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Ruth King

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Congress Just Begging for Another Quagmire War . By Frank Miele

By on October 18th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/18/congress_just_begging_for_another_quagmire_war_141524.html

I’ve been hesitant to comment on the U.S. troop withdrawal from northern Syria until now because I was conflicted.

Like many Americans, I support President Trump’s stated goal of extricating us from foreign entanglements as much as possible, and especially removing ground forces from harm’s way when they have no definable mission other than waiting to see if anyone shoots at them.

On the other hand, I have been sympathetic to the Kurds, who have helped us to restore peace in Iraq and to defeat ISIS in Syria. Moreover, I am no fan of Turkey and its Islamist autocrat, Recep Erdogan.

So when Erdogan announced his intention to invade northern Syria in order to establish a zone to which Syrian refugees could be repatriated, my first instinct was “Hell, no.”

But wait a minute. Turkey is a NATO member. Were we prepared to go to war with an ally to defend this strip of land held by the Kurds? Even if the Turks had an ulterior motive of seeking to punish their traditional enemy, the Kurds, were we willing to sacrifice American lives to take sides in that conflict?

Also, how exactly do we distinguish between the U.S. invading Syria several years earlier for our “national interest” and what the Turks are doing now for their own perceived “national interest”?

Certainly, we do not always go to war to protect people from invasion. As an example, we did not go to war with Israel when it invaded Lebanon in 1982. Many more such examples could be provided.

But then there are the Kurds…

We don’t want them to become the victims of genocide the way the Armenians were at the hands of the Turks in the last century, but what kind of commitment can Americans make to police Syria into the foreseeable future? Are we supposed to keep our soldiers at risk forever to prevent war between enemies who have irreconcilable differences?

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CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

By on October 18th, 2019

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/hillary_clintons_impossible_dream.html

Hillary Clinton’s Impossible Dream Fletch Daniels,

Hillary Clinton, still suffering from delusions of adequacy, has a dream.  It is that Democrats will beg her to run again and be their savior.  After all, she recently celebrated her historic 2016 win against President Donald Trump during an interview with Judy Woodruff.

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mark-levin-know

Mark Levin: This is how we know Pelosi & Schumer’s walkout was ‘staged’

Wednesday on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin commented on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “staged” walkout of a meeting with President Trump.

“I’ve had several discussions with the president over the course of a few years, and he’s a kibitzer, and he jokes and he needles, and as I wasn’t there, but Kevin McCarthy and a number of Republicans were there, and they say it was Schumer and Pelosi, particularly Pelosi, who was rude to the president,” Levin said.

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/the_democrats__who_they_are_what_they_want_and_how_to_confront_them.html

The Democrats — Who They Are, What they Want and How to Confront Them
Alexander G. Markovsky

Every time the Democratic presidential contenders take the stage, we witness a stunning display of the Democratic Party’s ideological conversion to a Marxist-sponsored socialist cartel. In pursuit of utopian/egalitarian virtue, the party has adopted the language of the ideology and is growing perpetually out of sync with American liberties.

In a frightening sense of déjà vu, the downsized American replicas of Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Clara Zetkin, and Rosa Luxemburg are seeking to impose the moralities of a flawed society through seductive promises of fairness and equality with an intensity and passion that rivals that of their precursors a century earlier. However, unlike the originals, the candidates are hardly thinkers or mavericks; they sound like pedestrian opportunists having no intellectual basis and as such are unable to define independent philosophical identities.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Opinion: Why are Jews honoring journalist who says they ‘control White House’? Moshe Phillips

By on October 18th, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinon-why-are-jews-honoring-journalist-who-says-jews-control-white-house/

Giving an honor to somebody like Thomas Friedman, who slanders Israel and the American Jewish community, sends a message to all potential slanderers that Jews are fair game.

By Moshe Phillips, World Israel News

Next month Moment magazine will hold its “DC Gala & Awards Dinner” honoring four distinguished journalists. The presenters will be four prominent individuals.

How disappointing that one of the presenters they have chosen has publicly accused Jews of controlling the White House and paying off members of Congress. Especially considering Moment magazine is a Jewish publication originally co-founded by Elie Wiesel.

I’m referring to Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

Friedman’s troubling record on Israel began during his years as a student at Brandeis University. In 1974, Yasser Arafat, gun holster on his hip, made his infamous first appearance at the United Nations. Jews in New York City organized a huge rally against him. Friedman and a handful of fellow-students signed an open letter denouncing the anti-Arafat rally.

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Why Are Palestinians ‘Disappearing’ in Saudi Arabia? by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15035/saudi-arabia-palestinians-disappearing

The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), a youth-led independent organization that advocates for human rights across Europe and the Middle East, said it has collected names of about 60 Palestinians detained by the Saudi authorities in recent months

Euro-Med said it considers the “practices of the Saudi authorities a flagrant violation of the requirements of justice, which guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial, including knowing charges against and the right to defense and access to a lawyer… [and] affirms that the relevant authorities do not comply with the international legal rules that guarantee the simplest rights of litigation for any individual…”

The Saudi authorities have offered no explanation for the widespread campaign targeting Palestinians in the kingdom. It appears that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his officials in Ramallah fear that any critique of this behavior would jeopardize the financial handouts and political support they receive from Saudi Arabia…. For Palestinian leaders, Saudi money and political backing far outweigh the fate of a few dozen Palestinians held without trial in an Arab country.

It is only Palestinians who are held by Israel for terrorist-related crimes who Abbas and his friends remember to mention in their endless litanies of complaints.

Dozens of Palestinians have been “disappearing” in Saudi Arabia in recent months and are believed are being held in detention in the kingdom’s prisons, according to Palestinian sources and international human rights organizations.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership in the West Bank, which regularly condemns Israel for arresting Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorism and other anti-Israel activities, has been reluctant to speak out against the Saudi purge of Palestinians, ostensibly for security reasons, not to harm its relations with the kingdom.

The PA is not only keeping mum about the unprecedented Saudi crackdown, but it is also trying to prevent the families of the detainees from protesting in public. Last week, the PA’s Preventive Security Service summoned the family of Palestinian engineer Abdullah Odeh, being held in a Saudi prison, and warned them not to protest their son’s detention.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Greece: Reminding the New Government Why It Was Elected by Maria Polizoidou

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14981/greece-government-fear

A press report on September 24 revealed that Greece’s National Intelligence Service is investigating five Greek NGOs operating in tandem with Turkish intelligence agencies and people-smugglers to transport illegal immigrants to the Greek islands.

Ankara’s goal in this operation is an open secret: to unleash a flow of Muslim migrants on Europe.

On September 27, Greek Minister of Defense Nikos Panagiotopoulos said that illegal immigration “is taking on the dimensions of a national crisis, and poses a threat to the country’s internal security.”

The emergency measures appear laughable, however, when one considers that about 500 people are entering Greece illegally each day, and millions more are waiting to come over from the other shore of the Aegean Sea.

Illegal immigration into Greece cannot be tackled as long as the left-wing elites and media — with a solid push from neighboring Turkey — continue to cloak what constitutes a hostile invasion in a mantle of political correctness.

A resolution adopted by the European Parliament on September 20, “paying tribute to the victims of communism, Nazism and other totalitarian and authoritarian regimes,” was passed by an overwhelming majority. This is as it should be, given that communist regimes around the world have caused the deaths of more than 100 million people.

Surprisingly, however, only one out of 21 Greek members of the European Parliament — the New Democracy Party’s MEP, Anna Michel Asimakopoulou — voted in favor of the resolution. This was in spite of the thousands of casualties and massive damage resulting from the Greek Civil War in 1945-1949 between the communists and the democratic forces in the country.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Australia’s Future and Its Enemies Mervyn F Bendle

By on October 17th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/109925/

Finally! The National Farmers Federation has announced that it will implement a long-term public relations campaign to mobilise public and political support for a major expansion of the agricultural industry in Australia and combat the zealotry of animal rights activists and green extremists.

Such a response is well overdue. As I discussed over six years ago in a Quadrant Online article, Australia faces an epoch-defining challenge. With the global population projected to exceed nine billion people by 2050 our country is well placed to become a major food supplier to the world, doubling — even quadrupling — agricultural production, and generating an additional $1.7 trillion in aggregate export earnings over the next four decades. Estimates vary, but global food supply will have to increase by between 60 per cent and 100 per cent by 2050 to satisfy requirements. This is not idle musing: hundreds of millions of people will starve if the global food supply is not greatly increased.

Much of the demand will be in Asia, including from an increasingly massive middle class with evermore discerning tastes and evolving consumption patterns that will respond to the efforts of a sophisticated agricultural industry. Australia has a potentially major role to play in meeting this challenge, capitalising on its geographical position, expanding its agricultural sector, improving its crop yields and productivity, adopting new technologies, developing its infrastructure, and bringing virgin lands under cultivation. It is in the unique position of being a developed economy that nevertheless possesses large-scale under-utilized land and water resources, especially those located in northern Australia in close proximity to these emerging markets.

At the economic level the outlook for this initiative is positive and Australia is well placed to take advantage of this stupendous opportunity. While it will be a major task to mobilize the investment required to finance the project, it appears there are vast funds available internationally. Foreign investors, pension funds, international corporations and foreign governments are already buying Australian farmland to capitalise on the growing Asian demand.

However, at the cultural level the situation is different, as the NFF has finally realized.  Tragically, Australia is afflicted with deeply entrenched anti-development forces. It must therefore re-affirm its national identity as a frontier society, ready to engage in nation-building projects on a continental scale, and prepared systematically to harness the natural and human resources required to develop a thriving, highly productive society. This is a battle that must be won in the realm of culture, and it can no more be ignored than the financial or physical infrastructure requirements of this gigantic project can be ignored.

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National Security Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings We are in the Middle East for one reason: To ensure that terrorist groups based there do not plan and effect mass-casualty attacks here in America. Going to war with NATO ally Turkey is not part of the plan. Sebastian Gorka

By on October 17th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/16/national-security-doesnt-care-about-your-feelings/

Ben Shapiro has become famous for the line: “Facts don’t care about your feelings!” Neither does strategy. And the last week should serve as a lesson in how to do strategy properly, and how to serve the national interest: clinically and without emotion.

Since President Trump made his decision to relocate 50 U.S. troops from Northern Syria, who were in the way of incoming Turkish forces, the commander-in-chief has been relentlessly attacked by the Left, their accomplices in the press, and the forever war neoconservatives and RINOs on the Right. After 18 years of war, thousands of Americans dead, and trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted, the president is being pilloried for not wanting to go to war with Turkey, a NATO ally with the largest Army in Europe.

Just let that sink in. After a generation of war, the “elite” is attacking President Trump for not getting us into another war.

Why are we told we should go to war again? Because the Kurds are suffering. Are the Kurds members of NATO? Are they our formal allies in any way? Are they even members of the same Judeo-Christian civilization to which we belong? The answers are no, no, and most definitely no.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, POLITICS Comments turned off

Global Warming Alarmism Deflated By The Dem Debate

By on October 17th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/17/global

As we noted Wednesday, this week’s Democratic presidential debate was unconstitutional, all about radicalizing American society. But there was one positive development. Screeching about global warming was limited.

While a large slice of America sees this as a feature, the Democrats’ allies in the press thought it was a bug.

“CNN slammed for asking about Ellen, but not climate change, at Democratic debate,” howled USA Today.

“Ellen DeGeneres’ friendship with former President George W. Bush made it onto the agenda but climate change and immigration did not,” moaned Newsweek.

“Democrats have spent more than 90 minutes so far talking about health care — about twice as much time as they’ve spent discussing either foreign policy or climate change,” said Vox.

Even the candidates themselves groused.

“Three hours and no questions tonight about climate, housing, or immigration,” tweeted former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who believes “climate change is an existential threat.” 

Sen. Kamala Harris, apparently looking over Castro’s shoulder as he tittered on Twitter — or maybe it was the other way around — tweeted “Three hours. Not one question about the climate crisis.”

“An entire debate without a single question on climate change — the existential issue facing not just our country, but our entire planet,” Tom Steyer, the billionaire who made a good portion of his fortune investing in coal and other fossil fuels, grumbled in an overheated tweet.

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The South Bronx School That Outscores the Suburbs A new book profiles the rigors and achievements of New York City’s Success Academy. Ray Domanico

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/harlem-success-academy-charter-school

How the Other Half Learns, by Robert Pondiscio (Avery, 384 pp., $27)

Robert Pondiscio’s new book, How the Other Half Learns, chronicles what he observed in the year he spent in Success Academy Bronx I Charter School. Success Academy is New York City and State’s largest and fastest-growing charter school network and also, by far, the most successful—earning it and its founder Eva Moskowitz the disdain of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a teachers’ union partisan. Pondiscio addresses the criticisms—some fair, some not—that Success has received, while offering a vivid picture of daily interactions among administrators, teachers, students, and parents, showing the culture of the school in action.

Two things struck me in reading his account: first, Success Academy’s design and methods are pragmatic and firmly grounded in the here and now; second, Success Academy requires a tremendous amount of work from all associated with it—staff, students, and parents. The school’s detailed design is tailored to the needs of its students, and teachers and administrators are expected to implement it thoroughly. This attention to planning sets Success apart from other schools—much more so than its admissions policies, which have been the subject of intense controversy.

Despite its reputation for rigor, Success is not trying to recreate a mythical golden age of Victorian-style instruction. Supporters and critics of the network might be surprised to learn that its pedagogical orientation is broadly progressive. Founder Eva Moskowitz describes her schools as “Catholic school on the outside, Bank Street on the inside.” Pondiscio notes that the school sometimes fails to live up to all the ideals of “Bank Street”—a stand-in for progressive education—but that its math instruction is “easily the most ‘constructivist’ aspect of its curriculum; at least at the elementary level.” In math, Success reaches seemingly impossible levels of achievement on the state’s annual exam. Progressive or not, though, the school is certainly defined by hard work, from the two weeks of staff preparation prior to the first day of school through the last day before summer break. No one—administrator, teacher, student, or parent—gets off the hook for student outcomes.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald:Gigabytes of Virtue-Signaling Eager to win praise from homeless advocates, guilt-ridden tech CEOs pony up with donations—and disparage capitalism.

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/homelessness-tech-industry

Tech mogul Marc Benioff has been winning media accolades for his declaration that “capitalism, as we know it, is dead.” The billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce, a cloud-based customer-relations company, has launched an advertising blitz promoting his new book, Trailblazer, which calls for a “more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism,” as Benioff put it in a New York Times op-ed on Monday. This “new capitalism” would not “just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact,” Benioff maintains.

Benioff’s belief that providing products to willing consumers “takes” from society is apparently shared by the 181 CEOs of the Business Roundtable, who rejected the traditional principle of corporate shareholder responsibility this August in favor of “stakeholder responsibility.” Benioff suggests that the Securities and Exchange Commission (or, as he put it in his Times op-ed, the Security and Exchange Commission) start requiring corporations to document how their actions affect this amorphous and infinitely expandable set of “stakeholders.”

Fortunately for anyone seeking to evaluate what the new capitalism might entail, Benioff has provided a concrete example of a CEO solving “social challenges”—the challenge in this case being San Francisco’s festering homeless problem. Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco and is the city’s biggest employer. In 2018, Benioff, in conjunction with San Francisco’s most fearsome advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness, put a new tax on the local ballot to double the taxpayer dollars already going to the city’s main homelessness agency. Proposition C would impose an extra 0.5 percent gross-receipts sales tax on companies with more than $50 million in annual revenue, raising an estimated $250 million to $300 million, all of which would be funneled into the homelessness-industrial complex.

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