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May 2020

Strategic Revelations from Susan Rice Her boss sent women to perform his dirty work. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/strategic-revelations-susan-rice-lloyd-billingsley/

In her now fully declassified January 20, 2017 email to herself, former national security advisor Susan Rice three times claimed everything about incoming Gen. Michael Flynn was done “by the book.” In the January 5, 2017 meeting, Rice wrote, “President Obama asked if Comey was saying that the NSC should not pass sensitive information related to Russia to Flynn. Comey replied ‘potentially.’ He added that he has no indication that Flynn has passed classified information to Kislyak, but he noted that ‘the level of communication is unusual.”

On March 22, 2017, Judy Woodruff of PBS asked Susan Rice about President Trump’s claim that that the Obama administration had surveilled his campaign in 2016.  “Nothing of the sort occurred,” said Rice.

On April 4, 2017, Woodruff confronted Rice with revelations from House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes. As the California Republican charged, during the final days of the Obama administration, the president-elect and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals and their identities may have been disclosed.  Woodruff wondered, “Do you know anything about this?”

“I know nothing about this,” answered Rice, who knew everything about it, and this was not her first duty on the falsehood front. Back in 2014, Rice said deserter Bowe Bergdahl had served the United States with “honor and distinction.” That whopper came two years after Rice’s major starring role.

Israeli Arab Citizen Indicted as Iranian Spy Recruited by a member of a Palestinian terrorist group. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/israeli-arab-citizen-indicted-iranian-spy-joseph-klein/

An Israeli Arab citizen, Ayman Haj Yahya, was indicted last month for meeting and cooperating with two operatives of Iranian intelligence with the intention of “assisting the State of Iran in its efforts to harm the State of Israel.” This would-be fifth columnist spy for the Iranian regime is alleged to have provided his Iranian contacts with information on a variety of matters affecting the security of Israel, which “could help Iran in its war against the State of Israel.” Yahya was allegedly sharing information regarding the Israeli military, potential targets for terrorist attacks, recruitment of more Israeli-Arabs to assist Iran and ways to sow division within Israeli society.

Khaled Yamani, a Palestinian resident of the Baddawi refugee camp in Lebanon and a senior member of the terrorist organization known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), reportedly recruited Yahya. After corresponding via Facebook, Yahya met at least twice in 2018 with Yamani, who reportedly revealed that he was working for Iranian intelligence. The PFLP-Iranian regime nexus is strong. For example, as documented by Joe Truzman, a contributor and analyst for The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “The PFLP’s military wing, Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, honored Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and former Qods commander Qasem Soleimani…The Soleimani poster says ‘In the Quds day, we pay tribute to the soul of martyr commader (sic) Qasem Soleimani.'”

Haj Yahya, together with PFLP’s Khaled Yamani, allegedly met with two representatives of Iranian intelligence in Europe in both February and March of 2020. Yahya “received funds, training, encryption tools and codes in order to be able to maintain contact with them in an encrypted way after he returned to Israel,” the Shin Bet claimed. Yahya was attempting to do just that upon his return to Israel before being arrested by Israeli security forces.

Iran Quietly Lowers the Temperature With U.S. Alissa J. Rubin and Farnaz Fassihi

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-quietly-lowers-the-temperature-with-u-s/ar-BB14kvKf

BAGHDAD — After years of increasing tensions that nearly led to war, Iran has moderated its approach to the West, shifting from a policy of provocation to one of limited cooperation. The change reflects an effort to avoid direct confrontation with the United States that the Iranians say could benefit President Trump in the November election.

After months of attacks on American forces in Iraq, Iran has called off its proxy militias, one of several de-escalation steps.

Nowhere is the shift more evident than in Iraq, where Iran has backed a pro-American prime minister and ordered its proxy militias to cease their rocket attacks on American forces.

The Americans, while publicly dismissive of any change in Iranian posture, have quietly reciprocated in modest and indirect ways.

Taken together, the openings represent an incipient détente that, even if it does not last or lead to the end of hostilities between Iran and the United States, has already lowered the temperature of the relationship, reducing the risk of open conflict.

“A war is less likely to happen, but there is still the risk of a confrontation,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “But it’s less likely because the intent of the primary actors has shifted. Both Iran and the U.S. definitely do not want a war six months before the U.S. elections.”

Iran’s shift, which has not been announced or explained publicly, appears to be tactical, analysts said, noting that the country still vehemently opposes the Trump administration’s demand that it renegotiate its nuclear agreement with the West and that it has not backed off its goal of ousting the United States military from the Middle East. Publicly, both countries remain engaged in verbal warfare.

A Slippery World Without Brakes? Francesco SiscI

http://www.settimananews.it/informazione-internazionale/slippery-world-without-brakes/

Is the world sleepwalking into a new war, be it hot or cold? And is the virus the oil to lubricate and fuel the clash that is centered on China and the US but impacts the world? Are countries playing a bizarre game of chicken where neither wants to step back for fear of losing domestic support? It is hard to miss this trend and most importantly, this is all happening without checks and stops. There is no international organization apparently able to pull the brakes, mediate in this predicament.

The slippery slope

On May 18 Chinese president Xi Jinping addressed the World Health Organization (WHO) defending Chinese actions during the Coronavirus epidemic. He underlined his support for the organization from which the US, which accused the organization of having covered and abetted Beijing’s murky behavior during the crisis, had withdrawn funds.

«In China, after making painstaking efforts and enormous sacrifice, we have turned the tide on the virus and protected the life and health of our people. All along, we have acted with openness, transparency and responsibility. We have provided information to WHO and relevant countries in a most timely fashion. We have released the genome sequence at the earliest possible time. We have shared control and treatment experience with the world without reservation. We have done everything in our power to support and assist countries in need»,[1] said Xi.

He also announced a US$ 2 billion extra support package for the WHO and the establishment of a supply center to distribute health care equipment worldwide. Xi didn’t mention the US. From the US point of view, it looks like China is stepping in globally, and in the WHO, whose role is objectively important during this crisis, replacing and pushing away the US.

End New York City’s lockdown now! By David Marcus …..DPS note

https://nypost.com/2020/05/20/end-new-york-citys-lockdown-now/

DPS NOTE:

It is about to get “interesting” and some time soon it will matter less and less what the justifications are for making people watch their and others’ lives crumble. It will surely happen differently in different parts of the country where wealth, ethnicities, cultures and tolerance for perceived unjustified suppression will vary dramatically. But America may still be different from other countries. Different enough to have a citizenry which will always at some point question – and perhaps defy – governmental authority. In some places it may simply be going back to work when told you can’t. In others there might actually be civil “unrest.”
So that’s why I am circulating this. Not as an endorsement of the headlines, but to raise the questions my Note has posed. Or, as we would have said in the Brooklyn in which I grew up, “Hey, you wanna know what you can do with your model?”

…….”Sometimes, a good rant is all a writer can offer. Bear with me.

Last Friday morning, some 3,500 New Yorkers lined up at a Catholic church in Queens to receive free food hours before it even opened, ­according to the New York Police Department. Catholic Charities has reported a 200 percent increase in demand over the past month and a half.

By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

It needs to end. Now.

In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

·A HERO’S LIFE AND DEATH-RON SHURER 1978-2020

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/70801-what-hero-really-means-2020-05-20

EXCERPT:

What ‘Hero’ Really Means “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Mark Alexander

In my capacity as a board member of the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, I’ve been privileged to meet many members of our nation’s most exclusive fraternity — those military personnel whose courage under the most extreme of circumstances has earned them our nation’s highest military award for valor.

Not one of those Medal of Honor recipients would describe their actions as “heroic,” but simply being in a place and time that required something extraordinary of them. To a man, they are then quick to say that most others would have done the same if they’d been in the recipient’s boots.

This week, falling as it does between Armed Forces Day and the upcoming observance of Memorial Day, allow me to express my frame of reference for the meaning of “hero” by telling you about one American.

Last Thursday, I received word from a mutual friend that Staff Sgt. Ronald J. Shurer II had died after a three-year battle with cancer.

In 2008, at the age of 29, Ron was a Senior Medical Sergeant in Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 3336, Special Operations Task Force-33, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom during the battle of Shok Valley, Afghanistan. He was an ordinary man who faced extraordinary circumstances and summoned the courage to repeatedly run through enemy fire to provide medical care to his brothers in arms. Despite being wounded himself, he tended to four critically wounded soldiers and 10 injured commandos, then helped evacuate many wounded through fields of fire to waiting medevac helicopters.

Here Are Five People Who Say Hydroxychloroquine Saved Their Lives Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/05/20/five-people-who-say-hydroxychloroquine-saved-their-life-n2569069

When President Trump announced Monday afternoon that he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine for weeks as a way to help prevent Wuhan coronavirus, nearly everyone in the media turned themselves into a doctor to condemn the move. They claimed it was far too dangerous and that it doesn’t work. 

While lengthy scientific studies about the use of the drug to prevent the disease are still being conducted, it is true that a number of frontline healthcare workers have been taking a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin  as they work to take care of infected patients. Further, we know the drug has been prescribed successfully to a number of Wuhan coronavirus patients who credit it with saving their lives. 

QED Prepare for an Orgy of Back-Patting Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/05/prepare-for-an-orgy-of-back-patting/

Has there ever been a more ill-informed, recklessly destructive example of public policy in the history of mankind than the Great Lockdown? Well, of course there has. Mao’s Great Leap Forward cost tens of millions of lives. Stalin’s Great Purge cost a million lives or thereabouts. So, there it is, Morrison, Trump and Johnson et al can take comfort in not wreaking as much harm as have past despots. Consolation indeed! As David Richards and Konstantin Boudnik  put it in The Telegraph

Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns … could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.

Public health experts can rest easy. Sure, their bodgie, overblown predictions caused governments to rain down devastation on pliable populations. but they will never be brought to account. Governments have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction that countless deaths were saved by following their experts’ advice.

Trump often cites a figure of 2.2 million Americans dead but for the lockdown. This number, a completely made-up fiction, comes from Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College (IC) team. Ferguson has a reputation for epidemiological alarmism burnished now with a reputation for eschewing social distancing in the cause of fornication.

Quite aside from any flaws in the innards of epidemiological models, the problem with predictions about new contagious diseases is that data is inevitably wanting. Data is wanting precisely because the disease is new. How contagious is the disease? How is it transmitted from one person to another? How deadly is it? How many are susceptible to being infected versus those not susceptible? What profile does the disease have among different population groups – by age, by ethnicity, by sex, by the range and severity of pre-existing illnesses? How many who contract the disease are asymptomatic or suffer only mild symptoms? How long had the disease been circulating prior to it being recognised?

Trump Hate Is Making It Harder to Study Hydroxychloroquine By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-hate-is-making-it-harder-to-study-hydroxychloroquine/

Yesterday, I pointed out the potential consequences of having an overwrought, childish, partisan debate over a lifesaving drug that’s used by millions of Americans. Today, I see, Joe Biden is comparing hydroxychloroquine to poison. “It’s like saying maybe if you inject Clorox into your blood it may cure you,” Biden said of Donald Trump’s admission that he takes the drug. “C’mon, man! What is he doing? What in God’s name is he doing?”

Now, I get that Biden thinks it’s cute to merge the myth that Trump wants Americans to inject themselves with bleach and the president’s unproven prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine. It’s worth noting, however, that the presumptive Democratic Party nominee is also now telling Americans — including those who need this low-risk prescribed drug that has been approved for all public use for over 70 years — that taking hydroxychloroquine is tantamount to injecting yourself with bleach.

Listen to this NPR interview with some doctors trying to conduct tests of hydroxychloroquine effectiveness. Dr. John Giles, a rheumatologist at Columbia University, who says that the partisan fight over hydroxychloroquine has made it virtually impossible for him to find people to test the effectiveness of the drug against coronavirus. Why would anyone want to swallow Clorox, right?

Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology? By Rich Lowry

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-ron-desantis-florida-covid-19-strategy/

The Florida governor explains a COVID-19 strategy that has gotten bad press and favorable results.

A  couple of months ago, the media, almost as one, decided that Governor Ron DeSantis was a public menace who was going to get Floridians killed with his lax response to the coronavirus crisis.

In an interview with National Review, DeSantis says he was surprised at “how knee-jerk” the hostile coverage was, but he “also knew that none of these people knew anything about Florida at all, so I didn’t care what they were saying.”

The conventional wisdom has begun to change about Florida, as the disaster so widely predicted hasn’t materialized. It’s worth delving into the state’s response — as described by DeSantis and a couple of members of his team — because it is the opposite of the media narrative of a Trump-friendly governor disregarding the facts to pursue a reckless agenda. DeSantis and his team have followed the science closely from the beginning, which is why they forged a nuanced approach, but one that focused like a laser on the most vulnerable population, those in nursing homes.

An irony of the national coverage of the coronavirus crisis is that at the same time DeSantis was being made into a villain, New York governor Andrew Cuomo was being elevated as a hero, even though the DeSantis approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to that of Cuomo. Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19-positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.