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‘I Bet on the Wrong Horse,’ Says an Unrepentant 101-Year-Old Spy Convicted alongside the Rosenbergs in 1953, Morton Sobell still shrugs at communism’s horrors. David Evanier

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-bet-on-the-wrong-horse-says-an-unrepentant-101-year-old-spy-1529707003

Three decades after the Cold War, stories of Russian infiltration may come as a surprise to Americans. But some of us are old enough to remember that Russian skullduggery and espionage have a long history, going back to the inception of the Soviet Union in 1917.

The most infamous chapter was the atomic espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage and executed in June 1953. Even at the time, many people didn’t know there was a third defendant tried with the Rosenbergs. His name was Morton Sobell ; he was convicted and imprisoned for conspiracy to commit espionage. Born half a year before the October Revolution, he is still alive at 101.

I first visited him at his Manhattan apartment in 1982. He had freedom, girlfriends, a Social Security check. My early interviews with him hinted at how much he wanted to let the world know he had been a great spy—but he was torn. Was he a martyr who had helped the Soviets, or a scapegoat for the U.S. government? There was a tension between wanting to do the right thing for the U.S.S.R. by proclaiming his innocence and his egotistical need for attention by making his crimes known.

Julius Rosenberg recruited Mr. Sobell in December 1943 to spy for the Soviet Union. In June 1947, Mr. Sobell was hired by the Reeves Instrument Corp., which was working on ballistic-missile defense systems. The classified information he gave the Soviet Union was later used against America in both Korea and Vietnam.

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Mueller’s Fruit of the Poisonous Tree It makes no difference how honorable he is. His investigation is tainted by the bias that attended its origin in 2016. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/muellers-fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree-1529707087

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation may face a serious legal obstacle: It is tainted by antecedent political bias. The June 14 report from Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, unearthed a pattern of anti-Trump bias by high-ranking officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some of their communications, the report says, were “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but imply a willingness to take action to impact a presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” Although Mr. Horowitz could not definitively ascertain whether this bias “directly affected” specific FBI actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, it nonetheless affects the legality of the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, code-named Crossfire Hurricane.

Crossfire was launched only months before the 2016 election. Its FBI progenitors—the same ones who had investigated Mrs. Clinton—deployed at least one informant to probe Trump campaign advisers, obtained Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court wiretap warrants, issued national security letters to gather records, and unmasked the identities of campaign officials who were surveilled. They also repeatedly leaked investigative information.

Mr. Horowitz is separately scrutinizing Crossfire and isn’t expected to finish for months. But the current report reveals that FBI officials displayed not merely an appearance of bias against Donald Trump, but animus bordering on hatred. Peter Strzok, who led both the Clinton and Trump investigations, confidently assuaged a colleague’s fear that Mr. Trump would become president: “No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” An unnamed FBI lawyer assigned to Crossfire told a colleague he was “devastated” and “numb” after Mr. Trump won, while declaring to another FBI attorney: “Viva le resistance.”

The report highlights the FBI’s failure to act promptly upon discovering that Anthony Weiner’s laptop contained thousands of Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Investigators justified the delay by citing the “higher priority” of Crossfire. But Mr. Horowitz writes: “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on [the] investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”

Similarly, although Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that then-FBI Director James Comey was trying to influence the election, Mr. Comey did make decisions based on political considerations. He told the inspector general that his election-eve decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation was motivated by a desire to protect her assumed presidency’s legitimacy. CONTINUE AT SITE

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Left-Wing Mob Descends on DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen at Her Virginia Home By Debra Heine

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/left-wing-mob-descends-on-dhs-sec-kirstjen-nielsen-at-her-virginia-home/

Three days after a left-wing mob hounded Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen out of a D.C. Mexican restaurant, another group of far-left agitators has harassed her outside her Virginia townhouse.

Early Friday morning, according to the Washington Times, about two dozen protesters from the Soros-linked group CREDO Action held up signs outside the embattled DHS secretary’s home that read “child snatcher,” chanting “no justice, no sleep” and blaring an audio clip of crying immigrant children.

Ms. Nielsen was forced to walk by protesters shouting “Shame!” when she left her house, according to video posted on social media. One man shouted, “You belong in the Hague!” and, “You’re a modern-day Nazi!” as Ms. Nielsen entered her vehicle and left.

Heidi Hess, the co-director of CREDO Action, called Nielsen a “child snatcher” and argued that it’s important to expose the decision-makers in the Trump administration.

“There’s a child snatcher living in Alexandria, Virginia,” Ms. Hess said in a statement. “Rightfully so, there’s a huge amount of attention focused on the border and the detention centers but the people who are making the decisions are here in DC, so it’s important to shine a spotlight on them as well.”

U.S. Secret Service officers and other law enforcement personnel were at the scene during the protest, which lasted about an hour, Fox5 DC reported. CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Haley: ‘Russia Will Ultimately Bear Responsibility for Any Further Escalations in ‎Syria’ By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-russia-will-ultimately-bear-responsibility-for-any-further-escalations-in-%e2%80%8esyria/

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said the pressure is on Russia to stop ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from violating the ceasefire brokered by Jordan, Russia, and the United States.

Syrian regime forces were dropping barrel bombs on opposition-held areas in the southwest part of the country Friday, the first such assault bordering Jordan and the Golan Heights since the U.S. and Russia agreed on the “de-escalation zone” last year.

Abu Bakr al-Hassan, spokesman for the rebel group Jaish al-Thawra, which fights under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that he believes Assad is using the bombardment) to test two things: “the steadfastness of the FSA fighters and the degree of U.S. commitment to the de-escalation agreement in the south.”

Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin, speaking in the pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar, warned Israel — which doesn’t want the Assad-aligned Iranian militias on their border — against intervening, saying the Jewish state has “no justification to carry out any action.”

In a statement today, Haley criticized Assad’s “intensified military operations” including “airstrikes, artillery, barrel bombs, and rocket attacks” which “unambiguously violates ‎the southwest de-escalation arrangement and risks broadening the conflict and exacerbating civilian displacement.” CONTINUE AT SITE

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Fake news: Crying migrant child in photo never separated from her mother By Monica Showalter

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/fake_news_scores_another_one_crying_migrant_child_in_photo_never_separated_from_her_mother.html

Score one for the power of fake news.

We already know it was going on with the manufactured crisis over child separations of people caught breaking U.S. law by entering the country illegally. The policies were Democrat policies, yet Democrats and Jeb Bush-style #NeverTrumps were decrying it as a product of President Trump’s heartlessness, separating parents from children entering illegally as families, in order to keep the children out of their parents’ jail. Yet they were President Obama’s and President Bush’s and President Clinton’s policies, dating to 1997. The press pounded the drumbeat nonstop for days that President Trump was heartless and evil – the same way they did for President Reagan.

Best of all in this feeding frenzy, there were the photos: The crying toddler, crying as toddlers do, wildly, for all the universe to hear them. The big one on that front was the one shot by Getty Images photographer John Moore, showing a one-year old crying in front of Border Patrol agents, as her mother was apprehended for illegal entry and searched for weapons or drugss by the lawmen. The photo was a highly edited one, showing only the huge legs of the neutrally clad, utterly depersonalized Border Patrol officers, and the crying one-year-old, Yanela Sanchez, clad in a brand new bright pink toddler jacket and bright pink, brand new pink sneakers.

Time magazine edited the photo even more impressively, with this much-tweeted magazine cover here. The leftist who posted this example of it, of course viewed it as a cover for the ages:

MEDIA Comments turned off

OMITTED FROM THE TIMES: MARILYN PENN

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

http://politicalmavens.com/

On Thursday, June 21, the Times offered a front page article entitled “Incivility Infests Life in the U.S. on Trump’s Cue” , along with a heads-up about “The Art of Hooking Up” that appears on the front page of its Arts section. That review is of an installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale devoted to the “places and practices of casual sex,” specifically gay hookups with “colorful condoms and other sexual accoutrements” scattered on the floor of the pavilion. Although there are 71 participants in this biennale, in keeping with the Times’ devotion to promoting all things gay, this is the one it chose to highlight. More items deemed newsworthy on that day included violence in Nicaragua, the Taliban killing of 30 in Afghanistan and the omission of “horrific details” from the UN report on Syrian chemical attacks.

Missing from the news altogether was the fact that on June 20th, Hamas fired 45 rockets into Israel, aimed at heavily populated areas near the border, one landing near a kindergarten. This omission is particularly notable since the Times handled Hamas’ storming Israel’s border fence with burning tires and explosive kites with daily front page coverage featuring gruesome pictures of Gazan fatalities and wounded “civilians.” It called this military attack a “protest” and labeled Israel’s retaliatory measures as disproportionate, barely mentioning that the majority of Gaza’s “civilian” activity was performed by Hamas terrorists continuing their calculated use of women and children in lethal activity to arouse international sympathy. As the Arabs have repeatedly stressed, their love of martyrdom and death give them a decided edge over Israeli values of choosing and preserving life.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A timely anniversary of American greatness By Lawrence Haas

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

http://thehill.com/opinion/international/393669-a-timely-anniversary-of-american-greatness
Seventy years ago this coming week, the Soviets blocked all access to West Berlin, prompting President Truman to launch an airlift of food and supplies that saved the city and convinced Josef Stalin to back down 11 months later.

The airlift came amid Truman’s broad-scale reinvention of U.S. foreign policy in which – through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and other initiatives – the United States shed its traditional isolationism and seized global leadership to defend freedom and democracy. In the ensuing decades, the United States fought the Cold War, built a network of alliances, and promoted free markets, all of which helped maintain peace and drive prosperity at home and abroad.

At a time when the United States is disparaging its allies, stroking its adversaries, threatening its alliances, and undermining its trade relationships, Berlin offers a timely reminder of what truly made America great.

After World War II, the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union controlled separate quadrants of Germany. They also controlled separate sections of Berlin, but the city was entirely situated within the Soviet quadrant. As tensions rose over the final status of Germany, so too did fears in Washington that Moscow would seize all of Berlin.

U.S.-Soviet tensions began to reach the boiling point in the spring of 1948. The United States and Britain, which by then had consolidated their zones into “Bizonia,” introduced a new deutschmark for Bizonia and West Berlin, with an eye toward creating a more permanent West Germany.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of Illegal Immigrant Family Separation at the US Border – hoax 28 by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21309/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-illegal-immigrant-family
http://goudsmit.pundicity.com
http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Children are the future of every nation and culture on earth which makes them the most valuable natural resource in the world. Water, air, land, coal, natural gas, phosphorus, oil, minerals, iron, soil, forests and timber are all subjects of worldwide conservation efforts. What about the children??

Wars are fought over natural resources in competition for power and dominance. So it is with the children. The leftist exploitation of illegal immigrant children is a political dirty trick being played for the hearts and minds of the compassionate American electorate. This is how it works.

President Trump’s America-first policies are demonstrably positive for America and threaten the narrative of Obama’s leftist collectivist destruction. President Trump’s insistence on our national sovereignty is an existential threat to Obama’s battle for internationalized globalism. Obama’s promise to transform America has been exposed as a promise to destroy America from within and replace our infrastructure with socialism in preparation for the mother of all collectivism – planetary governance.

The left is exploiting ILLEGAL immigrant children in a desperate attempt to delegitimize President Trump before the midterm elections. A midterm victory is necessary for leftist Democrats to start impeachment proceedings against the President. Tear-jerking appeals for reunification of ILLEGAL immigrant families are completely disingenuous. They are pure political theater – a humanitarian hoax designed to engage compassionate voters and insure a midterm election victory because:

● Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion fell apart and only served to expose serious malfeasance of Obama’s FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Department.

● sensationalized news is a weapon designed to stigmatize Trump and offset his stunning economic victories before the midterm elections

● reunification of families deflect attention away from the damning 6.14.18 IG report recommending more investigations into FBI improprieties during the Clinton email scandal which will ultimately expose Obama’s participation.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UNHRC: World’s Most Inhumane Institution BY: David Isaac

Posted By on June 23rd, 2018

http://freebeacon.com/blog/unhrc-worlds-inhumane-institution/

“The Human Rights Organization is the last place anyone would ever expect to find some of the biggest human rights abusers in history.” This quote, from the 2003 film Bulletproof Monk, proves that even a silly action-comedy can contain basic truths. The United Nations Human Rights Council contains such human rights beacons as China, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Congo. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called it a “cesspool” in her remarks announcing America’s exit, making it the first country to leave in UNHRC’s 12-year history.

Ironically, the U.N. created the Council in 2006 to replace the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which had become hopelessly compromised by anti-Semitism. But only a year after its inception, the Council singled out Israel as the only country to be a permanent item on its agenda, Agenda Item 7.

While critics of the move argue that the United States can do more good by working within the Council, this ignores that after the United States joined, nothing about the Council’s behavior changed. Since the United States became a member in 2008, the number of anti-Israel resolutions has even accelerated. According to UN Watch, the Council condemned Israel on 27 separate occasions in its first four years. By 2015, the number had risen to 62. Israel has received more official condemnations from the U.N. than all the world’s nations combined.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Morocco’s Break with Iran Means By Irina Tsukerman

Posted By on June 22nd, 2018

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/morocco-iran-relations/

Iran’s recent moves against Morocco’s national sovereignty reflect its intention to continue on its path towards global domination by destabilizing pro-Western countries. Tehran is shifting its attention towards Africa, which is less on the Western radar following the American withdrawal from the JCPOA.

Morocco’s decision to sever relations with Iran a week before President Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA may not have been a complete coincidence. Iran’s presence in North Africa has been increasing over time and grew yet more pronounced as the deadline approached for the expected American withdrawal from the JCPOA.

Iran, which is concerned about the future of its interests – global influence, access to natural resources, recruitment of new proxies, the training of existing proxies, and the relocation of illegal conventional and nuclear weapons research – has shifted its attention towards areas that have until recently attracted little scrutiny from the international community, particularly the US. Likewise, in the past few years, Iran has pushed for stronger relations with African countries, including South Africa and Algeria – working to counter Sunni influence through mosques and ideological overtures, but also funding infrastructure, concluding mutually beneficial deals, and arming Shiite militias in West Africa.

Rabat’s break with Tehran came as a shock to much of the international community. Not many have followed events in North Africa and are aware of recent illegal maneuvers by the separatist group Polisario, which claims to represent the Western Sahrawi tribes. Polisario has long been known as a smuggler of small arms to Mauritania and other countries in the region, and in the last decade has been implicated in drug smuggling.