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Ruth King

Putin Pulls a Syria in Venezuela The Russian is betting he can prop up Maduro at little political cost.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-pulls-a-syria-in-venezuela-11553901531

Vladimir Putin has made a career of intervening abroad and seeing if the world lets him get away with it. He did this in Georgia when George W. Bush was President, then in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria in Barack Obama’s Presidency. Now he’s doing the same on Donald Trump’s watch—this time in America’s backyard in Venezuela.

Two planes arrived in Caracas last weekend with 100 Russian troops, and in recent years Russia has provided cash, food and weapons to prop up the regime of Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has thrown its support behind Juan Guaidó, the interim president chosen by the National Assembly and backed by nearly every country in the region. But Mr. Putin is betting that with a limited military and financial investment he can keep Mr. Maduro in power, expand his control over Venezuela’s oil company, impress the world with his moxie, and embarrass Mr. Trump.

Stop Iran From Going Nuclear by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13961/iran-going-nuclear

“Thank God, the tests on the IR4 and IR2M (centrifuges) have been completed. They were tested for over 12 years. Today we have all the data, and we can easily manufacture them on an industrial scale.” — Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was not allowed to inspect or monitor Iran’s military sites where nuclear activities were most likely being carried out. Among the many concessions that the Obama administration gave the Iranian government, one was accepting the Iranian leaders’ demand that these military sites would be out of the IAEA’s reach.

Due to this surrender, various high-profile Iranian sites such as the Parchin military complex, located southeast of Tehran, were free to engage in nuclear activities without the risk of inspection.

Once the authoritarian, anti-Semitic and anti-American government of Iran possess a nuclear bomb, no amount of actions will be able reverse the catastrophe.

No Time to ‘Move On’: Trump’s Michigan Triumph By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/29/no-time-to-move-on-trumps-michiga

Grand Rapids, Michigan, might be my new favorite city. I hadn’t remembered that it was the president’s last stop on the 2016 campaign trail until he reminded his huge (yuge!) audience there on Thursday night. At 1:00 a.m. on November 8, 2016, he drew some 30,000 cheering people. Some hours before that rally, he recalled, Hillary was waddling (my word, not his) across a stage before 500 or 600 kale-eating advocates for wind power and open borders. I’ll wait while Politifact weighs in with the important correction that Hillary actually drew 687 supporters.

That was no big deal because, you see, she had Michigan sewn up. Trump couldn’t win the nomination, certainly couldn’t win “blue wall” states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio. The well-pressed establishment Geist, incarnated in the Clinton-Obama dynasty, would thrive for at least another generation. The blob was safe. Time for a final Chardonnay and a nap . . .

The rally in Grand Rapids on Thursday night was classic Trump. The braggadocio, the calculated shamelessness—our accomplishments, their stupidity—the off-the-cuff, rhetorically roughhewn delivery, not eloquent, exactly—at least not by traditional rhetorical metrics—but surgically precise in gauging and playing to the emotional temper of the crowd.

What Siegfried & Roy Forgot by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22503/what-siegfried-roy-forgot

Siegried & Roy were illusionists whose famous Las Vegas act with Bengal tigers thrilled audiences at the Mirage Resort and Casino for thirteen years. Their daredevil performance was predicated on the technique of “affection conditioning” in which Roy bonded rather than trained the animals. The method required raising tiger cubs from birth and sleeping with them until they were a year old. Roy described the experience saying, “When an animal gives you its trust, you feel like you have been given the most beautiful gift in the world.”

On October 3, 2003 Roy Cohn’s prized cat, 380 lb Montecore, sunk its teeth into Roy’s neck and dragged him offstage before a horrified audience.

Roy faithfully insisted that Montecore was just trying to protect him. Other experts had a more realistic view of the attack. Kay Rosaire, head of the Big Cat Encounter in Florida at the time said, “They’re predators, so who can really know what goes on in their minds? Even though they are raised in captivity and they love us, sometimes their natural instincts just take over.”

Trying to tame the wildness of a Bengal tiger for entertainment denies the predatory nature of the animal. So it is with the Muslim Brotherhood in America

The Next Shoes to Drop After the Mueller Report . By Charles Lipson –

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/26/the_next_shoes_to_drop_after_the_mueller_report_139856.html

Footwear aplenty will fall as more details from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report are disclosed. The reckoning will come in several baskets and will fall on Democrats and Republicans alike, with major ramifications for 2020.

Basket No. 1: More information about the Mueller Report and the basis for its conclusions.The public wants that information and deserves it. Democrats will cry “coverup” if they don’t get everything. While Republicans emphasize “no collusion,” Democrats will concentrate their attention on Mueller’s indecision regarding President Trump’s possible obstruction of justice. Democrats will press Attorney General William Barr about the special counsel’s ambiguous conclusion—and Barr’s own definitive one–about the obstruction issue. Other Trump critics, who heretofore have described Bob Mueller as a modern-day Eliot Ness, will start crying, “Whitewash!”

Israel on the Golan Heights enhances US interests Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2YfZ2TE

While US recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights bolsters the national security of the Jewish State, it also yields major strategic benefits for the US.

Thus, President Trump’s endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the strategically commanding Golan Heights – which may be reinforced by a Congressional resolution – highlights the synergy between the national security of the US and Israel. It underlines the mutually-beneficial, two-way-street strategic coordination and cooperation between the US and Israel.

This endorsement enhances the posture of deterrence of Israel – a systematic, unwavering, effective beachhead of the US in the Middle East – and therefore extends the strategic hand of the US, without the need to deploy additional US forces to the region.

In fact, Israel’s upgraded strategic profile has been a most effective US force-multiplier in the Middle East.

Strivers, sulkers and the State of Israel David Goldman

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/opinion/strivers-sulkers-and-the-state-of-israel/

Nothing succeeds like success, and the State of Israel’s success in a range of fields has created more goodwill for the Jewish people than at any time in history, and also more enmity. The world’s strivers see Israel as an example, and the world’s sulkers view Israel as a humiliating reminder of their misery.

Joseph Dana argued in a March 25 opinion article on this site that “political Zionism raises the risk of anti-Semitism.” That is true only to the extent that success breeds envy. Success also elicits admiration, though, and Israel is admired by ambitious and upwardly mobile people around the world. On balance, political Zionism has brought about far more philo-Semitism than anti-Semitism.

Half a million tourists visited Israel in December 2018, twice the number of the previous December. South Korean high-school students are adopting traditional Jewish learning techniques. Books about Jewish success are best-sellers in China. Chinese students are applying to Israeli universities; 200 now attend the University of Haifa compared with just 20 in 2013, and nearly 200 are enrolled at the Technion, Israel’s elite science university.

In Sweden, a glimpse of America’s future Kowtowing to Islam inch by inch. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273281/sweden-glimpse-americas-future-bruce-bawer

Not so many years ago, the notion that a hijab-wearing jihad enthusiast like Linda Sarsour could become a leading figure in the American feminist movement would have seemed risible. The spectacle of a congresswoman, also in hijab, who routinely spouted anti-Semitic rhetoric and gave speeches to groups with known terrorist connections, would have been unimaginable. But here we are. And the important thing to realize is that, unless things change radically, this is just the beginning. Before you know it, three Muslim members of Congress can turn into five, then ten, then twenty. There are now fifteen Muslims in the British Parliament, up from thirteen in 2015 and eight in 2010.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the taxpayer-funded TV network, SVT, now has a Stockholm-based news reporter who appears on-camera in hijab. As the alternative news website Samnytt reported recently, the young woman, who goes by the name Cheyma Moufid, began work as an intern at SVT last September and has been a full-time SVT journalist since January, doing remotes as well as in-studio reportage. In one report, Moufid, who is 23 years old, charged that the municipality of Stockholm was doing a less thorough job of clearing snow in Muslim neighborhoods than in other parts of the city. She presented this disparity as evidence of racism. Anyone familiar with the current state of affairs in those Muslim areas, however, might conclude, alternately, that snow removal teams avoid them for the same reason that police and firefighters do – namely, because they’re no-go zones, sharia zones, where infidel interlopers are not exactly treated with hospitality.

Trump’s Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty over Golan Heights U.S. president sends a strong message to enemies of democracy. Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273300/trumps-recognition-israeli-sovereignty-over-golan-ari-lieberman State Department lifers at Foggy Bottom must have been convulsing with horror this past Monday when Donald Trump announced that the United States would formally recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. There had been strong indications in recent months that US policy was shifting in favor of recognition.

In November 2018, the US opposed a yearly ritualistic United Nations General Assembly pro forma resolution condemning Israeli control over the Golan Heights. In previous years, the US abstained. Then in early March, the State Department’s annual report on global human rights issues referred to the Golan Heights as “Israeli controlled” rather than “Israeli occupied,” a subtle but significant distinction not lost on Israel’s enemies, chiefly Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and to a lesser extent, Hamas and the so-called Palestinian Authority.

On Monday President Trump made history again by shattering the unsustainable status quo and extending formal recognition to Israel’s claim over the territory. The Golan plateau, an area of approximately 400 square miles that overlooks all of Galilee, was liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981, Israel passed the Golan Heights Law, a legal step tantamount to annexation. Predictably, the move was not recognized internationally, and was even condemned by stalwart allies wishing to preserve the status quo and avoid offending the Muslim world.

Islamist Bachelor of the Year! Is CAIR sex predator Ahmad Saleem looking for a child bride in Pakistan? Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273313/islamist-bachelor-year-joe-kaufman

Former CAIR representative Ahmad Saleem, who made national headlines when he was arrested for soliciting sex from a 12-year-old girl, is in the market for a wife, and he may have found the perfect place to find one. It is Pakistan, a haven for child marriage.

On the night of May 20, 2015, Ahmad Abrar Saleem (a.k.a. Ahmad Shaheen) was arrested in Clermont, Florida, a short distance from his Orlando home. Saleem was intending to meet the twelve-year-old girl he had been chatting with online but, instead, met Sheriff’s deputies waiting for him and 21 others in a child sex sting operation. He was charged with “use of computer to seduce/solicit/entice a child to commit sex act” and “travel to seduce, solicit, lure a child to commit sex act.”

In July 2014, Saleem referred to himself as a “rising star.” Indeed, his celebrity within the Islamist community was growing. He had held the position of President of the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Muslim Students Association (MSA) and, countrywide, served as MSA National Service Director; he was being invited to speak at mainstream Islamist conferences; and he had been named Orlando Regional Coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).