https://freebeacon.com/blog/operation-northern-shield-notch-israels-belt/
Operation Northern Shield is a victory for Israel. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Dec. 4, Israel’s military thwarted a Hezbollah plan to attack the country through tunnels. Israel revealed the first tunnel that day. It has since found two others. The Israel Defense Forces estimate there are 10 such tunnels.
It’s easy to become confused as to whether the operation should in fact be considered a success when confronted with Israel’s turbulent punditry, where everything is thrown into doubt, including whether even to call it an “operation.”
As one Israeli columnist noted (who argued it was indeed an operation), when Israelis hear that word they expect columns of troops marching into enemy territory, not a couple of soldiers standing around a rock drill with their hands in their pockets. The scene resembles peaceful preliminary work on a new highway.
Nevertheless, it’s difficult to overstate the catastrophe that Israel avoided. Hezbollah planned to use these tunnels—large enough to drive motorcycles and tractors through—to mount a small invasion, sending elite forces into Israel under cover of artillery fire to cut off Metullah and other Israeli towns in the upper Galilee.
The thought of hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists wreaking murder and mayhem is terrifying. It would have been a painful defeat for Israel. Yes, the IDF would have regained control, but Israeli society would have spun into depression while Muslim morale skyrocketed. Propaganda videos of Hezbollah killers planting victory flags over Metullah would have streamed throughout the Islamic world.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1055202/south-africa-crisis-power-cuts-cape-to
SOUTH African residents are bracing for rolling power cuts that could last up to two years following extreme water shortages in Cape Town.The South African city has been suffering from extreme water shortages. Cape Town locals have been forced to reuse buckets of water to wash, limit loo flushes or risk being fined if they go over an imposed water limit. State-owned Eskom who generates, supports and distributes electricity to more than five million households in South Africa announced the measures in a bid to “protect” power supply.
The power cuts, also known as load-shedding, was a measure taken by Eskom to “protect the electricity power system from a total blackout”.
Eskom is reportedly struggling with debts of more than $30 billion and according to chairman Jabu Mabuza the power company is “locked into a permanent loss-making position.”
There has also been a dip in the supply of coal needed for the main power stations as earnings flatline and late payment of bills by large local authorities, all major customers for Eskom, have sparked havoc for the state-owned company.
https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/in-zimbabwes-crisis-we-cannot-talk-of-christmas-anymore-20181210
Dressed as Father Christmas, a man dozes off while sitting in a supermarket in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. No one seems to care.
The holiday mood is not catching on in a country where a currency crisis has forced people to risk jail time to buy basics such as medicine and food. Many Zimbabweans navigate from one currency to another, often tapping the black market, while the government issues salaries in forms of payment it later refuses to accept.
The frustration has sparked a new round of anti-government sentiment in a country that once saw July’s presidential election, the first without longtime leader Robert Mugabe, as a chance to start over. New President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared the country “open for business.” But citizens are now asking: How?
This is Zimbabwe’s most severe economic meltdown since a decade ago, when the local currency was abandoned due to hyperinflation that reached more than 1 billion percent. Since then, daily transactions have been dominated by the US dollar.
But a dollar shortage has pushed most people to use a government-issued surrogate currency called bond notes, as well as mobile money, which are funds electronically deposited into bank accounts. Both are devaluing quickly against the dollar on the black market.
‘The black market is my only option’
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/university-policy-allows-expulsion-for-mean-expressions/
Nobody likes a mean person, and it’s better to be nice. But there is nothing nice about restricting students’ speech.
The University of Montana Western has a policy that allows for punishing students for “mean” words or “facial expressions” — and that punishment could technically be as severe as expulsion.
“While discussions may become heated and passionate, they should never become mean, nasty or vindictive in spoken or printed or emailed words, facial expressions, or gestures,” states the Student Code of Conduct.
Another area of the code states that “committing any act prohibited by this Code of Conduct may result in expulsion or suspension from the University unless specific and mitigating factors are present.”
“Factors to be considered in mitigation may include the present attitude and past disciplinary record of the offender, as well as the nature of the offense and the severity of any damage, injury, or harm resulting from it,” the code continues.
Unsurprisingly, the pro-free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has expressed some concerns over this policy — especially considering the fact that the University of Montana Western is a public (read: taxpayer-funded) university.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-unbelievable-james-comey-1544478713?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
Can the story former FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Friday possibly be true? In a joint executive session of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, Mr. Comey presented himself as unaware and incurious regarding one of the most consequential investigations the FBI has ever conducted. After describing how little he knew about the federal government’s use of its surveillance powers against associates of the presidential campaign of the party out of power in 2016, Mr. Comey then assured lawmakers that the launching of the investigation was proper and free of political bias.
On Saturday a transcript of the Comey testimony was released by the congressional committees. President Donald Trumptweeted without subtlety on Sunday:
On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) – didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!
This is perhaps an overstatement. But some skepticism is clearly in order on the part of the President and every other American who wants free and fair elections. Lawmakers were interested in finding out who exactly initiated the investigation and when. Here’s a portion of the transcript in which the Obama administration FBI boss was questioned by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.):
Mr. Gowdy. Do you recall who drafted the FBI’s initiation document for that late July 2016 Russia investigation?
Mr. Comey. I do not.
Mr. Gowdy. Would you disagree that it was Peter Strzok?
Mr. Comey. I don’t know one way or the other.
Mr. Gowdy. Do you know who approved that draft of an initial plan for the Russia investigation in late July 2016?
Mr. Comey. I don’t.
This was not just any investigation. On the other hand the FBI is a big place and perhaps the director would not recall which of the staff had worked on a particular document. Under further questioning from Mr. Gowdy, Mr. Comey added that he didn’t remember ever even seeing the document. Again, one might hope that consequential cases going to the heart of our democratic process would be closely supervised by the most senior officials, but any case generates some volume of documents and an FBI director may be able to learn enough from staff briefings to make sensible decisions. The next part of the transcript is harder to swallow: CONTINUE AT SITE
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-of-good-intentions-1544486212?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
Almost everywhere you turn these days, someone is claiming that capitalism is facing an existential crisis.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old who will soon be a congresswoman from New York, declares that our “no-holds-barred Wild West hypercapitalism” is on the way out. French economist Thomas Piketty, by contrast, frets about a future where we are all governed by a ruling class drawn from billionaires, what he calls “patrimonial capitalism.” Meanwhile the archbishop of Canterbury hails the gig economy as “the reincarnation of an ancient evil.”
Let us stipulate it’s foolish to pretend the market is without its costs. A 57-year-old General Motors worker in Ohio who will be laid off as his company expands production in Mexico may understandably balk at the argument that, in the larger scheme of things, it’s all for the best.
Yet the recent protests across France ought to remind us that market decisions aren’t the only ones that can make life difficult for those trying to get by on their paychecks. For in these protests are we not seeing French citizens who have lost faith in the ability of their government to fulfill its most basic tasks, along with a growing resentment of the high price inflicted on ordinary French men and women by the good intentions of their elites?
The “Yellow Vest” protests across France were triggered by an increase in the gasoline tax. But even before this planned increase, the French were already the most taxed people in the European Union, one reason they pay more than double the American average at the pump. A gallon of gas in France costs drivers roughly $6, nearly two-thirds of which is tax.
Americans spend about $2,000 a year each on gas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If the U.S. price were at French levels, that would rise to at least $4,000 a year—a considerable hit for most families. To make matters worse, the French taxes have increasingly diminishing returns because France accounts for such a small fraction of global emissions.
Nor are the French the only ones with doubts about the judgment of their elites. Whatever the merits of Brexit, at its core it reflects the British people’s distrust of the proposition that a supranational government in Brussels knows best. Given how their own government has botched things, it’s hard to conceive of any ending for Brexit that doesn’t promise even less British confidence in their leaders.
The U.S. has its own versions. Until recently Exhibit A was the war America lost—the “war on poverty.” More than 50 years and trillions of dollars after Lyndon B. Johnson launched it with the best of intentions, all we have to show for it is the devastation of the black family and the dysfunctions of our inner cities.
Today, however, the crisis of good intentions is manifested most dramatically in the green movement, particularly in California. In a recent article for the Orange County Register, Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky write that “California is creating a feudalized society characterized by the ultra-rich, a diminishing middle class and a large, rising segment of the population that is in or near poverty.”CONTINUE AT SITE
https://quadrant.org.au/seldom-seen-lately/
Tony Thomas, fresh from eye surgery, writes:
I was waiting around at Sunbury Day Hospital, north of Melbourne, last week for an eye-cataract job. I reached for a Reader’s Digest half-buried among the Hello and Take 5 pile of magazines. The Digest’s cover lines included “Politicians’ Outrageous Perks: This privileged class is living the high life – on our money.” Good job, Reader’s Digest.
But hang on, look at the item immediately below on the Contents page: What’s wrong with global warming? The last time Earth had a warm-up, good things happened.
I flicked to page 45. It’s a piece by Dennis Avery, a veteran US food scientist. There’s an illustration of a yellow blossom in a sort of rain-forest, with the caption, “Robust forests – A warmer world could create plant heaven.”
Dr Avery discusses how the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) helped agriculture and civilisation to thrive, and ridicules the claims about warming costing economies trillions of dollars this century. Here’s how he concludes his three-page essay:
“History and the science of climatology indicate that we have nothing to fear but fearmongers themselves. Any global warming in the 21st Century should be modest, bringing back one of the most pleasant and productive environments humans – and wildlife — have ever enjoyed.”
Who is this author Avery? Aged 82, he’s been a food policy analyst with the US Department of Agriculture and Department of State. He’s now director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, where he edits Global Food Quarterly.
I flopped back in bemusement. I had no idea Reader’s Digest is spearheading the sceptic cause. I thought it had long been captured, like Time and The Economist, by the junk scientists and their media shills. Holy (greenhouse-gas emitting) cow! the Digest still has a global circulation of 10 million with maybe 50 million readers. It remains the world’s largest paid-circulation magazine.
I suspected the warming-is-good piece was the sceptic Digest’s sly attempt to undermine the UN’s COP 24 at Katowice. There was no counterpiece that “warming is bad” or “Avery is in the pay of fossil fuel interests”. Avery’s piece is presented as an orthodox view, needing no rebuttal from fringe groups like the IPCC or our own Climate Council.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/melbournes-petite-shy-honours-student-terrorist/
Why did Australian authorities allow Momena Shoma into the country after Turkey, and perhaps Tunisia and the United States as well, rejected her visa application? They did, alas, and the international student’s host almost paid with his life when ‘sudden jihadi syndrome’ saw her plunge a knife into his throat.
A petite, pretty twenty-four-year-old Bangladeshi named Momena Shoma (left) arrived in Melbourne on February 1, 2018, to study linguistics on an excellence scholarship at La Trobe University. Describing herself as “an introvert and very shy in nature”, she spoke of an ambition to become a university instructor. Coming from an affluent and secular Dhaka family which considered her “brilliant”, Momena had been an A student at some of the capital’s elite English-language educational institutions: Loreto School, Mastermind School and North South University (NSU). She graduated from NSU with an honours degree in English language and literature in 2016, then enrolled for a master’s degree at NSU before switching to La Trobe.
Like many newly-arrived foreign students, Momena turned to the Australian Homestay Network (AHN), “Australia’s largest and leading homestay provider”, to find a family with which to board. She quickly settled in a home in Bundoora, near the university.
What could be more innocent? Anyone worrying about her being dangerous because of her Muslim faith would have been called out for racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, bigotry and (that most dreadful of accusations) “Islamophobia”. That she wore a burka (the black full-body Islamic covering) only made such suspicions the more heinous.
But, as Momena took a twenty-five-centimetre kitchen knife to her Bundoora room and repeatedly stabbed her bed, she signalled the danger to come. In the words of a magistrate, “She did the practice run on the mattress with the first family that hosted her and they felt intimidated enough to go to [AHN], saying, ‘We’re scared, we don’t want her to continue living with us’.” Out she went, facing homelessness.
Responding to her urgent need for accommodation, the Singaravelu family—husband and nightshift nurse Roger (fifty-six), wife Maha (forty-five) and daughter Shayla (five)—welcomed Momena into their four-bedroom house in the suburb of Mill Park on February 7 for a few days until she found more permanent lodgings. Maha explained her motive in accepting Momena: “I felt for her, being in a foreign country. I put myself in her shoes and her parents’ shoes.”
https://www.city-journal.org/mentally-ill-ada
As the death of George H. W. Bush brought admiring attention to the Americans with Disability Act, which he had signed into law, the New York Times detailed how mental health advocates have weaponized the ADA to force hospitals and adult homes to discharge mentally ill patients still in need of significant care. The result of these discharges has been increased degradation, death, homelessness, and incarceration among the mentally ill whom the advocates purport to represent.
The Times told the story of Abraham Clemente, a schizophrenia sufferer formerly housed in an adult home—a residence where mentally ill can get intensive care, in environments less restrictive than psychiatric hospitals—who was discharged in 2017 as a result of an ADA consent decree that New York State signed under pressure from civil-liberties advocates. The agreement, as the Times described it, “is meant to be a national model for the rights of the mentally ill to live independently.” Frontline’s cameras were rolling this year, when police found the 69-year-old Clemente living in his apartment with “maggot-infested scrambled eggs . . . strewn across the floor”; a cantaloupe “so spoiled, it seemed to be melting,” and feces “ground into the carpet.”
After being hospitalized, Clemente was readmitted to an adult home, and says he doesn’t want to leave. The Times detailed another mentally ill victim, a 34-year-old former adult-home resident also moved to independent living after the ADA consent decree. She “stopped taking her antipsychotic drug and began trying to solicit sex from passing drivers and swap alcohol for drugs with neighborhood children. . . . Eventually, facing eviction, she became homeless.”
Civil liberties and mental health advocates believe that institutional living is axiomatically bad, and independent living is definitively good, regardless of the severity of the mental illness and the limitations it imposes on the person suffering from it. In its 1999 Olmstead v. L. C. decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the ADA requires states to place people with mental disabilities in the “least restrictive settings . . . appropriate to the individual . . . taking into account the resources available.” (Emphasis in original.)
http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/10/6-key-takeaways-from-the-comey-deposition-transcript/
Two House committees quizzed former FBI director James Comey on Friday concerning his knowledge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a homebrew server when she was secretary of state, and the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.
The judiciary and oversight committees released a transcript of the hours-long deposition on Saturday. Here are six important takeaways.
1. We didn’t learn much — but that was significant.
Comey repeatedly responded to questions about the Trump campaign investigation by pleading ignorance, establishing he did not know of many of the facts underlying both the launch of Crossfire Hurricane and the continuing investigation. That’s concerning.
For instance, in response to Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy’s characterization of Crossfire Hurricane as a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, Comey claimed that the FBI was not investigating Trump or the Trump campaign, but had instead “opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference effort. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.” Yet Comey had never seen the “FBI’s initiation document,” which Gowdy indicated referenced the “Trump campaign.”
Further questioning revealed that Comey had no knowledge concerning the agent responsible for drafting the FBI’s late-July 2016 initiation document for Crossfire Hurricane, did not know who approved the draft of the “initial plan for the Russian investigation,” and never read or saw the initiation document. In fact, Comey said he didn’t even know how the FBI launches counterintelligence investigations, who has the authority to launch a counterintelligence investigation into a major political campaign, or whether such an investigation would need to be approved by the FBI Director. Comey did note that “there’s documentation in criminal investigations and in counterintelligence investigations to explain the predication for the opening of a file, that is, the basis for the opening of a file.”
These exchanges raise three concerning points: First, that FBI agents — including the biased, “We’ll stop Trump from becoming president” duo of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — had the ability, without Comey’s involvement, to launch an investigation into the Trump campaign. Second, Comey’s testimony shows that he may not have known the official basis for, and scope of, the probe because he never saw the “initiation document.”
And third, the same agents who launched the investigation craft the documentation to explain “the basis for the opening of a file.” So, if the agents wanted to pin the launch of Crossfire Hurricane on George Papadopoulos’ supposed foreknowledge of the WikiLeak hack into DNC emails, they would merely need to list that as the predicate for opening the investigation.
