Get China and Russia Out of Venezuela – and the Western Hemisphere by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13700/venezuela-china-russia

The partnership of Beijing and Moscow is certainly up to no good. As an initial matter, the duo, powers from the other side of the world, are in Venezuela to take on the United States, not help it.

It is doubtful, as Matt Ferchen of the Leiden Asia Center in the Netherlands suggests, that Beijing can help another society transition to democracy. The same, of course, can be said about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After China and Russia worked to turn Venezuela into “the Syria of the Western Hemisphere,” they are not about to democratize it.

An outreach from Washington “would legitimize the concept that Russia and China have a constructive role to play in Western Hemisphere security… the U.S. has everything to lose from inviting China and Russia to the table, and no realistic prospect of gains.” — Robert Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College, to Gatestone.

China and Russia make no global problem better. The only sensible approach, therefore, is to remove them from our hemisphere, and the place to begin to do that is Venezuela.

“What are our national security interests in Venezuela?” Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, asked Erin Burnett on January 29 during her CNN primetime show. “The idea that we’re going to go in and do battle in Venezuela over who should be running that country, I don’t see a single U.S. national security argument for doing that.”

Not a single interest, Chairman Smith? In December, two Russian Tu-160 Blackjacks landed near Caracas. The Mach 2, nuclear-capable bombers can launch cruise missiles with a range of 3,410 miles, putting the U.S. homeland at risk from the airspace over Venezuela. The Blackjack bombers also buzzed America’s West Coast as they left the region last month.

Representative Smith charged President Trump with making Venezuela policy “on whims and fantasies and no reality behind it.”

On the contrary, Trump policy is based on the reality that the U.S. must be involved in the resolution of the Venezuelan crisis and not on the whims or fantasies that bad actors on their own will produce constructive solutions.

Has Turkish President Erdoğan Distanced Himself from the Muslim Brotherhood? by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13704/turkey-erdogan-muslim-brotherhood

The picture sent shockwaves through the Turkish grassroots: A poor Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood, handcuffed by the Turkish police, put aboard a Turkish Airlines plane to fly back to Cairo, to be tortured and eventually executed. Is President Erdoğan not a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is he not an eternal enemy of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power after toppling the Muslim Brotherhood man, former president Mohamed Morsi, a darling of Erdoğan?

The “mistake” was that the Erdoğan administration was not expecting Hussein, so the immigration officers treated him as just another illegal entry. He would not have been arrested and extradited if the Turkish authorities had known he was a member of the Ikhwan.

False alarm. Erdoğan apparently has not changed, after all.

The picture sent shockwaves through Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s grassroots: A poor Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan in Arabic) handcuffed by the Turkish police, put aboard a Turkish Airlines plane to fly back to Cairo, to be tortured and eventually executed. Is President Erdoğan not a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is he not an eternal enemy of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power after toppling the Ikhwan man, former president Mohamed Morsi, a darling of Erdoğan? Did Erdoğan not freeze diplomatic relations with el-Sisi’s Egypt?

Is Gantz falling from grace? Most of the promises Gantz made in his speech are already being fulfilled by the current prime minister. By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-wrong-Is-Gantz-

When the new Great White Hope of the Israeli opposition, Benny Gantz, delivered his first public speech last week, the press couldn’t contain its excitement. During the hours before he took to the podium to address a packed hall of supporters, all Hebrew broadcasters treated the event as momentous enough to warrant an hour-by-hour countdown.

The fervor was palpable. Prior to Gantz’s December 27 announcement of the formation of his party, Israel Resilience, the Left was on the verge of despair. Polls were showing the implosion of the once illustrious Labor Party – whose past prime ministers include David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres – and the fizzling out of the elusive “center.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on the other hand, was soaring in the surveys. Consensus had it that Likud would emerge victorious in the April 9 elections. To prevent the sure win from being too great – and to force Netanyahu to forge a coalition with others vying for prized portfolios – parties across the spectrum went into high gear, if not high anxiety.

When Gantz threw his hat into the ring, the mood instantly shifted. Here was a guy who might give Netanyahu a run for his money. At 59, the former IDF chief of staff is neither too young nor too old. He is also tall and handsome, with piercing blue eyes that, until four years ago, gloriously contrasted his dark green military uniform.

Anti-Semitism in UK reaches record-high numbers, report says

https://worldisraelnews.com/anti-semitism-in-uk-reaches-record-high-numbers-report-says/

The increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom has set a new record for the third year in a row.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom has set a new record for the third year in a row, according to a report released this week by the Community Security Trust (CST).

In 2018, 1,652 expressions of hatred of Jews were reported across the country, which represented a 16% jump from the previous year. The number for 2017 showed an increase of 3% over 2016.

The vast majority of incidents – 1,300 – consisted of verbal invective, hate mail, and graffiti.

The “good” news is that physical assaults were down by 17%, with 123 attacks versus 149 in 2017. Property damage was on a similar downward trend, with 78 occurrences as opposed to 93 the previous year.

Nearly three-quarters of the incidents took place in London and Manchester, home to the largest Jewish communities in the U.K. Most of them “involved verbal abuse randomly directed at visibly Jewish people in public,” the CST stated, while almost 25% were found on social media.

PART4: LLOYD BILLINGSLEY -THE STATE OF AFFAIRS AT U.C.L.A.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272807/down-kang-jong-un-lloyd-billingsley
Down With Kang Jong-Un! Pushing back against UCLA diversity dictator Jerry Kang.

UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

1.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley

2.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272720/king-kang-makes-ucla-safe-jew-hatred-lloyd-billingsley

3.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272745/king-kang-rampage-lloyd-billingsley

As a UCLA student, Keith Fink won a national debating championship defending the proposition that “illegal aliens” are inimical to the United States. Today, as he noted in his recent video, that would be a “microaggression,” that would trigger warnings and of course be “summarily dismissed.” The way UCLA dismissed Fink should serve up a warning to students, parents and policymakers alike.

UCLA teaching assistant Justin Gelzhiser, a PhD candidate, wrote a letter in defense of Fink. After Fink’s departure, longtime communications department manager Jane Bitar told Gelhizer he was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint. As he told the Daily Bruin, they would report the claim to the Title IX office if he didn’t leave his teaching position. The department, Gelhizer said, “wanted to get rid of me because they had just got rid of Fink.”

The Title IX department did investigate the harassment claim, which turned out to have some existential problems. Fink called it “a fiction” and notes that Bitar also violated the mandatory reporting requirements. For that lapse, she would suffer no consequences.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A one-woman EMP By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/alexandria_ocasiocortez_a_onewoman_emp.html

The ubiquitous Miss O-C made her big splash yesterday and introduced her Green New Deal, and an amusing prescription it is. If even a fraction of her plans were ever implemented, the U.S. would be transported back to before the Industrial Revolution. No fossil fuels, no airplanes, no cars, no heat, no air conditioning, no meat, no dairy. Every home and building in the country would have to be retrofitted to comply with her ridiculous demands. There would be “charging stations” everywhere; she does not say where the power to those charging stations would come from. She apparently thinks wind (now provides 1.9%) and solar (now provides 0.5%) can fill the bill. She must think the trucking industry that above all others makes our country work can run on wind or solar; it cannot. When asked how to pay for all this, she suggests printing more money! Has this woman ever considered how groceries and all other merchandise in stores get there? Obviously not.

The first time I ever heard the phrase “as dumb as a rock” was years ago. It was a caller to Larry Elder’s radio program; the caller was talking about Sean Penn, whom the caller knew. It is an apt phrase, and never more than to describe Miss O-C. Boston U, from where she received a degree in economics, should immediately be de-certified and shuttered. No public person has ever displayed more ignorance, not just on economics, but on practically every topic relevant to the public realm. The fact that the media have made her a celebrity far beyond her ability to speak coherently will most likely be her undoing. They will at some point realize their catastrophic mistake and take her down. If they don’t, as the face of the Democratic Party, she will take them down.

Mythology Trumping Facts The president was wrong to malign the criminal-justice system in his State of the Union speech. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/trump-racial-bias-criminal-justice-system

President Trump maligned the criminal-justice system in his State of the Union speech last night. Touting a recent federal law that gives federal judges greater discretion in sentencing violent criminals and drug traffickers, Trump claimed that the previous sentencing regime “wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African-American community.”

The claim that the criminal-justice system is racist is the mantra of left-wing activists the country over. Adopting it for the State of the Union was an unfortunate attempt to score bipartisan political points. The effort has already proven unavailing: Trump and his supporters continue to be charged with racism, while the legitimacy of law enforcement has been undermined.

It is crime, not the punishment of crime, that disproportionately harms the black community. And the demand for strict drug enforcement has always originated most forcefully in the black community. In 1959, Harlem’s New York Age newspaper called for “no leniency for the criminals, the recidivists, the junkies, dope pushers, muggers, prostitutes, or pimps. Clean out this scum—and put them away as long as the law will allow.” New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, now reviled by the elites, were passed in the 1970s because of activism in the black community, as Michael Fortner shows in Black Silent Majority.

The infamous federal crack penalties followed a similar trajectory. It was New York congressman Charles Rangel who initiated the federal crack legislation in 1986 by pointing out crack’s effect on urban youth. Other members of the Congressional Black Caucus agreed. New York congressman Alton Waldon called on his colleagues to increase federal crack penalties: “For those of us who are black this self-inflicted pain is the worst oppression we have known since slavery.”

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman

AVAILABLE ON MARCH 6

Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff–but it’s all true.

The four spies at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel’s existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk, collecting intelligence, and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they’d become. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end the Arab Section would emerge, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.

Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about Israel’s own complicated and fascinating identity. Israel sees itself and presents itself as a Western nation, when in fact more than half the country has Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this story. And, according to Friedman, that goes a long way toward explaining the life and politics of the country, and why it often baffles the West. For anyone interested in real-life spies and the paradoxes of the Middle East, Spies of No Country is an intimate story with global significance.

The tragedy of Venezuela shows us how dangerous Jeremy Corbyn and his acolytes really are By William Hague

https://premium.telegraph.co.uk/newsletter/article4/the-tragedy-of-venezuela-shows

In 2014, John McDonnell, now Labour’s shadow chancellor, said that the socialist regime in Venezuela showed “the contrast between capitalism in crisis and socialism in action”.

In a way he never intended, he has turned out to be right. For the people of that country are now enduring a situation worse than any crisis of capitalism, anywhere in the world, at any time in the last 100 years. Their economy has shrunk by at least half – far worse than the Great Depression or the recent economic woes of Greece.

Three million people have fled the country. Inflation, having reached 1.7 million per cent, has made money worthless. Basic commodities are scarce and hardship widespread. More than half the population are now living in extreme poverty.

Yes, this is socialism in action. This is what happens when you take a promising nation, rich in natural resources and human talent, and subject it to nationalisation, excessive spending, state control of prices and the discouraging of enterprise and foreign investment. These were the policies of the egotistical Hugo Chavez, and his utterly corrupt and tyrannical successor, Nicolas Maduro.

This catastrophic approach was praised endlessly by the current leadership of the Labour Party. Diane Abbott said “it shows another way is possible”.

As for Jeremy Corbyn, he appeared on every possible platform to praise Chavez and support Maduro. On the death of Chavez in 2013, he went out of his way to laud his “inspiring” leadership and to say: “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared”.

In practice, Chavez was one of the world’s most outstanding hypocrites, amassing a fortune estimated at a billion dollars while campaigning as a friend of the poor. Now that most people in Venezuela are desperate for change, there are three charges that can be levelled against Corbyn, McDonnell, Abbott and their acolytes.

The first is that their economic beliefs are verging on madness – if they don’t understand that trying to control the prices of everything in the shops soon leads to severe shortages of everything from food to toilet paper, then their understanding of economics is near zero. A set of policies they were happy to support has led to countless starving people searching for food among the rubbish piled high in the streets. Yet these are the people who would be running our economy if Labour wins the next election.

The 10 Most Insane Requirements Of The Green New Deal The Green New Deal isn’t just un-America, it’s also completely bonkers. David Harsanyi

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/07/ten-most-insane-requirements-green-new-deal/

Note: Ocasio-Cortez’s office has taken down their page describing the Green New Deal.

A number of Democratic Party presidential hopefuls — including Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julián Castro, and Beto O’Rourke, for starters — have already endorsed or expressed support for the “Green New Deal” (GND). Today, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Edward J. Markey dropped details about her plan.

It is not hyperbole to contend that GND is likely the most ridiculous and un-American plan that’s ever been presented by an elected official to voters. Not merely because it would necessitate a communist strongman to institute, but also because the societal cost are unfathomable. The risible historic analogies Markey and Ocasio-Cortez rely on, the building of the interstate highway system or moon landing, are nothing but trifling projects compared to a plan overhauls modernity by voluntarily destroying massive amounts of wealth and technology. That is the GND.

While some of the specifics need to be ironed out, the plan’s authors assure that this “massive transformation of our society” needs some “clear goals and a timeline.” The timeline is ten years. Here are some of the goals:

Ban affordable energy. GND calls for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production, the lifeblood of American industry and life, which includes not only all oil but also natural gas — one of the cheapest sources of American energy, and one of the reasons the United States has been able to lead the world in carbon-emissions reduction.
Eliminate nuclear energy. The GND also calls for eliminating all nuclear power, one of the only productive and somewhat affordable “clean” energy sources available to us, in 11 years. This move would purge around 20 percent of American energy production so you can rely on intermittent wind for your energy needs.
Eliminate 99 percent of cars. To be fair, under the GND, everyone will need to retrofit their cars with Flintstones-style foot holes or pedals for cycling. The authors state that the GND would like to replace every “combustion-engine vehicle” — trucks, airplanes, boats, and 99 percent of cars — within ten years. Charging stations for electric vehicles will be built “everywhere,” though how power plants will provide the energy needed to charge them is a mystery.
Gut and rebuild every building in America. Markey and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going invent in their committee hearings, I guess.
Eliminate air travel. GND calls for building out “highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.” Good luck Hawaii! California’s high-speed boondoggle is already in $100 billion dollars of debt, and looks to be one of the state’s biggest fiscal disasters ever. Amtrak runs billions of dollars in the red (though, as we’ll see, trains will also be phased out). Imagine growing that business model out to every state in America?
A government-guaranteed job. The bill promises the United States government will provide every single American with a job that includes a “family-sustaining wage, family and medical leave, vacations, and a pension.” You can imagine that those left in the private sector would be funding these through some unspecified “massive” taxation. On the bright side, when you’re foraging for food, your savings will be worthless.
Free education for life. GND promises free college or trade schools for every American.
A salubrious diet. The GND promises the government will provide “healthy food” to every American (because there are no beans or lettuce in your local supermarket, I guess).
A house. The GND promises that the government will provide, “safe, affordable, adequate housing” for every American citizen. I call dibs on an affordable Adams Morgan townhouse. Thank you, Ocasio-Cortez.
Free money. The GND aims to provide, and I am not making this up, “economic security” for all who are “unable or unwilling” to work. Just to reiterate: if you’re unwilling to work, the rest of us will have your back.
Bonus insanity: Ban meat. Ocasio-Cortez admits that we can’t get zero emissions in 10 years “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” The only way to get rid of farting cows is to get rid of beef.