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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Getting down to IDF brass tacks By raising the issue of morality, then, Kochavi was following a long-standing tradition carried down by his predecessors. His version was to emphasize that war is always a “last resort” Ruthie Blum

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Getting-down-to-IDF-brass-tacks-612213

At a conference on Wednesday at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi delivered a comprehensive address on Israel’s current military preparedness and future challenges. It was Kochavi’s first major speech since assuming his role in January as head of the Israeli military.

The novelty of his appearance was not the only reason for its prominence at the much-publicized event, held in honor of the late Amnon Lipkin-Shahak – former IDF chief of staff, Knesset member and government minister – who died in December 2012 after a long battle with cancer.

No, Kochavi’s multi-year plan – based on the motto of “readiness and change” – already was unveiled eight months ago when he hit the 100-day mark on the job. Nor was he an unknown entity beforehand, serving in various capacities and leading many operations, including those that have been carried out against Iranian targets in Syria over the past several months.
 
But his words in Herzliya were particularly significant, given their context and timing: with Israel surrounded by enemies on the one hand, and commemorating Hanukkah – the Jewish people’s historical victory over forced assimilation and physical annihilation – on the other.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Eric Holder and Wapo Threaten U.S. Attorney John Durham For Looking Into Spygate

By on December 26th, 2019

https://amac.us/eric-holder-and-wapo-threaten-u-s-attorney-john-durham-for-looking-into-spygate/?campaign=daily-news-email

We’ve all heard the joke. A thuggish looking guy walks into a business he is trying to shakedown and says, “Nice little store you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Wink, wink. The message is crystal clear; do what the bully wants or else something really bad is going to happen.

This scene has now played out in real life. In a so-called “news” article in the Washington Post recently, “Experts fear Durham’s Reputation at Risk in FBI Probe,” the newsletter for the deep state openly threatened U.S. Attorney John Durham who is looking into abuses by intelligence agencies and the Justice Department in launching the bogus witch hunt against President Donald Trump under false allegations that he and his campaign were Russian agents.

With zero news in the article, with nothing more than opinion, conjecture and rumor, the writers assert that Mr. Durham is risking “his reputation” by pressing the matter of criminality inside the FBI and the Department of Justice.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The war against Christians by Clifford May

By on December 26th, 2019

http://www.cliffordmay.org/23607/the-war-against-christians

Grinch that I am, in the days leading up to Christmas I immersed myself in “The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924.”

The authors of this recently published, extensively researched, 500-page book are Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, historians at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. “We embarked on this project in quest of the truth about what happened to the Ottoman Armenians during World War I,” they explain. What they found was “incontrovertible” proof of Turkey’s 1915-16 genocide.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously in favor of a resolution, co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, and Ted Cruz Texas Republican, to “commemorate the Armenian genocide through official recognition and remembrance.”

The White House disapproved, arguing that such a statement was unhelpful given the fraught state of Turkish-American relations. Ankara has maintained that atrocities happen during times of war and turmoil, but that liquidating an entire community was never the intention.

“The Thirty-Year Genocide” provides ample evidence to the contrary. But it goes further, making the case that the Ottoman Empire in its final years, the Young Turks who came to power following the Ottoman collapse, and even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, father of the modern Turkish nation, came to regard not just Armenians but all of “Asia Minor’s Christian communities as a danger to their state’s survival and resolved to be rid of this danger.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s Critical Medical Device Industry Gets A Needed Tax Cut Henry I. Miller and Erik Paulsen

By on December 26th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/26/americas-critical-medical-device-industry-gets-a-needed-tax-cut/

Medical devices may not be as glamorous as blockbuster drugs, but they include some of the genuine miracles of modern medicine: pacemakers, artificial joints, replacement heart valves, scanners, and cancer radiation-therapy machines. The U.S. has been the global leader in medical devices, one of the few major industries that both boasts a net trade surplus and is a job creator. The sector employs 400,000 Americans directly and is indirectly responsible for almost 2 million more that supply and support the highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care, including everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

But Washington politics has put this made-in-America success story at risk. For years, the medical device industry was ravaged by unwise public policy, including a devastating 2.3% excise tax that took effect at the beginning of 2013 as part of ObamaCare. It was included largely as an afterthought with little debate or consideration, as one of a grab bag of taxes, fees and fines used to finance the law’s litany of new spending programs.

After a decade, the omnibus spending bill just approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump has finally relegated the device excise tax to the dustbin of history.

The tax, which required the payment of billions of dollars by device manufacturers, was especially pernicious because it was assessed on gross sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’re a manufacturer of medical devices and had a profit of $100,000 on sales of $1 million after all your costs and expenses for everything from materials and labor to research. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost a quarter of your profits.  

Think that example is extreme? Well, Signus Medical, a small Minnesota company that makes cutting-edge devices used in spinal surgery, ended up paying an effective tax rate of 79%.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Parliament: Its Resolution to Ban Hezbollah is Just a Legal Charade – Part II by Soeren Kern

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15346/german-parliament-hezbollah-update

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

It is utterly implausible that Germany, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in Europe, is unable to ascertain the organizational structure of Hezbollah within its own borders.

“Six months ago, the AfD presented a resolution in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah, a resolution which you vehemently rejected and which since then you have blocked in caucus…. What is needed is the complete ban of Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s propaganda and terror financing in Germany must be stopped… This, by the way, is also demanded by the Bundestag’s Anti-Semitism Resolution, which expressly calls for the deportation of supporters of anti-Semitism. If this does not apply to supporters of Hezbollah, which wants to send Jews to the gas chambers, and wants to destroy Israel, then to whom could this apply?” — Beatrix von Storch MP, Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] party, to the Bundestag, December 19, 2019.

Von Storch noted that the Bundestag’s resolution, if implemented by the German government, would allow Hezbollah’s 30-plus German-based mosques and cultural centers — where the group raises funds and spreads anti-Israel propaganda — to continue to operate. Moreover, not one of the 1,050 known Hezbollah operatives now in Germany would be deported.

Gatestone Institute recently reported that a December 19 German parliamentary resolution, which claims to call for a complete ban in Germany of Hezbollah (Arabic for “The Party of Allah”), actually falls short of demanding a comprehensive ban of the terrorist organization. A senior US government official called the article “flat wrong”. It would have been nice if had been.

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

The Bundestag itself has issued a statement which states that it is calling for an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot) of Hezbollah, but not an organizational ban (Organisationsverbot) — an important distinction because the activity ban is legally weaker than the organizational ban.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A New French Leader: Joachim Son-Forget by Grégoire Canlorbe

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15319/joachim-son-forget

What shocks the elites of Paris or Brussels about President Trump is that he actually embodies real governance, which is totally inadequate in their mode of operation.

Clandestinely, North Korea is at the forefront of computing, which allows it to siphon significant funds through the blockchain [bitcoin].

Kim Jong-un has no interest in denuclearization. His program is total and irreversible, not to mention verifiable…. He has promised that its effect… will change the “strategic status” of North Korea… Why would his regime comply with adopting a position of weakness?

Joachim Marie Son-Forget, a French politician born in South Korea, since 2017 has been a member of the French National Assembly (lower house of the French Parliament) representing French residents overseas. Formerly active in the Socialist Party and later La République En Marche!, he resigned in late 2018 to start his own political party, Valeur Absolue.

Grégoire Canlorbe: How do you react to the EU’s attitude: hostile to Trump but friendly towards the mullahs of Iran?

Joachim Son-Forget: I do not think that the EU is particularly hostile to Trump, except that it denounces the trade war that has been declared. I fully understand the US President’s decision to increase tariffs on goods such as European wines or Airbus aircraft. Trump is defending America’s economic interests, and from his point of view, he is right to do so. As I am concerned with French and European interests, I am obliged to approve the tariff sanctions with which the EU has promised to respond. But Trump is a great President; I regret that he cannot find in [French President Emmanuel] Macron an interlocutor who answers him from a position him of strength — as a leader who skillfully and ferociously defends his own economic and geopolitical interests, like Kim Jong-un, who has been so skillful despite his age and his education in Switzerland.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Dems Target Tulsi “Present” vote on impeachment sparks call for Gabbard to resign from Congress. Lloyd Billingsley

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/tulsi-gabbard-target-junkyard-dog-democrats-lloyd-billingsley/

Former congressman and Hawaii governor Neil Abercrombie, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports, has called for Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard to resign “the sooner the better” following her vote of “present” on the articles of impeachment against President Trump.

Abercombie is co-chair for the campaign of Kai Kahele, a Democrat running against Gabbard, and the former governor cited Gabbard’s missing votes “on everything” as the reason for his resignation call. On the other hand, fallout from the call has focused on Gabbard’s impeachment stand.

“Throughout my life, whether through serving in the military or in Congress, I’ve always worked to do what is in the best interests of our country,” Gabbard explained last week. “Not what’s best for me politically or what’s best for my political party. After doing my due diligence in reviewing the 658-page impeachment report, I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no.” That aside, Tulsi Gabbard has been a target-rich environment since October, when she made her most controversial statement.

“Trump won the election in 2016,” Gabbard said in the CNN debate that turned out to be more of an impeachment inquest and socialist shout-out. In effect, Tulsi Gabbard was saying, “Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016,” a clear violation of the Democrat speech code. The former First Lady had been repeating the claim that she defeated Donald Trump, telling PBS “Obviously, I can beat him again,” and that she was panting for a “rematch.” With Tulsi Gabbard, as with Trump in 2016, Clinton saw the evil hand of Russia at work.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Plot Against the President Lee Smith’s new book exposes the biggest political scandal in American history. Daniel Greenfield

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/plot-against-president-daniel-greenfield/

The Five W’s are the essential infrastructure of good journalism. It’s important to be able to tell a good story. But if the story doesn’t contain answers to who, what, where, when, and why, it’s meaningless.

Fortunately, Lee Smith’s The Plot Against the President digs into the origin of the coup against President Trump in the old-fashioned Five W’s sense. While the book still leaves plenty of questions buried in reams of classified documents, it’s an excellent resource for organizing and making sense of the mess.

Rarely has a government investigation been clouded in this much secrecy or required so many investigations of the investigation. The points of the spiderweb between private contractors, the media, and government figures still vanish into darkness. But Smith follows the work of Rep. Devin Nunes and his team (the subtitle for the tome is The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History) and that comes with its own infrastructure of the Five W’s.

The ‘why’ isn’t hard to grasp, but the ‘when’ remains elusive. Smith makes a good case for the smear campaign associated with the Steele Dossier predating the former British operative whose continental credentials and FBI connections were used to sell a political assault ordered by the Clinton campaign.

Instead, Smith describes a series of ‘protodossiers’ which were used to eventually shape the Steele Dossier. These protodossiers were works in progress, bits of opposition research focusing on Trump’s international business connections, put together and fed to the media in a conventional fashion. There’s nothing especially controversial (or palatable) about this type of opposition research. But, even from the very beginning, these work products were not merely opposition research intended for the public.

Their real audience can be assessed from the linkages to Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, and a friend of Steele’s, who would act as a conduit for the Steele dossier, and the warnings that Trump was a national security threat. Accusing Trump of Russian ties was not a strategy meant to win an election. It was a justification for an unlimited investigation of Trump and his associates using methods and degrees of secrecy that would otherwise be off limits against Americans.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Richard Jewell as Everyman Carol M. Swain *****

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/

I left the theater saddened after watching Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial work, “Richard Jewell,” a film about the falsely accused Atlanta Olympic Park bomber and the media’s rush to judgment.

I was disheartened because Jewell, now deceased, represents every American and especially the Trump “ deplorables.” Any of us can be falsely accused of a crime, and our ability to defend ourselves often depends on resources and knowledge that many of us lack.

We live in a society where trials-by-media are commonplace, and due process and the presumption of innocence are fading away, part of a bygone era. In the U.S. judicial system, due process is supposed to mean that every citizen is accorded legal rights and protection from governmental overreach.

We find protection in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and it applies to the states via the 14th Amendment.
Due process is accompanied by the presumption of innocence, unless proven guilty in a court of law. So much for that: Witness the recent cases marked by a total breakdown in due process and the presumption of innocence for both Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Roy Moore in their media trials. They represent current examples of a trend that started more than two decades ago.

In the Jewell story, we see a flawed and man-eating media, as well as an FBI that apparently either forgot or ignored its own mission statement to protect the American people and uphold the U.S. Constitution.
Here we are today, more than 20 years after the Atlanta bombing, and once again the FBI—or at least elements and former elements of the FBI—has been brought into question concerning not only the current impeachment proceedings but also that the FBI might have spied on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. For real. Protect whom, uphold what?

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

1917: A Somber Journey into Hell By Kyle Smith

By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/movie-review-1917-contrived-technique-director-sam-mendes/

Sam Mendes is the real star of Sam Mendes’s new World War I drama.

The list of great films about World War I in Europe is surprisingly short: After the acknowledged masterpieces All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Paths of Glory (1957), there aren’t many more worth discussing. 1917 is a splashy attempt to join the list that is well worth seeing yet suffers from comparison to the far better film covering the same ground that was released just eleven months ago.

That movie, the Peter Jackson documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, was meticulously, devastatingly real. 1917, by contrast, starts out convincing but comes to seem unforgivably contrived around the halfway mark, and by the end it asks us to suspend disbelief to such a degree that the effect is nearly absurd. I was reminded of Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, whose protagonist developed into a kind of Buster Keaton figure who miraculously bumbled his way through a storm of violence so focused that it seemed as if the Wehrmacht’s sole purpose was to kill this random citizen.

1917 is defined also by its surface contrivance: Sam Mendes has designed the film as a single take (followed, after a brief blackout in the second half, by another single take). Like Birdman, though, as well as the fantastically complicated opening scene of Mendes’s own James Bond film Spectre, 1917 is actually composed of many shots ingeniously woven together using digital wizardry to look like a single take. I dislike the gimmick, at least at this length; staying on a single take creates a sense of hanging in midair as we wonder when we’ll finally hit the ground, and it works beautifully for a single scene like the opening of Spectre or Touch of Evil (1958), the Orson Welles film that inspired all subsequent one-take sorcery. Keeping a take going for an entire movie, though, is a mistake. It redirects the attention from the story to the technique. To be slightly rude about it, it makes Sam Mendes, not his characters, the star of the movie.

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