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February 2018

Cape Town May Dry Up Because of an Aversion to Israel The Palestinian Authority accepts the Jewish state’s help on water projects. South Africa refuses it. By Seth M. Siegel

Cape Town, South Africa, has designated July 9 “Day Zero.” That’s when water taps throughout the city are expected to go dry, marking the culmination of a three-year drought. South African officials aren’t responsible for the lack of rain, but inept management and a devotion to anti-Israel ideology needlessly made the situation worse.

Even before Israel declared statehood in 1948, its leaders focused on water security as closely as they did military preparedness. Mostly desert, Israel would need adequate water to thrive. In the decades since, the country has developed an apolitical, technocratic form of water governance.

Conservation is taught from kindergarten. Market pricing of water encourages everyone to waste nothing. Sensitive prices have driven innovation. Israelis helped create desalination, drip irrigation and the specialized reuse of treated wastewater in agriculture. Although Israel is in the fifth year of a drought, today its citizens can reliably count on abundant water.

Cape Town is another story. Its reservoirs began receding more than two years ago. This problem turned into a crisis because of subsidy-distorted water pricing, inefficient irrigation, and a lack of desalination facilities and a long-term plan. In 2016 officials from Israel’s Foreign Ministry recognized the problem and alerted national, provincial and local governments in South Africa. Israel has trained water technicians in more than 100 countries, and it offered to bring in desalination experts to help South Africa.

South African officials ignored or rebuffed the no-strings Israeli proposal. It would be admirable if South Africa’s rejection came from a can-do attitude, in a statement of national self-sufficiency. But it appears to have been for ideological reasons that South African officials wanted no help from Jerusalem.

Thomas vs. Sotomayor A Supreme Court exchange illuminates judicial differences.

A unanimous Supreme Court struck a blow for the plain reading of the law on Wednesday, but a pair of dueling concurrences deserve broader attention for what they say about the different methods of legal interpretation on the High Court today.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the full Court in rebuking the Securities and Exchange Commission for reinterpreting the Dodd-Frank Act despite the clear text of the statute (Digital Realty Trust v. Somers ). Paul Somers sued Digital Realty Trust , claiming protection as a whistleblower for filing a complaint about a securities violation. He might have sued under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law that protects whistleblowers if they file complaints with the Labor Department within 180 days.

But instead he sued in federal court under Dodd-Frank, which lets whistleblowers who are retaliated against sue and receive double back pay. The problem is that Dodd-Frank defines a whistleblower as someone who provides information about a securities violation to the SEC. Mr. Somers didn’t do that, but the SEC claimed that didn’t matter because Congress intended the law to protect people like Mr. Somers no matter the law’s text.

Citing precedent, Justice Ginsburg rightly wrote that “‘When a statute includes an explicit definition, we must follow that definition,’ even if it varies from a term’s ordinary meaning. This principle resolves the question before us.” She then went on an extended and needless tour of congressional intent that may invite legal mischief down the road.

What is the FBI hiding in its war to protect Comey? Tom Fitton

As the James Comey saga continues to unfold, the James Comey legend continues to unravel. The more we learn about his involvement in the deep state’s illicit targeting of President Trump, the more reason the American people have to question both his motives and his management as director of the FBI, the now-disgraced agency he headed before Trump fired him on May 9, 2017. Comey has left a trail of suspicious activities in his wake.

Comey now looms large over a burgeoning constitutional crisis that could soon overshadow Watergate at its worst. To deepen the crisis even further, it now appears some of Comey’s former FBI and Justice Department colleagues continue to protect him from accountability.

Three suspicious activities stand out, all intertwined: the so-called Comey Memos, Comey’s controversial testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee and Comey’s book deal.
After Comey was fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017, he arranged to give The New York Times a Feb. 14, 2017, memorandum he had written about a one-on-one conversation with Trump regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The New York Times published a report about the memo on May 16, 2017. Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed the following day.

On June 8, 2017, Comey testified under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he stated he authored as many as nine such memos. Regarding the Flynn memo, Comey admitted: “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter [for The New York Times]. I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

How The Media Enable Rep. Adam Schiff’s Russian Bot Conspiracy Theories For more than a year, Adam Schiff has been hopping to all the TV stations claiming, without benefit of specifics, the existence of a vast conspiracy between President Trump and Russia.By Mollie Hemingway

Last week, Lawrence Tribe suggested, without evidence, that a plane crash in Russia was related to fallout from the Russian dossier operation orchestrated and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Tribe is a Harvard Law professor, a passionate critic of President Donald Trump, and a known Russia conspiracy theorist. So it should have been surprising that the same day he was tweeting out plane crash conspiracy theories, he also argued in a “facially absurd” op-ed in The New York Times that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., should be charged with obstruction of justice — no, really — for performing congressional oversight of the FBI.

Then again, it was only last May that The New York Times published another Russia conspiracy theorist named Louise Mensch talking about Russian hacking. Yes, the same Louise Mensch who believes that the “Marshal of the Supreme Court” told Trump about his impeachment and that Steve Bannon faces the death penalty for espionage. (Forget it, she’s rolling.)

When it comes to the Russia-Trump collusion theory, a bit more journalistic rigor is in order. One of the most enthusiastic promulgators of a Russia-Trump collusion theory is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member on Nunes’ House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. For more than a year, Schiff has been hopping around all the TV stations claiming, without benefit of specifics, the existence of a vast conspiracy between Trump and Russia.

Leaks from his committee that advance this theory frequently get published, even if they fail to hold up under scrutiny. But even his public actions shouldn’t be accepted so uncritically.
Experts Refute The Russia Charge

On January 23, public interest in the memo from the majority of the intelligence committee had been high, as evidenced by the demand to #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag on Twitter and Facebook. When the hashtag went viral, Schiff had a theory that it wasn’t the American public that was interested in abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Nope, it was Russians! Secret Russian bots were trying to make it look like Americans were interested in FISA abuse against a Trump campaign affiliate.

Vote of confidence in Israel’s brainpower Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

1. Intel has announced a $4.5BN-$5BN expansion of its southern Israel plant (in Kiryat Gat) – which is one of the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing facilities – for the next three years, following a 2016-2017 $6BN upgrade of the same facility. The two rounds of investment are, probably, related to Intel’s March, 2017 $15.3BN acquisition of Mobileye, the Jerusalem-based developer of advanced vision and autonomous-driving assistance systems. Intel acquired eight Israeli companies.

Intel employs, in Israel, 11,000 persons (in addition to Mobileye’s 1,000 employees) in three research & development centers and one manufacturing plant, which exported $3.7BN in 2017 (before the current expansion). Since 1974, when Intel launched its Israeli operations, it invested $35BN in Israel, and exported $50BN from Israel.

Since 1998, “Intel Capital” has invested in 18 Israeli startups.

During the last decade, Intel’s total purchase of Israeli goods and services was $10BN (Globes Business Daily, February 19, 2018).

2. Israel has attracted over 300 global high tech companies due to its brain-power, which has been enhanced by a “do-or-die” state of mind – militarily, economically, educationally, agriculturally, irrigation-wise and balance of trade-wise, yielding game-changing, ground-breaking solutions and technologies.

3. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway expressed confidence in Israel’s (ailing-recovering) Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, buying 1.8% of its stock for $358MN, which surged Teva’s share price 8.64% on the NYSE (Globes, Feb. 15).

4. According to Bloomberg (Feb. 19), a 10 year, $15BN deal to export Israeli natural gas to Egypt is about to be concluded between Noble Energy and Delek Drilling, the exporters, and Dolphinus Holdings, the importer, enhancing the Egypt-Israel cooperation, and advancing Egypt’s ambition to become a regional energy hub. It follows the 2016, 15 year $10BN natural gas agreement with Jordan.

First Do No Harm – Medical Ethics vs Transgender Politics By Marilyn Penn

http://politicalmavens.com/

The Mt Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery has induced lactation in a transgender woman who has not had sex-reassignment surgery or breast augmentation; in other words, a biologically correct man who was taking hormones and wanted to nurse the baby born to ze’s partner who is female but didn’t want to nurse. The staff at Mt. Sinai advised this couple on how to acquire and use domperidone, a drug that is not FDA approved, not available in the U.S. and one for which the FDA has issued warnings against serious cardiac problems including death. The team leaders who directed this experimental procedure are an endocrinologist who is committed to the health of the LGBT community and a nurse-practitioner who is an activist transgender woman herself.

After treatment, the patient was able to nurse the newborn infant for a period of six weeks. This “breakthrough” case was written up and published in Transgender Health which admits that it remains unclear whether this fluid is nutritionally equivalent to the milk produced by biological birth mothers. The NY Times (Feb 16) describes at length the advantages of breast feeding – including healthier babies with higher I.Q.’s , better bonding with the mother (in this case, a biological male) and even money-saving on formula. There is no mention of how much the transgender nursing woman spends on hormones compared with infant formula, but ze continues to use a testosterone blocker which is excreted in human milk.

Aside from noting that “some” called this experiment dangerous and disturbing, the Times does not elaborate on whether the “some” are medical professionals or simply ordinary people who may be astounded at the hospital’s sponsorship and supervision of an experiment using a drug considered unsafe and forbidden for sale in the U.S. Furthermore, the Times never questions whether a human infant is the right subject for such experimentation which may be toxic for adults. Do any of us still remember the outrage over testing mascara on innocent rabbits? Are some of us old enough to remember the consequences of using a popular drug prescribed by doctors for morning sickness in pregnant women – thalidomide? Or a drug used by pregnant women which resulted in ovarian cancer in their daughters decades later? Shouldn’t this controversial liquid have been fed to a lab animal for a significant period of time before contemplating feeding it to a human? Are researchers who are activists or medically committed to the needs and wants of the LGBT community the most objective people to weigh the potential harm to an infant versus the political gain to the transgender movement?

There is a world of difference between what adults choose to put into their bodies with questionable medical repercussions and the ethics of doctors supervising experiments which directly impact infants who are fragile and cannot give consent. We are not told what the Ethics Board of Mt. Sinai has to say – perhaps that will await the first lawsuit which is sure to come.

GLAZOV GANG: THE MEDIA’S ROMANCE WITH NORTH KOREA JAMIE GLAZOV

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/02/21/glazov-gang-the-medias-romance-with-north-korea/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and editor of The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discusses The Media’s Romance With North Korea,unveiling how the Left’s love affair with totalitarian monsters continues full speed ahead.

Don’t miss it!

Obama’s Meddling in Foreign Elections: Six Examples By Steve Baldwin (June 2017)

Why such silence from the media that obsesses over alleged Russian interference in our elections?

While the media obsess over an alleged Russian conspiracy to collude with Donald Trump to affect America’s 2016 presidential election, what about Obama’s interference in the elections of other countries? Most Americans have no idea that President Obama meddled in elections all over the world. And apparently, the media decided there’s no reason for Americans to know about this illegal activity.

Indeed, in 2016, the Los Angeles Times did a story on how America has interfered with other nation’s elections in the past, but they stopped short of mentioning the various foreign elections Obama tried to influence. But the same article reports that Obama “slapped Russia with new penalties for meddling in the U.S. Presidential election… by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails.” Hypocrisy check, anyone?

Since that article appeared last December, it has essentially become fake news. The Republican National Committee was never successfully hacked into and evidence is mounting that the DNC was not hacked by Russia. Not only has Wiki Leaks itself insisted Russia was not the source, but a number of cyber security experts, including McAfee antivirus developer John McAfee, disputes this. McAfee says the hack on the DNC “used a piece of malware a year and half old” and was “not an organized hack and certainly not a nation-state that did this.” Moreover, the DNC has never allowed the FBI or any government agency to analyze the computers in question.

Nevertheless, Obama, operating on unconfirmed evidence, abruptly imposed new sanctions on Russia. Many observers believe he did so in order to set the stage for the left to initiate its phony Russian-Trump collusion narrative to be used to remove Trump from office or to defeat him in 2020.

Meddling in other’s elections is a violation of international law. In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly reaffirmed this with a resolution stating: “No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal […] affairs of any other State.” And the International Court of Justice also considers such intervention to be illegal. More importantly, U.S. law prohibits the use of tax dollars to influence foreign elections.

Nevertheless, the violation of both American and international law did not stop Obama from intervening repeatedly in the elections of other nations. Moreover, most of Obama’s meddling was known by many foreign correspondents and if it was reported at all, it was downplayed. Most certainly, the media did not condemn it nor drop hints about impeaching Obama.

So let’s get this straight. The media is hysterical about a flimsy conspiracy theory that Russia colluded with Trump to steal the 2016 election but was mostly silent about Obama’s efforts to control the outcome of elections in at least six countries during his tenure. Media bias, anyone? Let’s review the examples we know about:

UK: Max Hill, The Queen’s Counsel for Political Correctness by A. Z. Mohamed

Hill’s aim to ban the term “Islamist terrorism” indicates that political correctness is more important to him than strengthening Britain’s counter-terrorist efforts.

His recommendation comes despite the fact that Hill himself, whose official title is Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, referred to the “threats from Islamist terrorism” in his first report, released in January.

Britain’s terrorism watchdog, Max Hill QC (Queen’s Counsel), recently told a parliamentary committee that it is “fundamentally wrong to attach the word ‘terrorism’ to any of the world religions,” and suggested that the term “Daesh-inspired terrorism” should be used instead of “Islamist terrorism” to refer to attacks carried out by Muslims (“Daesh” is the Arabic acronym for ISIS). His recommendation comes despite the fact that Hill himself, whose official title is Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, referred to the “threats from Islamist terrorism” in his first report, released in January. In that first report, Hill also argued that “what [Islamic terrorists] claim to do in the name of religion is actually born from an absence of real understanding about the nature of the religion they claim to follow.” How impressive that he knows more about their religion than they do, despite the fact that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, received a PhD in Koranic Studies from Saddam University for Islamic Studies in 2007.

Although Hill’s statements ostensibly put him at odds with Prime Minister Theresa May, she too has mystifyingly called terrorism “a perversion of Islam.”

There are two problems with this expression of political correctness. One is that although the Quran and Sunnah contain inherently contradictory texts, most jihadi leaders and ideologues follow and act upon the most extremist and violent interpretation of them. Therefore, constantly apologizing for the religion is worse than counter-productive: it is incorrect. The other, related, problem is that British policy is forged and implemented on the basis of ideas; so when those ideas stem from a fear of offending Muslims, the policy is necessarily flawed.

Britain: The Hijab as the Entry Point for Islam by Khadija Khan

Islamists seem to be influencing the British school system with ease: there is simply no solid opposition to them. The government even stays silent about the harassment and intimidation.

Islamists in Britain seem to be intent on establishing regressive requirements, such as the hijab for young girls, wife beating, making homosexuality illegal, death for apostates, halala rituals in divorce, and exploitation of women and children through Sharia courts as part and parcel of British culture.

That St. Stephen’s School allowed itself to be blackmailed in this way bodes ill for both Britain and its education system.

St. Stephen’s School in East London recently imposed a ban on hijabs (Islamic headscarves), but reversed its decision after administrators received hundreds of threats from enraged Muslims.

Among the targeted officials from the primary school was the head of governors, Arif Qawi, who had supported the ban on the grounds that the girls wearing hijabs were less likely to integrate socially with their peers. As a result of the outcry, Qawi submitted his resignation, saying that members of the staff were afraid to come to the school.

Head teacher Neena Lall, whose educational philosophy has turned St. Stephen’s into one of the best secular primary schools in Britain’s capital — in spite of its being in Newham, a poor neighborhood where English is spoken predominantly as a second language — was bombarded with e-mails calling her a “pedophile” who “deserved what she had coming.” Lall, of Punjabi origin, was even compared to Hitler in a video uploaded to YouTube.

It is not the first time that British educators have been intimidated by Muslim extremists. The head of Anderton Park School in Birmingham, Ms. Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, received similar threats on social media.

Anderton Park School was inspected as part of the “Trojan Horse” scandal, in which the British government discovered that Muslim extremists had been trying to take over Britain’s secular school system.