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Declassified Info: DOJ, FBI Knew Trump Surveillance Was Based On Russian Disinformation By Margot Cleveland

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/13/new-info-doj-fbi-knew-trump-surveillance-was-based-on-russian-disinformation/

These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

On Friday, the Department of Justice released newly declassified information from an inspector general report on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse, revealing for the first time that the FBI had received information indicating the Christopher Steele dossier contained Russian disinformation. The newly unredacted portions of the IG’s report also confirmed there was no “network of sources” backing up Steele’s reporting.

While both revelations provide further fodder for attacking the Carter Page surveillance proceedings, the significance is much greater: These facts establish the FBI used Russia’s meddling with the 2016 election as a pretext to investigate Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office was complicit in this ploy.

More than two months ago, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter to William Barr requesting the attorney general declassify information and unredact information contained in four footnotes in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 478-page report on FISA abuse. In their letter, the senators noted that they “[were] deeply concerned about certain information that remains classified.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Very Remarkable President Donald Trump Michael Busler

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbusler/2020/04/13/the-very-remarkable-president-donald-trump-n2566739

In spite of the nasty negative press, the Democrats and the RINOs, President Trump’s achievements are truly remarkable.

Years from now, history will note a major event that occurred in 2016, an event that significantly altered the course of the country and the world. At the time, the U.S. was in the last year of a 10-year economic slump. It was, in fact, the only 10-year period in history where the economy did not achieve 3 percent annual growth in any year.

From 2007 to 2016 economic growth averaged about 2 percent. That subpar growth rate led to fewer opportunities for Americans. That led to poor employment prospects and stagnant wages. Many Americans had no opportunity. That led to resentment. 

Wary citizens were beginning to reject capitalism in favor of socialism. The country was headed in an un-American direction. 

On the world stage, a number of threats existed. There were numerous and long-term problems in the Middle East.  Russia and China were going on offense, and North Korea was getting serious about displaying their strength. As for America’s foreign policy, it was as if someone gave the “stand down” order to every conflict, which resulted in the U.S. taking very soft, and ultimately weak, positions.

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New York Working on Reopening Plan With 5 Other States By Zachary Stieber

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-working-on-reopening-plan-with-5-other-states_3309934.html?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

New York officials are working on a reopening plan with five other states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

The governors of those four states have already made lockdown announcements, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hoping to draw them into a plan for reopening the economy as the hardest hit state in the nation starts to see declining hospitalizations and new cases.

Additionally, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Delaware Gov. John Carney will be on a call with Cuomo later April 13, along with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

“We’ll be having an announcement this afternoon about reopening,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany.

The plan will start with easing the isolation imposed through harsh measures that have largely restricted people across all six states at home unless they’re designated an essential worker. The next phase will be increasing economic activity, in part by adding new groups to the list of essential workers.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Are American Universities Becoming Multinational Institutions? David Randall

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/are-american-universities-becoming-multinational-institutions/

American universities should always serve American interests—not serve as a machine to employ compradors and promote acquiescent collaborators to foreign strip-mining of America.

Iconoclast historian Henry Kamen argued in Empire that there wasn’t really a Spanish empire. Spain was a convenient vessel for Italian bankers, Portuguese shipwrights, and German soldiers. Christopher Columbus was Genoese; Hernán Cortés served the interests of his Tlaxcalan allies as he conquered Aztec Mexico.

Higher education administrators are turning “American higher education” into a vessel for foreign study and foreign economic reward.

New York University now has a campus in Abu Dhabi and Texas A&M University a campus in Qatar. Saint Louis University has a campus in Madrid and SUNY a campus in South Korea. Lakeland College has a campus in Tokyo and Duke University a campus in Kunshan, in partnership with Wuhan University.

American universities are becoming multinationals. New York University wants to become a global franchise: it possesses two degree-granting institutions in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and 10 more academic centers abroad, from Berlin to Buenos Aires, all of which are the seeds of future degree-granting campuses.

American graduate schools within the nation’s borders, especially in engineering and the sciences, are also becoming multinational enterprises. A majority of graduate students in a great many fields of study come from abroad; in disciplines such as petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science, the proportion is closer to 80 percent.

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Herd Immunity vs. Herd Mentality Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/herd-immunity-vs-herd-mentality/

Although we do not yet know every detail of the end of our infatuation with the coronavirus, it’s clear that the historian of this episode will include a chapter called “Mistakes Were Made.”

If I might adapt Keats, “much have I travell’d in the realms online, / And many goofy states and kingdoms seen.” And if my experience wasn’t quite like that of the “watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken” (or even “like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes / He star’d at the Pacific”), still there have been discoveries that produce a little frisson of recognition.

The most recent was the distinction I saw somewhere between herd immunity, on the one hand, and herd mentality, on the other.

We’ve been hearing a lot about “herd immunity” lately. Along with the phrases “social distancing,” “flattening the curve,” and “sheltering in place,” “herd immunity” is one of the chief flecks of jargon adopted by newly minted amateur epidemiologists in this age of (new master word) coronavirus. (And it seems we’re all epidemiologists now, in more or less the same sense that the future King Edward VII was correct when he observed, in 1895, that “we’re all socialists now.”)

“Herd immunity” is a settled concept in epidemiology. It occurs when “a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or vaccination, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune.”

“Herd mentality,” on the contrary, provides immunity from independent thought. It protects a population from thinking clearly by spreading a spirit of conformity. It increases a people’s docility, thus rendering them more susceptible to the blandishments of usurping authority.

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The Thin Façade of Authority Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/12/the-thin-facade-of-authority/

As we continue to debate about numerators and denominators in determining the real impact of this virus, one common denominator remains certain about the elites advising, crafting, and developing our response: they aren’t touched by the impact of their decisions.

The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom.

One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, dictates the decisions of most politicians, the media, and public officials—who for the most part share the values and confidence of the credentialed elite.

The other wisdom is not, as commonly caricatured, know-nothingism. Indeed, Americans have always believed in self-improvement and the advantages of higher education, a trust that explained broad public 19th-century support for mandatory elementary and secondary schooling and, during the postwar era, the G.I. Bill.

But the other wisdom also puts a much higher premium on pragmatism and experience, values instilled by fighting nature daily and mixing it up with those who must master the physical world.

The result is the sort of humility that arises when daily drivers test their skills and cunning in a semi-truck barreling along the freeway to make a delivery deadline with a cylinder misfiring up on the high pass, while plagued by worries whether there will be enough deliveries this month to pay the mortgage.

An appreciation of practical knowledge accrues from watching central-heating mechanics come out in the evening to troubleshoot the unit on the roof, battling the roof grade, the ice, and the dark while pitting their own acquired knowledge in a war with the latest computerized wiring board of the new heating exchange unit that proves far more unreliable than the 20-year-old model it replaced.

Humility is key to learning, but it is found more easily from a wealth of diverse existential experiences on the margins. It is less a dividend of the struggle for great success versus greater success still, but one of survival versus utter failure.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Legacy of a Marxist failure – Dr. WHO. What we should have known about the head of the World Health Organization, but didn’t. Barry Shaw

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/legacy-marxist-failure-dr-who-frontpagemagcom/

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is the name of the top global health official. But what do we know about this man?  The globalization-favoring leftist mainstream media has been silent, apparently reluctant to investigate the total lack of qualifications of this man for the role.
They give him the moniker of “Doctor”, but he is not really a doctor at all. In fact, he is the first World Health Organization Director-General without a medical degree.
 
He has never cured a patient in his life. He has a diploma in public health, but even this could not cover his dangerous incompetence as Ethiopia’s Health Minister.
 
There is growing unhappiness with this man following the disastrous virus crisis. Prominent US senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio joined the global call for Doctor WHO’s removal.
 
Rubio accused him, with reasonable cause, of pandering to Communist Beijing who, through the office of Dr. WHO, misled the global community. Tedros echoed China’s false claim that the virus had no human-to-human transmission.
 
In other words, he was the global mouthpiece for Chinese lies.
 
Former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, tweeted about Tedros’s unquestioning promotion Chinese lies. “This was posted by the WHO on January 14, that the WHO found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Coronavirus: A French Disaster by Guy Millière

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15880/coronavirus-france-disaster

The first bad decision was that, in contrast to the European Union fantasies, borders apparently do matter. France never closed them; instead it allowed large numbers of potential virus-carriers to enter the country.

In January 2020, several hundred thousand masks were available, but on February 19, President Macron decoded to send them to Wuhan, as a “gesture of solidarity with the Chinese people”…. The French government announced that masks would be available soon, but by the end of March, most doctors and caregivers still had no masks. Several doctors fell ill. As of April 10, eight have died from COVID-19 and several others are in critical condition. On March 20, the Government’s spokeswoman, Sibeth N’Diaye, incorrectly said, “masks are essentially useless”.

On February 25, a renowned French epidemiologist, Professor Didier Raoult… published a video… In it, he said he had found a treatment quickly to end the pandemic: hydroxychloroquine… (used with azithromycin)… On April 10, Professor Raoult published data showing that he had treated and cured 2,401 patients.

Immediately, Olivier Veran, the new French minister of health, said that Professor Raoult’s statements were “unacceptable” and that the treatment he was proposing was “worthless”…. In an attempt to quell the controversy, the French government, by decree, authorized Professor Raoult’s treatment in “military hospitals” for “patients reaching the acute phase of the disease” but prohibited family doctors from prescribing hydroxychloroquine. Professor Raoult replied that the treatment was only effective if administered “before the disease reaches its acute phase”. [Emphasis added]

France’s mainstream media would do well to fight harder for physicians to be able supply hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin and zinc sulfate. The French media would also do well to be more aware of the dirty game China is playing.

“The behavior of our leaders has been marked by unpreparedness, casualness, cynicism, and many of their acts imply the enforcement of the criminal law. Deliberate endangerment of the lives of others and failure to provide assistance to people in danger are obvious… In war, generals who are judged incompetent are sometimes shot. The President and other officials are well aware of this.” — Regis de Castelnau, attorney, in Marianne, a center-left magazine, April 4, 2020.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

IMF Must Not Buy the Mullahs’ Coronavirus Lies by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15884/imf-iran-coronavirus-lies

The U.S. Embassy wrote in a Facebook post: “The possessions of the current supreme leader Ali #Khamenei alone are estimated at $200 billion, while many people languish in poverty because of the dire economic situation in #Iran after 40 years of rule by the mullahs.”

If the Iranian leaders are so concerned about the public health, why they have been ratcheting up their use of lethal force, suppression and human rights abuses against those who have been revealing the truth about the COVID-19 virus in Iran or who have been voicing their concern about the regime’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis?

“The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism is seeking cash to fund its adventurism abroad, not to buy medicine for Iranians. The regime’s corrupt officials have a long history of diverting funds allocated for humanitarian goods into their own pockets and to their terrorist proxies.” — U.S. State Department Spokesman to CNN, April 9, 2020.

The ruling mullahs of Iran are doubling down on requests to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), headquartered in Washington DC, immediately to give Tehran an emergency $5 billion loan.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that his government wants to use the $5 billion fund to fight the coronavirus pandemic, and stressed once again, “I urge international organizations to fulfill their duties … We are a member of the IMF.” The IMF, however, should definitely decline the mullahs’ financial request, because the ruling mullahs have plenty of cash and that they would most likely misuse the funds to advance their anti-American and anti-Semitic — and even anti-Iranian people — agendas.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for instance, the unelected “representative of God on earth” and the longest-ruling autocrat in the Middle East, has a financial empire worth at least $95 billion, according to a report published by Reuters in 2013.

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Florida Mosque Promotes Books Calling for Violence Against Jews Joe Kaufman

Posted By on April 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/taliban-imams-mosque-promotes-books-calling-joe-kaufman/

Masjid Jamaat Al-Mu’mineen (MJAM) is a radical mosque, located in Margate, Florida, infamous for having an imam that was charged by the FBI with helping to finance the Taliban. Surfing the mosque’s website, one is able to access a web library of downloadable Islamic texts. The amount of bigotry and violence found in the books is alarming, especially in their attacks against members of the Jewish and Christian faiths.

This past decade, MJAM has been working hard to expand construction beyond the mosque to include a children’s school, a conference center and more. As Phase II of MJAM’s Islamic Center expansion project was underway, the mosque’s imam, Izhar Khan, was behind bars. In May 2011, Khan was arrested and spent the next 20 months in a Miami federal detention center for his alleged participation in a terror financing scheme to ship $50 thousand to the Pakistani Taliban for the specific goal of murdering American troops overseas.

As stated in the US Justice Department indictment against him and his family, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”