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March 2019

POLITICS Comments turned off

Progressive Ideology and the Ghosts of Nazism Daryl McCann

By on March 30th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/03/progressive-ideology-and-the-ghosts-of-nazism/

It has become commonplace for the critics of President Trump to refer to him as an aspirant Adolf Hitler. Democratic Representative Hank Robertson, in the first session of the 2019-20 Congress, made the following comparison:

Hitler led a political movement of anti-education, anti-science racists, who focused on nationalism with rhetoric about making Germany a strong country, which would result in prosperity for the German people … Sound familiar?

No, not familiar at all, but the accuracy of Robertson’s allusion is mostly beside the point. To understand our times, it is necessary to turn this all on its head. We need to start asking why the likes of Robertson believe their political adversaries are modern-day Nazis and what that means for our future.

Condemning Donald Trump for being a modern-day Führer amounts to an ad hominem attack of the highest order. Should they not be calling for his assassination? There are ethical arguments in favour of tyrannicide. Playing the Hitler card, admittedly, is not exactly new in political discourse. The political philosopher Leo Strauss defined the phenomenon, in 1951, as an association fallacy and coined the expression reductio ad Hitlerum: “A view is not refuted when it happens to have been shared by Hitler.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump signs permit to jump-start delayed construction of Keystone XL pipeline

By on March 30th, 2019

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/436509-trump-signs-permit-to-jumpstart-delayed-construction-of-keystone-xl

President Trump on Friday signed a presidential permit to jump-start construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline with a facility in Montana, a move seen as a way to circumvent previous court orders halting development.

The permit authorizes energy company TransCanada Corp. to “construct, connect, operate, and maintain” pipeline facilities between the U.S. and Canada.

The permit also allows for the maintenance of a pipeline facility at Phillips County, Montana, for importation of the oil to the U.S.

The order supersedes a March 2017 order. That permit was invalidated by a Montana federal judge in November. The ruling is being appealed in the 9th Circuit. Separately, a December lawsuit placed an injunction on most pre-construction activities.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I hereby revoke that March 23, 2017, permit,” Trump wrote in Friday’s order.

A White House spokesperson told The Hill that the new permit “dispels any uncertainty.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

System Fail The Mueller Report is an unmitigated disaster for the American press and the ‘expert’ class that it promotes By Lee Smith

By on March 30th, 2019

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/282448/system-fail

It will take weeks for the elite pundit class to unravel all the possible implications and subtexts embedded in Robert Mueller’s final report on the charge that Donald Trump and his team colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. The right claims that the report exonerates Trump fully, while the left contends there are lots of nuggets in the full text of the final report that may point to obstruction of justice, if not collusion.

But here’s all you need to know about the special counsel probe:

First, after nearly two years, the special counsel found no credible evidence of collusion. It found no credible evidence of a plot to obstruct justice, to hide evidence of collusion. The entire collusion theory, which has formed the center of elite political discourse for over two years now, has been publicly and definitely proclaimed to be a hoax by the very person on whom news organizations and their chosen “experts” and “high-level sources” had so loudly and insistently pinned their daily, even hourly, hopes of redemption.

Mueller should have filed his report on May 18, 2017—the day after the special counsel started and he learned the FBI had opened an investigation on the sitting president of the United States because senior officials at the world’s premier law enforcement agency thought Trump was a Russian spy. Based on what evidence? A dossier compiled by a former British spy, relying on second- and third-hand sources, paid for by the Clinton campaign.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Five Ways Trump Is the Most Pro-Israel President By P. David Hornik

By on March 30th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/five-ways-trump-is-the-most-pro-israel-president/

President Donald Trump has taken five dramatic, unprecedented pro-Israel measures. They’re not the only factors that make him popular in Israel; others include his withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal and his sanctions on Iran and its proxy Hizballah. But those aren’t moves directed at Israel specifically. The explicitly pro-Israel moves include:

1. Declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem

Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995; Presidents Clinton and Bush, as candidates, vowed to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and President Obama, as a candidate, criticized them for not doing so—and then didn’t do so himself. Candidate Trump promised to “move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem”—and President Trump did so. It’s deeply appreciated in Israel.

2. Cutting aid to UNRWA and the Palestinians

Trump, much more than any past president, has let the Palestinians know that there is no free lunch—that they cannot, along with their UN ally UNRWA, cultivate generations of Israel-hating “refugees” and cannot incentivize and reward terrorism while continuing to receive aid. Last year the administration cut funding to UNRWA and put the Palestinians on notice about U.S. aid and their pay-to-slay policy. Congress advanced its own initiative, and this year, fearing lawsuits in the U.S. over Palestinian terror attacks that have killed Americans, the Palestinian Authority itself requested—and “got”—a major aid cut from the administration.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard: Move On From Trump-Russia Probe

By on March 30th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-if-mueller-found-trump-co

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, said it’s a “good thing” for America that special counsel Robert Mueller did not find President Trump or his campaign colludedwith the Russians to the win the 2016 election because it could have sparked a civil war.“Now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country,” said Gabbard, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.She continued, “Because if the president had been indicted for conspiring with Russia to interfere with and affect the outcome of our elections, it would have precipitated a terrible crisis that could have led to civil war. So we should all be relieved that President Trump was not found to have colluded with the Russians.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Updated Official US maps to show Golan belongs to Israel

By on March 30th, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/updated-us-maps-to-show-golan-belongs-to-israel/?ut

The U.S. State Department announced this week that it will update its maps to reflect the Trump administration’s move to officially recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.A department spokesperson told Voice of America that the map modifications would be “consistent” with the proclamation the president signed on Monday, remarking that the United States “recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.”U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told Voice of America that Foggy Bottom would “redraw” official maps and make them available “as soon as they are ready.”The editing, said Hook, reflects reality and a “need for Israel to have secure and defensible borders.”Last week, Trump posted on Twitter that he would make that recognition.“After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and regional stability!” he tweeted.Israel took control of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“New Europe” and the Islamist Agenda By Rachel Ehrenfeld

By on March 30th, 2019

http://news.acdemocracy.org/new-europe-and-the-isl

The European Union’s Progressive-Left post-nationalist leadership is set on challenging the sovereignty of  nation-states, by eliminating borders and letting in millions of Muslims.   This policy has already contributed to moving the “old” European continent towards a new Europe, occupied by new people with a new culture. Apparently, opening the continent to millions of mostly unqualified migrants who refuse to assimilate, and who drain the coffers of their host countries, seems like the preferred solution to the negative birthrates among the Europeans.

On August 30, 2010, as he was folding his tent near the Vatican, on his last visit to Rome, Italy, then Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, forewarned: “Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration; it could turn into Africa. There is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe, and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion.”Kaddafi urged the Europeans, “imagine that this could happen, but before it does, we need to work together.”

He proceeded to offer the Europeans a deal, asking for a modest fee of 5bn euros, to stop the mass migration to Europe, which as he predicted, are costing billions of euros annually.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Mueller Protects the Deep State Diana West

By on March 30th, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-mueller-protects-the-deep-state_2855984.html

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy has published a shocking op-ed, explaining why he suspects that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has known for the past 18 months, since fall of 2017, that there was no Trump-Russia “collusion.”

Personally, I suspect Mueller knew earlier still, and certainly no later than the day he became Special Counsel, his very appointment resulting from leaking chicanery by his longtime “law enforcement twin,” James Comey. (Muller and Comey both were thought of as “rising stars mentored and guided by Eric Holder in the 1990s,” according to the Washingtonian)

McCarthy has laid out a logical argument based on dates and FISA warrants to make his case, which rather makes me wonder how long McCarthy has suspected Mueller has known there was no Trump-Russia “collusion.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

No Winners in the ‘Collusion’ Wars By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on March 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/mueller-report-collusion-debate-inflated-talking-points/

Both sides are peddling inflated talking points.

‘There was absolutely no collusion!”

“Are you kidding? There was a boatload of collusion!”

I’ve been doing legal analysis in hotly contested cases, including political cases, for about 35 years. By now, I should be used to the insidious word games, as well as the confusion inherent when people imprecisely use ambiguous words because they don’t know any better. Yet it seems like it has never been worse than it is now.

That’s because I’m spoiled. I spent the first couple of decades in the confines of a top-tier judicial system. In legal proceedings, a judge is there to make sure no one plays fast and loose with language. As a young prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, I was very fortunate that my cases were assigned to exceptional judges, who made it their business to mind the court record.

At the time, I didn’t appreciate how valuable that was — judges interrupting the testimony, even if there had been no objection, to clarify what a lawyer or witness meant by some loaded word planted in a question or uttered in an answer. But by the end of the trial, in the transcript that would ultimately be reviewed by appellate courts, there was no way a fuzzy term, such as “collusion,” would be permitted to muddy the waters. Everyone understood what it meant, and didn’t mean, within the four corners of the case.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Russia Hoax: Should We All Now Just Move On? March 29, 2019/ Francis Menton

By on March 30th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-29-the-russia-hoax-should-we-all-now-just-move-on

A week ago today, the issuance of the Mueller Report finally popped the long-inflating bubble of the Trump/Russia collusion hoax. After thousands of excited and breathless press reports and cable news segments over two-plus years (“new bombshell,” “the walls are closing in,” “impeachment,” etc.), it turned out that there was nothing there. So is there any point in wasting any more time on this? Why don’t we all just move on?

You won’t be surprised that many voices in the media are already advocating for that. At the New York Times, they had barely made it to Tuesday when the lead front page article, headlined “Trump, Citing ‘Evil Deeds,’ Turns Wrath on His Critics,” started pushing for Trump to “drop the subject,” citing the precedents of Reagan and Clinton:

[Trump’s] approach [of seeking retribution against his critics], if it lasts, contrasts with those of other presidents who survived major scandals. After the Iran-contra affair, President Ronald Reagan happily dropped the subject and focused on arms control talks with the Soviet Union and other issues. After being acquitted at his Senate impeachment trial, President Bill Clinton was just as eager to move on to Social Security and other initiatives.

Less expected, perhaps, was the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the same day from long-time G.W. Bush advisor Karl Rove, with the headline “Move On From Robert Mueller, Mr. President.” That article’s gist was captured in its sub-headline, “Obsessing over the investigation’s origins isn’t the way to win over swing voters.” Rove urges Trump to switch his attention to focusing on a positive message, including the strong economy.

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