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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What Purpose Does NATO Serve? What U.S. interests does the bloated bureaucracy advance — at our expense? Bruce Thornton

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/what-purpose-does-nato-serve-bruce-thornton/

While the political class obsessed over act two of the House impeachment hearings while normal people ignored them, NATO met in London for an international photo-op and a celebration of the treaty’s 70th anniversary. Nothing of substance happened, and no needed reforms were discussed. Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union made NATO irrelevant, no one can say what strategic purpose this bloated bureaucracy serves, nor how––despite being financed mainly by the U.S––it advances U.S. interests and security.

Of course we were treated to the usual claims that “NATO kept the peace” in Europe during the Cold War, along with the other institutions of the “rules-based international order.” This globalist marketing slogan is hard to credit. The postwar Europeans were in no condition to fight each other, because most had neither the matériel nor the morale to fight with. Nor did NATO keep the Soviets out of Europe: that was accomplished by 70,000 American nuclear warheads and 400,000 American troops. The contributions of European pygmy-militaries to American military capability were in the end comparatively minimal.

Then there were the usual petty squabbles, snarking at President Trump, and bombastic rhetoric about the “world’s oldest military alliance.” The issue of European members’ continuing failure to increase their puny military spending was brought up again. Trump-haters, of course, have used his aggressive lobbying of the Europeans on this score to buttress their claims that he is a dangerous geopolitical ignoramus unschooled in the technical and diplomatic knowledge of the foreign policy establishment and the “interagency consensus” mentioned in act one of the House impeachment hearings––finally, a confession that we do indeed have an unaccountable “managerial elite” that thinks it should run foreign policy rather than their boss, the Chief Executive elected by the people, and the Commander in Chief to whom the Constitution has given this authority.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Pushes Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism Pro-Palestinian thuggery on campus finally gets a rebuke. Robert Spencer

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/trump-pushes-back-against-campus-anti-semitism-robert-spencer/

President Trump made history again on Wednesday, when he signed an executive order authorizing the Department of Education to act against anti-Semitism on American college and university campuses, and making it clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal money, “would apply to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate,” that is, virtually every public institution of higher learning in America.

This executive order is long overdue. The Jerusalem Post reported that as far back as 2015, “more than 30 organizations, including Jewish fraternity AEPI, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Zionist Organization of America wrote to University of California regent Bruce D. Varner in July, requesting that substantive measures be taken to combat rising anti-Semitism on UC-affiliated campuses.”

The problem wasn’t restricted to the University of California, either, but nothing was done. And it is virtually inconceivable that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or any presidential hopeful on the scene today would have signed the executive order that Trump signed Wednesday. Trump pointed out that earlier efforts to combat campus anti-Semitism “didn’t get it done,” and declared: “This year, there’s no roadblock.”

There have been roadblocks for years. Campus groups, most notably the notorious Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), have grown increasingly aggressive as the Left has intensified its embrace of opposition to Israel and open anti-Semitism. Jewish students and supporters of Israel on campuses have been shouted down, defamed, vilified, and physically menaced, with only a handful of groups, particularly the David Horowitz Freedom Center, providing any support for those students.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Articles of Impeachment Are Very Weak By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/the-articles-of-impeachment-are-very-weak/

The charges range from insignificant to implausible to inane.

Democrats rolled out two articles of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday, alleging abuse of power and obstruction.

As noted over the weekend, I had to correct myself when writing that the impeachment inquiry that led to this point was a “rush to judgment.” The judgment was made long ago. The president has been Impeached Man Walking for “The Resistance” since before he took the oath of office. The House proceedings have been a matter of rushing the process until it catches up to a judgment of three years’ standing.

The two impeachment articles were produced by the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), cribbing from the report spearheaded by Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D., Calif.). The abuse-of-power allegation is confined to the Ukraine episode, a kerfuffle that emerged three months ago and was promptly magnified into a scandal. The claim of obstruction relates to the president’s refusal to cooperate with the partisan impeachment inquiry, the outcome of which was foreordained even as Democrats refused for weeks to conduct a vote endorsing it — for fear of antagonizing voters, which, of course, would not be a fear if there were an obvious, egregious impeachable offense.

It was the lack of an identifiable crime that settled Democrats on “abuse of power,” taking advantage of the fact that the Framers did not require a penal offense for impeachment . . . but ignoring the Framers’ caution against an ambiguous standard that would invite politicized impeachments based on trifling misconduct. Here, Democrats say the abuse involves Trump’s converting of presidential power to his “personal political benefit” — recall the mantra of placing “self above country,” which was chanted throughout Monday’s farcical Judiciary Committee hearing (an often catty partisan duel, mainly between staff attorneys, with no testimony from actual fact witnesses).

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Greta Thunberg Is the Perfect Hero for an Unserious Time By David Harsanyi

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/greta-thunberg-is-the-perfect-hero-for-an-unserious-time/

Histrionic, beset by apocalyptic fantasies, and easily exploitable

Who better than a finger-wagging teen bereft of accomplishment, or any comprehension of basic economics or history, to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019? Greta Thunberg’s canonization is a perfect expression of media activism in a deeply unserious time.

Has there ever been a less consequential person picked to be Person of the Year? I doubt it. I mean, Wallis Simpson, 1936’s Person of the Year, got King Edward VIII to abdicate the throne. Thunberg can’t even get you to abdicate your air-conditioning.

These days we celebrate vacuous fire and brimstone. “Greta Thunberg” — the idea, not the girl — is concoction of activists who have increasingly taken to using children as a shield from critical analysis or debate. She’s the vessel of the environmentalist’s fraudulent apocalypticism-as-argument. Her style is emotion and indignation, histrionics and fantasy. She is a teenager, after all.

How dare you attack a poor defenseless child who suffers from Asperger syndrome!

You’ll notice that, on one hand, Thunberg’s champions demand that the world take her Malthusian crusade seriously, and on the other, they feign indignation when you actually do. The argument that young people, because they will inherit the future, are also best equipped to comprehend it is as puerile as any of Greta’s positions.

Perhaps a better question is, What kind of parents, editors, producers, or U.N. officials would thrust a vulnerable child with Asperger, no less, into a complex and contentious debate? I have great sympathy for her. It’s her ideological handlers who have stolen her childhood.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The FBI’s Corrupt Cops By Kevin D. Williamson

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/fbi-corruption-how-dirty-cops-spied-on-trump-campaign/

The falsified documents and the many errors all disadvantaged one side. That’s not bias?

White-collar criminals should hope for one thing this Christmas: that they get to live under the Horowitz rules.

Michael Horowitz has testified that he found no evidence of political bias on the part of the decision makers who, under the Obama administration, relied on hilariously implausible “evidence” and falsified evidence of their own in order to launch a federal investigation of the Trump campaign. Rather than political bias, Horowitz says, the investigation uncovered a series of “basic and fundamental” errors. Democrats are cheering that aspect of the report, because they believe that Horowitz’s words can be used to silence charges that the investigation of the Trump campaign was, as the president charges, part of a politically inspired “witch hunt.”

Here’s Horowitz in his own words:

Errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams; on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations; after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI; even though the information sought through the use of FISA authority related so closely to an ongoing presidential campaign; and even though those involved with the investigation knew that their actions were likely to be subjected to close scrutiny.

No bias, just honest incompetence. Or so we are expected to believe.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Trump the Only Adult in the Room? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 12th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/is-trump-the-only-adult-in-the-room/

Donald Trump certainly is mercurial at times. He can be uncouth.

But then again, no president in modern memory has been on the receiving end of such overwhelmingly negative media coverage and a three-year effort to abort his presidency, beginning the day after his election.

Do we remember the effort to subvert the Electoral College to prevent Trump from assuming office?

The first impeachment try during his initial week in office?

Attempts to remove Trump using the ossified Logan Act or the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution?

The idea of declaring Trump unhinged, subject to removal by invoking the 25th Amendment?

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month, $35 million investigation, which failed to find Trump guilty of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election and failed to find actionable obstruction of justice pertaining to the non-crime of collusion?

The constant endeavors to subpoena Trump’s tax returns and to investigate his family, lawyers and friends?

Now, frustrated Democrats plan to impeach Trump, even as they are scrambling to find the exact reasons why and how.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Incredible Shrinking Impeachment The Democratic grounds for ousting Trump are weak—and damaging to constitutional norms.

By on December 12th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-incredible-shrinking-impeachment-11576109728?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

They shouldn’t get off that easy. By defining impeachment down, they are turning what should be a rare and extraordinary constitutional remedy into a routine tool of partisan warfare. They are harming constitutional norms, as the liberals like to say.Americans will decide in 11 months whether Mr. Trump deserves to remain in office. But they should also keep the impeachment vote very much in mind when they decide whether Democrats deserve to keep the House.

So that’s it? That’s all there is? After all the talk of obstruction of justice, collusion with Russia, bribery, extortion, profiting from the Presidency, and more, House Democrats have reduced their articles of impeachment against President Trump to two: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Honey, we shrunk the impeachment.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will vote as early as Thursday on the text of the two articles they unveiled Tuesday, and then they will rush it to the floor next week. It’s enough to suspect that Democrats understand they are offering the weakest case for impeachment since Andrew Johnson, that the public isn’t convinced, and so they simply want to get it over with.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The security establishment will be terrified by the prospect of Prime Minister Corbyn Con Coughlin

By on December 11th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/11/security-establishment-will-terrified-prospect-prime-minister/

PM Corbyn would be a ‘useful idiot’ to the enemies of Britain

Boris Johnson and the Tories are not the only ones who will be having sleepless nights about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn entering Downing Street. The possibility that Mr Corbyn, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists, could end up becoming Britain’s next prime minister will be viewed with deep concern by the various agencies responsible for safeguarding our national security.

Numerous warnings have been issued about Mr Corbyn’s profound unsuitability for assuming responsibility for the defence of the realm, from his well-documented history of associating with avowed enemies of the state, like the IRA and Iran, to the prospect of  Britain being excluded from the exclusive Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network in the event of the Labour leader becoming prime minister.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, has gone so far as to denounce Mr Corbyn as being a threat to national security, as well as being totally unfit to lead the country. Now we discover senior members of Mr Corbyn’s own Labour front bench privately entertain serious misgivings about the national security implications of him becoming prime minister, after Shadow Health Minister Jonathan Ashworth was secretly recorded giving a less-than-flattering depiction of his leader.

Asked by a friend about the risk Mr Corbyn posed, Mr Ashworth, who has personal experience of working at No 10, conceded that the Whitehall machine “will pretty quickly move to safeguard security”.

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IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Spain’s ‘Migrant Friendly’ Border Fences by Soeren Kern

By on December 11th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15263/spain-migrants-border-fences

Critics say that the razor wire functions as a significant deterrent to illegal immigration and that by removing it, the Spanish government not only risks unleashing new waves of mass migration from Africa, but also gives effective control of the Spanish border to Morocco, with which Spain has a tense relationship.

The border fences in question involve those at Spain’s North African exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla — magnets for Africans seeking a better life in Europe.

The removal of razor wire is in line with the current Socialist government’s pro-immigration stance.

“We are not against immigration. We are not even against the illegal immigrant. It is not their fault that an irresponsible government has called them to come here illegally.” — Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, Parliamentary Spokesman for the conservative party Vox.

Spanish authorities have begun removing razor wire, known as concertina wire, from border fences along Spain’s frontier with Morocco. The Socialist government ordered their removal after migrants who tried to jump the fences to enter Europe illegally suffered injuries after coming into contact with the wire.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska justified the removal by saying that Morocco had recently installed concertina wire on fences on its side of the border, and that therefore it was no longer necessary on the Spanish side.

Critics say that the razor wire functions as a significant deterrent to illegal immigration and that by removing it, the Spanish government not only risks unleashing new waves of mass migration from Africa, but also gives effective control of the Spanish border to Morocco, with which Spain has a tense relationship. Morocco frequently dumps large numbers of illegal migrants along the Spanish border to extract concessions from the Spanish government on unrelated issues.

The border fences in question involve those at Spain’s North African exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla — magnets for Africans seeking a better life in Europe.

At Ceuta, two parallel fences that are six meters (20 feet) high and topped with concertina wire run eight kilometers (five miles) along the border with Morocco. At Melilla, twin fences that are four meters (13 feet) high run 12 kilometers (eight miles) along the border. The fences at Ceuta and Melilla are fortified with anti-climb mesh, video cameras, noise and motion sensors, spotlights and surveillance posts.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Murder of Women Reaches Epidemic Proportions by Uzay Bulut

By on December 11th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15246/turkey-murder-of-women

The cause of 50% of the killings was not determined, but 16% of the women were killed because they wanted to make decisions about their lives, such as wanting a divorce, rejecting offers of reconciliation or even for not answering the phone when called by their men. 13% of the women were killed for “economic reasons.”

According to the Turkish women’s-rights platform, “We Will Stop Femicide,” 652 women were killed by men in the year-and-a-half period prior to November 2018 — 36 of whom were murdered in October of that year.

“One of the reasons why such a large number of women fall victim to violence is the reluctance and even prevention of relevant institutions to implement current laws.” — The Central Women’s Committee of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (HRA), “Violence against women is a result of discriminatory policies,” August 26, 2019.

“There was no finger left unbroken, no women left unbeaten for the last two seasons of a show aired on a pro-government TV channel…” — İlhan Taşcı, Republican People’s Party deputy and Radio and Television Supreme Council Member.

“In our religion, the life, dignity and rights of women are untouchable and entrusted [to men].” — Ali Erbaş, President of Diyanet, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs.

On November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, thousands of Turkish women took part in demonstrations at Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The women were protesting the increasing number of murders in the country committed by men against female family members. After reading a statement to the press, the demonstrators were attacked by police with tear gas and plastic bullets.

The murder of women by male relatives — particularly spouses or former spouses — has become a dangerous trend in Turkey. The brutal murder, on August 18, of 38-year-old Emine Bulut by her ex-husband — in front of their 10-year-old daughter — is one particularly noteworthy case.

Bulut was stabbed multiple times in the neck at a café in the city of Kirikkale, where she had gone to meet the man from whom she had been divorced for several years. In a video of the attack, which went viral on social media, Bulut is seen covered in blood, shouting, “I don’t want to die,” as her terrified child screams along with her.

In response to the attack, women across Turkey held demonstrations to condemn the killing and called on the government to guarantee their protection.

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