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Ruth King

SUSPICIOUS IRANIAN CARGO PLANE LEFT DAMASCUS MINUTES BEFORE AIRSTRIKE SETH FRANTZMAN

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Suspicious-Iranian-cargo-plane-left-Damascus-minutes-before-airstrike-575441
According to the site Flightradar24.com, the Boeing 747-281F left Damascus and flew due east towards Tehran, climbing to 30,000 feet and then crossing into Iraq after ten in the evening.

Two suspicious Iranian planes left Damascus on Tuesday night just prior to reports of airstrikes.

Details from flight monitoring sites show that a Fars Air Qeshm 747 cargo plane left Damascus International Airport at 9:28 in the evening, just half an hour before reports emerged of air strikes in Syria on Tuesday night.
According to the site Flightradar24.com, the Boeing 747-281F left Damascus and flew due east towards Tehran, climbing to 30,000 feet and then crossing into Iraq after ten in the evening.
By midnight it had entered Iranian airspace and began a beeline for Tehran. A second Tehran bound flight, Maham Air took off at 10:04 in the evening and flew precisely the same route. The Far Air Qeshm flight has been in the news in the past in relation to alleged smuggling of arms to Syria and also to Damascus. Al-Arabiya claimed that it transferred weapons to Hezbollah in early December. In October, FoxNews carried a similar report.

Similarly Mahan Air has been targeted by the US Treasury Department for links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, making its departure right after the Fars Air Qeshm suspicions. Although the Fars Air Qeshm flight appears to have left before the airstrikes began, the Mahan Air flight seems to have left around the same time.

In the past reports have indicated that airstrikes targeted Damascus after suspicious flights landed and allegedly disembarked cargo for arms smuggling to Hezbollah factions.

Suspected Israeli Airstrike Rocks Damascus Airport, Hits Hezbollah Leaders

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/35558/Default.aspx

A series of explosions rocked Damascus on Tuesday night as Israel allegedly targeted Hezbollah and Iranian targets.

A US Defense Department official told American media that top Israeli military brass had told him that a number of senior Hezbollah leaders were targeted as they boarded a plane for Iran.

Also reportedly targeted were strategic Iranian supplies to Hezbollah, including advanced GPS components for use in the many, many missiles that the Lebanese terror group has aimed at Israel.

Syrian media reported that its air defenses had opened fire on enemy targets launching a strike from Lebanese airspace. The Syrians said they had downed a number of targets, but there were no reports of any Israeli planes being hit.

One Syrian air defense missile entered Israeli airspace, triggering Israel’s air defenses. The IDF reported that the threat had been neutralized, but did not provide any specifics. It was also unclear if the Syrian missile merely went astray, or was purposely fired toward Israel as a warning.

If Israel was indeed behind the airstrike, it was a clear message to Syria, Iran and Russia that the Jewish state would continue to take decisive action against threats to its northern border despite the recent installation of advanced Russian anti-aircraft systems in the war-torn country.

How Impeachment Works By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/12/31/how-impeachment-works/
Lessons from the failed Republican effort to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency

Impeachment chatter is suddenly in vogue. It was strictly déclassé during the Obama years. To hear congressional Republicans tell it, the Clinton fiasco of the late Nineties proved both that the Constitution’s procedure for removing corrupt presidents is futile and that invoking it guarantees political carnage for the accusers.

Today’s Democrats, as the saying goes, never got the memo. Or perhaps they have known all along that their counterparts learned precisely the wrong lessons from President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Now that the impeachment of Presi­dent Donald J. Trump is a realistic contingency, though, getting those lessons right is vital.

The problem with Clinton’s impeachment was not the impeachment process itself. It is difficult by design, as it must be for stability’s sake. But it is hardly obsolete. It did, after all, drive a president from office — Richard M. Nixon, who resigned on the cusp of impeachment — just 25 years before articles of impeachment were filed against Clinton.

No, the problems were twofold. First was the nature of the impeachable offenses. It is not the case, as is commonly assumed, that they were salacious, but that they were remote from the core duties of the presidency. Second was the mulish insistence on pursuing impeachment when the public was clearly opposed to it. An impeachment effort cannot succeed without the tireless building of a political case in favor of removal, a case that achieves a critical mass of public support before impeachment is sought.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course. I was still a Justice Department prosecutor during most of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, not a journalist doing public commentary. But I favored his impeachment, just as most Republicans and conservatives did. It is easy to see now that the episode has had an enduring, poisonous effect on our politics. Still, 20 years later, with a Republican president in office, it seems a wee bit self-serving to pronounce, finally, that we were wrong.

In truth, I have not waited 20 years. Clinton’s impeachment was a focus of my 2014 book Faithless Execution. At the time, the backstretch of the Obama presidency, the political class and most of the public were not of a mind to ponder the Constitution’s ultimate remedy for presidential misconduct and overreach.

GLAZOV GANG: VALERIE PRICE SPEECH ON THE UN GLOBAL COMPACT VIDEO

This new Glazov Gang episode features Valerie Price‘s speech on The Dangers of the UN Global Compact — and she stresses: Love Canada! Act for Canada!https://jamieglazov.com/2018/12/25/glazov-gang-valerie-price-speech-on-the-un-global-compact/

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Jamie’s recent appearance on America’s Voice with Kyle Olson & Tudor Dixon to discuss his new book, Jihadist Psychopath.

The book is now Amazon’s #1 New Release in the “Medical MentalIllness” and “Islam” categories and President Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has praised the book.

2,000 Against Millions By Gunnar Heinsohn ****

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/25/2000-a

Gunnar Heinsohn is an emeritus professor at the University of Bremen. Since 2010, he has taught war demography at the NATO Defense College (NDC) in Rome.

Proclaim victory and pull out!

On December 19, Donald Trump tweeted his own version of this classic military maxim as the president announced the withdrawal of America’s 2,000 soldiers from the war against the ISIS caliphate in Syria.

Allies reacted with shock. Enemies mocked and gloated. Neither reaction should come as a surprise.

The president’s defenders emphasize that America has nothing to show for the $7 trillion it has spent on this war. The United States, they say, has much greater concerns at home and in East Asia. Few analysts, regardless of how they feel about America’s withdrawal from Syria, understand why such conflicts drag on and on, despite enormous losses. Historians and journalists rarely examine the demographic data that explain why deadly wars can last for decades or centuries.

Even the killing ground of Europe from 1500 to 1945 escapes their attention. And when it comes to Syria, they are utterly clueless about the link between rapid demographic growth and the long and bloody wars that have devastated this region. Explosive population growth results in explosions on the battlefield.

Between 1900 and 2015, Islam’s global population increased by a factor of nine, from 200 million to 1.8 billion people. Christianity, though still the largest religion worldwide, only quadrupled (from 560 million to 2.3 billion). Since 1950, Islam has added nearly 1.4 billion people to its fold, despite the fact that Iran, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey—which together have 180 million inhabitants—are now in a post-growth phase (defined as fewer than two children per woman). This lower birth rate also applies to the approximately 20 million citizens in the rich sheikdoms between Bahrain and Kuwait.

But nine Muslim countries belong to the 68 nations of the world that have what I call a “war index” that is higher than 3—that is, they have 3,000 or more youths between the ages of 15 and 19 for every 1,000 men aged 55 to 59 who are close to retirement. For four Islamic countries outside the Middle East—Afghanistan (5.99; 36 million), Sudan (4.65; 42 million), Mauritania (4.17; 5 million) and Pakistan (3.39; 200 million)—the war index is even higher.

MY SAY: ONE MORE TIME ON SYRIA WITHDRAWAL

I was advised by a good friend with whom I almost always agree, that I should include more columns criticizing the withdrawal of our troops from Syria. I did below. However, they only hardened my support for troop withdrawal.

First: Jewish “leaders” are opposed? As I recall they were not uniformly opposed to Obama’s disastrous and scurrilous appeasement of the mullahs in the infamous Iran deal.

Second: Israel is “nervous” that the removal of 2000 American soldiers will embolden Iran, Turkey and Syrian jihadists. Now, I am hawkish on Israel- very hawkish on a hawkish Israel with defense forces that do not rely-never- on any foreign guarantees for the security of the nation. Am I to believe that the presence of 2000 United States troops is necessary for Israel’s defense?

Sorry I remain unconvinced. And as for General Mattis- he was opposed to moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem; opposed to quashing the Iran deal; was opposed to the 2017 bombing of Syria in retaliation for Syrian chemical weapons attacks; opposed to leaving the G20 global climate fraud. Since it is a holiday I will say one nice thing about him. General Herbert Raymond McMaster was worse. rskrsk

Deconstructing and Decomposing: The Politically Correct Songbook Geraldine Massey

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/deconstructing-and-de-composing-the-politically-correct-songbook/

In a world where Baby, It’s Cold Outside is banned from the PC airwaves, the decidely un-woke Cole Porter’s lyrics need and get a radical update:
You’re the top,
You’re tidal power
You’re the top,
A trans-sex bridal shower …

The recent furore surrounding the lyrics of Baby, It’s Cold Outside caused me to revisit some classics from the Great American Songbook and I realised just how offensive and traumatising they might be to sensitive and coddled millennials … and that was before I even got to the lyrics.

Concern over Irving Berlin’s White Christmas needs no explaining. So too, George and Ira Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me and the Rodgers and Hammerstein favourite You’ll Never Walk Alone have ‘stalker!’ written all over them. Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick Out of You surely evokes domestic violence while Rodgers and Hart contributed disturbing titles like The Lady Is a Tramp (slut shaming) and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (gun violence). Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Ol’ Man River smacks of cultural appropriation , while Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg were clearly insulting the intelligence-challenged with If I Only Had a Brain. Perhaps most distressing of all is the gender-enforcing I Enjoy Being a Girl – Rodgers and Hammerstein again!

But, as in the case of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, it’s the lyrics that will have some listeners retreating to their nearest safe space. Who knew that what has long been revered as the canon of influential popular American songs of the first half of the 20th century is nothing more than sexist, racist, patriarchal propaganda? Consider these shocking sexist examples:

The Rubber Whip: Extremist Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13462/extremist-persecution-christians-october

Following the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir vowed to adopt a stricter version of sharia (Islamic law) and recognize only Islamic culture and the Arabic language. Church leaders said Sudanese authorities have demolished or confiscated churches and limited Christian literature on the pretext that most Christians have left the country following South Sudan’s secession.” — Morning Star News, October 17, 2018.

The head teacher of the Government Boys Primary School… assaulted Sharjeel Masih, a 12-year-old Christian student, after he touched a water tap in her presence. “I was just trying to turn off a running tap when the teacher grabbed me… and asked why I had touched the tap and made it filthy…” The boy was then suspended from school. — Pakistan.

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Christians in Iraq have been abducted, enslaved, raped and slaughtered, sometimes by crucifixion. “Another wave of persecution will be the end of Christianity [in Iraq] after 2,000 years,” according to Chaldean Archbishop Habib Nafali of Basra.

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: As many as 55 Christians were murdered and a church was torched during an attack by Muslims on a crowded market in Kaduna state on October 18. A local source explained:

“A Muslim raised a false alarm about a thief in the market, which caused stampede, and then other Muslims started chanting ‘Allahu Akbar [the jihadist slogan, God is Greater],’ attacking Christians, burning houses and shops belonging to Christians in the town.”

“When people heard ‘Thief! Thief!’ they were confused and started running,” the reverend James Moore elaborated. “Unknown to the people, it was a strategy by the Muslim youth to attack the people. They went into killings, looting and burning.” After visiting the site, Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai reported that so far “55 corpses have been recovered; some burned beyond recognition.” He added that such Islamist attacks “cannot continue…. This country belongs to all of us; this state belongs to all of us. No one is going to chase anyone away. So, you must learn to live with everyone in peace and justice.”

Why the West Must Safeguard Free Speech by Josef Zbořil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13464/free-speech-west

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s “Media Strategy in Countering Islamophobia and its Implementation Mechanisms” describes one part of its strategy as: “To call media professionals to develop, articulate and implement voluntary codes of conduct to counter Islamophobia. The OIC and its Member States should be vocal in calling media professionals to use the power they have with responsibly through accurate reporting.” What, however, if those two requirements — accurate reporting and countering Islamophobia — conflict with each other?

“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.” — Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, author of Charter 08.

“Man… does not have to accept a lie.” — Václav Havel, in his 1978 essay, “The Power of the Powerless”.

“… if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.” — Miloš Forman, Czech-American film director.

The freedom to express oneself without fear and the tolerance for opposing viewpoints are what binds otherwise diverse, democratic societies. In the United States, this freedom is protected by the Constitution, with only very specific limits, the key one of which was imposed in 1969, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio. According to that ruling, inflammatory speech cannot be penalized unless it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

Europe Faith World How terror changed Europe’s Christmas markets Europe’s public buildings and major infrastructure are positively surrounded by bollards and steel barriers Douglas Murray

https://spectator.us/terror-changed-europes-christmas-markets/

The traditional Christmas market is one of the great sights in any European capital at this time of year. But as with all traditions it evolves over time. A few evenings ago, I went to visit the Duomo in Milan and walked through the beautiful Christmas market in the square surrounding it. It was all there: the Christmas lights, the chalet-like huts selling warm food and drink, the fake snow. And, of course, the crash barriers. For since December 2016, when Anis Amri hijacked a truck in Berlin, shot the driver and then plowed the vehicle into the local Christmas market (killing 11 more people) crash barriers have become a necessary feature of any European Christmas market.

I was in Milan two days after Cherif Chekatt shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and started shooting at people enjoying the Christmas market in the city of Strasbourg. And so Milan’s Christmas market, like every other in similar cities, was on high alert. Which furthers yet another new tradition at Europe’s Christmas markets, which is the presence of army vehicles and police and military standing around with heavy duty weapons at the ready.

It all brought to mind a point that Mark Steyn has made a number of times in recent years, which is the phenomenon one might call the ‘bollard-ization’ of public life. Earlier this year in Norway I noticed that even Oslo has a strange set of massive steel devices on both sides of the street on the popular thoroughfare of cafes, restaurants and hotels that leads up to the country’s Parliament. They began to sprout one day and after a dose of negative public comment the local authorities decided to plant flowers on the devices, making them probably the world’s most ungainly flower-pots. What could have made these huge flower-carrying vessels so necessary? Who is to say.