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Ruth King

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The Barr Memo Is a Commendable Piece of Lawyering By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/the-barr-memo-is-a-commendable-piece-of-lawyering/

Trump’s attorney-general nominee would help Mueller conclude his work within DOJ guidelines.

It is exactly what we need and should want in an attorney general of the United States: the ability to reason through complex legal questions in a rigorously academic way. Not to bloviate from the cheap seats, but to think these issues through the way a properly functioning Justice Department does: considering them against jurisprudence, statutes, rules, regulations, and Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, with a healthy respect for facts that we do not know or about which we could be wrong — facts that could alter the analysis.

That is precisely what Bill Barr did in June, when he penned an unsolicited memorandum to top Justice Department officials on a matter of immense national significance: the obstruction aspect of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump.

Barr, whom President Trump has nominated to be the next attorney general, was not prejudging the facts. He was addressing the law and Justice Department policy. With great persuasive force, the 19-page memo posits two contentions. First, based on what is publicly known, the special counsel’s theory of obstruction is legally flawed. Second, if a Justice Department investigation is going to be used to take down a democratically elected president, the social cohesion of our body politic demands that it be over a clear, very serious crime, not a novel and aggressive theory of prosecution.

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The Eagle and the Dragonfly: How Google Threatens Freedom By Mytheos Holt

By on December 20th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/19/the-eagle-and

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s recent congressional testimony capped a deservedly rough year for the embattled search giant. While Pichai largely avoided any major missteps in his testimony—thanks mostly to the technological illiteracy of the questioners—even Google-friendly sources couldn’t help noticing his evasiveness on one key point: the infamous proposed partnership between Google and the Chinese government to build a censored search engine in line with Chinese government ideology—a project ominously code-named “Project Dragonfly.”

Most notably, Pichai absolutely refused to rule out making such a product, instead devolving to corporate doublespeak about being “committed to engagement,” whatever that means. He also tried to downplay Project Dragonfly, characterizing it merely as an “internal product,” rather than something under serious development.

This was wise of him, considering that the reports on what Dragonfly allegedly is being designed to do. According to a suppressed Google internal memo, Dragonfly is being built not only to limit search results, but also to enable the Chinese government to track what every single citizen searches for on the app. In other words, it’s a surveillance tool disguised as a search engine.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Very Model of a Global Green Rorter by Tony Thomas

By on December 20th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-very-model-of-a-global-green-rorter/

That Third World cesspits sent hundreds — nay, thousands — of freeloading delegates to the latest catastrophist gabfest is, sadly, to be expected. But they have something of an excuse: when it comes to living high on the climate dollar, the UN’s Erik Solheim is the gold standard.

From top to bottom, things don’t get more disgusting than at the UN Environment Program, which runs the UN’s anti-emissions campaign. Indeed, UNEP under its director Maurice Strong in 1988 co-founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2005 Strong was caught red-handed at the UN with a $US988,000 cheque from a South Korean business man. Strong fled to the safety of Beijing — China has no extradition treaty with the US — and he lived there, honoured and unprosecuted, until his death in 2015.

Life at the top of UNEP is no longer so spectacular, but its latest director-general, Erik Solheim (above), had to resign last month when an internal audit exposed his rorting of travel and lifestyle costs. While preaching against CO2 emissions, he enjoyed aerial globetrotting for 529 days of 668 days (audited) since getting the job in 2016.

More of Solheim later, but let’s take a look now at the underbelly of UNEP’s COP24 at Katowice, a talkfest for 23,000 designed to save the planet and transfer at least $US100 billion a year, as of 2020, from the West to African and other Third World basket-cases. Numbers of these countries displayed their integrity by each flying literally hundreds of freeloaders to Poland, their travel and living costs disbursed from UN funds courtesy of UN donors, including Australia.

Resoures-rich Republic of Guinea in general fits the Trump definition of “a shithole country”. It’s 85% Muslim, 96-98% of women suffer genital mutilation, child marriage and illiteracy rates are among the world’s highest, 5% of women can expect death in childbirth, close to 40% of the population suffers malnutrition, and health threats range from HIV/AIDS to malaria and ebola. Only a quarter of the population has electricity, children are trafficked with impunity for sex and slavery, and after nine years, no security forces have been tried for a 2009 pre-election massacre of 156 people and rape of more than 100 women. Need it be said that the government is monstrously corrupt?

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HOMELAND SECURITY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Does China’s Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Missile Threaten U.S. Deterrence? by Debalina Ghoshal

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13443/china-hypersonic-missile

U.S. officials revealed in August that China had test-fired a hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and of thwarting missile-defense systems. About two months earlier, China tested the advanced DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It has a range of 12,000-15,000 km, and is capable of carrying 10 miniaturized nuclear warheads.

China is no doubt assuming that if its ICBMs can reach the United States mainland, they will deter the U.S. from interfering in China’s affairs in the South- and East China Seas.

U.S. officials revealed in August that China had test-fired a hypersonic missile — the Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2 — capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and of thwarting missile-defense systems. Although this was the first such test that was openly acknowledged by Beijing, it was, according to the Washington Free Beacon, merely one of many that the U.S. has been monitoring.

About two months earlier, China tested the DF-41 — one of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It has a range of 12,000-15,000 km, and is capable of carrying 10 miniaturized nuclear warheads, rather than a single large one.

These miniaturized nuclear warheads on a single ballistic missile are referred to as “multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles” (MIRVs). MIRV-ing a missile enables it to counter enemy missile-defense systems. Because the DF-41 uses solid rather than liquid fuel — as does the DF-5 ICBM — it is more mobile and its launching requires less preparation time. Although it can be dispatched from mobile launchers, it can also be launched from silos. Over the years, China has developed dummy silos — to confuse the enemy and force it to have to distinguish between real and fake ones.

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From Iraq to Gaza, from Egypt to Syria, fewer Christians in the Middle East. Daniel Greenfield

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272250/obamas-christmas-genocide-daniel-greenfield

This Christmas, there will be fewer Christians celebrating in their homes in the Middle East than ever before.

Before Obama, Nineveh Plains hosted 90,000 Christians. Today, it’s under 40,000.

Nineveh is one of the first cities mentioned in the Bible. The Nineveh Plains are the heartland of Syriac Christianity. But now the plains are barren with ruined churches and deserted homes in formerly Christian towns and cities. And that same story repeats itself across Iraq where 81% of Christians have disappeared.

In Mosul alone, over 100,000 Christians were displaced as Jihadists marked their doors with an “N” for Nazarene. From cities to small towns, the end of the year bears witness to a Christian genocide.

In 2008, there were an estimated 700,000 Christians in Iraq, today estimates hover between 250,000 and 300,000. While ISIS is most directly associated with terror against Christians, most Jihadist groups, including those backed by Obama, intimidated, robbed and tortured them.

In January 2014, Obama dismissed ISIS as a “jayvee” team. That summer, the team took Qaraqosh and its surrounding villages, including Bartella. The Christians were given a choice between converting, paying Jizya, the traditional Dhimmi tax that Muslims impose on non-Muslims under Islamic law, and “death by the sword.”

The Shiite government finally took back Bartella, but now its Christians have found themselves under the thumb of the Shabak, a Shiite cult, whose soldiers that are part of the Shiite Jihadist Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) backed by Iran. The Christians of the Nineveh Plains that had been displaced by Sunni Jihadists backed by Turkey and Qatar are now being displaced by a Shiite Jihadist cult backed by Iran.

While the Obama administration backed the Pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and its Shiite militias, it discouraged the Americans who had volunteered to come and help protect Assyrian Christians. Congressional efforts to protect Christians were likewise stymied by the Obama administration and by State Department personnel in the region who refused to act on Congressional mandates.

The situation in the Nineveh Plains highlights the larger dilemma for the Christians in the region. As a middle class minority, instability turns Christians into immediate Jihadist targets. When Shiite and Sunni Muslims fight, they both rob the Christians. And when the fighting dies down, the Muslims go back to some version of the status quo, while the Christians lose what little they were trying to protect.

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Canada Reveals a Third Citizen Detained by China Trudeau says latest case doesn’t fit pattern of others following arrest of Huawei CFO in Vancouver By Paul Vieira

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadian-government-is-aware-of-another-citizen-detained-in-china-11545227386

OTTAWA—Canada revealed a third Canadian national in just over a week has been detained in China since the arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, of Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that this new case appears to differ from the detention last week of two Canadians—a former diplomat, Michael Kovrig, and an entrepreneur, Michael Spavor, with ties to North Korea—who are both reportedly being held on national security grounds.

Security experts and China watchers say they believe the arrests are meant to punish Canada for its role in the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, and persuade Ottawa to release her.

“We are looking into the details of this most recent [case] that doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of the previous two,” Mr. Trudeau said at a press conference.

Later, he said the case of the third Canadian detained appeared to deal with what he described as routine issues, without elaborating. In contrast, Mr. Trudeau said, Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor “were accused of serious crimes.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The U.S. Military’s Crisis of Imagination America’s longstanding position of dominance has tended to make strategists and citizens complacent. 37 Comments By Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-militarys-crisis-of-imagination-11545264636

At the heart of national-security strategy is imagination. The strategist’s job is to dream up what enemies someday might do to harm us. But there’s a lot of history supporting the adage that generals forever prepare to fight the last war. After World War I, France fortified itself against a German invasion of the kind it had spent four years stalemating in the trenches. After Sept. 11, 2001, the new Transportation Security Administration focused on airport procedures to prevent a repeat of that attack.

The problem of dangers’ being unimaginable was front and center for the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission. Congress created the commission of national-security experts in December 2016. Its report, released last month, conjured up realistic near-term scenarios to show how the U.S., as a result of military deficiencies, might acquiesce to enemy aggression or accept defeat in battle.

Here’s one of the report’s scenarios: “Responding to false reports of atrocities against Russian populations in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Russia invades those countries under guise of a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. . . . Russia declares that strikes against Russian forces in those states will be treated as attacks on Russia itself—implying a potential nuclear response. Meanwhile, to keep America off balance . . . Russian submarines attack trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables. Russian hackers shut down power grids and compromise the security of U.S. banks. The Russian military uses advanced anti-satellite capabilities to damage or destroy U.S. military and commercial satellites. Major [American] cities are paralyzed; use of the internet and smart phones is disrupted. Financial markets plummet. . . . The banking system is thrown into chaos. Even as the U.S. military confronts the immense operational challenge of liberating the Baltic states, American society is suffering the devastating impact of modern conflict.”

Unless one is blessed with stupid enemies—and you can’t count on that—the proper assumption is that they are innovating. For World War II, the Nazis invented blitzkrieg, which worked stunningly at the outset and made France’s static fortifications ineffective. Before 1973, intelligence leaders in Jerusalem didn’t imagine that Egypt, without being able to destroy Israel’s army, would launch a surprise attack to seize the Suez Canal. It’s hard to dream up the unprecedented, and even harder to persuade large bureaucracies to heed unfamiliar dangers.

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Palestinian Children: Victims of Arab Apartheid by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13442/palestinian-children-apartheid

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “legal prohibitions persist on access for Palestinian refugees to 36 liberal or syndicated professions (including in medicine, farming, fishery, and public transportation)… In order to work, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are required to obtain an annual work permit. Following a change in the law in 2001, Palestinian refugees are reportedly prevented from legal acquiring, transferring or inheriting real property in Lebanon.”

The latest failure serves as a reminder of the apartheid and discrimination Palestinians face in Lebanon. According to various human rights organizations, Palestinians there suffer systematic discrimination in nearly every aspect of daily life. The UNHCR also points out that the Palestinians in Lebanon do not have access to Lebanese public health services and rely mostly on UNRWA for health services, as well as non-profit organizations and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. The Palestinians are also denied access to Lebanese public schools.

Where are all the international human rights organizations and pro-Palestinian groups around the world that feign concern for the suffering of the Palestinians? Will they remain silent over the neglect of Wahbeh because because he died in an Arab country and Israel had nothing to do with his death?

Mohammed Majdi Wahbeh, a three-year-old Palestinian boy from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, is the latest victim of apartheid and discriminatory laws targeting Palestinians in an Arab country.

Wahbeh was pronounced dead this week after Lebanese hospitals refused to receive him because his parents were unable to cover the cost of his medical treatment. According to reports in the Lebanese media, one hospital asked the boy’s family to pay $2,000 for his admittance. The boy had been in comma for three days before his death, but no hospital agreed to receive him because his family could not afford to cover the expenses of his treatment.

The death of the Palestinian boy at the entrance to the hospital has sparked a wave of anger among many Lebanese and Palestinians. Addressing the Lebanese Minister of Health, Ghassan Husbani, Lebanese journalist Dima Sadek wrote on Twitter:

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BOOKS Comments turned off

THE TYRANNY OF “EXPERTS”- DARYL McCANN

By on December 19th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/the-tyranny-of-experts/https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/the-tyranny-of-experts/

One of the many virtues of Salvatore Babones’ The New Authoritarianism is its dissection of ‘progressive’ liberalism, a political philosophy that assumes the task of ‘administering freedom’. When it comes to re-engineering society as the Left would prefer, there is no shortage of solons or arrogant presumption.

The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts
by Salvatore Babones
Polity, 2018, 128 pages, $21.95
_______________________________

Salvatore Babones’s The New Authoritarianism is an important book. The central proposition is that a class of experts, an illiberal liberal elite, has hijacked representative democracy in America (and Western nation-states in general). Our new masters, though tyrannical and radical, are not Marxist or Fabian in the customary sense of championing ordinary working people. They despise ordinary people or “everyday great American patriots” as Donald Trump refers to them. The new authoritarians, well-travelled, well-educated and well-heeled, are intent on refashioning the West according to their own “liberal worldview”. Brilliantly insightful and always fair-minded, The New Authoritarianism is a compelling insider’s account of how the liberal-minded became close-minded.

Babones must be something of a class traitor, given that he himself belongs to the expert class as Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. The New Authoritarianism, remarkably, is an expert casting a coolly authoritative eye over latter-day liberalism and finding it tarnished by a desire to dominate, adjudicate and legislate every aspect of our lives. The customary role of liberalism, according to Babones, was not to vanquish the other two strains of political thought, progressivism and conservatism. Liberalism, as one-time stalwart of the British Liberal Party Winston Churchill opined, should be an integral part of a constructive tension between the status quo/stability and change/progress. The true liberal thinker, sophisticated and broad-minded, appreciates that not all change creates progress and that reactionary intransigence does not guarantee stability.

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CORBYN CALLS MAY “A STUPID WOMAN”

By on December 19th, 2018

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/19/did-stupid-man-say-stupid-woman-least-break-brexit/
Did a stupid man say ‘stupid woman’? Well, at least it’s a break from Brexit

Michael Deacon

Please, in your prayers tonight, spare a thought for the disciples of Jeremy Corbyn. They’ve been having the most miserable time, frantically trying to agree on the most plausible excuse.

“No, of course he didn’t call Theresa May a ‘stupid woman’!”

“All right, he did say it – but it’s not sexist, because it’s true!”

“Anyway Tories can’t complain about sexism, because Tories are sexist!”

“And what about austerity! And arms sales! And Israel! And BBC bias! And—”

The funny thing is, I’m not sure anyone actually saw it at the time – in the Commons, at any rate. There was no immediate outcry from MPs. Instead, they saw it minutes later, while idly browsing their phones. There it was, all over Twitter: a video clip of Jeremy Corbyn appearing to mouth “Stupid woman” at the Prime Minister.

Yes, really: Jeremy Corbyn, that paragon of progressive virtue, captured on camera spitting a sexist insult. From up in the gallery, you could see it spread across the chamber: MPs on both sides goggling at their screens, and then showing their neighbours. On the Labour side, little huddles formed and swapped anxious whispers. Perhaps they were brainstorming an explanation for their leader to use. “Actually Mr Speaker, what I said was ‘Stupendous woman.’ Despite our differences politically, I can’t help but admire the Prime Minister for the way that, in deeply trying circumstances, she always—”

The first MP to mention it out loud was Paul Scully (Con, Sutton & Cheam). Did Mrs May, he asked, think it was acceptable for an MP to use the phrase “stupid woman”?

Mrs May had been busy answering questions, so she couldn’t have seen the video, but a colleague must have passed her a note about it, because she seemed to know what Mr Scully was alluding to. All MPs, she said darkly, with just the briefest glance in the direction of Mr Corbyn, “should use appropriate language when referring to female members”.

To which Mr Corbyn, believe it or not, nodded earnestly, and mouthed: “Quite right.”

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