NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Did Obama Allow Comey to Brief Trump on the Russian Prostitute Story? By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/20/why-did-obama-allow-comey-to-brief-trump-on-the-russian-prostitute-story/

We are three years into the biggest political scandal in American history and former President Barack Obama has yet to be asked about his role in orchestrating the international subterfuge that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election.

Not one journalist has posed a single question to Obama about what officials in his White House knew—or when they knew it—despite multiple ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and on Capitol Hill. The more than decade-long media swoon for the 44th president continues unabated.

But Attorney General William Barr might do the work that the news media refuses to do.

In an interview with Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Friday, Barr indicated his office is looking into “some very strange developments” that occured between the election and Inauguration Day.

One of these events, Barr told Hemmer, was the meeting on January 6, 2017 between President-elect Trump, his transition team, and Obama’s top intelligence chiefs, including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

House Democrats Seek Brennan’s Malignant Advice on Iran While the ex-CIA director squirms as his legal problems intensify. Joseph Klein

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273826/house-democrats-seek-brennans-malignant-advice-joseph-klein

Disgraced former CIA director John Brennan will be briefing House Democrats early this week on his perspective regarding the current situation in Iran. No doubt, he will use the opportunity to once again take a shot at President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Obama administration’s disastrous nuclear deal with Iran and to blame the president for escalating tensions with the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Brennan said late last week on NBC, for example, that it is the United States under the Trump administration whose drums are “beating the loudest” in any march towards war with Iran.

Last year, in one of his many deranged rants, Brennan tweeted that “Donald Trump simultaneously lied about the Iranian nuclear deal, undermined global confidence in US commitments, alienated our closest allies, strengthened Iranian hawks, & gave North Korea more reason to keep its nukes. This madness is a danger to our national security.”

House Democrats are wasting time listening to Brennan on Iran. It’s a lame attempt to bolster Brennan’s reputation as a so-called national security expert and divert attention as more damaging facts come out about his abuse of power as CIA director during and shortly after the 2016 presidential election campaign.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Alien Smugglers Exploit Infants While the Left declares there is no crisis on the border. Michael Cutler

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273818/alien-smugglers-exploit-infants-michael-cutler

On May 16, 2019 ICE issued a press release with the extremely disturbing headline:

Fraudulent family case involving 6-month-old represents ‘new level of child endangerment’ according to ICE officials.

Here is an excerpt from the press release:

Security Investigations (HSI) special agents have described as an increasing trend of fraudulent families presenting at the border in order to take advantage of loopholes in immigration laws and avoid being detained by immigration authorities.

“Cases like this demonstrate the real danger that exists to children in this disturbing new trend,” said HSI Acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs. “And while we have seen egregious cases of smugglers renting and recycling children, this case involving a six-month-old infant is a new low – and an unprecedented level of child endangerment.”

Amilcar Guiza-Reyes, a 51-year old citizen and national of Honduras, who was previously deported in 2013, made an initial appearance in federal court in the Southern District of Texas May 10, charged with 8 USC 1324 alien smuggling for allegedly smuggling a 6-month-old infant across the U.S.-Mexico border.

On May 7, Guiza-Reyes was observed by U.S. Border Patrol wading across the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the U.S. near Hidalgo, Texas, carrying an infant child.

He initially claimed to the U.S. Border Patrol agents that the infant was his son. However, after presenting a fraudulent Honduran birth certificate at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, he was referred to HSI special agents for interview and further investigation. He later admitted to the HSI special agents that he obtained the child’s fraudulent document to show him as the father and that he intended to use the child to further his unlawful entry in to the U.S.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Tourism Triumph: Part 4 The lure below. Edwin Black

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273811/israels-tourism-triumph-part-4-edwin-black

[Read Part I: HERE, Part II: HERE, Part III: HERE].

When the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement [BDS] mounted a campaign against Israel, it targeted more than Israel’s economy, including tourism—which has nonetheless flourished beyond any expectation. The “D” in BDS stands for delegitimize. So the anti-Israel movement also targeted the country’s very identity and legacy. A people’s future cannot be stolen unless first their history is abducted. BDS not only attacked Israel’s tourism industry, but also the country’s single greatest and most meaningful attraction—its multi-faith religious roots.

Yes, Israel features excitement and awesome beauty in its museums and architectonic urban spaces, stem to stern coastline, as well as the country’s deserts, caves, hill treks, river trips, zip lines, and jeep excursions, not to mention its nightlife. Then again, many nations offer outstanding museums, mountains, and wilderness. However, there is one unique tourist attraction that Israel possesses that no other nation can offer, and which the people of all nations crave—its unrivaled religious heritage. This heritage is inextricably woven into the country’s national identity.

All three major Abrahamic religions are anchored in Israel.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The U.S. Is Outplaying Iran in a Regional Chess Match By Seth J. Frantzman

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/the-u-s-is-outplaying-iran-in-a-regional-chess-match/

The Trump administration’s ‘bluster’ has forced the Iranians into a defensive posture.

In the first two weeks of May, U.S.–Iran tensions appeared to be careening toward war. In an escalating series of warnings, the U.S. asserted that an attack by Iran would be met with unrelenting force. Iran eventually responded with its usual bluster about being prepared for a full confrontation with Washington. But on the ground the Middle East looks more like a chessboard, with Iran and its allies and proxies facing off against American allies. This state of affairs was brought into sharp relief when Iranian-backed Houthi rebels launched a drone attack on Saudi Arabia and a rocket fell near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

U.S. media have tended to focus on the role of national-security adviser John Bolton in crafting the administration’s policy — and whether America would actually go to war with Iran. Iranian media have also sought to decipher exactly what the Trump administration is up to. According to Iran’s Tasnim News, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami told a closed session of Parliament that the U.S. was involved in a “psychological war” with Iran, predicting the U.S. didn’t have enough forces to actually attack Iran yet.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will the Deep State Conspirators Ever Be Held Accountable? By Mark Ellis

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/will-the-deep-state-conspirators-ever-be-held-accountable/

Democrats and their complicit media wildly overpromised on how damaging the Mueller report would be to President Trump. They paid a huge price when Mueller did not deliver. Collusion diehards like Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler look delusional with their ongoing search for something that never existed.

The Deep State coup attempt stands busted cold, its perpetrators caught red-handed in unbelievable and un-American actions aimed at covering up Hillary Clinton’s inarguable illegalities and overturning an election whose result they could not abide.

For Trumpservatives the schadenfreude was sweet. But now, those vindicated supporters of the president must caution against being overpromised to themselves. To what extent, if any, will Russia-Gate actors like Lynch, Simpson, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Strzok, Page and the rest be held accountable for their alleged criminality?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians Need to Get Real About Israel The focus should be on prosperity and good government, not perpetual resistance. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/palestinians-need-to-get-real-about-israel-11558391713

Jerusalem

As Palestinian officials nervously await the Trump administration’s peace plan, one fundamental reality shapes their long and bitter contest with Israel. Diplomatically, economically, militarily, Israel has never been stronger than it is today. By contrast, the Palestinian cause has never been in worse shape. Neither Hamas, which alternates between firing rockets and begging Israel to admit to Gaza the supplies it needs to stay in power, nor the Palestinian Authority, which is compromised by corruption and divided by factionalism, can find a viable policy either to defeat the Israelis or to make peace with them.

One result—as I saw on a recent visit sponsored by the Philos Project, a nonprofit Middle East engagement organization—is that Palestinians, especially young people, are increasingly giving up on having a state of their own. Instead they favor a “one-state solution”—a single, binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yet in meetings with senior Palestinian Authority officials and political observers, it was clear that this is more a cry of despair than a serious political program. A Palestinian return to the policy of rejecting the two-state solution may spur American campus activists to new denunciations of “Israeli apartheid,” but it won’t help the Palestinian cause in the real world.

The argument for one state is straightforward. Israel is de facto in control of the West Bank and to a lesser extent the Gaza Strip; liberal principles say people should have a say in the government that rules them. Some Palestinians claim the situation is comparable to the South African system of “bantustans,” in which white South Africans created artificial “homelands” for the different tribes of black South Africans and used them as alibis to deny blacks citizenship rights in South Africa proper. The West Bank and Gaza are, some Palestinians argue, bantustans for Palestinians. Thus the solution, with no Palestinian statehood in sight, is to give Palestinians full voting and citizenship rights in the state that matters most in the neighborhood: Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are Terrorist Organizations and Should be Treated as Such by Guy Millière

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14247/hamas-islamic-jihad-terrorist-organizations

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) walked away from the negotiating table a long time ago and show no interest in returning. They have continually refused to do what the Trump administration has asked: stop funding terrorism. They have shown again and again that they do not want a state living peacefully alongside Israel; they want to displace Israel. They have rejected the most generous proposals made by Israeli prime ministers, such as one made by Ehud Olmert in 2008, which included a near-total withdrawal from West Bank and the end of Israeli control of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Middle East scholar, Daniel Pipes, observing that Israel’s leaders shy away from victory, writes: “The only way for the conflict to be resolved is for one side to give up.”

“[F]iring 600 rockets at civilian targets in a neighboring country is an act of war… and as such it grants the nation-state [Israel] the authority under the international law of armed conflict not just to disable the specific military assets used to carry it out but to destroy those who carried it out… It’s time for the world community to stop imposing these double standards on Israel, and start doing what international law requires: holding Hamas responsible for the devastation that results from Israel’s legal, necessary, and proper responses to its provocations. Only then will Hamas know that if it sows the wind, it could truly reap the whirlwind…” — David French, National Review, May 6, 2019.

On May 5 and 6, 700 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israeli territory in less than 48 hours. It was the most intensive rocket offensive on Israel to date. Four people were killed: three Israelis and one Palestinian Arab worker. One of the Israelis was hit in his car by an anti-tank missile. The Israeli military retaliated and resumed targeted killings. One was to a Hamas member, Hamed al-Khoudary, considered responsible for the transfer of Iranian funds to the armed factions in Gaza. On May 6, a spokesman from Islamic Jihad and Hamas announced a ceasefire and said they had got “what they wanted”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a short statement: “We struck a powerful blow against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The campaign is not finished, and it will require patience and careful judgment. We’re prepared for its continuation”.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Afghan War: Hope for Exit, No Hope for Peace by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14250/afghan-war-peace

President Trump should be lauded for working toward a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 14,000 U.S. troops still remain. But he should not expect to leave behind a peaceful situation in the failed state, which is made up of a complex web of tribal divisions and hostilities.

Yet another factor militating against national unity is that Pashtun clans appear not to view Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic minorities as equal partners in a future Afghanistan.

These Persian, Mongol and Turkic peoples, based upon their past armed resistance to Pashtun attempts to control the whole of Afghanistan, will most likely fight to maintain their autonomy. This historical reality alone should be sufficient cause for U.S. policy-makers to abandon the seemingly impossible task of building a unified, democratic, pro-Western Afghanistan.

Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country.

In his State of the Union address on February 5, U.S. President Donald Trump said that his administration was “holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban… [in order] to be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism.”Trump continued, “We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.”

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

How alumni are revolutionizing the Israel debate on campus Alumni can become the missing piece in countering bigotry, bringing years of practical and professional experience to the table. by Avi D. Gordon

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-alumni-are-revolutionizing-the-israel-debate-on-campus/

College might be the place where you found your career, met your significant other or forged friendships that would last a lifetime. One way or another, your alma mater likely played a significant role in making you the person you’ve become today.

Now, imagine that your alma mater’s faculty sought to end the school’s study-abroad program with an Israeli university. Suddenly, the institution you felt embodied your values has instead gone down the path of exclusion and discrimination.

That exact scenario played out this semester when the Pitzer College Council voted to suspend the school’s study-abroad exchange with the University of Haifa. If you were a Pitzer alumnus how would you react?

The marginalization of Jewish students and the de-legitimization of Israel on campuses nationwide have alumni searching for answers on how to counter the surge of bigotry at their alma maters. Some of the most recent incidents include anti-Semitic flyers and posters at University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of North Carolina; New York University honoring Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with a long history of anti-Semitism; and Jewish students at Emory University waking up to eviction notices on their doors.

This is why Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) is galvanizing alumni like never before to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing Jewish and Zionist students and faculty. Until now, no organization has harnessed the untapped power of alumni to defend campus communities from discrimination. We are taking alumni off the sidelines, mobilizing them across the country to speak out against anti-Semitism at their alma maters.