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Ruth King

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Turkey, Russia agree to create ‘terror-free safe zone’ in Syria By Mark Moore

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/10/22/turkey-russia-agree-to-create-terror-free-safe-zone-in-syria/

Turkey and Russia agreed Tuesday to create a “terror-free safe zone” in northern Syria and launch joint patrols in a deal reached hours before a five-day cease-fire was about to expire, according to a report citing a senior Turkish official.

The announcement came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“We had a very productive meeting with our Russian counterparts today,” an official said, Reuters reported. “We reached an excellent agreement. We agreed to establish a terror-free safe zone.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed that the two leaders agreed to have Russian military police and Syrian border guards deploy on the Syrian side of the Turkey border beginning Wednesday.

Over the next six days, they would remove the Kurdish fighters and their weapons from northern Syria.

After the Kurds are removed, Turkey and Russia, which has been backing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, would launch joint patrols along a six-mile strip of the border.

Turkey would also continue to control a 20-mile-deep swath of northern Syria that runs roughly 75 miles between the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain.

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British Parliament finally approves Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill – but moments later votes down three-day timetable

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/world/british-parliament-finally-approves-boris-johnsons-brexit-bill-but-moments-later-votes-down-three-day-timetable

The United Kingdom’s divorce from the European Union passed one major hurdle Tuesday when Parliament lawmakers approved Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill but hit a roadblock moments later when a three-day timetable was voted down.

The House of Commons passed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill by a 30-point majority, with the ayes getting 329 votes, over 299 by the Noes, sending the bill on for further scrutiny and possible amendments. Then lawmakers quickly voted down Johnson’s a three-day timetable, attempting to fast-track the bill through, by a 14-point margin.

The vote likely made it impossible for Johnson to fulfill his vow to take Britain out of the EU by the Oct. 31 deadline.

After the second vote, opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that lawmakers “refused to be bounced” into considering the withdrawal bill in just two days.

He urged the prime minister to “work with us … to agree [on] a reasonable timetable.”

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RUTHIE BLUM: ISRAEL’S HOLIDAY GOVERNMENT

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israels-holiday-government/

It’s not an electoral impasse per se, but a month of Jewish festivities in September and part of October that shuts everything down for a month.

While the world oohed and aahed with the news that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was returning his coalition-building mandate to President Reuven Rivlin—who, in turn, would offer it to Blue and White Party chairman Benny Gantz—Israelis reacted with a shrug and a nod. During the weeks since the second round of Knesset elections on Sept. 17, it became increasingly clear that Netanyahu, the head of Likud, would not be able to cobble together a government under the current circumstances.

Netanyahu’s pact with the right-wing/religious parties that they would be part of a “package deal” in any coalition negotiations was unacceptable to Blue and White, which rejected any such “preconditions,” while also asserting that it would not join a national-unity government with a party led by someone under indictment. This is in spite of the fact that Netanyahu has yet to be indicted on any of the flimsy charges for which he has been under investigation.

Be all that as it may, Gantz probably won’t be able to succeed where Netanyahu failed, making a third round of elections likely, if not inevitable. Most Israelis have resigned themselves to such a scenario. Even Hebrew news outlets started relegating items about coalition-building to below-the-fold, inner-page or last-spot-before-the-weather-report exile. Until Monday evening, that is, when Netanyahu effectively placed the ball in Gantz’s court.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Report: Durham probe seeks interviews with Brennan and Clapper Chuck Ross

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/10/22/report-durham-probe-seeks-interviews-with-brennan-and-clapper/U.S. Attorney John Durham intends to interview former CIA Director John Brennan as part of his investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies’ activities in the Trump-Russia probe, according to NBC News.

Brennan told NBC News, where he is an analyst, that both he and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, are sought for interviews with Durham’s investigators. The interviews, should they occur, would signal that Durham is expanding his investigation.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham to oversee an inquiry into U.S. agencies’ Trump-related intelligence-gathering activities earlier this year. Barr said he was not satisfied with official explanations about the origins of the investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

The FBI opened an investigation on July 31, 2016 into whether Trump associates were colluding with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The special counsel’s investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy or that any Trump associates acted as agents of Russia.

But Brennan, a staunch critic of President Donald Trump and Barr, has fiercely defended the investigation of the Trump campaign. He is also questioning the legal basis for the Durham probe, which he called “bizarre.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Is It Time For America To Begin Decoupling From Communist China? By Ben Weingarten

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/22/is-it-time-for-america-to-begin-decoupling-from-communist-china/

The longer businesses in the West remain wedded to Chinese profits and Chinese money, the stronger the Chinese Communist Party will grow, at our long-term expense.

Perhaps the most momentous part of the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) was its acknowledgment that the U.S. government’s historical premise “that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order would liberalize China” was wrong. Recent events indicate that not only was the theory underlying all U.S.-China policy for nearly 50 years incorrect, but that perhaps the opposite is true: Support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order has actually illiberalized America.

Stated differently, there is a case to be made that since President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China, the United States has become more like China than China has become like us. We may have been sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is just one of many prominent Western industries as diverse as automobiles, fashion, and lodging that have cowed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) line, and engaged in self-censorship out of a desire for the almighty dollar. While the NBA is a particularly deserving target of ire, given the fact its social justice warriors have shown themselves to be hypocritical sellouts, one would be hard-pressed to find any entity with substantial profits or funding tied to China willing to permit the voicing of views that might rankle the CCP.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Power To Subpoena a President’s Tax Returns Is the Power to Destroy

By on October 23rd, 2019

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-power-to-subpoena-trumps-tax-returns-is/90878/

What a cornucopia of constitutional questions will be opened up in federal appeals court at New York tomorrow. That’s when President Trump will get the first hearing in his appeal of a ruling that his tax returns must be handed over in a criminal probe being pursued by the district attorney of New York County. The case is so hot — such a teaching moment — that it’s going to be aired on C-Span.

Pull up a chair, we say. That’s certainly what we’re going to do. Particularly because the liberals are laughing at the president and carrying on about how no one is above the law. The problem there is that the law — the Constitution is a law, after all — doles out a number of immunities. Like the fact that members of congress are privileged from arrest when they are traveling to or from a sitting of the legislature.

Plus, for anything said on the floor of either house, no member of Congress may be questioned in any other place. In everyday lingo, it means that for anything our legislators say at work, they can’t be sued or prosecuted in federal, state, municipal court, or the United Nations. What would an ordinary mortal — a newspaperman, say — give for such dispensation? Is Congress above the law? No, that is the law.

What is so newsworthy about this case — known as Trump v. Vance, the latter being the Manhattan d.a. — is that it represents the first time in the history of America “that a county prosecutor has subjected the President of the United States to criminal process.” That’s the way it’s put in the president’s opening brief. Think of it. For more than 200 years, prosecutors have resisted temptation, until Mr. Vance.

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Thomas McArdle:China’s Disguised Global Threat Comes Alive

By on October 22nd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/22/chinas-disguised-global-threat-comes-alive/

To twist Lenin’s quip, it will be a communist who sells capitalists the cheap advanced telecommunications technology with which China hangs them.

A new and exciting movie was just released illustrating through semi-fictional dramatization how the Chinese government-controlled telecom company Huawei is a primary economic weapon in an arsenal through which Beijing seeks global domination.

The names of the people and the company are all changed, but “Claws of the Red Dragon” dramatizes Canada’s arrest at U.S. request last year of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s financial chief and daughter of its founder, for violations of sanctions on terrorist Iran and other offenses. In retaliation, Beijing detained two Canadians, an ex-diplomat and a businessman, for spying, and retried a 36-year-old tourist serving a 15-year drug offense, sentencing him to the death penalty.

It depicts a real life-based Chinese-Canadian reporter reluctantly taking on the story and risking her life to connect the dots between the company and the Communist Party and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. And the film goes behind closed doors to show the scheming of party operatives whose sights are set on global dominance in our lifetimes.

Having premiered over the weekend on the One America News Network, which will show it again Friday evening, the film is the work of New York-based Chinese-American New Tang Dynasty Television. The production values and acting, particularly Dorren Lee as journalist Jane Li, are top notch. Ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who’s an executive producer, hosted a press screening in New York City last week, where he brandished a well-worn copy of “Unrestricted Warfare,” a 1999 book by two senior Chinese air force colonels. They argue that economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure, and terrorism can enable a lesser power to win a war against the U.S., especially as part of a “grand warfare method” pairing military and non-military tactics. Beijing hasn’t veered far off that strategy in the two decades since.

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JULIE KELLY: EVERYONE KNOWS A MITT ROMNEY

By on October 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/21/everyone-knows-a-mitt-romney/

After Romney’s anonymous Twitter account was exposed, he fessed up. Then he did the most Romney-esque thing ever: He protected his account.

Mitt Romney is that guy.

The kid who made the team because his parents donated big dough to the school but gives footwork advice to the other legit athletes. The fraternity brother who wore khakis to keg parties and drank Bartles and Jaymes out of a solo cup but pretended it was beer. The office colleague who cribbed someone else’s idea from a presentation or an email chain and passed it off as his own to the boss. Then he became the executive who inspires only eyerolls during his weekly motivational session. “How the hell did this guy get this far?!” everyone internally screams.

He secretly keeps squeezy balls in his desk drawer to calm his nerves before he has to call the boss, and, when those fail to ease his jitters, he keeps a bottle of Rumchata in the file cabinet just in case.

He’s a 31 handicap and he doesn’t even count all his strokes. He wears CrossFit gear but does water aerobics. He owns a Porsche but won’t drive it more than 59 miles per hour. He starts laughing before he tells a joke because he knows he can’t deliver but is trying to get you to play along. He pretends to know the words to Metallica and Guns N’ Roses and the Violent Femmes while playing air guitar on his Bobolat racket, but his iPod is loaded with Barry Manilow and Celine Dion.

A guy with so much cringe who thinks he’s boffo: Cowardice camouflaged in smugness.

In other words, a fraud. A phony. And, because losing presidential candidates never die, they just relocate to another state and run for the U.S. Senate, the American people must now tolerate the national version of the Mitt Romney We All Know In Real Life.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Attempt to School Republicans Is a Disingenuous Fraud Roger Kimball

By on October 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/21/media-attempt-to-school-republicans-is-a-disingenuous-fraud/

What we are witnessing with such gems of hysterical mendacity are the pathetic death throes of a discredited political franchise and its rapidly disintegrating narrative.

If you haven’t had your daily dose of petulant surreality, swivel over to read this astounding editorial at what used to be America’s paper of record. This curious effusion warns that “The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer.”

Oh, dear. Are things as bad as that? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. And you know that it is really serious because the cri de coeur not only appears in the leaky flagship of the legacy media (I won’t name it if you don’t mind) but also it appears under the solemn byline of “The Editorial Board.”

Silence, please! The important people are about to speak. Pay attention!

The sobbing editorial is called “The Crisis of the Republican Party,” but it might have been better titled “Whistling Past the Graveyard.”

I always wonder exactly who is the intended audience for such high-and-mighty imprecations. They appear to be addressed to “the GOP,” to “conservatives” (those who still have a “conscience,” i.e., those who have mutated into progressives), to “Republicans.” Here is your last chance, such columns seem to shout, we’re warning you. You are tearing the republic apart (you know they’re upset when they start talking about “the Republic”: I think they’re trying to remind you of Rome circa 44 B.C.).

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Why Hamas Supports Erdogan’s War by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on October 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15049/hamas-support-erdogan-syria

If, according to Hamas, Turkey has the right to protect its border, why does Israel not have the same right?

Hamas’s support for Erdogan’s war on the Kurds seems to be in the context of its attempt to persuade the Turkish authorities to allow its members to continue using Turkey as a base for masterminding terrorist attacks against Israel.

As Hamas said in its statement, it is opposed to the “US and Israeli presence in the region.” Hamas seems to be happy that the US abandoned the Kurds and left northern Syria. Hamas does not want the US to play any political or military role in the region….

It now remains to be seen how Erdogan will reward Hamas for supporting his war on the Kurds. Hamas, meanwhile, is holding its breath, hoping that Turkey will embrace the group and facilitate its fight against Israel.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated terror group ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, is the only Palestinian party that has come out in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s war on the Kurds in Syria.

A statement issued by Hamas on October 14 said that the terror group “understands Turkey’s right to protect its border, defend itself and remove threats harmful to its national security against the tampering of the Zionist Mossad in the region, as part of [Israel’s] effort to undermine Arab and Islamic national security.”

Hamas also praised Erdogan for his “support for the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people” and expressed opposition to “the Zionist and US presence in the region.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, voiced support for Turkey. “The Israeli media campaign against Turkey is rude and unacceptable. Israel will remain the enemy and Turkey will remain in the hearts of Muslims,” he wrote on Twitter.

Another Hamas leader, Izzar al-Risheq, said that his group is “confident that President Erdogan has no ambitions in Syria and he only wants to preserve the security of his country.” The Muslims, he added, need to “end their conflicts so they would have the time to confront the big challenge imposed by the presence of the Zionist enemy.”

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