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Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Iraq Memories The former Vice President omits a few details about his strategic misjudgments.

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-iraq-memories-11564786933

Foreign policy was barely discussed at the Democratic presidential debates this week, and not in a good way when it was. The main point seemed to be to stop “endless war,” which sounds like Donald Trump as a candidate in 2016.

That includes Joe Biden, who as a former Vice President and veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee should know better. Yet when criticized about his 2002 vote for the Iraq war, Mr. Biden had a memory lapse.

“I did make a bad judgment, trusting the President [George W. Bush] saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in,” Mr. Biden said. “From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress and the Administration.”

Mr. Biden forgets that he was also a loud critic of Saddam Hussein, had been so for many years, and also worried that the dictator might have weapons of mass destruction. Everyone knew that the vote in 2002 was about authorizing a potential military intervention.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK LAWYERS FOR ISRAEL WIN A BIG ONE

By on August 3rd, 2019

http://www.uklfi.com/dfid-ordered-to-disclose-audits-of-palestinian-

DFID ordered to disclose Audits of Palestinian Authority Funds used to pay Salaries to Terrorists

The Information Commissioner has ordered the Department for International Development (DFID) to disclose audit reports of accounts into which British grant aid was transferred and allegedly used to pay salaries to convicted Palestinian terrorists.  The Commissioner has concluded that there is a significant public interest in the disclosure of the information.

This overturns the refusal of both the DFID and its internal reviewer to disclose these reports, following Freedom of Information requests made by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) last year.

UKLFI submitted a Freedom of Information request to DFID for copies of audit reports for the Palestinian Recovery and Development Program (PRDP), a World Bank multi-donor trust fund (MDTF) for the Palestinian Authority (PA), along with the terms of reference for these audits.

In the period 2008 to 2015 Britain paid grant aid to the PA totalling £430.5 million, via the World Bank, untied and not earmarked, to the PA Central Treasury.  Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) disclosed documents which showed that the PA pays over 8% of its total budget to fund salaries for convicted terrorists, which serve to reward and encourage terrorism. The funds to pay these salaries came out of the PA’s Central Treasury account.

UKLFI had noted that when questions about payments of salaries to terrorists were raised in Parliament, British Ministers had claimed that the payments were not salaries but welfare payments.  However, the PMW material had shown that these claims were false.  UKLFI demonstrated that British Ministers have repeated claims that the payments were for welfare long after the PMW reports showed that this was untrue.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Google Wants In on 6,000 Israeli Startups Within the Next 3 Years, Says Exec by Elihay Vidal

By on August 3rd, 2019

Interviewhttps://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3766973,00.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Matthew John Brittin, Google’s president of business and operations, EMEA, spoke with Calcalist about the company’s role in Israel’s tech ecosystem, navigating regulation, and future plans
Google’s goal for Israel in the next three years is to play a meaningful role in the “lives” of 6,000 local startups, according to Matthew John Brittin, the company’s president of business and operations, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Brittin spoke to Calcalist earlier this month while on a visit to the company’s Tel Aviv campus. Google, he said, wants to help the next generation of startups grow, scale-up, create jobs, and promote prosperity.According to Brittin, while 6,000 is an ambitious number, with 1,250 local employees—1,000 of whom are in engineering roles—the company is ready for the task.In recent years, Google has been investing a lot of resources in an effort to establish its foothold within the Israeli tech sector. Less than a year ago, Google launched its new, 1,800-square-meter Tel Aviv Campus. It features a cafe that serves as a meeting place for entrepreneurs and event spaces where the company hosts meetups and lectures. In this campus, Google operates digital trainings, startup mentorship programs, and accelerators.

Q: There are nearly 7,000 startups active in Israel today. You are already involved in the activity of hundreds of local tech companies, and talking about becoming involved with 6,000 more. Does this mean you aim to take over the local ecosystem?

A: These are the numbers today, but consider that in the next three years, the number of startups will go up. We recognize this is a great place to be an entrepreneur, and a lot of startups are on the right path. We want to help more entrepreneurs realize their ideas and build businesses centered around these ideas. What we offer is a toolbox that anyone can use. We are not trying to get these 6,000 startups to use nothing but Google tools. On the contrary, we are trying to inspire them and give them the confidence to recognize opportunities.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Science Meets Reality at the Water’s Edge Jack Weatherall

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/climate-

“There is a notable disparity between the sea-rise data sets favoured by catastropharian climateers and actual observations. What those numbers highlight most of all is the distorting green lens through which one-eyed advocates choose to see that which exists only in their doom-laden imaginations.”

The splendiferous east coast of Tasmania never ceases to please with all its myriad landscapes. So it was a little discombobulating to recently pass a sign planted hard against the flow of traffic following the serpentine track that threads the coastal communities, proclaiming ‘Climate Change Is Killing the Planet’. As it was only about eight degrees at the time, I was reasonably confident I would make my destination before something akin to the fate of the death star transpired and, thankfully, I was right.

It did however get me to thinking how corrupt the science of the carbon cycle has truly become in the hyperbolic atmosphere of climate politics. You would likely need a temperature increase in excess of 100 degrees in order to extinguish all life, including prokaryotes, from the biosphere — and even then creatures at depth, both aquatic and terrestrial, would probably find safe harbour. Not to disappoint my sign-erecting fellow Taswegian, but his or her prophecy can’t possibly be achieved through carbon emissions alone. Furthermore, the complete death of the planet, depending on how you might define that, may require extinguishing all its iron and siliceous substrate into stardust, a mighty feat even for that arch villain, CO2.

Wishing to stay open minded about what 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide had inflicted on the planet, I was intrigued when it was announced recently that what has been a great example of citizen science orchestrated under the banner of the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACECRC) was to be more or less abandoned, possibly due to being unhelpful to the narrative that accompanies climate change dogma. Known as TASMARC (Tasmanian Shoreline Monitoring & Archiving Project), this admirable public access project,
with dedicated volunteers at the dune face of data collection, commenced tracking the gradient of 16 beaches around the Apple Isle in 2005, the object being to measure ‘the shoreline and the way it is responding to storm events and sea-level rise.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Washington D.C. Conference Exposes ‘Climate Delusion’ By Tom Harris and Dr. Jay Lehr *****

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/washington-d-c-conference-exposes-climate-delusion/

The new president of The Heartland Institute, Frank Lasee, was not exaggerating when he described the 13th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC13) as “the most important climate change and energy event of the year.”

Speaking about the July 25 conference held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Lasee explained, “ICCC13 demonstrated that the Climate Delusion is not based on sound science or economics. It is wasting trillions of dollars and threatening our way of life, while propping up the drive for world socialism.”

This was a common theme throughout ICCC13. The Climate Delusion, relying on bad science and misguided economics, is damaging America and threatening the world.

The conference sold out with over 300 attendees, launched with a translated video address by Dominik Kolorz, a Polish trade union activist and the chairman of the Śląsko-Dąbrowski Solidarity, the largest regional union structure in Poland. Kolorz could not be at the conference because he had to support union workers in a protest against the closing of furnaces in one of the largest employers in Śląsko, a major steel plant, due to misguided European Union climate policy. “You can see that the effects of climate policy, already noticeable, can be very dramatic in a social context,” said Kolorz. “We do not deny that we are in a period of global warming. But … there is no scientific consensus, in our opinion, about human responsibility for climate change…”

Kolorz expressed strong concern about the long-term consequences of UN climate policy, stating, “what the European Union proposes to us in the frame of climate policy is…a liquidation of industry operating in Poland. It’s not just about banning the coal. It’s not only the elimination of conventional energy, but it is really about the decarbonizing of the industry in Poland but also in Europe, we would deal with the liquidation of the metallurgical, steel and cement industries…What can happen in Poland if we stick to the dogma of the climate policy—we will lose about half a million jobs in the next 20 years.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Google wants Trump to lose in 2020, former engineer for tech giant says: ‘That’s their agenda’ By Victor Garcia

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/media/fired-google-engineer-fears-company-will-try-and-influence-2020-election-they-really-want-trump-to-lose

A former Google engineer who claims he has been blacklisted by the tech giant says he believes the company will try to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

“They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda,” Kevin Cernekee said Friday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“They have very biased people running every level of the company,” Cernekee continued. “They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.”

“They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda. They have very biased people running every level of the company.”

— Kevin Cernekee, former Google employee

Cenekee was fired in June 2018 after Google told him he was terminated for misuse of the company’s equipment, including its software system for remote access. However, Cernekee, who describes himself as a whistleblower, maintains he was terminated for his outspoken conservative views.

“They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.” 

— Kevin Cernekee, former Google employee

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hong Kong police fire tear gas as city is again roiled by protests James Pomfret, Simon Gardner

By on August 3rd, 2019

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong police fired multiple tear gas rounds on Saturday night in confrontations with black-clad activists in the city’s Kowloon area, as the Chinese-controlled territory was again rocked by anti-government protests.

Police had kept out of sight during the afternoon as tens of thousands of protesters marched through Mong Kok, usually a busy shopping district. But they charged onto the streets after 9 p.m. (1300 GMT), with hundreds of officers in riot gear pushing back crowds who jeered them.

At around midnight in Wong Tai Sin, a residential area, protesters hurled umbrellas and other objects at police, who responded with pepper spray and then tear gas.

Throughout the evening in Kowloon, police confronted protesters who retreated and regrouped. Some were detained.

Protests against a proposed bill allowing people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China have grown increasingly violent since June, with police accused of excessive force and failing to protect protesters from suspected gang attacks.

On Saturday, protesters set fires in the streets, outside a police station and in rubbish bins, and blocked the entrance to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, cutting a major artery linking Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Are Any Of The Democratic Candidates For President Not Completely Crazy? Francis Menton *****

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-8-2-are-any-of-the-democratic-can

Perhaps President Trump is not particularly your cup of tea, and you are thinking that you might consider as an alternative supporting one or another of the Democratic contenders for the presidency. If so, here is an important question to consider: Is any one of these people not completely crazy?

To start with, I’m willing to grant that the bar for selecting a candidate to support for President is of necessity a low one. A person matching your idea of the perfect candidate simply does not exist in the real world; and even if such a person did exist, he or she would not make it past the first week of the campaign. Working strongly against the potential for even any half-way decent candidate is the fact that everybody who throws a hat into this ring is almost by definition a self-centered ego-maniac. Plus, every one of them deeply believes that each word they utter, no matter how ridiculous, is a pearl of God’s wisdom. And then, by the time you get to the general election, you will only have two options left to choose from. It goes without saying that both will be very deeply flawed.

But “deeply flawed” is not nearly the same as “completely crazy.” Surely, we can find some among the Democratic candidates who can pass the “not completely crazy” test.

Well, good luck trying. To evaluate the question of whether any of these people are not completely crazy, I’m going to look today at what they have said recently — mostly in the debates — about the federal government’s appropriate role with respect to “climate.”

As background, readers here know that I do not think much of what passes for the “science” of human-caused climate change, including such obvious flaws as the refusal of advocates to articulate their contentions in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis, the failure to attempt to articulate and refute appropriate null hypotheses, and also the alteration of data by advocates in order to create an apparently strong warming trend that did not exist in the data as originally officially reported. (See, for example: as to lack of a falsifiable hypothesis, “Things Keep Getting Worse For The Fake ‘Science’ Of Human-Caused Global Warming,” July 12; as to failure to articulate or refute appropriate null hypotheses, “You Don’t Need To Be A Scientist To Know That The Global Warming Alarm ‘Science’ Is Fake,” July 15; and as to alteration of data to try to make it fit the narrative, my now-23-part series “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.”)

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Baltimore’s 30,000 Public Employees Cost Taxpayers $2 Billion But Can’t Save Their Own City Adam Andrzejewski Adam Andrzejewski

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/07/31/baltimores-81000-public-employees-cost-taxpayers-5-billion-and-cant-save-their-own-city/#510381f119a3

President Donald Trump’s recent tweet about Baltimore ignited a firestorm of controversy. Baltimore has since become the focal point of a very public fight between Trump and local congressman Elijah Cummings (MD-7).

People on both sides have strong views about Trump’s motives. However, on one level, Trump served to highlight the videos of a local political activist Kimberly Klacik. These videos revealed Baltimore’s systemic problems of rats, abandoned buildings, and trash. Klacik reported that many of the city’s residents feel that they have been forgotten.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com investigated just how much taxpayer money flows into the Baltimore bureaucracy at every level: federal, state, and local. We found the city drowning in taxpayer dollars.The last time we analyzed the amount of federal grants and direct payments flowing into major U.S. cities (FY2016), Baltimore received more funding per resident ($573) than the comparable cities of Portland, OR ($274); Nashville, TN ($353); Oklahoma City, OK ($201); Detroit, MI ($372); and Milwaukee, WI ($183). However, Baltimore also lagged cities like Chicago, IL ($1,942); New York, NY ($894); and was on par with San Francisco, CA ($588).

Our audit shows that $1.1 billion in grants and direct payments (subsidies and assistance) flowed into Baltimore city agencies and other city-based entities including non-profit organizations, corporations, and colleges during the last four years (FY2015-FY2018). That’s the equivalent of nearly $7,000 in federal aid per family of four living in Baltimore during this period.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The DOJ Will Not Prosecute James Comey over Trump Memos By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/the-doj-will-not-prosecute-james-comey-over-trump-memos/

Turning the page away from the politicization of investigations

A  free society cannot stay free for long if the criminal-justice system becomes a political weapon, if that becomes our norm.

The most alarming aspect of the Trump–Russia investigation, and of the stark difference between the aggression with which it was pursued and the see-no-evil passivity of the Clinton emails caper, is the way the investigative process was used to influence political outcomes.

The way to right that wrong is to prevent it from becoming the new normal, not to turn the tables of abuse when power shifts from one side to the other. We can only make things worse by losing the distinction between rebuking errors in judgment and criminalizing them.

Ardent Trump supporters are growling over news that the FBI’s former director, James Comey, will not be prosecuted by the Justice Department for the mishandling of memoranda he wrote about his contacts with the president. The news has been reported by The Hill’s John Solomon and the Washington Post’s Devlin Barrett, among others.

Comey’s handling of his memos is one aspect of probes related to investigations attendant to the 2016 election, which are being conducted by Justice Department independent counsel Michael Horowitz. Indications are that Horowitz referred the memos issue to the Justice Department for possible prosecution and that, after reviewing the IG’s findings, Justice declined to pursue the matter as a criminal case.

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