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Ruth King

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Warriors Wanted (Not the Social Justice Variety) James Allan

By on October 3rd, 2019

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

Take a look at the photo above.  I managed to overcome my usual ineptitude with technology the other day to snap that picture as I was walking into a barbershop in the Californian city of Coronado.  Actually, although Coronado is classified as its own city (of barely 25,000) it is in reality part of San Diego. Across a large curving bridge that was opened by Ronald Reagan back in the late 1960s sits the home of US naval aviation, the huge airbase of Coronado, on a peninsula that forms the magnificent San Diego harbor.

This harbor is the home of the third- or fourth-biggest US naval base in the world (depending on how and what you count), the biggest being in Norfolk, Virginia.  And even though this peninsula – which is so long you can’t help thinking it’s an island – is dominated by the naval airbase, by a separate Navy Seals base, and by other parts of the US Navy, there is also a chunk of the peninsula that constitutes the civilian town of Coronado.  Given how many people either live in, commute to or work for the US Navy, you won’t be surprised to hear that it is the safest city in the United States.  Any police officers who want only to investigate bicycle thefts should immediately put in their applications to the Coronado Police Department. There are basically no parking fines handed out because the metres in Coronado charge 25 cents per hour – yes, a quarter is all it takes to park for an hour – so you’d have to be brain dead not to pay up.

My wife and I stumbled on Coronado purely by chance back in 2013 when we were here for an earlier sabbatical of mine.  Purely by luck we ended up renting a house on the beach in this amazing place, and we loved it.  So when the offer came to return to the University of San Diego School of Law – the most conservative law school in the US, let me note, which means maybe one-third of the law professors would be right of centre, and why I can find a spot here – both my wife and I knew we’d be renting again in Coronado.  It is magnificent, and quite a contrast to London, where we spent the first half year of my sabbatical.

Don’t get me wrong.  For both us, London is our favourite city on earth.  But Coronado is right up there.  Furthermore, if you ever find yourself in San Diego let me strongly recommend that the first touristy thing you must do is to take the two-hour boat tour of the harbour.  You’ll see a stunning array of top-of-the-line US Navy vessels – destroyers, battleships, weird looking stealth ships, helicopter carriers, two or three of the big Nimitz class aircraft carriers, and at the far outlet end of the harbour the docking zone for  nuclear submarines.  San Diego is home to the killer attack subs, but once in a while you will see the “big banger” missile-launching Tridents come in for a visit.  They are magnificent.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

“Anti-Normalization” With Israel: The True Goal by Bassam Tawil

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14943/anti-normalization-israel

If greeting a Jew on his or her holiday, cleaning the beach with an Israeli, or working in Israel are considered by many Arabs a “crime,” what will be the fate of any Arab who makes peace with Israel?
Those who are calling for boycotts of Israel — and are threatening and inciting their people against any Arab who dares to host a Jew or send him or her greetings — are also emphatically opposed to peace with Israel. For them, making peace with the “Zionist entity” is considered an act of treason.
They are worried that an Arab who greets a Jew may one day make peace with Israel. They are worried that an Arab state that hosts Israeli athletes may one day make peace with Israel. They are worried that Arabs who go to work in Israel may fall in love with Israelis and stop thinking of ways to kill them or destroy Israel.

Arabs who dare to greet Jews in public on the Jewish New Year are being denounced by their fellow Arabs as traitors. Arabs who dare to engage in sports activities with Jews are also being condemned by their fellow Arabs as traitors.

In the past week, many Arabs have taken to social media to express outrage over a Jewish New Year greeting by Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

On September 29, the minister posted on his Twitter account “Shana Tova” (“Good Year” in Hebrew). His greeting to Jews celebrating the Jewish New Year has triggered a wave of condemnations from many Arabs, including Palestinians, who accused the minister of promoting normalization with Israel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France: President Macron Must Stop Appeasing Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14941/macron-appeasing-iran

Has French President Emmanuel Macron forgotten that he is helping and appeasing a state leading in human rights violations? In 2018, according to Javaid Rehman, the UN expert on human rights in Iran, at least 273 people were executed in Iran, and 6,000 over ten years, according to Iran Human Rights.

In addition, the use of cruel and inhuman punishment is also on the rise in Iran; according to Amnesty International, the use of various forms of torture such as amputation and flogging has been increasing at an alarming rate.

Macron also fails to recognize that the nuclear deal never contained or adequately addressed Iran’s multifaceted threats, which include but are not limited to: The arming and financing of terror and militia groups in the region; intervening in the internal affairs of regional countries; pursing a sectarian agenda by pitting Shiites and Sunnis against each other; carrying out cyber attacks against other nations; and committing human rights violations inside Iran and abroad through its proxies.

French President Emmanuel Macron appears to be following the footsteps of former US President Barack Obama when it comes to appeasing the top state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In a recent development, the French government offered $15 billion to bail out the Iranian government from US sanctions, and a plea to “restart negotiations.” The Iranian government was most likely thrilled; a headline of a major Iranian state-controlled media outlet, Abrar Eqtesadi read: “Iran to receive $15 billion line of credit!”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Schiff’s Deep State Collusion NY Times accidentally suggests the intelligence committee chairman’s fingerprints are all over the so-called whistle blower’s report.Matthew Vadum

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/schiffs-deep-state-collusion-matthew-vadum/

Leftist conspiracy-monger Adam Schiff was aware of select details of the Ukraine-Biden allegations against President Donald Trump before a lying CIA snitch reportedly involved in the case filed a complaint under a whistleblower law, according to the intermittently reliable New York Times.

It has been widely reported that the CIA official’s complaint was based on a July 25 telephone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the said stoolie somehow learned about.

Rep. Schiff is the California Democrat, now the laughably unqualified chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a Trump-hater who spent the last three years smearing anyone who doubts the existence of his Trump-Russia electoral collusion conspiracy theory as traitors and agents of the Russian government while apparently leaking secret details of congressional investigations to his friends at CNN and elsewhere in the media at every opportunity.

Trump stands accused by Democrats without any credible evidence whatsoever of trying to muscle the government of Ukraine into investigating a potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, in order to discredit his campaign.

This, of course, is the exact opposite of what actually happened. Three Democrat senators urged Ukraine to investigate Trump and a Democratic National Committee operative named Alexandra Chalupa went on a dirt-digging expedition hoping to get usable opposition research on Trump from Ukrainian officials.

The New York Times makes the claim about Schiff’s foreknowledge of the whistleblower report citing “a spokesman and current and former American officials,” so take the report with a grain of salt. The Old Gray Lady lies habitually nowadays so trusting the once-respected media outlet is a risky enterprise.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Senate Should Change Its Rules on Impeachment By John Yoo

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-senate-should-change-its-rules-on-impeachment/

The Constitution gives the Senate flexibility on whether and how to hold an impeachment trial.

Now that the House has launched an impeachment probe of President Donald Trump, the Senate should reform its antiquated rules for the looming trial. Under current procedures, a trial produces the worst of both worlds. If the House has a flimsy case, the Senate must still put the country through the wrenching, divisive political spectacle without any opportunity to dismiss the case. But if the House has a strong case, senators must sit silently by without any chance to participate directly in the trial. Allowing a real trial will improve the decision-making over whether to fire Trump and will make the Congress more responsive and accountable to the American people.

With House Democrats suggesting a swift march to impeachment by the end of the year, senators can attend to the defects revealed by President Bill Clinton’s 1998 trial. Those rules give senators a passive role: They cannot reject the House’s decision to send an impeachment over, they must sit and listen to House prosecutors and White House defense lawyers without making a peep, they never see witnesses or documents, and they never make arguments over the facts or the law of conviction, particularly the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell announced this week that the Senate will automatically hold the trial if the House impeaches. Some conservative commentators argue that Senate Republicans should instead slow-walk the process. Perhaps they could repeat their success in holding open the seat of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia by refusing to schedule a vote. If Republicans could delay indefinitely, or at least until after the 2020 elections, Trump might never face removal from office at all.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The NYT and ‘shooting migrants’ By Silvio Canto, Jr.

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/the_nyt_and_shooting_migrants.html

The crazy story of “getting Trump” is like a modern episode of “The Twilight Zone.”    

This is the latest:    

The Times report, published on Tuesday, included an excerpt from a book by two of the paper’s reporters. 

It read: “Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate.   

“He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal.

“But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.”

A source who was in the room at the time confirmed the conversation about shooting migrants in the legs to Fox News late Tuesday.

Where is Rod Sterling when we really need him?

It’s hard for me to believe that a story like this makes it out of a newsroom.   

A serious editor would have looked the reporters in the eyes and said: “Are you (expletive deleted) me?”

So the ‘resistance’ goes on and now has alligators and “shooting migrants in the legs” to entertain the crazy left with!

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Whistleblower Executive Every call with a foreign leader is now subject to congressional review.

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-whistleblower-executive-11570056633

The impeachment process is barely underway and already some constitutional norms are being trampled without a note of media notice or political concern. To wit, can a whistleblower inside the intelligence bureaucracy override a President’s right to executive privilege merely with an accusation?

That seems to be the default view among Democrats and the press as they luxuriate in news about Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders. First it was the call with Ukraine’s President. Then on Monday the leak was what Mr. Trump told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Now Democrats want to see the transcripts of other phone calls with other leaders.

“This is a coverup,” declared Nancy Pelosi last week, but if that’s true it is the most incompetent coverup in presidential history. Mr. Trump can’t seem to have any conversation that doesn’t leak, in part or whole, or that can’t be demanded by Congress as if everyone in the executive branch works for the House Speaker. Mr. Trump has released the Ukraine transcript and the whistleblower complaint, and he’s still accused of a coverup.

Last week’s inquisition of acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff captures the prevailing disdain for the separation of powers when Mr. Trump is the political target. Mr. Maguire, who has an impeccable reputation, had received the whistleblower complaint as part of his duties. He then acted responsibly by seeking legal advice about whether the document was subject to executive privilege.

Mr. Schiff berated him for even waiting to turn the document over to Congress: “At any time over the last month that you held this complaint, did the White House assert executive privilege?”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Opens a Second Front Along Israel’s Border The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies control Syrian land near the Golan Heights. By Jonathan Spyer

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-opens-a-second-front-along-israels-border-11570056375

Israel is fighting off Iranian expansion across the Middle East, but danger for the Jewish state lurks near its own borders. Painstaking work by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their loyal proxies has succeeded in laying the groundwork for a second Iranian front with Israel in the Golan Heights.

The first front is to Israel’s north in South Lebanon. The Golan, which Israel won from Syria in 1967, lies further east. Though Israel rules the skies, the Syrian land adjoining Israel’s border appears increasingly to belong to Iran. Reports from both Israelis and Syrian opposition groups have revealed glimpses of the methods the Iranians and their allies have employed to build a military infrastructure on the Syrian side of the Golan.

One is “The Iranian Conquest of Syria,” a report published last month by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The authors are two retired senior Israeli military intelligence officers, Brig. Gen. Shimon Shapira and Col. Jacques Neriah. They explain how Iranian and Hezbollah fighters have crept methodically westward from the Syrian lava field of Lajat, 40 miles from the Golan Heights in Syria’s southwest, to the broken nation’s Quneitra province, which is even closer.

The Iranian element, made up of the Revolutionary Guard, Lebanese Hezbollah and the local Syrians they have recruited, is tightly woven into the border villages and the official Syrian security forces. That much is clear from the locations of the four permanent bases used by Lebanese Hezbollah in southwest Syria. One is at Al Haraq, within an area controlled and maintained by the Syrian army’s 52nd Brigade. Two others are in the Lajat area. These are used to train locally recruited fighters and store short- and medium-range missiles.

The fourth base is in Quneitra, outside Al Hadr, about 3 miles from the Israeli border. According to the Israeli researchers, the base is protected by the Quneitra Hawks Brigade, which is part of the Syrian National Defense Forces, a reserve army established by Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani. The base is situated within a position of the Syrian army’s 90th Brigade and used mainly for intelligence gathering and eavesdropping. CONTINUE AT SITE

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Portland Bans Urinals In $195M ‘Gender-Neutral’ Remodel of Government Building By Tyler O’Neil

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/portland-bans-urinals-in-195m-gender-neutral-remodel-of-government-building/

The City of Portland has banned urinals in the $195 million remodel of the Portland Building, which houses administrative offices for the city. While urinals use less water than toilets, they are a relic of a bygone era when men and women were recognized as biologically different.

A spokeswoman told NBC affiliate KGW News that she could not estimate how much it will cost to remove the urinals, which have been a feature of the building since its construction in 1982.

Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart explained the urinal ban in an email to employees last February.

“We will continue to have gender-specific (male and female) multi-stall restrooms that are readily available to any employee that prefers to use one. But, there will be no urinals in any restroom in the building. This will give us the flexibility we need for any future changes in signage,” he wrote.

According to KGW, the building will have gender-neutral multi-stall bathrooms intended to be used by men and women together. These free-for-all restrooms — a dream come true for perverts — will be on the first, third, and fifteenth floors.

Every floor will have at least one bathroom open to “any gender,” in most cases a single-stall restroom. Throughout the building, there will be 42 “all-user stalls” and 104 sex-specific stalls.

Rinehart framed the urinal ban as a way to “remove arbitrary barriers.” In his email to employees, he wrote, “I am convinced that this is the right way to ensure success as your employer, remove arbitrary barriers in our community, and provide leadership that is reflective of our shared values.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump’s Real Liability Isn’t Impeachment: It’s China and the Economy By David P. Goldman

By on October 3rd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/forget-the-impeachment-circus-republicans-need-to-worry-about-the-economy/

Below is an open letter to Larry Kudlow I posted here on July 19, 2018. I warned that Trump’s trade war would backfire. Today we heard that the National Association of Purchasing Managers’ industrial production index had fallen to the lowest level since June of 2009. We are in a manufacturing recession, according to the Federal Reserve. Factory output is contracting. Trump won in 2016 by carrying key manufacturing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconson. This blunder could lose him the election. This is MUCH more dangerous than the impeachment masquerade. Americans really don’t care about Ukraine but they do care about their jobs. The president is trying to deflect blame onto the Federal Reserve, but he’s not fooling anybody.

Otherwise, we’re getting our heads handed to us by the Chinese. After a year of twisting the arms of our allies to boycott Huawei’s rollout of 5G broadband, the Chinese national champion will ship 600,000 5G base stations this year, and the latest batch has zero U.S. components. All of our attempts to jawbone their customers and cut off their access to U.S. technology have failed.

I hate being right about this sort of thing, because I want to see Trump re-elected, and I’m horrified at what a Democratic victory in 2020 would do to this country. Nonetheless, I’m going to tell you I told you so. Tariffs don’t work. We need a JFK- or Reagan-style mobilization of our technological and human resources to force the advancement of U.S. technology and maintain our preeminent position before the Chinese pull past us. That’s what won the Cold War. It’s what we’re good at. And it’s the only policy that will work.

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