many of our neighbors were of the temperament that they might easily get fired up to burn some witches or turn local Jews in to the Gestapo—but there it is. Parents have actually been carried off in chains in front of their terrified young children for perceived transgressions in the area of social distancing.

 

In the realm of the stupid, there have been plentiful examples as well, such as those who’ve come to blows in public places over someone’s failure to don a mask, or standing too close in line at the grocery store.

 

Not all of the dangerous deportment and stupidity we’re witnessing has to do with COVID-19, although I daresay that the reality of the pandemic tends to shed a completely new light on things we might ordinarily find stupid and potentially dangerous.                                         

 

Rice Preferences…by Gerald A. Honigman

 Breaking news about the horrendous travesty of justice that General Michael Flynn, a much decorated career army officer and President Trump’s former National Security Advisor, was subjected to at the hands and machinations of the previous Obama Administration–whose real target was/is President Trump himself–got me thinking about another Rice.

The first is preferred by Republicans–that would be the Condoleezza variety…the one which/who shares many of her fellow Republican petro-business-related buddies’ interests in the Middle East. Think the likes of James (“F-the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway”) Baker III, the Bush family, John Sununu, and numerous others who made mucho dinero off of assorted autocratic Arab oil potentates’ black gold.

Let’s turn the clock back to learn more about this bright, attractive, but somewhat troublesome variety–at least for those folks hoping that Israel would get a fair shake in Washington.

Recall that this special Rice species had an oil tanker in the Chevron fleet named after her for associations with the company–one of the Seven Sisters closely associated with Arab oil https://www.energytoday.net/conventional-energy/the-seven-sisters-the-great-oil-companies-and-the-world-they-shaped/.

Now, while others can also claim such connections, please understand the implications for people in high government positions.

Israel’s Control of Judea & Samaria – a Prerequisite for Security Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2LPFZKZ

The mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) – 3,000ft above the Jordan Valley and 2,000ft above Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain – constitute the “Golan Heights” of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, the key north-south transportation artery Highway 6, critical commercial and defense infrastructures and 80% of Israel’s population.

The eastern mountain ridge – facing Jordan and Iraq – is the most effective tank barrier in the war-ridden region.  The western mountain ridge could become a platform to intensified Palestinian terrorism, targeting Israel’s 9-15-mile soft belly along the Mediterranean, and dooming this congested area to worse terrorism than the one inflicted by the Gaza-based Hamas.

Israel’s control of the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria – rather than a Palestinian state – is a pivotal national security prerequisite in view of the 14-century-old intra-Arab Middle East reality: extreme volatility, violent intolerance, lack of peaceful-coexistence, repressive tenuous regimes, shifty policies and precarious agreements.

Such a tectonic reality requires Israel’s secure boundaries to respond to bad, worse and worst-case unpredictable scenarios. Therefore, Israel’s national security cannot be based on peace accords, which could be as fragile as the regimes which conclude them. Israel’s national security must be based on the capabilities to withstand unforeseeable and violent regime change (e.g., Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq) and the potential abrogation of peace accords.  Thus, in 1979, Iran was transformed from a close ally of the US and Israel to their most ferocious enemy.  Similar turbulence in Jordan – which must be avoided with the assistance of the US and Israel – could transform Jordan into a chaotic platform of regional and global terrorism, which would critically upgrade the significance of the dominant mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria.

Paying Illegal Immigrants Puts America Last By Steve Cortes

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/20/paying_illegal_immigrants_puts_america_last_143250.html

“Put your own mask on before assisting others.” Flight attendants repeat this wise instruction before every airline flight because, in an emergency situation, an incapacitated passenger cannot help anyone else and, in fact, becomes another person in need. In the current economic and health emergency, Democrats ignore this mandate and instead seek to exploit the crisis as an opportunity to fulfill long-held leftist policy aims like diminishing citizenship and destroying the efficacy of borders. By leveraging a time of pain for so many Americans, these demagogues prove that they put America last.

Two recent actions best showcase this agenda. First, in the mammoth $3 trillion boondoggle that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats passed last week, taxpayer handouts of up to $1,200 would flow to illegal migrants. Thankfully, her 1,815-page legislative monstrosity will never become law, but Pelosi’s home state took more immediate action, dispensing tens of millions of California taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants, with direct cash payments to over 100,000 trespassers.

The appalling disconnect between these leftist politicians and the current angst among America’s citizenry underscores the distorted reality of an entitled political class operating in a sort of parallel universe, undeterred by the on-the-ground predicament of millions of Americans. Consider that 36 million people are newly jobless. Even among the still-employed, job anxiety is pervasive: A recent Associated Press poll showed that 55% of working Americans report a cut in either hours or pay during this pandemic.

The message of Democrats like Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom to these worried Americans is clear: “Get in line, because we have other priorities, including catering to the needs of criminals who willfully violated our laws to enter the United States without permission.” Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden clearly agrees with this policy arc, as he publicly affirmed during his party’s primaries that he supports providing taxpayer-funded health care to illegal aliens.

“Put your own mask on before assisting others.” Flight attendants repeat this wise instruction before every airline flight because, in an emergency situation, an incapacitated passenger cannot help anyone else and, in fact, becomes another person in need. In the current economic and health emergency, Democrats ignore this mandate and instead seek to exploit the crisis as an opportunity to fulfill long-held leftist policy aims like diminishing citizenship and destroying the efficacy of borders. By leveraging a time of pain for so many Americans, these demagogues prove that they put America last.

Two recent actions best showcase this agenda. First, in the mammoth $3 trillion boondoggle that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats passed last week, taxpayer handouts of up to $1,200 would flow to illegal migrants. Thankfully, her 1,815-page legislative monstrosity will never become law, but Pelosi’s home state took more immediate action, dispensing tens of millions of California taxpayer dollars to illegal immigrants, with direct cash payments to over 100,000 trespassers.

The appalling disconnect between these leftist politicians and the current angst among America’s citizenry underscores the distorted reality of an entitled political class operating in a sort of parallel universe, undeterred by the on-the-ground predicament of millions of Americans. Consider that 36 million people are newly jobless. Even among the still-employed, job anxiety is pervasive: A recent Associated Press poll showed that 55% of working Americans report a cut in either hours or pay during this pandemic.  

Sullivan on Sullivan By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/michael-flynn-case-judge-sullivan-rules-amicus-briefs/

General Flynn’s counsel, Sidney Powell, has filed petition for a writ of mandamus in the D.C. Circuit, seeking to have the appeals court instruct District judge Emmet Sullivan end his tantrum over the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case. Judge Sullivan’s antics include inviting a torrent of amicus briefs to help him figure out a way to deny the motion, which he must know he has no authority to do under the circumstances.

There are many things about the submission that are worth discussing, but I just want to highlight my favorite part: Ms. Powell quotes in full Judge Sullivan’s own order, dated December 20, 2017, explaining why it would be improper for a judge to allow third parties to file amicus briefs in Flynn’s criminal case — something he reportedly refused to permit some two dozen times before the dizzying U-turn he took a few days ago (my italics):

MINUTE ORDER. This Court has received several motions to intervene/file an amicus brief along with letters in support from a private individual who is neither a party to this case nor counsel of record for any party. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure do not provide for intervention by third parties in criminal cases. The Court recognizes that the movant sincerely believes that he has information to share that bears on this case, and that, understandably, he wishes to be heard. Options exist for a private citizen to express his views about matters of public interest, but the Court’s docket is not an available option. The docket is the record of official proceedings related to criminal charges brought by the United States against an individual who has pled guilty to a criminal offense. For the benefit of the parties in this case and the public, the docket must be maintained in an orderly fashion and in accordance with court rules. The movant states that he disagrees with the similar Minute Order issued by Judge Berman Jackson in Criminal Case Number 17-201, but the contrary legal authority on which he relies is neither persuasive nor applicable. Therefore, the Clerk is directed not to docket additional filings submitted by the would-be intervenor. If the individual seeks relief from this Court’s rulings, he must appeal the rulings to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on 12/20/2017. (lcegs3) (Entered: 12/20/2017).

As Flynn’s mandamus petition explains, the court rules to which Sullivan refers (i.e., the rules of the court on which he sits as a judge) expressly authorize amicus brief in civil cases, but do not authorize them in criminal cases. Those are rules Sullivan used to apply . . . until he decided to stop being Flynn’s judge and start being Flynn’s prosecutor.

Across the Wide, Growing American Divide By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-growing-american-divide-red-states-blue-states/

Perhaps in this time of plague, Americans can at least agree that the romance of Arcadia is suddenly preferable to the allure of big-city lights.

Red- and blue-state America was already divided before the coronavirus epidemic hit. Globalization had enriched the East Coast and West Coast corridors but hollowed out much in between.

The traditional values of small towns and rural counties were increasingly at odds with postmodern lifestyles in the cities.

There were, of course, traditionalists in blue states. And lots of progressives live in red states. But people increasingly self-segregate to where they feel at home and where politics, jobs, and culture reflect their tastes.

The ensuing left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican divide not only intensified in the 21st century, it also took on a dangerous geographical separatism.

The coasts vs. the interior reflects two Americas — often in a manner similar to the old Mason–Dixon line that geographically split the U.S. for roughly a century.

Sydney M. Williams-The Media – Abdication of Responsibility

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

On Monday evening, Connecticut’s version of Ground Hog Day emerged, giving two more weeks of lockdown for hair salons and barber shops. Already, Connecticut was the last of the fifty states to ease restrictions. On the same day, the dyspeptic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, criticized the President for obesity. This from a woman of so many face and body lifts that there is little left of her that God and her parents created.

…….

It may be splitting hairs, but President Trump is wrong when he calls out The New York Times and Washington Post for printing “fake” news. What those papers are printing is “slanted” news, articles biased toward a leftist, political ideology. Fake news is fabricated, while slanted news is prejudiced, where a reporter selects what to emphasize, deemphasize or omit based on personal political preferences. Satire (“An obsolete kind of literary composition, in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.”[1]) is a form of fake news. However, with the exception of good satire, both fake news and biased reporting are a disservice to readers seeking truth. It is the latter that is subtler, so more difficult to discern and address. The burden for determining what is real and what is false is the consumer’s, as reporters have abandoned responsibility to readers and viewers.

 

Owners, publishers, editors and bloggers can spout whatever opinions they choose. This is a free country and that is their right. But when opinions filter into news stories, and news is reported as unvarnished truth, the consequence is divisiveness and a threat to freedom, which relies on a well-informed citizenry.

Professor Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington teaches a course called, “Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.” In a phone interview with Michael Rosenwald, printed in the Columbia Journalism Review in the fall of 2017, he said “The average American spends nearly an hour a day on Facebook. Doing what? Mostly spreading bullshit.” Whether that is true or hyperbole, I do not know, but a Pew Research Center survey in 2016 essentially confirmed the trend. It found that 14% of U.S. adults shared news they knew was fake. Other surveys support the contention that people willingly pass on information they know to be fake, if it aligns with their preconceived political opinions; for example, promoting Trump derangement syndrome has become daily fodder for the leftist media.

Fake news should make us all wary. If something seems amiss, it probably is and should be double-checked. But slanted news is a beast of a different kind, especially when it appears in so-called respectable news sources. In a free country, the press has the right to print or report what they will.