MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

‘They Shall Not Grow Old’: Peter Jackson’s Masterpiece War Memorial By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/they-shall-not-grow-old-peter-jacksons-masterpiece-war-memorial/

Our war memorials are usually made of brass or stone. But Peter Jackson’s astonishing new film They Shall Not Grow Old is a war memorial for the big screen.

Jackson’s film has done the impossible: He has created a time machine. Jackson was given access to the sound and video archives of the Imperial War Museum and tasked with producing a documentary about World War I in time for the centenary commemoration of the armistice on November 11, 2018. (Link to trailer here.)

After playing to sold-out theaters across the United Kingdom in October, the film will show just one more day in the United States – December 27. December 17, the only day the film has shown so far in the United States, saw packed theaters.

Jackson’s film portrays the World War I soldier as you have never seen him: in color, in high definition, and with sound.

They Shall Not Grow Old painstakingly cleans up the old jerky films of the Great War. It removes the blemishes, turns them into clean high definition, and colorizes them with thorough, painstaking accuracy. The film speed is even reset to natural motion, so no more unnatural gaits.

Jackson’s technical wizardry turns the landscapes of France into something vivid, expansive, and apocalyptic.

But it’s the faces of the young soldiers that will haunt you. Instead of the old washed herky-jerky films with their blurry soldiers marching by, Jackson uses modern technology to wipe clean the dust of a century and draw out the real people who endured unendurable trench life.

The faces are so young.

They are the kids down the street. They are the people you see every day in your own life. They gaze at you across the century and change forever the history of the Western Front in your heart.

An officer reads a morale-boosting charge before a company roars into the hell of the Somme in the summer of 1916. Jackson’s filmmakers dug up the original orders from that day and produced a voiceover of an officer using the geographically correct dialect based on the regional unit insignia. Indeed, Jackson employed lip readers and voice actors from the correct regions of the United Kingdom throughout the film to provide dialog anytime onscreen lips move.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum: Hail to Haley Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley not only has lived up to the legacies of other great U.N. ambassadors, she has surpassed them.

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.jns.org/opinion/hail-to-haley/

When Nikki Haley was appointed in November 2016 by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to serve as America’s ambassador to the United Nations, I wrote that there was reason to hope she would live up to the legacies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and John Bolton as “shining beacons in the Midtown Manhattan snake pit.”

Although Haley, the governor of South Carolina at the time, was not well-known beyond the confines of her state, her personal and political history appeared to indicate that she possessed what I called the “kind of clarity on controversial issues that is required in an arena filled with people whose key purpose is to cloud the distinction between good and evil.”

Four months later, when Haley emerged from her first encounter with the U.N. Security Council and blasted its anti-Israel bias, I was even more optimistic that she had what it took “to navigate the Orwellian universe in which the U.N. operates, where Western values are on a lower hierarchical rung than Third World culture, and where a mockery is made of the concept of human rights.”

From that moment on, Haley continued to exceed expectations. She not only served as a proud and fierce defender of American interests in the world, but did so in her own dignified and powerful voice. Indeed, she made the office her own. It is an accomplishment whose significance cannot be overstated.

Her announcement on Oct. 9 that she would be leaving her post at the end of the year was thus a shock and a disappointment, particularly for Israelis. Her popularity in the Jewish state was on full display at this year’s Fourth of July celebration in Tel Aviv, where the mere mention of her name during U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s speech elicited such screeching cheers that one might have mistaken the event for a rock concert.

The ovation was well-deserved. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted upon learning of her resignation, Haley “‎led the uncompromising struggle against hypocrisy at ‎the U.N., and on behalf of the truth and justice of ‎our country.”

Indeed. But that’s not the only extraordinary thing about her. Unlike most people on their way out of a job, she did not slack off for a second. If anything, she upped her game. Her farewell speech at the monthly meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Dec. 18 was just as memorable, if not more, than her previous addresses. The gist of her words—a preview of Trump’s yet-to-be-revealed Mideast peace plan—was that the Palestinians have been abused by their leaders and misled by members of the international community.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

It Was Always About the Wall . By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/12/20/it_was_always_about_the_wall_138971.html

The reason a secure borer wall has not been — and may not be — built is not apprehension that it would not work, but rather real fear that it would work only too well.

There was likely never going to be “comprehensive immigration reform” or any deal amnestying the DACA recipients in exchange for building the wall. Democrats in the present political landscape will not consent to a wall. For them, a successful border wall is now considered bad politics in almost every manner imaginable.

Yet 12 years ago, Congress, with broad bipartisan support, passed the Security Fence of Act of 2006. The bill was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush to overwhelming public applause. The stopgap legislation led to some 650 miles of a mostly inexpensive steel fence while still leaving about two-thirds of the 1,950-mile border unfenced.

In those days there were not, as now, nearly 50 million foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, perhaps nearly 15 million of them illegally.

Sheer numbers have radically changed electoral politics. Take California. One out of every four residents in California is foreign-born. Not since 2006 has any California Republican been elected to statewide office.

The solidly blue states of the American Southwest, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, voted red as recently as 2004 for George W. Bush. Progressives understandably conclude that de facto open borders are good long-term politics.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Alan Dershowitz: Michael Flynn now has three options to stay out of prison

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/alan-dershowitz-michael-flynn-now-has-three-options-to-stay-out-of-prison

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s handling of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing Tuesday on Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI was anything but exemplary. The judge – who has a well-deserved reputation as both tough and fair – made several fundamental errors right at the outset.

First, Sullivan suggested that Flynn might be guilty of treason. This reflects an abysmal ignorance of the governing case law. Nothing Flynn did comes even close to satisfying the strict definition of treason.

The U.S. Constitution states: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same Overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

Flynn admitted he represented Turkey – America’s NATO ally – before he became a federal employee as President Trump’s national security adviser, but said he failed to register until later under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not charge Flynn for failing to register – let alone with the far more serious crime of treason.

But Sullivan blundered by accusing Flynn of having been an unregistered foreign agent while he was serving in the White House, thereby having “sold your country out.” This was flat out wrong, since Flynn stopped working for any foreign government before he became President Trump’s national security adviser when Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Barr Memo Is a Commendable Piece of Lawyering By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/the-barr-memo-is-a-commendable-piece-of-lawyering/

Trump’s attorney-general nominee would help Mueller conclude his work within DOJ guidelines.

It is exactly what we need and should want in an attorney general of the United States: the ability to reason through complex legal questions in a rigorously academic way. Not to bloviate from the cheap seats, but to think these issues through the way a properly functioning Justice Department does: considering them against jurisprudence, statutes, rules, regulations, and Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, with a healthy respect for facts that we do not know or about which we could be wrong — facts that could alter the analysis.

That is precisely what Bill Barr did in June, when he penned an unsolicited memorandum to top Justice Department officials on a matter of immense national significance: the obstruction aspect of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump.

Barr, whom President Trump has nominated to be the next attorney general, was not prejudging the facts. He was addressing the law and Justice Department policy. With great persuasive force, the 19-page memo posits two contentions. First, based on what is publicly known, the special counsel’s theory of obstruction is legally flawed. Second, if a Justice Department investigation is going to be used to take down a democratically elected president, the social cohesion of our body politic demands that it be over a clear, very serious crime, not a novel and aggressive theory of prosecution.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Eagle and the Dragonfly: How Google Threatens Freedom By Mytheos Holt

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/19/the-eagle-and

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s recent congressional testimony capped a deservedly rough year for the embattled search giant. While Pichai largely avoided any major missteps in his testimony—thanks mostly to the technological illiteracy of the questioners—even Google-friendly sources couldn’t help noticing his evasiveness on one key point: the infamous proposed partnership between Google and the Chinese government to build a censored search engine in line with Chinese government ideology—a project ominously code-named “Project Dragonfly.”

Most notably, Pichai absolutely refused to rule out making such a product, instead devolving to corporate doublespeak about being “committed to engagement,” whatever that means. He also tried to downplay Project Dragonfly, characterizing it merely as an “internal product,” rather than something under serious development.

This was wise of him, considering that the reports on what Dragonfly allegedly is being designed to do. According to a suppressed Google internal memo, Dragonfly is being built not only to limit search results, but also to enable the Chinese government to track what every single citizen searches for on the app. In other words, it’s a surveillance tool disguised as a search engine.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Very Model of a Global Green Rorter by Tony Thomas

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-very-model-of-a-global-green-rorter/

That Third World cesspits sent hundreds — nay, thousands — of freeloading delegates to the latest catastrophist gabfest is, sadly, to be expected. But they have something of an excuse: when it comes to living high on the climate dollar, the UN’s Erik Solheim is the gold standard.

From top to bottom, things don’t get more disgusting than at the UN Environment Program, which runs the UN’s anti-emissions campaign. Indeed, UNEP under its director Maurice Strong in 1988 co-founded the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2005 Strong was caught red-handed at the UN with a $US988,000 cheque from a South Korean business man. Strong fled to the safety of Beijing — China has no extradition treaty with the US — and he lived there, honoured and unprosecuted, until his death in 2015.

Life at the top of UNEP is no longer so spectacular, but its latest director-general, Erik Solheim (above), had to resign last month when an internal audit exposed his rorting of travel and lifestyle costs. While preaching against CO2 emissions, he enjoyed aerial globetrotting for 529 days of 668 days (audited) since getting the job in 2016.

More of Solheim later, but let’s take a look now at the underbelly of UNEP’s COP24 at Katowice, a talkfest for 23,000 designed to save the planet and transfer at least $US100 billion a year, as of 2020, from the West to African and other Third World basket-cases. Numbers of these countries displayed their integrity by each flying literally hundreds of freeloaders to Poland, their travel and living costs disbursed from UN funds courtesy of UN donors, including Australia.

Resoures-rich Republic of Guinea in general fits the Trump definition of “a shithole country”. It’s 85% Muslim, 96-98% of women suffer genital mutilation, child marriage and illiteracy rates are among the world’s highest, 5% of women can expect death in childbirth, close to 40% of the population suffers malnutrition, and health threats range from HIV/AIDS to malaria and ebola. Only a quarter of the population has electricity, children are trafficked with impunity for sex and slavery, and after nine years, no security forces have been tried for a 2009 pre-election massacre of 156 people and rape of more than 100 women. Need it be said that the government is monstrously corrupt?

HOMELAND SECURITY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Does China’s Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Missile Threaten U.S. Deterrence? by Debalina Ghoshal

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13443/china-hypersonic-missile

U.S. officials revealed in August that China had test-fired a hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and of thwarting missile-defense systems. About two months earlier, China tested the advanced DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It has a range of 12,000-15,000 km, and is capable of carrying 10 miniaturized nuclear warheads.

China is no doubt assuming that if its ICBMs can reach the United States mainland, they will deter the U.S. from interfering in China’s affairs in the South- and East China Seas.

U.S. officials revealed in August that China had test-fired a hypersonic missile — the Xingkong-2 or Starry Sky-2 — capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and of thwarting missile-defense systems. Although this was the first such test that was openly acknowledged by Beijing, it was, according to the Washington Free Beacon, merely one of many that the U.S. has been monitoring.

About two months earlier, China tested the DF-41 — one of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It has a range of 12,000-15,000 km, and is capable of carrying 10 miniaturized nuclear warheads, rather than a single large one.

These miniaturized nuclear warheads on a single ballistic missile are referred to as “multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles” (MIRVs). MIRV-ing a missile enables it to counter enemy missile-defense systems. Because the DF-41 uses solid rather than liquid fuel — as does the DF-5 ICBM — it is more mobile and its launching requires less preparation time. Although it can be dispatched from mobile launchers, it can also be launched from silos. Over the years, China has developed dummy silos — to confuse the enemy and force it to have to distinguish between real and fake ones.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

From Iraq to Gaza, from Egypt to Syria, fewer Christians in the Middle East. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272250/obamas-christmas-genocide-daniel-greenfield

This Christmas, there will be fewer Christians celebrating in their homes in the Middle East than ever before.

Before Obama, Nineveh Plains hosted 90,000 Christians. Today, it’s under 40,000.

Nineveh is one of the first cities mentioned in the Bible. The Nineveh Plains are the heartland of Syriac Christianity. But now the plains are barren with ruined churches and deserted homes in formerly Christian towns and cities. And that same story repeats itself across Iraq where 81% of Christians have disappeared.

In Mosul alone, over 100,000 Christians were displaced as Jihadists marked their doors with an “N” for Nazarene. From cities to small towns, the end of the year bears witness to a Christian genocide.

In 2008, there were an estimated 700,000 Christians in Iraq, today estimates hover between 250,000 and 300,000. While ISIS is most directly associated with terror against Christians, most Jihadist groups, including those backed by Obama, intimidated, robbed and tortured them.

In January 2014, Obama dismissed ISIS as a “jayvee” team. That summer, the team took Qaraqosh and its surrounding villages, including Bartella. The Christians were given a choice between converting, paying Jizya, the traditional Dhimmi tax that Muslims impose on non-Muslims under Islamic law, and “death by the sword.”

The Shiite government finally took back Bartella, but now its Christians have found themselves under the thumb of the Shabak, a Shiite cult, whose soldiers that are part of the Shiite Jihadist Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) backed by Iran. The Christians of the Nineveh Plains that had been displaced by Sunni Jihadists backed by Turkey and Qatar are now being displaced by a Shiite Jihadist cult backed by Iran.

While the Obama administration backed the Pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and its Shiite militias, it discouraged the Americans who had volunteered to come and help protect Assyrian Christians. Congressional efforts to protect Christians were likewise stymied by the Obama administration and by State Department personnel in the region who refused to act on Congressional mandates.

The situation in the Nineveh Plains highlights the larger dilemma for the Christians in the region. As a middle class minority, instability turns Christians into immediate Jihadist targets. When Shiite and Sunni Muslims fight, they both rob the Christians. And when the fighting dies down, the Muslims go back to some version of the status quo, while the Christians lose what little they were trying to protect.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada Reveals a Third Citizen Detained by China Trudeau says latest case doesn’t fit pattern of others following arrest of Huawei CFO in Vancouver By Paul Vieira

Posted By on December 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadian-government-is-aware-of-another-citizen-detained-in-china-11545227386

OTTAWA—Canada revealed a third Canadian national in just over a week has been detained in China since the arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, of Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that this new case appears to differ from the detention last week of two Canadians—a former diplomat, Michael Kovrig, and an entrepreneur, Michael Spavor, with ties to North Korea—who are both reportedly being held on national security grounds.

Security experts and China watchers say they believe the arrests are meant to punish Canada for its role in the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, and persuade Ottawa to release her.

“We are looking into the details of this most recent [case] that doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of the previous two,” Mr. Trudeau said at a press conference.

Later, he said the case of the third Canadian detained appeared to deal with what he described as routine issues, without elaborating. In contrast, Mr. Trudeau said, Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor “were accused of serious crimes.”