NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anti-Trump bias at FBI a fatal flaw of Mueller investigation By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 4th, 2017

The credibility of Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation of Donald Trump took two huge hits in the last 24 hours, as it is now an open question whether the FBI can conduct an unbiased probe into the allegations against the president.

First, it’s been revealed that one of Mueller’s chief investigators was fired for exchanging anti-Trump texts with a mistress who is a top lawyer in the bureau. Peter Strzok, a former deputy director for counterintelligence at the FBI was removed earlier this year and now, the inspector general is looking into other “politically sensitive cases” that Strzok was involved in, including the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Strzok was also FBI liaison with the CIA.

Also, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes issued an angry letter to the FBI demanding to know why he and his committee were kept in the dark about the firing of Strzok. Taken together, the picture that emerges of the Mueller probe is one of a fatal anti-Trump bias that should disqualify Mueller – and the FBI – from carrying out what is supposed to be a non-partisan, independent, and unbiased investigation.

Byron York:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller’s investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI’s human resources office — an obvious demotion — in July.

The Post reported that Strzok and Page exchanged text messages that “expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton.”

Word of the messages and the affair were news to Nunes, even though the committee had issued a subpoena that covered information about Strzok’s demotion more than three months ago. The committee’s broadly worded subpoena for information related to the so-called Trump dossier went to the FBI and DOJ on Aug. 24. In follow-up conversations on the scope of the subpoena, committee staff told the FBI and DOJ that it included information on the circumstances of Strzok’s reassignment.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Hillary Mole By Daniel John Sobieski

Posted By on December 4th, 2017

How objective can an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email investigation be when the FBI agent who played a lead role was removed from it this summer for texting his pro-Hillary and anti-Trump sympathies? And why does House Intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes have to read about it in the New York Times and the Washington Post? As Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner:

House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes has issued an angry demand to the FBI and Department of Justice to explain why they kept the committee in the dark over the reason Special Counsel Robert Mueller kicked a key supervising FBI agent off the Trump-Russia investigation.

Stories in both the Washington Post and New York Times on Saturday reported that Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the original FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia matter, and then a key role in Mueller’s investigation, and who earlier had played an equally critical role in the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, was reassigned out of the Mueller office because of anti-Trump texts he exchanged with a top FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair. Strzok was transferred to the FBI’s human resources office — an obvious demotion — in July.

Are we to believe that Strzok was diligently and impartially examining evidence related to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump while being unable to contain his anti-Trump bias? Is he the only Hillary mole? Just look at Robert Mueller’s staff and James Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton after the infamous tarmac meeting between AG Loretta Lynch and unindicted conspirator in Uranium One William Jefferson Clinton. Stop when you detect a pattern.

This news comes as House Republicans, tired of leaks and finding out about things in the legacy media, are moving to find both the FBI and the DOJ in contempt of Congress for failing to provide requested material:

U.S. House Republicans are moving to bring a Contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray for stonewalling the production material related to the Russia-Trump probes and other matters.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Left Sets Honduras on Fire Socialists rampage through the country after an apparent election loss.By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Posted By on December 4th, 2017

Hillary Clinton’s favorite Central American was back in the news this week, as Honduras painstakingly counted ballots in front of international observers and tried to discern, with utmost transparency, the winner of the Nov. 26 presidential election.

Amid the tension, left-wing candidate Salvador Nasralla cried fraud and called for an uprising. Soon, like a bad centavo, pro-Chávez Honduran former President Manuel Zelaya turned up in the midst of one angry mob.

Recall that in 2009 Mr. Zelaya was kicked out of the country, with the support of his own party, for violating the constitution. Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state, tried and failed to force Honduras to take Mr. Zelaya back. Last week he was seen again, wearing his signature cowboy hat and leading a bunch of hooligans trying to break into the warehouse where the electoral authorities had stored ballots and tally sheets from around the country for counting. The raid did not succeed, but the incident captured the spirit of Zelaya-Nasralla politics.

Mr. Nasralla, a former game-show host, ran against incumbent center-right President Juan Orlando Hernández. By Friday it looked like Mr. Hernández had narrowly won. Mr. Nasralla seemed sure of it too. That’s when he announced that his supporters would stay in the streets for years in protest unless he was declared the winner. With no concession, the uncertainty dragged on. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Anti-Israel Activists Subvert a Scholarly Group The American Studies Association boycotted the Jewish state. It wasn’t by popular demand. By Jesse M. Fried and Eugene Kontorovich

Posted By on December 4th, 2017

Emails unearthed in a federal lawsuit appear to show that the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israel was orchestrated by a small cadre of academics who infiltrated the ASA’s leadership to demonize the Jewish state.

The ASA website says the scholarly group “promotes the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history in a global context,” but in December 2013 it endorsed an academic boycott of Israel. The ASA’s leadership, called the National Council, backed the boycott resolution and put it to a membership vote. A third of the members voted, and two-thirds of those endorsed the resolution.

Last year four ASA members sued the organization, alleging the boycott violated its bylaws, the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act, and laws prohibiting nonprofits from exceeding their chartered purposes. Even putting legality aside, the boycott was out of step with the principle of academic freedom. The boycott generated an immediate rebuke from the executive council of the Association of American Universities.

The ASA sought to have the suit thrown out, arguing that legal challenges violate the group’s First Amendment rights—a claim commonly made by Israel boycotters. A federal judge rejected that argument in March and allowed the case to proceed.

A central figure in the boycott’s adoption was Jasbir Puar, an associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, according to emails cited in a public filing by the plaintiffs in the case. The emails appear to show that after joining the ASA’s nominating committee in 2010, Ms. Puar actively tried to stack the National Council with boycott backers.

“Jasbir is nominating me and [University of New Mexico professor] Alex Lubin for the Council and she suggests populating it with as many supporters as possible,” reads a late 2012 email from Sunaina Maira, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Davis.

Ms. Puar appears to confirm the strategy in an email from the same time period. “I think we should prepare for the longer-term struggle by populating elected positions with as [many] supporters as possible,” she wrote. By the end of Ms. Puar’s term on the nominating committee in 2013, seven of the ASA’s 12 National Council members were public supporters of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “In my conversations with Jasbir it’s clear that the intent of her nominations was . . . to build momentum for BDS,” wrote Mr. Lubin in late 2012.

The emails suggest that secrecy was part of the strategy. As nominees sought election to leadership in late 2012, many explicitly agreed to hide their anti-Israel agenda from the ASA’s voting members. “I feel it might be more strategic not to present ourselves as a pro-boycott slate,” Ms. Maira wrote. “I would definitely suggest not specifying BDS, but emphasizing support for academic freedom, etc,” wrote David Lloyd, a professor of English at the University of California, Riverside.

But Nikhil Singh, a New York University professor of social and cultural analysis and history, cautioned Mr. Lloyd, Ms. Maira and others against subterfuge: “I think that not revealing something this important and intentional and then hoping later to use the American Studies Association national council as a vehicle to advance our cause will not work and may well backfire, because it will lack legitimacy.”

The warning went unheeded. Only one BDS supporter running for a seat on the National Council mentioned his support for a boycott resolution in his candidate statement. He lost. Those, who hid their support won. More recent Israel-boycott campaigns at larger academic organizations like the Modern Language Association have failed.

Emails cited in the court filings also show that ASA boycott supporters coordinated with outside anti-Israel activists, such as Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement. In the run-up to the vote, ASA leaders sent materials to Mr. Barghouti—who has no obvious previous connection to the group—and other anti-Israel activists before distributing them to the membership. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lois Lerner’s Secrets The former IRS official wants a court to seal her testimony.

Posted By on December 4th, 2017

If only the National Security Agency were as good at keeping secrets as Lois Lerner. When news that the IRS had targeted conservative groups led to congressional hearings, the former director of the Exempt Organizations division declared her innocence and then clammed up. Now she and her former IRS associate, Holly Paz, are asking a federal judge to seal forever their depositions in a lawsuit that the IRS settled last month for $3.5 million.

Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz say they or their families have endured harassment or death threats. But Edward Greim, the attorney for the roughly 400 tea-party clients who sued, notes in reply that the last threat Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz cited was from early 2014.

Leave aside that the usual way of dealing with threats or harassment is to notify police or the FBI—not to keep information about an abuse of power by public officials from the public. Every other party is united for disclosure: the defense (i.e., the government, which has admitted wrongdoing and apologized); the plaintiffs; and the Cincinnati Enquirer, which has filed a motion to lift the seal.

In his initial decision in May, federal Judge Michael Barrett said he could see the wisdom of confining access to the testimony to the lawyers during discovery. But he added that others could ask to lift the order later, and Ms. Lerner and Ms. Paz would then “bear the burden of overcoming the presumption of access to court documents.”

That moment is here. American taxpayers who will fork out $3.5 million for Ms. Lerner’s actions have a right to hear how she justified what she did at the IRS.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kuwaiti Writer Abdullah Al-Hadlaq: Israel Is a Legitimate State, Not an Occupier; There Was No Palestine; I Support Israel-Gulf-U.S. Alliance to Annihilate Hizbullah

Posted By on December 3rd, 2017

Kuwaiti writer Abdullah Al-Hadlaq said that Israel was an independent and legitimate sovereign state and that there was no occupation, but instead, “a people returning to its promised land.” “When the State of Israel was established in 1948, there was no state called ‘Palestine,'” said Al-Hadlaq. He recalled that he had once written: “I wished that we could be like the people of the State of Israel, who rallied, down to the very last one, to defend a single Israeli soldier.” In the interview, which was broadcast by the Kuwaiti Alrai TV channel on November 19, Al-Hadlaq further said that he believed in peaceful coexistence with Israel and envisioned a three-way alliance of Israel, the Arab Gulf states, and America “in order to annihilate Hizbullah beyond resurrection.” The interview caused an uproar in the Arab media and social networks.

Host: “What is Israel? What does it represent? Is it a state? A group? A terrorist organization? An entity? How can we define it before we go into our topic of discussion?”

Abdullah Al-Hadlaq: “Like it or not, Israel is an independent sovereign state. It exists, and it has a seat at the United Nations, and most peace-loving and democratic countries recognize it. The group of states that do not recognize Israel are the countries of tyranny and oppression. For example, North Korea does not recognize Israel, but this does nothing to detract from Israel or from the fact of its existence, whether we like it or not. The State of Israel has scientific centers and universities the likes of which even the oldest and most powerful Arab countries lack. So Israel is a state and not a terror organization. As I was saying, it is an independent country…”

Host: “Is it a legitimate country?”

Abdullah Al-Hadlaq: “Yes, it is legitimate. It received its legitimacy from the United Nations.

[…]

“My colleague called Israel ‘a plundering entity,’ but this may be refuted both in terms of religion and politics.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Another Muslim Zionist Speaks Out Video

Posted By on December 3rd, 2017

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2017/12/another-muslim-zionist-speaks-out.html The trend exemplified by this Kuwaiti writer and this one finds favour with this Pakistani Muslim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdMstCuV-LQ

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

GOP Senate Opens ANWR to Oil Drilling By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 3rd, 2017

As part of the tax reform bill passed by the Senate, Republicans included an amendment that would open a small part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil exploration.

ANWR comprises nearly 20 million acres of pristine wilderness. The bill authorizes drilling in less than 10% of that area.

Washington Examiner:

“This small package offers a tremendous opportunity for Alaska, for the Gulf Coast, and for all of our nation,” Murkowski said before the vote. “We have authorized responsible energy development in the 1002 area.”

Democrats have long been successful in blocking Republican efforts to allow energy exploration in a 1.5 million acre section of the 19.6 million acres of ANWR known as the “1002 area,” where billions of barrels of crude oil lie beneath the coastal plain.

But this year, Republican control of Congress and the White House spurred Senate Republicans to consider the provision with the tax reform measure under budget reconciliation rules that allow it to avoid a filibuster and pass with a simple majority vote.

Senate Democrats have blasted the process Republicans used to advance the ANWR bill, considering it an unfair way to change the character of a refuge that has been protected since 1960.

Democrats and environmentalists say drilling would harm the ecosystem of what they describe as one of the wildest places left on earth, inhabited by animals such as polar bears, caribou, and arctic foxes.

Opposition to drilling in ANWR has been irrational. Even Democrats have to admit that the tiny fraction of the reserve that will be opened to development will barely impact the ecosystem or any animal, rare or not.

Environmentalists oppose opening ANWR because, well, fossil fuels. When 90% of the wilderness set aside by Congress will be protected and preserved, the argument that oil exploration will destroy the land doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

To get the oil from the refuge to the coast would require construction of a pipeline. But we’ve built pipelines in Alaska before with little or no impact to the ecosystem.

The “best” argument made by the greens for not drilling in ANWR is the impact on one of our largest Caribou herds.

Science:

To the west of the Arctic refuge, in the heart of the North Slope oil fields, researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that, in the 1980s and 1990s, the Central Arctic caribou herd shifted calving areas away from well concentrations. And in longterm studies of the Porcupine herd (named after the Porcupine River in the Yukon and Alaska), Johnson found that even decades after oil development in the Canadian portion of its range, caribou were still avoiding areas within 6 kilometers of roads and wells.

But it is not clear how those behavioral changes might affect population size. “We get into a more nuanced conversation: ‘Does this mean there are going to be a lot fewer caribou, [or] a little fewer?’” Johnson says. “What [development] means for population dynamics is the million-dollar question.” CONTINUE AT SITE

BOOKS Comments turned off

BEN ROTHKO REVIEWS “THE STORY OF HEBREW” BY LEWIS GLINERT

Posted By on December 3rd, 2017

This review originally appeared in The Jewish Link of New Jersey.

Many people have likely heard the claim that Hebrew is the only
ancient language to be in active use today. While speakers of Farsi
and Chinese may disagree,Hebrew’s resurgence and resurrection may be
the linguistic equivalent of a miracle. From being a peripheral
language in far off Israel a little over a century ago, it’s now a
vibrant language spoken by millions across different continents.

In a fascinating new book, The Story of Hebrew (Princeton University
Press 978-0691153292), Dr. Lewis Glinert, professor of Hebrew Studies
at Dartmouth College, provides a history of the Hebrew language from
biblical times to today. While written by an Ivy League professor and
published by Princeton University Press, this is nonetheless a most
readable and highly engaging book.

In addition, knowledge of Hebrew is not needed to enjoy this
remarkable book. At Dartmouth, Glinert teaches a class From Genesis
to Seinfeld: Jewish Humor and its Roots. As to his dry sense of humor,
he has written an entire book about Hebrew, and aside from a few
illustrations, not used a single Hebrew character. The truth is that
this is not a book about what the Hebrew words mean. Rather it is
about what the Hebrew language has meant to the people who have
possessed it.

The book tells two stories. First, how Hebrew has been used in Jewish
life for the past 3,500 years; how it was left for dead, only to come
back. The other story is that of how Jews and Christians have
conceived of Hebrew, and invested it with a symbolic power far beyond
normal language.

A few of the many questions that Glinert addresses are: how did Hebrew
figure into the sense of identity of the Jews, how did that
relationship change with the advent of Zionism and their love affair
with the Hebrew language, what kept Hebrew from dying out completely,
and perhaps most importantly: what can its remarkable story teach
about the working of human language in general.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Robert Fulford: Mattel thinks hijab Barbie is cute and progressive. It’s not The hijab is more than a way of dressing. It’s a symbol that often stands for an array of social customs and regulations

Posted By on December 3rd, 2017

In a burst of bogus feminism and commercial ambition, Mattel Inc., the global doll-maker, has announced that in 2018 it will market a Barbie doll wearing a hijab. Barbie dolls rarely impinge on political and social issues but this one is so unsettling that it evokes a wide range of responses.

We have to understand that Mattel likes to believe Barbie dolls positively influence the feelings of girls and help to point them toward the possibilities of adult life. That’s a self-justifying idea that runs through the company’s bloodstream. It suggests that Mattel serves a social purpose while selling its products.

After all, Barbies aren’t just princesses and wonder women. You can buy Barbies wearing practical clothing for offices, “chic summer suits” and camel-hair coats. This is Mattel’s bow to feminists who believe little girls should be discouraged from dwelling on fantasies of the future: they should learn, as soon as possible, the truth about what they are likely to become.

For girls with higher aspirations, you can get Barbies clothed in a cocktail dress, a classic black dress, or an Oscar de la Renta ball gown. One Barbie has a Hudson’s Bay jacket and another displays an Andy Warhol painting on the front of her dress.

Attached to the news about the hijab Barbie is a line from Mattel about “Continuing to inspire girls to be anything.” Girls are to become whatever their desires and talents can make them. Elsewhere, such as in admiring quotations from Glamour magazine in the Mattel publicity, the same idea appears.