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December 2019

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, MEDIA Comments turned off

Schiff obtained journalist John Solomon’s phone records, and nobody in the media seems to care Rob Eno

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/schiff-obtained-journalist-john-solomons-phone-records-and-nobody-in-the-media-seems-to-care?

WTF MSM!? is a newsletter that puts a dose of sunlight on the mainstream media and exposes how the media twist facts, selectively report, and outright lie to advance their left-wing agenda. You can sign up for the WTF MSM!? newsletter here.

We have been told over and over and over again by the media that source relationships are the key to journalism. That the relationship between source and journalist is so sacrosanct that reporters are willing to go to jail to protect it. Enter the impeachment of President Donald Trump, and those same reporters aren’t screaming about Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) obtaining records of calls between investigative reporter John Solomon and his sources regarding corruption in Ukraine.

CNN reported, “The phone records, which are labeled in the report’s endnotes as coming from AT&T, show a web of communications between Solomon, Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Ukrainian American businessman Lev Parnas, Nunes and the White House’s budget office.”

Get that? Not only did Schiff obtain a journalist’s call records, he obtained the call records of the ranking member of his committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Which is particularly rich coming from Schiff, who is alleged to be a serial leaker.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Top Hungarian official says 100,000 migrants gathering on Balkan Peninsula

By on December 4th, 2019

https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/12/top-hungarian-official-says-100000-migrants-gathering-on-balkan-peninsula/

Top Hungarian official says 100,000 migrants gathering on Balkan Peninsula by Arthur Lyons      

A top government official in Hungary has warned that over 100,000 migrants have gathered on the Balkan peninsula and have the potential to flood Europe and give rise to a crisis similar to the migrant crisis of 2015.

Speaking at a press conference over the weekend, Hungary’s State Secretary Szilárd Németh said that although “the situation is still under control it’s beginning to look like the big crisis in 2015”, Hungary Today reports.

Nemeth, during his address, confirmed that around 100,000 migrants have gathered mostly on the West Balkans, saying that if they are “let loose on the Hungarian border, there could be big trouble, and we must prepare for that possibility.”

Last Friday, Hungary police announced that they had discovered two underground passageways used by migrants to illegally enter into Hungary from Serbia. Shortly after the discovery, dozens of migrants were arrested in the village Asotthalom, where the tunnels were found.

During an interview on Kossuth Rádió on Sunday morning, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s chief security advisor, György Bakondi, said that although the increased presence of migrants has mostly been seen on Hungary’s border with Serbia, “an increase in illegal activity has been registered on the Croatian, Romanian and Ukrainian borders as well.”

Last week , Hungarian security forces intercepted 600 people trying to cross into Hungary from Serbia compared to about 80 in the same week in 2018.

So far this year, 11,808 people are said to have attempted to enter Hungary illegally, with 2,418 attempts being made this month alone.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It shouldn’t take a tragedy to get jihadists off our streets Allison Pearson

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/shouldnt-take-tragedy-get-jihadis-streets/

It was one of those glittering frosty mornings in Cambridge on Monday, the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive. It only added to the terrible poignancy of the gathering in Market Square to mark the deaths of Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23.

Some of my friends’ kids, who had known Jack socially (“he was popular, really lovely”), were there to lay flowers. The minute’s silence went on and on as if returning to the normal babble of life were intolerable. In a chilling irony, the two young criminologists had been murdered at a conference to mark five years of Learning Together, a programme for students and prisoners, by one of the very men who had benefited from Jack and Saskia’s shared passion for rehabilitation.

Usman Khan was let out of jail last December on licence after serving only eight years, because his sentence had been reduced (by Lord Leveson) on appeal. A crazy change in the law meant that the release was automatic. Khan didn’t need to appear before the parole board, although the judge at his original trial had been clear that this cunning fanatic should not be released if he posed a continuing danger to the public.

Now wearing an electronic tag, Khan was given permission to travel from his home in Staffordshire to the event at Fishmongers’ Hall, even though he was once part of a terrorist group that had planned to blow up the London Stock Exchange, and the beautiful livery hall lay right next to London Bridge, scene of a horrific attack in 2017.

Did alarm bells really not ring? I’m afraid not.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Norway’s Top Cop Seems Baffled by Free Speech – but Not by the Inviolability of the Koran by Bruce Bawer

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15240/norway-free-speech-koran

Norwegian police chief Marie Benedicte Bjørnland is unable to rid from her mind the certainty that mistreating a copy of the Koran is wrong and that she and her fellow flatfoots should, under some statute or other, have the power to do something about it. In short, for the Norwegian police, the Koran is, in a way, as holy as it is for Muslims.

Once again, one was reminded of the cartoon crisis, when the Norwegian diplomatic corps saw it as urgent to apologize to authoritarian governments for whatever is left in Norway of individual liberty.

A teacher at the school explained that she had “made a conscious decision not to buy napkins with ‘Merry Christmas’ written on them” or to use a red tablecloth or red tree ornaments because “certain religions are very sensitive” and care needs to be taken “not to offend anyone.”

The Norwegian government has recently spent well over $100,000 to convert churches in Stavanger and Skien into mosques and is kicking in a huge sum of taxpayer money for the construction of a mega-mosque in Bergen with, according to journalist and political activist Hege Storhaug, “open ties to extremism.”

Recently I wrote here about how, on November 16, the group Stop Islamization of Norway (Stopp Islamisering av Norge – SIAN) set fire to a copy of the Koran in a public square in Kristiansand, only to have the fire doused pronto by a group of 30 or more police officers. It later emerged that they were under secret orders from the chief of the Norwegian police, Marie Benedicte Bjørnland, not just to put out any such fire but to prevent SIAN members from committing any such act.

Bjørnland defended her orders by citing the so-called “racism clause” of Norway’s criminal law, and the Minister of Justice, Jøran Kallmyr, stood behind her, making the baffling statement that while burning a Koran was not illegal, it could (depending on how you translated his words) “become” or “morph into” a crime.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Morning Greatness: Nadler Hypes He Won’t Take Any Sh!t During Today’s Judiciary Pageant Liz Sheld

By on December 4th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/04/morning-greatness-nadler-hypes-he-wont-take-any-sht-during-todays-judiciary-pageant/
Good Wednesday morning.

Here is what’s on the president’s agenda today:

The president participates in an Official Welcome with the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
President Trump participates in a North Atlantic Treaty Organization Plenary Session
The president participates in a bilateral meeting with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
President Trump participates in a working lunch with the NATO 2%ers
The president participates in a bilateral pull-aside with the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Denmark
President Trump participates in a bilateral pull-aside with the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic
The president participates in a press conference

ImpeachmentTV: Season 2, episode 1- The House Judiciary Caper

Previously, on ImpeachmentTV, the Intelligence Committee Democrats held a parade of hearsay witnesses, followed by the media dutifully reporting “BOMBSHELLS.” The Intelligence Committee partisans produced a report comprised of the witnesses’ fairy tales and voted to adopt the impeachment report and send it to the Judiciary Committee.

One of the most notable parts of this report is that the Democrats obtained some phone records. The records “detailed previously unreported contacts between President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the White House, top House Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, and Hill columnist John Solomon.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Biden Attempts a Meet-and-Greet, Farmer Reportedly Has No Clue Who He Is

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-attempts-meet-greet-farmer

Oh, to be that farmer in the Corn Stalk Cafe.

If you don’t know who I’m talking about, well, Joe Biden probably wishes he doesn’t. And it’s just as well, because the farmer apparently doesn’t know who Joe Biden is, either.

In case the name of the establishment didn’t clue you in, Biden is on another sweep through Iowa, a state where he currently sits in fourth place and is trending downward, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

In fact, the only reason he can’t really get lower is that Amy Klobuchar is in fifth place and, let’s face facts — Amy-mentum just isn’t happening.

Campaigning in Iowa means plenty of low-level meet-and-greets, and one of them was at the Corn Stalk Cafe in Shelby, according to TheBlaze.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE IMPEACHMENT REPORT IS DAMNING….FOR DEMOCRATS

By on December 4th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/04/the-impeachment-report-is-damning-all-right-for-democrats/

Amid falling support for impeachment and worries that it will backfire against Democrats, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff released a 300-page report he says proves that President Donald Trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of removing him from office.

And if you read only the summary, you might think they’ve got the goods.

The House impeachment report claims to have “uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.” (You can read the report here.)

It says that the “scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.”

And it argues that “To compel the Ukrainian president to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.”

So the Democrats’ entire impeachment case rests on two pillars. First, that Trump threatened national security by withholding an aid package to Ukraine. And, second, that he did so in order to get Ukraine’s new president to publicly announce investigations into two supposedly bogus scandals – Joe Biden’s son, and Ukraine’s efforts to keep Trump out of the White House – simply to wound Biden politically.

But read into the report, and then look through the Republican response, and you come to realize that the Democrats fail to support either claim. In fact, in some ways, they make Trump’s case for him.

The report never actually accuses Trump of engaging in bribery.

Despite all the foreboding tones and dark insinuation, the impeachment report never actually accuses Trump of bribery. In fact, the word “bribery” appears only four times in the entire 300-page document: once when it quotes the impeachment clause of the Constitution, twice in reference to accusations of bribery against Biden, and once in defending the impeachment inquiry itself.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

UMass Chancellor Applauded Over BDS Criticism, University President Urged to Act

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/03/umass-chancellor-applauded-over-bds-criticism-university-president-urged-to-act/

The president of the University of Massachusetts system is being urged to condemn academic boycotts of Israeli universities, after the chancellor of the Amherst campus faced criticism for acknowledging that such boycotts damage academic freedom.

In a letter sent to President Martin Meehan last month, the heads of the Academic Engagement Network and the AMCHA Initiative — both of which oppose the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in academia — applauded Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy of UMass Amherst for an October 21 statement condemning a “one-dimensional” and “polarizing” BDS panel that was set to take place on campus on November 12.

The event, which came on the heels of another major pro-BDS panel on the Amherst campus in May, exclusively featured supporters of the BDS campaign, which has been criticized by Jewish groups worldwide for denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and advancing antisemitic tropes. Among the participants was BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti, who has rejected the notion that Jewish people have a right to self-determination by claiming that they are not a nation, as well as activist Linda Sarsour, who has spoken at a rally hosted by antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and recently claimed that Israel “is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else.”

The lack of ideological diversity on the panel, Subbaswamy noted at the time, would do “little to increase the understanding of such a complex topic like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Rewriting the History of Israel’s 1948 War by Moshe Phillips

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/12/03/rewriting-the-history-of-israels-1948-war/

Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a great artist. But that doesn’t mean that every world leader he painted deserves our admiration — nor should we assume that Syzk admired every one of them, either.

In a recent essay in The Algemeiner, Samantha Lyons and Irvin Ungar presented Syzk’s 1941 portrait of King Abdullah I of Transjordan. Lyons and Ungar hailed Abdullah as an “Arab peacemaker.” But Abdullah was nothing of the sort.

Lyons and Ungar also claimed that Syzk’s portrait “reveals his admiration for a moderate Middle Eastern leader.” But they present no convincing evidence that Syzk felt that way. The fact that the painting was a “dignified rendering” of Abdullah says nothing about what Szyk thought of him.

Let’s remember that Szyk was an active member of the Bergson Group, which was created and led by activists from the Jabotinsky movement. They regarded Transjordan as a part of historic Eretz Yisrael, which had been illegally and immorally torn from the rest of Mandatory Palestine by the British authorities in 1922.

As the unelected leader of Transjordan, Abdullah was the fascist dictator of a country that was little more than a work of fiction. There were no “Transjordanians.” Their “nation” was concocted by the British in order to give Abdullah a “country” to rule over, after they disappointed him by giving the throne of Iraq to his brother. So they severed the eastern 78 percent of the Palestine Mandate and handed it to him on a silver platter as a consolation prize.

It hardly seems likely that Syzk “admired” the illegal Arab occupier of 78 percent of Israel.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Journalists Against Free Speech A strange new world. John Tierney

By on December 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/journalists-against-free-speech-john-tierney/

Reprinted from City Journal.

Suppose you’re the editorial-page editor of a college newspaper, contemplating the big news on campus: protesters have silenced an invited speaker and gone on a violent rampage. Should you, as a journalist whose profession depends on the First Amendment, write an editorial reaffirming the right to free speech?

If that seems like a no-brainer, you’re behind the times. The question stumped the staff of the Middlebury Campus after protesters silenced conservative social thinker Charles Murray and injured the professor who’d invited him. The prospect of taking a stand on the First Amendment was so daunting that the paper dispensed with its usual weekly editorial, devoting the space instead to a range of opinions from others—most of whom defended the protesters. When a larger and more violent mob at the University of California at Berkeley prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, students at the Daily Californian did write a forceful editorial—but not in favor of his right to speak. Instead, they reviled Yiannopoulos and denounced those who “invited chaos” by offering a platform to “someone who never belonged here.”

Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced.

These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “de-monetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.

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