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US Throws Kurdish Allies Under the Bus; Turkey “Opens the Floodgates” to Europe by Sezen Şahin

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14953/turkey-migrants-europe

Turkey’s Erdoğan government will be invading northern Syria to slaughter the Kurds, America’s loyal allies against ISIS; release captured ISIS fighters, and doubtless seek to stay permanently in control of the area. The horror is that it will be doing all this with the tacit blessing of the US.

“I am saying this today: We have not got the required support from the world — particularly from the EU — to share the burden of the refugees we have been hosting, so we might have to [open the gates] to get the support.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Takvim, September 5, 2019

“If we open the floodgates, no European government will be able to survive for more than six months. We advise them not to try our patience.” — Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, Anadolu Agency, July 21, 2019.

Erdogan’s threats are not new… and his claims are flawed…. Ankara has not lived up to its commitments.

“The most important question is why the refugee camps are not open to civil monitoring. Entry to refugee camps is not allowed. The camps are not transparent. There are many allegations as to what is happening in them. We are therefore worried about what they are hiding from us.” — Cansu Turan, a social worker with the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), to Gatestone Institute, August 2016.

“Turkish authorities are detaining and coercing Syrians into signing forms saying they want to return to Syria and then forcibly returning them there.” — Human Rights Watch, July 2019.

In a betrayal of staggering magnitude, the White House announced yesterday that the United States has effectively given Turkey a green light to massacre America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria who fought against ISIS on America’s behalf.

US President Trump apparently assured Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a phone call on Sunday October 6th that if Turkey invaded the Kurds’ homeland in northern Syria and rescued ISIS fighters captured by the Kurds, US troops would not intervene. According to White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, US troops “will not support or be involved in the operation.”

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The Madness of Progressive Projection Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

amgreatness.com/2019/10/06/the-madness-of-progressive-projection/

The only Trump “crime” was in his winning an election he was not supposed to win. So after the election, prior illegal acts were redefined as legal, and legal ones as illegal.

Strangest among all the many melodramas of the last two weeks were the blaring headlines that President Trump had dared to talk with the Australian Prime Minister—and referenced the role of foreign governments and in particular Australia in U.S. electoral politics in 2016.

Given the hue and cry of Democrats in the last three years, they should have been delighted that the president was peremptorily warning foreign nations to cease to currying favor with presidential candidates and asking them to hand over what information, if any, they had of past “collusion.” In fact, they were outraged and once again returned to “collusion” charges, as if Trump were subverting the 2020 election.

I Accuse You of Doing What I Did!

Unfortunately, projection is now an encompassing explanation for almost everything the Left alleges. After all, the Australian government’s own connection with U.S. elections is only on the American political radar because in 2016 its former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who had steered a large Australian donation to the Clinton Foundation, may have colluded with intelligence agencies to entrap George Papadopoulos, a minor and transient Trump campaign employee, to find dirt on the Trump campaign. Bringing up Australia is like the Left leaving a scented trail to its own past miscreant behavior.

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Chernobyl: The Meltdown of the Soviet Union Joe Dolce

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/10/c

In Citizen X, a 1995 film about Andrei Chikatilo, eventually convicted in 1992 of the murder of fifty-two women and children in the USSR, Lieutenant Viktor Burakov cannot persuade the provincial Committee for Crime that they have a serial killer in their midst. He is told, “We have no serial killers in the Soviet Union.” This kind of aberration, he is informed, is associated with Western moral corruption. The political resistance to reality resulted in an eight-year delay in Chikatilo’s eventual capture and dozens of preventable murders.

In the recent HBO series Chernobyl, about the nuclear disaster of 1986, the Russian bureaucracy will not accept at first that they’ve had a catastrophic failure of one of their prestigious “Peaceful Atom” nuclear facilities. A party apparatchik says, “The official position of the state is that global nuclear catastrophe is not possible in the Soviet Union.”

But midway through episode two, Valery Legasov, the Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow (played by Jared Harris), and Ulana Khomyuk, a nuclear physicist from Minsk (played by Emily Watson), deliver a stark briefing to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev—a terrifying scenario of what is about to occur. The initial reactor fire has been extinguished by helicopters, who have dropped five thousand tons of sand, lead and boron, and streams of liquid nitrogen, onto the damaged reactor. The sand, although smothering the fire, has now been converted by the extreme heat into lava, which is melting down through the cement protective shield below the installation, and will reach the full water tanks within three days, causing:

a thermonuclear explosion. Everything within thirty kilometres will be destroyed, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl, the entirety of the radioactive material in all of the cores will be ejected, at force, and dispersed by a massive shock wave which will extend 200 kilometres and likely be fatal to the entire population of Kiev, as well as a portion of Minsk. The release of radiation will be severe and impact all of Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and most of East Germany … for the Ukraine and Belorussia, this means completely uninhabitable for a minimum of one hundred years.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Greta Thunberg To Win The Nobel? The Madness Continues

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/07/greta

The Nobel committee has cheapened its Peace Prize by handing it to some questionable, even asinine, recipients in the last few decades. It will reach a new low if, as some are predicting, and even hoping, it chooses Greta Thunberg this week.

The British Daily Mail reported last week that, according to oddsmakers, she “is the one to beat” for the prize, which carries a $930,000 payout. It is not, however, a sure thing. Greta’s “youth, outspokenness and confrontational approach,” says Reuters, “present challenging questions for the Norwegian Nobel Committee.”

Given the committee’s record, though, it would be naive to think it won’t do the most foolish thing it possibly could. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with a few of the recent undeserving winners of the Nobel Peace Prize:

Yasser Arafat (1994), a known terrorist who shared the award with Israelis Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and continued to order terrorist attacks after receiving the prize.
Barack Obama (2009), “honored” just months after he took office, whose top accomplishments then, and remain to this day, nothing more than getting himself elected to public offices.
Al Gore (2007), a charlatan and hypocrite who has ridden climate hysterics to the peaks of wealth and acclaim.
And Rigoberta Menchu Tum (1992), the Guatemalan who claimed to be an advocate for the poor but whose “’achievements’ cited by the Nobel committee” were “later revealed to have” been largely made up, says the British Telegraph.

Her prospects were apparently boosted by her recent United Nations “speech.” Evidently being granted a bully pulpit in front of that body’s general assembly, then using it to hector, nag, scowl, and in general behave with the entitlement mindset of a “spoiled brat” screeching “how dare you” multiple times is an impressive feat.

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Spartacus: ‘If You Come After Joe Biden, You’re Going To Have To Deal With Me’ Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/10/spartacus-if-you-come-after-joe-biden-youre-going-daniel-greenfield/

People have said that Senator Cory Booker is funny, I haven’t seen one example of it. Until now.

But I’m calling this one unintentional.

Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker came to the defense of his 2020 rival former Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday as Biden continues to face unfounded attacks from President Donald Trump.

When you’re polling below Morris the Cat and the other guy is the front runner, you’re not his rival.

“I’ve said time and time again that this is unacceptable, that if you come after Joe Biden, you’re going to have to deal with me in this case,” Booker told CNN’s Ana Cabrera on “Newsroom.”

And then what?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Allahu Akbar”: Knife-Wielding Syrian Invades German Synagogue, Is Released Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/10/allahu-akbar-knife-wielding-syrian-invades-german-daniel-greenfield/

Surely this gentle knife-wielding soul only wanted to help the Jews celebrate by running into their synagogue and shouting, “My god is greater than yours” in Arabic.

(This phrase coincidentally originated in Mohammed’s ethnic cleansing of the Jews.)

It would be Islamophobic to think otherwise. That’s the conclusion that the German authorities seem to have reached, as Benjamin Weinthall at the Jerusalem Post reports.

Two guards protecting a Berlin synagogue in the district of Mitte detained a Syrian man who apparently sought to enter the building with a knife on Friday.

But not for long.

According to a report in the Bild newspaper, the Damascus-born man said “Allahu akhbar”’ or “God is Great” – a phrase frequently uttered before or during radical Islamist terrorist attacks.

The guards drew their firearms and police were notified. A police spokeswoman said the guards kept their weapons holstered but the man ignored them. The security guards said “Knife away and stop immediately.”

The Bild reported that the Syrian man did not drop the knife and repeated sentences in Arabic. The guards remained at distance with their firearms out until police appeared and sprayed an irritant gas in the face of the man.

The authorities arrested the man and no additional weapons were found on him or in his apartment. There were no injuries.

The police released the man from custody.

Of course they did.

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A Second ‘Whistleblower’ Emerges The Demcorats’ contrived and hysterical impeachment investigation takes a decisive turn. Joseph Klein

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/whistle-joseph-klein/

The House Democrats’ urgency in moving ahead to impeach President Trump over the so-called Ukraine “scandal” is turning into a sequel to Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less. The question is which is to be master—that’s all.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is following Humpty Dumpty’s advice. She believes that she has the unilateral power, as master of the House of Representatives, to wave her magic wand and convert ordinary legislative oversight investigations into an “official” impeachment inquiry by just declaring it to be so.

“I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” Pelosi declared on September 24th without introducing a resolution for adoption by the full House of Representatives to formally launch an impeachment inquiry. With her Democrat cohorts, she is hoping that Ukrainegate will turn into the decisive gotcha moment that finally checkmates President Trump and leads to his removal from office before next year’s presidential election. 

A second whistleblower, who supposedly has first hand knowledge to back up the first whistleblower’s second hand account, has reportedly come forward. More whistleblowers may follow. Mere coincidence or an orchestrated attempt by Trump-haters to build up public pressure to impeach him by inflicting a thousand cuts with drip by drip leaks? Almost certainly the latter, considering that the first whistleblower’s attorney, who said he is also representing the second whistleblower, “co-founded Whistleblower Aid, a small nonprofit that blasted advertisements around D.C. actively seeking whistleblowers during the Trump administration,” as reported by Breitbart. “Whistleblower Aid is heavily tied to far-left activist organizations and Democratic politics.”

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Turkish Dissident Faces Ten Years in Prison for ‘Blasphemy’ Against Islam Will you take a stand for Canan Kaftancioglu? Kursat Christoff Pekgoz

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/turkish-dissident-faces-ten-years-prison-blasphemy-frontpagemagcom/

Canan Kaftancioglu, a Turkish politician and critic of Islam, has received a ten-year-long prison sentence for “blasphemy against Islam.” If the Court of Cassation upholds the verdict, Kaftancioglu will have to serve time in prison.

Canan is the executive director of the Istanbul branch of Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), the secular opposition. Islamists have suffered a crushing defeat in Istanbul, the largest city in Europe and the fourth largest city in the world, thanks to Canan’s relentless efforts. Canan has multiple college degrees and a long history of human rights advocacy, including working for TIHV (Turkish Human Rights Foundation). She has written her dissertation about “Torture Victims in Forensic Medicine.” Her father was assassinated by Islamists.

Islamists are furious because they lost Istanbul, and Canan has now become their scapegoat – given her courageous and colorful rhetoric. Canan once quipped on Twitter: “men with small dicks want to build big mosques.” She posted pictures of herself eating pork (forbidden in Islam) and acknowledged the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide. She once wrote, “stop praying, Muslims: there is no room left in paradise.” She expressed support for Kurdish dissidents, accused the current Turkish government of serial murder, and wrote that “being human is a higher dignity than being Turkish.” She is a Socratic provocateur, perhaps. But her irreverent statements serve a higher purpose: to protest human rights violations. She is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Turkey was once an imperfect but functional democracy. Now it is an increasingly theocratic state under the totalitarian presidency of Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan’s presidential achievements include electoral fraud, persecution of religious minorities, war crimes in Africa, massacring Kurdish civilians, unparalleled corruption, banning Wikipedia and Twitter, centralized online censorship, stacking the courts, persecuting academics, and terrorizing journalists. Swedish lawmakers pressed charges of genocide against him. Various commentators have called him a tyrant, a terrorist, and a war criminal. He has been condemned by international organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

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The Longer Elites Ignore Populist Outcries, the More They’ll Be Surprised By John Fund

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/brexit-referendum-elites-ig

Elites ignore at their own risk voters who want political accountability and more control over national borders.

Los Angeles — It’s been three years since the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump sent shock waves throughout the world.

Those events in Britain and the U.S. symbolized a broader revolt against elites by frustrated voters in other countries. The populist revolt was a reaction to elites’ reckless and anti-democratic push for ever greater integration. Many critics have tried to paint these uprisings in scary terms by branding them as rooted in racism or xenophobia. I myself part company with the more radical populist movements on some issues — especially those that want to shut down legal as well as illegal immigration.

But it’s unarguable that many populist concerns are rooted in the understandable desire — of people who feel neglected, even held in contempt, by distant, self-interested liberal elites — to have a voice. That is especially true in Europe, where a suffocating European Union bureaucracy threatens both to hold back economic innovation and to trample on many of the continent’s traditions.

Even a neoconservative such as the late Charles Krauthammer recognized the need to rein in a European Union that was trying to absorb or co-opt the key functions of the nation-state. “The task today is to address the sources of Europe’s economic stagnation and social alienation rather than blindly pursue the very drive that led to this precarious moment, he wrote in 2017. “If the populist threat turns out to have frightened the existing powers out of their arrogant complacency, it should be deemed a success.”

The fear of the European Union’s apologists is all too real. In elections to the European Parliament last May, the percentage of seats held by populists of all stripes — whether left-wing populists, right-wing populists, or others who aren’t easily defined, such as the Five Star Movement in Italy — rose to 29 percent of the total vote.

Populists are succeeding in the most unlikely of places. Swedish Democrats, for example, are now tied for first place among all parties in the latest polls in Sweden, with 23 percent of the vote. But even in prosperous Sweden, only 27 percent of voters believe that the country is heading in the right direction, while 50 percent think that it is going in the wrong direction.

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Pelosi defends Schiff’s version of Trump-Zelensky phone call: ‘He did not make it up’ By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on October 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/pelosi_defends_schiffs_version_of_trumpzelensky_phone_call_he_did_not_make_it_up.html

Nancy Pelosi appears to have shocked even George Stephanopoulos of ABC news yesterday. The Speaker of the House claimed that Rep. Adam Schiff did not invent his own version of the telephone call between President Trump and the (then) newly inaugurated President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, during a September 26th hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs.

Schiff himself later in the hearing characterized his version of what he initially called “the essence” of the call as a “parody.” But the purported humor sailed right over the head of the Speaker.

Here is the entire  ABC News transcript.  This is the relevant exchange with emphases added by me:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You talk about the dignity with which you handle this. You’ve seen the president’s tweets. You’ve heard Republican’s– Leader McCarthy wants to censure Adam Schiff. I know you support Chairman Schiff. But– was it– was it right for him to have that dramatic– reading of the president’s– interpretation of the president’s– transcript of the phone call at the hearing last week? Did that follow the kind of process you want?

NANCY PELOSI: I want the American people to know what that phone call was about. I want them to hear it on their– on their iPhone or whatever. I want them to see it visually. Because this was an absolute betrayal of the American people, this phone call. It was a betrayal of our national security, it was a betrayal of the integrity of elections, it was a betrayal of our Constitution. So yeah, it’s fair. It’s sad. But it’s using the president’s own words. So if he’s–